MTM | THE FINALS: Rob and Jonny

Speaker 1 Welcome to Meet The Makers, our interview style podcast on all things the Finals. I'm your host, Dusty Gustafson. During our second closed beta, we assembled two members of the dev team every day to help dig into specific areas of the game and answer questions from our Discord community. And today is a very special episode where we will be chatting with Founder and Chief Content Officer Rob Runison and Executive Producer for the finals. Jonathan Lindsay, the Executive Producer for a game is the conductor of the whole orchestra, so to speak. They make sure that the game is on track to meet deadlines and quality expectations. The best way to describe a Chief Content Officer is that they set the bar for the integrity of the content that gets into your hands, whether it be art or sound, animation and more. Each and every product we have at Embark comes with a rubber stamp of approval from our illustrious CCO. I am sitting here in the studio with Rob and Johnny right now. Welcome, fellas. Speaker 2 Thank you, Jessie. Speaker 3 Hey, thanks very much. Speaker 1 Rob, who asked me to introduce him as Robbie Thunderstorm. And I am quite certain that he's just making fun of me. Is one of Embark's founders, who has built this place from the ground up. Johnny is a newcomer to the Embark team, having just surpassed 3 months in these walls, but has taken a running leap at the finals and has quickly and expertly assembled the team around him already. Rob, let's start with you. Speaker 2 Yeah, Thank you. First of all, I did not ask you to put in Robbie. What do you call me, Robbie? Speaker 1 I think you know. Speaker 2 Thunderstorm. I did not. You did that to threw me off and you're almost it. So hello everyone, My name is Rob and like that's I said, I'm one of the founders here at Embark and I've been an artist my entire life and I've been working in the game industry for a little bit over 25 years or so. So yes, I'm. I'm old. I worked on games like Battlefield, Mirror's Edge, and Midtown Madness, and here at Embark I'm working with art, audio and admission. So it's me. Speaker 1 Thank you, Robbie. Thunderstorm Johnny, same question or let me ask the question for the first time. Can you give us a rundown of your history in the industry and what led you to your role as Executive Producer for the finals here at Embark? Speaker 3 Yeah, sure. So back in 2006, I got my first break into the games industry. I think back then, much as now, it was very hard to to break into the industry. So back then I was working on a project called APB. It stands for All Points Bulletin and it later became known as APB Reloaded. So back in 2006 I met a German girl when I was still studying in Scotland and I moved over to Germany and started my one of my first roles was as a game designer and an MMORPG, and then I moved over to become a game design lead. Eventually, and then the projects got bigger and my role changed over the years to producer, senior producer, executive producer. But it was always pretty much the same. It was project leadership. Yeah, the games I worked on, I worked on Dreadnought, I worked on the cycle and then the cycle Frontier. And what led me to to come to Embark was the the ambition, I guess, the ambition to do something really innovative in a genre that I love with a really talented team. Speaker 1 Thank you. That's really good stuff guys. Let's dive into our questions from the community now, and I think we should start with a really hard hitting question right off the bat if you're ready. Speaker 2 Of course. Speaker 1 What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? Johnny, you go first. Speaker 3 Oh, my favorite is probably pistachio we. It was really hot in the studio last week and we went and bought lots of ice creams and one of the flavors we bought was salty licorice and I tried that for the first time and wasn't really for me. But it's a I think it's popular in Sweden. Speaker 1 That's a that's a unique flavor to Sweden. I think it's it's quite an experience. So Pistachio Rob beat that. Speaker 2 Well, I'm a super simple and traditional person, so I would say probably. Chocolate, vanilla, maybe pecan, some pineapple, little bit of strawberry, maybe some banana. And then just mix it up in a perfect mix at the same time in the blender and then I'm done. Speaker 1 OK, so your favorite flavor of ice cream is. Speaker 2 Chocolate. Vanilla. Pecan, strawberry, Raspberry, whatever, I said I don't have a clue. That's not a that's not a community question. You made it up as well. Trust us too. Speaker 1 I did not. OK, All right. All right, a real question. A real question. Microwave Sushi asks What makes the culture at Embark different from your previous studios? Rob, how about you start us off? Speaker 2 Oh, first of all, I mean, I don't really. I can't really, I don't. I won't compare Embark to other studios, but I can tell you a little bit about how I see the culture here at Embark. So I mean, first of all, we actually started Embark because we believe that there are other ways to make games. Like I said, I've been in the game and it's quite some time and I thought it was time and we and other founders, that was time to do something a bit different. And what we want to do is work much closer to our community. We want to be more transparent and try new things. I mean, we want to build great experience of course, but actually completely changed the way we work and at the same time have fun. And I think it's now we're like 4 years into Embark, and at Embark we're actually all game makers. We all care about the games, we all play games. And the player, the player experience in the game, they mean everything. For us. At least it does. Section does it. So it's it's so nice to be here. And everyone here is part of creating something magical. And it doesn't matter if you're like a dinosaur like me or if you're coming straight out of school. A great idea can come from anyone. And that's what I think is very nice here, that this mindset led us to be much more transparent and open. We need to have a culture is actually pretty safe and secure because if you want to change, if you want to change the industry, if you want to change the genre of first person shooter for example, you need to try new things and try new things, you will fail. And that's okay at the mark. And that's also why we are, I mean sitting here talking to you guys, we are being as transparent as we can. And we're also running proper betas. And I know that there might be some problems in there and there might be some things that now looking back on in like a couple of days, oh, why did it put that? That wasn't the best idea. But that's who we are. We try, we test things early, we do. And I just, I love it. I love this kind of open, transparent culture. I don't know, only if what do you say? So I don't ramble here. Speaker 3 Well, I've only been here for three months, so I guess I have a new person's take on it. I think the thing that I really notice about Embark is it's probably, you know, the studio, the culture is quite competitive, but in a good way. And I think that presents itself by by wanting to to be really innovative, do stuff that no one else has ever been able to do. I think also the other thing is really push for high quality and it's really hard to do those two things together. Because doing something innovative just means a lot of risk, and doing something high quality means it's usually very expensive. And I think it takes, it takes a certain desire to do something really good to be willing to take such risk. Speaker 1 Absolutely and thank you both. I think this next one is for you, Rob. Jake asks how did you come up with the idea for the entire environment of the map to be destructible? And how hard was it to make it so that almost everything could be destroyed without losing frame rate? Speaker 2 Ah, we're probably losing the frames here and there. I think we probably get some questions about performance later on, but I can try to answer this. This is also a little bit tricky. I would say okay. First of all, I didn't think it was going to do another first person shoot it again in my entire life. But after a year or so into Embark, some will start feeling that we really miss this immersive. I mean it's very immersive to be in the first person shooter game and it's a it's a feeling you can't get anywhere else. So we we missed that and we were sitting talking and said if and this was a big if, we're going to go to build another or build a first person shooter at Embark, it needs to bring something new to the market, something new to the genre and something that could actually redefine. This genre at the core, something that's extremely fun for the players that they can't get anywhere else. Otherwise why do it? I mean it's pointless. So we want to change what first person should look like. So we or this was Patrick, Stephan and Gustav and me, we talked back and forth what we could do so we can actually change how you played the traditional shooters and when that. Coming back to this like childish idea, that's super fun to build things and destroy things and change things. So we said we, we, we want to build something that is extremely dynamic and where you as a player could define your play style and change the outcome of the game. Not just by shooting people, but by using the world, using the environment, using dynamism, using whatever you can come up with, use your imagination. And they're fun, so. Maybe I should go back to the question. So during my 2025 years as a game developer, this is by far by by by far the most difficult task, maybe most stupid task I ever faced. But it's also something that me and many other here has been dreaming about to do for decades and also been very transparent. I I. Many, many times I thought that we would have to give up because it was extremely hard and we felt that we can't put it off. We can't build this creative, dynamic, entertaining sandbox. But to be honest, today I'm watching you guys playing, I'm playing with you guys, so, So when you call me, that's when they call me by the way, But when you call me, it says embark Aducan, that's me. I'm so happy. I'm smiling all the time because I see how much fun a lot of people are having and it makes me so happy. Because this is what everything is about. I mean, I understand there's some bugs and some crashes and some buggy performance here and there. We're working on that, we'll fix it. But this is about having fun together and that's what gaming is about. Have fun together, make friends. And so I understand, I haven't answered the question at all, but destruction is is just one of the different dynamic systems that we we have in the finals. So and tomorrow I'm doing some advert. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For Gustav and Matt little show tomorrow. So sending questions if you want more because they are much more professional and prepared than I am. So asked in question about the dynamist and the dynamist features and they can talk so much more about this. So I know I didn't answer a question. Back to you, Dusty. Speaker 1 Discords User Arctic wonders What did we learn from the previous play test? The closed alpha and CB1 that helped inform the current experience of CB2. So Johnny, I know you're new, but I also know that you have had your hands all over this since day one at Embark, so why don't you take this one? Speaker 3 Yeah, sure, there was. There's a lot of different things we learned from it. It was a, it was a real close beta. It wasn't, you know, a marketing beat. So we really, you know, learned a lot from it. We tried to validate. Our assumptions. So the things we learned from close beta one different focus areas, if you like the the 1st is probably movement. We learned that the movement fell a bit, a bit floaty, not responsive enough, too much input delay, not reliable, and so we've worked really hard in improving that. Another area was gunplay. So some of the recoils was maybe a bit too much or some of the the weapons, sways, the time to ads, things like this. We tried to tie it up and just make it feel better. So these are both kind of game feel topics if you like. So we tried to improve the game feel. Then another big area of feedback was the was the game mode itself. So some people really, really love cash out. And other people were quite confused by it. So what we learned is that for the new players coming in, it can be a bit overwhelming, a bit too complex. So we tried lots of different more traditional game modes and we just keep kept on coming back to to cash out because cash out was really made for the finals. It's it's the game, this game mode that we that we felt. Best plays to the strengths of the finals with the destruction and all the dynamism. So what we thought was let's let's take the core of cash out and make it a bit more straightforward in terms of the wind condition and you know maybe slightly lower the tactical depth and that became quick cash and I'm quite, I'm quite happy with it and I'm eager to to see the feedback on it. Now the other areas. We did a lot of UX improvements or user experience improvements and we still have a lot to do. But we did a bunch of stuff in the actual match but also outside of the match. So in item progression and in the the the player character customization and Rob did a lot of work there with the UI, UX and retention team to to bring that, you know, big step forward another area. Actually, an area that is improved by a lot of the things I've already talked about was team play. This was an area we got quite a lot of feedback on. I think if you're playing as part of a premade, it works quite well. If you're a premade squad, you know with your friends. But if you're coming in as a solo, we didn't really have the the comms, the tools to to make it easy enough to coordinate with other other players. So we've worked on that and our VoIP implementation is a bit, you know, more closer to where it needs to be and we've added barks and other other things as well. Then there are two areas which are really critical. We kind of call them like hygiene factors if you like and those are performance. So the movement for example was heavily impacted on the field of of the movement was heavily impacted by the performance issues. So we've worked harder than that, but. We still have a lot to do there and another area, another very important hygiene factor is anti cheat. We saw that we had quite some issues in the second week of close beta one and we've worked on many different things which I for very obvious reasons can't get into and we'll continue to work on that with top priority as well. Speaker 1 I think so, and while we're on this topic. Let's back it up just a little bit and revisit performance because we've received a lot of questions about performance improvement. Do you want to elaborate a little bit more on that and what we're trying to do? Speaker 3 Yeah, sure. I'm not the tech director, but I'll give it a blast. So the problem for many people is that they might have quite a good GPU. And they expect to have a higher frame rate and they go to the settings and maybe put the game on low visual quality settings and they don't notice any improvement in their frame rate. And that's kind of frustrating and not expected for the player. The problem is that our game is for most people it's CPU bound. So unless you have a very good CPU and maybe a not very good GPU, you're going to be CPU bound in the finals right now. We have a lot of work to do to to make, to make that just where it needs to be. So yeah, the the problem of being CPU bound, it's it's something that we are tackling as we speak. It's one of our top priorities and we think it will be a much better place in the next releases. Speaker 1 Thank you. And it's especially important because I see a lot of people in Discord who are continuously bringing up their their graphics card and and and comparing them and. The fact that we are CPU bound and not GPU bound means that that conversation doesn't always have a bearing on how you are experiencing the game. And it's great. The answer is, of course, we're working on it. OK, Rob, here's one for you. Sebastian wonders if you have plans for even more interactables on the map. He mentions the crane as an example. But we also, it's worth mentioning, have people writing in and asking about that Wrecking Ball way back in the first teaser. I guess my question is, and Sebastian's question is where the heck is it? Speaker 2 So first of all Sebastian, if you only knew how many crazy things we have been trying out so far. Some good. Some pretty bad and we actually had a jet driven platform Canon that shoot players sold over the map for a while. That didn't really pan out. But two of our pillars in the finals is dynamic and intuitive and we actually have a list of cool and interesting things that we really believe can spice up the game and the game show moving forward. And like you said, we had other things in the game before. But they actually didn't work out from a performance perspective right now. So we are working on them. Of course they will be Wrecking Ball. I mean, why on earth would it play a game that about destruction, dynamism without the Wrecking Ball or working cannons again? Although they need to come back in. So we're working on it. They will come. I don't know when, I don't know where, but of course we should have. Things like that. In the game there's we have a pretty long list of things we want to try and we tried them, we tried them and put them in if they make again, if they make sense and they enhance the game play, they enhance the experience and make the game more fun to play. So I think that answer it. Speaker 1 Yeah, as we say on Discord, Soon, soon TM, TM. Along that same vein, another question we had is do you have plans to add more specializations and if so, what kinds? Speaker 2 Yes, we we have again, we have looked, I mean we have looked into the future and we have again a list of things we want to try. This is where in our second close beta to getting feedback on stuff. We will continue to try things forever and we are a live game. We are in it for long run. We want to build a game that can live for 20. 50 years. So I, I, I I want this to be my last game I play. I want to be okay maybe I play art grades as well but that's how good good this game should be. So we have a long list of specializations, weapons, gadgets, play style, dynamic features that we will add to the game in the future. And again this is the ultimate game show and everything can and if it makes the game funner, more fun and better should happen And that's I mean everything that enhance. Gameplay should be in the game. I still haven't really figured out how to get Dragons in the game, but there will be Dragons, Dragons, Dragons. I've said it before, we need to have Dragons somehow. We just didn't figure out how. Speaker 3 No, I. Speaker 2 Didn't have a plan. Speaker 1 Johnny, what do you think about Dragons? Speaker 3 Oh, my word. Well, it has potential. Speaker 2 Potential Yeah, there you go. They're big franchises just about Dragons. So why don't we just add a dragon in our game? Speaker 1 Sure. Okay, we're going to move past Dragons now. Peter wrote in to ask what is the long term vision for the game? Are you seeing a more casual paths or are we on the road to E sports? I will leave this one to our EP. Speaker 3 That's a good question. We, you know, as a free to play game we are going to get a lot of casual players because the barriers to entry is really low. You just download the game. And that's a that's a really good thing because free play games, they they don't work unless you have lots and lots of players. I mean they don't, they don't work as a as a business unless you have lots and lots of players. That being said, we really need to have depth in the game to to keep the more, let's say engaged players or hardcore players. And you know, it's what makes the game really fun and worth spending lots and lots of time in. And I personally would love to eventually see you know an esports scene I think that would be that would be incredible. I think the finals with the IP, you know the game show IP is such a good fit for that and the close beta that's running just now, we've we've obviously prioritized the first one. You know new players casual players we've. Had a go at improving onboarding and you know, unlocking different body types and game modes and that's working quite well and the numbers have really improved there. But we're going to for sure have to do both, because I think for a game that's that as ambitious as the finals, it's not going to be an either or. It's going to have to be. It's going to have to be both. We're going to have to nail it for new players and we're going to have to. Have all the depth for highly engaged players, so you know, easy to learn, hard to master. So it's going to be tricky when it comes to production prioritization. But you know, watch this space I guess. Speaker 1 Thank you. A quick one for you, Rob. Real quick. Have you there's? Speaker 2 Nothing quick with my answers. I'm rumbling. OK, go ahead. Speaker 1 I'm sure this one's going to be quick. Have you considered adding a second weapon slot for sidearm? Speaker 2 Yes. Speaker 1 Good answer. Speaker 2 No, but yes we did. I mean, we tried this multiple times during the last 2-3 years and what we find out was actually that players the more. Players who put in the hand of the guns, who put ahead by players, the more they tend to start playing the game as a running gun as many other shooters. Nothing wrong with that, but that's not what we want. We want this to be a very unique and special first person experience. So we want people to use the environment, use the gadgets, use the destruction, use a lot of things to have fun, not just running gun. So we have tried it. Maybe we'll try it again in the future, but the way it looks right now, it actually made the game less the finals, so that's why it's not in. It was pretty quick. Speaker 1 That was pretty quick. I'm impressed. Thank you. Here's a fun one for both of you. With all the games that you've worked on, you must get a lot of gifts from fans. What's the strangest thing you've ever received? Speaker 2 And I start this you've. Speaker 3 Definitely received the strangest gifts, so please do. Speaker 2 No, but okay. So I love our fans and they're very often they can come up with very creative and find funny ways to show their appreciation. And so what's the stranger things? Well, not long ago I got a sign Mate mug from Argentina. That was a big surprise. I got a wig once. I don't have much hair. I lost that. So someone probably thought that I should have hair. Yeah, nice of them. I got custom made swim trousers and socks. And of course, very, very recently I got a enormous, oversized inflatable Flamingo that wasn't just to me, that was the entire studio of Embark. But still amazing. Johnny, I got anything? Speaker 1 That's hard to beat, Johnny. Speaker 3 Well, I guess I've got a lot of things to look forward to in my career then, but I haven't yet received anything strange, or certainly nothing like pink flamingos. I've received a couple of things that that kind of stood out for me I thought were cool. One was I was working on a spaceship game and I got a 3D printed spaceship. And this is like 10 years ago when 3D printing first kicked off. So I thought that was cool. And the other thing that I really liked was I got this Larpine axe, which was way too much fun and had to be put away eventually, sadly. But I'd never got anything really. Really strange. I guess I have to wait and see what happens next. Speaker 1 All right, one for Johnny? Artichoke asks. What's the timeline? Speaker 3 Oh, that's that's a tricky question. Our close betas are they're really close betas. We're using them to, to validate our choices by listening to the player feedback and they're really not, they're really not marketing beats for us. So once this close beta is over, so close beta two, we're going to look at the results. Going to take some time a week or so to go over everything and analyze it and and make sure we understand the feedback and then we're going to see you know what we still have to change and build and how long that will take. So how big is the gap between you know where we are right now with the game and where we want to be for for launch and that will that will dictate the date. But within reason we also want to bring the game to markets, we also want to release the game. I don't think it would be that long, but we don't want to rush it either, so you have to wait and see. Speaker 1 Good answer. And like we say, we're doing a closed beta, and it's a real one because we need the feedback. All right, Raladin, one of our long time Discord members, has one for you, Rob, he says. You come from a storied background of several AAA DICE titles, most being FPS games. One stand out for him is Mirror's Edge. Given the difference in play style, what is one of your favorite lessons from Mirror's Edge that you carried over to the finals? Speaker 2 This is probably a little bit emotional. Dear Faith and Kate. Well, Mirror's Edge will always have a very, very special place in my heart. And OK, I would go a little bit off topic here now maybe, but when people talk about Mirror's Edge I kind. We'll do that. So it started as a passion product many, many, many years ago with us and we wanted back then to change again. Change little bit is very similar to the finest actually. We wanted to change the view of the first person shooters back then and actually back then. Nothing bad about the shooters back then, but they were more more of a floating gun and they were pretty brown and gritty and to be honest not very diverse and the genre was. Yeah, the honor was different. So back then we were a small team actually working on another project and that product never got released, I think. So I should not say talk about that. But we were a small team working on other projects and back then they were, oh, this brings back so many memories. This was this new cool website where you can watch videos. It was, it's what's called YouTube. So it was. It was getting famous and we, these athletes doing crazy cool parkour things on this movie website. And I'm a lifelong skateboarder, so I was extremely interested and inspired and we were then working on this other game and a couple of us actually built a small parkour track on the rooftop. In the game, and while the other guys were running around and shooting each other on the streets, we were doing time trials on the rooftops. So, all right, the question So okay, now I'm back on track. What did carry over? Well, first I want to say the the urge to follow your dreams, to shudder the preconception, to listen to your heart. This one, this one sounds so she's. But always lead and never follow. I mean, Mirror Said changed my I started crying. Mirror said changed how I see game development and that in many ways that curious and Rebellion heart that Faith had is actually what makes the finals work and it actually gave birth to that. So I have a lot to thank. Cut me out. Speaker 1 I think that's beautiful and I think that's. Speaker 3 That's passion and game development right there. Speaker 2 Faith. Speaker 1 And I think that I speak for a lot of people who are listening and who are on our Discord as well, that Mirror's Edge has a really special place in our heart as players as well. Leland asks. And now I'll I'll take away the emotions with a jerky question. Between Rob and Johnny, who shows a more excellent performance in the finals. Speaker 2 You only want to take that wiping my tears. Speaker 3 Clearly I'm better, but no, really. I guess we we played different roles, so he's normally playing a tank and I'm playing, I'm playing a healer. Speaker 2 I'm a heavy. Speaker 3 And my job is to keep him alive so he can get so he can frag a bit. But I like to frag as well. I think we're pretty. Speaker 2 Pretty close. Speaker 3 Yeah, I think we're pretty good at team play, actually. Speaker 1 OK, that didn't really answer the question though guys. Speaker 2 But it's like sometimes some days I'm terrible. My aim is completely off and then I need a good healer and then I have a pocket healer and then Johnny helped me and sometimes I'm really good and I don't need your name. So we're sometimes I'm bad and sometimes he's good and so we, I think that's the cool thing with the finals, yeah. Yeah, we are very, very similar and a lot of people here. I mean, of course we have some of the people here embarked that are insanely good and then I go out and play against you guys and then I just got stomped. Speaker 1 Oh, thank you. Speaker 2 Not by you, that's the. Speaker 3 Same. It's really hard to say. Speaker 1 And I coined them both all the time. All right, moving on. Speaker 3 Come on. Speaker 1 Here is a question from Corvx. But we've also been hearing it on the Discord, like since day one. So will there be a Nama, Tama, Plushy and Rob? We've been talking about this one, haven't. Speaker 2 We I've been talking about this and my the short answer would be absolutely yes. I don't know when, I don't know how, but I mean, seriously, I love Nama Tama. I think it's an amazing creature and it deserves to live in every single people's home and house. I mean, it can be a key chain. It could be a little baby rattle. Click click click click click. It can be like one of these sooner stress eggs, or it can be like a chewing toy for your lovely dog. I mean, Namatam works for everything. So the short answer is, of course Namatam should exist in the real world, and it actually really does in some places. Speaker 1 Thank you. You're welcome. All right, listeners have really been shelling out the love for this exceptional segment where, in honor of our adorable and possibly coming to you in squeaky toy form, spokes egg the nama Tama. And to continue the embark tradition of telling terrible puns, I must now ask each of you to tell us an egg joke. Speaker 3 Oh God, I can't believe you're making me do this, but I'm ecstatic for CB2 and I'm. Excited for what comes next? Speaker 1 Good one dear Rob. Speaker 2 Well you didn't really caught me off guard because I know you go to Aspen is, but I probably need to spend some time in the incubator on this one because I I I'm cracking up. Speaker 1 Oh. Thank you. Thank you that that's all for today's episode of. Speaker 2 Dust his face Here you would have laughed yourself to death, because what is he saying now? Sorry for that. Speaker 1 This is my life, you guys. Let's try this again. That's all for today's episode of Meet the Makers. Thank you so much for listening. If you're hungry for more, please join our Discord community and make sure to play the finals when it. Finally releases. Speaker 2 Thank you and thank all of you for joining the Meet the Makers. Speaker 3 And thank you, Dusty for hosting and to everyone else for listening. Speaker 1 Thank you. See you next time