Good Day Google+ - Video Game Development and Design

Hey everyone, I'm Chef Dennis and welcome to Good Day Google+. My favorite day of the week is Friday because I get to talk to my friends and introduce them to my new friends to my older friends. Today we have a very special show on. It's a gaming show and I was lucky enough to meet one of the panelists today when I was over at UCF speaking for one of their projects that they have there. The Black— what is it? Help me out there.

Blackstone Launchpad.

Blackstone Launchpad. Thanks, Christopher. I'm, you know, at my age, my mind goes blank way too often now, so it's still working. But anyway, we're gonna talk about gaming and game design and anything else that just happens to come across the board here. You know how the show works. If you have questions for our panel, feel free to ask them in the comments stream and we'll pop them up and get to them. And you'll notice too, let me kick this up right away, I do have a link for a Kickstarter campaign that Christopher's running for a game that he's designing called Project Catfish, and he'll talk a little bit more about that as we get to it, but I just wanted to point that out right now. So let me introduce everyone, and to introduce everyone, I'm just gonna start from my far side, and that is Christopher. And Christopher Ross, how you doing today?

I'm doing pretty good. My name is Christopher Ross. I'm one of the co-founders of HamHock Games. Do you want me to go ahead and dig into the project or just stick with my name?

Yeah, just say hello for Now let's get all the introductions and give people a little more time to get into this stream too and watch it. You're in sunny Orlando, not too sunny Orlando today with me here. I got a lot of Orlandoites, I don't know what else to call them, here with me today.

Hello world, and yeah, I don't know, it's a good day in Orlando. Weather isn't great, but I'm pretty happy about it.

It's better than up north, well let's put it at that. Then we've got Corey Cochran here. How you doing, Corey?

Hi, how you doing today?

You're a newbie to Google+ too, right? We got a lot of newbies today.

Yes, learning the ropes this afternoon. My name's Corey. I'm an independent game developer here in Orlando, Florida.

I'm a sole proprietor.

I also love the weather. I was actually just outside the other day taking some pictures of palm trees, and I wasn't trying to I didn't want to annoy anyone up in the Northeast, but apparently I did, so there's that.

That kind of goes with the territory. I posted on Facebook the other day, it was someone with a ruler in the sand, and it said, "Oh, the winter, will it never end?" Oh, look, Matthew's showing his outside.

Oh, woo-hoo!

I'm getting cold just looking at that, Matthew. Alright, so good to have you here. And then we have David and is Christina? And how are you guys today?

Yes, this is, so I'm David Barry, normally call me Barry Lo, and this is Christina Parker.

Hello everyone.

And we are two members of the Cherry Pie Games team.

Yes, and I remember you sent me a little note that you just had a recent name change, so it's now Cherry Pie, I like that, it's a good name for a gaming place.

Thank you.

Anything having to do with pie works well for me. That's good. So I'm glad you could make it with us today, and I look forward to talking to you a little bit more.

Glad to be here.

And now we have next to him Eli Finnell. Eli's lower thirds isn't working. It's one of those Google days for him. So how you doing, Eli?

Hey, I'm pretty good. I'm Eli Finnell. I'm an internet marketer from sunny Fort Lauderdale. You could actually see the sun behind me. Yeah, it's difficult surviving this sun blizzard. And I'm an unrepentant gamer, and I'm looking forward to hearing from these game developers here. Absolutely.

It's going to be a fun day. And then next, you're a lone New Yorker, but he represents everything up in the Northeast. Matthew Rappaport, how you doing, buddy?

I'm freezing.

No, I'm just kidding. I'm great. Thanks for having me, Shep. Great to be on this gaming show. Yeah, we got buried at Long Island here with the sun. Snow, and the city got 6 to 8 inches, and they were all like, we didn't get any snow. They were all upset about the 6 to 8 inches, because they were calling for 3 feet. But everything's good. It's Friday. I'm working from home, because I'm like— I think it snowed like an inch today. I was like, ah, I'll stay home and do this. That's after that. But I'm excited. I'm Mara Port. I work for techtimes.com, social media, video. And we just got back from CES a week or so ago, or whatever it was. And that was exciting. And looking forward to a fun show, everyone.

Very cool. Thank you for joining us today. Like I said, if you're out there and want to ask us a question, please do. I'm going to just pop up a few hellos here. Denver Prophet 65 and Sunny, Florida State, yay! Okay, Kristen Drysdale is feeling a little burr. Scott Socroft is here. We have who else? Jamal.

I didn't realize Jip was joining in progress. I feel like he would get jipped.

Chips.

Yeah, I got chips, but I— yeah, that's positive.

Greta Nielsen is here from Ohio, and she's used to the cold. David Pipe, England. Michael Thomas, thanks Michael. I like this shirt, it's a new one. Jamal is here. So we have a nice mix of people from all over the world, and more will join us as we get started. Carmen Manich is from Spain. How you doing, Carmen? Good to have you.

Here.

So we're having a good time with our group here today. So let's dive right into it. You know, I, I am admittedly not a tech guy, and I am not a gamer, and it's one thing I've never dived into because I've got an addictive personality, and I figured you would never see me again if I started playing video games. So, but I'm real anxious to hear more about them from you. So let's start with Christopher. We'll just go right back to you. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what you're doing at HamHock Games and the new game you have out and everything you got going on.

All right, so we're currently working on a game called Catfish. We've been working on it for about 3 months now, and it's a game— it's an open-world adventure game where you set sail as a feline captain trying to reclaim the waters from a variety of diverse and sometimes dangerous fish. We're on Kickstarter right now. You saw the link at the beginning, and that's been pretty exciting. We're actually— we're at 80%, and we're only about halfway through the Kickstarter, so I'm very excited about it. But the game is very big on, first off, fishing, as it is a fishing game. We spent a while trying to make sure it's very novel, so it's not a traditional fishing game. Think almost where Mario Tennis has fireballs going everywhere, kind of that sort of fishing where you throw literally a tornado in a can into the environment and try and knock the fish into the air. Um, at the same time, we're very big in the dynamic world where the water is moving about and things are getting knocked around. Uh, there's actually a cartoony ecosystem simulation thing happening. You can actually drive some fish extinct, but that's a very dramatic consequence. More subtly, uh, if you— let's say that we have a predator and a prey, and you start to remove a predator from the environment, the prey will actually start to do better because you're removing the predators from the environment. And if you start to remove the prey from the environment, the predators will start to do worse because they have less food available. Um, and Also, we're very big on the customization in the game. It's a very relaxed but exciting game, and we wanted to make sure people were able to express themselves. So we have this little cartoony cat that you're able to dress up and change the cat's fur color, make it so that the cat is able to dress up as a pirate, dress up as a ninja. I, for one, am very excited about the idea of being a cat samurai. I'm really hoping that I'll be able to do that. That'll be great. But it's a very relaxing but at the same time really exciting game.

What? 69 lives, right?

We've been thinking about working in some sort of 9-life mechanic. For the time being, no. But yeah, as a cat, there's a lot of puns everywhere, which has been pretty awesome, actually.

Well, that should go well on Google+. They love the cats here, and Facebook as well. Cats are just kind of hip. Now, is this your first game, or have you designed other games?

So, uh, we have a couple of people on the team. I am the one that has the most experience thus far. I've made a couple of phone applications, demos, proof of concepts, things of the nature. Uh, the most recent thing I've done is called Fly Whales Fly, which is a phone application on iOS and Android about whales that are parachuting across the United States to be able to get to the lady whales in the other ocean. Uh, the other members on the team— so This is the first game that we have done as a group, other than we formed at a game jam. Are you guys familiar with a game jam?

I am not.

So—

I am. I am.

I am. A game jam is where you sort of gather together to make a game in just a couple of days. So a group on campus at UCF, Game Dev Nights— oh, I suppose our team is entirely UCF students, so go ahead and explain.

So it's like a hackathon for games, right?

Exactly, exactly. So we gathered together as a group, made a game in a couple of days. It was called Necroherder, and we literally were just sort of herding zombies around to get them to attack survivors. And we liked working together, so we decided to run with it.

Very cool. I do have a question here from Denver Prophet. He wants to know if you're using— I think it's called PhysicsX for the fish game?

We are not. We're using Unity, and that has its own physics engine included in it. And then admittedly, I'm doing a lot beyond that to be able to get the water to work work in the simulator and so forth. But we're using the physics engine in Unity.

Very cool. And then we had a comment here from Cheryl Deuce, who wants Matthew to convince you guys to come up with a bacon game.

So is that something more specific, or just a game with bacon in it?

That would be good.

We love bacon.

I think they basically want an animated dancing bacon or something like that. You are the bacon.

Where the bacon maybe fights the eggs and the chicken.

Maybe like the beginning is like you're like a pig minding your own business, and then you become a piece of bacon.

Wow.

Or in keeping with your cat theme, you could have a game where you're bacon running from dogs. Bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon! It's bacon!

You'd be running from plussers, too.

Or you could have a bonus character as a piece of bacon instead of a cat. We actually had a bacon cat, too, where it was a cat wrapped in bacon.

I make no promises, but I'll see what I can do for you. Maybe there can be a bacon costume or something. Dress the cat up as a piece of bacon.

Chris, I want a bacon fish.

Ooh, actually, I will say we do have an area where there's a bunch of fish based off of pigs and cows and stuff. So we already have a pig fish. So I mean, that may work.

You could actually slide in a Breaking Bad bacon reference too with the number if you want.

Just to show you how much we love bacon, Mia Voss is here, my sister Thelma. A game with bacon in it, what else do you need? And then someone actually marked the time when we started talking. Thank you, George.

Wait, is the bacon talk over, or are we still in the bacon— we're in the bacon segment?

I mean, I can talk about bacon all day, so I mean, we can keep going if you like.

There are bacon games out there, too.

You guys are just bacon me crazy now. Bacon games.

But these kinds of— a lot of these games, like, I feel like they become simulators for YouTube channels, right? For people to play. I feel like that's the popular thing. These games that are not necessarily games, they're like simulator games. I'm not totally hip with it, but I've seen some weird games that YouTubers have demonstrated, like shopping in a mall and like running around a mall, things like that. So—

There are some really fascinating simulation-type games. It's not a new genre by any means, but simulations have become very, very popular in recent times. And especially, I know there's one guy locally that we work with who does series of flight sim games for mobile platforms. But yeah, even just kind of off-kilter, there's one game that's found some popularity called Papers, Please, where you're basically a guy who's in charge of customs. Like, you're looking at people's passports and deciding whether or not they get into or through an airport.

So—

Yeah, instead of actually experiencing life. I think there was a game to build IKEA furniture that just came out. And there's a game where you're— What's that game? Like your piece of toast or something? I don't know.

Yeah, toast in a bowl.

Yeah. It's interesting how our fantasy games have become just mundane things in real life that are now the game.

My last game jam game— oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt.

No, go ahead. You're fine.

My last game jam game, actually, I didn't have much time to work on it, but I made a cookie clicker style game that was actually what I called a social media simulator. And it was basically you just click to post random things and over time gain followers and likes and kudos and star marks, things like that.

Wait, isn't that actually how social media works?

I know, that's what I'm saying. I want to take it further at some point.

Very cool. Well, Corey, since we have you now, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you've been doing and some of the things you've made or created or what you have— what you do for fun.

Oh, I like to think everything I do is fun, or I try to make it that way. My most recent published project is available on iOS and Android. It's a game. On iOS, it's called Those Devils Ducks. It's a duck feeding— if you want to call it a simulator, but it's really— there are action elements to it. The action elements are pretty far in, though. You have to feed a lot of ducks before you start to see that there's anything to the game other than just sitting and feeding ducks. On Google, the name is not so family-friendly. It's the full version of A Hole Ducks, but I'll keep that. Yeah, yeah. And that grew out of a game jam game from a year and a half ago where I was frustrated with the theme. I'll put it that way. And my wife actually suggested the game that I make. But I also have two works in progress right now, one of which is a competitive pencil sharpening game. I'm working with— Professor Dr. Peter Smith of UCF, and he has actually built pencil sharpeners that act as controllers. They read input, they read when you have the pencil inserted and use y-axis input on a mouse to read the y-axis. So you competitively see who can sharpen the most pencils in a given amount of time. I'm also working on a dungeon crawler with a guy who works down at DeVry, Dave Sushil. And that we're hoping to have out mid-February. I can throw up a screenshot if you're interested, if I can figure out— bear with me, I'm sorry.

That's okay, we should have gone over that earlier.

But this is just the web deployment. We're building— he's building, I should take zero credit for this, but he's actually building this entire awesome HTML5 JavaScript engine from scratch, and then we're using— we've been using Apache Cordova to wrap it so that we can export it natively to platforms. We want to try and hit as many platforms with this as we can. A lot of people— we were at Otronicon, which is an event that takes place every year at the Orlando Science Center, and it— we were there 2 weeks ago and got a lot of positive feedback, I think. How do I turn off?

Oh, just click on screen share again. Click on the green—

There we go. Okay. But yeah, we got a lot of positive feedback, and a lot of people were comparing the gameplay in it to the original Zelda, which we really like that comparison, obviously, because—

Yeah, that's high praise.

Yeah, yeah. And we've been trying to keep the interface on that one as simple as possible because we want to put it out for mobile platforms and for desktop, PC, Mac, things like that. So a lot of things that happen in the game are context-sensitive and kind of based on single touches. But we do have controller support, so people can play that way. And there's a little more interactivity if you have a controller hooked up. But yeah, that's actually the first in a planned series of games. We want to keep working on it. And eventually— the reason we started building it in HTML5 and JavaScript is because we want to build our own backend that allows us to do cross-platform co-op multiplayer. And we think that would be a lot of fun. Oh, speaking of game jams, so Chris was mentioning game jams. Actually, just last weekend— I know Chris stopped by— I was an event organizer for the Orlando, downtown Orlando Global Game Jam, which produced— I didn't get to make a game at that one, but there were 23 teams that generated a game or some sort of playable prototype within 48 hours. And you can kind of check those out on the Global Game Jam website. I'm also a co-founder of the Indie Galactic Space Jam. Which we did our first version of that in July of this past year. And what was really fun about that— we want to do that again, we want to keep doing that, and our intention with that was to do a game jam. But we also have the Kennedy Space Center and all these great resources just out on the Space Coast, not far from Orlando, and we wanted to try and start connecting game developers with people who work in these highly technical fields and start seeing what they could produce to maybe generate excitement for the space program and get attention out there and even get kids interested in STEM and pursuing those kinds of careers.

I had a couple of questions on that. I want to jump back to the Global Game Jam for a moment. Weren't we like— wasn't Orlando one of the biggest areas or something?

It actually was, and now we might be cheating the numbers a little bit on this, but we actually, because there were two Orlando sites. There was the downtown Orlando, and then there was also one in Winter Park that I believe took place at Full Sail. And between the two events— what's that?

I went to the Full Sail one.

It was, it was large, right?

It was very large. It was bigger than I expected.

Yeah, and, and that's the thing is between the two sites, I think Orlando had the fifth or sixth largest city presence in the world, which is really an accomplishment considering that some JAM sites encompass entire countries. There are some countries where there's one site for the country.

That says a lot for Florida.

Yeah, Orlando.

Mickey Mouse country.

Very cool. Well, thank you. Let's move over to Barry and Christina, and we'll talk now about what you guys are doing. You know, and I was at Full Sail once. I love that place.

Oh my Folsom's definitely a great university. They have a lot of resources there. But we're Barry and Christina, and we are from Cherry Pie Games. The most recent game that we worked on is Hollow, and it was born actually out of two different game jams. We started with the Big Scary Game Jam, which is hosted by UCF, and then we competed in the Leap Motion 3D Jam. Which was a month-long jam compared to the 48-hour one.

We had like 160-something other competitors to— we were fighting over getting some money and going to IndieCade, which is in New York. We didn't win, but we did get 8th place, and they gave us a bit of funding. So we're taking that money, and we've now made our own studio. And it's Christina, I, and then 4 other UCF students. And our game Hollow, it's kind of a— it's like a VR—

Atmospheric hayride kind of thing.

We'll show you some screenshots if we can.

Oh, that would be cool.

Do some screen sharing right now. Let's see.

How about you open it in the background, and I'll talk more about it.

OK.

So Hollow is basically, as you said, an atmospheric hayride. It started out as a concept to kind of make something, a VR experience for a casual gamer, because a lot of people don't have access to VR technology, and we kind of wanted to make something that would introduce them to it. So it's just like a short 6.5-minute game where it's on rails. It's kind of Disney's Haunted Mansion where you're experiencing a story, and there's some jump scares, there's some things that might get you and surprise you around every turn. But essentially it's just a—

yeah?

Before you get too far, can you say, take a moment to explain like the Oculus and Leap Motion and how that works with the game?

Sure. Well, the Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset. Essentially it allows for 360-degree views in a 3D atmospheric way. And then the Leap Motion is a hand-tracking device that uses two infrared sensors to detect where your hands are, and based upon your hand motions, they can actually do different interactions in the games and control what you're doing in the game. For our game, since you're in a hayride, you're controlling the horse. You know, you can speed up, slow down. You can also have a lantern and look around and see what's going on. So it's really immersive. And if you combine the Leap Motion with the virtual reality headset, it gives you an experience that's really not like anything else you've probably had before. It's the first way to really get involved in a video game. But I think Barry is showing you some screenshots right now.

Yeah, you guys getting any of that?

Yeah, they're very pretty looking, man.

Awesome.

We definitely had an art style that we wanted to go with. It's this low-poly, very bright and colorful, and I don't know, it's beautiful. We're so proud of it.

We took a lot of inspiration from all of Walt Disney's work. A lot of his stuff from like the '50s like Fantasia, but also a lot of his dark rides like the Haunted Mansion.

That actually has a little Bambi look to it.

Hmm.

You know the fire scene in the Bambi kind? That's what—

Yeah, yeah. We really try to capture that very classic American kind of storytelling with visuals.

Very cool.

Yeah, I think a lot of the screenshots you're showing are really— they say something about the world. It gives a clear sense of the tone of it. So I want to say good job on that. It looks very good.

Thanks, Chris.

Very good. Okay, so thank you for sharing that with us.

Hey, can I just real quick— Indycade. So that's something that I'm not aware of, and I'm in New York, and I want to go to that. Is there something about— can you guys talk a little bit about Indycade, this event? Happening next month and how quickly, how widespread it is, or is it growing? And it says Indiecade East. I guess there's a West?

Yeah, this is Indiecade East. There is a West one that takes place, I think it's sometime in August. But from what I've heard, Indiecade East is definitely growing. It's one of the conventions for indie developers and anybody that wants to get into the indie game industry. There's a lot of people there showing off new technology and indie game studios. It's definitely growing and expanding. It's kind of the place to be if you want to be an indie dev upcoming in the industry and you want to get your foot in.

Cool. Hopefully press are welcome, because I'm going to try to get in there.

I imagine that they'd want press there.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry to interrupt.

Oh, it's okay.

No, if you're going to IndieGames, then is the hopes to get picked up by like a major distributor then, or just fund your own and put it out there?

I think we'd like to partner with larger companies and development studios, but we kind of want to keep our indie feel and our indie roots. Keep it small, keep creative control over the games that we want to make, and work with larger companies that want to go down this path with us.

We're really interested in working with hardware firms, the people like Leap Motion, Oculus Rift, and others.

Unreal.

Yeah. Yeah. But not so much being owned or being told what to do by a boss, like it's someone from like Blizzard or EA. We're not looking for that.

So is that the advantages of doing an indie game over a big studio game, that you can have your own control? Like what do you think— I mean, I'm just curious to know from everyone what the advantages are of being indie versus— it seems like you eventually need a company to help you out down the road, right?

I think one of the biggest advantages to being indie is being being young and green enough that you can explore a lot of the frontiers of this industry. Like, we're using Unreal 4, which is an engine a lot of people shy away from, but since we don't know what we're doing, we just dive in. Why not? And it's like the same philosophy with all the hardware too.

Yeah, I think on this scale a lot of different things become feasible. You have to imagine if you have a couple hundred people, you know, tens of millions of dollars in your project, you must make money. You can't take risks then, which means that the sort of projects that are made by a large AAA studio are very different from the kind of projects that a small indie can do. A large AAA studio must make— they have to ensure that they're not gonna, you know, lose something and then everybody is out of a job, which means they have to take very safe gambles, which means they're probably going to do something that is similar to what's already out there because it's predictable. So as an indie, we both have creative control, but we have the capacity to try things that are a little bit further out there. As there are— if, let's say, that a project doesn't go well, we're not bankrupt. We're not completely, you know, we're not out of it. But if you're a large AAA studio and you spent, you know, $70, $100 million making Call of Duty and nobody buys it, you're now bankrupt and everybody's out of a job.

Or if you make a video game to the movie The Interview. What?

I think one thing that I really like about being indie is the sense of community and support that we get from the community. Because we're so small, we're so in touch with our players and people who support us, and we try to be really personable and talk to them. And if you're a larger corporation, you're just kind of a faceless person in the crowd. And so are your players. You don't get to know them on an individual basis. And being indie really gives us that relationship that you can't get in a big game studio.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. I know at Hammock Games, even I specifically have gone out of the way to try and talk to as many of our fans directly as possible. I believe Corey Cochran had mentioned going to Atronachon. Like, I was there as well. And I was actually the game developer talking to our fans directly. And that's something that is It's a very big deal for indies being connected with the community of fans. So I don't know, I'm very happy about that.

I was just going to ask, how do you get your game out there, like around the world? How do you get it where more people want to play it rather than just, you know, if you're starting in a local community and you have friends that you send it out to, how does it really start to get far-reaching?

Internet.

Internet.

I was just going to say the same thing. Yeah. Right now—

oh, go ahead, Matthew.

No, I was going to say real quick, like, do you— like, with Chef's question, do you feel like that there's— because there's way more channels for you to get your game out there, like Steam and PlayStation. I don't know if you can get it on Xbox, but there's a lot more channels out there available to you now than, say, someone from the '80s or early '90s, right? Absolutely.

I think the industry is definitely changing and accepting indie game studios as more legitimate than they used to be considered. I know Xbox has implemented different ways for indie games to be purchased on the Xbox, and PlayStation as well. Steam is really a big provider for the indie devs. But really, it's the internet and our fans. It's all the social media, Reddit, Tumblr.

Reddit.

Reddit, Reddit, Reddit. Those are the ways that our game gets out there.

Do you not feel that Reddit guides the entire internet? I feel like everyone goes to Reddit. And like all the— Reddit dictates what the news is for that day. Like everyone just copies that almost.

Yeah, Reddit is the internet.

Yeah, Reddit's very important.

I'm gonna be killed for saying that, but it's true.

Everyone's there. It's definitely a big part of it. It definitely carries a lot of sway.

Here's a question from Kathleen DeCosmo. She wants to know if you also plan to attend PAX in Boston.

Well—

I'm our convention person. So I wanted to go to PAX South that happened last weekend, the weekend before last weekend. It just happened, but I missed it because this is the first year that they had PAX South, so I didn't hear about it in time. PAX East is already sold out, but I plan on getting my hands on some tickets. I have some ways. So hopefully I'll be attending PAX East. I'm still considering going to Indiecade. No, there's other conventions on the horizon for us as well.

Very cool. And Nazim Beltram is asking about Twitch.

Nah, we didn't talk about Twitch yet, Nazim.

I know Hammock Games and I, we both stream our development process on Twitch. It's a relatively new thing to Twitch, having a game development section, because it's typically just been for game streaming in general. But it is something that I think helps us in being indie developers. It connects us to our fans more.

Absolutely, being able to show like full transparency behind the scenes of how we make everything, and people are allowed to ask whatever they want to, it really helps us.

Yeah, to an extent.

After you, sir.

Oh, alright, um, yeah, we've been streaming our development on Twitch as well, and yeah, it's number one, people get to ask questions, number two, as we are still students in school, it allows us to show We're continuing to do work. We're doing work regularly, and I think it's really helped us connect with our community and give a clear sense of what the process is.

What I was gonna throw on there was too that it's also another avenue whereby your community can actually help to add content or guide the development of your game. Because if you're already reaching your audience, they can tell you what they want. They can tell you they want bacon in the game. They want a bacon fish. So yeah, it's a really valuable resource.

It's the perfect avenue for concept testing, for any sort of user testing. You know, you get that instantaneous live feedback. And then not just streaming our development process, but other Twitch streamers, if— you know, it's a perfect venue for free media. I know we've had a streamer play our game and He had, you know, about 1,000 viewers at the time, and then he posted it to YouTube and got 30,000 views on that. So that's just another means to spread our game online.

So I'm gonna go ahead and jump back a bit to the bacon thing. Um, throwing it out there, uh, on the Kickstarter there's actually a reward tier that lets you design a costume. So if you super want the cat to dress up as bacon, you totally can have that happen.

Throwing that out there.

Gotta love it. We do love our bacon.

Well, thank you.

Let's jump in and talk to our other two panelists a bit. Eli, we haven't had a chance to talk to you too much, so what's your take on all this? You're an internet marketer and you love games. What do you think about everything that's going on?

Well, you know, games are one of those things that I love, and sometimes, you know, when I've got time, I can just spend days is just obsessing over games. And then, like most people, I have real life, and then I can't. But from a marketing perspective, I'd be curious about what would be the best— what do you find to be the best distribution platform in terms of, is it Play Store? Is it Steam? Valve, you know, what do you all think is the best distribution platform, honestly?

I think as an indie gamer, it's not necessarily about one. I think it's about getting your game out there in as many viable platforms as possible to the masses, because we don't have the capabilities that a AAA game studio does, so we have to utilize everything that's available to us.

Well, and it's also about, I think, getting things out to people appropriately. If you have designed a game for a touch device and you want to put it on a keyboard or something with a controller, you see a lot of kind of slapdash patch on, "Okay, well now I can kind of make things happen." And that's the most— that's what I would say about going multiplatform is to really focus on designing per platform. Just like when you put in a resume to a job, you want to try and guide your resume so that you are appropriately answering the job description. It's the same thing here. You just want to make sure that whoever's going to be using your software on their hardware, your software is actually designed to best interact with their hardware.

Cory, speaking of your hardware and software for pencil pushers, how do you distribute that? Because you made your own hardware for it.

That's something— it's actually something we're talking about. We did it more as, I think, a lark than anything else. But then what was kind of funny about it was we had it— OK, so we we had it at Otronicon where that was the first place we were really showcasing it. And we actually had some people approach us and suggest some avenues or some uses that we hadn't really thought of. There was one woman who came up, and now I don't know if anything's going to go anywhere with this or who— there are a couple people we were told to contact and talk about this, and we might get into talks with them. But something that someone brought up is that she was there with two of her children who Both are on, um, they're both on the autism spectrum, and apparently they attend a special school locally, but something that they actually do, I guess kind of as a leisure time or reward activity, is they sharpen pencils. And I guess for many of the kids, this is actually a very soothing thing from what she was telling us. I would never have imagined. I don't remember people liking sharpening pencils when I was a child. But something like that, and especially if you can take something like that where it's something that maybe already has components that make people happy, but also gamify it and add those layers, like add some sort of reward structure to it where maybe— okay, and something like that, because again, if you're going to go that kind of a route with it, then you definitely want to look for some sort of grant funding or something like that where maybe— because that's something where you're not trying to go out and market and be like, yeah, buy our game for your school. It would be something where you would want to try and find some funding to develop it, but it was just something right there. That was something we had never thought of. We just wanted to make a game where we could stare at each other while we were sharpening pencils, and our pencil sharpeners would catch on fire on the screen. And so we kind of did that.

Make life reality. That's a good thing. Very cool. Well, you know, my wife is a teacher, and she would say that a lot of the kids like to sharpen pencils, but they would sharpen them so there was no pencil left. Yeah, it would just keep sharpening.

It's always an accomplishment to bring it down to the very end. You're like, eh, there's no pencil left, I have destroyed it.

That's cool. So Eli, anything you're doing for fun right now? What's going on in your life, on and off the Plus?

Well, you know, I just started working with a new company. We work with a lot of different clients, so that's not everybody's idea of fun, but I'm totally into this stuff. Tech nerdery stuff. And I've got— since I'm spending more time at home, you know, I'm starting to get back into the gaming scene, you know, dipping my toes back in with some Grand Theft Auto, you know, maybe get back into Skyrim soon. You know, my Nord character is languishing away in his castle right now. By the way, speaking of Skyrim and just the Elder Scrolls games in general, I would like to say I think that Bethesda Softworks there with the Elder Scrolls series in particular has just been brilliant in their ability to build a fan base. Just like, they love to put these Easter eggs in their games that are all references to things that are organically from the Elder Scrolls, you know, like online community, which goes way back to like the bulletin board days, I think. Like, they have a dragon in their mythos called Akatosh, and that's because one of their early popular forum users used to sign his signature line as "also known as the Old Smaug," that being the dragon from The Hobbit, "himself," which when you take the letters becomes Akatosh. And you can find Easter eggs all throughout their games that are directly taken from the interactions that grew organically within their gaming community.

And I just think that's absolutely brilliant. I didn't know any of that. I didn't know Bethesda was— I knew they were already cool, but I didn't know they were that cool. That's amazing. When we were at Tronicon, we don't, like Catfish, have a Kickstarter yet. But a little 12-year-old boy, he really liked our game. And he wanted to give us money in some sort of form. So he gave us $5. And we actually got his name. And we're going to make him a character, like a full NPC in the game. And we're giving him a tombstone. We're going to make him— immortalize him in our product one day.

He'll become an Easter egg because we were just so touched by his generosity and gesture.

It was adorable. It was amazing. You just could not give him something.

Very cool. And Matthew, over to you.

Hey, guys.

So what's going on?

Hey, everyone. Yeah, I got crashed. Sorry. Yeah, I feel like there's a lag. Hopefully there's not. No, this has been awesome. I like the Scott Pilgrim poster you guys got back there. That's pretty cool. Hanging out, Barry and Christina. That's pretty awesome. So yeah, gaming. So I work for Tech Times. We have a pop culture geek gaming. We do lots of stories every day about games, reviews, comic books too. I think art, comics, gaming, they all go— they all kind of cross over with each other, which is kind of cool. I don't know if I missed that. Let's get my friend Nazim Beltran out there. He's dying to know more about Twitch TV and virtual reality gaming and all that. I guess I can— before I can— let's go into that. So Twitch.tv, any opinion on Amazon? They bought, I think, bought it under Google's nose or whatever. Any thoughts?

They did.

For a while it was back and forth between whether or not it was going to be Google that bought them out or Amazon.

A lot of animosity over Google buying them.

Exactly. Amazon did end up buying them out. It kind of happened overnight, and it was very hush-hush and quiet, but of course it got out. From the streamers that I know and everybody that I've spoken to about it, nobody's really upset. It seems like they're not going to change anything. They like what's going with it. They're just there to expand it if need be. Because I don't know how long you guys have been following Twitch, but it's been around for a long time. It used to be Justin.tv and things like that. And it's just growing and growing. And I definitely think that watching video games and streaming is in the future. I mean, they already have it on television, normal channels in Korea. So just a few short years, it'll be on normal cable television.

And what does everyone feel Twitch versus YouTube, like they both— what the big difference is between which channel you want to focus— which platform you'd want to focus on for gaming?

I think you need a healthy dose of both, but I definitely think from, yet again, from all the streamers and Twitch people that I know, it's completely different audiences. The YouTube audience and the Twitch audience are completely separate, which is why you want to get your hands into both. The people who watch Twitch seem to invest more time in it, and YouTubers, people who watch YouTube, are more casual viewers of video games. They're typically into short commentaries, less than 10 minutes. Like let's play, or they do commentaries of gameplay with their favorite streamers. People who watch Twitch are more into competitive play. They're more of what used to be called a hardcore gamer, and they're really invested in the personalities they watch and the games that they play.

There you have it. Cool. Nazim, did that answer your question? Does anyone else want to talk about Twitch? Because the other thing I was going to ask about— I don't know if you did when I was gone— virtual reality gaming. But CES— Virtual reality gaming at CES, that was like the big thing, and maybe every year it is. But I tried the Samsung VR, the Oculus, and I've tried— and I saw VirtuaKami had a gun game of virtual reality. And you guys have a game, a virtual reality game. So is virtual reality in gaming, is that the next year or two, that's all people are going to be talking about, you think?

It's going to explode really soon.

Oh yeah, there's a lot of things. Things on the horizon that are kind of hush-hush.

We can't talk about everything, but it is going to get enormous. I don't know a single entertainment company that isn't investing into R&D with VR.

We're tripping over each other here because we're so excited about the future of virtual reality, and we can't wait for it to be announced and for things to happen already that are in motion. A lot of people were worried that virtual reality is like a novelty.

Just a gimmick.

Exactly. Kind of like 3D movies had their heyday for a little bit. You know, it comes and goes. 3D in the '50s, 3D in the '80s, 3D in the 2000s. And whether or not, you know, virtual reality was going to be something like that, that just is a fad and goes through. But, you know, it's coming. If you watch science fiction, which is always said to be the precursor of science fact, There's already so little, like, you know, SAO, Sword Art Online, there's immersive VR technology in these science fiction things that is about to happen.

I think anybody that puts on, that's tried the Oculus, that's put it on has no doubt that they can get it right away. I think it's instant. I don't know if any of you all agree with that, but it felt that way, and it feels like it's up there. The thing I did find interesting, though, I was at Oculus's Off the Record But the guy I told— the gentleman I talked to at Oculus said very adamantly that it's not a gaming platform. But what's interesting is they were demoing mostly games. A couple of movies, a couple of other demos, but they had a Heroes of the Hood demo. They had this asteroid game demo with the VR. So what do you guys do? Could you talk a little bit about virtual reality and also about Oculus? Do you see it more as a gaming platform, or do you understand that it's really more than that?

I think that the earliest adapters— adopters— they will be gamers without a doubt. They will be the people who want to play WoW and Call of Duty and actually be there in the universe. They want to be immersed in their favorite video game. They'll be the first ones to pick it up, but they are not the only people who care about this at all. I know that the medical industry is really getting into this for surgical training. I know that a lot of car manufacturers are also getting into this. I don't know all the specifics, but—

Department of Defense is looking into it a lot as well for simulation training, that kind of thing.

Absolutely. It's widely applicable. It's just a different medium. That's really all it is.

And do you guys see it just in people's houses? Like, you don't see people actually sitting in a Starbucks with it on their head, do you? I mean, I know I saw one picture on Reddit.

Yeah, yeah, I saw the same thing, man.

Same thing.

So you're like, is that really going to happen? I don't know.

No, it will happen. It's going to happen very soon.

People will be in Starbucks with virtual reality.

I really can't— I really am sad. I'll be sad that first day where it's like, man gets hit by a car wearing his VR glasses. And then everyone's going to— all the news stories, like Google Glass. When that came out, everyone was like, oh my god, piracy, and all this stuff.

See, this is what I want. I want the Oculus. Thing with a Starbucks inside of it. I don't know, I'll sit at my laptop and drink my coffee pretending I'm in Starbucks.

Exactly, and you have to see the trend. Virtual reality isn't just something that's going to come and go because large corporations like Oculus and just recently, what was it, Microsoft with their HoloLens.

Who was that?

That was Microsoft.

Yeah, Microsoft with their HoloLens. I mean, it's a type of virtual reality. It's, you know, these large companies are investing millions of dollars in this technology because they realize that we're on the forefront of what's called wearable tech. And wearable tech will be something that happens on a norm. You know, Google Glass, people make fun of people who wear it now because it looks silly, but 20 years from now it'll be the norm for everybody to have, you know, a Samsung watch that you can read everything on, and Google Glass or HoloLens, Fitbit.

MP3 players you wear.

It's another form of wearable tech that'll be norm.

There's a couple of things I want to add on to this, first of which is that it takes— I think the hardware is coming along pretty well. At the same time, it kind of takes developers a while to figure out what to do with it. So I'm pretty happy with how they're approaching it, where they're able to get it in the hands of a lot of hobbyists, a lot of people to be able to literally just get used to how to make something with this technology. So I think they're approaching it very well. I think I am very excited about it. I do think it is going to be a big deal. I think it's gonna take a little bit longer than a lot of the other people I have talked to. I think in some cases you have to deal with expense. So let's say we have the Omni or something of the nature. If it's a big piece of hardware, it takes a bit to actually you have to have enough software to justify the device, that kind of thing. And I think they're really working on getting that price point low, so I'm pretty excited about that. At the same time, let's say we have something like the Oculus in a Starbucks. I, I think we're gonna see a lot of wearable tech which is gonna be normal. That specifically, I don't think people are gonna use out and about simply because of the getting hit by a car scenario. I know my immediate reaction would be—

Is it a real car or is it a virtual reality car? I don't know.

Both terrifying. But let's say that you are at a Starbucks and you have an Oculus on, and I know I'm a clumsy guy, I would start to knock cops over. And so I think if you're in a public environment, people— you're probably going to see wearable tech like Google Glass where you can see the world around you. If you're using the Oculus, which sort of removes the world around you, I don't think that's going to be something you'll see in a public environment too much soon.

Do you think they would actually go as far as ban it? I'm sorry.

No. They probably won't ban it, just because I don't think they'll need to. And I really don't think it'll be that much of an issue. I mean, effectively, it's just going to— it's not like you're going to run somebody down or anything. So I think it's just going to be the obvious choice. So you wouldn't need to ban it.

And if people want to do it, then sure.

Sure, why not?

Something—

I just wanted to add something to this discussion that I think that, well, from a consumer perspective, Barry and Christina are absolutely right that the early adopters of VR technology will be gamers. I don't think that's necessarily where VR and augmented reality are really going to get their foot in the door. Like, when you look at Google Glass, you know, I mean, okay, it wasn't launched very widely, but sort of meh with consumers even once they made it available to buy on the Play Store. But it is getting huge with firefighters and gas rig operators and doctors and, and, uh, courtesy people for airports. Uh, I think a lot of it's going to start with real practical, what sort of like Christopher was getting at, killer app, uh, you know, killer uses for it., and then it'll slowly— I don't think it will happen as fast as some people here are thinking.

Simulations.

Right, or like you go to— they're already doing this with Google Cardboard. You go to your dealership and they got the Google Cardboard thing and you take a virtual test drive of the car. So I think it's going to be practical uses, the killer app uses, and it probably— I'm going to be pessimistic here and say I think it'll be at least 20 years before the average person will be walking around with augmented reality and virtual reality. There will be some people, but I don't think the average person is going to be doing this, walking around with it for 20 years. They may be using it, but in some capacities, but I don't think they're going to be walking around with virtual augmented reality for the average person for at least—

It's going to be more about wearable tech, don't you think?

Stuff that disappears more than stuff that makes the world disappear.

Something I figured I'd bring up, kind of in response to that, and I guess I would focus less on a projection of when this stuff will be mainstream, but we were talking about other uses for it and kind of financial powerhouses that could really help to push the tech forward. And something I was going to mention was that I'm pretty sure NASA actually gave some sizable sums to a couple universities. I wish I could remember the name of the prime Primary University up north off the top of my head, where they're developing simulations too, and they want to have as immersive simulations as possible. The thought process being for long-term spaceflight, they want to be able to combat homesickness and mental issues that might arise. And something— the reason I even was aware of that existing was because I actually recently worked on a device driver for something called a scent palette, which is a smell generation machine for UCF, uh, for their psychology department, because they're doing studies with PTSD patients and the effects of different stimuli on triggers.

Yeah, that was, that was a very interesting thing you were working on. Um, that was, I don't know, I don't have anything other than I thought it was cool, but I mean, I thought it was cool, so I'll throw that out there.

It was really fun walking through a haunted carnival and having popcorn burnt popcorn, cotton candy, and trash smells.

So is that where virtual reality is going? Sensors and wind and like creating that environment more so with all the different senses?

Making it 4D?

That's the interesting—

sorry, that's the interesting thing is that most of what we're talking about is visual, but there are so many more components to actually creating a simulation and I find that interesting. I guess I'll throw that out there for discussion.

I'm gonna— so regarding smell specifically, I think that one's probably gonna take a bit. Um, for— I both know that's positive is that, uh, what you smell is very tied into memory. So if we could actually get smell to work, that has a lot of very good potential uses. Uh, but on a negative side, unfortunately, a lot of the things that are using smell have like a— let's say you have a particular, like, bag of, like, a trash smell or flowers smell, and it's hard to be able to have a general-purpose thing that you're able to make smell differently, which means depending on the application and what you want to be smelling, you have to use something else. I think we're gonna see a lot of different areas coming about, but we're probably gonna focus on vision more than anything soon and see some of the other things come along. I know I've seen a couple of people I suppose to ground my experience, I'm not actually doing a lot of work in the virtual reality, but I used to work in doing research in a lab that did, so throwing that out there. I think you're seeing a lot of things in haptics where we're starting to build a good foundation. I think it's gonna take a while to get those to actually happen as they're more complicated to do cost-effectively and consistently. Consistently well.

And for the record, even the cheap machine that I was writing the driver for was, I think, somewhere in the $3,000 range, and they had machines scaling up into the $20,000+ so—

Yeah, and it's hard to justify writing a video game for the limited market that would have that device. This isn't related to the current thing, but I thought it should be thrown out there. I think initially a lot of VR and wearable tech is going to have a problem with user acceptance simply because of science fiction. I think, for instance, Google Glass— everybody has this notion of putting it on and looking around and then getting to see everybody's names and where they work and getting all of this information. And they, they have almost this idealized version, and the reality is we have to slowly sort of chip our way up to this really high-quality experience. And so a lot of people, they would try and be like, oh well, alright, I wanted this to be like Terminator vision. And so I think we're— there's gonna be a conflict where people have to sort of get used to the fact that this isn't going to be all of our dreams quite yet.

Yeah, I'm looking for the holodeck.

Exactly, everybody wants the holodeck, and we're working toward that, but it's gonna take a while.

Well, you know, I mean, there's a certain perspective that, that Google Glass's demise— yes, it's not quite gone, but let's say the demise of the Explorer project was accelerated by Android Wear because what Google Glass was promising, this ability to discreetly check and respond to notifications, can actually be done with the wristwatch thing and is a little more societally normal. Though I suppose at some point Somebody had to have looked like the idiot with a clock on their wrist before that became normal.

Well, and also the demos that they come out with, the first thing, the Google Glass demo we first saw, the HoloLens demo, I mean, most people just think, oh, it's going to work like that when they get it, and it's probably nowhere near that. So most average— I would say the average person, not—

yeah.

Yeah, it's easy to market it as the thing that is their dreams, so unfortunately they may even be causing more of a conflict there.

I know we're almost out of time. I wanted to ask about— bring it back to indie games real quick and just ask all the indie game developers what changes you've seen in the perception of indie games over the last few years. And I mean, we sort of covered that. But if there's anything else as far as people more accepting about indie games and playing them more and talking about them more than even in the last 2 or 3 years blowing up more.

I think first off, it is easier to become an indie gamer because there is a lot of technology that's helping, let's say, Unity, Unreal, things of the nature. A lot of people— I think it's kind of the new fad to treat it almost like being a rock star, where I know a lot of people who want to be an indie gamer, but they just sort of sit around and fantasize about it as opposed to actually doing things, which is both exciting, but throwing it out there, I think there is a lot of hype on the subject. I also think you're seeing, because it's easier to do, there's a lot more successes where a rock star may not be feasible. And I'm certainly— it's very hard to create indie games. I'm not going to say otherwise. But it is a lot more feasible than it used to be. We're seeing a lot of exciting things happen on Steam. We're seeing Sony, Microsoft really start to support indies, things of the nature. So it's been a very exciting time where I think it's become much more prominent. What do you guys think, though?

Well, I think really with the acceptance of people classifying themselves as gamers or people who play games, it's become more mainstream to play games in general, whether or not you actually classify yourself as a gamer. I'm pretty sure 90% of the population has a smartphone, and probably 80% of those people have some sort of casual game or mobile game on their phone. You know, they might spend 5 hours playing Candy Crush a day. So because more people are playing games, it opens up the idea for people to create more games, and more casual games specifically. Because being an indie game maker developer, we don't make 50 hours of content for our games. You know, we don't have the capabilities or the resources to really put together that. Cherry Pie Games, we're a studio of 6 people. That would be a project that would take us our lifetime. So because more people are playing more casual games, it opens up the possibility to have more indie gamers, indie game developers.

I really— and I think building off that, I think that's one of the best things about this entire kind of culture of the gaming industry. I mean, it wasn't too long ago where normal cable television, there were only 3 channels. And that really restricted what people were consuming and watching. And what they could even be thinking about. I mean, of course there were other mediums such as books, but it was still very limiting medium. But with indie culture and the internet, it really allows people who maybe had started gaming with the arcades, or even as old as pinball machines, they're able to stick with the same culture, but they're able to experience a wider breadth of experiences. And that's the coolest thing, and it's only going to keep growing, especially now that titans like Microsoft are noticing that indie developers are of monetary value to them. Like, they just bought Minecraft, which is no longer, you know, really indie, but it was indie. It used to be.

Very cool. Well, that's been a great discussion. We are coming close to the time, and guys, I'd like to have you all back on another time time to talk about this. You're always welcome on my show. It's been very illuminating for me, and I think we've delved into a lot of subjects besides just the gaming. And you know, the one thing about technology is that a lot of things tend to come out of it that we weren't thinking about in the first place. So, you know, the games lead to other things, just as like other things led to the games. So it's— people tend to forget about that part of it. I know we've learned a lot of— we've come up with a lot of different nuances for our life because someone invented one thing that wasn't and they are intentionally aimed towards that. So, you know, the games can bring us closer to reality too, and other items. Very cool. Well, let's go down the panel one last time and say goodbye. And Christopher, any calls to action? Anything besides your— well, we want to talk about your Kickstarter campaign, which is almost fulfilled, so let's get people on that. Anything else you'd like to talk about?

Yeah, once again, Kickstarter, very excited about that. This— it is ending February 10th, so if you get it now, uh, there— number one, limited window, number two, if you get the game now, it's gonna be cheaper. We're also on Steam Greenlight, uh, so if you're worried about actually donating money, you're able to go on the Steam Greenlight. It's, uh, it takes nothing. Um, at the same time, I wanted to say, uh, thank you, uh, Chef Dennis for inviting us on, and I'm very excited about the other projects as well. Cory, your projects have always been very interesting. And very fantastic. And the guys who are working on Holo, Christina and Barry, I really think you're using the technology very effectively, and every time you show it off, you can see just hordes of people coming around to look at it. So very proud to be talking with you on the work you've done.

Very cool. All right, and Cory, anything you'd like to share with us before we sign off today?

Anything you'd like to I was gonna tell you to go back Chris's game.

Thank you. Cats.

Okay, well—

Are they exploding cats?

They are not exploding cats. I'm afraid that's the oatmeal.

No, I know, I know. Yeah, yeah, I was just trying to give you an edge. Exploding cats with bacon.

There are bombfish that explode though, so I'll throw that out there. I'll tell you, in the next 2 hours or so, we see our numbers go up, I will give you a bacon costume. I'll talk to people, I'll make it happen.

Make it happen. All right, folks, you heard it right here. All right, Christina and Barry, thanks so much for being here. And anything you'd like to leave us with before we go?

We would just like to thank you for this opportunity. It was great fun talking with everyone, meeting everyone, getting everyone's different inputs on VR and technology and indie gaming. We do have a website if you want to check us out, it's cherry-pie-games.com. You can check out Holo, it's free, there's a link to it. You can also see what we're working on next and where we'll be showing it off.

Great, thank you, thanks for being on today. Eli, so good to see you, it's been long overdue. We have to— since we're actually in the same state, we need to get together again physically too.

Absolutely, absolutely. Thanks for having me on the show, Chef. I'd like to encourage everybody to go back Chris's game because I want that bacon suit. Dang it. I want to see Bacon Cat. And I'm gonna be very disappointed with all you people out there if we don't see Bacon Cat. I have a website too, EliFennell.com. I post articles there, but the best place to follow me online is Google Plus, right here at Google Plus, best social network on the internet. Thank you. And thanks for having me. It was really great getting to talk to everybody.

Good to see you again. And Matthew, always a pleasure seeing you. Thanks so much for coming to us from the snowy Northeast today.

Sure, my pleasure. I'm so happy to be here with all of you and hope to get to know you guys more and your games. Definitely agree with what everyone's saying. Eli too, go back the Christmas game, go back bacon cats, meows. Gotta get that bacon cat costume so we can make more memes and enjoy the internet more. But no, it's been fun and I look forward to Indiecade. Hopefully I get to meet the Parkers and Cherry Pie Games and anyone else that's going to be at Indiecade, and maybe even E3. I don't know if any gamers show up at E3. I'm guessing they do. And PAX. I don't know how cool— I don't know. Or not. And, you know, Tech Times— go ahead, Chris.

If we can, we're going to be at all possible conventions, but I can't commit to any particular one right now. —but if we can afford it, we're going to go to just everything.

That's the goal.

The problem with E3 is it's a consumer-only convention, so it's really difficult to get tickets to. It's really hard, yeah.

And I don't know, is there gaming more and more at Comic-Cons now, too?

Yeah, I mean, pretty much every big studio has their own convention. I think the big one for developers is Game Developer Convention, GDC, which is happening at the beginning of March.

OK, cool. Well, so yeah, I'm looking forward to meeting you guys and writing more. We write reviews about everything under the sun, and we do interviews too. And techtimes.com, and especially techtimes.com/t-lounge, we make videos. We have video interviews. I'd love to do Hangouts with all of you. And I see that Chris Berry is writing something in his arm. So that's good.

You can see that. We're writing down everybody's names.

Take a screenshot, that would help. But you can find me @NewYorkActor. Google+ I agree is a great network, you can find me there. And happy heat in Florida and California while we get more snow on Monday.

That's a good way to leave us. And guys, you can also go into the comment stream and leave any information you want there. So if you want to leave any, any of your websites or any other information for our viewers that might come back later, please feel free to go to the comment stream and do that too.

I'd like to go ahead and say that— oh, sorry, I'd like to go ahead and say, I didn't— that way you don't have to search through Kickstarter or Steam itself. If you go to hamhockgames.com, it has a link to all of our social media, the Kickstarter, Steam, it has a link to all of those directly. Very good.

So you heard it here, and thank you all for being with us today. It was a wonderful show, and all of our viewers, thank you for stopping by on this Friday, this last Friday of January. It seems crazy that the month has flown by, but oh well, that's what happens. Okay, so have a great weekend, and I will see you soon.