Talk:2020-10-17 Steven Sharif Interview - Paradox Gaming Network

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[Music] all right guys we have uh we have our good friend uh even sharif back today hi stephen sorry about that was muted hey buddy how you doing i am doing good uh for those of you that in the community don't know this guy i think he's i think he's somebody important over at Intrepid Studios what what is that oh sorry that was my cue to introduce myself i didn't i didn't catch that uh yes uh hi guys i am um steven sharif i'm the creative director and founder uh at Intrepid Studios so i do have to say uh now that you're on a little bit bigger of a camera we've already captured the background we're gonna parse through all of your reading material behind you because we have to we have to know you so oh no i don't even know what's up there hold on let's see is there anything bad no there's nothing bad i'm sure [Laughter] it might give some insight to my reading categories so the first question is are you tired yet i am uh tired uh but um there's of course things that re-energize me and anytime really i get to interact or um you know see the response of the community after a video or after you know a live stream or whatever those those typically tend to recharge my uh my energy banks i guess my batteries when was the last time you slept in on a saturday oh last time oh i don't even know you know it's not that i choose not to sleep in it's that like you know ever since really kind of starting the project my typical wake-up time just my body does not let me sleep past like 5 30 a.m um but i always used to kind of be a kind of early um early waker i guess yeah i mean i see you i don't sleep much but i see you on like after i go to sleep you're on before sometimes i get on the com i'm like i know my life and i can't i can't imagine trying to run a company with the little amount of sleep you actually get yeah it's a at a at a certain point your body is conditioned and it becomes accustomed to you know a certain number of hours so i mean i i will typically go to bed at around around 1 30 or 2 and i'll wake up around 5 or thirty and that that for me is good i'm i'm fine with that well if you decide to take a vacation i know i sent you the picture of the butterbeer truck uh last night how was that that was good i think i think that we should arrange an ash's family uh meetup at uh universal orlando next fall for halloween horror nights like just not like sponsor it just say steven's gonna be there this weekend everybody book your trip that would be kind of fun all right we've we've done events like that you know at pax or at um at gamescom and that was a a lot of fun getting to meet with people it'd be cool to do like a organized ashes meetup trip to some like theme park or something all right guys you you heard him i'm gonna organize that i'm gonna i'm gonna start like 12 months in advance i'm gonna send him a memo we're gonna get that going that'd be cool so i think yesterday was a big day for intrepid something something like really big happened yeah we announced the uh dates for the alpha one testing schedule um and uh you know it's always it's always a fun time when you get to announce those things you know i think early on in the project i was definitely very gung ho in kind of making transparent our internal schedules um but the thing about you know kind of learned along the way was that your internal schedules can change a lot based off of things that sometimes are outside of your control based off of unknown unknowns you know and i think we kind of pulled back a little bit the rains on announcing dates until we're much more confident that we'll be able to hit them obviously that doesn't mean you know that there's not an opportunity for something to happen and delays to occur um but generally because we keep dates very close to the chest we mitigate a lot of that uh potential i would say sorry you being here has caused me to have to wear a hat so i i i i there's a hype train in the channel going on so i must put the hat on it's a contractual requirement nice i love it i just want to say i bust your chops all the time so i want to say this to you first of all you said i don't have to say it but i am going to apologize to you anyway anybody who watches that video um i i do want to just reference back to the video i was talking about it i got kind of quoted out of context but steven brought it up to me guys i do owe steven a apology even though he doesn't want one i i was i was referencing a when stephen gets heated and i i said in the video steven gets heated i get heated people human nature has to get heated steven needs to i said in the video steven needs to shut the [ __ ] up and let his public relations company and margaret handles some things when he gets angry but i also if you guys watch the whole thing i also say i get angry stephen gets angry and i said stephen has brought it back into control so even though you said i don't owe you an apology i i i do bust your chops so i feel that i did owe you an apology of that if it bothered you i don't know if it bothered you right now i actually i actually didn't watch it it was just something that someone had mentioned to me but uh no i i like i came into this industry and into you know this project being a gamer first so i understand you know what it's like to be on the other side of the screen um and i guess you know yeah i'm not the perfect like pr person but that's not my aim you know my aim is to be uh essentially one of my community members you know they say in the marketing the best marketing person is a person who understands their audience well you know i take it a little bit of a step further the best marketing person and or developer is a person who is their audience and there is a lot in the in the gaming community who are you know gamers obviously but and then excuse me in the um in the uh gaming development community who are who are gamers first but um you know my aim isn't to be super buttery smooth on the pr side or you know perfect in that regard i just i just want you guys to know like when i'm talking to people in discord or on the forums or you know through the letter or whatever that position isn't a rehearsed or isn't a you know scripted type of interaction it is who i am and it is what the company's aiming to be so yeah sometimes i might get hate heated you know and and and that heatedness can come from when you're with people every day who are working endless nights to provide something that's going to make you know our fans proud it can sometimes hurt you know to hear uh things and i don't know i don't even know what we got heated about with each other but yeah anyways that type of relationship i i think is is is healthy i think it's okay and i do want to say you haven't seen the video yet so i that's okay but when i said i think people a lot of times i think i'm starting to get quoted out of context which is okay but i actually said you're like my little brother we we like argue we get heated because we're passionate about the project i get frustrated on your behalf when people are just not knowing what like not knowing what they're talking about and it just irritates me on your behalf because you don't you don't got time to be irritated you got a game to build that's that is true no i can appreciate that for sure i mean there are some you know there's some interesting things set out there but but i can understand why they're said um you know we've been through a lot as a community and a lot of different developments and promises that are made and um sometimes when you go through you know the ringer so many times we get jaded but that's why i've always said you know let that's fine if you if if if as a viewer or as a fan or follower the ideas you hear excite you but you don't have the patience to to kind of sit through development then just come back later when you know the game's ready to play take a look then and there's no harm done um you know i encourage people who are in any way shape or form either skeptical or whatever don't buy a pre-order pack don't even you know necessarily if you if following development gets you too you know flustered or uh upset or impatient or whatever take a step back that's that's we're going to keep trucking no matter what we're building the game um and it is definitely beneficial for us as developers to hear words of encouragement um that is a a recharge for the batteries as i said previously it is a motivator um but there's not much that it does for us as a team um to hear uh i don't want to say criticism criticism is good uh but to hear i guess just just [ __ ] you know you know it's it's funny one of the things in my community i always tell people i said you have you have the right to go to the forums and say this sucks but then don't expect intrepid to actually give that feedback any like look over it's gonna go in the pile of okay we gotta this sucks comment put it in the pile and i said a better comment is this sucks because but an even better comment is this is what i see and then both sides of the argument and then you might see that and be like oh this isn't a this sucks comment let me read into this and i've seen you on the forums you dive into some of them on occasion but you very rarely engage with just the pure 100 toxic people right yeah so you know i've obviously i've i i have wielded the band hammer a few times um and i will say that uh i will say there's three categories of of community feedback um there's the feedback that you describe where somebody just says this sucks and to be honest with you i might actually push back a little bit on your on your statement this sucks isn't super informative because you don't indicate why it sucks per se nor do you indicate a resolution to it sucking but saying something sucks is still feedback a little bit we understand that the sentiment towards a feature or system is not positively engaging with the player so i would say it's even okay to come and say like hey this sucks it's better if you come and say this sucks because or this would be better because right because that gives us your you know insights but the third category is the worst category and that's when it's like an outright lie or shade right yeah when it's like absolutely you know a couple years ago when we didn't have you know a lot of stuff to show right and there wasn't a semblance of of the game that's present and the alpha state wasn't per se ready we had a lot of people come and say you know this is a scam a pyramid scheme and uh you know whatever and that stuff is the third category that's just trash like that's toxic it's not it's not beneficial to anything um you know and it's just now where i lie so those things were hard to listen to but the other two like just saying this sucks or giving this sucks with an explanation i actually you know those things those things are good you know those are that's that's that's player feedback well i'm gonna i'm gonna go to 180 on that uh your letter yesterday i'm gonna say that letter was amazing and thank you uh i'm gonna say it's the best one you've done and that's saying a lot just because of the dates [Laughter] no and and there's there's there's pages here i i i actually printed the script this time but nice but uh your first letter that you did crushed it and it's been interesting for me as able to watch you grow as a leader as a developer obviously retired military officer and i that's why you're allowed to call me chair force you got a little bit of that military schooling early on i do cardio you don't um but that's true but watching you i did however just start a new diet i will say i started a no carb diet and i've been extremely irritable over the last week because i just started it but uh yeah there's still no exercise i need to change that how does herman feel about the uh the no carb diet herman's upset herman is definitely john is still eating herman but uh i i unfortunately cannot i don't think you realize how bad that sounds because people don't know who herman is oh that's true i'm sorry herman is a starting as a starter a yeast starter essentially for bread uh that we named him hermann um so yeah so so later on for halloween there's going to be a hannibal lecter of mask on john's face and your sound fight john is eating herman oh no so but yeah it wasn't just the fact that you released dates and i don't i don't think that that made the the letter the best one you've done you laid out a road map and we've been like begging for because we feel like we're broken down on the side of the road we don't know where we're going we don't know how far the next gas station is how far the rest stop is we don't even know how far we have to walk you gave us the next six months and both as ashes testers and it's just mmorpg players there are people who now know hey i can go commit to another game for six months because it's not right around the corner so that's why i think you knocked this one out uh with this cd letter yeah um you know back to kind of the original comment i made is that you know early on i was very gung-ho and kind of giving dates um and you know of course we want to provide as much detail as possible with a roadmap but it's it's a a delicate it's a delicate dance between hey what can we share that we can commit to and are confident will hit versus sharing something and having to having to walk it back like you know there's there's a credibility scenario on on behalf of the company that has to be maintained so that you as players as a community can um establish a rapport of trust and and understanding with us the developers um so there's a there's a there's a there's a walk betw on that fine line um and yeah of course you know there's of course i want to share as much as possible and if this were a perfect world where you know the understanding was superb on behalf of all types of players because players exist in different categories right you have like the super interested and the super like following every word and every monthly live stream to the person who's just an impression that just kind of glances at the project or maybe a headline and on that scale of of players you have the ability as a developer as a company to make the wrong impression and it scales further down that you know uninvolved player list that you go and sometimes you never recapture those users um i am a firm believer however that that when the project launches uh that it will be probably one of the largest mmorpg launches uh of its time and that's that's simply because of the amount of momentum and a number of pre-registered users and exposure that's been present in the mmorpg genre the community itself at large and and the quality of visuals versus the qual versus the answer of mechanics that players have wanted will yield a significant interest at launch so i'm not too concerned about recapturing you know impressions early on that maybe you know hey we have a long development cycle and you know our goal is to focus on creating a quality product that has a good launch um you know we're not beholden to to um you know a publisher or investors to hit certain dates and rush something out you know we can take the time necessary uh albeit with you know grain of salt because we have a community that's hungry but we can take the time necessary to ensure that uh the product is as advertised and is of a quality that is expected uh of the community we've garnered thus far all right well uh he caused me to jump ahead to the last page of the interview because i wanted because you went into it now you know me i'm the kool-aid man sometimes you open a door and i'm just gonna bust all the way through october 2018 we had a content creator meeting i took them i wrote the memo because uh the person that was gonna do it wasn't there uh october 2018 there were eight hundred thousand registered accounts not trying to put you on the spot but um and you don't have to give us an exact number but it's definitely north of a million at this point north of 2 million it's it's north of it's almost 3 million as of this date yes i will take that and then the other one you were talking about quality products uh are you a fan of henry ford's business management and do you know what i'm talking about when you're talking about quality products you'd have to elaborate on the on the ford i read so many different positions on on product quality and uh company dispositions henry ford's uh philosophy is that a company that focuses on the quality of the product will only have one concern about their profits and that they will be embarrassingly large sure absolutely that's the if you build it they will come philosophy yeah so i mean you know your first your first objective and i am i am obviously a fan of this is whenever you have a product based um whenever you have a product based company right and you have a two consumer monetization there's a there's a few philosophies i think that have taken place in the mmorpg genre you either build for retention you build for a splash right or you build off of off of what's going to um what's going to satisfy a niche market right those those in my opinion are kind of the three focuses um building for a splash is essentially consigning yourself to the fact that you can't compete with the big boys and you want to recoup the money that you've invested and a little extra and then you'll you'll you'll take those assets you'll reuse them you'll sell them you'll divvy up the cup whatever you want to do right we've seen a lot of mmorpgs do that um and a lot of them got our hopes up and you know that's kind of the i think the jadedness that that comes from the community at large and then you have larger projects many of them start with a pre-existing ip as a as a as a launch pad these are games that are typically built for retention they're going to build uh in a way that answers certain metrics and data essentially to expand upon the amount of time a player essentially exists in their game this i think lends itself more to the if you build that they will come philosophy where your focus needs to be 100 on the product not so much on how we can you know how you can leverage uh you know pay to win monetization gimmicks or uh you know repeated fresh start servers or whatever right those i think um i think my objective has always been hey i have a dream of what type of mmo i would love to play it's a crossbreed with many mmos i've played in the past kind of cherry picking the good systems as inspiration and it's also one of my other major you know fan as a gamer is the civilization series uh where you kind of empire build and and that kind of stuff and i i took those philosophies and i originally incorporated them in a pathfinder campaign using kind of the the building kingdoms uh expansion and then when i decided to make intrepid um you know that that campaign i decided to adapt into an mmorpg and our focus right now is yes the community interaction is great the open transparent development is good i believe it's the future of these types of games and development i think there's always going to be triple a companies that are keeping things close to the chest because yes there is a danger being in a competitive market space that you're going to have companies come along and cherry pick some of your ideas as well but traditionally i think the best way you can create the best product is by incorporating the players feedback as part of the process and that means being open with kind of what your design philosophies are what the mechanics and systems are going to be the alphas and betas that exist you know these types of things create a perfect feedback loop uh for the company to take opinions throw out tests get more feedback take opinions throughout texas that circular development process will eventually yield uh i think the the perfect you know the the good long-standing experience that players are looking for the years-long um you know campaign in an mmo that many of us are nostalgic about uh with our first mmo we enjoyed you know whatever that may be um there were you likely for many of us there were years of enjoyment that was garnered out of that out of those experiences yeah sorry i'm very long-winded oh no oh no because that a lot of people were thinking this was going to be my usual 60 minutes of steven on the hot seat uh asking the game stuff this is all basically dialed into that cd letter because uh you know people need to see you that way as well and i already have you booked for like april of 2021 for a hot seat so uh one thing was it hard for you to not because you loved a leak you loved a leak was it hard to not leak what was in the creative director letter um you know i would normally say yes however the previous couple of months with the amount of testing and some of the challenges we saw particularly in september and in august kept me very very busy you may have noticed i probably have not been uh as as um as present on discord uh or on different mediums of because i've been so busy so that sometimes helps to curb my um my leaking desires if i if i'm so busy uh with stuff going on in the project sometimes i i neglect that but that's why we have a great community team so they can pick up where i neglect uh something i did see and we we you touched on it and we showed it i was did it make you happy to be able to kind of go back to your original roots of doing this road map because i know you like you loved the idea of transparency and you you talked about it earlier in the interview you said you don't want to release a date you're not 100 sure you're going to meet so so did that make you like like happy that you're able to get back to your roots that i want to have this aggressive schedule um yeah you know i don't know because i'm still i'm still in my roots internally it's just that that and that internal perspective isn't as shared uh openly until we're we're pretty confident um but yeah of course i i know that when when i knew that when giving the letter obviously dates are going to make people happy because it's something that is you know um it's something that people can can uh can put some uh specifics around they can uh i'm trying to think of the word sorry my brain is mush as usual um yes it does make me happy to share dates because people people get excited around those and and they appreciate them um but also it's scary too um and you know that's where i was that's where i was trying to get you to i wanted to see if you were gonna walk into it scary well sometimes i mean i you know you can have the best planning possible right and you'll never know the unknown unknowns and anytime you give something to people you care about and i care about our community and anytime you give something to them and there's a potential i'm not saying that's going to happen but there's a potential that you could disappoint them that's scary i don't want to you know i i don't want to disappoint my community so um that that puts a little bit of pressure uh on on on performing which is i think a good thing as well i think any time you have some pressure to perform you know you're a little bit more on your a-game absolutely yeah but uh yeah of course it absolutely there's a mixture of excitement of scariness of you know everything that goes into it um but uh yeah no i mean overall it's a good thing so that pressure to be to perform will be when i jump your back wall and i steal your laptop and you don't do cardio you're going to be incentivized to run faster yeah i don't know about that you'd have to you'd have to make it past the guards first we'll see and the dogs the dogs will also grab you i'll just throw a sandal to your dogs they'll be distracted that is true that would definitely distract silas she likes to grab the sandals and nest with them um riley on the other hand really doesn't care but unfortunately riley is 14 now so she's partially deaf uh so she probably wouldn't hear you jumping the wall so that's okay yeah i'm going through the same thing with my cat my cat's been to the vet like three times old cat uh where where where was i oh one thing i did want to address on the screen i just i sometimes people just can't be happy with what we have and we have a six-month road map it people have already started saying and i'm going to kill this one right away that alpha 2 is starting in like june of 2021 even though nothing you put out yesterday even remotely hints at that this is our six-month road map we got until may 6th and then that's it you you're not committing to anything past may 6th of 2021 so there's no alpha 2 right behind alpha 1. absolutely so from a from a date and expectation standpoint the only thing i can commit to players 100 is that the delivery of this game will be ready when it's ready um and what that means is and the way you want to take that is that we are 100 committed to a quality product to a game that is going to include all of the features that we have discussed and is going to be polished and is going to run well and is going to be thoroughly tested and the amount of time that's going to take is and this is a little bit of my development maturity happening is the time amount of time that's going to take is the amount of time it's going to take and we're going to keep you updated along every step of the way with our monthly live streams with our development updates with our articles with the interviews that i do with the videos that we release so you can watch that development in real time but you have the commitment from myself and the team that it's it the delivery dates are dictated by the quality of the product and um you know that's the way it should be in my opinion one thing i didn't get to ask you in july and you just i didn't write it down for today but you just hit it in your first creative director letter you sort of committed to weekly updates and i think that's unrealistic i i i do you think that i think that's unrealistic that there's going to be a weekly update every week can we just like say that that was probably unrealistic just so people aren't expecting it you we're going to get updates as you have updates to give us sure yeah i would say that's probably accurate um i think i think originally and and we had you know a lot of updates going on but with the last seven months of of covet that does make some of the plans we had especially with regards to like video content a little bit more difficult um but yeah i would say that you know you can expect regular updates from us and those updates will come when they're ready um you know i don't want to necessarily give us a quota we have to hit per se so i guess no of course yeah uh that's actually why i've told people all year every like well they didn't do a video this month i said yeah covet you know there's they they like the videos you put on the screen the 4k game the 4k game play that you do yourself that's still a video it's not a dev diary it's not dressed up it's not pretty but it's substance it's the meat right for sure and you know it's i think it's important through the videos that we provide and we'll be doing a lot more videos as the alpha one client kind of gets you know through the polish and bug fixing phases you're going to see a lot of a lot of you know video content kind of giving you and players a perspective on the game's development and yeah you know as we've kind of released the 4k videos you'll see people they look at it and say this looks great this looks playable this this looks better than most games that i have played on release um but at the end of the day you have to understand the goal post for me and for the team is far beyond what people are seeing now um and you know in the letter i said you know you ain't seen nothing yet and that's because it's it's true like if you look back a year two years ago um and you do comparisons between the footage in 4k you see you know just over the last two months versus the footage we released early on there's a i mean it almost looks like a completely different game um and that quality is almost that improvement rate is is almost exponential up to a point um you know as our artists continue to to refine their process make additional passes on assets make additional passes on animations incorporate you know ui and tutorial systems and you know content gets fleshed out you know all of those things start to coalesce into um into a pretty awesome looking game and we're really not you know at not at that point yet where people get to actually see wow this is indicative of the state of the game at launch we're still very very early i think in the in the presentations we're making and we hope that the direction you see progress for those of you who are watching you know constantly and seeing you know our updates and whatnot we hope that as you see these updates you're seeing that trajectory in progress um and that trajectory continues you know it it continues in the august live stream you talked about some castle siege stuff inside of alpha does that mean castle siege mode in apoc is off the table no um it is not off the table yet um what i will say is you know we reached essentially apox castle siege mode to touch on that for a second that so castle siege was initially implemented in what we call the mmo branch right um apoc had a separate branch and this is in reference to source control uh like perforce that we use essentially where you know we keep the depot of of our source code and assets and whatnot so there's different branches that exist there so the castle seed system was originally in the mmo branch and we plucked it as a system out its code its logic its assets whatever threw it into the apoc branch which was a more session based you know easily testable component but it it it would take some additional work for us to get it going there and right now we're just kind of focused on how we can incorporate some components of that test siege potentially in in alpha one and that just means that we activate that system on a timer with registration and utilize the pvp affiliation logic um you know and if that's the case uh then in alpha one we could see intermittent castle siege events uh that players would participate in um we're still going to see that's kind of a lower priority than many of the other systems why because that particular uh mechanic is pretty straightforward um that has been done in games previously uh so we're not as concerned with the data revolving around that particular system and it's already coded um so it's it's not necessarily a huge priority but it will it will uh likely make it into the alpha one testing all righty and then you're not gonna believe this but people want the battle rail back you know why does that not shock me um so what i would say is that uh that right now in order to in order to focus on the alphas i've i've allocated all hands on deck to that and there is something to be said for as a gaming company having a live service operational that requires the dedication of a devops and liveops team to monitor and update would be a little bit of a distraction if we didn't gain additional data from it so we have gained the data i feel we've needed from the testing that was done for the battle royale and to do additional testing there wouldn't be for the project's sake it would be for the fan's sake but i believe you know ultimately those resources should be kept on uh on the alphas uh and betas now is that to say that again there's not an opportunity post alphas and betas for us to reintroduce that session based kind of environment now i think that there is an opportunity there we have to be careful um you know obviously there were some marketing faux pas i think made with the um with the apocalypse release uh you know obviously it's a little bit difficult when you go wider with the audience to make sure that the messaging is is continuous and and received appropriately by all participants but you know that really was a testing session for much of the ancillary excusing much of the um tertiary systems that exist around the back end slash launcher slash patcher slash networking as well as a test for the action-based projectile and hit scan mechanics and weapon instances that were used but you know like i said we collected that data and and perhaps it just wasn't understood by many of the of the community what the purpose of that testing was and why it was important to stand that up prior to the alphas uh because it takes a lot to get an alpha stood up for an mmorpg more so than it does to get a simple battle royale in place yeah because you didn't want your alpha one to need a complete back-end rework it was it was a good thing to know hey we need to think about some stuff because it we're not getting the performance we want with 100 people and i i tell people that probably once a week if not twice a week during my show and there's still people that are like they just wasted all their time in a br they wasted a year and i'm like that you don't understand game development so that's that's the third category of [ __ ] there you go let's switch gears for a minute uh let's talk Extra Life um i'm gonna say the Extra Life campaigns that you guys do is like amazing because there's like a camera on you guys for like usually 25 hours this i know this time it's not on uh time change weekend so it's only 24 hours i know that's good are you excited for Extra Life this year i am very excited i will be uh dming a pathfinder campaign again in the world of vera for Ashes of Creation um we will have some fun participants there's going to be prizes uh that we're going to do there may even be some alpha 1 keys i'm doing a 24-hour stream to support your team that i'm how am i going to watch how am i going to watch you know what maybe if you set a goal and hit your goal maybe that'll be an alpha one key i don't know we'll see well we'll have to have to talk with margaret about that oh we're we're about to talk some goals because you kind of talked yourself into something in casual discord i don't think i didn't remember we're getting there what what are you talking about [Laughter] so i believe in big goals uh my uh my channel just raised a thousand dollars for operation supply drop and i'm setting oh nice that's awesome congrats to your to your viewers very good job guys and i'm setting a ten thousand dollar goal for a 24 hour live stream to shave this dome live on and we're gonna shave the dome all of it oh no what does your wife think about that well well you know if i'm on your team the proceeds the proceeds from my fundraising flow into your team's goal there we go and i do remember a statement that for 30 000 raised a beard might go away oh my god so can i get you to commit to 30 000 and the beard goes bye-bye it's for the kids steven ah 30 i don't know you did you did walk it up from 25 you said 25 was too low you said maybe 30. so 30 000 and your beard goes bye-bye all right if there's if we do 30 000 in donations to raties children hospital through Extra Life in 24 hours has to be part of the 24 hours i will shave my beard on camera there you go folks we're gonna now see in fairness Extra Life runs all year i'm gonna be talking to margaret and steven after this year's campaign getting the team started from now on in january so uh streamers can raise money all year long but steven said if we do 30 000 in a 24 hour period he's going to shave his beard so 30 000 24 hour period you're doomed man because somebody in your chat said that i will donate the beard to hairless children i don't know about that but i will shave the beard there you go folks so i suppose i should have said we should sell a we should sell that pyramid mantle piece for five dollars a piece before i got you to come in i really want to have a pyramid decor item or like a building structure something that's a pyramid and every now and then it'll spawn like an effects of a person just coming to the pyramid and getting absorbed into the bottom of it i think i think you should like get it so that every so often a little guy walks around the pyramid and just puts a coin in the top of the pyramid yeah it just puts a coin and then gets absorbed into it that would be great he becomes a brick that would be so funny uh little off script because i didn't think about it were you nervous for the pax panel uh that you did with uh pantheon new world ever crowfall were you nervous being like the new guy among all these like pillars of the mmorpg genre no um not at all it was i was very when i originally got approached actually they were you know funny story about that there were two um there were two other panelists who were supposed to be part of the panel it well i guess maybe i can't say who they were but they were they were from some pretty big projects um and they had backed out at the last second and i had actually suggested that we invite um pantheon and crowfall to be part of it uh because i felt that was more indicative of kind of where the community um is at when it comes to kind of these project developments and who's doing you know who's doing the more crowdfunding slash community involved uh development processes um so no i wasn't nervous i was excited i you know you know me i love to talk one two i love to talk about um mmos so uh i was that was that was an awesome awesome panel i do want to say that knowing you're not love of public relations i was kind of like because i have anxiety from my time in the military i got anxious for you and i was kind of like i was like biting my fingernails i was like oh no oh no and man you crushed that you absolutely crushed that that panel there was definitely some interesting i think uh night and day between some of the philosophies uh that were expressed um and i i always enjoy when there is you know significant disagreement on some things because i think that gives the viewers you know an opportunity to understand you know where they lie on an issue there was a particular topic about the quote unquote future of mmorpgs and being you know more mobile focused um and i hope i didn't come off as as um you know kind of demeaning in my disagreement but uh i i think it's just interesting to to to not understand an audience to some to such a degree that uh you know you're led to believe mar that mobile is the future of mmos now that's not to say that mobile markets don't bring in a [ __ ] ton of cash sure they can absolutely um and the metrics would support that the data would support that but there will always be a significant demographic that is mmorpg playerbase when we are an aging player base um that will only play on pc or desktop that is that truth is not changing anytime soon very true i'm going to mix it up a little bit here because we're going to reach the top of the hour and i don't i never want to hold you if you have to like bounce but did you take the wiki quiz the wiki quiz no i haven't seen the wiki quiz you sponsored the wiki quiz oh did i sponsor it i don't know that must be the community team like i said sometimes when when was that recent assuming it was probably yeah it was recent i'm pretty i'm 99 sure the quiz is still available to take just the contest is closed i failed you i failed you lord and sandal i only got oh no i only got a 47 out of 50. oh you missed three wow well maybe i should take this quiz uh yeah i'm still trying to figure out which last one i missed one of them was as a former teacher one of them was a really really good question one was a gray area question and then i don't know the third one but i was interested to know if you've taken it no i i haven't taken um i as i understand it um you know like i said when i get super busy sometimes and i hate to say this but unfortunately sometimes community is kind of the first to fall off the plate of responsibilities um and i think i may have missed uh i may have missed that sponsorship or um that announcement but yeah i'll look into it and all right to go take a look at it somebody from the wiki in my chat make sure you pm stephen the the the quiz link and you know for what you just said i would i would actually say that impresses me because you have you have a community team if you were trying to micromanage everything you're never going to get anything done you're like okay when my time goes i have margaret i have sarah who's the third one i always danielle yep you you have those people i i have to trust the people i've hired i can't micromanage oh for sure yeah you know my so i would say early on in the project i i did a lot of micromanaging um but as i developed my leads um into a firm understanding of my direction and the um the kind of parameters that i've set that are very you know granular about the project uh that's when delegation and comfortability comes in letting them run with tasks and whatnot now that doesn't mean that you know obviously as as kind of the art director and creative director you know i go and i do reviews obviously and i'll give changes and i'll give insights and and whatnot um but i don't typically take a micro management role i have i have an interesting question for you have you ever heard of a colossus or a mega penguin of a colossus like the colossus of rhodes yeah it's on the screen i don't know if you can see the stream but it's a oh it's it's a penguin that is actually six foot eight feet tall a colossus penguin have actually have been taller than michael jordan oh a penguin oh yeah wow no that can't be true it's true they it i i'm serious that it's true they found their remains and stuff in oh this is like a prehistoric penguin it's a prehistoric penguin we should totally clone those can we like find their body in some sap or something well i was just gonna say can we get cause all the people who think that penguins are fat stupid creatures can we get a colossus penguin in ashes that just messes people up that would be great i i whenever i see you see or read news articles about like some prehistoric you know species uncovered in like perfect condition my first thought is just like why don't we clone them why don't we bring them back and put them in a you know put try to revitalize their species that would be a really cool one to have like a giant penguin species all right guys if i'm not if i'm not doing anything later tomorrow i'm going to roll up steven like a stat page for colossus penguins arts templates all that we're going to get colossus penguins uh let's see uh did lazy peon's video that kicked off that july august september hype train that video has 1.8 million views did that catch you guys off guard like were you able to i had i had no idea that he was making it it definitely caught me off guard but to lazy peon's true fashion he is an exemplary and masterful uh content creator and i think really you know the views that he garnered is two part obviously there's excitement around the game but but he does such a great job in presenting information in a steady and understandable format um and compiles you know great clips to kind of of of co-op his explanation of things as he kind of delves through um through the video releases we've had uh so yeah i i think i think lazy is lazy peon's a great content creator you know obviously there's memes about oh you know this is the best game and then why i quit or whatever um you know that's that's i think that's his that's his stick uh so to speak um but lazy's very very excited about ashes i do talk with him regularly and it's it's obviously you know it's it's a great thing um when you have fans and and content creators of his caliber that are excited about the project but yeah it caught us off guard for sure yeah his one video has nearly as many views as my entire channel so so i i spent some time in the drawing board figuring out what do i do next yeah i uh i definitely enjoy you know i i do enjoy watching all the content creation that comes out of our community yours lazy peons pretty much everyone's uh even even the lord of salt um and uh i i like seeing everyone's different takes on on a lot of the stuff that we're discussing uh i saw notes three just so everyone gets the line up with that because it's i you know i memed you i have my own version of gnome's three i i did it for you cause you you were too busy so i did it um people shouldn't be expecting notes three and for another six months then because notes three ties in with the release of the actual no nda alpha opening so anyone who a lot of people are thinking nodes three was going to be in december and i was trying to tell them no nodes three its current projection is when alpha one officially starts um is that the cur you'd have to double check that for me i i'm not sure if it's alpha one or alpha two maybe it is alpha one all right you know what that is a perfectly reference for me that's a perfectly fair and you know what i respect that you're you're literally like okay double check that reference for me uh because it's wow it's been four years now things move things change i know it's been a while hasn't been no it has not been four years since the last node series has it no not since the last node series but since i i will always remember when you guys started because you're famous your original facebook post for ash's creation was on my birthday how was it that's cool uh closing up here uh people are dying to know because originally you wanted to have all eight uh archetypes in alpha one right and then it you shift you dialed it down understandably you said five and then the rest will roll in we know it's cleric tank and mage and people drive me nuts every single stream they're asking me what are the other two my guess is ranger and fighter because you've said specifically bart and summoner are at the end of the development and you already have the stealth mechanic really from the testing in the battle royale so i'm saying it's ranger and fighter that is accurate it is ranger and fighter good guess [Laughter] the rogue fans don't like me because i say to them that there's not really a huge difference between mechanically between a fighter and a rogue when you're laying out the initial development like yes they as they walk mile 1 mile 10 mile 40 they become radically different but at mile 1 a fighter and a rogue are roughly the same developmentally yeah i would say that's generally true at the levels we're testing at currently like 10 you know 1 through 20. um you know obviously they they signifi they they do depart but i would say they're they're general role levels 1 through 20. but um i i that's a good guess it is it is it is the the fighter and the ranger um and again that's because the other classes particularly the summoner and bard take a considerable amount of additional feature development in order for many of their skills to be the target skills that we have for those classes well plus the summoner is supposed to fill the missing roles in your parties so you don't know how to pull you don't know how to make a summoner tank well until you know how to make the tank tank well sort of really it comes down to the summon system itself there's just a considerable amount of engineering work required to code the type of design tools and support necessary to facilitate the summoner class and that's because of how the pet system is unique in that regard um and then additionally kind of the skills that go to to to buff and or augment your summons uh you know that's the direction that i'd like to take the summoning class in and from a priority standpoint it was just going to require you know this chunk of work as opposed to this chunk of work for the fighter or the ranger um and we decided to err on the side of of safety and uh you know punt punt that one off a little bit later so uh i i in july we talked about you no longer have a full staff page if people want to know why you don't list everyone on the staff page we'll because i'm going to keep streaming after you depart but my my math tells me right around the 90-person mark give or take is what intrepid should be at now i think i think we're actually at like 87 or 80 i think we're 87. okay i just want because people get worried because like i said in that interview people go to your website now and there used to be 48 52 people and now they see 11 and they're like oh my god intrepid down says i'm like no they go watch that interview stephen explains it but now that we know 87 right around 90 we'll take that is that going to be weird for you when you get back into the office in the spring because you're standing i thought about that a little bit as like hey when we get back into the studio there's going to be a number of voices with whom i don't have you know face context with that will kind of be like meeting all over again but um no i mean i i have a very intimate uh interview process um you know i i still even at this number of employees personally conduct one-on-one prior to a hiring so the final kind of interview step and during obviously that process and as as the new you know people come on board it's important to me that you know obviously talent and skill and experience those are those are one subsection of requirements and we're pretty particular on those but there are two other components um one is also the cultural fit you know are they a fit for the team and then the third is their passion and commitment level and the passion commitment level is is a very important thing to me because it takes a lot to onboard someone and to get them caught up with the complexity of the project and we don't want you know to onboard people that just have the talent and skill um and six months down the road they're they're burned out or you know this this is too much to chew um so i i literally in my final interview step try to scare the person like my go-to question is do you understand what you're getting yourself into do you understand the scope of work that's required do you feel that you can commit uh for the long haul what is going to be asked of you and if you don't think that let me tell you right now you should not be pursuing this position um yeah you know that that that is my that's kind of my last line of defense um and really i'm very happy with the people we brought on in this last hiring round we brought on some pretty amazing um you know talent but also one thing that was unique about this last hiring round we had over a thousand applications because of the the um the exposure from 4k video to you know the timeline of releasing the 4k video lazy peon's release and then the interviews that brought in a significant pool of talent that were not just experienced people looking for a job but were experienced people that discovered ashes and wanted to be part of that project and it's much it's very exciting to interview someone who you can hear in their voice just how badly they want to be part of the team um because they're excited about the project and passionate that is a different degree of of of of um of the recruitment process um so i'm excited to go into our next hiring round uh which you know we're aiming for that to be first quarter beginning of the first quarter next year and we're probably going to target um around i would say around 30 additional seats for that hiring round but we'll see how that goes was that your alarm you have to depart uh yes no no no problem i uh i i i appreciate you swinging by i know a lot of people are like i've been pinging me where are all the hard questions that's what that's not what today was today was talk about the letter i'll give you one last question if you want to do a hard one one want to do yeah one last question and a hard one you guys encountered a lot of difficulty in bugs expected not unexpected moving from 4.23 to 4.25 yes maybe set you back a little bit just because that's the nature of the beast 4.26 has that sexy water enhancement and we're seeing on the screen and we see some boats are you are you guys are you guys going to move to 4.26 to do the water or are you going to stick with 4.25 for the time being and push some development so um sorry i was eating a lemon drop a sugar-free lemon drop um so here's the thing about i guess there's two parts of that question let me answer the first part first first thing is yes we did experience some significant challenges in the update from unreal 4.23 to 4.25 um anytime you make two engine jumps a lot of things can break but what compounded that difficulty was that we had introduced some significant changes to how certain ability instances um uh how they work on the on the back end how they how they have you know the network component there as well as mounts and some of the movement systems because those are those those three tend to be the most taxing when it comes to large amounts of players in a single area um and when we did the updates a lot of things broke a lot a lot of things broke um and we had to essentially what would normally be done during a polish slash qa pass which is kind of like you know just prior to shipping a test client um things broke so much that we had to divert attention uh to actually reauthorizing some of the way those things function and that took a good six weeks roughly out of probably half the engineering team and half the design team wow so it was it was a significant uh a significant challenge the second component there in 4.26 yes they do have a water feature that is being introduced as an out of the box function for the engine we currently have our own answers for both buoyancy water physics water shader now that doesn't mean as new technology gets released in these updates that we don't take a look at them and you know will it be a wholesale exchange uh for our system versus their system if it works the way we want it to it has really the the focus on water physics and buoyancy and stuff that comes down to performance as well as visuals unreal does a great job at presenting a very nice visual you know presentation of water but unreal isn't isn't predominantly a mmo engine are there mmorpg projects within unreal yes they are but when unreal releases essentially out of the box um features they're not made for mmos you know conceptually what they're what they're building um so we have to take the that tech we have to evaluate it and um you know if there's things we can take from it we will if if it's a wholesale exchange we can do that too um but essentially you know that that just takes some some research and development perfect answer all right my community has said many many times that they want me to thank you on their behalf not because i always say thank you to you when you stop by but thank you on their behalf and uh they've been giving you uh hearts and hypes and everybody's saying everybody give steven hypes hearts whatever you got he's a good guy thanks guys appreciate it and like i said i said at the beginning i'll say it again for the people that weren't here yeah you told me going in i didn't have to apologize to you it's kind of just been gnawing at the back of my head i'm thinking about how i'm gonna have to rewatch that now on how that came off because my intention wasn't to be like belligerent and aggressive but yeah you do have my apology um i sometimes get off the chain when i'm streaming and that if you do watch it realize it wasn't a prepared video that was i was streaming live and i chopped it up for a youtube video and then i will uh i will kind of that's okay don't don't let it weigh too heavily on your heart it does though because you're a good guy and we have a good working relationship and i i will close the loop with the person who alerted you as well that the message has been received because it wasn't out of the i wasn't pulling a content creator that you've had to boot out of the program if i don't want to say anything that wasn't what i was trying to do so thank goodness for that that guy was a little off the hook he was kind of crazy all right well i'd say enjoy your saturday but i know you're working today so get out of here go build us an mmo absolutely we'll do thanks guys appreciate it it was fun have an awesome day bye stephen what are you still doing here nobody ever stays this long this is the end screen well since you're here there's a couple other videos i think you should check out and all those names those are my patrons over at patreon i couldn't do this without them so big thanks to them for all their support