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80 Level Podcast
80 Level Round Table: Techland, the Studio & Tools Behind Dying Light 2 Stay Human
Lead Designer at Techland Tymon Smektala has joined Kirill Tokarev at 80 Level Round Table to tell us about the life and culture of the studio, discuss the tools Techlannd uses to create massive open-world environments, and share some behind-the-scenes information about the studio’s recently-released Dying Light 2 Stay Human.
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Tymon Smektala is the Lead Designer at Techland
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tymon-smektala-4205534/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/smektalatm
Techland Website: https://techland.net/
Techland Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TechlandGames/
Techland Twitter: https://twitter.com/techlandgames
Techland Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techlandgames/
Dying Light 2 Stay Human Website: https://dl2.dyinglightgame.com/
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hello everyone and today we have with us timon smith carla from techland who's
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going to talk about dying light the production of the game some of the tools that the team was
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using we will also touch a little bit on the topics of recruiting as well as talk
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about building a career as a game designer greetings and welcome to the 80 level
0:24
roundtable podcast in each episode host karel tokorev invites video game
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industry leaders to talk about the world of game development no topic is off limits as long as it
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relates to video game development new episodes are in the works so remember to follow us or subscribe and
0:43
share with someone you know will also enjoy the podcast before we start can you do
0:49
a little introduction tell us a little bit about yourself about your role in the company what you guys are doing and
0:55
that kind of stuff okay so hello everyone my name is timon smachtawa i am the lead game designer at
1:01
techland working on dying lights to stay human i have been with the company for about
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eight years actually nine this year i have joined when we were working when
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the company started working on dying night one so i have been with the studio for the whole adventure since dying died
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one i was responsible as a lead game designer for dying lights to the following and then i was also a lead game designer
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dying like to stay human so tell us a little bit about
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the current situation in techland what are you guys are working on about the recent release and kind of
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where you are in terms of the team the size of the team and like the main things that you're working on right now
1:46
okay so quite a lot of questions rolled into one so i'll try to
1:52
take that one by one so uh i think it's a very good time for us as a studio we have just released uh our recent project
1:59
our biggest title so far the game has been released fundamentally well because
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over the first weekend it was played by more than 3 million players as you can imagine the numbers are still
2:12
growing so it's like business-wise and in terms of accomplishment professional
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accomplishment this is something that that that brings a lot of joy uh to our studio as
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an organization but also on our personal level um [Music]
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the period of time where we are right now as a company is actually very interesting because we have released the
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game the game is out there the game is received well and and now we are
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kind of thinking organizing ourselves to handling what's what's going to happen in the future
2:47
um we have three main directions in which our work
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will focus over the next months and years probably um the first one is of
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course post launch support for dying light to stay human um
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the other one is another project that we have already kind of announced or at least revealed its existence so we are
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working on an amazing open world rpg fantasy rpg that that is being made
3:18
by one of our two studios the studio in warsaw and the dying light team the core dying
3:24
light team is a team that's based in broadsword and but we also have another studio in
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warsaw uh quite big in size which is working on the on the other project i
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have just mentioned the team is kinda getting closer and closer to revealing the game more
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officially but as you can imagine this is something i can really go much into and then spill any beans but
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let me just tell you this is really something unique this is a very interesting project
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and i would love to be a part of that team um aside from that aside from working on post lounge for dying lights
4:00
to stay human and the new project we are also slowly starting to think about
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next project for our core virtual studio um but as you can imagine there are like a
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lot of ideas on the table a lot of possible directions we could go we didn't even start pre-production yet
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i think it this is a moment for us to reorganize ourselves and make sure that
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we are ready for whatever future brings when it comes to post lamp support it's actually again quite an interesting
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proposal for us as developers because we have already announced that we will be supporting the
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game for um five years so this is like a huge campaign that we have already planned
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out and and [Music] make sure that we approach this wisely
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um we have a quite solid plan for the whole five years we we
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are quite sure and we understand where we want the game to be in that five
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years uh period and but of course the plans for
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the next year maybe the year after that are way more precise actually the first year
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is like very detailed we have already revealed chunks of it but that's not all we will start
5:21
revealing more and more in the upcoming weeks but the thing is that this is actually a
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content that will be very varied very
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distinct quite different from one another because for the first year of post post-lung support of dying that's
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just a human we want to experiment with different forms and different ideas and
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basically try any crazy idea that that we have come up so far to see what works with the community what community
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expects come on let's talk a little bit uh about the dying light too and then
5:57
this project has been in development for a while there were a lot of things implemented there and the game is huge
6:03
in size and scope and the amount of stuff there um i want to ask you a question so
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what were kind of like the main tools technologies and also specialists that were key for
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the production of this amazing open world that you've created like i'm talking about procedural
6:24
generation or maybe some you know texturing tools or anything that was kind of essential we're trying
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to highlight the things that kind of in the avant-garde of the game development and help build not only the
6:39
current games but also the future games so it would be nice to hear your opinion okay so perhaps i'm not the best person
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to ask because as a game designer i don't really work much with automatization tools and the procedural
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generation of of of content but of course we were using uh systems like that we are fortunate
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enough to be able to work with our own engine which is called sea engine and this is an engine we have built
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purposeful on purpose specifically for the games we want to build as a company techland as a
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developer have said it internally this is our internal strategy that we want to focus on first person open world games
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we believe in those kinds of games because we believe that those games offer you the the highest possible level of immersion
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it's an open world game it's full of immersive elements full of of of sandbox
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elements that you all experience with your own eyes because it's first person perspective
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so um it also allows us to create this this graphical fidelity that that we feel will be important for
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immersion in open world games but in in in games that we want to build so the
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c engine is an engine built specifically for this but we have also like a part of it uh
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like a huge chunk of it is something that we are calling maybe not the most fanciest of names
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because we call it the city builder but this is actually our automatization tool that allows us to
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create and iterate on the on the environment and the fabric of environment and the playable space that
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our environment is very easily very quickly and very swiftly the thing is that we have named it city
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builder because we have developed it as we started working on language to stay human which was a game that was supposed
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to take place in an urban enviro environment but
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then we moved to the other project i mentioned before which is actually not all about cities it's it's a fantasy
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game so as you can imagine that the environment is drastically different to what we have in dying light too but
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we have also managed to make this tool allow us to speed up the process of creating the
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fantasy world of the other games so maybe the name city builder is not not the best anymore but i i think we
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decided not to spend too much time coming up with fancy name we just wanted to have a tool that works and tool that
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that makes our processes faster so what it does it allows you to create cities
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or other environment using smaller blocks buildings even smaller ones like specific like elements of buildings um
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and then iterate easily and change that easily with a partial push of a button
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with a like a move over of a mouse of a computer mouse and this is definitely something that helped us to to
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to make our work on dying lights to stay human faster especially that it also
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understands uh some of the gameplay rules that we have in the game so so not only the environment created with the
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city builder looked nice and then was creating like this illusion of of real city fabric but
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also was considering all of the rules that we have in our traversal system parkour system with measurements with
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the differences of hate etc etc so so definitely this is this is this this is
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like our baby that helped us a lot over the over the process and when it comes to especially citing
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um it's kind of hard to say but because i i i would bet that
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for every aaa game developer everyone is basically looking for everyone everyone is looking for the
10:25
best possible programmers for the best possible artists for the best possible level designers game designers so it's
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the same with us like we are on the market for um for for the best specialists out there thankfully with
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the success of dying like to stay human this is something we can kind of use to
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to to invite more people into our studio and this is also something that we are doing at this time uh where we want our
10:50
team to grow we don't want it to grow to be too big we don't want it to become this mega studio mega corporation that
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is kind of hard to manage both in terms of of uh production of a game development of a
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game but also in terms of those like softer hr elements and
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i think we are quite happy with with the size that we have right now currently at the studio we have about
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let's say 450 people we want to grow the number a little bit maybe to 500 people
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this is i think this is the the the rough estimate of what we want to have internally as a core part of our verso
11:30
and virtual studio combined so tell us a little bit about the kind of
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recruiting market in poland i know that it's extremely competitive because there is like a lot of
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very good studios that are producing aaa titles there how do you attract
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new people to the studio do you use your brand the game because we had
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this we have the saying that the developers are still gamers and they usually want to work
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on a game that they actually want to play do you use some other elements like you
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know a better office or maybe insurance like what are the things that help you attract more specialists
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so again maybe i'm not not the best person to answer maybe you should get someone for for from hr for this
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interview but but of course i i also see things and experience things and as a
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lead game designer i'm also involved in uh recruitment of new game designers so
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like i kind of i think i can answer your question quite uh
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thoroughly and and and make it quite factual so for us i think
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the most important thing is definitely the the projects that we are working on i
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think in the triple a space it's very very hard to compete in terms of salary
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or in terms of benefits because every top-notch studio out there offers
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basically a very similar level of benefits and
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gratification for work so so definitely what you can do to excite people is to
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present them that you are working on a exciting game an exciting element of a game or maybe
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you are working in a um in a studio that it's priced and praised as a studio and
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respected as a studio and i think with dying guide one and dying light too uh we have uh also
13:31
uh we have proven ourselves as being one of the top developers in the world dying like to stay human as i said is a
13:38
successful game so it's also make makes things easier for us but of course i understand this is this
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i think every one of us understand you are only as good as your last project so you need to hire the best people to
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prove yourself again and i hope we will do that um with with
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the with the next one but definitely what we have managed to create at techland is is an amazing
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culture of our studio and i think this is this is something that um personally but i think no matter who you
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ask from techland you will hear them saying the same thing that the biggest asset of our studio is the
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people that are working here because everyone is passionate everyone is creative i think everyone says the same thing
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probably but really this is this is a huge pleasure to be work to be working in such an environment like every
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meeting is is extremely creative full of goodwill for full of um
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something quite magical like i i i came to techland from uh
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game dev industry as well game industry as well i was working in uh in the gaming media i had some other job
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experiences as well but nowhere else i was
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feeling experiencing the same level of companionship and the
15:00
openness towards other your and your your work colleagues as as
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as as it is here in techland so [Music] the people of techland are just amazing
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so so definitely this is something that helps and this also helps in terms of the of uh recruitment because people
15:19
recommend our studio to one another and and this is also like
15:25
a a good advantage in recruitment i think this is this is something that can
15:30
be observed in a lot of other studios like um the specialist are spreading to
15:36
different places one studio or another and if they feel that there's something good going
15:42
at where they are they they they recommend that place to their friends and we see that a lot in
15:47
tech land as well do you guys work a lot with local schools like do you have
15:54
internships for you know younger specialists or somebody who's just beginning well of course we do but this became
16:01
quite difficult in the recent months because of the covet pandemic so like it's only recently that we started kind
16:08
of uh reigniting those those programs and uh and but but before pandemic we were
16:16
frequenting uh um job fairs and meetings of students in in
16:22
uh technical universities in brussels and generally in poland so so we are also
16:28
present on all game dev conferences in poland and not only in poland so so
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i think everyone hopes that with the pandemic slowly ending or like getting calmer let's say
16:42
we will be able to get back with full steam to those kinds of activities
16:48
so let's talk a little bit about the dying light too so i personally am a big fan of the first one i played like the
16:54
hell out of that one i'm i'm still to kind of go into full speed into the sequel because i'm
17:02
playing eldon dream right now so i need to finish that and then i need to go so i have a i have a reason and my
17:09
question is like we when we see a game kind of finished we don't see a lot of things and challenges
17:16
that were happening behind the scenes can you tell us a little bit about some of the kind of most challenging
17:23
decisions or you know just you know boundaries and challenges that you had to go through to
17:29
make sure that the game is at the quality uh and the size that you want it to be
17:35
okay so i think the biggest risk definitely the biggest risk that we took with the project was
17:41
approaching the sequel in such a
17:48
i would say maybe maybe it's not unorthodox but in such an ambitious and brave way so we had
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i think we have locked down the formula of what dying light is
18:00
as a game with the first one we have defined its core gameplay pillars which is first person parkour traversal which
18:07
is first person brutal melee combat which is day and night cycle that changes the rules of gameplay and we had
18:15
we had all of this in the first game and we had it working we have polished that formula quite well with the post on
18:21
support so perhaps we should go the easy route and just kind of repeat the same thing
18:27
with the second one but we have decided to add another gameplay pillar to dying light to the human which is choices and
18:34
consequences we wanted to create a game where player has this a similar level of
18:40
player agency and player expression in game play as in narrative general
18:45
narrative and this was definitely the biggest risk because as teclan we didn't work much
18:51
with non-linear narratives before and with environments that you could change
18:56
with your decisions and uh um generally a set up an environment a
19:03
combinations of factors that can make your game having quite a lot of different
19:08
combinations with affect the gameplay and narrative at the same time and i think this was also the biggest
19:15
challenge for us the biggest change for us was to kind of design our own approach to choices and
19:22
consequences there are quite a few games out there that try to play with similar concepts but i
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think we had to find our own way to work with that like methodologies that will allow us to
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make sure that we understand what a good choice is what kind of a consequence is an interesting consequence for the
19:40
players and also on the technical side it was quite difficult for us and maybe even a
19:45
little surprising and how much more work we need to put into
19:50
polishing and testing content which can have so many different states with dying light one we were basically
19:57
just testing one game in a way we were just testing a game that can could be played only in
20:03
one direction in in in buying like two and only in one
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environment really in line like to stay human the directions you can take as a players
20:13
are way more varied and also the environments in which all of this happens can have different states and
20:20
and actually being able to manage all of this and make sure that the quality is there that
20:25
was the biggest challenge during the whole project
20:31
what were the ways that you were kind of making sure that gameplay systems that
20:36
you created work well within these new environments and
20:43
inside this idea that you can make a lot of different choices how do you how do you test it how do you
20:50
tweak it what are the things that you maybe decided to change or alter in order for it to kind of make
20:57
sure that you know that some gameplay mechanics doesn't ruin the bigger idea
21:02
that you had there actually that's quite a difficult question to answer because um
21:10
there is no magic formula like the only thing that you can apply to to this kind of problem is to just
21:16
test the hell out of your game and just test it in all possible variations and
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make sure that it works uh with a very strict back reporting process and
21:28
with a very strict approach to to to solving those bugs and then issues that arise um
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in terms of of of i'm not sure if i'm able to point to any
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specific like thing that we had to change or or create in a very specific way to to
21:48
to make all of this work of course what helped us was applying modularity to some of our for
21:55
example visual design so we could create structures that can
22:01
share a similar foundation similar base but have different attachments on top of
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on top of it which ended up in those buildings looking different and having a different
22:12
mood and different theme and different visual aesthetics but but those are just in a way those
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are just uh quite regular solutions to similar problems that we just had to use and
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mass and apply and mask to all of the problems that we were facing so there is no magic formula it's just hard work
22:30
generally as in all game dev people often think that game development is like
22:35
easy the best job in the world because the only thing you do you just play games every every single day for the
22:41
whole day it's not like that it's actually quite hard it's one of the like from from the
22:46
from the jobs i know from the professions i know is one of the hardest but having said that it's also one of
22:53
the best because the feeling that you get when you are able to create something when you are when you are able to create this virtual world see it work
23:01
make it work as you want it to work and then you release it and people enjoy it that's really a huge accomplishment and
23:07
something that really gives a lot of energy and and and good
23:12
things to you as a person as a professional timon since we kind of touched on the
23:18
topic of testing there is also this idea of play tests in in the marketing kind of
23:26
way right so you have focus groups and you play with them and so on and um
23:31
they say that mike tyson wants that and everybody has a plan and until they're
23:36
hit in the face and my question for you is did you feel the same kind of hit in the
23:44
face when players first started playing your game because it's usually i know
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like for in in the game development circles it never goes according to plan and everything is kind of like so how
23:56
did you work with them in those directions definitely that's true that what you said is true like that in game
24:02
development nothing goes according to plan like you can have the best design on paper but as soon as you implement it
24:09
or even as soon as you try to implement it you see that there's like this mountain of problems that you have to
24:15
overcome and when you implement it and people in play tests playing this you see that there's like an even bigger
24:22
mountain of of player feedback that you have to consider but i don't see this as as being hit in
24:28
the face like as a game developer you are used to this so much that you don't even register this so it's not like this
24:33
this this big blow that knocks you out it's just like a regular slap on the
24:38
face so so of course we had that like the first the first playtest that we did
24:44
um actually they were quite encouraging but the list of problems that were listed
24:50
after after the first session of play tests was so huge so long that we kind of got a
24:55
little uh maybe not depressed but like oh so now there's this much of work
25:01
we need to do uh i think one of the one of the maybe the closest to what you what you
25:09
are asking about was one of the play tests we did meet last year when we realized that
25:16
people are finding our combat to be maybe a little too too too easy maybe a
25:23
little too much on the easy side maybe a little bit too repetitive and this kind of surprised us because we
25:29
we felt that we have it we have it good that we know what we're doing and we knew it
25:35
we found out that we knew what we were doing we just didn't we just kind of lose focus on upkeeping the balance the
25:42
like very small tweaks in parameters of what was happening so thankfully when we received that
25:47
feedback it was actually good that we have received that feedback and we did those play tests because we were able to
25:52
turn around this within a very short amount of time like maybe two or three weeks so then we released the the
26:00
re re did read the play tests um as i said after three weeks i think or
26:05
maybe a month and the results were completely different way way bigger so
26:11
so if you're asking me about something like this i think that was a moment that was kinda like a little surprising which
26:17
was the moment where we left our guard down but aside from that of course when you do play tests it's
26:25
it's not that easy to get good scores but that's good i think that's actually something that also tells a lot about
26:30
our industry in general that people are expecting more and more and higher quality and
26:37
if you want to play in the top league you just have to to be prepared to to spend resources and
26:43
time and a lot of effort to deliver that level of quality that people expect
26:49
timon this is an excellent kind of bridge into my next question so we often
26:54
talk about kind of players expectations and what do they want to get
27:00
from the game um how do you work with that like do you just follow the
27:07
trends that are out there and just trying to build on top of them or do you
27:13
feel kind of the courage and you feel confident that the things that you are introducing
27:19
is are going to be the the new norm and kind of build on top of that because
27:25
i i'm not going to kind of name point fingers or name name but there are
27:30
some examples when like there are companies that don't really follow the you know the beaten pass and they
27:37
are super successful and at the same time there are companies that are
27:42
very much into like listening to the players you know following making life
27:47
kind of more easier for for the player to make sure that it's not it's more like a movie i would say like
27:54
the the game is more like a cinematic experience and they are constantly being
28:00
critiqued in the community for you know kind of being super repetitive let's say this
28:06
way so what's your what's what's your take on it how does teclon kind of work in that so both
28:12
both me personally and i think as as a studio techland as a studio we i think we are quite confident about that about
28:19
our ideas but also and i think that's maybe even a stronger part of our design
28:24
process we are very confident about the relation that we have built with our community
28:30
so yes we listen to our community and i i i don't feel it is anything that that
28:37
game developers should be ashamed of it's good to listen to your community it's good to listen to what people
28:43
expect from your game the thing is that you have to learn how to create this communication which is
28:48
really direct really honest and allows you to filter what's really important so
28:54
um both me personally and generally the whole team and like there's a dedicated team that
29:01
focuses on contacts contacts with the community community management but also generally having a discussion with
29:07
community we we try to be as active as possible and we try to
29:14
not only like gather all of the opinions and feedbacks that are left
29:20
on twitter reddit or whatever but we also try to engage with those gamers and try to understand
29:26
what either are they expressing the the feedback that they are expressing is it really
29:32
did they really expressed it precisely is it really something they they asking for is like
29:38
an uh like an old metaphor about henry ford that if if he would give people
29:44
what they asked him for he would give them like a metal horse and but he gave him a car
29:49
because because that's what he understood from the from the feedback this is how he understood
29:55
what what people wanted because he was able to have a direct conversation with with his customers and i think we try to
30:02
do the same uh we are not ashamed i think we are even quite proud about
30:08
like being open with our community and listening to the community feedback of course this doesn't mean that we are
30:14
steered by like by um i don't know like
30:20
voting forms and and whatever people say online we approach that data as a data we
30:28
approach this quite scientifically we try to analyze it as as best as we can
30:34
but yes our decisions are based or are using community feedback as
30:40
a we're using this as a part of our decision making process because i believe this makes our decisions more
30:46
informed i thank you i think it's a wonderful answer because truly it is impossible to kind of make a
30:53
game that everybody likes and if you listen to community too much you might get in trouble but at the same
30:59
time if you don't listen to them you're nobody's going to buy the game exactly what also helps us is that dying
31:06
light 2 is the second game in the franchise so we have kind of grew with our community since the first one we
31:13
have a lot of trusted community members which which we can ask directly basically even give
31:19
them the build before their lease and ask them what they what they feel about it and have a very meaningful
31:25
conversation about about what we are trying to do with the game so so definitely this helps
31:31
so timon i want to kind of come back a little bit to this creative process and the
31:37
construction of the game if you will usually in the perception
31:42
of kind of the general audiences there are two parties inside every game studio there are the the coders the programmers
31:50
and then there's the artists who are kind of creating the vision and so on so
31:56
where do you feel game designers uh stand in this uh
32:02
you know in this territory are they more with more technical people or are they more with more kind of creative
32:09
crowd that just bounces ideas so i think game designers have actually
32:14
the worst job on the on the on the on the project because uh you could say that game designers they
32:22
they don't they don't know anything like if you are a coder you can code the game if you are an artist you can create this
32:28
amazing piece of art like this object or or texture or whatever if you are a game designer you can only create like a
32:36
basically like a excel spreadsheet and maybe a word document and and that's it so
32:42
you really have to work hard and you really have to prove yourself that of the of the team
32:49
and you really have to gain that respect to be able to lead smaller
32:54
interdisciplinary teams working on specific features so so uh
33:00
of course i was saying this half jokingly because as i said before i believe i have the best job in the world
33:07
but but um i think generally this is a call to all
33:15
game designers to focus on the professionalism of the work
33:21
on using professional methods and growing professionally as a game designer and being able to
33:27
to use those approaches those methods those those those professional tips and tricks to to gain
33:35
respect within a bigger team going back to your question
33:41
actually i think it's a good thing that designers are kind of in between designers one for me one of the
33:48
tasks of a good game designer is to actually be the the bridge between the artists and the and the programmers
33:55
being a person that understands both sides and be able to talk with both
34:00
sides and come up with designs that are may be some word are
34:08
okay good to work for both artists and the programmers and that allow both artists and programmers
34:16
understand the essence of the future that they are working on and work together on it and add to it not just
34:23
push it in in one direction or another and thankfully at techland we focus on
34:29
features working quite in a quite interdisciplinary way so uh for every
34:35
bigger feature there's like a smaller kind of strike team or a smaller team that's that consists of animators 3d
34:42
artists concept artists programmers basically anyone that's required for the future ethics artists so
34:48
i think we kind of know how to work with one another and as i said the the best thing about tech and is how much we like
34:55
one another so it's actually quite easy like it's it's even if we spec speak different
35:00
languages and we have to use different metaphors and different
35:07
again language words to express our needs from a pitch feature our requests
35:12
for our future our vision for our feature um i think being able to
35:18
speak openly and having that that honest communication within those interdisciplinary teams definitely helps
35:25
to deliver the the features that we need to deliver so um
35:31
to kind of wrap it up i have kind of like this final question about usually we ask people where where to
35:39
kind of how to get into game development where do you learn more about video game development
35:45
i think over the last you know 10 15 years there are much more schools right now that kind of
35:52
teach you how to build games you can build projects together and actually finish
35:59
finish some kind of little prototype of vertical slice and so on but um
36:04
where do you actually learn game design it seems like this is such an elusive thing and
36:11
you know when you look at any great game designers usually they just start with a pencil and a sheet of paper and they
36:18
start drawing something or creating these little labyrinths or maps and then kind of go from there
36:24
how would you recommend approaching this where would you suggest going if somebody is very passionate about being
36:30
a game designer how do you learn to build games okay so actually i think thankfully there are quite a lot of
36:37
universities and other schools that focus on game design and try to teach this
36:42
this this discipline within the broader game development spectrum
36:47
so definitely that's a good start but not everyone has access to this type of school not everyone can go to this type
36:53
of school for me it was actually quite easily but maybe there's something universal about my story which
36:59
is quite personal but as i said i was a game i was working in game media for
37:05
quite a long time i was a game journalist so i was able to play a lot of games
37:13
over the over my career and i was able to learn how to analyze those games and i
37:19
think this is a a good direction for someone who is interested into game design to actually play as many games as
37:26
he as he can and try to break it down into pieces and analyze
37:31
why specific elements of the game are working and like this and what the game designers wanted to achieve with with
37:39
specific decisions they took also try to kind of reverse engineer
37:44
the design process the decision process that made them implement features in a
37:49
specific way how the features implemented in the game add to the overall experience so
37:55
definitely this is something to do trying to break down games into pieces trying to analyze them trying to understand why they are built like this
38:02
um also trying to ask more specific questions like what's the progression system for the main character what's the
38:09
progression system for the whole game for the narrative so definitely something like this also look at the
38:15
enemies why are they designed like this what kind of um player abilities do they test
38:21
etc etc etc there are also quite a lot of books on the topic that are quite easily
38:30
available starting with theory of fun and basically there are quite a few dozen of them out
38:35
there so so so this is something to to try as well
38:41
one thing that i'm also using because i'm also running like a game design workshops and usually what we do is we
38:46
start with like a short lecture explaining the basics of
38:52
game design but the next thing we do is we try to create
38:58
a board game based on an actual computer game on an actual video game and this is
39:04
also a very good exercise to analyze the original video game and
39:09
understand why it's been like that what's the essence of the game what's the gameplay loop of that game
39:15
why why what are the gameplay pillars for for that for that game for that product and then try to translate it
39:21
into the into the rules and the the construction the design of a board game so also try
39:28
to to participate in excite exercises like this but yes as you said the game design is
39:35
is actually quite an elusive art and it's i personally my
39:40
professional quest and i hope i will achieve it one day is to actually be able to find like a set
39:47
of golden scientific rules for game design that will allow me to apply them to any
39:54
like any design problem and make sure that i i will be able to to solve it i'm
40:00
not sure if it exists but i'm still looking for it so so of course if i find it if i find the golden rules of game
40:06
design i will like publish it freely for everyone open source for everyone to enjoy
40:12
because i think that would that would make um it would make life easier for quite a lot
40:17
of people out there because um in one of the of the of the slides of
40:23
the presentation i was giving at the uh one of the game conferences i was kind of using this picture to present what a
40:30
game for what uh how does the work for a game designer looks and it's a person that's glued
40:37
sticked to a rocket that's about to blow off and i think that's very well speaks of of what game
40:43
designers are doing at their job because they never they never know what they're doing they never know what to expect but they have
40:50
to like prepare themselves for everything and make sure that they will be able to handle the situation and and
40:56
and uh design a game such big as as big as lying right to stay human so
41:03
i'm not sure if that's if that's encouraging but if it's not then please everyone let me
41:09
encourage you to try to get into game dev if you have just a slight interest in the
41:15
in the industry because this is really one of the best industries that you can work on at this time and one of the best jobs
41:22
that you can have so so so like don't hesitate don't get don't be afraid
41:28
don't uh don't let nothing stop you try to join the game industry try as much as
41:34
you can and hopefully you will be part of the industry one day and be able to create amazing interactive
41:40
experiences for every gamer out there to enjoy all right thank you timon this was very
41:46
encouraging and i want to say goodbye and also to say good luck on your quest to find
41:52
those golden rules to make sure that everything works out all right thank you so much it was very fun talking to you
41:58
and we'll leave the links to the game and to the site web the site of the company in the description thank you so
42:05
much thanks so much bye-bye thanks for enjoying another episode of the 80 level roundtable podcast
42:12
check out upcoming episodes on the 80 level website at 80.lv join our career site at 80.lv
42:20
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