E4: By Design - Elliot Maltby On Being a Design Lead, Good Habits, And The Path Taken To Get There.

[Music] Elliot. Hello. Hello. [Laughs] It's been a day. Yeah. Yep. So, going. yeah, starting from the beginning really, so you're a lead designer. What the hell is a lead designer? Like, what does a designer do? Um, designers can be kind of like. like a tool shed. We can fulfill many roles that we need to. It really depends on what the job asks of us. Like, I've had jobs where. like, my previous company where it was. we was doing like a very narrative story driven game. So, there, my job was to put all of the characters in the scene, line up all the audio, make sure the sequences with their. make sure like the cameras panning, like dramatic effect, make sure like all the. like, it was like, basically it was like until dawn, it was the Manama dang game. So, you had like a load of inspects, so like, make sure they're all placed and you can pick them up and then move properly. So, that's like one side of being a designer where I didn't really design much. I did a lot of implementation work. Wait, so you worked on Manama dang? Yeah, I worked on Manama dang. Um. Oh. Why? I know it's a sick game. I mean, what's it like working on, so you're terrifying? Uh. Terrif. well, it was. it was. more terrifying previously because there was a lot more goal in it, but. when you like. when you look. when they're looking for a publisher, they, you know, "Hey, look, here's this like prototype, this sort of. um. what do they call it? Like proof concept, vertical slice of the game." And you go and you present it to a load of companies and then depending on if the company likes it, then they'll go, "Cool, yeah, we'll publish you. We'll set up a whole thing." And we got published by Bandai Namco, so a lot of the gore had to be ripped out because they're more of a friendly, friendly company and they wanted to like. make it more broad and marketable instead of like, like, like, only 18s and above. Um. So it was a lot, it was a lot more scary, but at the same time, it's kind of like, "I put all the jump scares in, not all of them, but I put all the ones in my levels in, so I kind of know what to expect and I play an unlit mode with no music on, so I don't get scared." That's. that's cheeky as fuck. What? Yeah, I'm stuck there, like. So, do you. did you only end up doing, like, testing your stuff? Like, did you ever do, like, a full play for everyone else's? Yes. Like, we. My team, or team three, as we was known, um. We owned. we owned a bunch of levels, I think it was like eight levels, um. and we was the first. first proper team to get them. they're like, chaining, up and running, throw up for quite some time. Everyone's just working in solitude in their own levels, but no one had tried to sort of start chapter one and go all the way through. Um. and it got to this point where Bandai wanted an update on the, like, chaining in the multiplayer side of it, so they had to, like, ask our team to. to go through. So, we had to play a lot of. spend a lot of time sort of making sure the chaining was working, and testing other people, like, or other people's and our team's work. I'm used to have, like, little sinks where we'd sit down and we'd all, like, one person would have the controller, we'd all play, and then we'd note down things that we, like, I think this camera lingered too long here. I think this happened. I think this was this. Even though, like, I'm not. Like, we're not directors, I'm not a cinematographer, I was, like, a. fresh out of uni designer who was told to put a camera in, who was just kind of going off of what movies I'd watched. That's so cool. That's also because I remember I played that, and it genuinely scared the crap out of me. I literally. I didn't even make it, like, most of the way. I think, I mean, to the bit where the scary woman comes out. Oh, it is in the. The way it's like a pin-up girl. Yes, the pin-up girl. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. So spoilers, but that, I believe, is actually Julia. You're hallucinating the entire time, but it's actually Julia coming off, coming with you. She's trying to. She's trying to, like, stop you. I don't know what ending you got there, but yeah, it's Julia and Conrad was hallucinating. Geez. I have to go back and play because, like, my tolerance to horror games is a lot better than it was when I went and played that. When I played Dead Space. I've been playing, like, Clisto Protocol and stuff. And yeah, I really enjoy it now. I've kind of. I've grown up, mate. I've grown up. Me, yeah. But yeah, I'm gonna get police stuff. That's awesome, because, like, yeah, I mean, that's a small industry, like, just hearing that you worked on that. I have this, like, funny story where, like, when, like, me and my partner first got together, she likes Jack Saptaka and I was like, "Oh, he played in my games." So we booted up, like, his YouTube video, and he was on the boat. And the first thing he expected, he, like, inspected, there was like this little UI pump that would come in from the right. And it just kind of. If the text wasn't readable, this UI prompt would just have it all clearly written, so you could read it. And it was also localized, so you could read it a lot better. But on the English version, the person who wrote all of them was me. So we instantly, she's about seven spelling mistakes because I'm dyslexic, and so that's ripping into them. And she's like, as if that went out, who did them? To me, I was like, "Yeah, that was me." She'd be like, "I don't know what you're talking about." The exetly. This was before Grammily exists. Like, the one. Exactly. That's crazy. I need to play that series, because, like, I really did enjoy what I did. And there's a few more out now, isn't there? There's like. Yeah. There's more than little hope. Yeah, the one in the desert with the. I can't spoil it. Yeah, more than the desert. Yeah, no, no, no, don't ruin it for me. I want to say it's called House of Ashes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds right. Yeah, House of Ashes. Yeah, I don't know what the fourth one was called. But they're amazing. Yeah, yeah, no, the. The. It was a nice way to jump into the industry, and I met a hell of a lot of people there who. who I, like, I love and, like, have. I follow, like, there's a guy called, like. Jack Chapman or. My. Matt. And, like, Adam, they're all, they're all great people. I sort of follow what they do closely in there, yeah. So I met a lot of good people. How long were you there? I was there for one full year, until I joined Cloud. Ooh! Yeah. Yeah, so good time to meet people, though, and. Well, I'm still. I'm still mixed with, like, some of my colleagues from UV and, like, they reach out now and again. And it's awesome, because later on, when everyone goes to different studios, you get to see, like, what they're working on, and then you. Yeah. Go around and you're like, "Oh, I know some work, I love this." I know some work, I love this. That's awesome. Like, I spoke to one of my mates recently. He's working on the new PAYDAY game. I think he's a way to do that. Ooh! I was there. So I was like, a message him, I was like, "Oh my god, I can't believe you've ended up there." Like, I love PAYDAY so much. It's such a good day. Yeah. And me. Yeah, you'll love it. Like, I'm crazy for PAYDAY. I think I've got, like, 700 hours in PAYDAY, too. Oh my god. Yeah. I played it to death, like, probably the first six months that came out, and then I stopped playing for ages, and then when I went back, it was just. There was so much DLC. I was just, like, overwhelmed. At one tenths. Yeah, yeah, 100%. I'm gonna be, um, I hopefully could get in this one. So, you know, I've played it at some point. Yeah, definitely. I've pre-ordered it. I'm that kind of person. Yeah, I mean, it's only, it's only, like, 30 quid, I see. Right? Yeah, yeah, it's really cheap. It's really cheap. It's really cheap. It's good, though. It's amazing, yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that was a slight tangent, but. Did you go over there? No, no, no, no. It's great. But going back to, like, design, right? So obviously, designer feels. Can feel many different roles, and many different kind of. So obviously, on Man and Badan you were doing, like, object placement and stuff, and cameras and stuff. And how was your kind of role of all of now that you're working on, Star Citizen? Um, it's fun, because it's like, we're in a state of, like, pre-production, alpha and beta, and gold, all at once. So we go through very quick cycles of, hey, like, we need this mission or, like, this system, and it's kind of. Right, I have to sort of design it, pitch the design, iterate on the feedback, implement it, test it, iterate, and then push it out. And then obviously, players get their hands on it and rip it to shit or not, and then I go back and iterate more on it. So it kind of. It's more fun, because instead of waiting three years to release a game, I'm getting that sort of dopamine hit of releasing something, and feeling good about it every, you know, three to six months. And I also then get to rework on my work, like, I worked for, like, seven months on Siege Verizon, um, which is the big event I built. Super hyped about it, like, I, I stayed up, like, of my own choice, because I was really wanting to get out and make it really good. I stayed up late, I worked so much over time, um, even against what, like, Luke had said, you know, he's like, you need to go to bed, and I'm like, it, the more time I spend on it, the better it's going to be. Um, and then when that went out and players really liked it, and I got feedback from it, it, like, I feel like it improves me as a designer. But that's, that's, that's just be building stuff. Like, now I've gone into that whole leadership aspect. I'm, I'm learning even more stuff, because I've got a little team that I have to nurture and sort of look after, which is a, a whole different bug, get a ball game of stuff that I'm really not used to. Um, would you, would you say your roles changed a bit? Now you're relieved now. Like, do you feel like you're less hands on more kind of that guiding hand now? Yeah, pretty much. It's, I still have like, I still build stuff, but there's normally smaller things like, um, like, you know, but Lars on my team, he'll be a building career and I yore it. I'll be working on like the barge highest event that we announced. And then like, Max will be working on his new retrieve consignment. And they all come to me and like, they are asking like theory questions on how we could achieve something within our game. And I need to know the toolset, um, and need to know, oh, this is how you do it. And while I'm, I'm helping them there and they're also coming to me with design questions. Like, what do you think if the players this, how should we handle that? Do you like this idea I've got? And while we're talking about that at the same time, I've got little bits of my work, which I haven't made you for release, but they're important. Like, like doing a cargo manifest rework. So I still get to get my hands dirty, but it's like less. Like, it used to be before I would just be fully concentrating on building content. Like that was day in, day out. That's all I did was I just like, this release, I let you work in on infiltrating the fandom and wake up and I'd start building modules and then I'd test and I'd get ready and I'd build and I'd design and so off and so forth. But I was in my own bubble. Like, that was the only thing I needed to worry about. And now I've like, I so went up, it started getting to the point where I need to care about that, like, little bit in my bubble. But now I need to also care about some like big picture stuff. I need to care about all of their work, what they're doing, how far it's getting along. I need to know like risks. I need to know issues. I need to know how it works for if someone asks me because I need to know the high level. If they're off, I need to, if they're off in something breaks, I need to be able to go into their logic and help and fix stuff like up while they're off. And then even further outside that, I need to also future plan, which is the future of my content, there's also then like the future of the director requests that come to us like, hey, can you do this? Can you do that? And I have to look into it and help them. And then I have all the teams reach out to me, which I know you've experienced where you're like, hey, how can I do this? And then you're having to help them and teach them. So it kind of, it gets less intense on building missions because I'm no longer on the big things. But it's the void that that that would normally would have created is now filled with just a ton of other stuff. Yeah, lots of organization and meetings and yeah, the big picture stuff. Quite scheduling all of it. Yeah, it is intense. So how long have you been a lead for now? Oh my god. You know what, I'd have to go on my LinkedIn for that. I have no clue. I'm going to say like maybe like officially did the term like lead probably like four, four months maybe. But obviously, you know, it's like you trial at the job before you actually get it. So I think I was trialing at the job for quite some time before I actually got it. I kind of couldn't. I think it was like maybe like six months trialing at it where I was like still my, I was still just a principal systems designer. But I had like, in fact, I was trialing to be a lead while building Siege Morrison. So it was like within that process of doing all that, I had quite quite a bit to get on with. Test passed mate. That's one thing that's going to guarantee it. It like building the biggest vision of games ever seen. It was good. It's fun. Now you've been the role for a little bit. Like how do you feel about it? Do you still get like imposter syndrome? That kind of thing. I was 1%, 100% imposter syndrome because there's like, there's people who are in my team like, for example, Lars who I consider like very experienced. You know, he's been in the industry longer than me. He older than me. He studies birthday. So that birthday Lars. He's older than me, but it's just really weird because even though like, he called me boss and sort of some of the people in the team like James Tyler on my team calls me boss man. And it's really like, I don't know how to look at how to feel about it because it's like, right, like I'm 26. It's a bit weird. I'm just, I'm just the guy. I'm just the normal man. Yeah, that when you hear like those terms running around, you usually picture like someone like late 40s, 50s. Exactly. No word of a lie. I picture my dad like that is what I picture like. Someone says boss and instantly I'm like, thinking like, I'm not like that. I'm just, but I sit at home and play video games or thing. Yeah, though, it's, I'm smart to think, I didn't even think of that side of it to be honest. Like that, that's pretty, that would be pretty jar. I'm just trying to think like, it's because like when you when you're working at place like COG as well, everyone in your team kind of becomes like your best mates. Yeah, yeah, suddenly that when suddenly though, it's like kind of, it's like calling your boss. It becomes really weird. It's like hang on with me. We were just, we were just trying to shit a minute ago and I call me that like, I feel like I'm Michael from the office from the like US office. Because it's like that weird mix between being a boss and also a mate. Yeah, it is weird. Like one of the guys on my team, Max, I was friends with him for a while before he even joined that team back when he was still QA. And we did F1 nights. Like he'd come around and watch F1 and my house all the time. All right. Like, you know, maybe I'd go to his. And now I do his appraisals and stuff and it's just like, this is really weird. Just chucking a quick mid-year review on race weekend. Oh, exactly. Yeah. Based on what team he supports. Yeah, as well. Enjoying the Red Bull dominance, I mean, like in the bin. I didn't know you like F1. Yeah, yeah, man. I just one of my friends, he's a developer as well. He works at Rockstar. He's called Connor Allen B, very close friend, known him for years. Like I have pictures of him with, with Nurtre and Nursery. We grew up together. We played games together and we both just went into this career path together. He was like, yeah, watch Drive to Survive. And that's how I got into it. Me too. We drive to drive to drive to drive. Oh, here we go. Literally. We do like every single week when there's a race weekend on. We do a race on Formula One as well. So you should come join us. Oh, well, on the actual game. Yeah, so we're on F1, 23 now. But yeah, every single race week, we're even doing it during the summer break. We do the races that aren't on the calendar. So we've got like Porta Mayo and stuff. But yeah, every Thursday night from 8pm till whenever we finish, we do a full race. Well, it's like 50%. I think. Do you have like a full like, do you have the wheel and the pedals? Yeah, but don't you just have the wheel and pedals like some of us don't. Some of us do assist some of us don't. But yeah, he's come join us, dude. I didn't know I did. Yeah, yeah. No, I, you know, I don't actually have any of my, actually, no, I've got a landowner's helmet on my desk, not like a big like once one one, like a, you know, a small one. I don't leave my desk mate. If your desk isn't on the way to the coffee area, like, I'm behind you. I'm like next to the standoff. Yeah, I think I went over to Luke once. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're seeing your partner in over. But yeah, that has crazy. Yeah, it's good. I forgot where we were going before that. I left one and I was completely derailed. Yeah, it was, and being a lead. So, is there any situations where that's like, have you had any situations where it's kind of been a bit kind of sketch with like your teammates? Like, I don't know, like, obviously being friends and stuff and then being a boss, like, yeah, to tell any of them off for not coming. I don't know. You know, I, like, I, I, I joke, like, jokingly, like, like, sometimes like max, being max or playing a pool. And then like, I'm terrible at pool and max is like, he's amazing at it. So like, and it's probably getting barred at this point, but every time he wins, I'm like, yep, you're fired. But I've not, luckily enough, I've not had any real, like, situations that I think have yet, like, affected my friendship with them from, from my side. They might all hate me. That's not no clue. That's what you think. It's not just taking up personally every time. I tell you what my producer probably hates me. The amount, I wind him up so much constantly throughout the day. We, um, I have the same sort of thing on my team, but because the props team is kind of like divided into like different, different teams now, um, occasionally I'll get books through. And basically, I just, I tell Stefano where to send the books. Uh, yeah. And I occasionally, I'll bully Carl, even though he's on a different team, I'll just send like, like the other day, we had like a bunch of gears come through. Um, and Carl's like notorious for like, just sending gears back for their reason. Like, he'll just refuse, like, straight out refuse to do him. And he would go, uh, blank statement. I'm too busy. So yeah, I have the ability to, I turn around to Stefano and he basically does whatever I tell him because like, I'm sort of the authority on that. So I just turn around and I'm like, right, those 22 gears send them all to Carl, please. I went and commented on every single gearer. I was tagged as one for Carl, one for Carl, one for Carl. Just sat on watch as Carl gets like 22 emails to his inbox. Oh, well, these gears are much of a freak out. It's amazing. Yeah. See that, that's, that's, that's the bit where you, like, I think everyone like looks in and constantly thinks this like industry is constantly serious. And while we do have our serious moments, we also just like to joke about like, we, we all have like that, like, I remember when on our team, our programmer Dave, he had his child. And when we made, when he had his child, we made a gearer task that was like, raise, uh, like the child to maturity. And we estimated it for like, what was 18 years. And I'm pretty sure it's still in gear somewhere. He's still logging time on it. He's exactly. Oh, good. No, it's what I do. Could you imagine? Oh, God. Yeah. No, yeah. I, I, I, I love the industry for that. Like often I forget like, um, my partner works in like a completely different industry. And like, you know, sometimes I take the granted how easy it is to like, communicate in our industry because of how kind of pali, pali everyone is. Like somewhere else, it's where it's like extremely corporate. It's like a lot harder to communicate within different teams and like, oh, no, you worry, you literally come to work, worry about like what your boss is going to do if you say, like, something specific to the morning. Yeah, exactly. Whereas like, uh, our place, I'll come in one morning. My boss Nick will come over and he literally the other day he threw like a decommissioned hand grenade at me and it bounced off money. And this thing was like five kilograms of sleep. It bloody hurt. He's just like catch. And I just wasn't expecting it. I think it's like, I think it's like, I think it's like something to do with working in games, right? I reckon because we're all like gamers at heart. It's, it keeps us young. It keeps us like because you need to have a level of like, immaturity to build games. I think so I think like doing that, that like sort of like childish sort of fun keeps us immature, keeps us childlike. Would you like, like, let's us develop fun. Yeah, I mean, exactly. We're in the business of developing fun. So we have to be fun. You imagine if we have the attitude of like, I don't know, investment bankers also think, or you're more of each, you're more of each being declined now. Go make a fun. We'll be building like a permanent death game where the second you die, that's at your band. Yeah, we're working for like escape from Tarkov or something. You know, our game gets called StarCov. I know it doesn't, does that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we properly like, when we had it looting and the and the help system and things started to get really tough, people call it StarCov just because of how difficult it could be. Oh my god, which is great. It's fun. That's amazing. I wish I was probably the only one who was like, yeah, I wish I roomed the Tories was more like Tarkov. We're like, yeah, you know, shift quick and stuff. Yeah, there's, there's, there's, there's some work, I guess, that still needs to be done on that, but it's it's slowly getting. That's the, that's the one thing that like, I love like, when I first started at the company, like four, four years ago, we didn't even have like server side object content streaming. It used to take 50 minutes for your server to boot to even test in game and it used to crash all the time. And it will, microtect like that entire region, stand before microtect and all its moons didn't even exist when I started. We still had a planet from the Nick system in the solar system. And then seeing to the point where it's come like, I remember the, we just have somewhat called the PMA. The, it's like personal like inventory management or something. I don't know what he's called. Oh, yeah, yeah. Orable, it was a horrible UI. Was that like the, it was the old way. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it was like the personal version of it. And it was like where you could just, you had a global inventory. You could access no matter where you was. So you bought a gun and you could be in like in the middle of a career. And I'll put up your thingy and then just like the gun telepods to you. And it's just crazy how far it's all come to the point where it's like, we're starting to get some proper gameplay loops and things for, for people to do. Like I've, back when I first started working here, didn't, didn't play the game at all. Like, but now I find myself playing it a lot. Like I'm even in an org and I do like ups with them. Like they'll, they, they did one the like, I'm not a long ago that I joined in on where. Like a PVP, a PVP org had shot down a person who was hauling in a caterpillar and he had his, like his ship was full. They couldn't be bothered to unload it and sell it. So they sold it to the org I'm in. We then went unloaded all the cargo, put on other ships, sold that. And while they went to sell that, we scraped the ship using the salvage thing. Like like proper vultures. And it was just like, that's really fun. Yeah, exactly. And it was just, it was just fun. It was, it, like even though it might have taken us two hours because this game takes it, like so long to do anything, it was, it was an enjoyable like situation. So yeah. I think that's what I love seeing most from it, to be honest, is like seeing how players take those systems. It's like stuff like the Daymar rally when they do like these massive events. Yeah. And you know, that stuff's absolutely cracked. And I remember like at the bar, I went to the like the bar, it was in a Manchester and I was like some orgs that sat down and talked to me. And they were, and they were explaining how they, they essentially like go to every single location and map everything out. They have it today. Like they've got like wikis and stuff. They, they know where every single harvestable is. They know where every single loop container is. They go in like, literally, they've got like an exploring division. They've got like a medical division. You know, a fighter division. And it's like, I'm just overwhelmed. I'm like, oh my god, I just make boxes. Yeah. And it's cracked. It's like, it's like almost free work for us as well because like obviously we're busy building all these new missions and stuff. And when we come on to do racing, it's going to either we make our own custom track. But what we, what we was doing is like, right, we can make our own custom track. But there's these tracks that players have invented themselves that they really enjoy playing. So instead of making some it new that they might not like the racing community might be like, oh, we don't like that track because of how it bends here and here and here. We'll just take the tracks they've already set up for themselves and make it an official system, right? Because that's the, that's not only the players playing and having an effect in how the game grows. It's also like the player in say like a XGR, one of the racing logs can be like, I'm at that track. I came up with that. And then he knows that that track is in because of him. Maybe with a few slight tweets, the environment to make it more playable or more like visual as to where you've got to go. But that was like their everlasting like contributions of the game. It's like why I love doing references in our game to our player bases because it's like, they help build the world. Like I think I watched since I started here. I've watched like salty might quite a lot. And I put a reference to him into the game on one of the CCO objectives in Siege. Like, books, I put a reference to him in an ISC. Like I had to like, they asked me to capture some footage of something like in data forge to how we build missions. And I typed out an entire story for one of the literally is like a box at the top of the screen by typed out an entire story relating to books. And just like seeing their reactions when they see that makes it also worth it because they love it. Like it means a lot to them, which is really nice. Oh yeah, I want to do more of that stuff. How do you sneak that past narrative and stuff like that? Because we have to get like everything approved. And it's like, uh, there's so great areas. Yeah, yeah, like I so I got narrative to approve the salty might one in uh, in Siege Morrison. Basically, there's like this one screen and there's like a lot, it's an important screen, but there's like a load of files that are being transferred. And there's a bunch of files on there that are like just fluff. And one of them says like, um, salty appraisal. And it's just like, you know, it's his sort of reference at the ESC one. Uh, I jarradred a scene, but he'd he'd let it, he'd probably seen it and go, yep, okay, good. I'll let that one slip in because that's pretty good. That's funny or whatever. He's jarrads very much like he loves it when we shout out like a streamers on the SCL or whatever because, you know, it's kind of like pay it forward. They play our game a lot and they have a lot of role in the exposure in those ways. Yeah. Sometimes they have negative pinnets and everyone's entitled to it and they can say the game's terrible and we, how we know when it is, we know when the service is bad. Um, but yeah, he likes it when we sort of shout them out. That's awesome. I think like, yeah, with the whole negative thing, it's like, yeah, we listen to all the comments, whether positive negative. I mean, there's, well, most of them there's something to learn from them. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's some really good streamers, like who, they're like, and I know it's not you, the individual devs, like these decisions aren't ones that you guys make. Um, and they're very sort of like, like really, really nice in that way. Like, I know you're in some of like, I know you're in the Star Citizen, um, subreddit, discord, but I'm in a few of the other like, um, like the streamer ones and sometimes it's really nice because like, I'll be talking to him and then they just like, they just like randomly, they'll put like, yeah, we, we appreciate everything you and the entirety of all the devs do. And it's just like, yeah, thank you. Good. I'm glad you enjoy our work. So stepping a bit away from Star Citizen now. Yeah. Let's, let's talk about you, me. So, let's rewind it all the way back to, to, to young Elliott, when you're young Elliott, when you were, you know, I guess I don't know, nursery. No, I made it out of our back. But, um, when, basically, the point where you decided games was what you wanted to do. Oh my god. Um, ah, this, this guy, like, so when I was a kid, I have two brothers, uh, Lewis and Joe and, uh, they are 10 years older than me. Um, and my, my dad and my mom bought them games consoles. Um, so I used to as a kid, uh, sit next to them, uh, quietly while they played games. Um, and then eventually I graduated to being given an unplug controller, uh, that I could think I'm playing games, but I have a picture of it as well with my brothers like, intensely play a game and I'm like, sat there and you can clearly see the chords just like lying on the floor, but I think I'm like helping. Um, so it like, it kind of started there. Like, my brothers introduced me to gaming and then my parents got me like, as I grew up, like, Xboxies and play stations and I continued to play games and like really enjoy it and then sort of, um, play multiplayer games with, uh, with my friends from school, like Halo and modern warfare, too, probably some really big classics. And then like, exactly like those modern warfare two lovies, absolutely toxic, but I would just like, I'd give anything to just go and sit in one and listen for like 15 minutes. Um, so like we, like playing a lot of that and then when I used to go to my dad's on weekends, he didn't have Wi-Fi. Like my mom had Wi-Fi, he didn't. So what used to happen is that when I stayed in my mom's, I got to play multiplayer games, but when I went to my dad's, I had nothing to play. So I played a lot of single play against in those times, like a blivie and like, uh, you know, other get a fabled, fabled, fabled two, which is insane because I spent so much time playing that and now Luke, who's my boss, worked on it and literally built the things that I've spent hours of my life playing, which is like really surreal to sort of working in this industry constantly, because you love it. Like you then meet people who you're like, oh my god, like, and you, you've, you've, it's like you've fan over them. You're like, oh my god, what are you? I didn't know he worked on Vable 2. That's, that's blowing my mind a bit too. Vable, fabled 2, he worked on Driver Sam Francisco, which is this really good driver game. Like, oh, there was this crisis port home front. He worked on home front with Nick. I've papy worked on a lot of war all sorts like, oh yeah, I've seen the early footage of Todd Yeah, no, so I used to spend a lot of time like playing single player games and then so my, my town, like my hometown is very much like a manual labor sort of town. We're like a refishing port basically. So there's no games companies there. Like the only way I knew about games was because I played them and spent a lot of time playing them. So like when I was in school, like my secondary school before college, I was going to do manual labor kind of join my brothers in a trade. So I like, I have a, what is it? I have a B-Tech diploma in like construction, which is a generic term for basically like plumbing, bricklaying, carpentry, architecture, mathematical science, which just means I can work out a triangle from a square health and safety, all of this stuff. And that's what I was going to do. And I remember I went to an open day in college and I met with a guy called Graham and he was doing a game design course and I was like, oh my god, like I could actually do this as a thing. So like I sat down and and sort of talked to him and it's really weird because they, like they need people to go on the course of funding, right? But I swear to God the guy was trying to dissuade me. He's like, yeah, don't think you're going to come in here and make an indie game and make millions because that's not what happens and it's like, and this isn't, we're not going to be doing this and we're not going to be doing that. And I'm like, like he could, he could tell me that he'd like to get on the course, he'd take me kidney and sell it. And I'd just still gone for it because even though he's telling me all this like absolutely shit about how bad it was, I was just hyped. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, nice. Okay, cool. I want to do it. Just goes walking one air and I'll be able to go about games for this. Exactly. Yeah. So, so like I was, I joined that and so like I'd gone like Conor Alambi who I mentioned before, a very close friend. I'd gone through school with him and then we didn't see each other in secondary school. And then on the day start in this this course, he stood there and I'm like, oh, Conor, how are you doing? Man, like not seeing your ages and he's like, I'm doing games design. I'm on B2. And then that starts like the next journey of our ever-longing friendship. And we both was in college learning games design. It was called Creative Media Production Brackets Games Design. And we was taught by a coder called Scott Latham who now works on Bob the Builder, where he worked on Bob the Builder. He worked on, you know, the new plague Requiem tale games. Yeah. And he worked on like AR. Like when AR was first coming out, he was one of the coders on like AR. So he taught us for for quite a while and then he left for the second year because he got a job in the industry. So we had to take it by the time. But like that's where it really started was in college. I was enjoying it, but I was like, I don't know if this could be a career. And then there was like one turning point and it was a global games jam in 2014. And we went all the way to haul for it. And it was something that the like, the gear this word, you have to make a game off of it. And the word was something like, you do not perceive with your eyes, you perceive with your mind or something like that. And then you just like, that's it. You go make a game, right? For your 42 hours to build a game. So we're in this huge university or stack together. Computers everywhere. Like a bunch of sweaty game devs, especially after like 30 hours. Yeah, that's the mark where it starts. It's funky. Definitely. Especially when like everyone's like like because it was uni students and college students were all pretty young. So there's energy drinks everywhere. Donica babes everywhere pieces. And it's just like you can smell it and thinking about it makes me feel sick. But we built this. So it was it was back when the Oculus Rift was in its DK one stage, which is Dylan development. And we built a VR puzzle game where you'd shift realities to sort of fix a puzzle. And the idea was that you played as this guy who the the apocalypse is happening and he couldn't accept it. So he was able to see what it was like before and after. And he was hunting for his wife. And like you shifted the realities to sort of fix the puzzle. And I remember we built that and I think we got four hours sleep two hours each night in total. We was tired, shattered all of it. And it come to the end and we all just wanted to die. And I remember that when I when I saw people put like this, the VR heads on and play the game like the the game that I just spent all that time building like sweat and blood and all that sort of stuff. And they put it on and they smile and they enjoy it. That was the point then where I was just like, yeah, this is what I want to do. That's it. That was it for me. That was that was the point when I knew. And then we got to see some assist from Oculus because you need to buy a license to develop with the DK one to which the Microsoft representative tweeted back to them and said calm down were just having fun, which we also thought was pretty funny. And then we said you see this for game. I remember me in like it was again me and Connor, but we stood we stood in our college class and did the Graham guy who's a university electric came into our room so I don't need to speak with both. And he was like, okay. And he took his head and he's just like, you know, the NC square game. And I'm like, yeah, you're not working on it. It's like, no, it's like good. Don't because you got this laugh. And it was a seasoned system like we was like, oh my god. I'm like, I think how are we'd have been like 17, like it's two 17 year olds getting a season. How did they track it down? Did they did the pop off or something like? No, no, no, God no. It was so there were in the in the global game. They have this panel of judges. One of them was from Xbox. Oh, snake. And he tweeted it. He was like, Hey, look, we've even got an Oculus DK one at this game jam. And then that's when like, Oculus saw the tweet because obviously Xbox will get a lot of retweets and likes and other this. They then tracked down what university we was at who then tracked down what team we was who then sent it to our college who then relayed it towards. Yeah, I know. But it was fun. We then like, I finished college and went to university and T side and studied game design there. First year was just like a complete write off. It was a lot of like turning up to letchers very hungover or skipping them. And then sort of the second and third year, I got very serious and spent a lot of time actually just building on Unreal and doing things like that. And then past past university with a good grade. And then for a year, I couldn't get a job. And I couldn't even get a job in like in QA. It was so I found it so difficult. My other like Connor got job straight away in Rockstar QA. But for some reason, like I just couldn't get one. And and I know why like back then I wasn't very good at describing stuff. And obviously as a QA person, you need to write down reproducing steps exactly how that happened. So like the test they give you is make a sandwich, right? So my things would be like get bread open, like get bread, put ham on bread, put cheese on, on ham bread, put bread on bread done. Whereas when Connor told me afterwards, well mine was like get the bag, check it's in date, undo the like plastic thing at the top, on some and it's like I'm like, of course, that makes so much sense as to why they need that. I was sat there like what was wrong with your description? Like that's correct. This is why I'm so good at writing dev bugs, right? It's because I don't put any info on them. And basically like I started, I like I got a job as an IT person in a jewelry shop because I couldn't get a job. And then I got contacted by a head, a hot head hunter who was just trying to fill roles for the super massive games company to work on my number done. And he said like, hey we looked over you thing. I wonder if you'd be interested. I was like, yeah straight away did it? Did the interview was so worried that I'd messed it up, but luckily enough the guy who hired me, who got me into this industry who's the blame for all of this. He's called Wayne. He got me in and that's when it all started. That's when I started super massive games. But I had this whole thing when I first started where my favorite company in the entire world is super giant games like Hades, Bastion, Transista, Pire, Love those games. And for some reason I read super massive games as super giant and I was even happier until I tight copied the name and pasted it in and then saw it was until dawn. I was still pretty happy to get my first job role, but I was like, for some reason I thought it was like the studio I craved. Yeah, I was like, oh here we go, yes. And that's when I was started. That's still a craft company to end up up to here. Yeah. And this is the thing like going from, I know before you said that, you asked me about like how my journey to lead was like I have been so incredibly lucky with how my career has happened because that company didn't have juniors, it didn't have seniors, it just was you as a game designer. So when I started there, I was just a game designer, not a junior level essentially. Exactly. Just straight in at mid level, which was like super super super super lucky. And then from that when I went out when I left, it's a lot of the places that I could get were asking for that sort of you know, you don't need to be a junior, you've been a mid level like you're doing good whatever. And it was like I've genuinely a junior like I've definitely I've been in the industry for about a year. And like one of the things is that when I was looking for a company like to work out, it was I wanted the game to be one that I'm actually like in for like something I want to work on, something that I'd find something for the long raising exactly like something that I could be real passionate about. And I've always loved space. So like when when I applied like met Luke and stuff and it was a space game, I was in my element because I star was the expanse firefly all of that like I love that shit. And yeah, then they hired me and then the rest is pretty much me falling upwards with the ladder like I have I started as a junior after a year I was then a mid after a year I was a senior after a year I was a principal and after another year I'm now a lead. Yeah the progression is alright. Yeah, it's alright. It's pretty good. Yeah, but I feel like they they they reward the developers based on like you're doing really really good and we want to show you that we've noticed like and they'll they'll they'll reward you for it or at least they'll nurture your growth in a way that's really really good. I've messaged you a few times saying like like you're a lead that's that you're just a lead that's that's me I'm telling you you're a lead to me like that's that's how I would like how Luke and everyone else on my team just sees you straight up just as a lead. And I know you what you you basically are. Yeah, I mean the way I describe it to the group is it's like it's like Anakin Skywalker he's on the council but he's not granted the rank of the X-Men. He's not experienced them. But yeah, pretty pretty much. I mean yeah because basically Corey Corey disappeared after ships and yeah, I was the next in line so that's kind of I kind of fell into it too. But what I love about it is it's there's no more safety blanket so I've kind of it you have to learn like on the fly and there's no one there to back you up so you literally have to literally sift through like the information on like under the documentation or hunt out people that you think might know and then often it ends up being like oh you message one person then it's like well I don't deal with this but this person might know then you message them and then basically you end up networking your way around the company that way. Yeah 100%. So that's what's been like I think the day we used to like Corey or Ben was was like I go to's and then I think it was we started talking to you a bit and now it's just like anyone asking me a question about a problem like yeah Louisel now. Yeah it's not always it's always the best thing. We've got like the problem now where because of like the team name like obviously it's not proxy more it's like interactables now anytime there's a problem with like inner four someone comes to us. Oh god and I'm like I just make boxes ones that you can press after Carriol. Yeah yeah well there's it's kind of like even though I said design is a kind of like like a tool that's a sort of can handle a lot of stuff is like like you you you can do building blocks you can do a lot more than just like model right you you set set up records you make them carryable you animate like you your responsibility go way outside of what you're like roll and identify you as like a a props artist most people would see is like a model texture and like maybe animate right but you do so much more outside of that. It's just all part of the job in it. Exactly. That's what I look about it to be honest because like we're back at Ubisoft it was like you're pigeon hold into this role and you become that role and you know once you've modeled like like I was a weapon artist before this so I'd model a gun and then I'd texture it and then that would be it I'd have to head off and I'd never see that gun again unless there was a problem with the art whereas like here like basically the first kind of technical task I ever ended up doing was when I worked with active each team to basically create the first medbeds template and then I created the the medbeds and that was like crazy but that was amazing as well because it was the first time I did like a really complex model at CIG the first time I had to think about animations and constraints like the AI and you know how the building blocks screens were ported on and you know how it all worked and you know we had concept art and the template to do at the same time so like crazy that was like so much going on but it does so. No where else you'd learn all that stuff. Yeah. Exactly. You know maybe someone does know somewhere else but I think that's what's so great is it makes the the job's not mundane because you're constantly learning thing. Yeah yeah you constantly learning it. It's awesome to be able to like like for example one of the new things I've learned is how to make props with like moving parts so like when you rotate it in your hand I have like handles and stuff on objects like fluff it about and stuff like that I've just learned how to do that properly recently and the system is a pain in the ass to do it but it's so cool watching you know inspects in a proper just seeing like you know like a piece of ribbon moving about or like a hand with a lock and around and it's just little things like that that usually you'd pass on to like a tech artist in a different team to set up that kind of thing but like yeah yeah you just learn it and like you said with the building blocks as well like a lot of the teams are learning building blocks and learning how to do UI and yeah it's just really cool. Yeah it's definitely for it keeps the job fresh and then also like expand like you say like it's you've expanded your knowledge from to also what the technical artist would do so it's him it's you've gained more experience you could likely do more you know if you was to ever jump to a different company you could feel more than just know a prop size if they allowed that which I guess is the next part. Yeah I don't know I think like I don't know it's hard it's hard because like I'm used to I'm used to the way our our company works now where it's like more of like a live service type environment where everything's constantly moving there's like a release every quarter and you know it's it's like a constant role towards new stuff whereas like other companies it's kind of that you know it's like a maybe two or three years where like the first two years are kind of like you know trundling along and then last year it starts to ramp up and then you get to that final bit it's like you know yeah yeah and then everyone goes on and you leave and then it's back to the ground you know yeah and you just don't know it's I don't think it allows for yeah there's a bit of self development time at the beginning of that but you know once you're in the meat of it you can do you don't really have the flexibility to be adding new things and you know usually mechanics are decided early on and it's like right no no over scoping um you know in our places it's it's very much because that opportunity comes around more often we get more opportunities to like learn new things and yeah and like you get to like hey this doesn't work how how I think it would be best to work and then someone will improve the system for you or you get to prototype like that that whole um the posters were shown on that I think I remember the most yeah perfect yeah the poster whole thing that you made like that that that could open up so much things like for for potential missions and other thing other gameplay things and it's just like it's just something you got to prototype I literally know I get away with so much on that team like Nick will come over and be like what you doing and I'm like I'm just prototyping some posters mate maybe like cool are we were you meant to do that I was like no but I got bored while I was doing the stuff what I'd switch and try and do you see productive and then yeah and then we end up with something cool and now exactly it adds and a market in spot it and they're like we'll have that cool yeah so it's great it's good it's good it's interesting what did you were what games did you work on a Ubisoft so when I was at Ubisoft um so this is this is also like a parallel to you right because when I came out of uni I had no look for jobs either the only difference is I ended up basically searching overseas so the way I got my first row I get rejected from everywhere I applied in the UK I had two two interviews but like I fluffed the bow for them like it was it was messed up um and yeah I went over to Ub in Romania so I lived out in Romania for two years oh yeah um and I worked on Ghost Recon Wildlands and Ghost Recon Breakpoint and then also there was a Ghost Recon project that they've revealed that got cancelled because there was huge backlash over how bad it looked awkward yeah lowkey lowkey glad to be honest I really didn't like that project um but yeah like Ghost Recon series primarily I got to work on like some cool stuff like the there was like a terminator DLC um yeah that sounds cool so at one point we were like testing like one of other new weapons and then like a terminator running it about like blasting us terrifying that's pretty good and the weapons like in those games are quite key focuses yeah yeah so that was really awesome we had like um we had like a gunsmith system and like basically when you're going in Venturi like the guns splits apart into all its pieces um so yeah like it was awesome because like I joined as an environment artist um because basically at uni I was told like you should probably do environment art because it's like a lot easier to get an environment art job there's not many weapon art jobs so I had like some environments and I had like one gun on my portfolio um and basically like they liked it in in Ubisoft in Romania so they hired me as an environment artist I did an environment art test um and it didn't matter because they put me on a weapons team so I was just making weapons for two years um I literally arrived day one I was like right am I working on watch dogs and working on like Ghost Recon like what what I'm making houses for you know what I mean um yeah they were like you're making weapons to do it I was like no fucking way yeah and it's just we have to be paid for the house and stuff but like so wait when you were in uni like you you did like what did you want to do most of all like because you said they recommended environment to you to jobs what is it that you actually wanted to do so it took me like two years to decide it wasn't until like beginning a third year where I like decided that I wanted to be an artist so I was really on the back for I wanted to do weapons um but yeah like they they have I advised against it and to be honest I did look like and there was nothing weapon art related like no junior roles no nothing um so I ended up yeah I ended up doing some environment work and yeah I just wasn't I wasn't that good at it I just wasn't that interested and you know when I got to the end of uni my portfolio was pretty like pretty ass um the only reason Romania wanted me was because the education over there for like game art is like quite poor there's like one module in one of their uni courses um and even that's like quite outdated so one of the things I actually got to do over there was like uh I did a few lectures at their uni for um their game art course um and they have like they have like an actual class now that's run by Ubisoft there um which was done by a few of my co-workers over the over the years which was really awesome um but yeah no it was it was it was it was crazy like I did go on a bit of a crazy journey to begin with but like in my head I was like I don't care I just I I need to be an industry I I couldn't stand the thought of having to go back to work at like game or something like that because uh honestly when I left retail I was like I don't care what I do I'll like I'll wash cars or people drive ways or something or I'll like I'll become a babysitter I just don't want to deal with like the general public again I have so many horror stories from game is is awful I I fully like I not not a game but I like I I had to use to have to do sometimes the front of the house in the jewelry shop but my first ever job was I worked in a kitchen and occasionally I had to wait on people and I hate that so much so yeah no uh as much as this game is kind of public sector because you know we can interact with our community but generally like the retail community fuck that now goddamn no one I'll tell you for free right in our community no one's gonna come up to you in person and try and trade in a game that has human feces on it like oh that's all I'm gonna say yeah that is dying man like that's not that's not even though oh I don't know there's there's some mad stories I'll save them for another another sign though yeah you should delete that sweet one hour a month or something game horror stories game horror stories man that that that's that's horrible feces on a bit like surely they knew I've I've had all sorts of specimens come in like um one of my favourites was I had an Xbox 360 slim um they tried trading it in and when they placed it on the counter we came out the fucking vents and it's stunk like literally it's stunk you know I'm mission in Varkroy where like yeah yeah that's how I imagine that's how I imagine it's smell you know it's like playing at the muck already dropped it down but yeah I was like I can't trade this in and he was like yeah why not now like genuinely could see the problem I'll give you yes is me uh honestly it was like it was stunk of weed oh it's weird coming out of the vents I like seeing my head like he sort of pointed down you looking at it and going I can't trade that in and when he goes like why not you just like look at it and look at him like come on yeah yeah so many of them would play play dumb as well like when someone would try and trade in like a stolen phone and you're like I can't trade it in and they're like why and you don't want to stand there and go because it's stolen me it's just come up on the system as wrong like you're just like what do you want me to say me you know what you did have you ever had someone pay for a full game in in in like pennies because we had someone in our shop pay oh as probably I like mine was 20 quid I had to count in pennies but I can't imagine it games like 45 we had um so it was um I think they were like 14 or so and they came into by minecraft so luckily it was only like 80 I think it was an AC pound 49 but my manager sat there in the corner watching this this kid count out their money and I was like counting it and I basically I sold it to them and it took me like it must have taken me like like 10 minutes just to like get through it because they were like putting me they've taken out it's like this sheety little cash bag from like last few coins of like stocks and they're like oh hang on I almost got the last ones and yet they bought it they left and my manager was like you know legally like you don't have like you can refuse someone basically if they're paying with like change um up to a certain amount so I think you can pay up to like five pounds with like change like lose change right anything more than that I think you can like decline it I don't know if it's company policy or if it was like law yeah but she sat there and watched me do it and then told you I told you afterwards just for the beam thank you thank you Mel I appreciate but yeah some good I mean it's good times at game I did have some good times like for a first job it was relevant in the field of what I was passionate about which is what I was which I really enjoyed and some of the regulars were really really nice like there were some really lovely ones we got them like there would be some that pre-ordered like absolutely every spin so I think I'd rather have worked there than like I don't know like just a shop yeah yeah just like a general like a like a corner shop type thing yeah exactly yeah so yeah so I was talking the other day I can't remember who I was talking I think I was talking to Stefano Stefano goes I didn't realise how jacked Elliot was I was like I was like what really because like I didn't notice either and then I looked the other day I was like what fuck so what's going on man like yeah yeah yeah I mean I honestly like I used to be so fat like genuinely I was I think I'm I think I'm 5'8 I was 17 stone at one point in my life yeah like it was it's kind of the thing I've you get complacent in a relationship and it is a bad relationship um and you sort of pack on the way um so I think it was and I was like in lockdown didn't help because in lockdown like I had nothing else to do but order a hell of a lot of food um so I I after lockdown like when I met my partner we used to go to the gym um and we used to um we used to do a few workouts at home this when like covid sort of eased up yeah and then after that my my mate who like he having who works in he's an AccuA department um he started to go to the gym back then I always do his cardio but I just I didn't do the diet side of it I used to just do cardio and then like home home and order a pizza and Ben gerris yeah as we right now I went I went running with um the running group the other day all right yeah and my god Josh is like the guy that runs it his walking pace is like my 45k pace yeah is this pace okay I'm like yeah two years I got that oh my god so like that's exactly what I like I used to just do cardio I used to come home and I'd used to binge eat like Ben and Jerry's like the place around the corner from used to do this pizza box it was like a salt and pepper pizza box and I love like chicken balls it's by uh salt and pepper rigs ribs egg fried rice curry sauce like and just and I'd wolf that down and sometimes I get aside with it I was so unbelievably like yeah um and then like yeah so I have a have a have a side of the company I started going to the gym and he got me off of cardio and started doing weights with me yeah and I was about three years ago the diet is the hardest thing like going up and doing the sets and knowing the form all of that is easy because a lot of his repetition but the the dieting for me is the hardest part so I appreciate you call him you ripped I'm very happy that he jokes that way he said the gift for this this call and like in the gift he's his his ribs I was like holy shit my yeah flexi on twitch it was out lich that one was an sia I was in the background and I had twitched out on my phone I was watching one of our streamers watch it and they were like um do like do like the um you saying bolt pose or whatever so me and I believe it was Lars who was at the back with me we both did it and then I came onto his chat later on and I went on my discord and I discord like notification box was just lighting up and they were it was them talking about getting the gif right for me doing the fleximo um so now on like certain like I quite a few of our just asses and people have it on salty Mike burks this uh piss poor pee a few others like if you go in and type like capital F flex and then capital E it pulls that that gif of me and then the other one that I sent you like me poking my hand in and saying hi that was that was Jared trying to tell the UI team to do some on an ssl and I just kind of like poked my head around and pointed as well um and the community make memes I've just I've just sent you a pitch in the chat of of chonke me um yeah no I've got yeah four four years yeah four years I've been working out and uh I love it it's so good man I used to get I used to get knackered looking up like one flight stairs at the old office and wolves love jeez honestly that's insane yeah that's three years yeah those three years look at your mate you're looking at donnis thank you I appreciate it seriously like uh man like so so that'll be I'll try and keep this on topic because this isn't like Lewis is like Jim routine time like but I will I'll be I'm gonna be DMing you tomorrow about this uh but like so obviously like you go to the gym and stuff like to how do you keep cool because this is saying I've been looking into a lot recently is the whole work life balancing and I've been doing stuff like I've been trying to to try and go for a run three times a week um you know I'm trying to read like a book in the evening and like I've started even trying to do like bit of meditation like what other things you do to kind of like wind down after work because like obviously like being a leads pretty intense and like you know you've said before like you you put in some long hours sometimes like just because you're passionate about the project but how do you kind of unwind from that do you like Jim for me exercises and massive sort of uh let it helps with my mental health so much like it's and it's not it's not like like I'm going there and I'm ragefully picking up ways it's more that I have to focus on my breathing which is it kind of you know it that's meditation I have to focus on my breathing and also focus on this weight because some of the weights I lift are heavy and if I lift them wrong I could really injury myself so it's kind of like my brain is forced to not think about anything but what I'm currently working on and by the time the session's finished like an hour and a half two hours later I have forgotten about whatever work would stress me out about or whatever sort of thing and annoyed me that day and I go in the next day and it's a fresh day and it's like I consider myself like a goldfish in that regards like every time like I just go in and no matter what happened like if there was anything I was pissed off with anyone that I like I'd have like maybe we'd had to disagree and I'd be back to like golden retriever me sort of thing so yeah it's it's that but it's also like because some of the like questions I've got before from like other friends or people at work is like well how do you find the time to do this sort of stuff like after work like and I'm like I have to sacrifice something and it's like I have a sacrifice games or a sacrifice sleep and right now I choose sleep so like I'll go to the chat I'll go allow come on when I'll go straight to the gym or I'll play games and go to the gym at like 10 30 and come back about 1 a.m. and then just sleep until seven like six thirty and I get to work for seven and then I work until I've finished so yeah it's kind of just like I I had to I have to sacrifice something to do it so I don't know when you go in when you go to the gym it's about it depends on it depends on what what I'm exercising like legs you sometimes a bit quicker but it's normally an hour an hour and a half sorry for two hours geez really yeah what is I like obviously I have I do like I try to like most days it's like three sets each set has 12 reps and I try to do about six exercises and then I do 15 minutes cardio at the end and then obviously I have to drive to the gym and that's like a good 15 minutes there there and then 15 minutes back so like 30 minutes total but I also have like like the gym community is a really nice community when you start talking to people so there's also people who who just like come up to me and like we'll talk to me for like you know five minutes in between the set yeah so that kind of also slows the session down boys yeah that's what terrifies me like honestly I'm I'm feeling inspired just talking to you because I've got a gym downstairs in my apartment building and I struggle to go down to do anything like I can do my runs I'll go out and do a run like minimum two times a week but yeah you know I need I do want to incorporate gym into that but yeah I've got I've got one in my building and like the prospects of going to like a public gym scares me I'm quite anti social yeah um you know it worked like you know you kind of have to put on like a face and and talk to people and it's part of the job but you know when I come home I'm very socially deflated yeah yeah that's what scares me about gym really but I get that I recently like when like one of our one of our of a Q8 Q8 tester he's called Angelo are you ready I know him yeah yeah Angelo he's great he does weapon weapon modeling as well in his spare time he he came to he came to me the other day with to the gym um and he you know he's normally the city sort of like an outgoing person but sort of that that gym sort of stuff sometimes scares him and I was like showing him some exercises and he was loving it because he's like yep really feeling that part and really feeling that part so yeah if you want to go public gym I've got I've got one of them guest passes more than happy to go here oh that's totally man I'm gonna DM you tomorrow about this see because like you know it's like you said with the diet as well like I've got you know I'm I've been doing the running a bit and I'm happy with that but the diet side of things is where it gets a bit sketch for me because I yeah yeah just but anyway I'll talk to you about that tomorrow so the last kind of thing I like I ask everyone this if you listen to like the other episode for you know it's come in but um what would you say I see this is another one of my problems I'm really about articulating as well um three things that you wish you could tell your younger self um oh god this is the thing it's like it's like the the butterfly effect or like a paradox right if I went back and told myself things that I wish I did yeah would I be where I am because like some I'd love to tell my my younger self is like get into programming and stick to it um that's interesting what why be because like I like I I love like I'm a designer because I love problem solving I love being given a problem and being and having to solve it so whether it's the problem is I need a mission that does this and I have to solve that part of it or it's uh something like um it's as simple as like the not simple nothing simple but the the law system like figuring out a problem in the law system I love doing that sort of work to figure it out like I I I like came up with a merit system in the prison thing I'd like recommended to Luke I said it you know there's this whole merit thing that like exists in current prisons if you good you get treated better and then we changed the entire crime system to work off of this idea of merit value so it's like there was a problem I had a solution Luke liked it we implemented and it works it works so I think that I'd have loved doing programming because it that is actually implementing that sort of solution because the only things I can build uh entities and missions right which yet the good the fun I love to build them but I I feel like I could have done more if I had that knowledge of coding I feel like I can build more games yeah like like like like in my spare time sometimes I build like I have unreal and I build games and I feel like I could build even better things if I knew that programming side of it but on the same sort of like like the other sort of side of the coin is that I love doing the design work which isn't something that the programmers get to do normally it's taking the the design that I have given them and they make it work yeah um but that that's like one that I'd really consider myself giving myself advice on um or who knows what the future holds maybe your sacrifice an hour of your gym because you jack your jacks enough already for a hour of programming I started learning a bit of programming like um I think it was the end of last year because I wanted to I was going to go through the whole phase of making a game but you know like all long-term projects it grounds a whole for a bit but I did learn some I learned some some bits and basics um but yeah maybe I mean just got the problem solved in mindset then you know that's yeah because happening under it I mean like yeah yeah I hopefully won't be like the thing is that when I try to like I have attempted in the past program and I I have built a few things in programming following like tutorials and doing it but it's such a it's such a big thing to understand how every bit of the code functions and interacts with uh with each part of it so it's like it's like a monumentous task you can you can build things at work but like they might not necessarily work efficiently yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah some of the programmer will look at it and be like oh yeah 100% like it slap you about a code or like any code on my team if they saw the stuff that I code then spit it me viciously exactly so that that'd be one another one would be sort of like a quote which is like comparison is the thief of joy um because I always had this whole thing when I was younger of comparing like how how what my life was doing compared on how other people's was so it's like oh I need to do this because this person's achieved that and if I you know if I did that I got why did I do that or it's like I see someone at the gym and I'm like oh if only I started earlier I could have like I could be with it where they are and stuff and it's it's something yeah like I know I sure were that constantly is just can't like looking at other people and being like if only I did done this I'd have achieved what they achieved and I I'm aware of it I hate it because retrospectively I think I've done really well so I think that that'd be kind of one I resonate a lot about I mean I went on the run the other day and I was like my god like if I'd have been running for like a couple of years I'd look as defined as Josh does I'd be able to sprint with no effort like I'd be running marathon man trained for an ultra marathon I was like wow what's that what's an ultra-make it's basically like what you want to do when I don't know you don't like are we talking like 20k are we saying like it's ultra because he also has to do it well playing like I think it's I think it's almost double marathon distance I think it's like 75k what he 42 kilometers is oh is it a foot race longer than the traditional one it's a long ass one I mean I think he said 75k actually if I remember correctly but regardless crazy stuff yeah yeah I'm just like you know what you say is true like in all aspects really like I sit there and like I look at my career in general like I've done really well but like you know someone else will come along someone that I look up to a lot and like I'll be like oh maybe if I had to done something like this or it's it's same like the side side projects right it's like this podcast to start this because I was like I see so many people doing things outside of work whether that be like you know making new projects or you know running a YouTube channel or you know any kind of extra kind of activity and you know it pushes you to to do extra but at the same time like you're always sat there comparing like you know sometimes it is all right to just like if you want to come home and just chill and not do anything it's fine it's absolutely fine yeah 100% like the thing like the the comparison is it constant comparison would be the feat of joy I guess because like you going oh you know I'm you know I wish I could start running and it's same with me going like I wish I started Jim like all that time again but as long as you act on that initial comparison like you right I've started that podcast right I've started running me I started going to the gym as long as you started you're doing yeah you're doing great from it right yeah and as long as you keep it up it doesn't matter what they're doing right because the comparison motivated you to do something and now you're doing it and there's no point looking back right there's no point even checking what you're they're doing on their podcasts because you're doing your own thing and it's going great sort of thing you know yeah is this deep mind stuff man like yeah getting all deep on down the podcast it's important man I don't think enough people talk about it it's like I tried to really focus on recently is like my health outside of work because I you know as much as it's great to have this kind of like grind set mindset it's it's it's detrimental as well because you miss out on other things like you know if you're working loads and you're working on side projects maybe you don't have time if you partner or you know something else it's like you were saying earlier right something else gets sacrificed in that place like with the gym it's like gaming or sleep or you know anything they can be anything so yeah yeah yeah and final one what we got is fun I can't think of a final I'm trying I'm trying to think of one you've used all your emotional depth I know right yeah I can't I can't think of anything else that I'd like to do like that I'd like to tell myself because it's kind of like the journey that's happened so far so far has been good right I've not like murdered anyone or I've not like committed some sort of active terrorism so I'm doing pretty well so as long as I just keep on that I'll be fine Eric so I can't really think of one really can just leave it with the eat sleep gym repeat that's life I literally life is gonna work make games come home play games eat go to gym sleep for less less hours doesn't quite roll off the tongue to say but we'll go that why why like when when I took hand you low to the gym I wear my cloud top and instead of like cloud cloud Imperium games I say cloud Imperium gains and I thought Cameron and we're actually allowed to make our own shirts as long as legal approvals while I was like there we go I'm making a gym fit for the cook. Oh my god please do that I'd actually walk up to the gym where it's great honestly we have what's the is it I think we've got a Strava group that's called like Swalcittisms or something Swalcittisms yeah I love that so that's quite it's quite a few of them quite a few opportunities for you to start your t-shirt and buy them it yeah yeah exactly well I'm certainly feeling very inspired to be honest this has been a really lovely chat I will be messaging you tomorrow for diet and gym tips find it on a local your local session area is yeah yeah but yeah thanks so much for coming on and taking the time I really thank you for having me it was fun it's been yeah it's been a delight me it's been lovely to get to know you a bit better as well because I know we talk like in the office well we talk a bit in the office but yeah you know not not too much on a personal level so it's been really nice to have a chat so it's a lot more about props or building blocks or interaction or I'm busy leave me alone yeah it's been really nice dude so thank you so much for coming on anytime I did awesome thanks everyone also who's joined us to listen really appreciate you all listening and helping keep this podcast growing really if you could drop like a follow and maybe share if you enjoyed it that'll be much appreciated as well and yeah we'll see you next week for the next guest thanks very much see you later