The Mindset of Personal Success in the Game Industry, with Tommy Tallarico

Jordan: 00:00

Welcome to Playmaker's The Game Industry Podcast. Whether you work at a studio, publisher, service provider, or startup, this is the podcast that will give you all the information and entertainment you need to succeed in the game industry. Who am I? Just your friendly neighborhood veteran designer and producer, Jordan Blackman. In each episode of Playmakers, I go to work uncovering insights, tactics, and know how from a wide range of game industry luminaries. My goal? To help you win the game of making games. Are you ready? Then let's begin.

This week I have an exciting and inspiring interview with The man, the myth, the legend, Tommy Tallarico. He is a veritable video game industry icon. Certainly one of the most successful video game composers in the field. He's helped revolutionize the gaming world, creating unique audio landscapes that enhance the experience of playing the game.

He kind of broke through with Prince of Persia, which we talk about, but he also worked on the Terminator, Aladdin, Cool Spot, Seventh Guest, and on and on , Earthworm Jim, MDK. So just an absolute legend in that part of the industry. Also, of course, Tommy's well known for having started and formed and executed on Video Games Live, the symphony orchestra that plays music from video games all over the world.

I've seen video games live in LA and it was quite a thrill. I recommend if, if you ever have the opportunity that you do as well. And now Tommy is launching a new game console, the Amico under the Intellivision brand, certainly the most audacious thing he's done yet in a career of doing audacious things.

We talk about all this and more in this interview, we cover his incredible journey from homelessness to being the CEO of a company, bringing out a new game console. We talk about how he broke into music and games and how he broke through and his approach to some of his more well known projects, such as Prince of Persia, talk about his approach to success, how he climbs any mountain that he wants to in his career, how he approaches those challenges. Difficult challenges that he sets out for himself and why he is inspired to bring the golden age of co op gaming back with the Intellivision Amico and how Intellivision is working to help small developers succeed. We also talk a bit about distributed development, some of the pitfalls there and things to look out for.

So an absolute gold mine in this video and an inspirational one. If you have audacious goals that you want to achieve, then this interview is going to inspire you, for sure. With all that said, right before we dive into the interview with Tommy Tallarico, I just want to remind you that if you like PlayMakers Podcasts, if you dig what you're doing, then please subscribe. Please write us a review. Please share the show with anyone that you think would benefit from the information we provide. Within that would be cool. I would love that. So with all that said let us get into this week's interview with Tommy Tallarico

Jordan: 03:10

Tommy, welcome to playmakers.

Tommy: 03:12

Yo, thanks for having me Jordan.

Jordan: 03:14

Good to be getting into this with you. You and I we've known each other for a short while But I've known of you for pretty much my entire career and I'm curious to learn more about how you developed such an amazing career in the game industry, how you broke in and kind of how you grew this into everything you've accomplished. Tell me a little bit about that.

Tommy: 03:30

Yeah, thanks. I grew up on the East coast and I come from an Italian background. All four of my grandparents came over from Italy in the early 1900s. So I grew up with a very close, tight knit family. And my grandfather always used to tell me if you choose a career of something that you love, then it will feel like you've never worked a day in your life.

And that's kind of what I did. You know, my two greatest loves growing up were always video games and music. When I turned 21, I left my parents literally crying on the doorstep. I'm the oldest, which means something in an Italian family. The oldest male is leaving the house. And I just got my little two seater car and drove to California. I was all by myself. I didn't have a place to stay out there. I didn't have a job out there. I didn't have any money. I mean, I had a credit card with 500 bucks on it. I didn't have any friends out there, but I was just so driven because I wanted to do something so badly in the game industry or music industry.

And when I got to California, I was actually homeless. I was sleeping under a pier at Huntington beach. And yeah, well, I figure if you're going to be homeless, you might as well have it on beachfront property. I mean, the people behind me, they're playing 20 mil for those houses on the cliff there. But I was homeless for about the first three weeks I was out there. But the first day I got out there, I picked up a newspaper and I got a job at guitar center, selling keyboards because I was a keyboard player guitar player. I'm like, "oh I can talk my way into that job."

Jordan: 05:04

The Hollywood guitar center?

Tommy: 05:05

No, it was one in Orange county. The only thing I really knew was Hollywood and Disneyland. So I was like, "oh Disneyland looks like a cool place, that's where Mickey Mouse lives, it's got to be cool" because Hollywood in like the late 80s early 90s was kind of scary, it wasn't as cleaned up as it was now. And so the very first day I started now my second day in California, on my first day of work there, I wore a TurboGrafx 16 t shirt.

And back then, no one had video game t-shirts. The only way I got this thing was that the summer before, I got my mom to drive me and my brother eight hours to the state fair because I had read in a video game magazine, I think it was Electronic Games or something, Bill Kunkel Days, there was this Japanese video game company was coming out with a new system and they did tours around the country.

And I'm like, "mom, you got to take me." And they were basically doing a focus group test, right? They set up at a fair. I played this thing for the first time and then they gave me a t- shirt. And then they had to fill out a questionnaire afterward. Did you like this? Did you like that? Whatever. So that's how I got this TurboGrafx 16 t-shirt before it had ever come out.

I wore that on my first day on the job at Guitar Center, second day in California. And the very first person who walked in the store that day, the first customer I waited on, happened to work for Richard Branson, he was a producer. And they were starting the Virgin Video Game Company right down the street. And this guy saw my t-shirt. Again, the only people who had t-shirts back then, you had to like, work for the company. Like, they didn't sell them in stores, and there was no internet or anything. So he said, he was very impressed, he's like, "where did you get that shirt?" I'm like, "well, I play tested the game." "You what? You did what? It's not even out yet." So, they hired me. Right there on the spot. So I was in California for three days and I was in the video game industry.

I was hired as the very first game tester for Virgin and from there I would bug the vice president of the company every single day. I said, please if you ever need music, let me know. I'll do it for free, you don't even have to pay me. If it sucks, then, then you lose nothing, but please give me the shot. Give me a chance. And I think they liked my attitude. That East coast thing. So lo and behold, a couple of months later, they gave me the opportunity. And the first game I worked on for audio was the original Prince of Persia with Jordan Mechner.

It was such a great experience. I taught myself everything. I asked programmers how to do, cause I didn't know how to, I wasn't a computer programmer. And back then you pretty much had to be a programmer. I worked and figured out ways where I could make audio and it was really archaic, but you know, I worked really hard at it. And, I took a really different approach that a lot of people didn't take back then, and it ended up working out in my favor.

Jordan: 07:52

Let's talk about that. I mean, that is an insane story, right? Like all the things that lined up. It's really incredible. And I think it shows the power of putting yourself in the right position.

I'm curious to learn more about what you did on Prince of Persia, because that was one of the games that inspired me to get into the industry. And I remember some of that audio too. I remember some of the music and I think it's absolutely incredible that that was your first game.

Tommy: 08:13

Yeah. Well, you know, I wanted to approach it differently, right? Because most video games back then, a lot of them, especially on consoles, a lot of them just played music loops over and over. It's like "oh, how many levels in Prince of Persia?- 12? Okay, let's do 12 one minute looping songs" because that's what you do, right? And I never really understood or like that approach at all and especially with Prince of Persia because as you know, Jordan If you studied the game or read his great book that he put out about it, he recorded human motion, and himself on videocassette. And then he would take those frames and mimic them.

The animation for Prince of Persia at the time, nothing like that had ever been seen or done before, before he did it. And so you started to see games and we look back now and go, "Oh, it looks so archaic." But at the time it was like the greatest thing you'd ever seen and again at the time it's like, wow this is so cinematic. Because you know people are like, "oh, let's do you know music 12 different level music" and I'm like, "yeah, but silence is a sound" you know, if that makes any sense because it's an oxymoron, but it does the absence of sounds sets up dramatic sound even more, right?

And so my whole thing was like, look, instead of doing music all the way through, why don't we just have sound effects and things as footsteps and this, but then let's attach music to things that happen in the game. If he wields his sword, if he drinks a potion, if he opens a door, if he falls off a ledge to his death, if he meets a Sultan or if he rescues the princess, or if he's being told an important part of the storyline, right? And that's how we approached it. Let me do sounds and specific music stings, if you will, for certain times because then it'll mean something more and it'll bring more drama to the game experience.

Jordan: 10:13

That worked so well. I mean, I remember, to this day, I can remember those moments when you fall in the spikes and there's a music cue or when you get into one of those sword fights, the music kicks up.

Tommy: 10:22

Yeah. If it's something simple, it means something, you know?

Jordan: 10:25

You know, that's become, I think, pretty common, especially with these big open world games, like Red Dead Redemption 2, they can't play music all the time. So this is what they do, they follow that strategy where they wait for these important moments.

Tommy: 10:37

Yeah. That's such great audio in that game too. And I don't know how many hours and hours of recorded music they did, but it's beautiful. I love that music.

Jordan: 10:45

Totally. So we've talked a little bit about your break in story, putting yourself in the right position, hustling. I'm curious to talk a little bit more about the development of your career over time, the kind of skills that have allowed you to thrive in such an incredible way over the long term.

Tommy: 11:01

I always hate the term luck, like people are like, "Oh, you're so lucky that that guy walked in the store that day." And it's like, really, was it lucky that I cried myself to sleep every night because I left my parents and I was lonely and scared and had no money.

So no, I don't believe in luck. I do believe that if you work really hard and you pay attention and you do a lot of networking, I believe that it opens yourself up to be put into more positive situations. That's what I believe in, and the point I always make is I say, "look, you could strip everything away from me today, house, cars, wealth, whatever. Take it all away from me and put me back under that pier at Huntington beach. And I got news for you. It'll all be back within a couple of years." That isn't luck. Luck's winning the lottery, right? But, how many tickets did you buy? And did you buy them every day? And did you, you know?

Jordan: 11:55

And did you scratch them?

Tommy: 11:57

Yeah, did you even scratch them? Exactly, right? So, I think determination, belief in yourself is very important, right? And some people, "oh, is that being conceited?" No! There's a difference between being confident and being arrogant. Those are two entirely different things that sometimes crossover, sometimes they do, but you have to believe in yourself. You know, the only person that will stop you from reaching your goal is you. That's it, right? That's the only person. And Jordan, it's important to have goals. It's important to never give up no matter what happens. Being tenacious, believing in yourself, never taking no for an answer. A thousand no's means I gotta get a yes next for crying out loud. But if you give up after three no's, well, that's not how the game's played. You can never give up.

And I always view my goals as like climbing a mountain, right? So everything I do, whether it's putting out a video game album, creating a concert, being on a TV show, whatever it is. We should all create goals and they can be small. They could be large. They could be whatever anything in between. But setting goals to yourself and saying, you know what, no matter what happens, no matter how small it is, it could be something as easy as I'm going to read a book this weekend, right? Or I'm going to spend more time with my family, or I'm going to make sure I walk the dog for at least an hour. I'm going to spend time with my dog, whatever it is, set a goal for yourself. And no matter what, never give up.

Once you get that victory, once you climb that mountain, it's like, "okay, I know now that if I put my mind to something, I will accomplish it." And so again, every goal that I have, I relate to like a mountain. And so I'm like, okay, you know what? I'm going to visualize myself on the top of that mountain. I will be there. I don't know when, I don't know exactly the route I'm going to take to get there. And I know that along the way to the top. There's going to be wind trying to knock me down, there's going to be sleet, there's going to be snow, there's going to be rocks falling down on me, I'm going to reach a point where I can't go any further, so I'm going to have to try to figure out another way around, and there's going to be people underneath me pulling me down, trying to get me off that mountain as well.

Jordan: 14:25

There's gonna be other mountains that are gonna look like you should go climb them instead.

Tommy: 14:29

That's right, and so, oh, maybe this one's too hard. Maybe I'll go and climb those instead, right? All of that stuff is gonna happen, and I know that going into it. But what I know is, all that stuff's gonna happen, but I'm gonna be on the top of that mountain. At the end of the day, I will win. I will win and the only person stopping me from getting there is if I give up.

I always think about my favorite movie, Rocky. I mean I'm a little Italian from the East coast who grew up in the 70s, of course i'm gonna love Rocky, but there's that great my favorite movie scene from any film ever is in the original Rocky you get to the end of that 14th round and Apollo finally knocks Rocky down and Apollo's got his arms in the air. He's finally done it. And, and Mickey's telling them down, stay down, kids, stay down. And they show Adrian comes out because she hears what's going on and she hasn't been watching and she has a tear in her eye and her head goes down because she sees that Rocky's on the ground. Apollo said, and what does Rocky do?

Jordan: 15:31

He gets up. Come on.

Tommy: 15:32

He gets up and he's beaten to death. But he still got up and that scene, that one 10 seconds of film where Apollo looks at, turns around, looks at him and Rocky goes, come on, come on. And, Apollo just can't believe it, put his hand on his hips. And I'm like, I don't believe that guy.

That's how you got to approach every single thing that you do, right? I mean, that's how I approach each and every goal I have, each and everything. I don't care how many times you hit me down. I don't care. I'm going to stumble along the way and I'm going to make wrong decisions and wrong choices and I'm going to encounter things I never thought I would ever encounter.

You know, it's like when we started in television, creating a brand new video game console. We didn't have COVID 19 in our business model. I can tell you that. It wasn't a column in my spreadsheet. I can tell you this much, right? And so you're always going to be faced with the greatest challenges of your life.

And you know what? I'm going to just smash right through them. It doesn't matter. I'm going to smash through them. I'm going to climb over them. I'm going to climb around them, or I'm going to dig through it. I'm going to find a way to get there. And that's the most important thing that I think separates people who are successful.

And I don't equate success to just money. People are successful. They have a beautiful family. They have kids. They're happy in what they do. So you should never equate success with money. A lot of people do, and a lot of people that is their goal to be monetarily successful. But I can tell you that some of the most miserable people I've ever met in my life are money driven. And, so it's not just about money. It's about happiness, but you'll find that the most successful people out there are the ones who never give up. They believe in themselves, and they're in a happier place for it. They have that confidence.

Jordan: 17:33

Would you say for you success is climbing the mountains that you intend to climb, that you set out to climb?

Tommy: 17:38

I've been to the, and I don't mean to sound arrogant in any way, but I've climbed a lot of my mountains, that I've set out to climb for yourself and when you've climbed five or six of the big ones at that point do you say you know what I think I'm good, like I've achieved everything I want to achieve and I think I'm just going to retire.

I think I'm just going to lay back and read comic books for the rest of my life or whatever. You know, for me, it's exciting. Like you said, I still get the adrenaline rush and the endorphin hits because there's a challenge. And each challenge I create for myself seems to be a bigger and bigger mountain. I'm climbing Everest right now, right? And so that's the fun part is the journey to get there. I believe I'm going to be at the top. I believe that Intellivision is going to be a success. I believe all this thing in my head already. There's nothing that anyone can say or do that's going to tear that away from me or make me question myself.

The only person who can do that to take that away is me. And I got news for you, that ain't happening. It's all about the journey and, making as many of the right decisions as possible, because then you climb the mountain quicker, right?

Jordan: 18:54

So, okay. I want to get to your Everest and talk about Intellivision, but before I do, I think there are a lot of people in the audience who are interested in climbing some of the mountains that you've climbed. And we've talked about this, what I would call winner's mindset, which is something that I see you as an incredible example of, I'm curious what other skills you found to be generally helpful across climbing several of these mountains-okay. I have this mindset approach. What are some of the other things that you think maybe people are missing or tools that could help them climb?

Tommy: 19:20

Networking and the ability to sell yourself is a big thing. So yes, having confidence in yourself. But you could be confident and arrogant too, right? So you need the necessary skills to make friends.

You know, there's a lot of great books out there. You have to have a positive mental attitude. The art of attraction is another phrase for it. Anyone can sit down tonight and watch the documentary called The Secret. It's life changing for a lot of people. If you really do believe it, it teaches you to get into that mindset.

But I think the ability to sell yourself, you know, a lot of creative people and a lot of talented people are introverts. And it's not to say that introverts can't make it big or can't be successful. There's many great introverts like Prince and Michael Jackson, for example, from the music world. Those are two people who are known introverted folks who are very successful, but if you're an outgoing personality, you can attract people to what you want them to find out about you, or something that you're passionate about, and you want them to listen to that passion. So being passionate, believing in what you're saying. Again, great books out there, How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Secret. There's a great book that's actually, it's a relationship book that's called, 'how to make people fall in love with you.' Well, there's certain things that you can do when you walk in a room.

There's a way to present yourself. It's the way you make eye contact with somebody. It's the way that you have interest in them. It's not just all about you and what you want, you know? And so it's learning these kinds of skills, and I don't even really want to call them salesman skills. I mean, a lot of people will label them as, "oh, let's read these kinds of salesman books." But it's more than that. It's because it's actually legitimately caring about the person you're talking to and understanding them, trying to understand them as much as possible. And there's this great line from that book, where the woman who wrote it, she's amazing, says, "you have to understand that every single person who wakes up in the morning, they're the star of their own movie.

And you are nothing more than a supporting actor or actress." And so when you go to meet somebody, you're the star of your movie, they're the star of their movie, and you never really come to terms. But if you meet people and greet people, you know what? What's actually important to them? Let's not be selfish. Let's step outside ourself and let's step outside our ego.

That's what I would recommend to people is to really get out there and believe in yourself and find out who you are and be passionate about what you're doing because you can't fake passion. When you're really passionate about something that comes through in your voice patterns, in your body language, in your eye contact, and people pick up on that.

Jordan: 22:28

But you can fake this passion, and people do. And I wish they, you know, it'd be great to do less of that. People who are holding themselves back from expressing the passion that they have.

Tommy: 22:40

Because they're afraid, or they don't want to come across as silly, or they don't want to open themselves up emotionally. There's a lot of that kind of fear and ego that have been taught to us. Just living life, being on the planet for 30, 40, 50 years. And so kind of dismantling a lot of that really opens up to a lot of different experiences with people, you know?

Jordan: 23:03

Yeah, I love that. And for me, one of the things I enjoy about the podcast is it does help me take the position of really diving into other people's perspectives and trying to create something where I'm understanding from other people's point of view and kind of get into that space you're talking about. It helps me do that. And it's so fun to get a little bit out of my own movie and more into it as he talks about his own perspective on the podcast, but it does actually help me do that.

Tommy: 23:27

I'll tell you, there's a great author out there. If people are interested in learning more, his name is Eckhart Tolle, and his books even just listen to his audio stuff that he does. I'm sure he's on youtube as well. It's mind blowing. It's mind blowing because you're like listening to the guy going, "oh, yeah, I do do that Oh, wow, I do do that. Holy crap." That is messed up and it's just human stuff. It's just the way we were all brought up as children, you know? So he's a really great author though. I'd recommend him for sure.

Jordan: 23:56

I've read some of his books, loved it. And just his voice too. He has this amazing speaking voice.

Tommy: 24:01

Totally like low end. Like it almost puts you to sleep. It's almost hypnotizing.

Jordan: 24:05

Totally. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about what you're doing now with Intellivision and Amico and kind of the mountain you're climbing.

Tommy: 24:12

I've been in the video game industry for 32 years over the last 10 years, I've really seen the video game industry change and develop and, there's a lot of great things that I love about the industry and where it's going. And there's other things that I don't like that I feel we're getting away from.

And one of those big things is, I find it more and more difficult to enjoy and play a game with people in the same room who aren't into video games, or who might be casual gamers or non gamers at all. And I thought the Wii did this so magically 15 years ago, right? It's like, My mom bought a Wii, just so she could do this.

It was simple, it was easy, it was fun, she got it. She could go bowling by doing that. It's a lot more difficult these days. I mean, again, there's a million new video games that come out every year on mobile and Steam, and I mean, it's great that indie developers are in a position now where you don't need ten million dollars to create an amazing experience. You can kinda, do it on, it was like the old days, you know, 30 years ago when I got in where a team of three or four people could get together and make something magical and special, right? But you know, we see big budget games with a thousand people on the teams and they take four years and 50 million dollars, and then you have the indie games, but the problem with indie games, of course, is that there's so much stuff out there, the discoverability is more and more difficult for these great indie teams that have great indie products.

And then they put them on steam or mobile and 10, 000 new games came out that week and they're already lost. We wanted to focus on what made the industry so fun and interesting in the first place. Again, back in the 70s and early 80s. And even through the 90s as well, cause I always challenge people and say, "look, I guarantee that your best video game memory and moment was when you were with somebody else playing a video game, right?"

Like maybe it was GoldenEye on the N64, maybe it was Halo LAN parties, maybe it was Chuchu Rocket! o n your Dreamcast, or maybe it was just playing Mario with your mom and dad taking turns for me. It was in television, me and my mom and dad and brother playing in television in the early 80s again with the internet creeping into our industry by the late 90s multiplayer gaming, now kind of means a kid in a dark room with their headphones on right?

And we want to get away from all of that and we want to kind of bring gaming back to that simple fun, pick up and play nature, no matter what your skill level is. Because when you think of even what are considered casual games these days, like Overcooked, Animal Crossing, things like that, which are amazing games. When you think about those kinds of casual games on console, is it really casual for somebody that's totally intimidated by dual analog sticks and four buttons on trigger buttons and four more buttons on the controllers, and I think that's why you've seen why mobile gaming is now taking over.

It's the number one gaming segment for money for people who played. It's 55% of the entire market, video game industry in terms of dollars and cents. There's 200 million hardcore gamers in the world. You have 3.1 billion people that play video games on mobile devices. So, just that stat alone is mind blowing because when you think of yourself, you say, "wow, when we think of video games, your immediate thing is Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo or PC."

But the reality is if you add up all those people that play that 200 million, that makes up less than 7% of all the people that are playing video games in the world. And so, our mindset within television is, you know what, there's gotta be something that's kinda in between mobile and Nintendo Switch.

And that's kind of where we're at. We want to live in our own little lane where we're not trying to compete with Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo or PC. We're not trying to compete with Teraflops and gigawatts and streaming fast this and that processing threads. We're not about that. We're just all about let's bring it back into the living room. Simple, affordable family entertainment. And that's what we're trying to accomplish. So, if you're a hardcore gamer, we're probably not going to be your first choice. And that's okay.

But we're going to be the console that maybe you bring out when your friends come over or maybe you have a husband or a wife who really isn't into video games or maybe grandma comes over and she wants to just play something, simple and fun together, you know, maybe it's a little kid who doesn't want to play traditional cards anymore, but will play it digitally on a screen. So that's where we're trying to live. Our whole go to market strategy is to get to families and to get to people who normally aren't targeted for the PlayStation or Xbox or whatever.

Jordan: 29:34

Got it. You know, I remember there was a console OUYA or something. There was someone who tried to do a casual console. What do you think went wrong? I don't know the details of what happened, but I assume something went wrong. Yeah. I'd love to hear a little bit about where they went wrong.

Tommy: 29:50

Yeah. So the OUYA in theory, it was a good concept, which was, "Hey, there's all these casual mobile games out there, but you can't really play them because mobile is very solitary. So, let's get those in the living room." The issue there was that the people who created the OUYA weren't creators of video game content. So everybody here at Intellivision, we're game makers. That's what we do. We came from game development. We understand that the single most important thing is the fun and playability, the fun factor and the playability there, right?

So just porting mobile games to your television set and expecting people to just pay for that, I think was a major flaw and their ecosystem and everything I think that was the major flaw. What we've done is exactly the opposite of that where we've said "hey, we want to create our own little ecosystem here, but we're not interested in doing like porting over word for word games and this and that look again, you can get those on any platform." It doesn't matter. What makes us special is that the content that we create and we curate is exclusive for our system and around our controller. Again, if you look at the OUYA controller, it was an analog stick. It was four buttons. It was a gamers controller, right?

To appeal to people outside of hardcore gaming, you need to create a controller that more makes sense and that's simple and easy. So on every single one of our controllers, and you get multiple controllers with the system, every controller has a capacitive touchscreen and an easy to use spinnable disc, big giant buttons, everything lights up, and we have speaker, microphone, and accelerometers, and gyroscopes for motion controls, and we even have wireless contact charging so you don't even have to plug the thing in to charge it. It just rests right on the base. All you need to do is put it back in its base when you're done and it charges itself.

Jordan: 31:55

But it's familiar, if you know how to use a cell phone, you know how to use the Amica controller.

Tommy: 31:59

Basically, we took the best parts of gaming consoles and the best parts of mobile and we kind of combined it together using the most simplest elements of each. That's kind of our play is to live between mobile and the Switch.

Jordan: 32:15

I think the way that your controller gives everyone an individual interaction space, but there's also the shared space on the screen. It's one of the very interesting design opportunities of the platform. Have you, and I know this isn't the main audience you're going after, but have you thought about this as sort of a digital board game systems? It seems like, the Amico is kind of a stealth digital board game system.

Tommy: 32:36

Oh, we're already there. Yeah, we've licensed and we have exclusive licenses for some of the biggest and award winning board games out there. I'll give you an example. There's a company down here near me in San Diego called The Op and they have some of their amazing games again. These are award winning games. Telestrations is one of them. Blank Slate is another one. We have the exclusive license, digital rights and video game rights to make those games exclusively on Intellivision Amico. So, Telestrations is a perfect example.

Jordan: 33:09

I love Telestrations.

Tommy: 33:10

Oh, you know the game? Okay, now think about that game, Jordan. For those of you who don't know, you pick a word, and then you have 30 seconds or whatever, 60 seconds to draw a picture of that word. And then, everybody when the time's up, everybody passes their pad around and then you look at what the other person drew. You flip a page and then you write down what you think they were drawing or what their word is. And then everybody passes again and then you draw. So it's a kind of combination between Pictionary and telephone, right?

Now, Jordan, you know, how extremely fun and funny and family friendly that game is, right? But one of the bummers about playing that game is you have to pass this thing around. You have to flip the pages. "Oh, shoot. I forgot to flip the page. Oh, we forgot to do the timer. Is the timer up yet? I don't know."

Jordan: 34:04

But you got to clean the little board and it gets sort of dirty over time.

Tommy: 34:08

Clean the board. But then I think one of the biggest challenges is the best part of the game where at the end, the funny part is everybody gathers around your pad and you say, "Oh, look, my word was giraffe and then I draw it" and then "oh, they thought that was a llama" and then they draw, oh, and then look, this guy joined alpaca and then and then how did that get to, you know, whatever. And that's the funny journey. But you're doing this on this small piece of paper and everybody has to gather around. Now, Jordan, think of that game and all the fun you've had, but now on our controller, with a screen, and a big TV.

So it's like, on your market set, go. The timer's on screen, your word just shows up on your controller, you now just start drawing with your finger on the controller, when the time's starting to go up, your controller's starting to shake and beep down, because it has a speaker and a microphone on the controller as well, boom, time's up, your picture just gets shuffled to the next controller, and then a picture, a new picture comes in on your controller, and you have to guess what it is. And then at the end, okay, now it's Tommy's turn, shows his pad up on screen, and I can start clicking through each of the things that happened, and everybody's sitting around the couch looking on the screen.

That's just one perfect example of what you mentioned, how doing a board game on Amico, and you can't do that on any other machine or other kind. You can't do that on Nintendo Switch, what I just mentioned there, because of the touch screen, because of this and that, because of the multiple controllers. The other thing is you can hook up your mobile device, you download our app, and you can hook your mobile device up and it replicates our controller, and that's for free. That's just a free download. So you can hook up to eight people can be playing at once. That one little thing there, absolutely. We have a bunch of board games that we've got the licenses for and we'll continue to do.

Jordan: 36:03

Very cool. Yeah. I'm looking forward to playing Telestrations on Amico. There's probably a lot of people listening out in the audience right now who are developers. What's your kind of approach to development and for dev partners that are interested in doing something for the platform?

Tommy: 36:15

So we created a really unique ecosystem as well. Cause again, remember everyone, we are game developers. We came from that world and we've been doing it 30, some of us, 40 years who work out Intellivision. I've been doing it 32 years, but we have people who we have people at our company, Jordan, who started out Intellivision in 1981. So that, I mean, it's crazy. And so for developers, the thing that's sad about indie development is that. People have these incredible ideas, and like I mentioned earlier, they get lost when the game comes out.

Discoverability is a big issue, because you don't have marketing departments and PR departments. But the other big problem is, where does that initial money come from? You're either bootstrapping it yourself and living off of ramen and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches like I did. or you're trying to do a Kickstarter, an Indiegogo and raise some money there. And for anyone who's done an Indiegogo and a successful Indiegogo or Kickstarter, you know that there's a lot of work that goes into mailing all those things out and giving updates and you know, it's like you focus about half of your time on letting your followers know what's going on as opposed to actually making the product and mailing it out and all that stuff.

So what we do is first of all, we approach every project and every developer completely different. We're not like Apple, Google, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, or Steam where it's like, "okay, we take 30% and then you keep 70%." We're very different because we curate our titles and everything is first party. We say to developers look , come to us, give us your idea, and let us fund your dream And we're going to use our internal people here to become a part of your team as well.

So all of these incredibly talented people, I mean, I got half the Earthworm Jim team works full time out Intellivision. Now, all of the art people who worked on that original Earthworm Jim, "Hey, how would you like them as an art director for your project," Jordan, you know, who's doing most of the audio. For all the Intellivision games, I am so on the weekends, it's my weekend job.

So again, maybe you need some art direction. Maybe you need some audio stuff. Maybe you need optimization of your code. We're going to give you that stuff. We're going to put our programmers on your project to help you accomplish your dream. And so that's really something that's very different.

And every deal we do with people are different. So it's not like, "oh, it's this, it's that." No, what's the most fair for both sides, right? Because if we're going to pay for development up front, then that's good things. And that's going to be, that could be considered money that goes against, you know, future earnings on the development side or whatever. Or maybe it's a percentage of that is taken off and maybe, so there's no right or wrong way on Intellivision. It's whatever makes the most sense for the developer. And for us together, but together, we want it to be the greatest product ever. So we're going to give you everything we got, put in everything we got in order to help you be successful.

Jordan: 39:39

And for folks who are listening, who love that, how could they know if they're qualified to work with you? Like who do you want to connect with on this?

Tommy: 39:46

Yeah. I mean, we have teams that are two people and we have teams that are 15 people. So, we're looking for simple, affordable, family friendly, cooperative type games. Yes, they can have single player as well. So, if there's a simple couch co-op, fun to play experience, please reach out to us Intellivision.com, go on our contact page. We have a special developers at Intellivision.com email address you can see there. Please reach out to us. We'll sign an NDA together, and pitch us your project. Again, we're not looking for Red Dead 2 here, we're not making Call of Duty, or Fortnite. If you have a cooperative game that's simple, easy to pick up and play, we want to talk to you and we want to work with you.

Jordan: 40:38

We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well so people can find it down there and click through and find that. Tommy, I wanted to talk a little bit about how you have seen the industry change through this Corona virus period and how you think it's changing the industry long term.

Tommy: 40:53

It's funny because the video game industry, which is now 170 billion a year industry. It's bigger than film and music combined. And it's seen double digit growth over the last 30 years, year after year. So every year we go up 10 percent or more. And we've done that consistently for 30 years. In the year of the pandemic, 2020, we went up 23%.

Like it's insane, right? And so there's a good part and a bad part to it. I think a lot of mobile games are designed, and you know this to be true, Jordan. You've been around long enough to know this and in the industry enough to know, a lot of mobile games, they're being designed. The game design is designed around trying to suck as much money out of people as possible.

If they don't get your credit card or your friend's list on Facebook or your PayPal account, then you're going to get a 32nd ad every three minutes. Cause that's ad revenues, how they pay for it. So, because it's become such a big business, I find it a shame sometimes that games are being designed In kind of a predatory way, it was never like that before and I see COVID kind of piling on with that. But in terms of game development, you know, I think we've all learned "Oh, we can make games and not be in the same room together." We were able to do that. Well, I got news for you folks, it's never as good as being in the same room together, so can we stop? Yes, it's possible, but you know what's better? Are we trying to do possible and good enough? Or are we trying to do amazing, mind blowing, right? I don't want people to get lazy out there and lackadaisical and say, "Oh, you know what? We set this up now and now this is the new way to do things." No, there's nothing better than 5, 10 people, in a creative space, working together, breathing the same air, there's just that magic that happens, and I would hate to see that go away, because now we've all learned, "oh, look, there's an alternate way to do it, and it's more cost effective."

I'm a little afraid of that. I'm a little afraid of-that camaraderie that happens, that idea bouncing off of people, you know. The greatest games that I've worked on are when people were in the same room together and directions of the game were done entirely based around what was happening in the room at that time.

I'll give you a perfect example, Earthworm Jim. Earthworm Jim, we never had a game design for that game. Never did it exist on paper. It was always like we're just 10 people trying to make each other laugh in a room together, right? So, you know I can remember it's like, "How should we start the game?" "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if we just launched a chicken in the air or threw a chicken in the air or something?" And like every level there was like a chicken that you would see pass through. And why a chicken? Well, because chickens are funny, right? And they make funny sounds, bugawk! You know, and then, and then somebody's like, "yeah, but what if it was like a cow? Like something heavy that you wouldn't normally see fly through the air." Well, that's funny. And cows make funny noises too, moo!

Jordan: 44:23

A worm in a spacesuit is pretty funny.

Tommy: 44:26

A worm in a spacesuit. That's kind of interesting, kind of out of left field. And then you start to talk about it, and it's like, "okay, a cow flying through the air. That's funny. How do we get the cow in the air?" Well, I guess you put them on a teeter totter, right? Because that's, you know, and something hits the teeter totter, and then he launches up. Okay, yeah, does somebody jump on it? Well, no, that's what people would expect. What if something was really heavy? And we had to, like, shoot something, and it was heavy, and that's what launched him in the air.

Okay, well, what's heavy? A car's heavy, a car's not funny. What's funny? What about an old refrigerator? Like, what if there was an old refrigerator, and that "Oh, okay. Well, why would there be an old refrigerator around?" "Well, maybe he's in a junkyard." Boom. That's how we created level one junkyard for Earthworm Jim.

We didn't sit down and go, let's put him in a junkyard because that's interesting. It was, let's start with the joke. What's the joke? The joke is something flying through the air. Oh, it's a chicken. Oh, it's a cow. Oh, it makes funny noises. Oh, it's heavy. Oh, it's just some But you see that that never would have happened if it was a Zoom call.

I'm serious. It just wouldn't have, it just didn't happen in like an hour long Zoom call. That was something that ruminated with people. In the same room, joking around, getting up, throwing ideas on the wall, drawing something, an artist drawing something here, somebody else showing a cow like this, and there's magic that happens. So, I come at it as more of a pessimistic standpoint to say, "folks, you know, let's get back together and make video games, let's not make this the norm."

Jordan: 46:16

Well, you said at the top about how, for you, the journey was a big part of it, and I think the journey's more fun when you're hanging out with people you enjoy and having a good time making it.

Tommy: 46:24

It really is. There's magic that happens. It's not human contact. You're absolutely right.

Jordan: 46:28

Tommy! This has been a blast, man. Is there anything you feel like we missed that you want to cover? Anything you feel like we didn't get to?

Tommy: 46:35

This was amazing. I mean, me and you could probably talk for the next four hours.

Jordan: 46:39

Come back, man.

Tommy: 46:41

Totally. Anytime you want me back, man, I'll be there.

Jordan: 46:49

Another episode of Playmakers Podcast is in the bag. And if you want the show notes with all the links wrapped up with a bow for you, you can find all that at playmakerspodcast.com. That's playmakerspodcast.com. If you're interested in giving some feedback on what you'd like to see on future episodes, you can also reach out to me there.

And in the meantime, if you want to support what we do, the way to do that is to write us a review and subscribe. I will see you on the next episode. We have some great stuff coming your way. So I will catch you then on PlayMakers.