Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: staff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: here at how Stuff Works, and I love all things
Speaker 1: tech and we are going to continue the story about
Speaker 1: Naughty Dog Games. When we left off in our last episode,
Speaker 1: the game studio had just shipped Crash Bandicoot and that
Speaker 1: was their first title for the brand new Sony PlayStation console.
Speaker 1: And it was also a bold move to try and
Speaker 1: sneak in and create a de facto mascot for the company. Now,
Speaker 1: due to the complicated intellectual property ownership status, Crash would
Speaker 1: never become an official mascot of PlayStation, partly because Universal
Speaker 1: Studios had a stake in the property. Universal Studios had
Speaker 1: made a deal with Naughty Dog a few years earlier
Speaker 1: to develop three games together, and Crash Bandicoot was the
Speaker 1: first of those three. But there's no question that Sony
Speaker 1: was able to take advantage of crashes innovative gameplay design
Speaker 1: and the you know, no nonsense attitude that the little
Speaker 1: creator gave off in promotional materials. Actually it was more
Speaker 1: like all nonsense, all the time attitude. It was nineties attitude,
Speaker 1: which is probably the most irritating attitude ever. I lived
Speaker 1: through it. I know what I'm talking about. Well. In
Speaker 1: the thirtieth anniversary documentary that was based on Naughty Dog
Speaker 1: is a great documentary. It's available on YouTube. I I
Speaker 1: highly recommend checking it out. Andy Gavin said that the
Speaker 1: success of Crash Bandicoot exceeded their expectations, even though everything
Speaker 1: went quote exactly as according to plan end quote. So
Speaker 1: in other words, the team had set out to make
Speaker 1: a successful game with a protagonist that gamers would connect with,
Speaker 1: but they didn't expect it to take off the way
Speaker 1: it did. The development process had been a grueling one.
Speaker 1: If you listen to the last episode, you know about that.
Speaker 1: Most of the folks on staff were young and single,
Speaker 1: and so they spent long hours in the office, sometimes
Speaker 1: not even going home in order to get the game
Speaker 1: to ship on time. And people worked every single day
Speaker 1: of the week, including holidays. It was already time for
Speaker 1: them to get back to work on Crash two though,
Speaker 1: for the next project, so they couldn't really take any
Speaker 1: time to appreciate what they had done. According to Jason Rubin,
Speaker 1: one of the two co founders of the company. He
Speaker 1: worked three hundred sixty four days in He only missed
Speaker 1: one day that whole year, and that was because he
Speaker 1: had a cold so bad he could not come into work.
Speaker 1: He said he believed that Andy Gavin, his fellow co founder,
Speaker 1: had actually worked every single day that year for an
Speaker 1: average of sixteen hours a day. That would remain true
Speaker 1: throughout the process of creating all three of the Crash
Speaker 1: Bandicoo games, and that took its toll on both of
Speaker 1: the founders, not to mention everybody else in the company.
Speaker 1: The two sequels are called Crash Bandicoot to Cortex Strikes
Speaker 1: Back and Crash Bandicoot Warped. According to the founders, the
Speaker 1: team went from one crunch time on producing a game
Speaker 1: directly into the other, and then into another. It was
Speaker 1: an exhausting slog to get through everything. They also hired
Speaker 1: on more people to join the team, so each game
Speaker 1: took a little less time but more people to complete.
Speaker 1: The business of developing games was going through an evolution
Speaker 1: at this stage. So in the early days of computer games,
Speaker 1: you could be a generalist, or perhaps you could specialize
Speaker 1: in one very large general area such as game engine
Speaker 1: development or game art and That's exactly how Andy Gavin
Speaker 1: and Jason Rubin had been working together. Gavin did all
Speaker 1: the major programming and Reuben did all the art in
Speaker 1: their early games. But at this point, game development was
Speaker 1: starting to get more complicated and required people with narrower
Speaker 1: but hyper developed set of skills, so things like lighting
Speaker 1: and shading stuff that took very specific abilities. You couldn't
Speaker 1: just be an artist and do it all. You really
Speaker 1: had to have people who focused just on one aspect
Speaker 1: of the game. With each Crash Bandicoot game, the development
Speaker 1: team grew. Crash three marked the final game produced through
Speaker 1: this partnership between Naughty Dog and Universal Studios. Now they
Speaker 1: had initially agreed to produce those three games as part
Speaker 1: of the deal, and that number had now been reached
Speaker 1: and the relationship had actually soured quite a bit over time. Initially,
Speaker 1: Universal had provided the resources that Naughty Dog needed to
Speaker 1: develop games on a larger scale than what they had
Speaker 1: been doing, which was that two man operation of Jason
Speaker 1: Rubin and Andy Gavin. But by Crash three, things have
Speaker 1: changed significantly. According to Jason Rubin, Universal's part in Naughty
Speaker 1: Dog's operations had dwindled to almost nothing when it came
Speaker 1: to day to day operations, Sony was providing the money
Speaker 1: for development and production of titles. The team at Naughty
Speaker 1: Dog was doing all the work, and even their executive
Speaker 1: producer Mark Sarney, who had originally worked with Universal Studios,
Speaker 1: had left Universal and now was working with Naughty Dog
Speaker 1: as an independent contractor. So Reuben said that Universal wasn't
Speaker 1: really doing anything at all except cashing checks because they
Speaker 1: owned the intellectual property of Crash Bandicoot. This rubbed Ruben
Speaker 1: and many others at Naughty Dog the wrong way. They said,
Speaker 1: why should the developers split so much of their money
Speaker 1: with a company that's not really doing anything to provide
Speaker 1: for the success of our titles. Jason Ruben said in
Speaker 1: an interview with Games Industry Dot biz that he and
Speaker 1: Andy had decided not to renew the agreement with Universal
Speaker 1: Interactive while the team was still working on Crash three,
Speaker 1: so they hadn't even finished, uh delivering the game that
Speaker 1: would conclude the agreement when they had said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna do this again. He said they were
Speaker 1: unwilling to split that revenue with Universal, and he also
Speaker 1: said that the it was it was just getting really
Speaker 1: hard to deal with people at Universal is increasingly difficult
Speaker 1: to work with executives there, and they were making it
Speaker 1: a habit of taking credit for success of the Crash
Speaker 1: Bandicoot series, even though no one at Universal had really
Speaker 1: had a role to play in the later development of
Speaker 1: those games. According to Reuben, he and his team were
Speaker 1: moved into temporary spaces in the hallways at Universal Studios
Speaker 1: as offices. They couldn't be turned out in the street
Speaker 1: because the deal that Naughty Dog had signed with Universal
Speaker 1: guaranteed them work space in return for developing the three
Speaker 1: Crash Bandicoot games, But Ruben said the folks at Universal
Speaker 1: made sure that things were not easy or pleasant for
Speaker 1: Naughty Dog once it was clear they weren't going to
Speaker 1: renew their arrangement. Reuben said they even had to Jerry
Speaker 1: Riggan air conditioner for their servers because Universal would turn
Speaker 1: off the A C in the evenings. Their workspace was
Speaker 1: on the thirty fourth floor of a building and they
Speaker 1: were told they could not bring in portable A C
Speaker 1: units into the hall. They were concerned not just for
Speaker 1: their own for it, but for their servers that were
Speaker 1: getting up to a hundred thirty degrees fahrenheit so they
Speaker 1: decided they would do their best. They rigged up a
Speaker 1: bucket of ice and a fan, a regular oscillating fan
Speaker 1: to blow air over the ice and cool their servers
Speaker 1: down so that they didn't go critical. Eventually, they were
Speaker 1: able to sneak in a portable a C unit up
Speaker 1: to their space, disguised as a small refrigerator. The day
Speaker 1: the team handed off Crash three, they left the Universal lot.
Speaker 1: They did not waste time. They relocated to a new
Speaker 1: headquarters in Santa Monica, California, and they got to work
Speaker 1: on a cart racing game. Jason Rubin said that the
Speaker 1: initial thought was games were going to become more cinematic,
Speaker 1: They were going to incorporate live action sequences, and they
Speaker 1: were going to require the talents cultivated by the film
Speaker 1: industry in particular. Full motion video was still a thing
Speaker 1: at this point and had not quite become the joke
Speaker 1: many people associate with it these days, and so they
Speaker 1: chose to stay close to Los Angeles, thinking they would
Speaker 1: be really close to all of those assets, rather than
Speaker 1: relocate to a place like San Francisco or Austin, Texas. Now,
Speaker 1: according to Ruben, that decision ended up having advantages and disadvantages.
Speaker 1: The big disadvantage was that these other cities, you know,
Speaker 1: San Francisco in Austin in particular, had a lot more
Speaker 1: game development studios in them, and it was a lot
Speaker 1: easier to attract talent to a studio because there was
Speaker 1: already a culture there. Los Angeles didn't have that many
Speaker 1: game development studios, so it was harder to attract talent.
Speaker 1: But by being a big player in a town that
Speaker 1: did not have many game development studios, Naughty Dog could
Speaker 1: more easily hold onto the talent it cultivated. So once
Speaker 1: they got someone, they weren't likely to easily leave the company.
Speaker 1: There there wasn't the likelihood of another company coming in
Speaker 1: and sniping out an employee out from under Naughty Dog
Speaker 1: because they weren't in the same town. Naughty Dog then
Speaker 1: reached out to Sony and said, hey, we have a
Speaker 1: game we're working on. It's right now, a bunch of
Speaker 1: nondescriptive people on these go kart like racers. But we'd
Speaker 1: really love to make this a crash bandicoot racing game.
Speaker 1: Only there's a problem. See, we are not all We're
Speaker 1: not gonna talk to anyone over at Universal. We kind
Speaker 1: of hate their guts and they kind of hate our
Speaker 1: guts and we don't want to deal with that. So,
Speaker 1: because Universal owns the intellectual property for crash Bandicoot, if
Speaker 1: we want to make this a crash Bandicoot game, could
Speaker 1: you guys over at Sony go to Universal and work
Speaker 1: things out for us? And Sony said sure, and they
Speaker 1: jumped in and they negotiated the rights to use Crash
Speaker 1: Bandicoots intellectual property and create this racing cart game, Crash
Speaker 1: Team Racing. So that was Naughty Dog's first post Universal game,
Speaker 1: the Crash Bandicoot Crash Team Racing cart game for the PlayStation,
Speaker 1: which came out in now. As most of the team
Speaker 1: focused on building out Crash Team Racing, Andy Gavin began
Speaker 1: to work with Stephen White and Mark Sarney to plan
Speaker 1: for a new game engine to run on top of
Speaker 1: the next generation of Sony hardware. The PlayStation two was
Speaker 1: poised to come out in the spring of two thousand
Speaker 1: and Gavin wanted to make sure that Naughty Dog was
Speaker 1: ready to transition to develop games for this new hardware.
Speaker 1: They also wanted to create an all new intellectual property
Speaker 1: title that would be under the control of Naughty Dog itself.
Speaker 1: So while they were no longer a small, scrappy independent
Speaker 1: developer the way they had been in the eighties and
Speaker 1: early nineties, they were determined to chart their course as
Speaker 1: if they still were a very small team. The intellectual
Speaker 1: property would turn into a series of games featuring a
Speaker 1: pair of protagonists named Jack and Daxter. As for Crash,
Speaker 1: that i P would remain with Universal. Eventually, the Vendi Universal,
Speaker 1: which evolved from Universal Interactive, would merge with another company,
Speaker 1: that being Activision, and the rights to Crash Bandicoot ultimately
Speaker 1: would pass to this new merged company. There have been
Speaker 1: twenty games to feature Crash Bandicoot as either the main
Speaker 1: protagonist or a playable character. Only four out the twenty
Speaker 1: were actually developed by Naughty Dog Game Studio. The goal
Speaker 1: Naughty Dog had with Jack and Daxter wasn't just to
Speaker 1: make a new franchise. It was to push their approach
Speaker 1: to game development and try to incorporate more story and
Speaker 1: plot into an adventure game. That had been the original
Speaker 1: intent for Crash Bandicoot, but the team found out while
Speaker 1: they were developing it for the PlayStation that the limitations
Speaker 1: of that console made it impractical, if not impossible, to
Speaker 1: develop such an ambitious style of game, so they had
Speaker 1: high hopes that the PlayStation two would be up to snuff.
Speaker 1: The company also took it on faith that they would
Speaker 1: works out, you know, a publishing deal with Sony somewhere
Speaker 1: down the line, so they were concentrating on building Jack
Speaker 1: and Daxter and left all that contract stuff for later.
Speaker 1: So I actually started building a game before there was
Speaker 1: any ink signed to have that game published, which is
Speaker 1: sort of a repeat of how Gavin and Rubin had
Speaker 1: made Way of the Warrior a few years earlier. That
Speaker 1: was the game that got them the initial deal with Universal,
Speaker 1: and Naughty Dog was making decent money from Crash bandicoot royalties,
Speaker 1: so there weren't as many economic pressures in play as
Speaker 1: there could have been. At this stage, Jason Reuben instituted
Speaker 1: a new rule at naughty Dog. Development had reached a
Speaker 1: point where multiple people would be working on the same assets,
Speaker 1: so you would have multiple people creating a single character,
Speaker 1: for example. But naughty Dogs policy up to this point
Speaker 1: was to allow people to kind of come in at
Speaker 1: different times things that were suitable to their own schedules.
Speaker 1: So some folks would pull a twelve hour day starting
Speaker 1: from six am, going to six pm. Others were still
Speaker 1: pulling a twelve hour day, but they started four pm
Speaker 1: and they clock out it four am. Now, Ruben saw
Speaker 1: this as a problem. It meant that people who were
Speaker 1: handling the same assets in the game had very little
Speaker 1: time to actually work together because some of them would
Speaker 1: come in two hours before the other person was leaving.
Speaker 1: It really limited any sort of collaboration, so he created
Speaker 1: a policy in which all Naughty Dog employees were required
Speaker 1: to be at the company for several core hours. The
Speaker 1: reaction from employees was less than enthusiastic. In fact, two
Speaker 1: team members left after those changes took effect. However, they
Speaker 1: would eventually become industry standards across the video game world.
Speaker 1: Ruben and Gavin had also noted the effect of all
Speaker 1: that work was taking its toll on their employees. People
Speaker 1: had families now, so they weren't as eager to spend
Speaker 1: day after day working eighteen hours at the office, and
Speaker 1: they were getting tired, and so they created another new policy.
Speaker 1: At the end of every project, everyone would get a
Speaker 1: month vacation. Effectively, the company would shut down for a
Speaker 1: full month and then as soon as you got back,
Speaker 1: you have to go right back into work. On the
Speaker 1: next project. However, this policy did not cover the co
Speaker 1: founders Reuben and Gavin, because they would continue holding meetings
Speaker 1: and giving interviews during that month hiatus. In other words,
Speaker 1: they didn't stop working. Back to Jack and Dexter, Naughty
Speaker 1: Dog wanted an action adventure game in which as much
Speaker 1: of the story could be incorporated directly into the game
Speaker 1: as possible. They also wanted a large, open world environment
Speaker 1: without having any long loading times between zones, so that
Speaker 1: you could walk from one side to the other and
Speaker 1: you would never have an annoying loading screen. In the end,
Speaker 1: they were able to create cut scenes to insert into
Speaker 1: the action and advance the story, but they found it
Speaker 1: difficult to integrate plot and action more seamlessly. It was
Speaker 1: a step beyond what crash Bandicoot could do, but it
Speaker 1: was still far short of what their end goal was now.
Speaker 1: The title characters are Jack, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: young and an elf like creature who serves as the
Speaker 1: playable character for the first game, and Daxter, who used
Speaker 1: to be another young elf like creature but then got
Speaker 1: turned into a critter called an otsul, part otter, part weasel,
Speaker 1: and he's often the comic relief in the games Jack
Speaker 1: and Daxter, the precursor Legacy, launched in two thousand one.
Speaker 1: The following year, two thousand two, Andy Gavin and Jason
Speaker 1: Rubin made a big decision. They decided that they were
Speaker 1: going to sell the company to Sony and that they
Speaker 1: would retire from their leadership roles. I'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that decision in just a moment, but first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. The co founder's
Speaker 1: decision to retire didn't exactly come out of the blue.
Speaker 1: Jason Rubin has said that he and Andy Gavin were
Speaker 1: at a nightclub in Tokyo with a couple of other people,
Speaker 1: including Kelly Flock, and Kelly was the head of Sony's
Speaker 1: game division in the United States at the time, and
Speaker 1: Flock had said that Naughty Dog was effectively at the
Speaker 1: top of the video game business, which sadly meant it
Speaker 1: had nowhere to go but down, and that just meant
Speaker 1: that there was no way to climb higher than the top.
Speaker 1: When you're at the top, that's where you can be.
Speaker 1: You can try and stay on the top as long
Speaker 1: as you can, but eventually you're gonna go down if
Speaker 1: things don't, you know, consistently evolved, and Garrety Rubin began
Speaker 1: to give thought to selling the company because the idea
Speaker 1: of having to keep reinventing the company over and over
Speaker 1: in order to maintain that top spot when they hadn't
Speaker 1: had a vacation in years seemed a little too overwhelming.
Speaker 1: But even then, when they started thinking about the possibility
Speaker 1: of selling the company, it didn't happen right away. When
Speaker 1: the first Jack and Daxter game went live, the whole
Speaker 1: company went on vacation except for the two co founders,
Speaker 1: who continued to work, but the grind really was getting
Speaker 1: to them. The company was nervous about how their new
Speaker 1: game was going to be received, because really they had
Speaker 1: been known for Crash Bandicoot at this point would they
Speaker 1: actually find acceptance with Jack and Daxter. Fortunately, the game
Speaker 1: got good reviews and sales were doing quite well, so
Speaker 1: when everyone came back a month later, they immediately launched
Speaker 1: into developing the sequel to Jack and Daxter, conveniently titled
Speaker 1: Jack two. By two thousand two, Gavin and Rubin had
Speaker 1: decided it was a good time to change things up.
Speaker 1: They wanted to sell the company. They were going to
Speaker 1: sell it to Sony. It would become a wholly owned
Speaker 1: subsidiary of Sony Entertainment, and then they were going to
Speaker 1: step away from the company. But they didn't plan to
Speaker 1: just abandon Naughty Dog with no warnings, so instead they
Speaker 1: drew up a two year transition plan in which they
Speaker 1: would both gradually handoff duties and responsibilities to their chosen successors,
Speaker 1: and at the end of that in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: they would complete the handoff and then they could go
Speaker 1: and right off into the sunset, virtually speaking. Now, a
Speaker 1: lot changed between those first two Jack and Dexter games.
Speaker 1: The second game had a more serious tone and a
Speaker 1: different approach to navigating the world and progressing through the story.
Speaker 1: Behind the scenes, people at Naughty Dog weren't really sure
Speaker 1: what the future would bring. There were some worries about
Speaker 1: how the transition with Ruben and Gavin stepping away, how
Speaker 1: that could affect work, not to mention how an acquisition
Speaker 1: could change things. Would the company be able to maintain
Speaker 1: its philosophy and work culture, or which things changed so
Speaker 1: dramatically when Sony took charge that it wouldn't even be
Speaker 1: the same company anymore. That two year plan helped settle
Speaker 1: fears quite a bit. Ruben and Gavin began grooming Evan
Speaker 1: Wells and Stephen White to take over the leadership positions
Speaker 1: at Naughty Dog. They would effectively be co presidents. Gradually,
Speaker 1: Ruben and Gavin stepped back from their roles, with Wells
Speaker 1: and White taking on more of those responsibilities as time
Speaker 1: went on. This would often be cited as one of
Speaker 1: the more successful executive transitions in any industry, let alone
Speaker 1: in the video game industry. Eventually, Evan Wells and Stephen
Speaker 1: White would become co presidents of the company, and Andy
Speaker 1: Gavin and Jason Jason Rubin left Naughty Dog in October
Speaker 1: two thousand four. That was the same year that Jack
Speaker 1: three came out. Stephen White would end up leaving the
Speaker 1: company a few years later, and a programmer named Christoph
Speaker 1: Blestra took over as the new co president alongside Evan Wells.
Speaker 1: At that point. That was around two thousand seven. Jumping
Speaker 1: back just a bit. While much of the team transitioned
Speaker 1: to work on a racing title for Jack and Daxter
Speaker 1: that would come out in two thousand five, another early
Speaker 1: project began to take form. They had a creative writer
Speaker 1: on staff named Amy Hennig who had joined naughty Dog
Speaker 1: after working in the video games industry since nineteen nine,
Speaker 1: so she had had more than a decade's worth of
Speaker 1: experience in the world already, and she had a concept
Speaker 1: for a new game that she felt would be a
Speaker 1: good fit for the next generation of consoles. The PlayStation
Speaker 1: three was not set to launch until November two thousand six,
Speaker 1: but Hennig believed that Naughty Dog needed to start to
Speaker 1: focus on something that could be a defining game for
Speaker 1: that new console. Hennig started by striking off things on
Speaker 1: the list she did not want to make. She did
Speaker 1: not want to go with a dark, gritty, first person
Speaker 1: style games set in a post apocalyptic world. She said
Speaker 1: there were already other games that were doing that. She
Speaker 1: didn't want the game to be super serious, but she
Speaker 1: also did not want to create a game that was
Speaker 1: cartoonish that featured animated characters jumping all around the screen,
Speaker 1: and considering that Jack and Daxter and Crash Bandicoot kind
Speaker 1: of fell into that category, this would mean a big
Speaker 1: departure for naughty Dog. What she wanted to do was
Speaker 1: create a game that had realistic graphics, compelling animation, really
Speaker 1: great acting, both from the voice over actors, and from
Speaker 1: the in game characters themselves and great action sequences, and
Speaker 1: it also just had to be fun to play, not
Speaker 1: dour and depressing. The closest analog to what she had
Speaker 1: in mind was tomb Raider, but at that time the
Speaker 1: tomb Raider franchise had sort of faded into the background.
Speaker 1: Hinnigg's project had a code name, Project Big. It wasn't
Speaker 1: called anything particular because they were still deciding what it
Speaker 1: was going to be. It turned out that Project Big
Speaker 1: was a bit of an understatement. Not only had Hennig
Speaker 1: and her team not yet figured out what form it
Speaker 1: was going to take, they were also going to have
Speaker 1: to program a game for an all new console that
Speaker 1: had a drastically different microchip architecture. The PlayStation three had
Speaker 1: a lot of power at its disposal, but it also
Speaker 1: was not designed like earlier iterations of the PlayStation. Developers,
Speaker 1: not just Naughty Dog developers, but throughout the entire industry
Speaker 1: found it challenging to build games for this new console.
Speaker 1: At first, Naughty Dog was not alone in this. It
Speaker 1: was all uncharted territory. And yeah, I made that same
Speaker 1: joke in the last episode, but I'm making it again
Speaker 1: now because Project Big would of course, evolve into the
Speaker 1: hit game series Uncharted. One of the earliest ideas they
Speaker 1: played with was to create a game set in an
Speaker 1: underwater complex with underwater mechanics and physics and all sorts
Speaker 1: of cool ideas, but ultimately they felt like this setting
Speaker 1: wasn't really in line with what the company did best.
Speaker 1: They thought going with something that was so clustrophobic probably
Speaker 1: wasn't going to end up being fun, so they decided
Speaker 1: to explore other ideas, and later on they were really
Speaker 1: thankful that they changed direction because when Bioshot came out,
Speaker 1: they realized that that game was really incredible and probably
Speaker 1: better than what they would have done given a similar setting,
Speaker 1: so they were kind of glad they had decided not
Speaker 1: to go down that route, even though they had developed
Speaker 1: a lot of assets, art and other assets for such
Speaker 1: a game. Uh Naughty Dog was instead going to explore
Speaker 1: or other options for a project Big. So another idea
Speaker 1: they looked at was to set the game in the
Speaker 1: future and they would have a protagonist essentially what would
Speaker 1: turn into Nathan Drake, the protagonist of the Uncharted series,
Speaker 1: who is part treasure hunter, part archaeologist, kind of an
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones style character, although more on the treasure hunter
Speaker 1: side than the person wanting to preserve everything side. They thought, well,
Speaker 1: in this version, Nathan Drake is going to be in
Speaker 1: the future and he's searching for relics of the past,
Speaker 1: which would actually be stuff from our present day. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, it would take place in sort of
Speaker 1: a post apocalyptic world. But again, this didn't seem like
Speaker 1: it was going to be a good fit, and even
Speaker 1: though they did develop some ideas around this, they never
Speaker 1: pushed it to the point where it would become part
Speaker 1: of the Uncharted series. More changes and experiments followed. Maybe
Speaker 1: it would be a game with lots of high tech
Speaker 1: gadgets and weaponry. Maybe it would take place in a
Speaker 1: steampunk world with flying cars. Maybe it would involve super
Speaker 1: spies and double crosses. Now gradually it evolved into a
Speaker 1: pulp adventure kind of story based game. One of the
Speaker 1: big goals was to finally achieve what Naughty Dog had
Speaker 1: been trying to do for years, incorporating action sequences and
Speaker 1: story sequences together effectively. The goal was to create playable
Speaker 1: cut scenes. Naughty Dog wanted the gameplay to look just
Speaker 1: as good as other games. Unplayable cut scenes had turned
Speaker 1: out to be that would be too much for Uncharted one,
Speaker 1: but it would be something they would strive for again
Speaker 1: and Uncharted two. The story for Uncharted one took a
Speaker 1: really long time to coalesce, and it went through a
Speaker 1: ton of different changes. The development process for the engine, likewise,
Speaker 1: took an extremely long time. Sony, the parent company, allowed
Speaker 1: Naughty Dog to operate as if it were truly independent,
Speaker 1: so no Sony executives were knocking on the door and
Speaker 1: asking to see pitches or concepts. They didn't demand to
Speaker 1: sign off on story elements or game assets. There was
Speaker 1: a level of trust the company put in the team,
Speaker 1: which both gave the developers freedom and added to their
Speaker 1: sense of responsibility to deliver a really compelling experience. The
Speaker 1: protagonist of the game series, Nathan Drake, is sort of
Speaker 1: like Hans Solo and Indiana Jones combined into a treasure
Speaker 1: hunting scalawag. So Harrison Ford on his best days as
Speaker 1: a young man, he wasn't dressed in a particularly distinct way.
Speaker 1: He had a dirty T shirt and jeans that was
Speaker 1: his to go outfit, and in fact, most people felt
Speaker 1: that this put the game a disadvantage because how do
Speaker 1: you market a hero who just looks like a normal guy.
Speaker 1: It was a challenging concept to put forward as an
Speaker 1: iconic character, but Naughty Dog kept on going and working
Speaker 1: on the story and the game engine, and as it
Speaker 1: turns out, this design, while simple, was necessary because it
Speaker 1: meant less stuff for the team to have to animate
Speaker 1: to bring to life. When the game finally came together,
Speaker 1: this turned to be a nightmare of a project. Blestro
Speaker 1: would later respond to the question what was hard about
Speaker 1: making Uncharted, and his answer was everything. The decision to
Speaker 1: make the game cinematic meant the company had to developed
Speaker 1: new animation tools and styles while working on unfamiliar hardware.
Speaker 1: Now Cerny said that it took Naughty Dog about six
Speaker 1: months to get up to speed for the PlayStation two,
Speaker 1: but it took more than a year to get up
Speaker 1: to speed with PlayStation three, and even then there really
Speaker 1: wasn't a full mastery of the hardware. They had a
Speaker 1: rough build of some gameplay mechanics, and not everything was
Speaker 1: working properly. It was a far cry from a playable game,
Speaker 1: and it was really tough work, and for some people
Speaker 1: at Naughty Dog it was truly demoralizing. It didn't help
Speaker 1: that the needs of this game were well outside the
Speaker 1: comfort zone of the established teams at Naughty Dog. The
Speaker 1: animators there were used to more hand drawn styles and approaches,
Speaker 1: but that technique was not going to work if they
Speaker 1: wanted to have realistic motion and effects in Uncharted. The
Speaker 1: company made the decision that they were going to experiment
Speaker 1: with motion capture, which was met with some resistance from
Speaker 1: the animation department. It was totally new and they were
Speaker 1: worried about getting replaced. What's more, no one was really
Speaker 1: familiar with the technology, so the company actually had to
Speaker 1: hire people familiar with that tech to come in and
Speaker 1: figure out how to take the data that it generated
Speaker 1: from motion capture and make it usable within a game.
Speaker 1: As time went on, it became clear that the strategies
Speaker 1: the team was using just we're not working, and so
Speaker 1: they made the tough call to scrap everything and start
Speaker 1: over developing new tools. But that meant all the people
Speaker 1: whose work depended upon the tools couldn't actually do anything,
Speaker 1: so artists and animators and others were left with nothing
Speaker 1: to do. As programmers tried to build this new set
Speaker 1: of tools, there was very real danger that Uncharted could
Speaker 1: turn into vapor were akin to Duke Nukem Forever. There
Speaker 1: were even people who were saying this might be the
Speaker 1: end for naughty Dog. Several people weren't content to wait
Speaker 1: around to see if the ship was ever going to
Speaker 1: right itself, and a few were concerned about the new
Speaker 1: direction of the company. Uh They thought that a realistic game,
Speaker 1: even one meant to be funny and charming, was a
Speaker 1: huge departure from the more cartoonish platformers and action adventure
Speaker 1: games that they had built their reputation upon, and that
Speaker 1: no one would accept a new style of game from
Speaker 1: the studio. There were also people in the company who
Speaker 1: felt that Uncharted was very much not a Naughty Dog
Speaker 1: style of game at all, and so for the first
Speaker 1: time in the company's history, more people were leaving then
Speaker 1: the company was hiring on a month to month basis.
Speaker 1: Naughty Dog was actually getting smaller. Those who remained with
Speaker 1: the company began to double down on their conviction that
Speaker 1: they could put out a game that they had envisioned.
Speaker 1: They worked hard to get those tools in place, and
Speaker 1: then to put the tools to use in constructing a game.
Speaker 1: They also let go of the notion that the company
Speaker 1: had to develop all the tools itself as a result
Speaker 1: of the pains that they went through during the development
Speaker 1: of Uncharted one, so for Uncharted two they ended up
Speaker 1: paying a license for the Havoc game engine that's published
Speaker 1: by an Irish software development company. This was a difficult
Speaker 1: time for Naughty Dog, but the game was slowly coming
Speaker 1: together despite all those setbacks. The team created a demo
Speaker 1: for the two thousand and six E three conference. It
Speaker 1: was all built on PC because at that stage the
Speaker 1: studio didn't have any PlayStation three developer kits on the
Speaker 1: studio floor itself, they only had access to one developer kit.
Speaker 1: Taylor Kurasaki told I g N that that one PS
Speaker 1: three developer kit they had access to was the size
Speaker 1: of a refrigerator. At the time, there were a limited
Speaker 1: number of PS three developer kits available in the world,
Speaker 1: and because Uncharted was not scheduled to be a launch title,
Speaker 1: it made more sense to save those kits for developers
Speaker 1: who were working on games that were meant to be
Speaker 1: playable on the PlayStation three launch day. The demo over
Speaker 1: at E three went over really well, but what didn't
Speaker 1: go over so well was sporting the game to PS three.
Speaker 1: Once they finally got access to those developer kits, it
Speaker 1: became clear that not all the functionality they had put
Speaker 1: into the game was going to make it to the
Speaker 1: final title because the PS three just was not able
Speaker 1: to handle it. It It was going to require too much
Speaker 1: changes in code, and in fact, later on developers would
Speaker 1: say that if you were to look at the code
Speaker 1: for Uncharted, you would just see a massive mess that
Speaker 1: was practically incomprehensible. The game did come out just before
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving in two thousand seven. That same year, Christoph Bilester
Speaker 1: became the new co president of the company along with
Speaker 1: Evan Wells, and Uncharted had undergone some last minute changes
Speaker 1: at the two thousand seven E three. The build they
Speaker 1: showed off featured an auto aim function similar to what
Speaker 1: was found in Tomb Reader games, but the team decided
Speaker 1: that that wasn't really a fun mechanic for their game,
Speaker 1: so they switched it to a cover based system in
Speaker 1: which you'd guide Nathan Drake from one bit of cover
Speaker 1: to another while returning fire on enemies. It did well,
Speaker 1: but the company was eager to give it another go.
Speaker 1: They didn't win the awards they were hoping to win,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the stuff they wanted to put
Speaker 1: into Uncharted they couldn't because they had spent so much
Speaker 1: time just getting those tools fixed and learning how the
Speaker 1: PlayStation three would actually work. The development process for Uncharted
Speaker 1: one had spanned three years, but less than a year
Speaker 1: of that was actually spent on the real guts of
Speaker 1: the game. Everything else was just getting the foundation in place.
Speaker 1: Now that they had done that, the team was eager
Speaker 1: to go back to the drawing board and create a sequel,
Speaker 1: so work started an Uncharted two. Now, this time they
Speaker 1: really wanted to push themselves. They wanted a huge action
Speaker 1: sequence that looked like a cut scene but was really
Speaker 1: a playable moment in the game, and they quickly settled
Speaker 1: on an idea that appealed to the entire team. It
Speaker 1: was a cool action sequence involving a moving train. It
Speaker 1: become the big opener for Uncharted two, and it also
Speaker 1: became one of the hallmark moments in Naughty Dog games
Speaker 1: as a whole. One thing the studio decided to do
Speaker 1: is change how they captured performances and Uncharted they had
Speaker 1: an actor playing a character for the purposes of motion capture.
Speaker 1: Then they would have an actor, sometimes not even the
Speaker 1: same one do the voiceover, but for Uncharted two, they
Speaker 1: wanted to go a step further to performance capture. They
Speaker 1: wanted the same actor to produce the movements and voiceover
Speaker 1: for cut scenes. During the same shoot, actors would perform
Speaker 1: their roles as if they were in a film or
Speaker 1: a play. They would move, they would emote, they would
Speaker 1: speak in real time, with those performances making their way
Speaker 1: into the final build of the game, and this became
Speaker 1: the approach Naughty Dog would use for its next several titles.
Speaker 1: The developers were still tweaking nearly every element of the
Speaker 1: game itself, from AI to the physics of the world
Speaker 1: to the way you could fight off enemy, and they
Speaker 1: were using the Havoc game engine as a foundation. But
Speaker 1: the groundwork for the characters had already been done, so
Speaker 1: that helped a lot. Uncharted had already established who these
Speaker 1: characters were, so they just were able to flesh that out.
Speaker 1: More So, while Uncharted two was still a big effort,
Speaker 1: it wasn't marked with the same turmoil as its predecessor.
Speaker 1: What's more, when it did come out in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: it won awards like a lot of them, like almost
Speaker 1: all of them. Everyone and Naughty Dog was relieved and
Speaker 1: more than a little surprise at how well received the
Speaker 1: game was. They've been hoping for a hit, and it
Speaker 1: turned out. The game resonated with critics and players. It
Speaker 1: became one of the most popular exclusive titles for the
Speaker 1: PlayStation three, and of course, as soon as the game
Speaker 1: came out, Naughty Dog began to look at what to
Speaker 1: do next, and this time it would try doing two
Speaker 1: big projects simultaneously. What were they, Well, I'll tell you,
Speaker 1: but only after we take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor. So decisions at the highest levels, including at
Speaker 1: Sony itself, had led to Naughty Dog taking a different
Speaker 1: tactic post Uncharted two. First, there was an Uncharted three team.
Speaker 1: No big surprise there, Uncharted had done well, Uncharted two
Speaker 1: was already getting buzz so clearly they were already going
Speaker 1: to start on a sequel, and they put the same
Speaker 1: leaders in place who were going to oversee the development
Speaker 1: to Nathan Drake's next adventure. They had a pretty heavy
Speaker 1: burden to carry because Uncharted two had really raised expectations significantly.
Speaker 1: Now at the same time, they formed a second team
Speaker 1: that would share the same resources available to the Uncharted
Speaker 1: three projects. So if you think of the whole company
Speaker 1: as a talent pool. That talent pool was being shared
Speaker 1: between two major projects at the same time. The second
Speaker 1: team was led by Bruce stray Ley and Neil Druckman,
Speaker 1: and they had taken some ideas that had been pitched
Speaker 1: for the Uncharted series before it finally kind of coalesced
Speaker 1: into that pulp action adventure game, and they talked about
Speaker 1: setting their game in a post apocalyptic world, one that
Speaker 1: had been affected by a terrible catastrophe, and most of
Speaker 1: the story of the game would take place well after
Speaker 1: that catastrophe, and you'd have these overgrown cities. So a
Speaker 1: lot of ideas that were going to go into an
Speaker 1: early build of Uncharted but never went past kind of
Speaker 1: that brainstorming phase or the initial asset phase. Now, over
Speaker 1: time they decided that they had to define what is
Speaker 1: this catastrophe, what is it that caused this post apocalyptic world,
Speaker 1: And they decided upon a fungus that infects humans and
Speaker 1: turns them into crazed cannibals. So this is kind of
Speaker 1: a variation on the zombie motif, only these humans have
Speaker 1: become hosts to a parasite rather than turned two undead creatures.
Speaker 1: The game's name eventually became the Last of Us. Both
Speaker 1: Uncharted three, Drake's Deception and The Last of Us would
Speaker 1: use people from that same pool of talent. On the
Speaker 1: development side, some people were committed to one game more
Speaker 1: than the other, but during various stages of development, everyone
Speaker 1: was expected to lend a hand to one or the
Speaker 1: other of the titles, depending upon whichever one needed it most.
Speaker 1: At that time. Uncharted three would build Uncharted two, including
Speaker 1: fleshing out the multiplayer aspect that two had introduced, but
Speaker 1: upon its launch it would receive, let's be nice, slightly
Speaker 1: less praise than the second Uncharted game had earned. Some
Speaker 1: outlets still said it was an amazing game. Someone gave
Speaker 1: it a perfect score, but others felt like it wasn't
Speaker 1: quite a worthy successor for Uncharted two. Folks at Naughty
Speaker 1: Dogs seemed to feel the game was a good one,
Speaker 1: but perhaps not as great as the second one. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a game to be ashamed of by any stretch
Speaker 1: of the imagination. It's just that when a game comes
Speaker 1: out and wins all the awards, expectations can reach unrealistic levels.
Speaker 1: So Uncharted three came out in two thousand eleven at
Speaker 1: that time, the Last of Us was still in development.
Speaker 1: That process had also been really slow because they weren't
Speaker 1: really sure how to make the game. Should it be
Speaker 1: super narrative heavy, How do you balance out the gameplay
Speaker 1: versus the story. How much story should there be? What
Speaker 1: perspective should the game take? But there was a sequence
Speaker 1: and uncharted two that kind of acted as a guide.
Speaker 1: In that sequence, Nathan Drake works with another character in
Speaker 1: an area, and that the whole experience created a really
Speaker 1: interesting dynamic. It transformed the game from a purely solo
Speaker 1: effort to something more akin to a cooperative experience, even
Speaker 1: though one of the characters is controlled by AI. They
Speaker 1: decide the Last of Us would be similar, and they
Speaker 1: decided to create an older male protagonist as the controllable
Speaker 1: character and create a young female protagonist as the secondary
Speaker 1: AI character, and then create a relationship between these two.
Speaker 1: They started working on creating the story beats that would
Speaker 1: take this shape and become the Last of Us and
Speaker 1: make it a really impactful experience now here and how
Speaker 1: stuff works. The Last of Us is often brought up
Speaker 1: as an example of a phenomenal game that elevates the genre.
Speaker 1: There's a frequent debate in the game sphere and beyond
Speaker 1: about whether or not video games should count as art. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't plan on going into that debate here, but
Speaker 1: I will say that if you think that video games
Speaker 1: are art, the Last of Us has to be one
Speaker 1: of the games that qualifies as that distinction. My coworker
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick feels very much the same way. We would
Speaker 1: spend ages talking about the story yell months of the
Speaker 1: Last of Us, the pacing of the game, and how
Speaker 1: we found it to be a really appealing experience. And
Speaker 1: I'm being a bit vague about the details here because
Speaker 1: some of you may not have yet played this or
Speaker 1: watched a playthrough of Last of Us. I highly recommend
Speaker 1: checking it out. If you're not a gamer, you may
Speaker 1: want to see if there's a good play through to watch,
Speaker 1: because I think it's quite well done. It's a really
Speaker 1: good story. The Last of Us was a mature title,
Speaker 1: the first mature title for Naughty Dog, and had a
Speaker 1: much more gritty and dark world than the previous Naughty
Speaker 1: Dog games. It was also less playful and less funny
Speaker 1: than previous titles, which meant it was very different and
Speaker 1: we know about different things. People don't like different things.
Speaker 1: Specifically the development team, there were people at naughty Dog
Speaker 1: who resisted this whole idea. They felt that it was
Speaker 1: so totally different from the previous games from naughty Dog
Speaker 1: that again, it may not have been a naughty Dog tame.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, as this game began to take shape, the
Speaker 1: team won over most of the other employees, convincing them
Speaker 1: that no, this really is a compelling, interesting idea and
Speaker 1: we should really push it. Early play tests didn't go
Speaker 1: so well. The team kept putting in and pulling out
Speaker 1: various mechanics to tweak the experience, from the way that
Speaker 1: you did combat to how well Ellie the female protagonists
Speaker 1: could be spotted or could be hidden. But towards the
Speaker 1: end of the development process, about a month out, playtesters
Speaker 1: were coming back to the team with questions that had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the mechanics. They wanted to know
Speaker 1: what happened to the characters. So this wasn't about glitches
Speaker 1: or bugs or exploits or anything like that. This was
Speaker 1: about plot and narrative. People were connecting with those characters
Speaker 1: in the game, and they didn't like having to leave
Speaker 1: them behind without seeing what the end of the story was,
Speaker 1: which was a big clue to the company that they
Speaker 1: had a hit, They had a successful storyline, they had
Speaker 1: something that was resonating with playtesters. It was definitely on
Speaker 1: the right track. The Last of Us launched in two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, which was late in the life cycle of
Speaker 1: the PlayStation three. Now, by the rules of consoles, it
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't have sold that many copies because people were
Speaker 1: looking ahead to the next iteration of the PlayStation. Everyone's
Speaker 1: waiting for the PlayStation four. Why buy more games for
Speaker 1: an old console when the new ones right around the corner.
Speaker 1: And yet the reception was overwhelmingly positive. It became the
Speaker 1: fifth highest rated PlayStation three game on the aggregator service Metacritic,
Speaker 1: and sales figures were also very high. Since the Last
Speaker 1: of Us, Naughty Dog has worked on more sequels and
Speaker 1: some remasters. In fact, one year after the Last of
Speaker 1: Us came out for the PS three, Naughty Dog released
Speaker 1: a remastered version for the PS four. There are numerous
Speaker 1: PlayStation gamers out there who will own up to buying
Speaker 1: both versions of the game. The company, Oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm one of those people. The company also released Uncharted
Speaker 1: for a Thief's End, which was a uh the final
Speaker 1: chapter of the Nathan Drake saga, and they released a
Speaker 1: spinoff standalone game called Uncharted The Lost Legacy. So, now
Speaker 1: that Nathan Drake stories over, the company has addressed what
Speaker 1: a lot of gamers said, we're tough questions. They said,
Speaker 1: why are you abandoning Nathan Drake? The company said, well,
Speaker 1: the narrative had reached a natural conclusion. Nathan Drake was
Speaker 1: at the natural end of his story. And also from
Speaker 1: a technical standpoint, they were finding it increasingly difficult to
Speaker 1: create games that were set in a grounded universe that
Speaker 1: somehow would outdo their predecessors. So, for example, and Uncharted too,
Speaker 1: you have this big train sequence that includes a train
Speaker 1: wreck and climbing up a train that's dangling off the
Speaker 1: side of a cliff. This is a big action moment.
Speaker 1: But if your protagonist is a human who does not
Speaker 1: possess superpowers or crazy spy gadgets or any other things
Speaker 1: that augment their abilities, at some point you run up
Speaker 1: against barriers that push believability too far. As it stands,
Speaker 1: Nathan Drake must have insane stamina to be able to
Speaker 1: scale walls endlessly without his arms giving out. So what
Speaker 1: they were saying is we can't have it both ways.
Speaker 1: We can't set the world in a grounded universe and
Speaker 1: continue to outdo what we have already done, because we've
Speaker 1: already pushed our character to the point where anything more
Speaker 1: than that stresses believability too far. In co president Christoph
Speaker 1: Blestra announced he was retiring from the company. He had
Speaker 1: worked at Naughty Dog for fifteen years, with a decade
Speaker 1: of that being in the position of co president. Evan
Speaker 1: Wells remains at Naughty Dog. He's now the sole president
Speaker 1: of the company. Amy Hennig, the lead writer for the
Speaker 1: Uncharted series, had left Naughty Dog in two thousand fourteen.
Speaker 1: She had joined e A's Visceral Games, which was focusing
Speaker 1: on Star Wars games at the time. I find that
Speaker 1: interesting because in the early nineties, Hennig had worked for
Speaker 1: e A before. Back then, but she left e A
Speaker 1: to go join a different company called Crystal Dynamics, because
Speaker 1: at least in part, she found the idea of working
Speaker 1: for a small start up more appealing than a giant company.
Speaker 1: But then she leaves Naughty Dog and goes back to
Speaker 1: e A for Visceral Games. Also well in e A
Speaker 1: shut down Visceral Games and canceled the development of those
Speaker 1: Star Wars titles, So her current role is up in
Speaker 1: the air. She might have a good idea of what
Speaker 1: she's doing, but based on my research, I don't. Bruce Straley,
Speaker 1: who was one of the leads on the Last of Us,
Speaker 1: also left Naughty Dog in two thousand seventeen, and there
Speaker 1: was also a troubling story that developed late in twenty
Speaker 1: seven team that involved an ex employee named David Ballard.
Speaker 1: He alleged that he was fired after he had filed
Speaker 1: allegations saying that he was the target of sexual harassment
Speaker 1: from a senior team member over at Naughty Dog. Naughty
Speaker 1: Dog has released a statement that said they found no
Speaker 1: evidence that Ballard had ever filed such a claim. So
Speaker 1: that was the last I heard on that particular matter,
Speaker 1: but it is a troubling one. As for what is next,
Speaker 1: the gaming world is eagerly anticipating the release of The
Speaker 1: Last of Us two, which is rumored to have a
Speaker 1: release date sometime in twenty nineteen. The company has, as
Speaker 1: of this recording, not announced an official release date. Just
Speaker 1: a few days before I recorded this episode, Neil Druckman
Speaker 1: posted an image on Twitter of a dog wearing a
Speaker 1: mo cap suit. Yep, a real living furree doggie wearing
Speaker 1: a mo cap suit. So it's possible the next Last
Speaker 1: of Us will have a canine companion for part of
Speaker 1: the game that come, and he has been quiet about
Speaker 1: those release dates, possibly to offset any disappointment that might
Speaker 1: happen should development take longer than they had planned. If
Speaker 1: you never announce a release date and you miss it,
Speaker 1: no one else knows, and you can just keep on
Speaker 1: doing what you're doing, Whereas if you announce a release
Speaker 1: date and then miss it, everyone gets on your case.
Speaker 1: Naughty Dog has released a couple of teasers for the
Speaker 1: Last of Us to One of them shows an older
Speaker 1: Ellie playing guitar, and another teaser shows some new characters
Speaker 1: in a particularly grizzly scene which was super dark even
Speaker 1: for the Last of Us. Beyond that, people at Naughty
Speaker 1: Dog have largely remained quiet on what they're working on
Speaker 1: at the company. Perhaps in the near future we'll see
Speaker 1: some new intellectual property coming out from the studio. They
Speaker 1: may once again redefine the work of a company that
Speaker 1: has its roots in a knockoff of Punch Out. Who's
Speaker 1: to say and that concludes the Naughty Dog story so far.
Speaker 1: I look forward to seeing what games they produced in
Speaker 1: the future. Sure, I have played several of their more
Speaker 1: recent titles. I was not a PlayStation owner in the
Speaker 1: early days, so Crash Bandicoot and Jackson Dexter or jack
Speaker 1: and Dexter both kind of passed me by. But I've
Speaker 1: definitely played the Uncharted series and The Last of Us,
Speaker 1: and I love those games quite a bit. If you
Speaker 1: guys have suggestions for future topics I should cover on
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, maybe it's another company, maybe it's a personality,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a specific type of technology. Maybe there's someone
Speaker 1: you think I should interview for this show. Send me
Speaker 1: a message let me know. The email address is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can
Speaker 1: drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook. The handle
Speaker 1: it both of those is tech Stuff h s W.
Speaker 1: Don't forget we have an Instagram account. Make sure you
Speaker 1: go out and follow that and I record these shows
Speaker 1: live on Wednesdays and Friday's and you can watch me
Speaker 1: stumble my way through these tech topics by going to
Speaker 1: twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff. The schedule is up there.
Speaker 1: There's a chat room you can join it and you
Speaker 1: can also join me in welcoming our new super producer Torii,
Speaker 1: who joins the show for the first time today. That
Speaker 1: was tor and I will talk to you guys again.
Speaker 1: Releasing for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com