Legal Power-Ups, Gaming, and Podcasting: Interview with Haley MacLean

Welcome to another episode of The Gamerheads Podcast!  Joining us this week is Haley MacLean, who, with her legal expertise and gaming gusto, takes us down memory lane, sharing the childhood escapades that led to her pursuit of combining the worlds of law and gaming. She discusses her unique career trajectory, starting in games journalism and becoming a lawyer specializing in video game intellectual property.

Venturing into the intricate web of video game publishing agreements, Haley illuminates the often-overlooked importance of legal knowledge among developers. From the nuances of contract terms to the protective measures one should take when incorporating a game development company, Haley lays out the necessities for safeguarding creative work in an industry rife with complexity. Her experience as a legal guide in gaming provides invaluable insights for developers navigating the treacherous paths of intellectual property rights and corporate structures.

The finale of our chat with Haley casts a spotlight on the broader implications of mechanic patents on industry innovation, corporate greed on sustainability, and the rise of indie developers reshaping the gaming landscape. We also discuss her role as the Community Manager and podcaster at MinnMax.

This episode isn't just a chat; it's an education on the critical crossroads of gaming, law, and corporate influence, narrated by someone who's both a player and a defender of its creators.

Follow Haley on Twitter: https://twitter.com/haleyfax
Follow MnnMax on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MinnMaxShow
Support MinnMax: https://minnmax.com/patreon

Check out our sponsor!

Discover how Magic Mind, our favorite energy drink, can fuel your energy levels. You can get it at magicmind.com/gamerheadss and use promo code Gamerheadss.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:01

And welcome to another episode of the Gamer Heads podcast. My name is Roger. This week I have a very special guest with me. I have Haley McLean. She is a video game lawyer, minmac show community manager and bonus podcast host. Haley, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule and joining me today. I'm super excited to have you on the show.

Speaker 2 0:23

Yay, thanks for having me. Super happy to be here.

Speaker 1 0:25

Yeah. So before we get into the questions because I have a lot of questions for you why don't you tell us about yourself, Because your journey is an interesting one. Can you tell us about what got you interested in gaming in the first place, like your beginning of the interest in gaming, and then share your journey in the gaming industry?

Speaker 2 0:45

Yeah, I mean mean, I've been playing games for as long as I can remember. For my I think it was my fifth birthday I got a game boy color, the blue one, because I was a blue girl when I was young, you know, back in the 90s, it was like are you a blue girl or a pink girl? And I was a blue girl. Um, I got my pokemon color and I got pokemon blue and I was just like. I remember feeling so ecstatic I was like, oh my God, yay. That's one of my first memories of games in general. I remember playing Link's Awakening all the time, never beating it, just running along the beach, essentially in the opening area, because my brain wasn't developed enough yet to finish anything. And then I had an older brother and a younger sister, so that was fun too. So we all liked games as well. So we played games together, mostly with my older brother when I was really young. Um, like so much halo, so much call of duty, so much of the ones I didn't really want to play, like the nhl and nba, nfl games which I just did, so alex would play with me, um, and then it wasn't kind of, until I remember I was in a Best Buy which I wonder if that's an American thing, but it's a Canadian store and there was a copy of Red Dead Redemption in. It was 2010.

Speaker 2 1:55

And I'd never, at that point, I didn't even like research games to like learn what was coming out or whatever. I just kind of played whatever I had access to and I was like, oh, I'll play that. And I was like, oh, hell yeah, like I just fell in love with it. And that's when my brain kind of connected to the thought that like oh, I could like maybe work in this kind of industry. I seem to have a huge passion for it.

Speaker 2 2:14

And but that was only in, you know, middle school, high school. So I was just like I'll finish school, but I I remember thinking at that point like well, games are actually a job question mark, like I could maybe do something in this, in this industry. I thought about game development for a while because I do like the art side of it, but I'm I just love writing, so I kind of lean more into the writing side. I had a very pivotal point in my life where I had to choose between going to game developer school or journalism and I like stood there and for like weeks I was like what do I pick? This is like the biggest pick.

Speaker 1 2:43

But I ended up going journalism in the long run because I love writing so much nice, nice, yeah, um, did you play a lot of those games because your brother were like you have to play, I need a second player, so you have to play with me. Is that like a lot? Like the a little bit? Yeah?

Speaker 2 2:57

for sure. Like if his friends came over, they got priority and I was like sad, but uh, like he would buy games and then not even get that into them and then I would play them and that's kind of how I got them. So skyrim I remember he bought skyrim, played it for 40 minutes and was like this boring, went back to nhl or something and I was like what is this? And I put like like thousands of hours into my skyrim save and then when he moved out for university he took our xbox. This is like one of the biggest fights I remember ever having with my mom and him and I was like I want to keep that xbox in the house and my mom was like well, buy another xbox and you can have it. I was like you don't get it. Everything I love is on that one. I need that one.

Speaker 2 3:36

And the mom was like you're being difficult, they're the same thing. And I was trying to explain to her. I was like it's like if you had a filled out diary and someone took it and gave you a blank one. You want the filled out diary. It has all your stuff in it. She was like I don't know what you're talking about and I started getting so mad about it and, uh, I switched. The next time I went and visited him I switched them and really it was newer. I told him I was like I brought this one. I didn't do it sneakily, I was like here's the newer xbox. I was like can I please switch them? He's like fine, and he had, he was. He wanted some of his saves for certain things. But he was nice and I was like I need my skyrim save. You don't understand like so many hours please oh, that's so funny.

Speaker 1 4:16

That is, that's a great story. I can ask one more question about that, because this is something that my wife and I have talked about. This too, because when she was a kid, her first system that they had was a game boy. Yeah, but it wasn't hers, it was her brother's. She didn't get a game boy because her parents were like well, you know, you're a girl, you don't play video games. And she's like yeah, I do. Uh, did you each get a game boy? Was it a shared game boy?

Speaker 2 4:40

we each got a game boy. Yeah, he had a red one, I had a blue one, and then, for I think it was his birthday, we got that little cable that connected them so we could share, we could trade our pokemon and do stuff like that. Um, I'm trying to think of what other games we might have used the court for. I think it was just for pokemon. But there's a very cute picture of like him and I, very little in the corner of like a family reunion party, just with our two Game Boys trading Pokemon, and it's like one of my favorite pictures of us. It's like everyone else is having a good time and we're just quietly in the corner, like five and six years old, being like I'll trade you this Charizard for Jigglypuff and I probably did it too.

Games Journalism to Video Game Lawyer

Speaker 1 5:16

I love Jigglypuff. That's awesome. That's awesome. I love that. I love that a lot. So then you got into games journalism. Can you tell a little bit about that journey as well? And then your journey into becoming a lawyer then too?

Speaker 2 5:32

Yeah, so I worked in games journalism for about five years. I went to school and I studied journalism and I got my master's in it. Also the story of how I got my master's that was sort of more to do with law school but sort of the trajectory was I went to school and I studied English and history of science and technology, because there was just two things I was passionate about, and then obviously the whole time you're getting an English degree. All the science kids are like who? Starbucks employee? Like shut up. I just really loved reading and writing.

Speaker 2 6:02

And that's what I wanted to learn about. So that's what I went to school to learn. So I adored my English degree. I think back of just I just got to read books and write about books for four years. It was awesome, it was such a nice degree. And then I was like what can I do with this? And that's kind of when I was thinking about going to game development school, because I was really interested in art the whole time, like I drew my by myself and did painting and and that kind of thing. So I had some art skills. But I was like not good enough to actually work as a game developer. So I think I'd want to go to school for it.

Speaker 2 6:32

And there's a community college near where I live that had like a game developer degree and it was a couple years or something. I was like, okay, I could maybe do that. And then the other hand was journalism and I just liked reading and writing too much to want to give it up. I know I could like there's narrative designers and game game development work, but the the degree I was looking at was to be an artist. So I was like I don't know. It's kind of seems like it's who you know, when it comes to narrative design and video games, you have to have kind of a portfolio, which I just didn't have. Um, so I went into journalism. I did, uh, that degree it a year actually. So it was a cool degree where if you had a previous bachelor's you could just for 12 months straight just get this degree and have a bachelor's in journalism at the end of it. So I did that and then I interned at a local newspaper and during that internship I applied to a Game Informer internship as well. I wanted the Game Informer internship to be my real one, but they didn't get back to me in time because I had to do an internship for the end of my journalism degree. So, um, I remember the local newspaper was like we want to hire you full-time employment and I got. And then I got the game informer internship. I was like no, because I really want to do this game which, like I had other like journalism. Friends were like you idiot, like it's so hard to get jobs, and I was like I just I loved that job though I will say it was very sweet like it was in this tiny little town in nova scotia. Um, I in, I worked there for a couple months and I knew the mayor's like wife's name and stuff like that's how quick you just learn everybody's name.

Speaker 2 8:02

I did one story on a woman who had there was a tree stump on her front yard and she she was mad they cut it down but they had to for like power line reasons and the whole story was just like woman mad about stump Like my beat for the day and I went out and I got this picture. I was like Do you mind if I, you stand beside the stump? But she's like sure, and she stood on the stump like this, and I took a picture and my boss said that is the best picture ever for the most boring story. She's like good job. It's just this old woman really mad. She was really sweet. She offered me like tea after I had tea with her. It was that kind of job. I was like what is happening? This is the silliest job ever. Um, one of my things was new baby goats got born and I had to go take pictures of the baby goats, like that's genuinely what the news was like. It was really sweet, um, but yeah, so I got that internship at game informer different style of news, um and that's where I met a lot of people that even into my 30s now I've kind of still maintained connections with, worked with and stuff. So my interns I worked with are my boys for life. That was Leo, who's still at MinMax, blake Hester and AJ Moser, and we did a podcast the three, the four of us for years after, and so we're often coined as like the cohort group that remain really good friends, like the interns that remain really good friends, um, still talk with them all the time to this day and obviously we still work with Leo at MinMax.

Speaker 2 9:22

Uh, but yeah, then after that I I worked in the game journalism space for five years. I just freelanced, had a decent, like kind of consistent job with one site so at least I had that one as a solid base, but obviously had to work retail to supplement it because it's just not enough money and applied for jobs. That whole time, like the whole five years, just constant, and that was with a journalism degree too. I was like I should have a leg up, I thought, but it's just like so competitive. I was like, oh my God rents a lot like figure this out. So then I had another kind of pivoting moment was do I keep doing this or do I pivot into something else?

Speaker 2 9:59

And I had a family friend who was an IP lawyer, not a games lawyer, but like um, just like general ip. He was like a friend of a friend of my dad. So my dad was like you can go talk to him if you want, because I I was kind of curious about intellectual property law and talking with him was he kind of was interesting. So he's like, yeah, you could just apply that to any industry you want. So theoretically, like there's not really games lawyers right now, but like in where we are, but there could be, depending, and at that time there wasn't really a big games industry space in Nova Scotia. That was about five or six years ago. I was like, okay, maybe I'll look into this. And I applied to law school. Didn't get in the first time. So I got offered to do my master's in journalism, though on a scholarship, low-key, because they liked the news I did for that little newspaper which is still so funny.

Speaker 2 10:48

So my school was like we loved that, like you want to do your master's, and my master's was only a and it was only a year. So I was like I might as well do this. It's like paid for largely and then my resume looks better and I'll apply to law school next year. So I just did that. I did my one-year master's and then applied again and got in the second time. So did law school was really fun, hard though, but fun.

Speaker 2 11:10

I never want to make law school seem too scary because it might deter someone from going to it. I genuinely think anyone can go to law school. You just have to really like to read and write, because that's you'll just sit down after at the end of the day. I just sit there and read for hours and hours. If you can do that, you can go to law school.

Speaker 2 11:25

Kind of made it very video game law school as much as I could. Every paper I could write I made it a video game paper related. So like eSports, employment issues, video game, mechanic, patents, problems, like any kind of topic I could latch on to, I made it a game law one and then, once I graduated from that, I got really lucky and got essentially what. You know I don't dream of labor, but I got my dream job, quote unquote, and it's with a law firm where now I it's called voyeur law and I just get to do video game law, like that's. My title is video game lawyer, so 90 percent plus of my clients are specifically game developers. All new clients we get that are game developers get assigned to me. Um, and it's just been really fun and rewarding work as rewarding work as corporate work could be, because, like, my clients are so fun and they're making cool stuff and obviously I think it shows that I like games too. So when we have calls or something like, oh yeah, my game's inspired by journey, I was like I freaking love journey. They're like what? Like they're just not used to lawyers playing games too, maybe. So it's fun that I'm able to have just like nerdy talks with them too on top of like, so what are you playing right now at the end of the calls and stuff like that, which is really fun. But yeah, that's kind of what I've been doing lately.

Speaker 2 12:37

And then just last year I came on with Midmax, which is a video game patreon run by ben hansen, who used to be the main video producer for game informer. So I met him back when I was a little baby intern in 2016 and, uh, that's kind of how he. We were still mutuals on twitter and stuff. So I originally came on um to be the community manager and so I came on just kind of to manage the discord in my free time and like be part of the community a bit more and that kind of thing. But then I slowly became on content more and more because those those guys, the cohorts, are just lovely and they're fun to hang out with. I knew a lot of them from game former days and that's kind of what I'm doing now. It's kind of like during the day I'm a lawyer and during the night I'm a gremlin who plays fire red rom hacks for min max. It's been very fun.

Speaker 1 13:23

That's awesome. I just had to laugh in my free time because it doesn't. I mean, how do you have any free time? I mean I will tell you, like in gamer heads is nowhere near the size of min max. You guys do so much there, but that's a lot of your time. That's a lot. That takes a lot of your time to run a community and now you're running a podcast too.

Speaker 2 13:41

That that takes a lot of time I think I'm very lucky and I'm in a spot where it doesn't feel like work, it feels like fun after work, stuff.

Speaker 2 13:49

And then I also get it just happens to be for a company that I work for technically I've actually had long chats, chats with Ben and Leo about this because it's it's they have different perspectives right, for them it's their full-time job or like part-time job where, and then they also supplement it with other video game content work, where of course, that's going to hit a bit different, because that's what you do all day. So then at nighttime it's like I don't want to keep doing this, like ugh, but I think, where I'm sitting there reading corporate docs or like publishing agreements and that kind of thing all day, I'm just like, oh, I want to go play island wake 2 tonight and like maybe I'll stream it. You know, I think I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm lucky that my brain thinks it feels that way, because ultimately it just means that I get to work two things and it feels like I'm not, but I'm like crossing my fingers that the day doesn't come where I'm like ugh, min max stuff, because right now I'm like min max stuff in the evening. Yay, I look forward to it all day. So I'm so.

Speaker 2 14:47

I'm trying to be like brain, keep being like that, keep keep thinking games are fun, because that's. The other thing is, when you work full-time and game content, games start to feel more like something you have to play instead of just enjoying yourself and playing. But I haven't hit that wall yet, which I feel really lucky about. I'm still like going to bed early to play dragon's dogma 2 oh, it's so good.

Speaker 1 15:04

I love that game, but yeah I saw your post about that.

Speaker 2 15:08

That made me laugh, going back early to play video games I and I stayed until 2 in the morning. So what, how many hours. I went to bed. At 6 30 pm last night. I got in bed, um, my partner was the best. He took the. He took the dog out for pee and, like, did all the work that required standing and I was like I'm sitting in this bed I'm playing dragon's dogma for hours and I fell asleep, I think, at 2 30. I had to play it non-stop till then. So that's kind of my well, how do I have so much time? As I I don't have kids. My partner and I both play games, so when we hang out, we often play games or watch shows about games, like the new fallout show or something. So, um, and then, uh, I just like go to bed and play them, fall asleep and go to work the next day.

Speaker 1 15:49

That's awesome. That's awesome. As someone that has a deep understanding of the game industry, could you enlighten us on how the legal landscape of the industry has evolved in the recent years?

Speaker 2 16:05

The game space is really interesting because it's it really is its own, its own little pseudo industry, um, and you could say like, oh well, tv film they've kind of pioneered, and it's like, no, the game industry, legally speaking, is so different from film, tv, um. So I guess my angle I'm coming from there is like publishing agreements is a lot of what I do is just reviewing publishing agreements because a lot, a lot of times that'll be the biggest thing a developer ever has to deal with legally speaking, after they're set up as a company. If they want to be a company is okay. Yeah, I went in my dungeon and I worked on this for five years and now it's really cool um time to commercialize it right. So whatever they sign is going to determine how much money they make for the next 7, 10, 15, 20 years, depending. If it's a sleeper hit. If it's, you know, gonna, it could make a ton of money.

Speaker 2 16:46

So it does suck when sometimes we get clients who are coming to us because they've signed something a few years ago and they're unhappy with the situation. It's like, what can I do now? That tends to be tough because unless you know, you have a publisher that's pretty conscientious about, about having an equitable contract. It it'll sometimes just be like all the ips being maintained by the publisher. You can't terminate, terminate for any reason. If you terminate early, xyz happens, all these kind of punishments sort of thing. So we like to get in front of that and we do a lot of talks, like at my boss does a talk at gdc every year about publishing agreement contracts and games and stuff and what to look for. And the first year I went to gdc which was not this year but last year his talk was so full, like the whole room was like full and then people were standing in the back and stuff. Because it really is something that devs are like what, what, what should I be? What's nerve? What should I be looking for? What's a bad deal? What? What rev share is fair for the type of game I'm making yeah, and that's the other thing too is like an indie um might have a different revenue share than like a double a or triple a game, right, and maybe if it's the second game in a series, it would have a different revenue share there. So they they're also looking for that kind of guidance on industry standards for products too, which is just behind closed doors completely hidden, which is the benefit. Closed doors completely hidden, which is to the benefit of the publishers, right, if they can keep that stuff behind closed doors, they can say 50-50 question mark and then a developer might say yes, when it's more industry standard to have 70-30. So they look to us for guidance on that too.

Speaker 2 18:19

But a lot of times it's just the licensing is just completely wrong and we have to completely rewrite the licensing. Because licensing is so legally specific. You have to be very mindful about what words you're putting in front of that license. So like non-exclusive you know all these words that usually people glaze over sub-licensable, perpetual Well, like, all those words really mean something distinct legally. So to just sign something and say that seems right and then look back and be like, oops, they own my IP for all time. Didn't know that, like that can, that can happen.

Speaker 2 18:49

So if there's one section I rewrite the most, it's usually the licensing section, just to make sure the publisher gets exactly what they need to get no more for the amount of time they need. And the only stuff that needs to be exclusive like only the publisher is allowed to do it is exclusive and everything else is not exclusive. So there's no worry down the road that like, did we just pseudo, give the publisher sequel rights Because we said you have exclusive rights to develop game IP? Well, that kind of means you can make and develop game IP and you're the only one allowed to. So doesn't that mean that you're the only one allowed to make a sequel to this game? Like technically speaking, yeah, but and they might not have even intended to write it that way but it's just a lot, of, a lot of not great contracts that I'm just like nope, we have to completely rewrite this section.

Speaker 2 19:35

And usually the publishers are okay with it, like we didn't even know it said that and I'm like, why are you using this template? That this is such a template, but for the most part, like it's usually two parties excited to work together and it's going to be a good time, but they still need someone there to be reading the agreement from their lens of protecting them and the game ip. Like the game ip is king. We need to make sure that the game ip remains in the hands of the developer at any instance of anything going wrong. At the end of the day, they can walk away with their game and do what they want with it. That's kind of our, our thought process there wow yeah yeah, that's, that's surprising.

Speaker 1 20:09

I mean that's interesting because usually the thing that I hear when I interview developers is like I don't, I didn't know anything about marketing, right, like I know how to develop a game, but what's the marketing piece? It's really hard and it's funny because I don't. I haven't heard many talk about if any talk about the legal side of things, which you know should be something they should be thinking about. Obviously they do. But it's interesting too when you said that like even the publisher was like whoa, we didn't realize it was written that way. To me I just I just imagined like they had their lawyers write up this contract and be like oh contract. And be like, oh right, we're going to write it up this way, right?

Speaker 2 20:44

Sometimes it's like Google contract templates that the marketing team got their hands on. I can't prove it, but that very much gives me the energy. Not that marketing people aren't extremely skilled and good at what they do. They just shouldn't be writing legal contracts with very binding perpetual terms that affect the entirety of the point of why you're working with other parties.

Speaker 1 21:02

And listen.

Speaker 2 21:02

I didn't know any of that language before. I went to law school and worked with other people who knew more than me about that stuff too. It's really something that if you look at it every day, you start to be able to point stuff out really quick. And if you don't have that kind of access to other sources to know industry standards and then the knowledge of contract law in general, it's just like some really not great contract drafting can occur and it'll seem fine on face value and it'll even be written to sound like they're really trying to be good partners here and they'll have good intentions behind it. It's just like incorrectly legally drafted so that the wrong thing is happening and they'll say, whoops, we didn't mean that.

Speaker 2 21:38

And in those instances then the client has to spend money to have a termination agreement that specifies all this stuff was said wrong. This is hereby null and void, and that's money and time to tidy it up. Even if they're terminating it and they're trying to give them the IP back. It's like well, now that IP has value, you can't just assign it for zero dollars. Now there's tax to sign it back. It's just a lot of headache that could be solved if the agreement was nice and clean from day one of headache that could be solved if the agreement was nice and clean from from day one.

Speaker 1 22:07

Yeah, I guess. So that kind of leaves me nicely know. The next question here like what, what advice would you give to indie developers or startups when you're navigating that landscape?

Speaker 2 22:14

like what would you say um, there's a few different things to think about. Probably the thing I get asked the most when I'm first meeting with a developer is like should I I incorporate or not? It's like a really common question because it's just when in the lifespan of my project is the right time to incorporate. And what's fun is, there's not really an answer. It kind of depends. I can't just say three months from three months before commercialization, like there's no answer, it's it's. It really depends on what's right for that person.

Benefits of Incorporating for Game Developers

Speaker 2 22:45

There's a ton of benefits to incorporating. It's called the corporate shield, so it protects your personal assets. If you get sued, that's a huge bonus If you're going to be doing a crazy huge deal with a lot of money. Usually having corporation is good because, say, for some reason you breach the contract with your publisher and they're suing you. They're going to be suing the corporation. They're not going to be suing you for your personal assets. So that's a comfort there too.

Speaker 2 23:03

Another thing is just having all the IP nicely stacked into one thing, because corporations have pseudo personhood. It's considered a type of person under the law, person with a capital P. They can do some things, they can do everything, but they can own property. So the corporation could be the entity that owns the game, and so it's the developer assigning their rights in the game into their corporation shell, so that the value of the IP accumulates within the shell of the corporation and there's tons of tax benefits to that too. What can be kind of a hassle is game developers are really good at making really high value IP quickly, as opposed to maybe like a SaaS product or something where it requires a lot of testing, a lot of whatever. Someone can go away and come back and have a game and then post it on Reddit and it pops off and people want to kickstart it and like whatever. Like you could have a product that you could turn around very quickly and say this has a lot of value, because look at all the interests commercially online and that could help you negotiate with your publisher.

Speaker 2 24:08

But what's tough there is when you go to assign that IP into a corporation. You then have to account for okay, well, this isn't worth a dollar anymore, so now we have to transfer this into the company. For how much money? So that the IRS or the CRA isn't going to say, hey, where's my tax? The logic of it is you can't transfer a Lamborghini for a dollar, because the CRA or the IRS will be like where's our tax? We want our tax. That's not the value of that asset, you can't just be selling it for that. So we'll also be warning clients.

Speaker 2 24:38

If you think this is something that could accumulate a lot of value later on and you want to avoid all those capital gains tax down the road, why not assign it right now, when it's worth arguably a dollar and it's not accumulated anything yet? And then all that value just gets to get built up within the corporation and it's just like it kind of just avoids transfers and stuff down the road where it could have more value. There's ways to deal with. It's not like you can't transfer stuff in for no money. You know's ways around it. In Canada there's something called a Section 85 that lets you trade value for shares and then you redeem them later. Blah, blah, blah. Corporate law, blah, blah, boring. But that's also a thought too. It's like well, do you want it to be accumulating value in something right now instead of just your pocket? And sometimes that pushes people to say I think I want a corporation now and I'll just.

Speaker 2 25:31

And also sometimes it's really sweet how developers are like oh, my god, I can be a ceo. They don't realize that those titles are just like. I can have them too. You know, that's part of I send this little uh questionnaire. When I'm incorporating them, I'm like what officer titles do you want to have? And I give some examples like president, vice president, secretary, ceo, cto. And they're like I don't know, like what is it? I've never thought about it. And it's also funny in the game space, where a game ceo is like a negative connotation thing with all the corporate greed happening and stuff. Like I don't want to be a ceo, I don't think, but yeah, I should be something. It's like it's an interesting every other type of client when I give them the officer title. So like ceo or president, whatever.

Speaker 2 26:03

But game developers are very conscious about what titles and I think that's very sweet because they're like I need to really think about this and what title sounds the right for me that's all but yeah, incorporating uh tends to be the biggest one, and then after that it's usually just protection of IP. So should I register my copyright? Should I register my trademark? Um, where should I do those things?

Speaker 1 26:23

that kind of thing tends to be like a maybe later in stage question that they have yeah, yeah, that's awesome Again, something that I wouldn't have thought of, right, like for sure, like it's just something that you know and I at least say you know, my conversations with developers have mainly been I focus on the game. I don't think about anything beyond, beyond that scale, scope of like focusing on the game, and then what does that mean then to actually get it out in the public?

Speaker 2 26:51

So, yeah, there's a whole lot, and that's what's hard for developers. They're so good at the development part.

Speaker 1 26:56

Yes.

Speaker 2 26:57

And they're looking for somebody to just take the legal side off their hands. And I'm like, give that to me, baby, I got it. Like let me do all the legal stuff, like don't just keep developing the game, and so that's kind of. And then Like, if they have an accountant, I'll work in tandem with them to make sure everything you know just handling that side of it, so they can be the creative one and go make the project they want to make and then, when it comes time to commercialize it, they can just sign the agreement, feel comfy with the deal they've struck and just look forward to the nice rev share split and hopefully the relationship stays good from there with the publisher, sort of thing.

Speaker 1 27:28

Yeah.

Concerns About Video Game Mechanic Patents

Speaker 2 27:37

What? What are some of the emerging trends or legal trends or issues that you see shaping the future of gaming? I I've talked about this a lot. I'm very nervous about video game mechanic patents. I'm very anxious about the first time that one of those gets properly enforced because we're sort of of so just for a quick like patent law two minute blurb, one minute blurb. Patents are kind of new, new or useful inventions or improvements. So, um, a toilet seat cover that warms your butt, that's an invention.

Speaker 1 28:03

So you would go and patent that, and then can we get one of those they must exist.

Speaker 2 28:08

If I just came up with that, I already ruined it, because I know one of the requirements for patentability is novelty and you can't talk about it in the public space before you patent it, so I just ruined it for myself. But that's why you hear about NDAs is non-disclosure agreements is, if you have something that's patentable, you can't actually it can't exist in the world publicly Like the public can't have access to that concept before you patent it.

Speaker 2 28:36

Otherwise, that's kind of defeats the logic of the point of a monopoly patent it's like well, we already have this, so why do you get a monopoly on it for the next 20, whatever years? So, but there's and I've written papers on this and I could go into detail, but the gist of it is the courts in the US patent office is not, I personally think, approving way too many game mechanic patents and you. You're not supposed to be allowed to patent an idea like I shouldn't be allowed to patent. Two plus two equals four, because what the hell would we do if I had the patent on that?

Speaker 2 29:02

Every time someone thinks it, they charge it like what? Every time someone writes that down, I could charge them for it. So I think that some patent agents are very good at describing video game ideas like cool ideas for game mechanics and making it sound softwarey, because software is patentable and it took the courts like 20 years to figure that out in the 90s and, into the 2010s, kind of figured that point out. But now we're at this weird space where game mechanic patents sound really softwarey. But if I were to scrape away all the jargon the software jargon I really think it's just patenting a cool game idea it's just and it shouldn't be patentable.

Speaker 2 29:43

And there's also all these other requirements for patentability that are also not getting met, like um, not, like it can't exist before.

Speaker 2 29:50

I think some game mechanic patents that kind of already pseudo exist in other games are getting approved. It can't be obvious to somebody called the Positio which is person of ordinary skill in the art. I think a lot of the game mechanics that people are patenting are pretty obvious to game developers. So it's like I don't even think that should be patentable because another game developer could say ABC and come to the same conclusion of that same kind of idea. Developer could say ABC and come to the same conclusion of that same kind of idea. And so we have a lot of companies, like bigger companies, wanting to accumulate wealth in their IP value in their corporation. So they file all these patents and some of them get approved not all of them, but they go to the district court of Texas because they're really patenty friendly there. So they file their patents in Texas and then if anyone tries to attack them and say they're not valid, they usually win and say no, they're valid and it's just something about Texas, texas, the District Court of Texas is people from Japan come to Texas of any other place, because that's the place where they get, they get approved and they get protected the best and it's just kind of feels like a sleeping giant. I'm just like waiting for the first time. Warner brothers enforces the nemesis patent for shadow. That was the really. That was the one everyone seemed to care about patents for a little bit and I was like, yippee, people care about patents. That's fun.

Speaker 2 31:05

But I read through that entire patent and, as jargony as it is, I really think they're just protecting the idea of a player interacts with mpca. Mpca affects something with mpcb and that's. If I were to strip away the nemesis system to that. That's what it is. So there's also all these other mechanics. I'm not going to discredit the nemesis system because that's a really interesting system and there's a lot of really cool game development stuff in there. But we shouldn't be patenting player interacts with NPCA, npca interacts with NPCB, because that's really the mechanism that keeps happening over and over in that system. But that patent is really good at describing that in like a software styled way where it sounds like that's solving some game development problem that's been the devs have been struggling with for decades or something and they're like yes, that should get approved, and it got denied like two or three times before they finally approved it. It took the patent agent a ton of rewrites for that to get approved.

Speaker 2 32:00

Nintendo has a ton of patents, sega has a ton of patents. Like. It's just kind of like why are we patenting game mechanics when the whole industry is about innovation? So all it kind of leaves is indie devs, which I'm the most worried about being like can I do this in my game? If a patent exists, like what will they do?

Speaker 2 32:19

And what's tough about this industry is you have to go through years and years of work before that might ever become a problem and sink hundreds of thousands of dollars, potentially even millions of dollars, into a project and then for Nintendo to say that's too close to our blank patent, like take it down. That's, that's really yet to happen, but the first time that happens, I really think the floodgates are going to be like wait, this is what can happen. Like you get to take away cool games we're waiting for for years, because it, you know, invalidates a patent, and how integral that mechanism is to the main game mechanic too. Like it might just be a minor thing, like, oh, now we can't do that cool little side minigame that had that mechanic and whatever. We'll just take it out.

Speaker 2 32:59

But if the mechanic like the core mechanics of the game, is built into the potentially patentable, enforceable thing, they're like we just can't release this now and that's. That's kind of yet to happen, but it feels like a ticking time and all it's going to take is just one of those bigger companies that has one of those patents to be like Nope, you don't get to release your product Cause we have the patent on that for 20 years. And then that's when I think everyone will will care about it. Like me, like me screaming in the gutter, like you guys, this is going to suck. And no, I've been saying this for the last 20 years. I will come out and I'll say I've been saying this since I've been in first year law school.

Speaker 1 33:36

Yeah, that's right, that's right.

Speaker 2 33:38

But yeah, that makes me anxious, I'm not going to lie, because it actively harms indie innovation. It's the opposite of what patents should do. The whole point of patentability is encourage people to innovate and create new things so that they enjoy a monopoly for a short period of time and then everyone gets access to it after that. But if you're just having patent trolls scooping up innovative ideas just to sit on them to prevent innovation from happening within the industry, where that's like the whole point of the industry is to improve upon past stuff, it's just the antithesis of what that whole industry is for and it's not working for this. It works for other industries. 100.

Speaker 2 34:14

I don't think it's working for this industry. And that's not to say that you can't patent certain things in the game space, like they're procedural generated engines, like that's super valid, that can be patentable, and then someone would have to pay you to use your really unique, cool engine to do something. That's what I think patents should be for, not if this happens, then b happens. I'm like that's just an idea. That's literally two plus two equals four. You're just really good at saying it with all these terms in it, so it sounds like something softwarey.

Speaker 2 34:43

So yeah I could rant about that for hours well, well, a follow-up question to that.

Speaker 1 34:48

Do you think it's because I mean the reason? So do you think that the people that are approving this patents it's because the lack of understanding, maybe, of the video game space in how that works and, yes, they're willing to approve it?

Speaker 2 35:05

I think that's definitely part of it. I think it's part of the patent agent's really good job at drafting it softwarey. And other part is like when I talk about even the posita, the person of ordinary skill in the art, when you're thinking about novelty, especially which is it has to be new. It can't be something that already exists. Whatever, do you have to know? Every game ever, and not even every game ever, every game mechanic used in every game of all time. That's an insane amount of knowledge, because when we're talking about a heated toilet seat, I can look into has a heated toilet seat existed?

Speaker 2 35:40

yeah, and it's pretty straightforward, like it'll probably take a long time. But if I was to say, like there's the nintendo insanity patent which was for I always forget the game, but essentially what it is is if the insanity meter is, uh, a certain level of high, more scary stuff happens and that's just like the gist of it. It's since expired. I think it expired last year. Um, what's the game that's gonna sorry, I need to look it up. Insanity patent. I want to say they even use link in the drawings for the patent, which I think is really funny. It's not.

Speaker 1 36:13

It's not a zelda game um, but to make it more official they just added link like look link it's link hitting a skull and they just to show how the meter works okay um, oh, but I'm looking at the patent right now. Eternal darkness, that's what it was, oh interesting yeah.

Speaker 2 36:32

So for example, that patent um, has that existed? Has there been some kind of game that before eternal darkness had if a meter's high? Other stuff happens like probably, but it's just someone would have to. That's such a small part of a game like that could happen for two minutes in a game somewhere for like a cool little side thing or whatever. So not only you have to know every title, you'd have to know what happens in the entirety of the whole game to know if that that mechanic's been used once before eternal darkness tried to patent it, which is just that's too. That's why we don't patent ideas right. That's why this is clashing with the concept of patent. Patent law in general is because if we're talking about ideas, then patent searches are going to be impossible because ideas are so ethereal. It's like does this count, does this count, does this count? But if we're talking about an engine, like I made a proprietary engine that does XYZ, it's like I can search that, I can look that up. It's akin to the toilet seat analogy.

Speaker 1 37:29

Right.

Speaker 2 37:30

But if we're saying I patented. When level up scary stuff happens, I'm like that is just an idea, that's a cool idea. But it's an idea and it got protected. They got that patent and it lasted the whole 20 years of protection and they got to. They never enforced it to my knowledge, right like no. But there probably were games after that, like I was thinking about dredge, like dredge largely does that. It's like the more that that scary eye opens up, the more scary stuff in the water happens. And I remember thinking like dredge is launching on the tail end of the protection period for that and I was a little bit nervous that nintendo might say nope, you can't make that until this patent expires, which is like in another. I think it was another six or eight months or something. So maybe not worth it. But if dredge had come out 10 years ago would Nintendo have stopped it?

Speaker 2 38:18

And that's what I don't know. And then dredge would have had to spend all that money to make that game and release it. And that's such a core mechanic that they could have said, like the entirety of dredge is based on that mechanic, that on that mechanic. That's, if you take out that mechanic, it's just fishing game, right, there's nothing else to it anymore. Yeah, so that could have completely disvalued. But the other thing is annoying is we don't know if nintendo would do anything about it right would they just sit there and like have the?

Speaker 2 38:42

do they just want the value of the patents so their company looks better for shareholders and they don't actually intend to enforce? Or could they enforce? Do they want to enforce to for whatever weird corporate reason?

Speaker 1 38:53

and that's the other scary bit is like we don't know because no one's really doing it yet yeah, well, and in in the scary part is it could be different reasons for different companies, right? Nintendo might sit on it, sony might not right yeah, say no, we're gonna enforce that, so it's like, not even like they can be picky it could be picky, right, and nintendo could be picky on who they say oh, you're a competitor of ours and we are not gonna allow that to happen, right yeah so, yeah, that's in.

Speaker 1 39:24

Yeah, like the dredge example is a really good one, because I just think, as you're saying, that I just, like you said, I think of like a studio that worked years because games are made over years. Right, it's not like something that happens in three months, um, and they're just about to launch and they're super excited about it, and then this happens. It's like then how much time do they have to do research and saying does this exist?

Speaker 2 39:46

like do we have?

Speaker 1 39:47

to worry about that as well.

Speaker 2 39:48

That's the other thing like do they have to do patent searches for game mechanic ideas? I really I don't want someone to pay me for that. That sucks like that's awful.

Speaker 2 39:59

You should just be able to make a game, and as long as you're not using other people's proprietary tech, like engines or like their software systems or whatever, because that's really obvious, right, I'm not going to take, I'm not going to sneak and steal someone's engine and use it to make my whole game and then be surprised at the end when they're mad. Like that logically makes sense, like I can't steal their tech, that's patent protected, that's theirs, they have a monopoly on it. I have to pay them to use it. But to then release a whole game and at the end nintendo's like that's like our eternal darkness denied take it away.

Speaker 2 40:28

Here's an injunction get the game out of here. It's like I need to do a patent search for level high. Scary happen like, that's crazy, that's like and that's the the onus on. Then ip lawyers to have to think of all the potentiality they'd have to sit down with their clients and say tell me every game mechanic. That happens in your game and then think and be nervous that that might be patented in some pseudo weird way that's.

Speaker 2 40:53

That's insane, yeah, that's insane that's what I'm saying, everyone, everyone no, no, I'm in that boat, that's right, yeah, uh.

Speaker 1 41:07

Well, I'd like to shift gears a little bit here, uh, and talk about, uh, your role at minmax. So can you tell it for listeners that may not know minmax although I'd be surprised if they don't, because I mean, I share a lot of your stuff uh, can you tell us about minmax itself, like the history behind minmax and how they got started?

MinnMax Community Content Creation

Speaker 2 41:26

yeah, ben's the best at telling the story, but I've heard him tell it so many times I can I can pseudo tell it now. Um. So min max, uh was a project started back in five years ago. Wow, so 2019. Um, and game informer had recently done a whole round of layoffs. Because game informer be doing layoffs it, god, it makes me angry. So I could talk about that, I could write about that, but gamestop owns game informer and they their corporate side is just not. It does not value game informer as much as they should. So they're laying off their editors all the time, which is super frustrating. But so they did a huge round of layoffs in 2019.

Speaker 2 42:05

Um, ben actually wasn't one of the people who got laid off, but he pivoted. He just wanted to leave at that point because at that point, I would imagine, he just wasn't happy with the company. So he pivoted and started a video game, patreon called MinMax, and a lot of people from Game Informer came over with him as well. So Jeff Macchiafava, kyle Hilliard and Serial Vasquez at the time. Serial doesn't do as much MinMax stuff anymore. He's not a cohort technically anymore, but he was there at the founding of it. So stuff anymore. He's not a cohort technically anymore, but he was there at the founding of it, so they were at the the founders of that um, and it's really just a very nice and easygoing content structure, like when it comes to that. So there's a podcast every week. I now do my own podcast. It's like the complimentary show, the min mac show. We call it the sister show, but it's really just like me and one of the cohorts shoots the. I don don't know if I can swear yeah of course.

Speaker 2 42:55

And uh, and just gets to talk about whatever that might not be as trendy every week. Um, so if someone's rewatching an old anime from 10 years ago and just like as a nerd for it, they can come on my show and talk about that for an hour, cause maybe not everyone wants to hear about that right now. But you know, hear about that right now. But you know it's like we have that kind of system set up too, but there's a lot of different ways that min max does things really uniquely like. What I really like is we do something called new show plus. So every week the community gets to vote on a new show and so we'll put four options in the poll and then the uh backstage pass or higher tiers on patreon, because it's all supported via patreon, like there's. There's obviously everything has ads and stuff like podcasts too, but Patreon is kind of the backbone of how that system operates. So they get to vote on a show and it's like right now I think we're on week five or six of spiciest interviews. So now we're just going through every cohort and doing the hot ones interview style, where we're eating the hot wings and answering questions, and Leo's done such a good job of researching questions, um, but that's really fun, um, then there's also just like content streams. We do the deepest dive, which, uh, a panel of four or more people who are really into a game will sit down and just go through the entirety of the game and split it up into sections so the community can play it along with us. So ben just wrapped up the final fantasy 7 rebirth deepest dive and he he attributed it to his favorite deepest dive he's ever done, which is he's done a lot of deepest dives, and I think he said they ended at 23 hours or 24 hours talking about that game, which is like and just other other sites wouldn't be able to do that, right, like, hey, like, hey, here's spend 24 hours talking about one video game. So there's no value to squeeze out of that lemon. Like, let's just do a one hour video on Rebirth and move on.

Speaker 2 44:42

But what's nice about MinMax is like no, there's other people who are super nervous for Rebirth and want to hear Ben and his friends talk about it for 24 hours. So that's the kind of content that gets supported. So when it's an independent model, then it allows for what people want to talk about, gets talked about, and then I think the content inherently gets better from there, because people aren't getting forced to, you know, review games just for the sake of getting an article up. It's what are you a nerd for this week? It's like, well, here's a game no one's talking about that. I played on steam for 10 hours this weekend that has two reviews. You know like, whoa cool. Like maybe someone else will be a nerd for that. But yeah, if you were set up in more of a corporate funding structure, there just wouldn't be time for that. So I think there's a lot of fun there.

Speaker 2 45:23

And also just the cohort group is so sweet, like everyone's awesome. I knew quite a lot of them from before with game for, but all the people I've met since then like janet garcia, sarah pazorski, all those people it's like been so nice to work with them and play games with them, and everyone has such different gaming tastes too, which is really fun. So you'll get different people playing different things and someone will disappear and come back and they'll be playing it. Like, like sarah was like I played the sims one all last week and that's kind of all I played. I'm like, why put sims?

Speaker 2 45:49

it's just like fun, right, like that's fun, like what does sarah have to say about the sims one in 2024?

Speaker 2 45:54

yeah it's like that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I came on as community manager but have since been on content more and more, and then that's kind of allowed, since, with the patreon structure, since min max has seen a lot of growth recently, it allowed me to come on as more of a cohort, which is the term that they use for the people who are on the cast, I think is the way to describe it. But, yeah, I did. I went to minneapolis and we did a charity live stream in november. That was super fun.

Speaker 2 46:21

Yeah, um, we're planning our five year anniversary meetup, um, which is going to happen in september, and what's really fun is ben really wants it to be in like a town with like 200 people, like he's. He doesn't want to go to la or new york or something. So we are letting the community send in their uh, the pitch their hometown to us and just be like my hometown has the biggest ball of yarn or my hometown has a movie theater that only shows x movie, you know, like that kind of really cool, quirky stuff. And then we're going to boil it down to, I think, five options and the community is going to pick where the meetup is and that's where most of the cohorts are going to go and a bunch of the community is going to go for a five year anniversary in september.

Speaker 1 47:00

A lot of fun stuff like that that's cool yeah actually, um, I I'm tempted to pitch steven's point because you know, that'd be great. And yeah, it's a really cool brewery.

Speaker 1 47:11

It's one of the oldest breweries in the U S, so there you go, yeah, yeah, and what a better place to have a meetup than a brewery. Uh, uh, as the community manager, so when? So I? So, in full disclosure, I support min max. Uh, I am what's higher, the backstage or council, I don't remember whatever. The higher, okay, so I'm that level. Uh, so, full disclosure, I support, uh, min max. Um, but how do you incorporate I know, I mean, I know some of it, but how do you incorporate some of the feedback and suggestions from the community into the content and the direction of it?

Speaker 2 47:47

yeah, ben is so conscientious about that. He that's really his. He really likes to focus on making sure the community is happy, not to the detriment of the content, right, like you never want like only two or three people to be in charge of all the content you ever make, but like there's a ton of ways that he really focuses on like what would the, what would the community like? And we have like a backstage pass channel in discord which you would have access to that he'll chuck all the thumbnails in there. He'll make like five different thumbnails for every video. He's like which one's best? He'll say here's all the stuff we could talk about on the podcast this week. Thumbs up whatever you think would be cool. And what's fun is like like even that sims one example like that got the most votes. It's like, oh fine, everyone wants to listen to sarah talk about sims one. So like let's talk about it, right yeah, why not?

Speaker 2 48:31

get. Why not do that? And it's not that that talk is only going to make those you know 70 people who liked that post happy. It's that that kind of shows a trend to that. People would like to show backwards thought stuff like we could have talked about. You know a new game that came out, like Harold Halibut or something like that, but no one, no one really played it, no one wanted to talk about it. But we put it up there, is it? Do you want to see us talk about? It's like nope, we want to hear you talk about sims 1. It's like sure, let's talk about sims 1. So there's a lot of stuff like that.

Speaker 2 48:58

Um, the deepest dive and other shows like that are very community input based. So with the deepest dive there's you submit questions and then ben will integrate those questions throughout the natural conversation. It's not like at the very end we talk about them. It's like if someone starts talking about tifa's hairstyle and someone happened to submit a like a question about tifa's hair, it's like, oh well, then this person said blah, blah, blah, and that gets integrated into the discussion naturally, which is really nice. And then at the end of every episode of the mid-max show is the community questions section. So the last you know fourth or third of the show is just straight up questions from the community that get answered and then the the favorite one gets a prize from ian may bit like an actual physical thing that gets shipped to their house, which is nice too yeah, yeah, that that feels like it was something out of uh, the game informer show too, because I remember that I would do something like that where the best, they would pick the best question and then send them something, right so?

Speaker 1 49:51

yeah, yeah, for sure yeah, I love that and I and I think that's the one thing that I I mean is challenging, because, you know, I again nowhere near min max. But the challenge is like how do you stay relevant but also like focus on the things that you enjoy as well, and that is that is challenging. And that's one thing I appreciate about min max is the fact that they do have a wide berth of different different things you can listen to if you enjoy listening to like new games they talk about that but if you enjoy like like you know, that's one thing I love about what you said about even about your show, is the fact that there is a little bit of like fomo right around, like I have to play this play this game right now, right.

Speaker 1 50:33

But then if you're not on board of it, right, you know like, oh, I didn't get to play that game to be able to listen to something like hey, it's months after, but we're still talking about that game, like that's cool and that's. That's what I enjoy about min max as well yeah, no, I like.

Speaker 2 50:46

I was a listener of min max up until I joined it too, and that's what I always really liked about min max is like who's a nerd for something? Just, I'd rather hear someone be passionate and talk about something they're into than you know, the newest, the newest hotness even and what's nice about min max is a lot of times people are passionate about the newest hotness too, so you'll get to hear people get excited. Like you know, when infinite wealth came out, there was tons of people that were really excited and playing it and wanted to chat about it, so that the podcast got to be about infinite wealth. So it felt very much like the newest thing was coming up we're talking about. But that's because people were interested in it, not just because all of us were forced to play it and see if we liked it or not. It's because at least three or four of us were like, yes, yes, infinite wealth, I love it. She podcasting up, please let me talk about it.

Speaker 2 51:28

It's like that makes for a much better show, because then there's just more depth to that conversation there.

Changes and Challenges in Gaming Industry

Speaker 1 51:33

Yeah, yeah, for sure, I'm going to switch gears a little bit too. Now I'm going to ask you some questions about your career and some of the changes that you've seen. So what are some of the biggest changes you've seen in industry and what are some of the impact of these changes?

Speaker 2 51:52

So I'm a bit of a baby lawyer. I will have that disclaimer. They call if you're if you've been practicing for less than five years, you're a baby lawyer. Is that a technical?

Speaker 1 52:00

term, do they?

Speaker 2 52:01

low-key kind of I've heard. I've heard like 10 different lawyers refer to under five-year calls as baby lawyers, which is like kind of endearing in a way, like even if you're 40, you just only got called. When you're 40, you're still a baby baby lawyer, you're still a little guy.

Speaker 2 52:16

So you know, I feel lucky that I have access to the resources of my firm that I can look back at like because my firm's been operating for 10 years so and been doing video game work for 10 years. So I get to, if I want, look at precedents from you know 2014 and say what did the publishing agreement look like in 2014? And glance at that kind of precedent. And also, you know we do tons of deals, so we have access to AAA publishing agreement contracts. So I can say I can't say whose it is, but I can say this huge company that is a massive corporation, does this in their agreement. Like what's your comfortability there? Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 52:53

It also helps with interest based negotiation. So when I'm negotiating with another publisher and they say we want to take you know we want to have a 6040 cut and we get the 60, I can say I've looked at hundreds of agreements and I've never seen that. And then that's a very interest based like negotiation tactic to not just say we don't like those numbers, those sound icky to us. It's you're not being industry standard here right now. You need to calm down and then they'll go home and that'll help with that kind of thought process. So I feel lucky that I work for a firm that's been doing this work for so long that, even though I personally haven't been the one in 2014, I was like I was like playing Smash Bros at my mom's house. But I get, I get to still post humorous. I always say post humorously. How do you say that word?

Speaker 1 53:45

post, humorously it's not humor, no I don't know myself. Post starts with an h, though, but post something I?

Speaker 2 53:56

I don't I always. Just this year I learned that I've been calling it post humorously my whole life and my boss like that's not how you say that. Weird.

Speaker 1 54:03

I was like really, I just never googled it uh, okay, then I have to change the way I say it then too, because I think I've been saying it that way too.

Speaker 2 54:11

Have you been saying it too? Yeah, Is there maybe a correct? Maybe? Somewhere online we heard the same person say it the wrong way. What a tangent I just went down. I'm just embarrassed. I'm embarrassed because I use that word all the time. I just was trying to use it. I haven't trained my brain to not do it. Well, hey, now.

Speaker 1 54:28

I'm in the same boat because I have been using that word too, so I will have to take that out of my vocabulary from now on.

Speaker 2 54:38

I'm thinking back to all the times I used that word in front of people I was trying to impress. They probably were like what the hell did? She just say Post-team wrestling. So yeah, I don't know too.

Speaker 2 54:49

I would say there's definitely more care into making sure that the deals are more equitable to both parties. Like yeah, because game working in games can be really fun and that even in the games journalism space it's like you should feel lucky to even be able to kind of do this. So take whatever deal you can get. It's kind of the industry like take whatever job you can get, be paid dimes when you should be paying dollars. Like just be happy because some other people don't have a job. Like that kind of energy.

Speaker 2 55:16

And it's like no, pay people for what they're doing. Like that they should get a good rev share because you're trying to commercialize their good product. Like just because you have all the cards and the steel doesn't mean that you shouldn't be thinking about the long-term longevity of the studio and if you give them more money, they'll make you a good sequel, like let's. Like, let's think about this long term. So I I would say like, just looking at past deals and more of the work I'm doing now. Um, there tends to be a better trend towards like no. Games have value. Even in the wider like zeitgeist of humanity, it's like we've. I think everyone agrees games have value and they make a lot of money. They're a bigger industry than film and tv currently, I think right now yeah so, um, more equitable deals, for sure.

Speaker 2 56:02

And uh, just if I could I know this sounds like I'm just trying to get work but like, get a lawyer to review your stuff. Even if it's not me, does that mean me, get someone to review it, please, because then you don't have to, five years from now, worry about the value of your ip and who owns it and what you can do with it. Can you make a sequel? Can you make a prequel? What's allowed, what's not allowed, like, just go into your deals, knowing every word of your contract and what it means.

Speaker 1 56:27

That's probably the best advice I can give yeah, based on um, a lot of things that are happening in industry right now. Um and it's interesting that you said that, because I agree, I think that like it feels at least it feels like game industry makes a lot of money, right, but we've seen a lot of layoffs, yes, and I mean this is one of the challenges. We're also starting to see the rise of, well well, not just the rise, it's always been there but like the bigotry and the sexism and the racism in gaming as well. What do you think is the greatest challenge facing gaming industry right now and how would you say you'd overcome those challenges?

Speaker 2 57:10

Corporate greed is rampant in the games industry. Coming from a corporate lawyer, corporate greed is rampant. It's not the nds who incorporate, because they're technically corporations too. It's these massive corporations who prioritize shareholder happiness long term over their, their not just their employees, but their projects too. It's like they'll hear the way that they turn around like they've set up this system of layovers to show profits when they need the most. But long term it's just gonna wreck everything and I really think those corporations don't get it right now is so if they see they hire all these people to do a project and they, they work on it and they, and then right about time, they release it, the bar will go up even higher if we lay off all these people, right. So it's like we make all this project, even if the game does well, you're seeing all these layoffs because it just makes the number go up high and it's just there's no, there's no thought process towards what about just a nice stable line instead of all these crazy erratic ups and downs? Like, don't you guys just want a nice stable line?

Speaker 2 58:17

And uh, sven vick um, I might pronounce his last name wrong who is the main director for baldur's gate 3? He did a. I was at gdc this year and they're they, baldur's gate 3 won like a bunch of awards at the the game developers awards and he gave such an awesome, such a refreshing speech during his talk where he just essentially was like stop it, like, oh, my god, like look at me, I have 500 employees. They're all still with us, like they. No one gets laid off with on the project unless you know it's warranted. And he's like the reason that you're seeing all these layoffs is not because games aren't successful, it's because of poor management, it's because of corporate greed, it's because we want number to go up, so then our shareholders are happy, so that the top company guys get more money. And it's so frustrating to see that happen over and over and over and I don't know how long they can keep doing it before they're like wait, this actually isn't sustainable because we're losing talent. The devs are going to want to. Just, I give up. I'm going to pivot into PR, I'm going to pivot into software engineering for another industry, whatever. How many times are you going to chew them up, spit them out before they walk away? And then the pool gets small again. You're going to have no devs to pool from and then games are going to get worse because there's not enough people in the industry making them. So it's just like one of these things late stage capitalism, baby Like it's just oh, what are we going to? You really just want to grab them and shake them by their heads.

Speaker 2 59:35

But I think Sven did a really nice talk of it. That's essentially what he said. He's like this we have game of the year and we don't do that, and we're just as successful. So what are you guys doing? It's really just a matter of corporate greed, like if you really want to send that's everywhere. Like I live, I'm in canada and, oh my god, corporate greed is everywhere and we're having a cost of living crisis here. So it's not just games. It's like our grocery stores have been caught price gouging. It's just like something about the world we live in currently is everything needs to be sold the maximum profit, even if that doesn't mean sustainability of the very lives we live as human beings. It's just so frustrating.

Speaker 1 1:00:12

Yeah, yeah, and it's like you said it's very short sighted very short sighted.

Speaker 1 1:00:17

I suspect this is again. This is me Cause I agree, like I think corporate greed is, is a is a big concern, and I suspect that their thought is that even if they chew and spit out game developers or journalists or anybody right and get them out the door and they go do something else, that's okay. We'll just get cheaper labor with the upcoming people. And I would worry that at some point those people that are thinking about I want to go into game development or I want to go into games, journalism or I want to get into the industry at all, might say I don't want to do that because I'm seeing the landscape. Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 1:00:54

I'm going to go work in app dev instead, because there's more money in app dev right yeah so and all the games we'll lose, that we'll never get made because of that kind of mindset.

Speaker 2 1:01:05

What if, you know, all our favorite devs did that and weren't around in the 80s and 90s with the start of when games were kicking off and there was a decent industry to work in?

Speaker 1 1:01:16

Yeah, yeah, one last question. I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I do have one last question, if that's all right, mm-hmm, where do you see the landscape of the game industry in the next five years and the next 10 years?

Speaker 2 1:01:33

landscape of the game industry in the next five years and the next 10 years. Uh, I'm really excited for more and more devs going solo or even like with a couple partners and just wanting to make their own little vertical slice. I think that and that's the people that I work with, um. It's really fun to see that and I think it's the only silver lining I can see from the layoff industry is like all right for you, I'm gonna go make I know I'm good at this here I'm gonna go make my game and it might just make me a ton of money. Go.

Speaker 2 1:01:59

I hate corporate greed like that. Kind of energy is like that. At least there's that. And what sucks is the only people that can do that are ones that have the financial security to be able to do that. There's tons that can't do that, that don't have the money to go work on their you know passion project for x years while they um also work somewhere else. That's also really taxing to do so.

Speaker 2 1:02:18

I totally get how not everyone can do that, but it is nice to see these devs who are like x triple a studio go. Here's my little thing and I'm like this little thing's really freaking cool. And just to know that the money I'm spending on it is going to them and not a massive corp that then splits it up between 800 people, with most of the money staying at the top. It's like no, I'm paying this developer, it's going into their corporation and then into their pocket, like I. That feels good.

Speaker 2 1:02:43

So I think I'm excited for the indie scene. I'm really excited to see I feel like we're going to see a ton more. I personally know this because I represented a lot of indies and they're making really cool stuff. But I think we're going to see a ton more really unique and cool indie games coming out of people's frustration with working, not being their own boss. And just like you know what I'm here's my little vertical slice, here's my corporation. I'm gonna do what I want to do and I think that's where all the best studios that are now triple a kind first started right. So maybe those people will then go on to have massive successes, open up some medium sized studios that have a better ethos for how they treat their their you know employees. Like it's. It's like a healing phase.

Speaker 2 1:03:22

That's my hope that's what I really hope starts to happen. And yeah, again, like it's also just really exciting to see how good tech has gotten like just in general, and how accessible tech is to developers as well. With every passing year, you know, more and more stuff is becoming open source, like devs are able to get access to tools that are easier to use and make their projects work on their projects faster that kind of thing. So we could also see a lot more indie style studios making triple a looking products, which is also very fun too. Um, you know not that indies that have their own stylized version or just like rely on pixel or whatever aren't also equally cool.

Speaker 2 1:04:01

But it's cool when, like a double a or even an indie studio is like they made this. Oh my god, it looks like it was made by a naughty dog or you know some some studio that has a lot more money to throw into Fidelity or something like that. It's like no, this looks really freaking clean. That's also very cool too. So I feel like that's been happening a bit more and more, but unfortunately, I think the corporate greed side of it is going to keep going and we're going to see a lot more layoffs in the AAA space, for sure.

Speaker 1 1:04:25

I know, I know, and it's like I lost count of how many layoffs have happened, but it's, it's a lot it's like more than last year combined so far this year, or something, isn't it?

Speaker 2 1:04:36

it's crazy that's crazy.

Speaker 1 1:04:39

Um, all, right before we head out, though, how can people follow you on social media and and follow you and follow min max and all the things you do?

Speaker 2 1:04:49

yeah, thank you. So it's a min max with two n's, it's Minmax with two Ns. It's how Ben always says it. So patreoncom slash Minmax is where you can support Minmax, and then Minmax on every social media as well. And then I am HaleyFax on all my socials because I'm from Halifax, nova Scotia. I always have to explain the pun, but sometimes people who know what Halifax is can explain it. But so that's just h-a-l-e-y-f-a-x and I'm that on all social media. Um, I have a personal twitch, but I mainly just streamed in min max's twitch. Lately I've been doing a fire red rom hack playthrough. Have you ever done that? Oh my god, it's so hard. It's just it's fire red. But if, if it was impossible, it's just the ai is really good. Like they'll switch out pokemon.

Speaker 2 1:05:30

It has all nine generations of pokemon in it and they're pixelized, so it looks like they're from fire red yeah and then the ai is a genius. There was a girl in viridian forest which is like the most, whatever area, usually it's caterpillar, like fireball, fireball, and you just move on like she had a stuffle and like something else.

Speaker 2 1:05:46

I could not kill her stuffle because she had such good movesets on it and it had like a really good passive and she knew when to switch to counteract me and I could not. It took me an hour and a half to kill this girl in forest whoa, it's so fun though.

Speaker 1 1:05:58

Yeah, that sounds awesome, because I think that's I mean, that's always been my thing with pokemon.

Speaker 2 1:06:03

I'm like these trainers suck they they're so stupid they're not very good, they'll put out like a grass type and I have a charmander and they're like I won't switch, but these ones will. They'll see that and switch and what's also cool is the newest update. It's the 4.0 update, so that's why a lot of people are playing it right now yeah and uh, the ai.

Speaker 2 1:06:22

Um, if you lose to them, they remember the fight and then they remember what you do. So the next time, if they know I'm going to come out with a dark type to counteract something, they'll the next time I fight them, they won't have the poke one they usually have first out they'll have one that'll counteract my dark type and they'll like remember that and adjust it accordingly. Wow, it's really fun. It's impossible, it's I'm on normal difficulty too. I might bump it down to easy, but it's really fun oh wow, that, yeah, that sounds amazing.

Speaker 1 1:06:53

Actually kind of want to play it now, it's really fun that's awesome, hayley. Thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule today. I had so much fun. I hope you enjoyed our chat uh I loved our chat.

Speaker 1 1:07:06

Thank you for having me yeah, you are, I mean just the, the, the amount of knowledge you have and just all the stuff that you, I mean I hope I want to have you come back on the show and we could dive into deeper in some of these topics. But yeah, it was really really fun to have you on the show. So thank you so much again.

Speaker 2 1:07:25

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 1:07:27

Yeah, no-transcript.