How Inkle Studios Built a Sustainable Game Studio | Joseph Humphry

SPEAKER_02 0:00

On the one hand, it's about extreme minimalism, which also works with indie game development because it reduces your budget. You're just creating exactly the experience that needs to be there. But it's also about finding the little extras that you know will add a lot of value and uh immersion and uh just spark joy to the to the players who are playing it. Um but yeah, finding that balance can be a little bit tricky sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Hi there, my name is Stephen Lake, and welcome to the examined game. Today I am talking with another co-founder of Incle Studios. This time it is Joseph Humphrey. Uh a couple of weeks ago I released my episode with John Ingold, and this is a sort of counterpart to that. We really go into detail about what it takes to kind of run a sustainable video game company, and as you can imagine, it's quite a lot. They've made a sustainable model where they can keep on putting out just incredible games. We go deep into all things adventure game and talk about some of their greatest hits, including TR49, their most recent release, 80 Days, uh, Expelled, Overboard, Highland Song. Please do subscribe and tune into the other episode with John Ingold. It's a great counterpart to this interview. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

So, weirdly, I had any games consoles growing up, although I did play them at uh friends' houses, but my parents always had Macs uh rather than Windows PCs, and so the the types of games that I could play at home were always a very limited but uh now quite famous selection of kind of what would now be known as Ratch Retro games, but I loved Monkey Island growing up and all of those adventure games. Thankfully, LucasArts ported their games to Mac. Um and there was also this craze for this um tool called HyperCard that Apple created that was initially purely black and white. Um, and so there was all sorts of adventure games, sort of like indie adventure games that people would be able to make with HyperCard because it was a very accessible tool. Um, and so my childhood is very much a mixture of already dabbling in game creation myself, as well as kind of playing this small selection of adventure games and these Mac classic games that I absolutely, absolutely adored. Um, but yeah, I've I've been creating games for as long as I've been playing them pretty much.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

So, what is that picture? So you've got like you didn't have consoles, but you had parents that at some point a uh computer came into the home, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Yeah, so there was an old, the very first Mac we had was a Mac Classic, which is one of these uh like small boxes with the tiny black and white screen that was an all-in-one computer. It was sort of the precursor to the iMac. And so uh, yeah, this tiny little black and white computer, you could play a small selection of games on there, and already that that little computer had hypercard as well. So I was already making games about um, you know, exploring my school or you know, I I can't even remember the we made a game called The Missing Friend, and it turned out The Missing Friend was we we had a photo that from like a scan, it was before the days of digital cameras, uh, of my friend who was Max Dikoff, and um he actually ended up working for basically all of the AAA game companies in the world. Like he started at Free Radical and he moved to the US to work at Bungie and um Naughty Dog as well. So it's funny how in this small town in Scotland we we both grew up uh creating games in HyperCard and then and then yeah, went went into the game industry from a very kind of small, small beginning. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Do you think that I sometimes wonder, like, you know, obviously yeah, I just gravitated towards like Monkey Island and some of the Sierra games and um you know, if but I just wonder if I'd have been like shown Doom or shown Monkey Island, that my sort of innate nature would have just been drawn to that, or if it was just that that's what I was exposed to. So that's what I sort of. Yeah, no, that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Because as children, I guess we're drawn to the things that seem the most bombastic or exciting, and I worry a lot about that with my own kids. But I did play Doom as a child, it was available on um on Max back then, and I played Wolfenstein and stuff, but actually, yeah, it didn't draw me as much as Monkey Island because I guess Monkey Island had that that that so much charm and humour, and even though it didn't it didn't have like uh fast-moving action and and um you know intense visuals, I think there was a charming nature to the to the way the art was drawn that and it was colourful, it still draws you in even even as a child. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting actually.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

What sort of age were you?

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Um god, yeah. Uh I mean uh I guess when Monkey Island came out, I must have been like 10 or something. I'd I'd have to look up the year it came out and everything.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Yeah, around 10 or 12 or something, I mean it was yeah, because something I was talking with Ben Fisher from from Atom at Atomfall about was this idea of like, and I think it's everyone's like, and maybe it wasn't on Monkey Island for you, I'm not sure, but certainly playing games at an age that I couldn't fully understand them or comprehend them, whether it be in the mechanics, you know, I remember playing Mist and like loving it. It's such a visceral uh memory for me, but at the same time, probably not being of an age where I was capable of really progressing through the game. Yeah. And there's just something I just you know, this idea of like engaging with a form of media that you actually don't fully understand, but at the same time you're sort of drawn and attracted to it.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Yeah, no, I totally know what you mean. Um trying to think of an example from my own child, because I definitely noticed that about TV shows and books and and stuff there, that there are certain stories or elements that I that I didn't understand as a child. I I I don't know how I got through those adventure games as a child because they were so obscure, some of the puzzle solutions. But I think when you have a very limited set of games to play, then you just have this perseverance to get through them. Like, because you don't have any, you don't have a choice. You just have to play them until you figure it out. But I definitely remember being extremely frustrated. Actually, I do I do remember an example of um so so one of the um one of the few developers creating games for the Mac at the time was Bungie, who went on to create Halo and became really massive. But back then they were kind of this almost like indie uh developer that was purely making games for Mac. And what I loved about them is that there was one of the few first-person shooters that added a narrative and a sense of depth and kind of cinematic scenes to the first-person shooter genre. Um and they had these kind of computer terminals where you could go in and read all of this backstory and material, and there's this there's a whole backstory going on that I think I didn't get at all as a child. I mostly played it as this cinematic shooter, which was a genre that didn't really exist back then, and I loved it. But yeah, there was this whole backstory that I just didn't get into, I didn't understand at all as a child.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

But again, it's like not a barrier to entry.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I think I think that's when when games um really flourish, is when they have they're multifaceted in a way that different people with different interests can enjoy different facets without without um without needing to explore all of it. And different people can enjoy games for different reasons, whether it's the narrative or the game mechanics. Um I find that really interesting, actually.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

And so, you know, what I'm sort of leading up to is the work that you then have gone on to do. But I'm sort of interested in, you know, we were talking about like itches being scratched and those sort of pivotal moments. And again, perhaps you could talk a little bit about like Fahrenheit. If that still stands out as an example to you, you know, as sort of like seeing something again in a game or eliciting something from you that you hadn't experienced up until that point.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

Yeah, there was this sort of era in um games around the time of Fahrenheit where I think um developers were starting to experiment with um game mechanics that weren't pure pure shooting and action, and they were experimenting with blending genres. And even back then, there was this sort of this feeling of um developers needing to avoid risk. So there was a lot of repetition of first-person shooter genres and things like that. And so Fahrenheit was one of the early examples of a game that had really like impressive visuals for its time. Um, there was this kind of 3D simulated world, and it had this strong narrative running through it that didn't feel the need to um fill fill the game with guns and action, and that they could use all of this cutting and cutting-edge uh visuals to tell a story, and beyond that, they even had a branching story. So while a lot of games might have had a very linear narrative, or they would they would chop between an action sequence and a cinematic sequence in a very linear fashion, Fahrenheit was one of the first that was like the entire game is the narrative, and the narrative can branch in all sorts of different directions, so you there was a kind of a sense of freedom in the way that you could play it, and I found that really inspiring at the time because it was this kind of new new genre being developed, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

And then, like you said, with with um you know that desire that you've basically been making games for as long as you've been playing them, that you know, there was some sort of intrinsic want to, you know, create sort of I'm trying to think of the right words because you know, these like sprawling options for players and and for them to be.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

It's generally called like branching narrative nowadays, although the way we build games is not necessarily built quite in that way.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

But and I think that's why I was tripping on because it's like I it didn't quite feel exactly right to what you're creating, but yeah, that that the origins of basically wanting to create branching narrative.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Yes, yeah. And so um, yeah, when uh when I first met uh my co-founder of IncL, it was at while we were working at Sony in Cambridge, and um and we basically sat when I first started, it was my first day, we we sat next to each other and we were just talking about what games we liked, and turned out we were both like super interested in these types of games like Fahrenheit and and with uh you know new types of narrative systems and stuff. Um and he had a writing background, and so almost from day one, because I because I had always enjoyed just like little game prototypes, um, developing little prototypes in my spare time. So already, almost from day one, we were experimenting with some ideas. You were saying what he was interested in, and and I was I was excited by the idea of making a little web prototype to try out some of the ideas that we were discussing. Um, because yeah, it's quite hard to get back into my head from where I where I was in 2009, but I was I was already really excited about the idea of like creating these kind of intensely emotional narrative experiences uh right from the beginning, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

What is it about that style of gameplay that is just so you know drawn to, you know, when you you get this idea that you're sort of like having a not necessarily an i an impact on the world, but you know, that you sort of have choices and difficult choices that aren't just made with a weapon. Um I just sort of wondered what for you, if you've got any idea about like what in your innate nature draws you to that kind of storytelling.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

I think there's always been this sense that games aren't very serious, like, and it's been a this this reputation that games haven't been able to shake even to this day. And I think around that time, there was a lot of attempts to create games that felt more serious, that had that were more artistic, that that games didn't need to be purely about shooting zombies and aliens, and that you could create um with all of this technology that had been developed for for simulating entire 3D worlds and animating realistic human characters that why should it be all about shooting? Can we not use all of this technology to tell serious stories and um not just serious stories but also kind of quirky, fun, interesting stories with human characters? Does there always have to be a gun in in the story, or can we just you know make a family drama or you know a period comedy or something like that? And so I think the the what really appealed to both me and to John when we founded IncL is the idea that we could create an entirely new type of experience that would appeal to a a broader market, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

So that's what I wanted to then talk about is it's sort of like you blending this this desire with then the games that you've gone on to make. And it's like you're yes, you're like an independent studio, but um maybe depending on by whose definition, but like have been successful in what you've done. Um you're not sort of sitting at the fringe making these sort of, you know, these games that are doing everything that you wanted to do. Um, but it's not like you just have this kind of niche little audience that's scratching that particular itch for them. Like there's there's success in in what you're doing, which suggests to me that that initial idea you had about what you want to provide to the market has been people have like picked it up and run with it, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:43

Yeah, I mean the the the entire game space is massively broadened um since kind of the the indie game revolution started back in I don't know like 2007 or so when um Microsoft started Xbox Live Arcade and then that that created a market for developers to be able to sell games um independently. And since then the ability for developers to create games in all sorts of different genres has really flourished, which has been fantastic. Um and that so we have definitely had success in our own small way. Um we're we're we're actually a very sustainable studio at this point. Um we can't we can't predict which games are gonna sell well and which aren't, but the average is is is allowing and our and the sales of our back catalogue is allowing us to continue to to thrive, um, even though we're not you know on the same level in terms of like the revenue of some of the massive AAA game companies. Um but you don't need to be selling millions and millions of copies in order to be able to make it a successful business and um and to be able to create games that like that appeal to thousands of maybe not millions, but definitely tens of thousands of um players worldwide.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

I mean, do you think you could put into what I mean I know that every game is different in its own way, but there is there is some continuity in terms of what I think you're putting into the hands of players. Do you think you know you you should sort of sum up what is the sort of the core kind of foundation of what it is that you all are bringing to the market that again comes from that?

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Yeah, it's hard to it's hard to distill it down to core principles. I think we always say, you know, we're in narrative indie studio or something like that, because the core thing that all of our games have is narrative, and beyond that, it's all just shaped by our own personal sensibilities. And of course, we we look at what players enjoy and what they respond to. And so when we have a game that doesn't sell so well, maybe that would push us away from that area, and if we have a game that does sell particularly well, then we'll learn from that and we'll we'll, you know, even if we're not thinking this in very conscious terms, like we'll we'll think about the mechanics that are in that successful game and we'll want to reuse those because we'll have positive feelings about it. But actually, the way we design games and the the types of games that we choose to make, it's a very organic process. It's very much driven by our own feelings. Yes, we kind of think about um you know what game might make a good return and what might be successful, what might be uh critically successful versus commercially successful, but at the end of the day, it's all just down to vibes. Like we just we just make what we feel would be interesting. Um I've got to the point where I I find it I have to second guess myself a little bit because I find that my own interests don't always align with what people want to play. Um and John and I have different interests as well. So what he's interested in creating might not always align with what I'm interested in in building with him, but um as long as one of us has that passion to drive it forwards, then and and it and it had achieved success at the end of the day, then that's that's all that matters.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Do you have any examples, I suppose, of where you were sort of starting early games where you were getting that validation that it's like, okay, the thing that we want to see, other people want to see as well?

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Um Yeah, I don't know. I I can't really like I I feel like I can't distill it down to like we we make games and thankfully people buy them, play it, but play them and say that they enjoy them. Um I it's hard to precisely like match those two things up. Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

I guess maybe then it would be like say when you did because I'm guessing that every game you do you're learning something, right? And um, you know, one of my favourites of yours is 80 days, and that feels a little bit like a sort of a culmination, I'm guessing, of everything you'd learn up to that point.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Um combining it with what is clearly a really good source material for you know, what that that sort of trope of giving people is sort of a map, you know, and that they're making sort of decisions and sort of knowing if they're going here, they're not going there. Um, so I guess maybe if it's even just to focus on that particular game, um, how that felt, you know, what what had you sort of bought, what had you been learning along the way that then made it possible for you to sort of pull off what you'd done with?

SPEAKER_02 19:49

Yeah, it's a kind of a series of uh kind of technical um lessons that we've learned on previous games. It's it's kind of game design lessons, of course. Um, so the game, the the game that led to 80 Days was really Sorcery, which was a very map-based game. So um we discovered when we worked on sorcery that with branching narrative, the problem is um if players aren't aware of the fact that their decisions actually matter, then they might perceive that the way they're playing as a purely uh linear game, even though the game is branching. And one thing we learned with sorcery is that when you place a game on a literal map and show them all of the places that they can go or the places that they choose not to go, and that when they travel to a specific place, then it it's uh it's very clear to that player that the narrative is changing based on the the location that they they chose, um, then that really illustrates to them the fact that the game is branching. And so with 80 days, that was uh taken to the nth degree in that you could choose to go anywhere in the world on this um virtual globe, and we found that players absolutely loved visiting the, say, the cities where they live. And so, although you might start in London, we had players in South Africa or India or China, and they would find that they were able to visit the cities where they were currently playing, and it would have content that was specifically written for that city, as it would have been in a slightly uh fantastical version of 1872. And that's just really charming. Um, and so um yeah, we've learned we've learned lessons on every single game that we've made that's fed um experience into the next game that we go on to make. So it's it it's we're we're treading our own path basically, and each point leads to the next point, I guess you could say.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

That there's a sort of a a common pinch point with each game where the sort of the the challenge comes up that you know, because I'm assuming every game's gonna have its own problem that you're gonna have to solve to be able to sort of get it to work the way you want it to. Does that often appear in the same sort of phase, or is it just that like you know, everyone is different?

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Yeah, I would say everyone is different, is more is more the question of scale. I would say that when we make a larger game, then there's this real sense that you're in a tunnel and you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel until like a year before release. So if it's a you know a four or six year long development, then that's really hard because you get this real sense that you're in the dark and you're never going to get out. Because there's just the the mountain of work that needs to be done just feels so insurmountable, but you just have to, you know, take it one step at a time, and eventually you do see the light at the end of the tunnel. Um, and of course, there are design discussions along the way, and we're constantly solving you know problems, whether they're technical or game design related, and that's that's the kind of what we do day to day and what I what I love about the job. Um but yeah, I'd say the smaller games are a bit more straightforward because although they have these design problems that you need to solve, they they feel a lot more manageable.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

I'm also just wondering, you know, you talked about again, like with 80 days and getting that player feedback about how much people loved um, you know, again, that they can basically just find a way to traverse to their to their city or where they're from. Is there other examples of, you know, I'm sure there's many, but just if any happen to come to mind about again, about that sort of player, not even necessarily feedback, but just the response, you know, that is sort of quite satisfying as a developer to sort of like hear from from people.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

So when I was working on a Highland song, which is a very personal game for me because it's set in Scotland where I grew up, um, we definitely heard from a lot of people based in Scotland or people who uh who had a love for Scotland, uh, and that was really delightful to hear. So we heard from people who um say Americans who decided that they would go to Scotland on holiday because they played a Highland song and they went camping and they wanted to relive that experience, and then they sent us a message with a photo afterward and say you would you inspired us to visit Scotland and go on a trek across the Highlands, and here's a a photo of us camping out in the wilderness, and it was all inspired by your game. That that that was an amazing feeling, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

I had a similar thing. I was a big fan of the Gabriel Knight games, Jane Jensen, and like I went and did this like little European road trip, and Gabriel Knight 3 is said in France in um I've forgotten the name of the play, but this little village where there's this mystery to unfold. And I was like, I did a massive detour just so we go there because the game was built, it was literally like a carbon copy of that that village, you know. So um it is amazing when you think, especially when it's like if you created a virtual world, I mean, albeit based on a real place, that then inspires someone to sort of go uh to it, that must be pretty special.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

Yeah, it's amazing when we hear like stories of like people's kids playing the games and then just getting them because kids have get this obsession about games in the way that adults maybe don't so much. And so when you get like uh kids' drawings of the character from your game and and like little fan fiction pieces written by kids or something like that, it's just it's delightful, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Do you ever because again, come back to that question of playing games where I'm too young to sort of understand them or comprehend them? But actually, just on that note, I'm just interested in the sort of, you know, because it maybe is other than drawings and things, it might be harder to get that kind of direct feedback and hear from like some, you know, like five-year-old who has no idea really what they're doing, but they know that they love swiping around the globe. Uh, you know, is there any of a sort of Yeah, I don't know about that one.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

Um yeah, we don't I mean we we have to rely on the emails that we just get sent out of the blue and and we don't get that many. And so when we do get that kind of feedback, it's it's amazing. But yeah, I can't think of any other examples off the top of my head of how kids enjoy our games. Yeah. It would have to be purely guesswork, I think. It's usually quite vague, like the parent will say, Oh, my child loves it, and they've uh actually yeah, for a Highland song, I think I think they did say something like they've discovered all of the peaks in the game and they've been working on finding all the names and translating them. And I mean that is one of the core mechanics in the game, but yeah, just it's lovely to hear that a kid's enjoying that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

No, I just I for some reason I think because again it was such a big thing for me with these games I didn't understand that, but they clearly have such a big, big impact on us, you know. Not understand, but maybe too young to fully comprehend the mechanic of it. Um and so when, you know, how decisive was it when you and John decided to sort of start up the studio? You know, what was the core intention? Was it just kind of like, oh, let's go and we're gonna just go and play around with some things? Or it's like, no, we want to develop something and put it out? Like what did the conversations look like?

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Um, so yeah, it's really hard to remember all of the details of how this the steps that led up to it. Um I remembered that way before I was at all serious about starting a company, I liked the idea of starting a company, even though because I was like semi, semi-secretly like going to uh a library and reading like business books, even though I didn't at the time I don't think I had this any kind of real sense that I would ever actually start a company. But I liked the idea of doing something truly independently rather than you know working for a corporation. Um and that wasn't until my friend Diogo started a company that some something just switched in my brain that I was just like, oh no, you can just do that. You can just quit your job and found a company. And in the UK at least, it's not even that expensive or difficult, you can just do it. Um, and then suddenly it seemed possible. Um and so then I think John and I had been talking about all of these kind of narrative game experiments, um, and we'd kind of been doing stuff in our spare time. And I think we must have had like non-serious conversations somehow about uh like starting a company together. Because I remember there was a particular moment where I said to John, like, no, seriously, are we actually gonna do this? When went, shall we actually start a company together? Like, no, I'm actually serious. Um, and and then that became the point at which it became real, and we actually talked about, right, I'm gonna quit on this date, and you're gonna quit on this date. He he still had a he was in the middle of buying a house at the time, so he needed to make sure that the mortgage would go through. Um, so we left at slightly different times, but yeah, we we went for it. And yeah, I'm still, it's funny how all of these memories start to kind of merge in your head, and it's it's a bit unclear in retrospect because I I'd be so curious to know what those initial conversations actually looked like between me and him. I've never kept a diary, so I don't have any proof either way. Yeah, it's interesting to think back on.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

I guess it makes me wonder like what what were you what part of it were you driving and what was he driving that sort of led to that, you know, decisive. It's a big, it's a big decision, right?

SPEAKER_02 30:01

Yeah, so I mean, um yeah, as I as I said, I've always been interested in the idea of um having a startup and running a small business, and he's been always interested in building his own thing and writing his own narrative games. Um and I've always been the kind also the kind of the odd job kind of developer that where I will I will be the jack of all trades where I can I can fill any role because I'm just interested in technology and but also art and um tech art, and the one thing that I cannot do is narrative, as it turns out. Um so John and I just like our our skills fit together really really nicely, they mesh really well. Um so we're both interested in game design, and so that's where we meet. Um, and he doesn't have so much interest in the in the art side, although he's also a bit technical, so he can kind of do the the technical narrative systems. And so the fact that we we worked to get together so well, we communicated so well while we were at Sony, and um because our skills just meshed so well, it just seemed like a perfect fit. Um, in fact, now I think back to my days when I was at Rare, I think I was already thinking back then I would love to start an indie company. I just need to find the right person to do it with. And so I was probably thinking for years already, like I'd love to do this, I just don't know who with, basically.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

It's just interesting, and I wonder what your thoughts are on it's obviously you can attribute, like you're saying, it's a it's a successful, sustainable company, right? And that is a big part because it's your game sell. But I just wonder about what it is that you've built there that's made it workable, you know, and that you can sort of thrive and survive and and function.

SPEAKER_02 32:01

Yeah, so one of the things that we do is we don't take any everything we earned on our previous games and immediately spend it, all of it, on the next game. We we are deliberately very cautious. I mean, it's in our nature as well, but we are very cautious without how we spend the company money. Like we don't we always make sure that if a game would fail, then we still have enough money left over to be able to pay staff and pay ourselves and look after our families. Um but it wasn't that way at the very beginning because obviously we did we did well, not obviously, but we didn't have any money at the start. We just had our savings um to live on. And we even had like a Google spreadsheet where we where we knew how much money we had and how many months that it would last us at the rate that we were paying ourselves. And so it was like months left to live was a cell in our Google Sheet that we'd be able to keep an eye on. And thankfully that number just kept on going up. Um, and so the point at which we're like we could survive for two years, even if we, you know, stopped earning money at this point, that was the point at which we realized it was sustainable. Uh, and that contrasts quite starkly, actually, with the way a lot of game companies in the US work, where it's all about kind of venture capital or at least in the games business, getting funding for a specific project, and that will allow the company to survive for the duration of that project with all of their staff, whether it's you know, five people or a hundred people. Um, but the point at which that project is complete and they usually overrun, so funding is going to be difficult. Um, the point at which that's done and the funding runs out, they're already having to work hard to find more funding, either from the same uh same investors or a different investor, a different publisher for the next project. So it's all it's I think it's it's even more of a fight to survive when you're a larger company that's run on that kind of business model. And but thankfully, our games are always being funded by our entire back catalogue. So usually at any moment in time, the game that we've just released is the one that's making us the most money, but that's being very much buoyed by the sales of our entire back catalogue, which continues to sell. Um and in fact, some games will suddenly just out of the blue, they'll start selling more because, say, a YouTuber decides to do a playthrough of one of our old games like sorcery, and that will that will boost our sales and um genuinely help us. And that all of these things together kind of help to make it a sustainable business.

SPEAKER_00 34:47

Have there been any sort of storms that you've had to weather over the duration?

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Um I would say I wouldn't say there have been storms, partly because of our cautious approach. We've never had that moment where we've, you know, got investment from another company and then run out of money or something. Um we did perhaps spend a little bit too much money on Heaven's Vault because 80 Days was successful, and so we we um increased our team up to eight people, is the largest it ever was, which felt enormous to us at the time. Um and even with eight people, that you know, when you see the burn rate of how quickly you're you're burning through money with that many people, you you suddenly realize just how much you have to sell of the next game to be able to make that money back. Um and so that was the largest the company ever was, and it took a long time for Heaven's Vault to break even. It did eventually, um, but for a long time we were thinking we wouldn't make the money back on that one.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Um problem. Well done.

SPEAKER_02 36:08

Uh yeah, but we did we did make our money back for Heaven's Vault eventually, and so that did turn out to be a success in the end. But that was the kind of the most risky thing we ever did. Um and ever since then I'd say we've been more cautious, we've done more smaller projects, and through throughout Incle's history, if you look at the kind of the amount of time we've spent on um specific projects versus and the amount of uh money we spent on them versus how much they've made for us, our most successful titles by far are the small ones. So even though Heaven's Vault might have made the most money overall, it's also uh offset by the amount we spent on it. Um so we find that actually games like 80 Days and TR49 and Overboard are the most successful by far.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

And I guess again, because you keep getting this feedback that how you set up the business and how you're working it is is working for you. By the way, if you ever need to take a break, then just just um that you you've never really were were tempted to try any other sort of model or overextend yourself, you know, beyond, like you said, doing this sort of bigger game with a few more employees. But you sort of stayed sort of tried and true to this model that works for you.

SPEAKER_02 37:31

Yeah, I think um overextending ourselves isn't really our nature, but it's true we have talked about different funding models. We're we're always talking about whether we really should go to a publisher for the next game. Um because so like it's it's the norm actually, in um, it's not just in the US where they have more of a venture capital kind of culture. It's the same in the in the UK that indie game developers almost exclusively get funded by um you know indie game publishers. And so they're constantly playing this game of like getting funding and doing pitches and stuff like that. Uh and so it really is uh unusual that that we've never done that almost. Um there are some exceptions, like uh recently we did a project with Google where they entirely funded it. Um but for the most part, the ones that are kind of purely our own design are also purely self-funded.

SPEAKER_00 38:32

It sort of feels like it's not something you hear so much about when you you know talking about these sort of smaller projects that don't have these huge, ever expanding um production windows. Um I don't know if you know how you've sort of been at a bottle creating like really quality work. Okay, I get it, they're sort of smaller games, perhaps in terms of runtime, but like they're no less engaging or immersive, but you're not losing years and years of your life making them.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

Yeah, I god, I I I can't like I can't say that we're following a particular formula or something, it's just like our nature. I I maybe John would have a more snappy, uh insightful answer, but I think it's just it's the way we're inclined. It's the you know, yeah, we are actually cautious. We we we are also, I guess we're quite realistic about um what's possible for a team of our size, maybe. Um I mean, I say that, but of course, every time we make a project, it it goes way over in terms of uh time. Uh we we don't really budget in a very um in a very conscientious way. We we probably ought to do that better. Um but when we we're aware of how much we're spending every month and how much is coming in and when it's when the books are balancing, then we just don't feel like we need to look at it too carefully. Um but in terms of kind of scoping games, it's true that we do constantly uh think that a game is gonna take about a quarter to a third of the time that it actually ends up taking. And so I joke about that, but we can't still constantly do that. We like, we'll say, okay, this is gonna be a two-month project and it takes a year, or this is just gonna be a one-month, slightly more ambitious project, but it takes three years. So um, but thankfully, you know, our our our caution of uh um making sure that we're not spending too much on it each game at least makes it sustainable and less risky. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

Great. And then I mean I don't usually do this at the start just to get into it, but if you could sort of introduce yourself, give us your full name, and then just give me the sort of the rundown of you know what your primary role, you know, within the company is, and I'm sure that that's a million different things.

SPEAKER_02 41:06

This this is the most difficult question because I've never been able to decide the point. But it's like when someone else is the best name for me.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

So to give us your name and see what comes out in terms of trying to paint a picture, let's say, rather than attributing it to a specific role. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 41:21

My name is Joseph Humphrey. I am co-founder of Inkel, which is a small narrative indie game developer based in the UK.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

And yeah, so what is the what is your kind of you know day-to-day bringing to the table look like?

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Uh so I'm a bit of a jack of all trades. I'm primarily a programmer, um, but I'm also interested in art direction. I will do any little bits of art uh or UI design that doesn't fit into a category that's that's done by our um in-house artist. I'll also do audio design. I do a lot of the kind of the sound design for our games. Um and I, of course, uh co-design our games alongside John Ingold, who I founded the company with.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

And what does that look like? I know we spoke actually, perhaps you could just tell that to me again about you know, there's you obviously would would develop games uh together, but now there's kind of like there's John games and then there's you games, and just what what that looks like in terms of a project sort of coming together.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

So different projects generally um through I mean throughout IncL's history, we've always co-designed games right from the very beginning, but more recently there have been more projects that have been that have come more from John's um side or some that have been come more from my side. Um so for example, um Overboard, Expelled, and TR49 are very much John-centric games. Uh they they came directly from him. Um Highland Song is very much a game directed by me based on my experiences growing up in Scotland. Um, but pretty much all of our games, even when they they they come from an idea from one of us in particular, we always end up collaborating very closely on the game design. Um and um I would say all of the games up until Heaven's Vault were very much co-designed by both of us.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

And so maybe if we took like TR49 as an example, what does that look like when he comes to you with this this idea or this prototype? Well, what what starts um what cogs start turning in your head? You know, and what are you bringing to the table that's going to help realize whatever the vision for that project is?

SPEAKER_02 43:54

Right. So um this is probably a very classic case of how Inkel works is that. That John will have an idea for a story that he wants to tell, and because he's quite technical, he's able to create a little web-based prototype that's like a very raw form of a choice-based narrative where you'll be able to open up a really horrible-looking web page, but be able to read the narrative and make choices. And he will tell as he sends this to me over Slack or whatever, he'll say, try to imagine this and try to ignore this and just tell me what you think. And then we'll just start a conversation. So that's already in a playable state where he'll have written it in this in-house narrative programming language that we developed called Inc., and so he'll have written this narrative that's already at a playable stage, just very rough looking. And usually because I'm a more visual person, that will start to inspire me about what the presentation could look like or whether that presentation could start to inform the narrative. So I might start to have an idea. In the case of TR49, he'd already written a narrative that's based on kind of library cards. And so he had this idea of these individual paper cards that would form this library archive. And as we discussed it and as we tried out different visual ideas, we came up together. I can't remember whether it was his idea or my idea, but we came up with the idea maybe it could be this ancient kind of um CRT computer that you're interacting with that maybe has the vibes of um a micro mach a micro shit called a microfiche machine. Um and so all of the it'll then starts to kind of develop much more collaboratively, and we start to have a lot more back and forth of how the the visual and the narrative systems can fit together effectively.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

And I'm interested with that game in particular. When how do you start layering on the sort of the the user experience in terms of how you decide that they're gonna navigate the that game? You know, the the input controls for that one are sort of very satisfying, but you know, unconventional as well, in a way where they're sort of programming, you know, to albeit this sort of four-digit, you know, let and number combination.

SPEAKER_02 46:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:39

Um, yeah, it comes from a lot of experimentation. Um, initially, purely in visual terms, for me as the main kind of interaction designer, it comes from a lot of visual experimentation of like figuring out how you could interact with this machine, imagining it as a real physical machine, but I'm simultaneously thinking about um depending on what platforms we're aiming for, and I think very early on we decided, okay, we're gonna make this as a Steam game only, is what our initial plan was. It was gonna be PC only to make things simpler because it was meant to be a small project. But then we thought, well, but Steam Deck is also a big platform, and so the controls of the Steam Deck mean that people would expect to be able to use a gamepad to control a game. So already I was thinking about how to combine the control scheme of a Steam Deck with the input system of this like world fantasy, World War II based computer, and that's where the idea of using the thumbsticks to rotate a dial and select letters and numbers came in. Um and so it's kind of interesting how you end up designing this like uh anachronistic machine from the supposed 1940s so that it can be used with a Steam Deck from the 2020s. Um, but it's a lot of fun, and uh yeah, so it's it's very much thinking about like the the control scheme that we want to allow for in the case of TR49, it was these uh four-letter codes, and so it was very important that you could have um quick um text and numerical entry um on a gamepad. Um and so just combining all of these ideas and experimenting is what resulted in the the shape of the game effectively.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

I sort of get this impression, and maybe I'm wrong, but with your games, it feels like you're sort of trying to remove as much um unnecessary uh levels of interactivity or or player you know mechanics so that you're you're sort of basically left with what the absolute bare minimum is for them to fully engage with uh what you've intended. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 49:07

Yeah, I think that's very true. I think I think we're both from this kind of game design school of thought of like it's kind of that that that idea from design more generally of minimalism that the product should be the absolute bare essentials of what it needs to be and no more. And what that means when you're designing something like a gadget, like an iPad or something, versus a video game is very different because video games also necessarily need to have these bells and whistles that don't functionally have a purpose but add a bit of juice and interactivity to the experience you're creating. So it on the one hand, it's about extreme minimalism, which also works with indie game development because it reduces your budget. You're just creating exactly the experience that needs to be there. But it's also about finding the little extras that you know will add a lot of value and uh immersion and uh just spark joy to the to the players who are playing it. Um but yeah, finding that balance can be a little bit tricky sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

Um I'm trying to think. I mean, say with the with TR49, but did that take long for you to sort of land on that mode of interactivity that is, you know, that you're basically driving the game forward with four-digit inputs and then occasionally clicking to move the the story forward, you know, with the uh so the the the basic um that basic design of TR49 very much came from John.

SPEAKER_02 50:48

Um he came up with the idea of the codes right from the bit very beginning, even though it wasn't originally this old old-fashioned computer. He was thinking of a card catalogue with real physical cards. Um the idea of those codes and the idea of making it an audio drama, which was so it was simultaneously this interactive narrative where you're conversing with another character over the radio, while also simultaneously being this narrative that you're reading on on the library cards, that already came from John. Um, and then we were working together um to figure out how that could be presented to the player. Um, and so that's when it evolved from physical cards to to this old-fashioned computer.

SPEAKER_00 51:40

Was there a point, or maybe it just came quite organically, but with that game where like the sum of its parts like finally came together to like pull off what you were aiming for? Because it really does feel like there's a lot of not that I'm feeling when I'm playing it, but it's so immersive, it's so engaging. Um like out the gate, I'm interested in the mechanic. I'm I bought into the story, I feel quite unsettled by the environment that I've been bought into, you know, and and I think as many, it seems like you many people I think have said like what you might plan for a 20-minute sit-down and then you're kind of in it for a good few hours. I guess I wonder if you you could sort of like give us what the sum what those different parts are that sum up to to make that experience happen.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

Yeah, it's it's even for us, I think it's really hard to know where that comes from because certainly I think obviously this original prototype that John created um that wasn't very pretty, um, that would be unplayable for the majority of people who played the the final version, but it's hard to say at what point in the development it truly became kind of this kind of immersive experience uh from the final from the final game. I think it's just thousands and thousands of tiny uh decisions and little details that smooth it off and that make it beautiful and that make it feel like the little vibrations when you if you're playing on a on an iPad or a Steam Deck that make it feel like you're interacting with this chunky machine. Um, the voices, the final, the the the difference that the voiceover makes of having real actors reading out the lines makes an incredible difference because suddenly you're going from reading subtitles and having your attention um kind of distracted between reading subtitles and reading the content of the text on the screen to kind of hearing these words in the kind of the narrative um audio drama portion of it. That's sort of entering your brain in a different direction from the part that you're interacting with more visually, that makes a massive difference. Um, and I always say that I I'm really jealous of musicians because of what they can add to the overall experience. Like when you switch off the music and all of the sound, it's very different to that, like the overall emotional impact that a musician can bring in and add single-handedly to an experience. And I find that actually for larger games as well, because even for a game where there are 200 people working on the game, you only need one composer to come in and add some music and suddenly he transforms the entire experience.

SPEAKER_00 54:37

It's been I've been playing Claire Obscure recently, and I've actually turned the music off on the battles. Right. Because I was finding them too difficult with all the different things, but it is quite interesting because it makes you realize the the music makes it all feel way more tense than it actually.

SPEAKER_02 54:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially if the music's repeating on a loop. Yes, yeah. Like you hear the same like sequence over and over again, and then suddenly it doesn't have the same emotional impact, and they could just be really jarring, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:05

Exactly. And then something's like, oh, this uh it's not quite as frantic as before it was, you know, because it was le adding so much in a in a good way, you know. Right. But I just did it because I was struggling with the games. Right, yeah. Um, and then you know, are there things that you want to try to do more of or new approaches or things you want to experiment more with moving forward and mechanics or ideas that you feel like exist but aren't being utilized well enough or don't exist and you want to sort of bring to the table? And that's a big question.

SPEAKER_02 55:38

I know it's it's interesting. So if you asked me that 10 years ago, I would give you a book's worth of thoughts on what I wanted to do and like ideas I want to experiment with. Um, but nowadays I'm I've got to the point where we've tried a lot of the things, a lot of the ideas that we had, and of course we go on to have new ideas, but I I'm no longer at the point of like this extreme feeling of thirst to kind of uh to kind of get our ideas out and to let people experience uh what we had in our heads that just didn't exist out there. Whereas nowadays so many ideas have been tried. And there's of course there's so much still to be tried, but I don't any longer have that same sense that I've got too much going on in my head that I just have to get it on paper or into a game that people can play. It's right now, for me at least, it's more of a question of what is what of some kind of mixtures of mechanics and um kind of um environments and um time periods or like or narrative genres, the like worlds that haven't ever been combined quite in the way that uh we've seen before, and what would be a good fit for the types of games that Inkel creates. In a sense, I guess we're a more mature company where we do things in a more kind of uh logical way, where we're kind of um remixing ideas that we've had before with new ideas rather than always having to make everything brand new from scratch. Um I'd say perhaps Heaven's Vault was like at the very peak of that era for us, where every single little detail for us had to be brand new, like the character presentation style, the the choice interactive interaction model, the world, the the fact that we had this idea of creating these rivers that run through space and that you could travel over these rivers. I don't think in future we're likely to try to experiment with everything all at once anymore, um, even though some of our fans might love that. I think we're much more comfortable with creating games now where we we have like four out of five pieces that we know we've done before that will work really well, and then one piece which is like going way out there and doing something really brand new. And so I wouldn't say that there are really like genres that I'm like itching to get into. It's more like careful creation of new game ideas which tick a lot a lot of boxes and that also excite us, basically.

SPEAKER_00 58:43

Was there anything with TR49 that you felt was that element that oh, this is something that you know you're saying of these, you know, using tried and trusted, tried and tested elements. Yeah, okay. Potentially bringing in something new. Like maybe it wasn't the case of that, but is this?

SPEAKER_02 58:58

Yeah, no, that was maybe just like uh that was maybe an exception just because uh yeah, it's because sometimes I guess we've done this repeatedly, that we've kind of thought we'd we're gonna we we should do a sensible game where we're doing a s sequel or something like that. We should we really should do that. But actually, I had that little idea where I thought we could experiment with something all just to take two weeks, just because I can't get it out of my head, and then suddenly we turn it into a game that takes a year to make and and then we make it. And TR49 was very much that kind of game. Like John had an itch, he wanted to scratch, he like he'd played these other games that were like um Root Trees Are Dead and Type Help, where he was inspired by those and felt like he wanted to do a game in that genre. And so he did a little experiment and he said, Look, I just did this for fun, but maybe we could make it as a game that we release maybe for free or something, just as a web, uh a web game that people could play. Um, and then we're like, oh, let's let's maybe be a bit more serious about it. We could maybe build it in this game engine Godot that we'd been experimenting with. It might be a good test of that new platform, and then it just kind of spiraled from there, and we ended up uh making it a proper game, a proper release, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:20

Is there anything then outside of what you all are doing that you'd sort of would like to see more of, you know? And I always didn't think, you know, and it might not be even things that have, you know, I still think that there are games that were doing things. Um I always think about The Last Express by Jordan Mechner, you know, that kind of real-time element that I just I feel like hasn't really been iterated on much, and maybe because it's too difficult, or I'm not sure. But I just wonder from a gamer sense, if there's anything you're sort of craving to have in your hands more.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:52

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I don't I don't have a good answer for that question, I'm afraid. Like one one uh slightly uncomfortable truth is that um since like I was like really into games as a child and and for 10 years after after I, you know, after I became an adult, but um I my the amount that I play has gone down way over time, especially since having kids, and so I don't really play that many games anymore. And um yeah, I I sometimes I worry that I'm not exposed enough to all that's going on in the industry. Um so I probably play play less games than the average person uh at this point, which is very weird actually for me to say.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:44

I can relate, I don't I don't really watch documentaries and I spend all my time playing video games. No, I can tell you all about the documentary. Exactly. That's why. So I'm kind of video game obsessed, so I sort of know other things going on. But then it's sort of like I'm pretty bad, you know, when I'm at an industry thing. I was like, oh, did you see thing?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:04

I'm like, it's a bit of a taboo, like I'm not sure I should have really said that it's genuinely a bit of a taboo to like say, you know, I'm a I'm a game developer and I don't play many games anymore. Like that's yeah. People people say, no, no, you have to be playing, you have to be up to date, you have to have played all these genres and you have to know what exists, and you have to be able to play to understand what is enjoyable. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:33

I think about that a lot, and listening with through the interview, just you know, and again, maybe I'm trying to justify my own decision making, you know, that it's like, you know, I'm even gonna play a video game or I'm gonna watch Fargo for the 18th time, you know, instead of sit down and watch a new new documentary. But I sometimes wonder, and again, maybe I'm lying to myself, it's like I think that there was this point in my life where I was so open to so much influence um that probably happened from I don't know, like like nine through to like 21 or something. And I feel like most of the work I do is like influenced by or iterations of that thing. And I don't know that I've really updated my catalogue, but it does seem to work.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:18

Yeah. And I don't know if that absolutely, that's exactly the way I feel. Yeah, yeah. It's like all the game, like and it's it's the same with John as well. He's like, he's three years older than me, but we played broadly the same set of games in our teens and in our childhood, and we have the same kind of formative experiences of playing games, even though he's kind of more interested in certain genres more than than I am. Um, we still think back to like, oh, we should do another game like Monkey Island or something, you know. Um, and so yeah, I do worry that I'm not I'm kind of being left behind because I find it hard to draw inspiration from like games from the past five years, even though I'm sure that there are some like fantastic games out there that that I should be inspired by. Um yeah, I don't know, it's difficult. It is, but again, it's interesting, again, because you know, if you interview, you know, people in this industry, certain games are always gonna come up and say, like Monkey Island, like um, you know, in theory, just like a relatively simple game, but it's doing something that like people have then gone on to iterate on and iterate on and iterate on, you know, and again, like this sort of this source material from our youth seems to be the primary driving factor for even though nowadays Monkey Island wouldn't really hold up compared with like the the new modern takes by developers like Wajatai Games, like they're making far better developed games that don't have like frustratingly awful puzzles and all of this stuff. Like there are objectively better games released nowadays, and yet because we experience those as children, they still capture our imagination in the same way. I think it's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:07

And then it seems we can then extract more and more nutrition from them because of that thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:14

Always kind of like reacting to those same ideas, and yeah, but I think John's the same. He's he's still thinking about The Last Express because that was his one of his favorite games. Um, I do the same occasionally. I think about, yeah, I mean, in answer to your question about like what what what games would I want to you know develop in the future or whatever, like there's an old Mac game called Escape Velocity that was kind of a classic of its time about kind of it was just like a top-down 2D space game where you could kind of it was almost like an open world game before its time in the sense that you could fly across this massive galaxy and explore different worlds. And as a there were like little um micro narrative. Sections because you'd fly missions and stuff like that. And I would kind of love to recreate that kind of game nowadays. But unfortunately, I think maybe another side of getting older is that I get a lot more cynical because I think about all of the all of the things that go into creating a game like that. And I think about I'm always thinking about the end product. I'm always thinking about, okay, well, what how will that feel to play at the end of the day? And like, will that appeal to people? And you can't just recreate a game of the past and expect people to uh enjoy it for the same reasons because it is just not the same decade and people have different sensibilities. And so yeah, whether it's a good fit for Inkle, whether it's a good fit, whether it's a good game to recreate, whether it's good to create new experiences and new gameplay based on the things that I enjoyed as a child, I don't know. Like, yeah, it's it's very difficult.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:05

I guess at the end of the day, what it seems like you're doing is just sort of trusting whatever that instinct is of the things that well up within you. And then and then you're sort of cross-referencing it, right? With like, you know, what are people from what we know historically about what they've done, engage with and then at some point you come to a decision.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:24

Exactly. But market interests change, and like I I think my other issue right now is that I don't feel like my interests always align with the interests of what whatever the the demographic that we're selling to is right now. Like I feel like, yeah, maybe we sell to say 20 to 50-year-old, that's our maybe our broad, very broad uh demographic, and we actually sell more to um we sell more to women than the industry average. It's still obviously dominated by male players, but um I I sometimes I wonder whether like all of these people who are playing all of the new games of the past 10 to 20 years will have different interests and and sensibilities than than myself because I formed my games in this interest in the kind of the 90s or something. Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:20

This may be another you don't have a clear answer for, and it's just it's just is what's happening, which is interesting in its own right. But do you know why perhaps that you sell more to women in the industry?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:30

Oh, I think I think narrative games perhaps just appeal more um to women than shooter games do. I mean, I that's the way I see it in my head. Like there's there's more um there's more emotional uh kind of um gravita, not gravitas is an awful word, but um there's more emotional, not weight. It's like there's more emotional intelligence to the games that we're making.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:57

And I guess just and we'll sort of wrap up on this, but you know, with say TL49, you know, am I right in thinking like you make it, you have no idea how people you I know you would have playtested it, but you don't really know how the world's gonna respond to a game like that, right? Um, especially when it doesn't obviously because it can kind of sit within a certain sort of genre, games like you know, Oberdin or but you you don't know, you know, it's not necessarily an obvious game in terms of how people are gonna latch onto it or interpret or understand it.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:28

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:29

Um I guess I just wonder what it was like to then start getting that feedback and actually what the feedback has been for that particular game in terms of why people okay, that should be good, actually.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:41

Uh yeah, TR49 is the most unusual one game that we've created from that point of view because it's in in a sense it's like a very it's a very simple game in that there's a lot of text reading in it and a lot of like it it in a in a sense is a game that ought to not be interesting because it's about uh digging your way through a library archive where you're not even looking at the content of the library, you're looking at the index cards about that though those those library works. And so it's in a sense this kind of like database game genre is one of the most difficult to kind of explain why they're successful. And I myself find it that difficult to explain as well. Um yeah, I've I'd forgotten what the original question is.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:35

It's just about the the audience response, you know. Like if they can verbalize it, what is it about that game that's I mean, people do seem to just get lost in the game.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:45

They they they intend to play it for half an hour and suddenly they find themselves five hours later at the end of the game because they couldn't stop unlocking, you know, digging into the mystery inside the game and connecting all the pieces and stuff. Um so yeah, the the the overall uh reaction that we've had from the game has been absolutely incredible. We've had so much, so many positive messages and the critical reception's been fantastic. We've been like genuinely pretty overwhelmed with how how positive people have been about the game. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's the attention spans are so much shorter now that on the one hand, games that were created in the 90s are just you can't you can't make that kind of game nowadays because people would just drop off immediately. Um but I don't think that's necessarily a problem nowadays because game design has just improved over the past 20 uh 20 years. So the same overall game designs are possible, it's just we've got a lot more tools to deal with um low attention spans, in that we're much better at um a clever way of giving subtle hints or even just rudimentary hint systems that just didn't exist in games like that back then. Like um, there's a lot more techniques that have been developed since then that make all of these genres a lot more palatable, actually, for a more modern audience. And in fact, when when um remakes of those those types of games have been created more recently, like the Monkey Island games, they did integrate new hint systems into them, which made them playable for a more modern audience, yeah. And also nowadays we have the internet, so you can always look stuff up. And it can be surprisingly fun. Like, of course, it's a it's a very different experience, but actually following along with a guide is still fun because you're still doing the interaction, and yes, you don't have the satisfaction of solving the puzzles. But I'm a genuine believer that you can enjoy the story being told by uh a game like Monkey Island, even if you're told all of the solutions. There's quite a controversial take, I know, that like it can be enjoyable to experience that just as a story and to be able to do the interactions yourself and watch the amusing animations, enjoy the music and the sound, and everything. There's still a lot to enjoy, even if following along to a guide. So, yeah, it's it's possible to enjoy those games still.