How Arcade Cabinets and Passion Propel the Game Armed and Gelatinous

Welcome to another episode of The Gamerheads Podcast! Join us for a captivating chat with Rob and Anthony from Three Flipped Studios, creators of Armed and Gelatinous. 

Learn how their hands-on marketing with custom arcade cabinets redefined their presence in a crowded market. Hear about the challenges and triumphs of navigating the arcade industry and why they cherish local multiplayer experiences. 

Packed with insights and heartfelt stories, this episode showcases the passion behind creating beloved indie games. Don’t miss it! 

Transcript

Game Developers Discuss Armed and Gelatinous

Speaker 1 0:00

Hi, I'm Celia Schilling from Yacht Club Games. Hey, this is James from Mega Cat Studios. Hey, this is Matt, aka Stormageddon, from Reignite Screen Snark and the Fun and Games podcast.

Speaker 2 0:11

This is Stephanie from the Boss Rush podcast and the Boss Rush Network.

Speaker 1 0:15

Hey, this is Mark and Kion from Bonta Affold. Hey, this is Sebastian with the PronerdReportcom and the Single Player Experience podcast. Hi, this is Chris.

Speaker 3 0:26

Mike and Garrett from Daylight Bas, nerdreportcom and the single player experience podcast.

Speaker 1 0:28

Hi, this is chris, mike and garrett from daylight basement studio. Hey, this is baron j67 from level one gaming hey, this is todd mitchell from code right play salutations.

Speaker 3 0:34

This is mike carroll from stroller hey, this is jeff moonan from fun and games podcast. Hey, this is patrick from the backlog odyssey. Hey, this is rune from runic codes. Hi, this is andrew from spalada birds. Hi, everyone jill groat here from the Backlog Odyssey. Hey, this is Rune from Runic Codes. Hi, this is Andrew from SpolatoBirds.

Speaker 1 0:47

Hi everyone. Jill Grote here from the Indie Informer. Hello, this is the Cryptmaster and you're listening to Roger Reichrich here.

Speaker 1 1:00

You're listening to Roger on the Game Ahead podcast. You're listening to Roger on the Gamer Heads Podcast, and welcome to another episode of the Gamer Heads Podcast. My name is Roger. Along with me. This week. I have two very special guests. I have Rob and Anthony from Three Flipped Studios, the creators of Armed and Gelatinous. Rob and Anthony, thank you so much for joining me today. Absolutely, it's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I'm so glad that we're able to connect and have you on the show. So, before we get into the questions around the game, I always start off by asking my guests to tell us about themselves and how you got into gaming. So I'll start with you, anthony Tell us about yourself and how did you get into gaming.

Speaker 3 1:46

Sure, my name is Anthony Prusikowski. I am the designer and technical artist from Arm and Gelatinous. I got into gaming. I've just kind of always been into gaming. We talked a little bit about the show, about Super Nintendo, and one of my favorite stories is when Super Nintendo came out from probably six months before Christmas. The answer to every question that I would you know, do what do you want for dinner, what do you want to do today? The answer was Super Nintendo. Yeah, yeah for sure.

Speaker 3 2:19

And I've just always been kind of obsessive personality towards electronics and technology and video games specifically, and just kind of understanding how things work, and that's kind of partly what's always driven me.

Speaker 1 2:36

Nice, nice. And what about you, rob?

Speaker 2 2:39

Yeah, I'd say it was back like PlayStation 1 era.

Speaker 2 2:43

I went over to a friend's house to play his playstation quite often and, uh, he showed me a game called metal gear solid and that kind of changed my whole world. I think specifically the part when you were fighting psychomantis and had to like change your controller port. And then you know the part where they're like check out the cd, like the back of the cd case, and you had to like actually physically look for merrill's contact info on the back and I was just blown away by that breakdown of the fourth wall, I guess it would be so that inspired me a lot and, like I kind of wanted to make games after that, as as far back as I can remember, um.

Speaker 2 3:18

So that was kind of the inspiration and then, you know, I got into it. I guess my first like dabble in game development was um, back when Counter-Strike 1.6 was popular and Valve released the Valve Hammer Editor and you could make your own maps and such yeah, and I got a lot of positivity out of it. People were giving me a lot of good feedback because I was playing it locally with friends at school and they were just this is so cool.

Speaker 1 3:43

This is awesome.

Speaker 2 3:44

And it was pretty cool and I felt really good about it. Um, and so, getting that like feedback from people playing, I was starting to make like maps for the source engine after that and, yeah, it just pushed me in sort of a level design, level design direction. And then anthony and I actually met in college, uh, at Art Institute in San Francisco, cool.

Speaker 3 4:05

I was in the game design program.

Speaker 2 4:06

He was in the media arts animation or something. What was it? Interactive media design. Interactive media design, that's it.

Speaker 3 4:13

Fancy term for a web developer.

Speaker 2 4:15

essentially, so we met there and we shared a love for Command Conquer and a lot of other games that we played locally, just to kind of foreshadow things. And then we yeah, we ended up, you know, working together after that, and so that was a big part of it was meeting there and just having like sort of a love of local multiplayer games.

Speaker 1 4:41

Yeah, that's awesome. So we'll talk about the game in here in just a minute. But one thing I do have to ask both of you, because the game is an arcade style game. But I mean, when you grew up, gaming was there, there wasn't a lot of arcades in existed anymore, right, am I wrong? Um?

Speaker 2 5:01

uh, no, there was yeah, there was okay okay, arcades are a huge part of my childhood really okay, and at least in my case you know I didn't go to a lot of arcades. There was one that I did frequent, like on summer vacations.

Speaker 2 5:15

Up in lake winnipisaki there's one called fun spot, which is one of the largest in the world um and it's still there, still there and I would go there a lot as a kid and it was, like you know, disneyland for video games, but there was a local pizza joint that had, you know, like a neo geo and, uh, like I think it was a turtle's cap or something like that. I would always just run to whenever my parents were ordering a pizza. I was just like looking at the slots for quarters and, just like you know, pretending like I was playing the demo and yeah, so that was a big inspiration nice.

Speaker 1 5:49

I mean, then you're both very lucky because, like I, where I grew up, like once the arcade closed, but that was it. There was not. Now there's more opportunities. I would say, like now I see a lot more like barcades and things like that, but at the time, like they shut down and that was it. It was, you know, not every once in a while you'd find a uh, maybe a bowling alley with a pac-man or an asteroids, but that was about it. So well, when I was a lot younger.

Speaker 3 6:17

There was definitely more um opportunities for arcades that I would see, especially like boardwalks or, or you know, ski trips or something like that. Uh, but again similar to rob, when I was growing up, there was like a pizza place and they had an afterburner machine with the full, like the whole, like sit down and everything, and I was just really obsessed.

Speaker 1 6:38

That's awesome wow, uh, well, let's. Let's talk about the game then, because that's a nice segue into the game. So tell us about Armed and Gelatinous, what's the game about?

Speaker 2 7:05

is sort of how I'd describe it. Um, and like the main game, the primary mode is like a battle mode where it's every blob for themselves. You play as a little blob in space and you pick up weapons and, uh, they stick to your gelatinous body and they cannot be moved is sort of the the restriction there.

Speaker 2 7:17

So wherever you bump into a gun is where it's going to stay, and so the goal is to try to fill around your circumference like weapons on all sides, so that way you have at least one gun aiming in all directions, and then, when you fire, you fire them all simultaneously. Um, you can just blast the hell out of your opponents, and, yeah, every gun you get, though, is gonna make your blob a little bit larger. So you're trading agility for firepower, and you kind of become this big boss sort of target that everyone will go after and try to kill, so they can pick up all your weapons when you die, and then they become the boss, so you're sort of trading positions of being like the ultimate blob yeah, and it creates a little great little meta game in there.

Speaker 3 7:57

As you know, rob said it was a free, free for all at the beginning, but then when someone gets a little large, you're like, okay, let's kind of have an unspoken truth for a little bit, let's kind of go after this guy because he is just dominating us. So it kind of creates little opportunities for you to do that. And then the next person if they they are able to take you out, they're gonna you drop all your weapons so they can kind of come in there, pick them all up. And now you're kind of like the mini boss in a way. So it's it's.

Speaker 2 8:25

It creates a good game loop and there's also a dash attack and that's sort of like the depth of the game. There's a little meta game going on with that. So you have to charge it up and when it's at full charge you can blast your opponent with it. Um, and it just like shoots across the screen and as long as you hit like a spot where there's no guns, because if you get hit it'll cancel your dash but as long as you connect with that dash attack it'll kill them in one hit. So it really is the equalizer.

Speaker 2 8:51

It doesn't matter how big your blob is. If you have any guns or at all, you can still take out a full-size blob in one hit. And then the metagame to that is that if you're quick and you see it coming, you can dash back into it and block it. So yeah, as long as you time your dash correctly, you can kind of have a little defensive maneuver too. But it gets tricky because there's also a cooldown. So if somebody kind of baits you and you try to dash to block it and then they dash at you, you're in your cooldown state and then you can't block and then you're dead. So it's got like a nice little thing going on with the dash attack and there's a lot of depth to kind of figuring out the timing and how to charge it up correctly and like all that stuff. So yeah, it's a good time, yeah.

Speaker 1 9:31

Yeah, I played some of it before, before we did our interview here, and I was just shocked at how crazy and chaotic everything is going on in the screen and just in how, how fun and just yeah, like the characters get, like the blobs get bigger and bigger and uh, and I think actually at one point this is like, you know, boss mode or something like that. Right, and like my kid was really big, I just I loved it. It was just so and just so much going on, but it's so fast paced too, it's it's really wonderful, oh, well, that was also something, something from the past that we wanted to bring back.

Speaker 3 10:07

We were talking about some of our influences and one of them for both of us, was Unreal Tournament, the very original one, if you remember. They had very wonderful killstreaks that they would announce to you, and as a kid that was like we didn't have an achievement system and that was our own big achievement. We wanted to have that and we, you know, brought that kind of back with, uh, a blob twist to everything and we worked with a fantastic voice actor named brian summer who, yeah, just absolutely killed it with the vo um you know you get five kills in a row and he's like plumbinating.

Speaker 2 10:43

You get to like 10 kills Unblubbable.

Speaker 1 10:48

It's really nice.

Speaker 2 10:50

Yeah, it's like a little play on the Unreal stuff. And then, yeah, we've got other game modes too.

Speaker 2 10:57

That really adds depth to it Because we wanted it to be sort of a something for everyone party experience, because you'll play a game for a while and it'll just get like you know, you've played it long enough and it's like what else are we going to do? And it's like, oh well, there's like six other game modes in here to to try out. So we've got soccer, uh, with dash killing. We've got football with dash killing. It's a bit high, high pace too, like you don't. You don't pause between touchdowns, it's just like you keep going and it's sort of like a keep away mode.

Speaker 2 11:28

Uh, then dodgeball is a lot of fun, and then we added some other cool stuff like food fight we have to collect the tacos as quickly as possible and then we have like a combo king, which is the main mode, but you're just going for consecutive kills, so whoever gets like the most combo by the end of the time limit wins, sort of a thing nice, yeah, and and I I mean that's the other thing too I noticed that just there's so many different modes in the game, but then there's also plenty of opportunity for you unlock new things as well, which was really cool.

Speaker 2 12:00

Um so, yeah, I really enjoyed that as well yeah, we wanted to harken back to like the vibe of playing games that you know nothing's like you don't, you don't pay for anything, like you actually unlock things. And yeah, we also have some like cheat codes and we have some like secrets that have yet to be discovered that we're excited for people to find out about. Um, so there's, like you know, a lot going on with this game that makes it feel like something from like the 90s, early 2000s kind of era, like the golden age of gaming. We'll say that's awesome.

Speaker 1 12:36

Um so, with with the development of the game, what were some of the biggest challenges that you faced and and how did you overcome them?

Speaker 3 12:46

what one of ours, um, I would say is is marketing and play testing, was a big one, um, that's kind of like a two-parter. So the first one is we said before, we met in san francisco, so we lived in san francisco for for a long time and then we lived in los angeles, so we're fortunate enough to have a lot of opportunities to kind of show off our game publicly, um, to not only just the general public at like little expos or just places that would have a game meetups, but also, like to other developers, and that gave us invaluable feedback, um, and also insights to bugs, so many bugs, we, we really, we really tried to squash as many bugs and make this as a stable game from the beginning as we could, to kind of stay ahead of that, um, as much as we could, and I think that it worked out pretty well in the end, um, and then to go into, like, the marketing. The other part is we, we did do a lot of big expos, we. We went to penny arcade a number of times, we've done dream hack, we've gone to e3, we even went to gamescom one year, um, and it's it's it's.

Speaker 3 13:55

It raised questions for us and one of them was how, as a small indie, how are you going to market this game? And at these events, you get all this excitement, especially with the local multiplayer? You're going to get all these people playing it. You're going to have a queue system. You're going to have like all this energy and we're like how do we capture that energy in a bottle and take it with us? And that kind of brought us to the answer of arcade machines. I don't know if you're aware, but we actually make arcade machines as well for this game and we have about 10 of them out in the wild in North America at this point and that kind of acts as its own live booth, doing things every single night. People are playing this and it kind of captures that, that vibe or excitement that you have at these expos.

Speaker 1 14:44

That's awesome. Yeah, I did know that. I saw. I saw that on your, on your site, and I was like this is really cool that you know that you have this arcade cabinet out there too. That's amazing. Yeah, I love that so much. Yeah, tell us.

Speaker 2 14:59

Oh, go ahead, Go ahead, rob. Oh yeah, that was a big turning point for us, I think, when we decided to go that route and I mean we started developing this game, like almost a decade ago.

Speaker 2 15:12

And I think it was in like 2017 or 18 when we decided the arcade was sort of the right direction to take things. You know, just given like the saturation of the digital market space, it's just very difficult to stand out and we wanted to do something. We wanted to do things differently and we wanted to, I guess, just get into a smaller pond and not a lot of arcade games come out. You know, like you don't see a lot of new arcade releases, but what you do see like every month is like a hundred new digital games get released and it's it's very daunting, you know, like we didn't we didn't want to, you know, just exist in that giant ocean. So it became pretty important to us to at least attempt this, and we happened to have developed a game that was very well suited for the arcade. I mean, we wanted to keep things simple, to make it accessible from the very beginning, and our game is just two buttons, we've got dash and we've got fire, and that happened to lend itself very nicely to the arcade.

Speaker 2 16:16

And we chose an arcade design that we loved growing up, which was sort of that Turtles Simpsons, nba Jam style cabinet where you can get four players on the machine and it's simple buttons and just a joystick, and we took that design and we improved upon it and made it something that would work for today's standards, and it's actually evolved over the years. We started building those machines in 2019, 2018. Actually, the first one was 2018. And then, since then, we've iterated on it. We've tried different designs that friends have helped us with, different designs that friends have helped us with, and now we've finally released a production model that we're going to be able to mass produce, moving forward, and we're very excited about it.

Speaker 2 17:04

Yeah, it's been a whole learning experience and it's been nice to work with our hands. I'm the programmer on the game, so I just sit and type away all day. And it's been nice to like get out of the you know the office and into the workshop, let's say, and just get my hands.

Speaker 3 17:21

We moved out of the basement and we moved into the garage yeah exactly uh, and, and so are.

Speaker 1 17:32

That. Is your idea that these cabinets will strictly go to arcades. Are you going to open up to general public to buy them? What? What are your thoughts on?

Speaker 2 17:40

that that's an interesting question. Actually, you know, we've focused primarily on arcades and arcade bars. At this point we've been targeting major cities for the most part too, um, you know, because we really want the exposure. That's sort of our primary goal is to get the game out there and get eyeballs and hands on it. So that's been our focus. But, moving forward, now that we've, you know, stopped building them ourselves, we're working with a contract manufacturer, because we did the first 10 units ourselves and we just finished the 10th unit, like literally a couple weeks ago Wow, literally a couple weeks ago, wow, um, well, and so now we're kind of, you know, more interested in selling to more places, more people. Um, yeah, we're kind of curious to see if there's going to be more of an interest from, you know, not just arcades, but maybe like companies and also just individuals, like private sales and that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 18:31

Um, they, they are, they are expensive, it's not it's not something that you it's not a hundred dollars, you know it's not a couple thousand, yeah it's.

Speaker 2 18:40

Uh, yeah, it's also very large.

Speaker 3 18:42

You you have to have the the door space to be able to even fit it through your door. Yeah, yeah we have had a number of private sales to, like some like celebrities and and uh, some other like just personal individuals as well. Um, but it you know we're hopeful to to expand upon that and especially expand towards, like uh, distributors, so that'll get get our game out there in a much larger, larger audience yeah, did you?

Speaker 1 19:13

when you were thinking of this game and you're building it like? Did you ever dream that this was going to be, uh, the the market that you were going to tap into? Is that just kind of wild?

Speaker 2 19:23

it is wild yeah like it is childhood us would be freaking out.

Speaker 3 19:29

Yeah, yeah I mean I'm, I have an arcade cabinet and I'm on a Nintendo product, so like my inner child is screaming most days. It's pretty good.

Speaker 1 19:39

Yeah, yeah, I mean I just I think that's just incredible, and when you were talking about that and like that's, you know, it's an interesting thing, because not only are you tapping into a market that you're right like is not something that a lot of people go into right now right Like you can still get old cabinets but not like really new cabinets Right, so that's that's an interesting thing but then also the fact that this is part of the marketing arm as well, right so that people hear about the game and and see the game and talk about the game, Like that's, that's an interesting perspective as well.

Speaker 2 20:13

Yeah, I look at it as sort of a symbiotic relationship. Um the digital edition which, yeah, we just released back in may, um we, we hope that it will kind of market the arcade side of things, a little bit like people will learn about it.

Speaker 2 20:29

we actually have, like in the, in the extras menu, like the little arcade trailer that we made, so we're hoping people will learn about it through that. And then, vice versa, they'll learn about the digital edition, console edition, from playing it or seeing it in an arcade, like in Portland or Seattle or New York or somewhere, wherever they find it, and then look it up and be like oh, this is out on Switch. Cool, I'll pick it up.

Speaker 3 20:54

And we've actually already experienced that cross-pollination between two we've. Rob went to a game developers conference in san francisco and there was several people who played our game in an arcade locally and found him in this at this venue, and was like freaking out because they're like wait, you made this game and they had no idea.

Speaker 3 21:14

So and then we've even had um arcade sales that they specifically said oh, I found your game on, you know that, the app store for for switch and my, my daughter, is now obsessed with it and is now telling me I have to buy your cabinet.

Speaker 2 21:29

So yeah, that was pretty cool that's, that's that was our 10th unit.

Speaker 1 21:36

Wow, that's awesome. Uh, well, tell us about some of the key mechanics in the game and and how did you come up with these ideas and what were some of the design challenges implementing these, these key mechanics?

Speaker 2 21:49

well, it started out as a game jam prompt, actually, actually.

Speaker 1 21:53

OK.

Speaker 2 21:54

Yeah, the Game Jam. Prompt words were growth, arms and sticky, and so from that, from those prompts, we needed to make a game that fit that and the game ended up actually winning that Game Jam, which was super cool. It was a 48-hour thing that happened actually down in Australia.

Arcade Industry Challenges and Growth

Speaker 2 22:15

Oh wow and yeah it. It kind of like I don't know it. It sat around for a couple years and, uh, the other members of the the game jam team that I was on like went on to do other things and they didn't really care much to continue it. So, uh, I held on to the game and changed around a few things and made it more of a functional prototype and then when we went to Gamescom, we brought it with us because we were showing off. So I actually made a different game. It was a language learning game.

Speaker 2 22:47

Back in 2014, I released it it's called Influent and that kind of kicked off 3Flip Studios. And that's when Anthony, when, when anthony and I teamed up to like really run a company together and then, uh, we brought that game to germany for gamescom and we had two booths there side by side and one of the days we decided to throw on the armaged latinus prototype and it blew up. It just took off. We just had a line of people we had, like sony and alienware, asking us when it's coming out and if we want to just like work with them, and it was just like, oh, my god, all right, well, apparently we have to make this game into something like legit. Um, yeah, yeah. So all of that code base got scrapped because it was all game jam code. We started over and we made like what it is today, um, over like the last 10 years.

Speaker 2 23:38

But yeah, we took that huge segue into the arcade world, which took us like three or four years, and then, like pandemic hit, and then that slowed everything down and the arcades closed and we were like, oh my god, what are we going to do with our lives? And then, thankfully, you know, slowly but surely, the arcades reopened and things got back to normal and we were like, ok, cool, cool, cool, we can still do this. But during that time we were able to refocus our efforts on the console version and finally get that out. So, yeah, it was quite the journey. I think one of the biggest challenges, speaking of the pandemic, was that when we did change gears and we switched to that arcade space, that threw a wrench in our dreams. We were just completely caught off guard because things were going so well.

Speaker 3 24:25

Well, not only the businesses weren't open, but also material costs skyrocketed, and also one of the largest ones that you might not think about is the logistics of shipping an arcade cabinet. Our prices like doubled, if not tripled, and it was. We basically had to take a break until prices came down, because it was just unustainable for us.

Speaker 2 24:45

Yeah, wow, yeah. It was sad Like we had like a sale lined up for one of our units that like right when the pandemic happened, it just didn't happen. We're like, ah, that was really sad. But I mean it's really like good to see the arcades back open and things are like picking up speed again and like we're there's more now than there was before.

Speaker 3 25:06

Yeah, there's just I'm I'm always impressed about new and new and more and more and more growth in the arcade industry. It's just, I'm seeing it everywhere. Um, we've done a number of road trips across the country where we're stop at arcades especially. Um, we want, like people don't know we exist and we feel that especially like for arcade industry and the people who are running an arcade. They respond well, if we kind of stop in and just be like hi, I, I make this game and I exist and our game exists and we wanted to talk to you today and usually we get a very positive response for that much better than just here's a cold email or here's a phone, cold phone call.

Speaker 3 25:50

So I mean, we've gone to a lot of arcade bars and a lot of free play arcades and we've seen so many of them, and that's something that's very unique to us at this point is just the ability to kind of go to all these cool places and just kind of experience them, because there's so many out there there's way more than I ever thought there was.

Speaker 1 26:13

Yeah, Any in Wisconsin?

Speaker 2 26:18

Oh yeah, yeah, there, there's way more than I ever thought there was.

Speaker 3 26:19

Yeah, yeah, uh, any in wisconsin? Oh yeah, yeah, there's a few.

Speaker 2 26:21

We're actually just there. Where are you? Where are you? Is that? Where were you in wisconsin?

Speaker 3 26:24

we just we discovered, uh, wisconsin dells actually are you kidding?

Speaker 1 26:28

I'm like an hour from wisconsin. Oh my gosh, that's so weird. Yeah, yes, there. Yeah, believe it or not, were you really or?

Speaker 2 26:34

not. Our contract manufacturer is located in wisconsin, so when we drove across, really we stopped there for a week and built our 10th unit with them oh my, we stayed in wisconsin all week, and then, oh my gosh, after that we, we stopped at another two arcades in wisconsin, uh one, well, three actually. Two of them are down in madison and. And one of them was over in Milwaukee. Was it Geek Mania and IO Bar? Yeah, IO Bar is fantastic. Geek Mania is also super cool. They have the world's largest X-Men six-player.

Speaker 1 27:06

Yeah, I've been to that. I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 27:10

Yeah, that was super cool. Yeah, yeah, oh, man, I wish we would have had this episode, Could have done it in person Exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 27:21

Yeah, I'm in Stevens Point, so I'm not that far from the Dells. I'm like an hour north.

Speaker 2 27:26

Oh, very cool, yeah. Yeah, that's an interesting place. We played some mini golf, hung out and had some fun.

Speaker 3 27:33

Yeah, highly recommend the summer house Ate some cheese.

Speaker 1 27:38

Yep, ate some cheese, fried cheese curds as you do yeah, delicious, yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So I mean, is your arcade cabinet? So I'm going off the rails now? It's just all about me, right? I want to find out where I can play the game in in arcade. Is it in in the madison or milwaukee arcades, or is it? We're talking to you, it's, it's a process.

Speaker 2 28:02

It's not an easy thing to to convince someone to do. I mean generally arcades they've got their floor space all figured out already, so when?

Speaker 2 28:10

you're selling an arcade to an arcade, when you're selling a cabinet to an arcade, when you're selling a cabinet to an arcade, you have to basically convince them to take something off the floor which is, like you know, risky for them. So like what is arm and gelatin? I've never heard of that game before and it's like well, we've got good statistics and you know, our current arcade owners love us, so you know, hopefully you believe us when we tell you that and you'll buy one, but it's, it's not easy. Yeah, yeah, hopefully.

Indie Developers Discuss Online Game Costs

Speaker 1 28:36

Well and right? I hope so. And it's kind of funny, right down the road from the, the Madison one on Odana is a Chuckie cheese, so you could have just stopped in there and been like, hey, chuckie cheese, I've. I've actually done that in the last month I've actually done that.

Speaker 2 28:52

In the last month I went to a Chuck E Cheese out here in Washington and I went and talked to the manager and I asked him straight up. I was like, are any of these games in here, non-Redemption games, you know, like ticket?

Speaker 1 29:04

games and he said no, I was like oh God what's happened to Chuck E Cheese?

Speaker 2 29:10

Oh?

Speaker 1 29:10

my gosh.

Speaker 2 29:20

Yeah, it's been such a long time since I've been in chucky cheese, obviously, but that's really funny. Yeah, so they're all built into their you know kitty casino thing right now and it's like, yeah, I don't know, it's not the same experience. When it's all about the redemption, it feels a little bit more like you know, poker chips, and yeah, I, I don't know we're not trying to make a game it's a different market.

Speaker 1 29:34

Yeah Well, and it's funny that you say that, because I think in the Dells there's a lot of arcades inside hotels, but they are the ticket arcade games, right, where you redeem a lot of the tickets and then they have a booth you turn. Even in Appleton there is an arcade that I like going to but it is again very ticket driven uh market.

Speaker 2 29:58

So, yeah, it's just not like unfortunately, like the reality is that those types of games earn the most money and they really do and it's like a crisis of conscious thing because, like you know, it also breaks the game design like a bit yeah, when that is your focus is paying out. So we're not super interested in that market and as much as it would probably-.

Speaker 3 30:20

We're not very good capitalists.

Speaker 2 30:21

We're horrible capitalists, exactly yeah. We want to make a fun game. I mean sorry, yeah, it sucks.

Speaker 1 30:29

But yeah, at our own demise.

Speaker 2 30:36

So yeah, it's a frustrating reality with the market that way. I don't think we'll ever sell the Chuck E Cheese as a result. David Buster's is cool.

Speaker 3 30:46

Maybe David Buster's.

Speaker 2 30:47

They still have games just for fun.

Speaker 1 30:52

After the show. There's another place up here I'll have to you about, so uh, well, we'll talk after the show about that too. Um, but one of the things I wanted to ask about too, is the fact that you know, from the console perspective, I understand you know the, the arcade. Obviously you're playing local, but console too, you emphasize on the local multiplayer. Um, what are your thoughts on the current state of local multiplayer games, and why did you choose to focus on this aspect for the console game?

Speaker 3 31:23

there's. There's a big history of of us, especially with console side. We still play. We have game nights from time to time. We'll play a lot of contemporary like local multiplayer games, like like spelunky we'll have spelunky knights or or um wand wars or even like bangaroo uh, boomerang, foo, mage quit. You know, you know, and I also grew up on like worms and scorched earth, stuff like that. You know, that's, I think, really ingrained in our personalities and I think that was partly driven to why we were like let's kind of take this game, jam game and really focus on the multiplayer aspect. And it's very different to have kind of like a social game versus kind of even like an online MMO or something. Even though it's supposed to be social, at the same time it feels. I feel like, you know, almost today, contemporarily, it's more of a lone experience being in an MMO sometimes than an actual. You know, sit down on the couch next to your friend and have a LAN party.

Speaker 1 32:30

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 32:32

Yeah, and I think, like with the state of the industry, as you mentioned mentioned, like not a lot of local multiplayer only games get made, and I think it's probably financial that decision. Um, I mean, we don't have a publisher, and part of the reason we don't have a publisher is because we didn't want to do an online game. It's just not something that's popular much anymore, it's just a local, multiplayer-only experience. And we dabbled in making an online game. We spent a year coding it and trying to get it to work and we were pretty close. But we came to the realization that the server costs are going to be far too high without a guaranteed install base of players, and getting to that critical mass point is not guaranteed.

Speaker 2 33:21

You could spend a ton of time programming in this online game, which is not easy by any means, and not only that. Once you bring it to consoles, there's kind of two parts to this. But once you bring it to consoles, um, that's kind of two parts to this. But once you bring it to consoles, um, you have to get through much more rigorous certification process with sony, microsoft and nintendo, like they're not gonna make it easy for you when you start introducing online multiplayer and a lot of that is security. They need to to make sure that everything is fully secure. Yeah, and you're going to be suffering through that, making sure that everything is up to code.

Speaker 2 34:02

But then and this is where I kind of take issue with a lot of the main console manufacturers If you make an online game for consoles, every one of your users has to pay a subscription fee monthly to whether it's microsoft, sony or nintendo on steam on pc. You know that's not an issue, thankfully, um, but you know it's. It's not exactly fair to the developer at that point. In my opinion, I think that a lot of gamers don't really realize what is happening, but sony and microsoft and nintendo do not provide any of that server network to their developers. Like when we spin up servers for online games, as developers we bear the full brunt of that cost, despite the fact that the players are paying monthly to have access to those servers, which I think is very strange, and I think there's a disconnect.

Speaker 2 35:04

There isn't really like a clear communication between developers and their gamer customers that that is taking place and I I find it to be kind of an injustice because it's a lot of work to create an online game and it's very expensive to host those servers, um, but it becomes extremely unrealistic when you know your customers are paying monthly to have access to them and none of that money is going towards the server costs. That's just, you know, supposed to come from the sales of the game, and a lot of the reason online games have microtransactions these days is because they need to justify the server costs, and we don't want to have to do that. We don't want to live in a world where we're, like you know, microtransactions.

Speaker 3 35:46

Yeah, we would have to add a live service or microtransaction like monetization system to the game if we're going to have that online, and that's something both of us don't.

Speaker 2 35:56

we don't play games that way and we don't want to make our game that way right so that was kind of our decision of of keeping it local yeah, I mean I love rocket league, don't get me wrong like I think it's a great game, but like they would never be an online game if they weren't selling all that stuff and getting like all that you and getting all those crossovers and collabs and such with Batman and stuff. They do that because it costs a ton of money to run those servers. Probably not that much money if you're Epic Games, but still just as an example, that's why the game has all these microtransactions in it.

Speaker 2 36:34

I mean they need to justify the costs and then also they want more money. But we weren't going to be able to afford the servers, especially without that critical mass, and we had no guarantee that we'd get it. So that was sort of our big decision to stop developing the online. Now that doesn't mean that we won't have online in the future. I think it just depends on you know what happens with our uh user base, right, like if it grows to a point where it's big enough to support that, and we have people that are like demanding it and they're like I want to play this with my friend on the other side of the country. It's like all right, we hear you, we can afford it now, sorry yeah, it's like you know, we'd love to release.

Speaker 2 37:14

Like I'd love if every game was online, but the the costs and the risk just isn't justifiable as, like a, an indie developer made up of two people without a publisher.

Speaker 1 37:25

It's just not happening for us, unfortunately yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's and it's interesting because I think that's what you mentioned. There is just something that you know a lot of people don't think about. Uh, in regards to the cost of making a game, right, like I typically think of the cost from a perspective of you know, the length of time to build a game and and such like that and in the cost opportunity cost of removing elements that would be would add to the to the overall project development and the release of the game, right. But yeah, like I honestly I didn't even think, like until you brought that. I'm like, oh yeah, that doesn't make sense. We pay money for this online service and it doesn't go to the developers. They still have to pay for their own hosting. Like that just seems weird. Now that you pointed that out, I, I, I just I don't know. Now I can't get it in my head.

Speaker 2 38:19

It's frustrating, yeah and I think that's the most frustrating part is no one gets that right.

Speaker 3 38:24

Yeah, there's also a separate, like technical aspect of this too is, if you're going to make like an online game, you can either do like a peer-to-peer type of hosting or can either do like a peer to peer type of hosting, or you can do like a server based hosting and the P to P is like the kind of like the freer, easier version, but at that point, since we're a four player game, one person would have to act at the host.

Speaker 3 38:48

And at that point, that player now has an unfair advantage because they're not having a level of latency that the other three players are are experiencing. And then us, as a developer, would have to kind of create almost like an elaborate smoke and mirrors on a server level to compensate for that, and it just it. It became a little bit too much for the size of our development team. We, just we. We would need a dedicated like online infrastructure engineer essentially, and that's just something that we weren't able to focus on.

Speaker 2 39:20

Yeah, and at that point too it's like what's the difference between doing that and doing Steam Remote Play, and that just works out of the box. So that feels to me like the same thing. I mean, granted, it's not available on console, but if you want to play it online, you kind of can. We're not crazy about remote play or that sort of online experience either. It's just extra steps and I don't think a lot of people are really engaging with that service. But I do think the technology will improve as internet speeds improve and it might become more of a viable option to play local multiplayer games online. But I mean, like I said, it's not off the table. I think it's just a matter of demand, Like if we get enough players and people are like, oh my god, we need to play this game online.

Speaker 2 40:08

It's like oh yeah okay, cool, well, we can afford it, but I mean it's not something that, something that I mean obviously the market expects it up front, but it's not something that we can justify to do up front. So we just didn't. And I think we're more focused on the arcade, because that, to us, is like super cool and, like I said, it's like a less, uh, saturated market. It's just like a smaller pawn.

Speaker 3 40:32

So I think we have a higher likelihood of success in the arcade world than we do in the online games world yeah, yeah, I think there's about six of us or so uh independent developers around that number uh that are working inside the arcade space. You know it's probably single.

Speaker 2 40:49

Yeah, I don't yeah, I don't know, exactly how many, but I will shout out another podcast called indie arcade wave. That goes goes into detail about everybody in the space.

Speaker 3 41:00

That's from the creators of Galactic Battlegrounds.

Speaker 1 41:03

Okay.

Speaker 2 41:04

Awesome, another indie arcade game.

Speaker 1 41:07

Nice, I'll have to check out the podcast. It's cool.

Speaker 2 41:09

Yeah, it's got like over 100 episodes now. We were actually the first episode. Really, that's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, it's got like over 100 episodes now.

Speaker 1 41:15

We were actually the first episode, believe it or not. Really, that's awesome, that's awesome, yeah, that was super cool.

Speaker 2 41:18

It's taken off and gone all into crazy, crazy places. He'll interview, like arcade owners and distributors.

Speaker 3 41:26

Do a lot of tours and walkthroughs of different arcade spaces as well.

Speaker 1 41:30

That's awesome, that's awesome, very cool.

Speaker 2 41:38

What has been your favorite moment while developing the game? Oh man, I could just talk about arcades all day.

Speaker 3 41:46

Yeah, that was actually my first. That was my first blow up point was building the first arcade.

Speaker 2 41:49

Yeah, I mean that's definitely like seeing it work for the first time. There's like a video of me like putting the quarter in and having it like register as a credit and just so you can see the joy in my face, Like it's just like oh my. God, like this thing is sitting here and it's playing our game, I mean, and then seeing it for the first time like in an actual arcade and like watching people play it and just like have a blast. I mean, there's nothing like it.

Speaker 3 42:20

The other part of that too is we mentioned a lot of expos and traveling and networking with other developers and fans and just people who you know, nerds like us, that like video games when you're in those safe places in a way, um, like mag fest west, we went to the very first one in california and that was that was a big event for us, that that got us involved in the arcades, like making us think about the arcade stuff. But then just that event alone was. It was one part, mag fest, and then crunchy roll had their like anime expo at the same time and they crossed, crossed, it pollinated each other. So, like everyone was, like you know, cross cosplay and all these wonderful like anime outfits and then like they would.

Speaker 3 43:08

We would go to both expos at the same pass and that was just one of our like favorite events. We also went to we've gone to literally every um penny arcade expo. At this point we we did um south when it was still a thing. We've done boston a number of times. We've done seattle um, and we've even gone to australia twice wow, wow and yeah, pax is one of our favorites.

Speaker 1 43:33

Are you going to be at PAX West this year?

Speaker 2 43:35

We are thinking about it. We're financially challenged at the moment. Yeah, we're hoping our game sales will enable us to do so sort of where we're at with it. It's a possibility I don't know We'll see To be determined.

Speaker 1 43:51

Yeah, okay. As indie developers, what advice would you give to others looking to create their own games, and what were some of the key lessons you learned from your experience?

Speaker 2 44:08

I mean I'll say this like, if you can make a game with someone else's money, like you should probably do that, get a publisher first, go pitch your game idea to publishers and have some sort of credentials in there that show that you know what you're doing. Um, because I feel like there's there's people out there that'll listen and they'll be like cool, we'll green light this and give you like x hundred thousand dollars and that's like, oh my god, like I can do this on someone else's dime.

Speaker 2 44:37

Great, when it's your own money, like oh yeah you don't, you don't want to be where we are, so I, I think, like the whole the I don't know.

Speaker 1 44:47

It sounds like you guys have a really good plan here, though I mean the fact that you have arcades now and that you're getting into arcades and you have manufacturers manufacturing them now that sounds amazing.

Speaker 2 44:59

The future is bright. I'll say that, and I think that I would do it all again anyway.

Speaker 3 45:06

It just took us a long time to get here, yeah yeah, we're nuts like you know you gotta be.

Speaker 2 45:10

You gotta be a little bit like one part crazy, you know. So we're, you know we're doing it, we're living the dream, but it's not like it hasn't exactly paid off.

Speaker 1 45:21

Let's say I'm not buying a house anytime soon, um, but it's like you know, I still wouldn't change it, like I still am, like you know, in love with what?

Speaker 2 45:24

anytime soon, but it's like you know, I still wouldn't change it. Like I still am, like you know, in love with what I'm doing. So it's like, yeah, there's a bit of a trade-off, like being a starry artist or whatever. But, like the advice is, you know, definitely talk to publishers before you start developing your local multiplayer game, because they'll be like, oh, we don't publish games like that, sorry, they'll be like oh, we don't publish games like that Sorry, and so if you still just want to make cool games, it doesn't necessarily have to be in this genre, because unfortunately this genre doesn't get published is sort of the reality.

Speaker 2 45:56

It's the harsh reality of the video game landscape in which we exist now. Like I said, the golden era I think was early 2000s, back when the Nintendo DS, ds was super popular and new and like that. That felt so good back then. Um, and now it's just kind of it's a little bleak, it's a little bit like the games that get made now and greenlit and stuff. It's just like I don't know.

Speaker 2 46:20

I I don't mean to be like a downer about it, but like I lived through like what I feel is like the best era of gaming, like it was great and like it still can be great. There still are great games that get made that feel like they're from that era and that's those are the ones that I seek out. But, yeah, like if you can make a game with someone else's money, you should probably do that. And then also like definitely find the right people to work with. Like anthony and I are like really good at working together and I mean it's not necessarily like easy to find the right people, but I've seen a lot of projects fall apart because you know, oh yeah, the team absolutely just isn't.

Speaker 2 47:00

Like they don't have that, that special, that secret sauce or whatever. Like it's, just it's. It's scary because you know you'll spend years working on a project and then it falls apart and, uh man, just heartbreaking.

Speaker 3 47:15

So yeah, that's, that's part of my advice I would give. It would be like don't stop, don't sleep, keep going, and if you don't make it happen, it won't happen. It's up to you. Like you, just you just got to figure out how. Whatever the problem is, there is a solution. You have to figure it out, and that there's also part of. That would be like the business side of games. It's very easy to kind of get lost in it and forget what is important, and what's important is your main focus of your, your development and your development goals to make a a good game overall. I think that people will respond to a good game at the end of the day yeah, I'll give two more things too.

Speaker 2 47:59

Like game jams are really helpful. Like do a game jam and you'll come up with some cool concepts and things that are fun. Like that's a great way to get started on a project. It's really hard to start.

Speaker 3 48:08

You don't really know what to do but well, that's also good, good to lead into both networking. You need other other talent, other developers. You know you can't, is we? Wear a lot of hats and we do a lot of things, but you know, you know, my developer hat is not good as good as rob's developer hat. You know hat, and I feel I'm a pretty damn good designer. At the end of the day, we all have our strengths and weaknesses.

Speaker 2 48:35

Yeah, and the Game Jam stuff is really going to get you going on something. You almost need someone else to give you a prompt. You can't really give it to yourself.

Speaker 2 48:44

Getting involved in local community stuff and getting into into game jams with, like people that are local and there's even online ones too, like big ones that are international, um, and just they're going to give you a prompt, you know, they'll tell you what to make and then you can kind of like be creative with those restraints and that's gonna like get you started on something cool.

Speaker 2 49:05

And then the last thing that I would say is, like you really do need to connect with local community game developers because they're going to tell you hopefully they're going to tell you if what you're working on is good or bad, and you should sort of rely on your gut. But at some point I don't know it could be a bad thing, because if you think it's great and like no one else does, that's bad, like you might spend years and years making a game that just sucks and like no one told you you know, and like I don't want that to happen to anyone, so please like connect with your local community and like show off what you're doing, like you know, get feedback.

Speaker 2 49:44

Like get feedback from people, because it's very valuable yeah, yeah early and often too right, so yeah yeah, that's part of that whole play testing yeah that I was touching on earlier.

Speaker 1 49:56

It's so important to start start play testing as soon as you can yeah, uh, anthony, any any other thoughts on that before we wrap things up here.

Speaker 3 50:09

Find your local barcade and tell them that you would like an Armageddon Arcade Machine.

Speaker 1 50:16

Yes, Nice Before we head out, then how can people find you and follow you on social media? And then where can they get the game as well?

Speaker 2 50:28

Oh, yeah Well, we are at armed gelatinous on, like everything you know. Social media sucks, so don't use it, but if you do, you know we're on all of them.

Speaker 3 50:42

We hang out on discord a lot. We have a discord channel. It's a was it discord GG slash blobs online. We hang out on Discord a lot. We have a Discord channel. It's Discordgg slash BlobsOnline.

Speaker 2 50:53

That's where we hang out. I don't know, it's the least toxic of the social medias that we've found. That's usually where you can find us. It also prints out all of our live matches that are being played in the arcade, so like you can go in and click on one of the arcade venues and it'll just tell you what the latest scores were. Um. So that's fun.

Indie Game Platform Availability and Promotion

Speaker 1 51:20

That's awesome, that's really cool. Uh, and then your website, too. Right. What is your website that people we have? Uh, armedingelatinouscom just our name, um, and then your website too right.

Speaker 3 51:27

What is your website that we have? Uh, armedinjelatinouscom just our name, um. And then the platforms we're on. We're on nintendo switch and you can get us in the e-store. We're on xbox one, xbox x series x I believe that's what it's called uh, playstation 4 and playstation 5, and then, of course, uh, pc on steam nice, yep, yep yeah, well, anthony and rob, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule and meeting with me.

Speaker 1 51:51

I really enjoyed our conversation. Uh, and, and, listeners, I'm going to put links in our show notes where you can check out the game and wish list the game and buy the game, um, so check that out and make sure you follow them and join their discord as well. So again, thank you, anthony and Rob, for joining me. This is a real pleasure having you on the show.

Speaker 3 52:11

I can't wait to have our cheese cast next time yes, all right.

Speaker 1 52:18

Well, thank you listeners. Thanks everyone. Stay safe and game on bye.