TDC #01: Making Games in the Shadow of Other Games

Yuri Sokolov (00:05)
Hey there. So a little bit different setup, not your usual YouTube video that I'm hosting. I'm trying to do something different and it's a podcast, right? I'm not new to this and neither my co-host here, Amit Netanel, my colleague, we did something like this in our past lives and we'll try to do it once again. Hey Amit.

Amit Netanel (00:30)
Hey there. That's like your thing. You're hosting the podcast now. It's under your banner. But yeah, I used to record with Yuri. And I'll take every opportunity to just talk with you about stuff. So it's great to be here.

Yuri Sokolov (00:31)
Nice one. Yeah, yeah, By the way, the hey there, I probably stole from somewhere. I don't know where it came to me, but it's probably stolen. It's probably stolen. It's probably some other YouTuber welcoming ⁓ people. But what can I do? there are a lot of things we kind of like from...

Amit Netanel (00:51)
Yeah, it sounds it's right.

Yuri Sokolov (01:04)
other podcasts we listen to. So why not start from, from one of the topics that many other podcasts in our category doing like, what are you playing, reading, watching.

Amit Netanel (01:20)
Yeah, what's on my mind when nothing's on my mind? So I'm kind of in a bind there. And let me explain to you why. I'm currently developing a mobile-first gacha game. I can't talk about it a lot, because the version that's out right now doesn't represent what we're going to release really soon. But my downtime from developing a gacha game all day is a rotation.

Yuri Sokolov (01:49)
He's playing gacha games. ⁓

Amit Netanel (01:50)
Yeah, yeah, it's like a rotation of four gacha games that I started as I'm trying to do a research. I'm not addicted to ⁓ basically setting up a harem of waifus, which I'll get into if I tell you about those games. But I get it. Now I get it. I mean, when I started working on the game, I thought, OK, maybe it's for the ⁓ Asian markets and people that like really complex mobile games probably will like it. And ⁓ I intended to say that it's not for me, but I get it now. OK, I get it. It's supposed to be goofy on one end and really serious storytelling on the other. ⁓ So what I'm playing, OK, with what games I'm playing. You'll see. Yeah.

Yuri Sokolov (02:42)
By the way, sorry to cut you here. It's just, you know that I worked on Gotcha game as well some time ago and I kind of was into it from the start and I'm not into it right now. So I was developing a Gotcha game when I think in 2020, 2019. Yeah, yeah, 2020 our company closed because of COVID. So we did stuff like that and it was fun. It's fun genre. So I'm okay with.

Amit Netanel (03:10)
Yeah, so 2020 is just right before Genshin Impact. Or Genshin Impact did come out.

Yuri Sokolov (03:16)
Right, it was just before Genshin Impact and it was just before the Raid Shadow Legends. We did something similar to Raid Shadow Legends and ⁓ naturally we started the development ⁓ after them and they released the game ⁓ while we were working on the game. So we were at the beginning single developers, single artists, couple of freelancers.

Amit Netanel (03:24)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (03:45)
And we were working on the game and I don't know, half a year into development, Raid releases their game and it's so much better than what we did.

Amit Netanel (03:55)
Yeah, it was really influential. And let me tell you, it's still influential today. Like today, you can see gacha games that have like raid elements integrated into them.

Yuri Sokolov (04:05)
But let's not repeat this title again and again. think all of the people who watch YouTube videos are tired from hearing Raid Shadow Legends. Let's...

Amit Netanel (04:18)
And there's no one better to tell you about it than our sponsor. Just kidding. Just kidding. ⁓ Yeah, no. ⁓ My first impression from Raid Shadow Legends was from a bunch of YouTubers. So we're not going to talk about how great Raid Shadow Legend is. But it is still influential today. But I would say the more influential game in recent years was Genshin Impact to the degree that most gacha games have the same economy, like right down to the ⁓

Yuri Sokolov (04:41)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Amit Netanel (04:48)
to the amount of gems or crystals or jades or whatever you need to pull the characters, it's exact same like Genshin Impact.

Yuri Sokolov (04:57)
Yeah, it works like this because when we developed our game, we looked at Idle Heroes. So there was this game, it exists until now, but you know, recently I was trying to recover my account for some reason, I don't remember the password, and I haven't used this account for four years, I think, so I tried to recover and the support haven't answered me. So I...

Amit Netanel (05:05)
Mm-hmm. It's better this way. It's better this way,

Yuri Sokolov (05:26)
I don't know how big they are today and I haven't watched in in tensor tower tensor I don't remember the name of the company that tracks revenue mobile revenue so I haven't watched them but everybody was copying them the company it's it was a Chinese company if I'm not mistaken the company that did this game they did

Amit Netanel (05:39)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Sensor Tower.

Yuri Sokolov (05:57)
one more game earlier and it was worse and then they figured out everything and put everything together and when for example Red Shadow Legends came up they used a lot of stuff a lot of influence came from this idle heroes game and many other games that came at the same time were taking influence from there I bet even Genshin Impact was influenced by this game specifically

Amit Netanel (06:05)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, can tell you what. Developing a gacha game takes a long time, or lots of people, or both. And while you're developing the game, and I can say it firsthand because this is what happened in my studio, while you're working on a game that's inspired by a bunch of games, some new game comes out and shuffles things around just a bit. Like when our studio started, the main influence was Diablo Immortal. OK, because we like mobile. OK, we don't make the don't you guys have phone jokes. OK, we really like mobile. And playing Diablo on a mobile device really appealed to the people that started the studio. So naturally, they said, OK, let's do a more casual Diablo Immortal. While working on the more casual Diablo Immortal, more and more gacha games.

Yuri Sokolov (06:56)
Yeah, I remember the days.

Amit Netanel (07:21)
to control over the mobile market. And we started saying, hey, there is something here because all my free time goes to pulling waifus and playing stupid quests in Genshin Impact. And then Honkai Star Rail comes out and you say, ⁓ we can do it in space. It's really similar. It's just turn-based. And you see all the success of the other clones. No, actually no. I'm playing the third ⁓ big miHoYo game, which is called Zenless Zone Zero, or ZZZ.

Yuri Sokolov (07:40)
So what are you playing? Those games?

Amit Netanel (07:50)
That's like my main title. OK, I have to do all the quests. I have most of the S-rank characters. And what I like about it is that the loop is not so overwhelming that I have to play an hour each day. I can do it in five minutes, like the daily grind. You come in, you press a couple of buttons to pick up stamina, to pick up if you did the...

Yuri Sokolov (07:52)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Netanel (08:15)
If you're paying for the monthly subscription thing, you get the gems, you try to pull a character, you fail. And then you do a bit of grinding, just a bit, like one or two matches. And the matches in Zealots Zone Zero is really similar to fighting games, which I like. You have combos, and you enter with a crew of three characters that you swap around, which is really cool. And the graphics are awesome. Their animation team is really passionate. Each patch brings new quirks. The plot is silly. It doesn't take itself too seriously. But it's an apocalyptic game. Remember this, because I'm going to mention the other two games. And they're also post-apocalyptic with a goofy atmosphere. So Xenazon Zero is like my main one. Yeah.

Yuri Sokolov (09:05)
It's kind of a theme right now. It's a kind of a theme that's being reborn right now. So we had in the 90s, we had Wasteland and then Fallout and then Fallout kind of took over the scene and then what?

Amit Netanel (09:21)
Yeah. And also Fallout is a post-apocalyptic setting with that, which doesn't at least at three and above, it doesn't take itself too seriously. Like there's a lot of goofy moments in three and four.

Yuri Sokolov (09:32)
None of them. None of them. Fallout is basically what scientists in the 50s imagined. It's a retrofuturistic game. Before they knew what is nuclear winter and that they thought that radiation will make your cockroaches huge and stuff like that. they actually from the first game they made it kind of funny and

Amit Netanel (09:44)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (09:59)
That's by the way why I like the live action adaptation of the Fallout because it was a bit too much silly for my taste, right? But I still like it. I like that they haven't tried to rewrite one of the Fallout games. They just took the world and build on top of the world. It was fun. But I was interrupting you.

Amit Netanel (10:23)
Yeah. Yeah. There's no, no, there's I actually really agree with you. There's stuff there that's appealing to lore nerds and to just first time viewers, though I think the second season was too much for my partner that watched this first season with me. And in the first season, I could catch her up and tell her, you know, that's ⁓ you know, there's the Leonardo DiCaprio meme that he says, ⁓ this one. So that was me during the first season. Like, the Brotherhood of Steel, why they're important. ⁓ Peep Boys, what are they? Why are the Vault Dwellers are so, like, innocent? So I could explain it. And by the time we got to season two, she was like, OK, you watch that. OK, you enjoy it. For me, it's too much to learn while I'm trying to relax and watch a show. So ⁓ I really like that show.

Yuri Sokolov (11:02)
Mm-hmm. I haven't watched the second season. ⁓ My wife hasn't played Fallout games, so me and my wife watched the first season. She enjoyed it and recently she came to me ⁓ I heard the second season is fully out, let's watch it. I said, no, I'm playing right now. In my free time I have a game, so we'll reach the point when...

Amit Netanel (11:23)
Second season? Okay.

Yuri Sokolov (11:46)
I'm telling what game I'm playing. So let's get back to what is the third game.

Amit Netanel (11:50)
⁓ I just wanted to say that the other big, big gacha game I'm playing right now is Chaos Zero Nightmare. You'll also notice that most gacha games have three unrelated words, nouns, adjectives composing their name. Like Zenless Zone Zero, it doesn't mean anything. Also in the context of the game, doesn't mean anything. Chaos Zero Nightmare, again, ⁓ you're the captain of an interplanetary ship. called the SS Nightmare, so it's in the title. You explore chaos zones, which, OK, there is nothing about zero in the game. But it sounds good, OK? Chaos Zero Nightmare. OK, cool. ⁓

Yuri Sokolov (12:32)
Because the zero was in the previous game

Amit Netanel (12:35)
It was. You can chain together all the titles. So again, it's a post-apocalyptic environment. People took off into space, but there's a phenomenon called the chaos that starts ruining everything. ⁓ what you actually do in the game is having coffee and tea time and going on dates with the girls that are the crew of the SS Nightmare. And the gameplay itself.

Yuri Sokolov (12:38)
Yeah.

Amit Netanel (13:04)
is like if you took a Slay Despire and decomposed all the classes into smaller classes. So you choose three characters each with their own deck. And you need to build. It's also a roguelike. So you enter ⁓ a series of rooms. And you build your deck. You build actually one deck of three characters. So they have to ⁓ synergize with each other.

Yuri Sokolov (13:25)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Netanel (13:33)
So strategically, it's way deeper than ZZZ. It's actually the deepest gacha game I've ever seen. The gameplay is quite complex, and I really like it. The plot is silly and doesn't make sense. Actually, there was a big uproar in Korea, and fans demanded that the main story will be rewritten. ⁓ Not because the story is goofy, not because it's not interesting. It is not interesting, but because ⁓ one of the characters is no, they flirt with all the girls instead of the main character that you are playing. ⁓ So they're mad about that. Like all the girls are fawning over this playable character that is not you. So guys in Korea don't like that. And the company actually, the studio actually said it's going to rewrite the story of the first part of the game because of that. So they're doing it.

Yuri Sokolov (14:04)
Resemble someone. Well, you know, mobile game company, they can do that. They need to maintain the game for a long, long time.

Amit Netanel (14:34)
Yeah. Yeah, they have the resources to do it. Actually, ⁓ if you go deep into the ⁓ lore around the making of this game, you'll get the sense of ⁓ why things happened the way they did. It was in development hell. So people left while the crunch was too big to endure. And the main writer walked off in the middle.

Yuri Sokolov (14:49)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Netanel (15:09)
And the worst part is that the CEO of the studio ⁓ walked in and ⁓ tried to take over the writing part. And the story is feeling like three different entities wrote it ⁓ asynchronically. And when you get into the technical part.

Yuri Sokolov (15:33)
Isn't it the same story for any game? Not small indie titles, but if you're taking AAA games or mobile games, the story isn't written by a single person. It's many, many people, right? It's probably someone coordinating everything, right? Orchestrating everything.

Amit Netanel (15:50)
Of course. You need one ⁓ lore master, someone that has the Bible of all the terms and will visual... You need someone to visualize all the different quests are leading somewhere. ⁓ For example, in this game, there's emphasis on trauma and neurosis and losing sanity. Because you're fighting ⁓ interdimensional entities, people lose their shit.

Yuri Sokolov (15:57)
Yeah.

Amit Netanel (16:23)
OK, so if your characters get too much damage, they start to go insane. That's a sensitive subject. You need to handle it with care. So the start of the game really focuses on that. You have one character in your crew that something terrible happens to, and then you try to help them recuperate. And then that plot line is abandoned altogether. Like the character seems to be OK. And you start. ⁓

Yuri Sokolov (16:51)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Netanel (16:53)
fighting against ⁓ another political faction that tries to take over the existing civilization. So it's unfocused. And that's what happens if several people have a different vision for the project, in my opinion.

Yuri Sokolov (17:07)
Listen, listen, dude, I don't know. I've played my fair share of mobile games, right? I never, if you'd ask me about the lore of any of those games, I will never tell you and you just told me a whole story. think, I think they did something quite good there. They did something. They did something. So it is.

Amit Netanel (17:13)
Mm-hmm. you They did something. They did something. No, but most of the lore I know about the game I know from YouTube. I had someone else read because the storytelling is in a visual novel style. I'm a busy parent. I'm trying to get to the gameplay. And the visual novel is standing between me and the gameplay. So I just skip everything. That's also a meme amongst the gacha players, that you're mashing the skip button. And if I'll ever have a podcast dedicated to gacha games, that will be the name, by the way, the skip button or something with a skip button. And that's why, and I'll try to round up my gacha retrospective, the third gacha game in my rotation, I have no idea what's the plot. It's just that it has beautiful sights, beautiful waifus.

Yuri Sokolov (18:07)
skip but

Amit Netanel (18:24)
It's really new. It came out about a month ago. It's called the Arknights Enfield. And that gacha game is also open world, like Genshin Impact. But it has factorial-like ⁓ factory building mechanics. So you're going around the world. You're discovering mines and ⁓ stuff that generates resources. And then you have to connect your main factory to them. You have to manage. ⁓

Yuri Sokolov (18:29)
Mm-hmm. Interesting.

Amit Netanel (18:53)
energy resources, have to ⁓ actually, there's a whole feature that's creating blueprints of your factory and sharing it to other people. It's a really social game. And you can actually get a code for you to share, and you can download other people's factories if you want. You can actually skip that whole gameplay if you want. ⁓

Yuri Sokolov (19:04)
Mm-hmm. that... This is a great twist actually because most of the top earners currently in gaming industry are the games that allow you to create something within. So take Fortnite. The real Fortnite became so huge the moment they released the Create and Roblox and Minecraft and all of those games. Yeah, they're directed towards

Amit Netanel (19:35)
Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (19:46)
⁓ a younger audience, but still this is the thing that people really like in general. So it's a good twist.

Amit Netanel (19:49)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I get why they like it. I played Satisfactory for a bit because it's really hardcore. But it's hardcore, but also cozy because there's no real pressure for you to build the most effective factory. And you place all the tiles and you connect all the lines and it's calming. And in the context of a mobile gacha game, ⁓

Yuri Sokolov (20:12)
Yeah.

Amit Netanel (20:27)
The characters that you pull have no bearing on what you build. It's like two different games under one roof. So the characters are relevant for the exploration and the monster slaying. There are monsters and stuff like that. ⁓ But if you just want to build your factory, you can just say, OK, today I'm building that belt. Today I'm focusing on my energy balance. And you build some stuff, and you exit. That's it. And that's your loop for the day.

Yuri Sokolov (20:53)
Yeah, yeah. I'm not really into that. ⁓ I like games that require thought, additional thought, and I can appreciate it, but I'm not really into cozy things and yeah, I probably need at some point to get into satisfactory just because of the programming stuff. And that's my thing. know, the last... not the last game but recently I was playing a game, was waiting for this game to come up and it was revolving around programming. How was that game called? Do remember the one where you write 3D shaders like voxels with lua script?

Amit Netanel (21:43)
whoa, yeah. You actually, you're the one that recommended it to me, I think. Can't remember the name.

Yuri Sokolov (21:47)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I waited for this game to be released and when it released I played it a lot. Wow, I don't remember the name of the game and I think we'll find it and we'll put it in the show notes so you'll be able to find awesome game. yeah, but today, today I'm playing something different. I'm a bit late to the party. As you know, since my kid was

Amit Netanel (22:00)
Yeah, we'll probably link to it. It deserves it. By the way, being late to the party in games has a positive term now, it's called being a patient gamer.

Yuri Sokolov (22:21)
Not only that, if you're late to an RPG game, it usually means you're skipping all of the bugs. So I'm...

Amit Netanel (22:29)
Yeah, wow, yeah. Yeah, by the way, saw on the way here to my desk, I ⁓ saw that there's an anniversary version for Avowed. Do you know Avowed? That's the. ⁓

Yuri Sokolov (22:44)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ I was trying to play it recently. It's kind of... It's an Unreal Engine game, right? It has the same... It has the same feel all Unreal Engine games have today. So it was developed by a great company. What they called? ⁓ Obsidian, right. So Obsidian...

Amit Netanel (23:07)
Obsidian Studios. Yeah.

Yuri Sokolov (23:13)
are amazing. I'm sure that the game is awesome and the visuals are kind of nice, but I've started it and I'm seeing the same. It's this field that I don't really like. You know how I never programmed in Unreal, but things that I've heard that in Unity you're building up, in Unreal you're scaling down, so you're getting a whole package and you need to remove unnecessary stuff.

Amit Netanel (23:41)
Yeah.

Yuri Sokolov (23:42)
So a lot of the time, ⁓ the visual fidelity of Unreal game that everyone praises, it's making kind of, I don't know, I don't like it. Maybe, maybe I...

Amit Netanel (23:53)
It's getting same. It's getting a bit samey. I think you're what you're talking about is a combination of the motion blur that's really built in and it's really beautiful, but it gets old and something about the materials has that. I can't even even try to come up with the words to describe it. It's, it's that, slick, like everything is a bit.

Yuri Sokolov (24:02)
Yes. Yeah, something futuristic, something a bit futuristic, even if the... I don't know how to say it. Again, take a look at the tech demo that CD Projekt Red pulled with the WeChat. It doesn't look like a typical Unreal game. Even Fortnite doesn't look like a typical Unreal game. For example, Expedition 33, which is an awesome game. I really liked it. I really liked the navigation when you're, you know, small characters moving around. It didn't feel, it didn't give me this typical Unreal game vibe. But when you're entering, you know, regular character navigation in the Expedition 33, you're seeing the same thing. It's like if you're taking this game and for example, Marvel Midnight Suns,

Amit Netanel (25:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (25:16)
Feel is the same. It's it's really you even see the collision. They probably use the same and the same I don't character controller or whatever that the collision works the same. It feels the same so I Don't really like that. So avowed is not something I was able to get into I will probably get into this game because For example, with the same Expedition 33, the moment I got over this I don't like this vibe, this unreal vibe, the game kind of pulled me into it and I was never paying attention anymore to those things that I don't like. So I think about it as a great game. It's just since my kid was born three years ago, I kind of skipped a lot of games, a lot of series.

Amit Netanel (25:52)
Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (26:12)
And now I'm getting into stuff and at last, at last time, I'm playing the one and only Baldur's Gate 3. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Right, and that's what.

Amit Netanel (26:22)
⁓ wow. So that's why you're not available sometimes. You're deep in the underdark.

Yuri Sokolov (26:30)
I'm splitting my time right now, so I'm working, then after work I have my time with my kid, we go play, we go outside and then when it goes to sleep it's ⁓ playing time. So I'm not working, I'm forcing myself to stop working, I'm going to play for my sanity and it's been great for my sanity honestly. I've played a lot in the...

Amit Netanel (26:38)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (26:58)
In the last half a year I've played a lot of games, I've completed a of them. Smaller games, smaller indie titles and bigger AAA games like Starfield for example. Which I really liked, I know that a lot of people don't like this game, I liked. It's a typical Bethesda game. I don't know but... ⁓

Amit Netanel (27:19)
Yeah. By the way, with Starfield, I suffered from the same thing you described earlier. I started it. It was not epic and ⁓ actually kind of boring. And I kind of like let it go. mean, nothing drew me in. Like the start of ⁓ Skyrim, for example, isn't like award-winning, although it's iconic. Like ⁓ I saw, I went into someone's living room.

Yuri Sokolov (27:44)
It became iconic.

Amit Netanel (27:48)
a few years ago and I saw a pillow with the you're finally awake meme on it okay which speaks volumes on how iconic it is but I don't know Starfield didn't like drag me in

Yuri Sokolov (28:02)
I liked a couple of things there. So first of all, don't like, usually I don't like the construction thing inside games. And being someone who played Elite for some time, the flight in Starfield felt too casual for me. So I never was hardcore if...

Amit Netanel (28:27)
Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (28:30)
Elite, sorry. I never was a hardcore elite player. Also I never... Yeah.

Amit Netanel (28:36)
You're studying a war here. Yeah, but ⁓ I didn't play any of these games, say whatever.

Yuri Sokolov (28:43)
So basically even the casual mode ⁓ in Elite Dangerous is a lot deeper when you're talking about flight and landing on planets. You can actually land and not skip loading into loading and then you have this animation of spaceship landing. So even the casual controls and you can disable the casual controls and enter the simulation world, which is... for some people is amazing and I just it's too hard for me, right? So those things are kind of took from the experience but then the construction I was hating on the building stuff in Fallout 4 but constructing my own spaceship in Starfield, well, I liked it. I liked it a lot. And at some point in the game, pretty early, because I usually complete all the side quests first, I've got a spaceship, a great spaceship that you basically don't need anything better than it in the whole game. But I still was sitting and reorganizing it. It was really fun. I liked it. And it's a first for me. Usually I skip those activities if I don't... I don't know.

Amit Netanel (30:09)
By the way, that's related to ⁓ what we talked about earlier with the cozy mechanics, like building your own, whether it's an island in Animal Crossing or Spaceship, it has like a Zen feeling to it. Like, you know, you're trimming the bonsai tree.

Yuri Sokolov (30:25)
No, I think for me the cozy mechanics are things that making it kind of off. I don't like it. In Starfield, I like that everything you build is functional. So basically you're putting some modules together and then you're entering your spaceship and the rooms are organized the way you organize them in the builder. And it doesn't have...

Amit Netanel (30:51)
Does it have space fights and stuff like that? Do you have to place cannons and stuff like that?

Yuri Sokolov (30:54)
Yes, ⁓ yes, you place cannons and there is a calculator of things you can do and cannot do. And there's a, you have, I don't know, a battery of some sorts that, ⁓ it's drawing too much power. You can't place it and levels and, ⁓ but generally speaking, you basically, can, I don't know, for example, you can put three weapons. So you decided to put rockets, lasers, and whatever. And you can drop it wherever you want. It doesn't matter when you fight, it doesn't matter. It doesn't affect anything. So if it sticks, it sticks. That's all. nothing of the things I did in the constructions actually affected the gameplay. So you can make your spaceship super long. It doesn't affect the gameplay. Probably if it was PVP, then players would, it would affect. Right? So you're making your ship huge. It's easier to hit you. But when you're playing against the environment, it doesn't affect. but what it affects is it's an RPG game, right? So RPG game, it's not about the fighting, not necessarily. It's about going deep into those things. So, ⁓ it kind of the atmosphere of this. So I edited my spaceship and now I can.

Amit Netanel (31:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (32:21)
travel inside and it looks exactly how I edited it. I liked it. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amit Netanel (32:26)
Something about that fantasy appeals to you. Actually, it sounds way cooler than the start of the game was, I don't know, depressing. remember we got into a mine and we had to do something, convince someone about something. It was so inconsequential. Planning and building a spaceship is cool. Maybe start the game with that. I don't know. I don't know.

Yuri Sokolov (32:49)
The game is kind of a typical Bethesda game, know, like any other Bethesda game out there. It even had the same bugs at the release date, you know.

Amit Netanel (32:57)
You're the chosen one. You need to save the galaxy from something. You could see through the helmet and stuff like that.

Yuri Sokolov (33:09)
I think it's been so long that Bethesda develops games, so every time a new game releases, you should know what to expect. And if you expected something different, the problem is within you and not with the company, because they're doing the same thing. It's like Pokemon players, right? So when a new Pokemon game drops, the duo, I mean the major games, not the RCOs or whatever.

Amit Netanel (33:33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yuri Sokolov (33:38)
the legends. So when the main games drops, they're always the same. It's 20 how much? How many 25 years I think 2025 years

Amit Netanel (33:49)
It's the 30th anniversary this year, actually.

Yuri Sokolov (33:52)
30 years. So 30 years, the same game over and over again. And I'm buying them and I'm playing them. I'm playing the shit out of them. Actually, I'm buying always I'm buying two versions, one for me, one for my wife, so we can trade Pokemons. And it's kind of fun.

Amit Netanel (34:00)
Ha ha ha. Wait, but didn't you play the newest one, the ⁓ Z2A Legends one? Because the Legend games do have innovation in them. So it sounds like you're not looking for innovation, but the most recent one is an open world game. You can level up your Pokémon to be level 200, which is new to the series. ⁓

Yuri Sokolov (34:17)
No, no, no, the Legends, I've skipped both of the Legends games. kind of... The last game... Mm-hmm.

Amit Netanel (34:40)
You get to walk around in an open area with the Pokémon. It's more like a tech demo. It's what Scarlet Violet wanted to be, I think.

Yuri Sokolov (34:46)
No, no, with the Pokemons... It was introduced in previous games, so the Pokemons... The first Pokemon game where you can walk around with other Pokemons around was Let's Go Eevee and Let's Go Pikachu, which were completely mobile experience on a Switch console. So you didn't battle the Pokemons, you just threw a Pokeball. And that's it.

Amit Netanel (35:02)
Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (35:15)
They did this, they started with Let's Go Eevee, Let's Go Pikachu, then they experimented in Sword and Shield and they continued with it to other games. this is nothing new. I just, the last Pokemon game was where we're bad, just plainly bad. how was called? Sephires?

Amit Netanel (35:36)
Yeah, for fans, for gamers, but ⁓ for collectors, it's ⁓ fine, I guess. ⁓ yeah, you need to shake things up. Yeah.

Yuri Sokolov (35:44)
Yeah, same with with Bethesda games. Same with Bethesda games. you when you buy a Bethesda game, it's the same game over and over in in a different packaging. ⁓ It's it's not like Pokemon in a sense that Pokemon is actually the same game with different skin and Bethesda game is the same skin with different games. I don't know how to say. Yeah, yeah, so I.

Amit Netanel (36:07)
Interesting, interesting. No, no, we need to think about that. It's a good title for a video, by the way, Yuri. ⁓ If you ever veer into video essay territory, I think it would be a great title.

Yuri Sokolov (36:18)
So you know how in Fallout New Vegas, think, they had a limitation with... ⁓ It was either Fallout New Vegas or Fallout 3, where they had a limitation with the Metro. They couldn't get ⁓ the train to move. So what they did, they placed an NPC inside the textures below the floor level.

Amit Netanel (36:41)
Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (36:48)
and the train was actually a hat. So to simulate, you didn't know that? So if you haven't know it, Google it. It's awesome. They made a hat out of ⁓ train. So basically when you get on a train, there's an NPC below floor, under the textures that you don't see, he's running and the train is his hat. Right, so.

Amit Netanel (36:52)
I can't believe it. No. my God. my God, you're right. You're absolutely right. It's in Fallout New Vegas. Wow.

Yuri Sokolov (37:18)
I honestly don't know what kind of limitations an engine should have in order to not being able to reproduce a spline movement, but they had this limitation, they made it into a hat. And when I play Starfield, always imagine invisible NPCs wearing spaceships as hats and, I don't know, running around in invisible mountains that simulate space.

Amit Netanel (37:47)
Wow. I'm in awe of that. It's so creative. I mean, in awe.

Yuri Sokolov (37:55)
That's one of the reasons I'm into game development. It's really creative sometimes. yeah, so I'm getting back to Baldur's Gate.

Amit Netanel (38:05)
Ok, let's talk about the best game of 2024 At least it was my game of the year I played the hell out of it One playthrough took me 150 hours

Yuri Sokolov (38:09)
Yeah, yeah. I So I'm currently at 110, 110 hours and I'm kind of at the edge at the end of the third act. So I don't want to spoil for anybody. I'm kind of at the end. What I noticed about Baldur's Gate 3, Larian games, right? I've played only two games by Larian. I played the...

Amit Netanel (38:41)
Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (38:47)
Divinity Original Scene 2 and I played Baldur's Gate and they did the same thing in both of those games. At least it feels this way for me. The act's first act is taking you by the hand and first you feel overwhelmed but then they remove this overwhelmed feeling

Amit Netanel (38:48)
Divinity Original Sin.

Yuri Sokolov (39:13)
and they draw you into the gameplay and ⁓ it's kind of linear. The first act in both of the games is kind of linear. Then the second act... no, sorry. The first act is stop being linear at some point. You have a lot of branches in both of the games.

Amit Netanel (39:22)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, like escaping from 4Joy is really creative. You can do it in many ways. That's the first act of ⁓ Divinity Original Scene 2. But you had an introductory zone at the beginning on the ship. And in Barlow's Gate 3, you also have a kind of a ship that follows you through it. Yeah. And by the way, as someone that, as you know, played the

Yuri Sokolov (39:41)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's the first time user experience. We know it from the mobile development kind of...

Amit Netanel (40:00)
during the early access of Baldur's Gate, the part in the ⁓ elitid spaceship was ⁓ dumped down significantly. It used to be, it took to take like two hours and you had side quests inside the starting zone and you really needed to use the map. You had NPCs and stuff like that. And if I recall correctly in the ⁓ final game, you just, you meet with

Yuri Sokolov (40:03)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Amit Netanel (40:30)
with the Githyanki girl, Lysel. ⁓

Yuri Sokolov (40:33)
⁓ you can pronounce everything.

Amit Netanel (40:36)
I also play D &D before that. this game was made for me, by the way. It's a love letter to me. Thank you, Larian. I really appreciate it. They don't even know me. And never mind. So ⁓ you meet Laizel, you kill some imps, you free Shadowheart, and you go to the end of that part. Before that, it used to be like ⁓ a semi-open world inside the ship. And they

Yuri Sokolov (41:02)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Netanel (41:04)
They admitted that people were confused that it was too much freedom at the beginning of the game. So yeah, it's practices that we employ in mobile games as well to a bigger degree. By the way, we have lots of forced tutorials that you can also only play one game mode and only press on one button.

Yuri Sokolov (41:18)
Mm-hmm. By the way, there's a trend in mobile game development right now to start dropping the first time user experiences, the tutorials for those people that don't know the term from the mobile game development. So a lot of studios start dropping those and getting back to... Yeah. No, no, no, it's...

Amit Netanel (41:38)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, or at least making them shorter, like a few clicks and go.

Yuri Sokolov (41:55)
Recently, in the last week actually, I've seen a lot of posts by game designers and product managers ⁓ that are telling their story about how they're dropping the tutorials in their game, what are they doing and ⁓ this whole other story. So getting back to Baldur's Gate. So the first act, both in the Baldur's Gate and the Divinity Origins Original Scene 2. are kind of branching and they start linear and then they're branching and not linear and a lot of stuff going on. Then the second act is really linear. Like really, really linear. It's go from point A to point B, pick up a couple of side quests along the way and they did a better job in Act 2 in Baldur's Gate than in Divinity, in my opinion, because it was a bit more interesting with the side quests were a bit more diverse. And then the third act is in both games is just overwhelming. So in Divinity, I haven't finished the game because it was so overwhelming. I've stopped in the middle of the third act and just kind of I said I will come back to it. And then games like this, if you don't play for a long time, you

Amit Netanel (43:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (43:22)
can't come back to third act. need to start

Amit Netanel (43:24)
for a long time. If I don't play for a week, I can't remember where I am and what I did the previous session and I dropped the game. Like I have to play every day to keep the mental map of what I'm supposed to do.

Yuri Sokolov (43:38)
Right, right. same feeling exactly. ⁓ not every day. For example, today I'm skipping my playday. This. So, yeah, and the third act was overwhelming. I really pushed myself ⁓ this time because I really liked the game. I really pushed myself to get over this overwhelming feeling that this is so huge. And I think maybe

Amit Netanel (43:45)
What are you doing today?

Yuri Sokolov (44:08)
If they reverse the things a bit, if they were making the first act linear, the second act more branching and the third act is big, it will, it would be like kind of build up. So you're, you're building up the expectations, things getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And you're starting to feel, wow, this game is amazing. It's endless and stuff like that. And here they, they kind of. dropping the expectation of the second act and then they bring all of the stuff to you. So in Baldur's Gate third act you come to Baldur's Gate and you take two steps there's a side quest, two steps there's a side quest, there's a lot of things going on and from game design I don't want to say I know a lot of from game design and they made an amazing game. It's ahead and I'm waiting for the divinity, the next divinity title that they announced recently. ⁓ But I think they could have done it a little bit better, not forcing, not doing this overwhelmed. I don't know, maybe, maybe other people feel differently. Maybe it's just me. So.

Amit Netanel (45:11)
Yeah, looks amazing, by the way. ⁓ First of all, agree. think ⁓ Act 3 in Baldur's Gate 3 is... It's too much, but the game has built your resistance towards ticking off boxes and keeping the mental map of what you're supposed to do. You've built a tolerance over the first two acts. And by the way, you're playing on PlayStation, right?

Yuri Sokolov (45:43)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Amit Netanel (45:53)
And ⁓ I played on PC. And it also connects to what you said about ⁓ playing games two years after they got out. Act 3 was unplayable, optimization-wise, on PC, on launch.

Yuri Sokolov (46:08)
It's almost unplayable on PlayStation until today. Yeah, in many places inside the city, the frame rate drops significantly. So it also kind of, I don't want to say...

Amit Netanel (46:12)
Really, even now. Yeah, it's still, but it's not a blue screen of death like I got. I actually had to do something that I didn't do for like 15, 20 years. Back in high school, I played the world of warcraft a bit and it was too much for my PC. So I had to remove the chassis from my PC to let it cool. Okay. We live in a warm place. So, and it was a summer break. So I had to cool my PC somehow and I did it again.

Yuri Sokolov (46:26)
No, no.

Amit Netanel (46:51)
With Baldur's Gate 3 because I figured out it was too much for my GPU and CPU I didn't want to upgrade just for that one game ⁓ And I actually didn't have to But to actually play during that first launch week or two weeks or something like that I had to remove the the chassis because it was that level of unplayable but it really indicates on how many like NPCs and moving pieces and stuff there's to do at that final act

Yuri Sokolov (47:10)
Mm-hmm. Actually it really indicates how poorly your ⁓ PC is designed so you don't have a good airflow inside your PC.

Amit Netanel (47:27)
definitely, definitely. ⁓ There was also a conspiracy theory on the Reddit that they didn't optimize Act 3 enough because not that many people played it. And they showed in a livestream what kind of tooling they did ⁓ for the game. They started doing this ⁓ way back in Divinity Original Scene 2. And it's fascinating, by the way, in the heat map of where players are dying, where they're visiting.

Yuri Sokolov (47:51)
The heat map.

Amit Netanel (47:57)
It's a really useful tool, and I didn't think of doing it. For huge games like this, you need to get non-anecdotal data somehow. When people tell you about their gameplay, it's good, but you need numbers.

Yuri Sokolov (48:07)
Yeah, the- The thing is that they can, if I understand it correctly, and maybe somebody will correct me, things we're used to in mobile. So you're sending analytics events in mobile for every little thing. The player pressed here, ⁓ pressed there, opened this pop-up, this menu. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in mobile, you do everything.

Amit Netanel (48:35)
Even if the parallel didn't do anything, you want to know that, that you're idle.

Yuri Sokolov (48:42)
In console gaming and in PC gaming, especially in console gaming, you're kind of forced to... it does... it's not a thing. So I've heard, I don't know for sure, I've heard that it's not a thing. It's hard to pass a console certification if you're starting to spam analytics events and stuff like that. So it's...

Amit Netanel (48:53)
Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (49:07)
People usually don't do it. And in mobile game, you do it and you don't tell the player that you do it. In PC games, when you do it, usually you have this checkbox you need to tick and say, yeah, I'm fine with sending ⁓ data to... And I think if I'm not mistaken, Larry Ann collected this data during ⁓ early access, not during the full release.

Amit Netanel (49:20)
Mm-hmm, analytics, sure.

Yuri Sokolov (49:32)
During early access, they said, okay, we're giving you this, but we want to analyze it's an early access after all we want to analyze things.

Amit Netanel (49:38)
I know that they actually did collect analytics during release because they came out with a post blaming the players of being cliche. Right after launch, they said...

Yuri Sokolov (49:44)
Mm-hmm. regarding the character creation.

Amit Netanel (49:55)
Yeah, the majority of people played ⁓ white human male I mean, it's a fantasy game Be ⁓ a hot elven lady for once in your life I mean, you can do better You can do better than a straight white male

Yuri Sokolov (50:07)
Maybe Hot Elven Ladies played as white males.

Amit Netanel (50:13)
Absolutely. That's fine too. That's no problem. just don't know any hot Elven ladies that play Ballos Gate 3. They do other things. ⁓ But so I guess they did collect analytics because you missed the whole playing it now. You missed the whole feedback loop. They would release an update and then update you on how players reacted to the previous one.

Yuri Sokolov (50:15)
Ha Well, yeah.

Amit Netanel (50:41)
I don't think they scrapped any content. They just added a bit more. They did a final cut for the ending, which is nice because the initial ending was good, but it lacked closure for some of the plot lines. And in the new ending, you get closure for everything. Every little NPC along the way that you bumped into gets their 15 seconds of glory, which is really fun. And also, after a...

Yuri Sokolov (50:56)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Netanel (51:11)
100 plus hours game. It's an enormous achievement to see how they tracked all your decisions up to that point. It's really impressive.

Yuri Sokolov (51:23)
Interesting by the way they did this in Starfield as well. So when you're finished every Every little decision you made they tell you about it, but you know who I think did it best It's the guys that make a wasteland Wasteland 2 and wasteland 3 when you finish the game every every small every little decision you made it's kind of they they're

Amit Netanel (51:28)
Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (51:53)
telling you, ⁓ remember this decision? Those dudes are dead. And it's all because of you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're blaming you. So you saved those couple of elderly people. Nice. 50 children died. So they actually throw it in your face and they did it quite good. So this encourages replayability in those games because when I'm completing

Amit Netanel (51:59)
And it's your fault. You should feel bad.

Yuri Sokolov (52:23)
Wasteland 3 I say I'm telling to myself no no no now I need to finish this game once again and make other choices to save the other people

Amit Netanel (52:33)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fomo-ing. Not fomo-ing, but it appeals to your morals. You say, man, I think I can do better. I think I can do better. These people that don't exist, they deserve a better future than what I provided them. I should really play the Wasteland games. I didn't touch them at all. And I think I own them. I think I own them all on Steam.

Yuri Sokolov (52:58)
Yeah, you're missing a lot.

Amit Netanel (53:03)
Bye.

Yuri Sokolov (53:04)
I don't think there is a game on Steam that you don't own.

Amit Netanel (53:08)
Wow, I saw something on Reddit that touched a nerve with me the other day. I saw a picture of a bunch of apples with one bite taken out of them. And the caption is, my Steam library. Man, I feel guilty. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I have, ⁓ I think, like 1,000 games with less than one hour gameplay. And. ⁓

Yuri Sokolov (53:23)
This is definitely you. I usually pick those games really carefully. There are a lot of games in my library that I don't know where they came from. For example, I don't know where from the Batman games in my library. I never purchased...

Amit Netanel (53:51)
Probably from Humble Bundle. Probably.

Yuri Sokolov (53:54)
Probably. Probably from some kind of bundle. But usually I remember the games that come from this because I don't have a huge library. I think my GOG library is bigger than my Steam library. Because when I started to earn money, I decided that I need to pay back at least a small amount to all those companies that... Yeah, as a kid, as a kid... ⁓

Amit Netanel (54:08)
Whoa, that's impressive. For everything you pirated.

Yuri Sokolov (54:23)
So I bought all of the Heroes games, all of them and many, many, many, many other games as well. And my GOG library is huge. And today I'm playing console exclusively.

Amit Netanel (54:38)
Did you see that GOG started a foundation for preserving games that's funded by a... No, but they are actually ⁓ offering you to be a patron. It's not via Patreon. You can be a patron of their game. ⁓ I don't know how to exactly word it because I didn't read the whole thing. But I think what they say is that, hey,

Yuri Sokolov (54:42)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was their thing.

Amit Netanel (55:06)
Every money you give to us is another game preserved for the future, for future generations. ⁓ So that's cool, I think.

Yuri Sokolov (55:15)
They did some good things in the past, DRM free games. In terms of preserving games, they did a lot of so... I don't know, I wanted to play a lorry game, the first one. Yeah, yeah, Leisure Suit Larry. I wanted to play the first one, even before the remake. So they made a remake and...

Amit Netanel (55:29)
wow, Leisure Suit Larry. Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (55:42)
Even before the remake, I wanted to play it, so I was able to purchase it from GOG and it included the DOS box inside. you just on a modern hardware, you double click the executable and it's doing everything it's supposed to do.

Amit Netanel (55:54)
Yeah. Yeah, they make it super easy to just press play and play the game. Sure.

Yuri Sokolov (56:05)
Yeah, yeah, and when you buy modern game as well, you're getting the game as you would get them in the past, you know, like on a CD. But even in the CD time, there was a DRM. And those games without DRM take, we trust you're not going to, I don't know, distribute it in the illegal sense.

Amit Netanel (56:19)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. By the way, in Leisure Suit Larry specifically had weird DRM techniques when back when it sold in the boxes. They had ⁓ a scratch board with scents and they had like a riddle you have to solve to actually start playing the game.

Yuri Sokolov (56:37)
I love. The Riddle was not related to DRM, the Riddle was related to your age. So basically I remember I was, I don't know, 12 years old and ⁓ the older brother of my friend brought one of the Leisure Sudlari games and we saw him play and we wanted to play as well. So we entered the game and the game asks us for our age and there is no...

Amit Netanel (56:59)
Okay.

Yuri Sokolov (57:18)
age below the age of 18 and you can say 18 to 24, know 24 to 30 and so on so on. So when you select your age, it gives you a quiz with four or five questions that a person of that age supposed to know how to answer. we started and it was before the internet was globally available.

Amit Netanel (57:37)
Mm-hmm.

Yuri Sokolov (57:48)
I think it was

Amit Netanel (57:49)
Yeah, so we can just Google, how do I even start this game?

Yuri Sokolov (57:53)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was before the internet was globally available. So what we did was started mapping all of the questions and they have, for example, you pick one age group and they have, I don't know, 50 questions and you, every time you give, get a random five or something. And sometimes we picked a granny, some granny level questions.

Amit Netanel (58:22)
The oldest questions available.

Yuri Sokolov (58:23)
Because the grandmother of my friend was living with them, so we could ask some questions from her. the rest we were kind of mapping. So we would get a question, if we would answer it correctly, we would map. Oh, this is the right answer. And once we mapped everything, we were able to enter the game and play it. So.

Amit Netanel (58:29)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Yuri Sokolov (58:49)
It was kind of fun, game before game. It was an interesting experience.

Amit Netanel (58:50)
You That's dedication. Like if someone goes through that to start the game, let them play the game if it's not age appropriate. Like they put in the work, they deserve to see some pixelated chicks.

Yuri Sokolov (59:02)
Of of course. ⁓ You know, honestly, most of the censored things in Larry were not related to graphics. You have... Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was the language. It was the language, it was the jokes and that's all. And I don't think today they can make a game like Larry and release it and be successful.

Amit Netanel (59:20)
No, it was the jokes. The jokes were super crass. That's it. Yeah. I mean, I mean, OK, I'm a basics be known maybe because there are lots of, you know, ⁓ hentai and porn games available that turn up profit, but they're not known.

Yuri Sokolov (59:49)
No, but it's a different category. No, it's a different category. It's not a porn game. It's not a hentai game. It's a regular point and click game with some flavor to the jokes, some edgy flavor, ⁓ 18 plus flavor to the jokes. And it even wasn't that hard. If you think about it, it wasn't hardcore.

Amit Netanel (1:00:15)
But I don't know. It's hard to quantify. But for example, I played ⁓ Dispatch a few months ago. Great game. Awesome game. And it's super crass. mean, you see a penis in the first opening 10 minutes, and the character is cursed, like in the real world, in the real world, probably. And ⁓ there's some ⁓

Yuri Sokolov (1:00:24)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Netanel (1:00:43)
really 18 plus moments in there. But I don't know, it achieved, like it won something in the Game of the Year awards, I think. And it's widely known. it's a dot only. It's rated R, if I'm not mistaken. You can turn off the gore.

Yuri Sokolov (1:01:01)
I would assume if you see a penis in the first 10 minutes, I would assume it's R rated.

Amit Netanel (1:01:05)
Yeah, by the way, the fans are ⁓ angry at the company for succumbing to Nintendo's requests. ⁓ Yeah, everything is censored in the Switch version, even down to the... Not the packaging, but there's... If you bought the game, you have an inner sleeve on the box that shows... It's an homage to ⁓ an older X-Men...

Yuri Sokolov (1:01:16)
and censoring things.

Amit Netanel (1:01:35)
⁓ issue that had all the characters in swimsuits outside. ⁓ something quite innocent, like they're all hot people, but they're at the poolside, you know, playing with each other, pushing each other into the pool. Nothing too, like, super sexualized, but they had the artists cover, like, all the cleavages and all the, you know, all the sensitive parts.

Yuri Sokolov (1:01:37)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Amit Netanel (1:02:04)
And that's really annoying because...

Yuri Sokolov (1:02:07)
I don't know, Nintendo is kind of... I know it's the most selling console ever, but Switch is kind of children's platform. A lot of children use this platform. And when you're talking about, I don't know, PlayStation, Xbox, it's something that's sitting... usually it's sitting in your living room. So you can't start a game and expect your mom wouldn't notice something weird.

Amit Netanel (1:02:17)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's lucrative. Okay. I'll give you another, another more ridiculous example than that, because sexuality is a matter of preference. Okay. But violence is, ⁓ most people put the line over violence in a very specific place. Like when they talk about what's graphic, what's not graphic. I saw the trailer for the upcoming, ⁓ Resident Evil game for Switch. Okay. They had a Nintendo direct like ⁓ a month ago or something. And the version. that they played. It's the same game. It's the exact same game. Just the trailer that they showed during Nintendo Direct had all the characters that have guns miss their targets intentionally, so not to show gore. ⁓ All the zombies were almost catching the player because they don't want to show gore. mean, but you are selling the goriest game available on the console.

Yuri Sokolov (1:03:24)
Mm-hmm. No, but you gotta understand this. You gotta understand this. The people that are buying this game and the people that are watching Nintendo Direct are two different categories. So Nintendo Direct can be watched by tons of kids. And those kids will not necessarily purchase this game.

Amit Netanel (1:03:39)
and I don't know if something will stop them from purchasing the game. I mean...

Yuri Sokolov (1:03:53)
Nothing actually, you know, it's how you enter an adult website and asks if you're 18 or older and you, of course I am. It doesn't matter what age you are. Of course I am 18. Yeah. So things, things not, I don't think the companies are actually working that hard to, to prevent the purchases.

Amit Netanel (1:04:06)
What's that?

Yuri Sokolov (1:04:21)
You could have made it a lot harder for kids to have access for adult content. For example, you know, the credit card you're using issued for another name and not your name. So you can start there and you can, there's a lot of, you wouldn't be able to create a perfect edge verification, age verification system without, I don't know, scanning and your actual ID. but you can make it a lot ⁓ harder than it is today. But I think companies just agree that it's good enough. We're saying we're putting a V here in a checkbox and...

Amit Netanel (1:05:04)
Yeah, but you're correct. Okay, there are lots of roadblocks ⁓ in the way and the diligent parents ⁓ can be involved in a way that stops their kids from playing. Actually, my four-year-old's most ⁓ liked, most favorite way, most favorite activity, sorry, on the switch. is actually watching the short movie they have about parental controls, because it shows Bowser and Bowser Jr. arguing about how much he can play and what games he has to play. So my kid loves it, by the way. And they have all the available tools. ⁓

Yuri Sokolov (1:05:49)
Listen, kids find ways, kids find ways. So I give my kid, he's a three year old. I give him an Android tablet once a day for an hour and a half. And I, we've tried to fight with YouTube to disable some content we think is not, not good for a kid. But every time you disable one thing, the other pops out and ⁓ I decided to block YouTube altogether, both YouTube and YouTube Kids, so you will not have access to this. He found a way.

Amit Netanel (1:06:32)
What content did you find ⁓ on YouTube Kids? I think it's way too limiting. You have almost nothing there.

Yuri Sokolov (1:06:38)
YouTube kids is limiting above the age of three and I we don't like the dopamine bombs ⁓ of all the Things that switching fast with too colorful It's not good. So we decided to skip this and I blocked ⁓ Chrome and I blocked YouTube on the device So what my kid is doing now? He going into Play Store

Amit Netanel (1:06:46)
⁓ okay. okay. Right to the trailers for the games. Yeah, because it's video. It doesn't care where it comes from, sure.

Yuri Sokolov (1:07:08)
opens random games and watches the trailers so kids always and he's only three years old kids always find way like we did when we had we were kids how how did i find a way to play games before the internet era a lot of games where did i get them i don't even remember how all of the games were at my disposal. Right? So kids find ways.

Amit Netanel (1:07:42)
I was my group of friends as a supplier of games because I knew all the DOS commands. So I could take one exit and divide it over several disks. Like, mean, the diskettes, the floppy disks. Thank you. So just to wrap my previous point, I don't care about the kids. OK, the kids, as you say, find a way.

Yuri Sokolov (1:07:57)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the floppy disks.

Amit Netanel (1:08:10)
I don't care about corrupting the younger generation. But as a game maker, see like if I worked on something like Resident Evil and I would, you know, crunch over the animations and make the shooting mechanics feel real good. And then I would see how they sell my game by not showing how the shooting mechanics work and not showing the particle systems of the blood spattering and everything. I would be really offended. Like I would be really let down by seeing that commercial to my game. Okay. Yeah. They will probably like wipe the tears away with the all the money they will make by making another Resident Evil game.

Yuri Sokolov (1:08:42)
Nah, You would... You probably would, but you know, it's... What money? Please, it's... Okay, so in a mobile world we earn good money. I exited this world. I see how the other game devs ⁓ feel this.

Amit Netanel (1:09:11)
Mm-hmm. No, I actually don't know. Like, if you work in an established developer, OK, you work in a really big studio like Capcom, Konami, ⁓ even, I don't know, Rockstar, if we take a Western studio, they make OK money, OK? They're not starving. They make good money.

Yuri Sokolov (1:09:32)
Yeah, yeah, they make good money, but if, for example, if you're comparing the earnings of game developers, specifically in the US, I know that they have an issue there where developer is a developer, right? It doesn't matter if you're game developer or I don't know, backend developer or whatever. And the game developers are earning less than their counterparts in other... other places, other companies, other type of companies. Yeah, the software industry. So there's still some kind of bias and game developers overall... And I'm not talking about indie because indie doesn't earn money at all. Like... At all. And small companies do their thing and you remember we've talked with a couple of people from this industry.

Amit Netanel (1:10:03)
other software industries. Yeah.

Yuri Sokolov (1:10:31)
When they're telling us stuff that we were thinking, ⁓ it worked that way. For example, for us in a mobile industry, you come to work for a company. It's like any other company in the software industry. You're getting your laptop. And if you're working for a big company and you're working remotely, they will give you, I don't know, a chair or they'll send you home a new chair, a new set of monitors and stuff like that. And then you're talking with people that working for indie companies that are working remotely or not remotely that borrowing laptops from colleagues, they're working on their devices. And honestly, I kind of admire this because people, you know, it's like, it's like teachers, people do that for the passion and not for the money. And this is great. I also think this is a good point to wrap up. today's episode because yeah, and if you want to take something from this episode is do this for the passion, don't do this for the money. We're all about that.

Amit Netanel (1:11:31)
Mm-hmm. Oh, wow. That's a topic for a whole, as you know, a whole series of episodes. How far do you take your passion? Why are we developing games? Just a point to think about. Yeah.

Yuri Sokolov (1:11:48)
Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, and I think we'll find our place in this podcast world. I want to invite more people to join us. And if anybody listened to this point, I would love for you to suggest to us people to invite to our show to talk about game development, to talk about games, anything really that revolves around being a developer in a game dev world. Being a gamer ⁓ with a perspective from the game dev being it a programmer, a game designer, product manager, I don't know, whatever. We love to talk as you probably noticed.

Amit Netanel (1:12:42)
And we love for you to, for the suggested guests to try and challenge us, challenge our views, open us to new ways of thinking, right? We want people to come and teach us new stuff. We like it very much.

Yuri Sokolov (1:12:57)
Yeah. So thanks everybody listening. We'll get better. I think. I hope so.

Amit Netanel (1:13:05)
⁓ it was actually, I think, OK, looking at the timer, it flew by. So I had a great time.

Yuri Sokolov (1:13:12)
Hopefully the listeners and the viewers will think the same. So thank you again for listening, for watching, I don't know, and have a great time of day, whatever it is, and keep on creating, and we'll see you in the next one.

Amit Netanel (1:13:25)
Mmm, whatever time zone it is. Bye bye.