Larry Herb: Hi, it's Larry Herb here at Xbox live Major Nelson. Welcome to show number 563. Joining me here in the studio is, uh, Jeffery Rubenstein. Hello Jeffery.

Jeff Rubenstein: Always a pleasure to be here.

Larry Herb: It's great to have you. And now also join ... Not joining us is the lovely and talented Laura who is, uh, unfortunately wasn't able to make it, but instead we've got the love- the less lovely but ever so talented, Aaron Greenberg.

Jeff Rubenstein: I think he's-

Larry Herb: Definitely less lovely.

Jeff Rubenstein: I think you’re every bit is lovely.

Larry Herb: I would say probably less talent ... Laura is a smart girl.

Aaron Greenberg: Let's be clear.

Larry Herb: She, she's, she's delightful.

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah.

Larry Herb: And unfortunately she's so delightful that her, her time is of, of the essence and she couldn't join us.

Aaron Greenberg: Well I'm thrilled to fill the seat this week.

Larry Herb: But, but we, you have a lot to talk about as well. We're going to get to that in just a little bit. And I'm so thrilled. Fi- first of all, you are a friend to the show, you've been on frequently. You're always welcome to come back on.

Aaron Greenberg: I appreciate that. I'm a fan of the show.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Aaron Greenberg: I'm a fan of the people.

Larry Herb: Thank you.

Aaron Greenberg: That run the show well, we have a good time doc.

Jeff Rubenstein: You're looking at me and I'm like, "I, I haven't earned that."

Larry Herb: So I want to, I want to thank you listeners because little do you know, um, you, this maybe just an occasional podcast to you, but Jeff and I were talking about this show here today. This is actually the highlight of our week, right?

Jeff Rubenstein: They pull us out of the salt mines.

Larry Herb: Right. Where we get to, we actually get to sit here and, and just kind of hang out and talk about the stuff we love doing, the stuff we love and instead of I guess doing the stuff.

Jeff Rubenstein: And we hate each other.

Larry Herb: We do. We just despise each other.

Jeff Rubenstein: But we hit it off for an hour a week.

Larry Herb: 2007 I have been avoiding you.

Jeff Rubenstein: (Laughs)

Larry Herb: (Laughs) yeah, do, do you know that story?

Jeff Rubenstein: Still remember it yeah.

Aaron Greenberg: I don't know that story.

Larry Herb: Really?

Aaron Greenberg: No. I-

Larry Herb: Would you like to know the story of how we met? Would you like to tell the story?

Jeff Rubenstein: I would like to tell the story.

Aaron Greenberg: I know you were on the other side of the fence for a while.

Larry Herb: So no but listen to this.

Aaron Greenberg: Before that.

Larry Herb: This is way before that.

Jeff Rubenstein: So I-I was working at the Orlando Sentinel.

Larry Herb: In Florida.

Jeff Rubenstein: Which is a fine tribune publication and I was writing, uh, at a print column on games, I also run their, their gaming blog, control freak, uh, which was very clever 10 years ago. And, um, I had been interviewing I finally land-I landed a job in the industry at Sony.

Aaron Greenberg: Okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: And but there was like two months before I started and in that time Halo 3 came out and Larry was in town there was a whole lot of things going on.

Larry Herb: We were doing an MLG tournament at Universal studios.

Jeff Rubenstein: World Cyber Games.

Larry Herb: World cyber games that’s right.

Aaron Greenberg: Oh, the old Samsung thing.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah (chuckles). So there was a huge thing happening at Universal I was in Orlando and I was like, “Well I’m going to cover this.” And I was like … I remember telling that the folks I work with, “I’m going to meet that major Nelson.

Aaron Greenberg: Yup (chuckles).

Jeff Rubenstein: And uh and I’m going to look him in the eye and I’m going to make sure he remembers me.

Aaron Greenberg: And he did.

Jeff Rubenstein: And so even before that, uh-

Aaron Greenberg: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: On your blog I you mentioned you were coming down-

Aaron Greenberg: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: And I put a comment in and I said, “Would love to meet you and I’m working on a story.”

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: And I was working on a story about the PMS clan for Halo.

Aaron Greenberg: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah for the local newspaper.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah and-

Aaron Greenberg: I was in marketing we uh sponsored them at the time.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah the-they had a huge wing in Orlando and were really good so um-

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah they are really good.

Larry Herb: On south [inaudible 00:02:48] for sure, right?

Jeff Rubenstein: A lo- lot, lot of things happen on OBT that’s not one of them so-

Larry Herb: Wow.

Aaron Greenberg: Well I’ve never seen Larry so happy to have a story be told.

Larry Herb: But it’s all right anyway.

Jeff Rubenstein: So, so uh we …You wrote back on the comment and you are like, “Yeah let’s do it.”

Larry Herb: Let’s do it

Jeff Rubenstein: And you connected me and I ended up uh I ended up heading down to Universal-

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: And got back there you got me in early.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: And I remember, coming in and there was a great set up.

Larry Herb: This is your moment.

Jeff Rubenstein: There was some sound stage.

Larry Herb: Yeah I remember that too.

Jeff Rubenstein: And, and you know, you are busy and you are clearly and I’m like, “Is he okay, can I go over there to Larry (laughing) and uh and then so they bring me over…

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: And I’m like I’m just … you’re like, “I know.” And like you shake my … You give me a panted Larry Herb Major Nelson handshake.

Larry Herb: And he’s got the signature.

Jeff Rubenstein: And it was sort of …And I left …And, and you know, I let it linger for a little bit.

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah

Larry Herb: And I let it linger.

Aaron Greenberg: This is getting awkwardly-

Jeff Rubenstein: No, because he didn’t know that I was going to work and I was like-

Aaron Greenberg: Got it.

Jeff Rubenstein: And in my mind I’m thinking, “Next time we meet-

Aaron Greenberg: Yup.

Jeff Rubenstein: -It will be on the battlefield.”

Larry Herb: That’s right and it was.

Aaron Greenberg: Oh snap that.

Jeff Rubenstein: And then he ended up hooking me up with who was it? I don’t know anyway, anyway we got the story together and, uh, and it ended up you know, being great and-and I gave great review to him on [inaudible 00:03:56]

Larry Herb: Did we win an award; did that story win an award? (laughs)

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah I’ve never showed him my wall full of [inaudible 00:04:00] so then the next time six months later, I was working for Sony.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: And to your credit uh we were doing something to GDC and I’m out at lunch and I got a call, “Major Nelson’s here to see you?” And I’m like-

Aaron Greenberg: Oh that’s awesome.

Larry Herb: That’s right, I remembered that.

Jeff Rubenstein: “Oh my God, he remembered me.”

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: And, uh, and that was kind of amazing and here we are now.

Aaron Greenberg: So you did … And you did some work over at Sony for many years, great work at Sony for many years. I was a Rubenstein fans, right? And so to that point I remember I was so upset when you went to work at Sony.

Jeff Rubenstein: Were you really?

Aaron Greenberg: Not because, not because you were at Sony because they are a great company.

Jeff Rubenstein: Of course.

Aaron Greenberg: But because we didn’t hire you and we didn’t have a, we didn’t have a position and that’s why I was …So and then we had a position and you know, I called you and I said, “Jeff, it’s going to happen.”

Jeff Rubenstein: That was on Wednesday?

Aaron Greenberg: I remember Larry [inaudible 00:04:44] and saying, “Guess who we are hiring?”

Larry Herb: Yeah, yeah remember that?

Aaron Greenberg: Who? He goes ... I’m like, “I love that guy.”

Larry Herb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah

Aaron Greenberg: So here he is working on awesome stuff. Anyway, and that was a heck of a rundown memory lane-

Larry Herb: And now you two hate each other, that’s amazing.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah well you know, familiarity breeds contempt.

Aaron Greenberg: That’s sure though.

Jeff Rubenstein: We see each other every day.

Larry Herb: Yeah well Jeff … Let me just tell you how close Jeff and I are it’s a true story. Nobody else on this planet would I take the text from that I got last night.

Aaron Greenberg: Oh boy is this TMI or are we going to-

Jeff Rubenstein: So -

Larry Herb: But we could do a whole show I think. This is like a couple’s counseling I feel like I’ve stepped into here.

Jeff Rubenstein: Well look-

Larry Herb: I was sitting at dinner and I got the text message and I did a speed take.

Jeff Rubenstein: I-I have traveled around the world sport [inaudible 00:05:25] I have traveled with Larry more than my wife more than anyone I ever met.

Larry Herb: Yeah I quest that.

Jeff Rubenstein: We’ve been through uh you know, we’ve been to the …From a dump in New Mexico.

Larry Herb: The lowest lows to the highest highs, literary right?

Aaron Greenberg: That’s awesome.

Larry Herb: Brothers to the end right here.

Jeff Rubenstein: And what we do have in common is our fan of Japanese plumbing and bathroom implements and getting the total wash lit.

Larry Herb: Yeah I have a couple in my house, Jeff has one.

Aaron Greenberg: The turbo toilet? You guys have those or like the-?

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Aaron Greenberg: Got it-

Jeff Rubenstein: That was the thing where I spoiled myself.

Aaron Greenberg: The Shinjuku special.

Larry Herb: Oh yeah the whole thing anyway and-

Jeff Rubenstein: That’s something completely different Aaron. So do you want me to read it?

Aaron Greenberg: I thought it was a toilet completely, but certainly I haven’t lived.

Larry Herb: Go ahead. So I’ll, I’ll or do you want to have Aaron read it?

Aaron Greenberg: I have to read it, can I read the text? So I’ll go ahead and do this. Anyway, so if you can find them I know you-

Larry Herb: So many he’s so, so social.

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh my God, there’s a lot of stuff that no one can see here.

Aaron Greenberg: I won’t scroll or look or swipe I won’t … I’ll let you read it Jeffrey if you find it, yeah anyway-

Jeff Rubenstein: Well so I don’t see it but I … Basically I texted you and I just said, “There’s no one else I can share this with.

Larry Herb: True story.

Jeff Rubenstein: But you know, TF …That feeling when you sit on the toilet and it ain’t warm.

Larry Herb: It’s not warm, that the heater wasn’t on (laughing) oh no, wow.

Jeff Rubenstein: And that’s when he chided me for not reading instructions.

Larry Herb: First world, first world problems right there.

Jeff Rubenstein: It’s not …It’s beyond that.

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah, it was, it was ... It was very ... Anyway so you both have the Hello Kitty screen wipes too because I … You know, Larry has got that circus. Oh my God that’s awesome.

Jeff Rubenstein: I mean I can only, I can only grasp to you…

Aaron Greenberg: Exactly. Edited for to be an E10 plus.

Larry Herb: Anyway so-

Jeff Rubenstein: And then it went, then it went in really bad [inaudible 00:07:00]-

Larry Herb: But you are not here to hear about Jeff and I and our past and the electric toilets. You’re here about games. And we’ve got lots of games to talk about. I’ve been planning … I’m going to jump in here and just start because I’m playing the heck out of Unravel right now. I know … Jeff, you played a little of that?

Jeff Rubenstein: Not yet.

Larry Herb: Aaron you started right?

Aaron Greenberg: Okay I just started it last night and I will tell you it is … You can tell it’s a …This is going to be a very good game.

Larry Herb: Now I don’t want to get … Look, if you are sitting on your device or computer or your phone whatever … However you’re listening to the show, you know this is a pretty long show. I’ve got not one, not two, three world class interviews this week in addition to and listen to you guys hear it

Aaron Greenberg: Listen to us being here (chuckles).

Larry Herb: Listen you guys I mean I’ve got the-

Jeff Rubenstein: When does this guy shut up?

Larry Herb: I’ve got Martin Sahlin who is the …He is the executive producer, he is the designer, creative guy behind the Unravel and then Fazz from the Home front close beta just started on Xbox one this you know, started a couple days ago I think yesterday and then Jeremy Donam you know Jeremy?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, former IGN chair-?

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: Chair, he’s been around good guy.

Larry Herb: He’s going to tell us about Rocket League, coming to Xbox one.

Aaron Greenberg: Oh yeah.

Larry Herb: So those all will be in, in just a few minutes but you got to suffer through the little stories that you’re going to hear from us now so that’s … Anyway.

Aaron Greenberg: Let the suffering continue.

Larry Herb: So anyway, so I’m playing Unravel, playing a little bit of Halo as usual what else am I playing? It’s Tomb Raider I’m still chipping on to-

Jeff Rubenstein: On Windows 10?

Larry Herb: Yeah on my Windows gaming PC which I upgraded last week so nice. What are you playing now?

Aaron Greenberg: I just started playing Unravel. Uh I’ve been playing a little bit of everything. Uh, believe it or not, I, uh, and I went to the Super bowl I’m back and started playing a little more madness

Larry Herb: I’m sorry did you … Were you at the Super bowl?

Aaron Greenberg: I was not at the Super bowl?

Larry Herb: Okay you didn’t go anyway-

Aaron Greenberg: I know you always get …That was the … You are the marketing guy of the Super bowl is kind of what you probably…

Larry Herb: No I just thought I know a lot of folks, I had the opportunity to go down there and I declined because I just I didn’t have a business justification for being there.

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah.

Larry Herb: I would love to have gone… But you know, it was fun watching the game.

Aaron Greenberg: But, uh, yeah, I would say, lots of good games coming out, a lot of good ID games have been out too so…

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh yes.

Larry Herb: And we are going to talk about chess playing and then we are going to talk about the big news this week which is Quantum Break.

Aaron Greenberg: Yes.

Larry Herb: Which is really …There are some great news coming out we’re going to…

Aaron Greenberg: Yes that is the other game I started playing…

Larry Herb: And I want to talk about that in a minute after Jeff we kind of go through your list.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, yeah well a couple of ID games that you mentioned. ID is having …This time of the year is when I think a lot of independent games they don’t want to release in the middle of like your Halos and you other holiday titles and so this ends being like a great time of year for MDs. I sat down and in one sitting played, who Gone home, console edition…

Aaron Greenberg: Ooh.

Jeff Rubenstein: Which is a game that I have been hearing about for the long time, came out on Xbox One in January really it’s just fantastic.

Larry Herb: I’m stuck in the library I think.

Jeff Rubenstein: You’re stuck? How do you get stuck?

Larry Herb: I don’t know I’m just …I stopped playing. I guess I shouldn’t say stuck.

Jeff Rubenstein: Uh, yeah it’s not a very lengthy game but I love the way it plays with your expectations of what you think it is and the way people jump to conclusions and it tells the story. It’s basically you come home from college and actually it takes place on my birthday but in the 90s. Um I don’t know why [inaudible 00:09:44]-

Aaron Greenberg: I’m pretty sure you had a birthday in the 90s.

Jeff Rubenstein: I did. Well, yeah not this birthday.

Larry Herb: Okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah and it … I remember that year it’s a good one. So, um, and essentially you come home, no one’s home and you are just sort of figuring out, “What happened?” And in the year that you’ve been travelling abroad, your family their life is changed but what’s going on, why is no one there and you are just sort of figure it out by-

Aaron Greenberg: Mm (affirmative).

Jeff Rubenstein: The clues left around the house. Very interesting story telling and I really enjoyed that one.

Larry Herb: Yup.

Jeff Rubenstein: Um, and then I started playing OxenFree which I know-

Larry Herb: Oh yeah I finished it.

Jeff Rubenstein: You’ve played and finished? Laura played … I played this for about two hours have you played this game yet?

Aaron Greenberg: I have not played it yet but I had a number of folks I work with have been raving about it.

Jeff Rubenstein: You have to play it. It’s-it …The best conversational mechanic I’ve ever seen in a game where you actually feel like is the most natural conversation.

Aaron Greenberg: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes there is like a tree of three choices at any point but you can hit the button at any point and interrupt so the cadence of conversation…

Larry Herb: Is up to you.

Jeff Rubenstein: Very …It’s very normal. But the, um ... Which is unusual I guess abnormal for games but the voice acting is so good and it’s not your normal people you would recognize your-

Larry Herb: I don’t know who they are, brilliant.

Jeff Rubenstein: You, you know, your Troy Bakers and the like.

Larry Herb: I was phoning all over him when I was playing it.

Jeff Rubenstein: They are amazing. I think one of the guy …I think Ren is the dude who does Toyota voiceovers I feel like …You know, Honda, he sounds like the Honda guy the animated Honda guy. Got to look it up.

Larry Herb: No your buddy …Your bud …Let’s be clear, you talked about some people that do voiceovers and actually your buddy is not in it your BFF right?

Jeff Rubenstein: Who’s my BFF?

Larry Herb: Kevin Butler. Oh but he is in the team mobile Super bowl ad.

Jeff Rubenstein: Every time I see him I’m just like you know, …

Aaron Greenberg: Were you and Kevin like BFFs?

Jeff Rubenstein: Uh no. In my mind there’s the framed photo of that ad. I thought it was Jack trip but maybe it was Reuben Steen in the back.

Aaron Greenberg: There it was …Wow, good memory. Uh there are some stories, we’ll have to talk offline.

Larry Herb: Yes.

Aaron Greenberg: I don’t want to air dirty laundry. Kevin Butler, interesting campaign.

Jeff Rubenstein: Okay.

Aaron Greenberg: Let’s put it under that.

Larry Herb: But though I did-I did love the Hotline Bling Team mobile Super Bowl ad on that note.

Aaron Greenberg: Yes.

Larry Herb: And people saw he was…You-

Jeff Rubenstein: Steve Harvey and…

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh, oh I’m sorry there were two. There was that [inaudible 00:11:44]-

Larry Herb: No, no there was the one where the ad company comes in and they are like, “Please add all this there,” but they are the Verizon guy so he is that guy and then they ask if they can dance in the box at the end.

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah.

Larry Herb: And I thought it was pretty

Aaron Greenberg: Anyway.

Jeff Rubenstein: So OxenFree and one last thing and I’m at risk of turning into the E of the-the group X-COM2

Larry Herb: Oh yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: Um if-if I had granted it’s worth. February, really February not even halfway through, I had to declare a game of the year-

Larry Herb: Really?

Aaron Greenberg: Wow.

Jeff Rubenstein: It is that good.

Aaron Greenberg: [inaudible 00:12:10] declare actually.

Larry Herb: You are already there.

Jeff Rubenstein: We did first night but I’ve been there all right not everything works out. But, uh, I will say, XCOM2 it’s everything I wanted in … X-COM1 is one of my favorite games, enemy unknown and this just takes everything and flips it, it’s not …I would have been happy with more X-COM…

Larry Herb: But you got … You got much more.

Jeff Rubenstein: So much more and I know it’s you know, people are raving about it. Uh, it’s the reason that I bought uh a new Windows10 gaming PC in November and…I’ve not been disappointed.

Larry Herb: Yeah, good.

Jeff Rubenstein: So good. I won’t bore everybody but just saying, if you enjoy the-the original in anyway, fantastic.

Aaron Greenberg: All right, Rubenstein falling doors man.

Larry Herb: All right now listen, I had to get Aaron in here A, because Laura was not available and I…

Aaron Greenberg: Well he’s made really clear I’m the second choice.

Larry Herb: Mm third. Albert wasn’t available even.

Jeff Rubenstein: Wow.

Aaron Greenberg: Wow.

Larry Herb: No, no, no but we want to get you in here because you and I made a video earlier in the week depending on when you are listening to this.

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah.

Larry Herb: Around Quantum Break, there’s a lot of quantum break news came out…

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah.

Larry Herb: You and I did a video and we are going to talk about the video after this though. Um, but I wanted to give you the chance to come in and kind of go through some of the news in the top line. Sure you’ve probably read some stuff on twitter on my account or maybe Aaron’s account or online on the wire or my blog but let’s kind of go through it for those folks that maybe haven’t …Have missed a few things.

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah absolutely. Well I mean I think you are right. We’ve been, we’ve been busy launching of our holiday titles so we’ve been kind of quiet on Quantum Break but the …We’ve been working very closely with the team at Remedy and you know, they are frankly making I think another masterpiece. You know, they have a great heritage of making incredible games. Uh, I will tell one of my favorite games over the years was Max Payne.

Larry Herb: Right.

Aaron Greenberg: I played that to the end. That was in the Max Payne 2 another great title. Alan Wake uh-

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Aaron Greenberg: Just a fantastic, fantastic game. And what I think is probably one of the most anticipated titles we’ve been releasing is Quantum Break and so it’s coming out on April 5th. You can pre-order it starting today.

Larry Herb: Okay.

Aaron Greenberg: Uh, but in addition to that we have a few other news items on that. One is we are going to do something a little bit different with this release. Um, we are going to be launching at both on XBOX One and Windows10.

Larry Herb: All right.

Aaron Greenberg: Uh, we weren’t sure when and how we were able to get the Windows10 version done.

Larry Herb: Version ready.

Aaron Greenberg: Exactly.

Larry Herb: But they lined up?

Aaron Greenberg: They lined up and so now a lot of people saw the reaction on Twitter and people were like, “Hey I get it you want to bring to a lot of more gamers to play but like why didn’t you tell us about this before?” And I was like, “Well we didn’t know we could do this before. So…

Larry Herb: Right, right.

Aaron Greenberg: Um, but in anyway, um in addition to that well we’ve really …And I’m really proud of what the team’s done is loaded this with great extra contents so if you buy Alan Wake … Excuse me Quantum break,…

Larry Herb: Yes.

Aaron Greenberg: You get Alan Wake how about that?

Larry Herb: Yeah so now for your Xbox360 you get Alan Wake on your Xbox360.

Aaron Greenberg: You do, you get it via back and pat, you also get both of the DLCs that came with our waves. You get the signal and writer. In addition to that, we have a couple special pre-order bonuses that are only available between now and when the title launches on the fifth.

Larry Herb: Sure. So you got a pre … And the only way you get this, is if you are pre-ordering the title. After that, no bueno.

Aaron Greenberg: Exactly. You pre-order the title at participating retailers or through our store digitally, you will get American nightmare which was Alan Wake American nightmare which comes on Xbox Live arcade game fantastic title, very well received, well reviewed, another great game. So basically you get two free games when you buy the product in addition to…

Larry Herb: This extraordinary game.

Aaron Greenberg: Incredible product.

Larry Herb: But as they say on Late night TV, “But wait, here’s more.”

Jeff Rubenstein: Operators are standing by.

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah that’s right I feel like I’m marketing right now. But wait there is more Larry. Um we’re also doing something else different because have this title launching at both Xbox1 and Windows10, we are going to give Xbox1 owners who pre-ordered the title digitally, the Windows10 version for free.

Larry Herb: Okay wait, stop, don’t rewind your device. Say that again Aaron.

Aaron Greenberg: We well, we want a one offer … We want to make this game available be played by as many gamers as possible.

Larry Herb: Right.

Aaron Greenberg: So I think it’s great to be able to offer it both on the console and the PD. Secondarily, if you’re an Xbox owner you’re getting the Win10 version for free.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Aaron Greenberg: Now we didn’t just give you the Win10 version for free we are also doing shared saves.

Larry Herb: Right.

Aaron Greenberg: So if you start playing your game, you play through the first episode on your Xbox you are in living room, some of us can’t stay in the living room all day…

Larry Herb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Aaron Greenberg: We have to go to work or we have to go-

Larry Herb: Right.

Aaron Greenberg: We have to go on vacation or we have to go to jobs well, you have your Win10 PC with you, desktop, laptop, what have you, you can pick up and play where you left off and it’ll automatically sync your saves, you come back to your living room and back to your Xbox One et cetera.

Larry Herb: Okay that’s as that’s pretty … I don’t think we’ve ever done that with a title before.

Jeff Rubenstein: I don’t think we have either.

Larry Herb: This is … I have to go back and think about this that’s pretty great.

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah so it’s really just leveraging I think the full ecosystem of how do we make this accessible to more gamers I think it was a great opportunity for the title to be more successful. Remedy has a really deep history of bringing their titles to the PC and being able to get it all done. You had a little more time…

Larry Herb: Yes.

Aaron Greenberg: With this title so being able to deliver both is a good thing and we love to hear people’s feedback.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Aaron Greenberg: You know, it’s a start of a new thing and, uh, we love to hear what people think and if they like that as an added bonus if that’s something that they feel like is a positive thing we’ll look and see what their reaction is.

Larry Herb: But the way you need to get it … And you may need to get your free copies if you pre-order, uh, Quantum break.

Aaron Greenberg: Correct. And you can do that digitally through our store.

Larry Herb: Yeah I’ll put a link in the show notes.

Aaron Greenberg: Which is available now or, um, at participating retailers the digital download cards at the seller retail if you also buy that and redeem that code before April 5th.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Aaron Greenberg: You’ll also get the uh the Windows10 version as well as American Nightmare.

Larry Herb: And I think what you’ve seen here is we …We are trying to do … We’ve got this amazing you know, Xbox Live service that ties everything together, the PC side and the Xbox side, the console side. We are trying to …You know, we are trying to do creative things and give as much great gaming to everybody that wants it, right Aaron?

Aaron Greenberg: Exactly I mean that is the idea is that we really are trying to bring gamers together and we are trying to break down the walls, um, if you will.

Larry Herb: Yeah and Phil has said this in the past, our boss.

Aaron Greenberg: Exactly, and so being able …I mean for me I love the fact that on my Win10 PC that I have the Xbox app, I have access to the community, to my messages to you know, I can capture content and I can stream content from there, uh, and it really does feel like an extension of Xbox Live, running on my PC. And so now, you know, to be able to bring a title like Quantum Break as well to the Windows10 ecosystem I think is a great, uh, benefit. And we know there are a lot of PC gamers out there that would like to play the game.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Aaron Greenberg: Uh, so that opens up to no audience. And then in addition to that as a, you know, I’m primarily a console gamer.

Larry Herb: Sure.

Aaron Greenberg: Uh but I do play games on my PC.

Larry Herb: Sure.

Aaron Greenberg: And so the benefit to say, “Hey, I can keep playing this game…”

Larry Herb: Wait a minute, wait a minute. Outlook and Excel are not games. Uh, it seems like what we mostly do our PC and PowerPoint.

Jeff Rubenstein: It does feel like …Yeah. You would think that they are giving away … That we are offering achievements for emails to send Aaron

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah.

Larry Herb: Just the way you are doing it. I’m just…

Aaron Greenberg: Well yeah you know, well we are Microsoft I will say this is all about gaming.

Larry Herb: Right.

Aaron Greenberg: And so this is really putting gamers at the center of everything we are doing and uh-

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Aaron Greenberg: And uh you know I think, I think it’s you know, an interesting thing that we are trying and we would love to hear what folks feedback are and how people experience it …We’re going to learn, want to make sure it works, does it look right and didn’t …

Larry Herb: Do-do-do people like cross saves it that something that’s cool? You know, well how do you like what we are doing here.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Aaron Greenberg: I got to feel like you’ll like cross saves. I, I’m just I’m very excited about this and uh yeah someone who likes to just move to …You know, I don’t always get the living room and so but having a gaming laptop it’s just…

Larry Herb: What’s going on over there like a candle party? What’s going on over there?

Aaron Greenberg: Do you have any idea how many days a week The bachelor’s on and I lose that living room.

Larry Herb: Apparently you do.

Aaron Greenberg: My brother is living with me. I do. Um and I found out who won the season. So its spoiler and you know what? I’m still going to have to watch the rest of the season so anyway I’m just saying I like the choice.

Jeff Rubenstein: Tantrums, tantrums.

Aaron Greenberg: It’s nothing but a week, if we were just listing the facts there’d be no podcast.

Larry Herb: There’d be no podcast, that’s right. We would just be reading the news.

Jeff Rubenstein: So when does quantum break come out again?

Aaron Greenberg: Comes out on April 5th, in addition to that, we also haves some other things I should mention

Larry Herb: Go on.

Aaron Greenberg: One is we have a new limited addition bundle so we have white Xbox One, that comes with a white controller serious white, that actually named the white.

Jeff Rubenstein: And that we named where is that.

Aaron Greenberg: Serious is cloud,

Larry Herb: I get, I get it but I just didn’t know if there was a tie in back to the game.

Jeff Rubenstein: Spoiler.

Aaron Greenberg: I think it is a tone of white. When you’re dealing with people that do hardware, design work and there is a lot of different colors white, this is the serious white and it comes with the controller and I think it’s great because you also get the game at no additional cost, so you’re looking in the market to buy an Xbox One, you’re looking to buy a second Xbox One and you want to get Quantum Break included in the skew which I think is a great value as well.

Larry Herb: All right we’re moving along, what else have you got over there? I see you got your notes all scribbled down so I want to make sure you hit everything. You got anything else you want to talk about Aaron like Quantum Break?

Aaron Greenberg: The only other thing I’d say, we released a new ad,

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah

Aaron Greenberg: So we an ad called the cemetery with Shawn. Exactly and it’s a live action piece we shot in a cemetery.

Larry Herb: A real cemetery?

Aaron Greenberg: A real cemetery.

Larry Herb: Wow, can you say where it was, was it?

Aaron Greenberg: Uh, I don’t remember where it was but-

Jeff Rubenstein: It's just like [inaudible 00:21:31] in Paris.

Aaron Greenberg: Almost always in Europe, we do most of our shooting in Europe but it’s like Game of Thrones. What is truly interesting about this title is that you do have both the core kind of interactive game, we know it’s a third person shooter but, and that narrative which Sam Lake and the team around him are kind of geniuses in building this really rich stories and bringing us in and I think they’ve evolved what they did with polar time, with time freezing.

Larry Herb: Right.

Aaron Greenberg: And the mechanic there that I think is going to be super innovative and people will respond well to ... But the second piece is we actually have a live action show that’s built into the game and so that’s where you’re going to see.

Larry Herb: What does that mean explain that to us?

Aaron Greenberg: Well, you know, it just means that you’re going to be able to after you’ve finished an act; you’re going to be able to see because you play as a hero. You play as Jack Joyce and then, you’re going to able to see the side from the villain side from the monarch side. Monarch is the evil corporation and so when you go on the live action, you’re going to get to see what that other side is like. We’ve got folks like Aden Julian; we’ve got [inaudible 00:22:37].

Jeff Rubenstein: You know who Aden is?

Aaron Greenberg: I do.

Larry Herb: It’s little finger.

Jeff Rubenstein: Little finger Game of thrones.

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah so these guys are and people don’t know Shawn was iceman on X-men and so you know we’ve got folks from Game of Thrones, The Wire.

Larry Herb: Lord of the rings.

Aaron Greenberg: Lord of the rings, I mean it’s incredible cast and I’ve never seen this done in a video game before and what’s interesting is the way you play will determine what you see and so it’s not just a full in here track

Larry Herb: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Aaron Greenberg: And so that’s kind of interesting as well on the way that the story is told and decisions you make will change what you see on the scene and change the way you progress.

So it’s really, it’s truly interactive entertainment. That is the idea, it’s kind of one story but kind of told with two narrative mediums and, uh, which I think is great, you got to put that in the hands of the geniuses at Remedy who are incredible story tellers is really turned out to be, -

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Aaron Greenberg: To be pretty exciting. And the piece, the piece we did with cemetery is sort of to give you a flavor of what that’s like and so we’d love to hear folks reaction to that, we’re running out of them, we also have another TV commercial that’s in production right now.

Larry Herb: That you can’t talk about.

Aaron Greenberg: Can’t talk about but I was reviewing edits of it today.

Larry Herb: It looked good?

Aaron Greenberg: It looked good and it’s got, uh -

Larry Herb: Got more stuff.

Aaron Greenberg: We’ve got some licensed music in there and we hope you’ll like it.

Larry Herb: Now the one thing you didn’t ... So and like I said earlier Aaron and I did a video that we put up, I put it up on twitter.

Aaron Greenberg: We did.

Larry Herb: It’s on YouTube as well; I put a link to that in the show.

Aaron Greenberg: I think it does.

Larry Herb: And, but what you didn’t see -- so you know what I got to find Aaron.

Aaron Greenberg: What’s that?

Larry Herb: Is ... Do you remember what happened when we were shooting this is Jeff; I’ll explain it to you. The, we had a little bit of a blooper and it was a funny little moment I think I’m going to pull that out and see if you guys want to see it, hit us up on twitter and let me know maybe I’ll find that and post that on twitter it’s like a 15 second clip that is pretty funny.

The team was little it was like kind of a, I-I think it like, I-I maybe the room or whatever they got a lot of time to set up so everyone was kind of a little-.

Aaron Greenberg: No they were nervous because of you.

Larry Herb: Was it you me?

Aaron Greenberg: You are a big star.

Larry Herb: It felt nervous, I was like, “Why are you guys nervous?”

Jeff Rubenstein: Was it Larry, does Larry put the fear of God in people?

Aaron Greenberg: No, no.

Larry Herb: I’m the easiest guy to work with.

Aaron Greenberg: All of the things happened afterwards it’s just like -.

Larry Herb: Okay.

Aaron Greenberg: Next thing they know, they’re shown the door, whereas that, so this guy comes in can I tell the story.

Larry Herb: If you like to sure.

Aaron Greenberg: He does the slate; you know when you do the starting slate? But he’s like they were so nervous like “Who’s, the audio, are we ready?” And there’s all this kind of and then-.

Jeff Rubenstein: Commotion.

Aaron Greenberg: And I forget because I don’t know and did know obviously Ryan’s right and I don't know the guy that did the slide [inaudible 00:25:07] the audio. He comes around and he’s walking around. He’s sort of very nervous and he does the slate and then he literally.

Aaron Greenberg: In front of our face.

Larry Herb: Yeah and then he got so nervous, it out of hand and then it goes flying.

Aaron Greenberg: And it hits the camera.

Larry Herb: Yeah and almost, the guy almost falls over, the camera shakes and (chuckle).

Aaron Greenberg: We should find that clip, I don’t know if you guys want to see the clip.

Larry Herb: It was fun; it was fun so anyway it’s always good to shoot a video with you. It’s good to have you on the show.

Jeff Rubenstein: My thoughts and prayers are with him.

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah his fate lives in Larry’s hand so I hope I see him next time.

Larry Herb: All right we’re going to take a break right now because I’ve got to cover, you guys are going not going, you’re not going to want to go anywhere. I three great areas, first at we’re going to hear about the Unravel out this week on Xbox One, I’ll follow, we’re going to follow it up, we’re going to hear more about the Home Front Closed Beta and then bring it up the roof, Jeremy Dunham is going to tell us about Rocket lead coming soon to Xbox when are you guys ready.

Jeremy Dunham: February 17th.

Larry Herb: February 17th all right here we go. Well you’ve probably been hearing a lot about Unravel it’s out this week on Xbox one, joining me online is the creative director of Coldwood interactive. Creator of Unravel and that little cute guy, Yarny Martin Sahlin, Martin welcome to the show.

Martin Sahlin: Thank you glad to be here.

Larry Herb: First of all congratulations on launching Unravel, I mean it’s I know there has been a lot of drum beating going on. People are really excited about it for months and now they’re finally getting their hands on it, congratulations.

Martin Sahlin: Thanks a lot, it’s been, it’s been a long journey up until this ad but-but yeah, it’s been cool.

Larry Herb: Tell us a little bit about that journey, I mean you guys were, you’re a fairly small studio tell us about your studio and the kind of inspirations for what brought you to where we are today, because I got a lot of questions, I hear from Twitter, we’ll get to those in just a second. But I know there is a lot of questions about Unravel and Yarny, so why don’t you kind of set it up for us.

Martin Sahlin: Well, I guess the background was basically the .... I mean if you know anything about Coldwood you know that this is a pretty big departure for us like this game is very unlike everything we’ve ever made before and I guess it’s right to say that it’s kind of like a reaction to all that stuff. I just took a little step back and started thinking about what we created so far and triggered that-

I had this feeling that we could do more, we could do better up until now, we basically mostly made like sports games and really small games, surely kind of like mechanics driven games that are just, they don’t really have much to say.

Larry Herb: Sure.

Martin Sahlin: And I started to feel like a bit unsatisfied and just figured out like, is this really all that we’re capable of? Shouldn’t we be like trying to do more than this? And then there was this one point where we made the game a couple of years ago but it did reach a pretty big audience and then I was sort of just a little bit slightly shocked actually when I realized that we just made something that reached like hundreds of thousands of people and just didn’t really have anything to say.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Martin Sahlin: So, and that felt like such a waste. So that’s why I pretty much made this to just, you know try to speak from the heart at least.

Larry Herb: We it’s certainly, there is a lot of emotion elements to it and folks that are playing the game will understand it and if you haven’t played the game go check it out, if you’re EA access member you have a kind of a free trial there. Martin I want to talk about the style, because the style is just every level is so stunning.

It’s just, it’s just, I point star when I’m playing the game I stop and I’m just looking at the water and I’m looking at the leaves and there is, the ocean level where the waves are coming. I just left it on that screen for a few minutes and just enjoyed the water coming in. How did you I capture this, I mean I know that, I’ve read that your inspiration was kind of from where you’re from, but tell us about the inspiration, more about the inspiration?

Martin Sahlin: Yeah that was really the idea, to base it on our own surroundings, on our own back yard, basically we are ... Our studio is based on the north of Sweden so it’s a small town surrounded by lots of beautiful country side really and I guess I just wanted to share a little slice of that. I figured that it’s that type of environment that you usually don’t see in video games, because video games tend to go for like the fantastic I think that’s the word anyway.

Larry Herb: Fantasy.

Martin Sahlin: Yeah fantasy and surreal and just, now science fiction, things like that and what we wanted to do was highlight the beauty and the ordinary, just, I mean it says earning is search a small character, you really get down to ankle height and get a really good look at just how beautiful even ordinary thing are.

It sounds a bit hippy to say I guess but it’s still like stuff is pretty nice if you really bother to look at it.

Larry Herb: That you know, since you can point out because as you’re going through the game you realize, you co- across, you’re playing this character Yarny and as you’re travelling through the game, you come across these seemingly large structures but then you realize wait a minute that is just a tractor or that’s a boat which seems ginormous to Yarny but to an average person it’s small. Did you come up with the game play idea and the mechanics or the character first or ... Tell us which came first?

Martin Sahlin: The very first thing was this concept, this, the theme the idea for it and I know you’re really not supposed to do it in that order, you’re supposed to like create game play first but just it happened the way it happened and I’m not complaining because I think it kind of worked and it was just like this, um, ... Yeah that one line, just what if love and the bonds between people were actual real physical bonds and you were a character that was made from that stuff, wouldn’t that make a pretty cool foundation for a game?

And I basically, that’s all it was to begin with, just that very, very core concept of being a Yarn character that was unraveling in a game about love and then as I built that character when I went off on that camping trip with my family and it was just playing around in the woods with that little doll that I made, that I built that was when the actual game started taking shape. Just it kind of evolve pretty organically from that process just by playing with it and realizing just ... I mean, like you were saying like how small little things can become interesting obstacles and interesting puzzles just because you’re such a tinny character.

Larry Herb: Is when you look at Yarny is this where you started from is he always looked at, was he always this size and did he always look like that, or has Yarny gone through more of evolution as you tightened up the game?

Martin Sahlin: Actually it’s pretty much the same as it always was, we made some slight, slight refinement, um, or actually basically what I did mostly was that I made the first doll out of material that I scavenged and, and so the wire that I used for the skeleton was kind of rusty and sharp and sticky, so that doll is a bit difficult to work with but so then I made a second one that was from copper wire which is a bit more flexible and durable.

So that’s basically the only alterations that we made because I to me it felt wrong to change it, it’s one of those things like when you look at it and you see that it already has an identity of its own. It, it’s already its own thing so there is just even though you could probably improve things or make it better somehow you don’t want to because you don’t want to change it because you know it has some personality, it has an identity already.

Larry Herb: Let’s talk about his personality for a minute because there is certainly a lot of small nuances and touches and the way I described this game was in the office the other day and people asked me about it I said, “This feels like a hand crafted game that was made with love.” Because there are so many touches in the game that Yarny really comes to life from his personality to the environment but when it comes to his personality, how did, how did you bring personality to an inanimate object? I mean it’s always the secret of a wonderful animator and creator.

Martin Sahlin: Yeah I think, I mean part of it is because we have a really good guy doing the animations, so there’s this guy called Sam. He’s really, really good at what he does but also because it was a very conscious effort but-but, the way I looked at it was that I figured that this is a game about love, this is a game about caring and I felt that I really wanted to inspire empathy in players, I really wanted them to feel for the character and I want, I guide and protect this character. So that’s why we realized that in order to do that, Yarny has to feel like a living breathing thing.

So that is when we have ton and tons of animation and such going on, it’s amaze to make Yarny always aware of the environment and situation and always like reacting to things or just behaving in a way that makes sense within that context so if you’re standing close to a ledge he will be kind of like tiptoeing and balancing and peeking over it or if you’re, if you’re sneaking through a dark basement in some abandoned house somewhere you might be tiptoeing like you’re a bit stealthy.

Larry Herb: Sure.

Martin Sahlin: And stuff like that and also blending in a lot of physics as well, so we had like tons of layers going on, layers of animations that just you know bring the character to life really.

Larry Herb: Well it’s certainly achieved that, I think I told you before we started I’m only about the third level in, I don’t know many levels are but it’s just I love the fact that each of the areas is so wildly different, I spoke earlier about there is an ocean themed level I guess now I just finished the swamp themed level and looking forward to seeing where you’re going to take Yarny here.

In the, in the story and certainly there is a nice story in the background here, we’re seeing photos. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I’ve seen questions on my Twitter stream about people want to know are those personal photos, are those real people, what’s go- what’s that all about?

Martin Sahlin: Yes they are real people (chuckle) they’re real photos, some of them we’ve edited a bit and some of then we’ve taken especially for the game. But also a lot of them are just basically my old photos and some photos of other people in the studio because we’ve figured that even though the story we’re telling or the story we’re trying to inspire people to tell rather is, is you know a work of fiction we still figured that it was a, you know a nice little touch to just ground it in something real that we built it from parts that are actually real.

Larry Herb: Have you been surprised at how people have gravitated towards this, this, this character I mean a lot of video games try to create these, these hero characters but you’ve really created a tiny hero character that everyone just kind of is falling in love with universally.

Martin Sahlin: Yeah it’s, um, it’s overwhelmingly I mean I just, I’m really happy that people like it so much. I think and one of my favorite moments was actually at games com when we were demoing the game and my partner in crime Brian was demoing the game and accidentally killed Yarny during the presentation which was totally not supposed to happen.

Larry Herb: Right.

Martin Sahlin: But I think I might have jinxed him a little bit before the show by asking him about it and then of course it happened. And then afterwards you could hear basically like every dangerous moment, you could hear the crowd going (inhaling) because they were really tense and really feeling for the character and, and I just love that.

Larry Herb: Yeah well that steps into your point is people create this emotional connection with this character and even the way I don’t want to give too much away it’s not really a spoiler but you know when Yarny doesn’t meet an unfortunate demise due to my poor game play (chuckle) the way you kind of dim the screen add a little bit you’re like, “No, no Yarny come back, don’t go to the light,” it’s a little disturbing but it’s again like the rest of the game, it captures it perfectly.

Martin Sahlin: Yeah I mean the thing is true, sometimes we ask game designer it is quite, you just can’t resist being a little bit mean sometimes because it is kind of fun to just (chuckle).

Larry Herb: Well again, you also, you’re also, you also have the license to have a little of the fun because again, you said it’s a real world but also it’s a fake world in some regards. So you can have a little bit of fun and do things that you normally wouldn’t be able to get away with in real life.

Martin Sahlin: Yeah and I think also, what I think you have to kind of like, if you take with one hand, you have to give with the other.

Larry Herb: Sure.

Martin Sahlin: Basically I suppose, I’m a big fun of gi- of giving you reward in form of game play so whenever you have to do something that is kind of hard, that’s kind of tough and challenging and you always get some kind of ... You get something in return, you get something that’s just supposed to just smooth things out again, make you feel great.

Larry Herb: Can you tell me a little about with the game play what are some of the areas that you’re obviously are doing play testing that you refined a little bit and you said, “You know what, this isn’t going to work we’re going to do this instead.” Do you understand what I mean?

Martin Sahlin: Kind of, could you elaborate?

Larry Herb: Sure, like I’m sure there are certain areas maybe it was a puzzle or the way the swing mechanic or a left trigger and right trigger maybe they weren’t always on the, you know the, the lasso, maybe they weren’t’ always there. What are some of the evolutions that you went through to kind of settle on the game play and the mechanics?

Martin Sahlin: Oh yeah, we did go through quite a lot of alterations like that, there were lots of testing and, and I think most of all it’s been question of trying to tweak, also I’m trying to get the difficulty right.

Larry Herb: Sure.

Martin Sahlin: Because it’s, uh, it is really fun and surprisingly easy to come up with super, tricky, tricky, tricky puzzles. But so what we try to do is just try to contain ourselves a bit and not go overboard on the difficulty because we sort of want people to see it through to the end. We want it to be a challenge but we don't want people to be like intimidated and put off so maybe just basically try to make sure that everything is, you know, readable and nudges you subtly in the right direction and just basically ... We don't want to do hand holding but we just don't want people to feel put off by the difficulty.

Larry Herb: Yeah it's always a challenge of how do you make it ... How do you make it a game, right? How do you make it something that’s challenging?

Martin Sahlin: I actually, I think it's kind of funny like when we were testing it, um, sometimes I thought, um, because the thing is kind of like you have to get into that mind set after a while you kind of start thinking like a, like a little yarn creature like those moves, um and become kind of second nature, uh, and I have had lots of them when we were testing because we have all these really elaborate, elaborate set up with physically simulated ropes and it's such ... And sometimes those things break and sometimes they break hilariously.

Larry Herb: Sure.

Martin Sahlin: I think it's been super cool when we had testers over and they’re trying to achieve something and then they’d just create chaos in the level and then I’d take over and just say, “Wait a minute. Can I, can I try? Can I, Can I see if I can still figure it out? Does it still work? Is it still like a workable puzzle? Can I get through this?” Uh, and it's pretty cool because you can usually ... I mean the tool set is so powerful that you can usually handle even these like totally mayhem, haywire situations that, that could arise before we iron out all the bugs.

Larry Herb: Now, you’ve had a hell of a week with the launch and it's been very well received. I mean I know there's folks that are ... Some of them have finished the game, a lot of people are close to finishing the game because they’re just enjoying it so much. Can we expect some downloadable content in the future? You guys ready to talk about next, next plans yet?

Martin Sahlin: Uh, no. I wouldn’t say that we have any plans yet and just basically right now the plan is to just, you know, land and s- and see where this goes, you know, see what people say, uh, and, and just ... I know it's, it’s the first game of this kind that, that we’ve ever made so it's been a, uh, it's been a, like I said at the start, it's been a long journey and I think there's a lot of just ... We need to just talk it through. Do a proper, you know, I don't like the expression post mortem because it sounds so (chuckles) but, but yeah, I think that’s we have to do and just like evaluate and, and, and, and take some time to enjoy it as well.

Larry Herb: Yeah, you do. Your team’s absolutely deserved it so I, I ... That’s what I was going to say is you guys need to step back and just, just you know enjoy some of the success and the, and, and the, um, accolades that the, the game and off course the studio’s been, have been enjoying. So that, that’s my recommendation for you guys. Just relax for a little bit.

Martin Sahlin: Hmm. Yeah, we’ll do our best.

Larry Herb: All right. Um, Martin Sahlin, the creative director at Coldwood Interactive, the ... He is the creator of Unravel. His team created the Unravel and off course the cute little Yarny. Martin thanks for your time today.

Martin Sahlin: Thank you. It was fun.

Larry Herb: Homefront: The Revolution. The closed beta is coming up and I am thrilled to have on the line over ... Via Skype feed from his studio over in Europe is Fas who’s a designer on Deep Silver. Fas, welcome to the show.

Fasahat Salim: Hi, thank you for having me.

Larry Herb: Really thrilled to have you here. Uh, Homefront: The Revolution, folks are, folks are, you know, excited about the beta coming to X-box 1. Tell us when it's coming, what we can expect and what you guys are looking for out of the beta. How’s that for an open edit question?

Fasahat Salim: Well we, uh, we’ve got the beta going. We’ve been delivering short bursts like that over the last few weeks just to get a good amount of data and telemetry. Um, and this weekend actually, we’re giving it out to players to actually have a good proper go in it and we’re hoping people will enjoy it and as for the game itself, well, we’re working hard to, to, to get it ready for release which will be in May so, yeah, it's a very exciting, um, time at the moment.

Larry Herb: I want to talk something. Before we get into the beta specifics I want to talk about Homefront: The Revolution because it's had quite a, quite a, storied history, um, but I also want to point out the fact that I was talking with some folks earlier. It's not Homefront 2. You guys did something completely different with it. Is that accurate?

Fasahat Salim: Yes, absolutely right. Um, so yeah, like you said we’ve had um, quite a long development cycle in this game. Um, we started off with THQ. Um, that was a long time ago. Now, um, and obviously when they came to us with this game, uh, we were still with Crytek at the time. We were Crytek U.K. Um, and for us at that point we were developing a straight up sequel to the first Homefront so this was still very much a level to level game and it was pretty much of the same mold of what the first Homefront was all about. Um, obviously then, everything that happened with THQ unfolded, um, and at the time Crytek decided to grab the IP for themselves.

Larry Herb: Sure

Fasahat Salim: Um, for that if ... Well, that was the big turning point in, in the development process for this game because once we acquired the rights for ourselves, that gave us the freedom to, uh, to branch out and, and try to take this game in a direction where, where we thought we could actually get a true representation of, of what it meant to be a guerrilla fighter and what it meant to be the un-

Larry Herb: So let's-

Fasahat Salim: ... Showcase that ... Yeah we really wanted to showcase that, um, to the players.

Larry Herb: And, and, so let's talk about that for a minute. Wh- wh- what does that mean? How d-. How do you feel you guys attacked and, and captured that for players?

Fasahat Salim: Sure, absolutely so, so I guess that ... When we got that opportunity to kind of take a step back and see what guerrilla warfare is all about, what does it mean to be a resistance fighter, um, we wanted to strip all of, uh, all of the stuff that most players are used to. Rel- We as game players ourselves know that there's a lot of, uh, choice out there to be the hardened military soldier who has the best weapons and a pocket full of grenades and the can run into a room and, and kill everyone and everything and walk out unscathed.

Um, we wanted to try and focus on that pillar of being the underdog. The, the guy who actually has to, to scavenge the world and try to gather their resources and then use those resources in a clever way, um, and use those resources to take an enemy that is a lot bigger than they are, a lot stronger, they have the best weapons, so it's very difficult to just run up and take them on head on. Um, so, we did that by, by first looking at what guerrilla warfare was all about -those pillars that guerrilla warfare, uh, depends on.

Things like tactics such as hit and runs, um, assassinations, uh, being a resistance fighter and being part of a guerrilla warfare is mainly about, you hit the enemy when they’re least expecting it and then you get out before they can respond. Um, and for us that was something that we really wanted to try and get, uh, in this game and try to give the player a genuine experience of, of actually thinking about the, the combat scenarios that they want to take a part in and, um, obviously one of the big things that we, we’re doing different to what the first Homefront did was we, were an open world game where actually, we’re breaking free of, of having a scripted route that the player must take at all times.

This is a big sandbox environment. We’ve chosen the city of Philadelphia, um, and there's a lot of space for the player to, to, to explore the city and, um, but not only is it an open world sandbox environment, it's also an emergent environment so as game developers for us that’s really exciting because all over sudden, we’re not sure about how this city is going to respond in certain situations so the player could be running down the road, they could come up against a whole bunch of enemies that we necessarily hadn’t planned.

They could come up against a whole bunch of snipers that we don't necessarily know we’re going to show up at that point so, um, as a designer especially when you’re coming up with missions for this game, it's, it's very cool to, to kind of come up with the end objective for the player and then have all of this random stuff happen in between that we can’t even prepare for. Um, and that for us is exciting because it gives players those unique moments that they can call their own when they’re completing these objectives. Um, so that’s one of the big, big things that we’re trying to push for in Homefront: The Revolution.

Larry Herb: I want to talk about your, before we get into some of the game play, I want to talk a little bit about your choice to go with Philadelphia. Off course, why Philadelphia? I think I know because, I mean it's the cradle of America in some regards in terms of you know the [crosstalk 00:48:39] off course so tell us about that and decision and what you guys did to kind of prepare that and, and what's represented on behalf of the city of brotherly love.

Fasahat Salim: Absolutely, for us exactly like you said, there's a lot of history, um, with Philadelphia and obviously the idea of independence as the birthplace of US. independence um, so for us we thought, especially from my fictional and narrative perspective it was, uh, it was quite a powerful message which signified the complete and total power shift, um, that this universe was calling for where all over sudden the US is, is a fallen power in a way where all over sudden their, their birth place of independence has been taken over, uh, by this invading enemy and it was ... Basically, it was kind of a no brainer for us to go to this city because again, it has all of those iconic landmarks that people associate with independence.

Things like, uh, the liberty bell and city hall and independence hall and this are all things that, that were really, really exciting when we wanted to come up with missions and things that the players could actually go and see in the world and uh, our team have done a really good job of trying to, uh, be as honest to the city as possible. Obviously we haven’t gone completely Google maps on this and gone street to street but, um, anyone who’s been to Philadelphia, anyone who’s familiar with that town will definitely recognize a lot of the city and a lot of the landmarks, um, and they’ll recognize them but at the same time, they’ll see that there's something not quite right about them because they’ve been augmented with the invading forces um, infrastructure in a way so it's, it's familiar but alien at the same time and that was one of the key things that we really wanted to go for.

Larry Herb: No that’s also, you know, whenever you play a good open sandbox game that’s based on a real world environment, it's always good to walk around and figure out how game designers like yourself have kind of captured it, uh, it's essence and it's feel but reduced in size to something that’s obviously manageable for, for, for a game.

Fasahat Salim: Yeah, absolutely, I mean like, like I said it's, this is by far the biggest game that well, our studio’s ever done and we know that this is probably the biggest open world game that’s been done on the Cryengine which is, um, the engine that we’re using to develop this, um, so for us it was really exciting to try and push our, our, tech as well as to try and obtain, uh, a really, really, exciting experience and like I said, Philadelphia, we built quite an expansive world for the player to explore and we’ve broken it down into three distinct, uh, zones and each of those zones are unique in their own way.

They all have their own style, their own vibe as you’d say, uh, and the thing is that each of those zones plays very differently, uh, when compared to one another like we’ve got a red zone which is something that we showcased, um, last year at Games Home as well, uh, which is kind of like the bummed out suburbs of Philadelphia. This is like the war torn part of town. This is where, uh, no one is really going to be hanging around anymore. This is literally just a place that’s seen a lot of devastation in the past, um.

Then we’ve got yellow zones which is something that we’ve actually revealed a bit more, um, this year with a few trailers that we’ve, we’ve released, um, over the last few weeks and this is obviously where, uh, a lot of the, the Philadelphian population has been pushed. Um, this is where they get their food rations, this is where they’ve got, um, a little bit of the support of the KPA will provide them, uh, and this is obviously a completely different environment. You’ve got to be more careful there a lot more.

There are cameras around, uh, a lot more patrols and then obviously you’ve got the dynamic of civilian population thrown in there as well so you’ve got a, you’ve got to kind of cater your game play style to those dynamics as well. And then you’ve got obviously the green zone which is ... This is basically where we’ve got our main pillars, uh, for the story bit. Uh, this is where the player is going to go for a lot of the key missions, uh, and the story. Uh, and this is where you’re probably going to see a lot of those, uh, landmarks we just talked about so, uh, we’ve got three distinct zones and we try to give the player a very different experience in each of those so, um, yeah there's a lot of Philadelphia to explore in this game.

Larry Herb: (Chuckles) Larry let's focus on the closed beta coming up. When does it start and what, what do people need to do to get in and what, what can we expect once we’re in there?

Fasahat Salim: Um, so it starts this weekend, um, and players can go on to our website, um, on homefrontthegame.com and yeah. Just register and I believe that you will be receiving keys through that way. Um, and yeah we just want players to go up there, start playing the game, enjoy themselves and understand that, um, this is off course a co-op game, uh, which I know a lot of, uh, re- Homefront 1 fans were asking me about where all of the multi-player, the player will be, the PVP section of the game went.

Um, and to that I’ve always told them that obviously this is our take on Homefront, um, we, we’ve basically got nothing to do with the first Homefront apart from the universe. Um, so we’re delivering a co-op experience where we want players to work together as a cell. Create their own resistance cell,, and, and, learn what it means to be a resistance fighter and, uh-

We know that when you play together, initially, you’re kind of figuring out how other people play, what is your strategy, what are the kind of weapons you like, what is that, that you like doing in the game, how do you going to ... How are you going to take on certain enemies, um, we know, we also know that this game isn’t necessarily easy the first time you play it and that was a choice that we actually made, um, and we’ve actually thought about it.

Um, and co-op for us is something that allows us to actually showcase to the player that after the first few games, you’re going to learn a lot about the type of, uh, game play experience that we’re going for as well as you’re going to develop your own character, you’re going to understand the dynamics of how, um, you like to approach certain scenarios, the kind of strategies that you like to work with. Um, and then more importantly, you’re going to understand, especially if you play with your friends which is probably the best way to start out on this game. Get together with a bunch of your buddies and, and work together through some of the missions.

Um, you learn more about how your team mates play and that’s what we want to try and get players familiar with. That it's not just about you as a lone wolf because you’re going to realize that you need to depend on the other three guys in your squad because there are four of you against a massive army that’s coming for you. Um, so PVE is basically the way we’re trying to, uh, uh, showcase what it means to be a guerrilla fighter. Be the underdog but you can work together and overcome these, um, really, really intimidating odds. Um, so yeah, we’re, we’re really excited to see how players react to it. We’re really excited to, uh, share this, uh, this vision for Homefront that we’ve had for a long time and it's all coming to fruition now so it's very exciting.

Larry Herb: Uh, as I said earlier I’ve looked at some ... I have questions that I’ve been asking you from twitter. One, one that I saw on twitter that folks are curious about is what areas of the game can they focus on to make this beta, this closed beta valuable for you the developers. What are some of areas you can have, you’d like some, some of the, uh, some of the users to work on?

Fasahat Salim: Well, well, to be honest, I thinking the, the most important thing for us is to just let people play the way that they want to play. Um, because obviously, um, as developers we’ve been working on this game for many years now and it's always exciting when we give it out to the world to play and see how it does in the wild. Um, and for us obviously we were, for, well the last two times which was in the last two weeks when we’ve given out the beta for a short period of time people have played two missions.

Um, this weekend we’re going to be upping that to three so now we’ve got three missions in there which is, uh, there’s a good diverse, uh, variety. Let’s just say that there, that there are three very different missions in three different zones and all three of them are going to give us something, uh, useful and we’re all, we’re going to look at the data that we get from it and we’re going to be tweaking everything from weapons to all sorts of other values and we’re, we’re hoping that whatever the players play will be useful to us so we’re not really too concerned on the specifics of what to focus on. We just want it all for the time being (chuckles).

Larry Herb: So you know, when you’re dealing with a sandbox, you know, when gamers get in there and go like, “Okay, I don't even know where to start. What do I do?” so for those folks that are listening to the show, can you kind of give them, point them in the di- direction and say, “Hey, you may have a little bit of fun over here. Go check this out first.” What do you ... What can you kind of do for us?

Fasahat Salim: Yeah, so I, I, I, well, I think it's a good opportunity for me to just point out that obviously our, our open world Philadelphia is, is ... It's exactly the same world that the players are going to experience in the single player but, um, what we’re doing different for the co-op section of Homefront: The Revolution is, we’re actually wrapping each of our missions in their own little narrative so every mission will have its own little story and it will have its own little, um, uh, events unfolding that are pushing that mission forward so every mission kind of stands on its own.

Um, and like I said, each of the missions actually is taking place in a different part of the game and each of the missions is actually asking something different of the player. Um, as, but well, in terms f the strategy especially, what kind of guerrilla warfare scenarios can we throw the players way. Each of these missions will give you something new. Um, yeah, I mean like within the realm of the narrative, we’re going to be kind of guiding the player to certain sections of levels and certain sections of Philadelphia but within that area it's a big sandbox and we, we don't really have any control over where the player’s going to go, whether they want to actually sneak out the side or sneak through a certain section so for me to actually give them a specific location to go to or do specific things, it's kind of difficult for me to actually be very, very on the nose about it. So like I said we’re going to be looking into everything the players are doing and try to soak it all up and make our game the best it can be come May.

Larry Herb: Now, I know there's a lot of customization and upgrades that are going to be avail-, be available in the final game. Can we expect to see any of those in the, in the, beta – in the closed beta this weekend?

Fasahat Salim: Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, obviously, weapon customization is, is a big thing that we’ve been, that our studio loves doing with our games and the beta is no different so, everything the weapon that the player is going to unlock in this game, there's going to be several variations to it. Um, they’re going to unlock attachments so they can hook on to any, any of the weapons. There’s a whole bunch of guerrilla tool kit items which is one of the main key things that, um, the player’s going to depend on in this game to get their missions done. Um, the guerrilla tool kit is all about these improvised gadgets that the resistance have to take on the KPA.

So you’re going to have all sorts of, um, items that you’re going to match together. Things like RC cars with bombs on them, hack devices that you can throw on to drones that you see in the world and, and subvert them to help you out for a little while. Um, so, as far as customization goes, weapons, uh, gear, all of these things are hugely customizable and we’re offering the players resistance grades in the game. Which is something that they’re going to unlock through normal play time.

And resistance crates give the player the opportunity to unlock, uh, all sorts of other things like weapons to your, um, attachments, um and then off course, uh, use those things to customize the weapons and customize their character and then, and improve them on a level that, um, they feel comfortable with because weapon customization is just one aspect of it. We want the player to be able to customize their characters to the point where they have the resistance fighter that they are comfortable with and they’ve kind of molded them into the kind of soldier that they want. Um, obviously when you start out, you’re going to be burdened and have ... Well basically just be a rookie. The only think that’s going to be defining who you are is the profession that you chose for yourself before you actually signed up to be in the resistance.

Um, and that was important to us because it allowed to kind of lay the foundation for where your character starts so he could be a, let’s say fitness guy like a health instructor, or you could find a ballerina who might be slightly quicker on her toes and be able to dodge some bullets. Um, all of these things kind of help you on a base level and then from beyond that we want the players to have the freedom to take their character wherever they want and have that resistance fight be exactly the kind of resistance fighter that they know they’re comfortable with.

Um, so yeah customization is quite expensive on all fronts in this game so, yeah players will have plenty of stuff to unlock and customize with.

Larry Herb: Plenty of stuff to do there, Fas I want to talk to just briefly about you’ve been working on betas, you know close betas, previously up until this, what are some of the elements that the team has learned and how have you impacted the game play?

Fasahat Salim: Um, for us well, obviously balancing of enemies weapons, all of that stuff is extremely important to kind of nail down, um, the identity of the game especially when like I mentioned, we’re trying to go for a game which isn’t necessarily, uh, you have the best weapons and you just run into a room and take out everyone.

We want it to feel like, okay, you fired a few shots off but you need to conserve some ammo so you need to think about what your next move is going to be, if you get cornered, you need to plan for escape routes, you need to have a way out because yeah, uh, yeah, I mean running away in this game is a third option.

It’s not something that we’re going to say is bad because it’s not. There isn’t a right wrong way to take on this game, there isn’t a right or wrong way to finish these missions. Um, it’s just how the player chooses to approach them. Um, so like I said, running away is a valid option. You can always run away stock up; come back and try to deal with the situation in a different way.

Scavenging is a huge part of this, obviously when we’re looking at some of the telemetry that we receive from this kind of game play sessions. It’s incredible to see how players initially start off just playing the game, how they have kind of gotten used to playing most games in way where their, they just run into a situation and take on the enemy and then they, very quickly in our game we see players and realize that, “Oh, I’m running out of ammo a lot quicker than I really should be so -” Then all of a sudden they start changing the way they play and then their like more conservative with their weapons and with every shot that they fire, every enemy that they take down they go and name like start scavenging for bullets and other cool stuff that they can take from the enemy, they just taken down.

These are all the things that, obviously we see in the information and the telemetry that we receive back and that just helps us to kind of fine-tune things like I mentioned the weapons as well as how enemies react, how much damage enemies can take. The kind of bottle necks we have in our maps, how we could open the spaces up.

Um, so yeah it’s like, it’s all about polishing and trying to get the identity of our game out there and trying to get the best experience that we want from this game because we ... Like I said we don’t actually mind this game being too difficult, I think it’s something that we, we’ve actually sat down and talked about and thought about and it’s, we really enjoy it when players actually realize and learn with each game that they play.

And that’s the best thing where they actually realize okay this game is asking me to actually think about how I’m going to approach these scenarios and when players do that and they become better players and we see them then actually doing the things that we haven’t even thought about in this sand box environment, it’s really, really cool.

I mean it’s, there is nothing cooler than seeing a player go and do things that we haven’t even considered and using tactics and strategies that are literally just taking the tools that you’ve provided them and using them in creative way. It’s, it’s an awesome, awesome feeling and it’s hopefully stuff that we’re going to see this weekend as well once players have an extra map to play as well so that’d be cool.

Larry Herb: I know, so close beta on Xbox One is February 11th through the 14th maybe go a little through the 14th , so for those people that don’t have anything to do on valentine’s day can give then something to do in that city of Philadelphia.

Fasahat Salim: Absolutely.

Larry Herb: Anyway listen Fas, I appreciate you taking the time, I’ll let you give all the details out again. Where do they find, where do they follow you on Twitter on the dates of the game for launch?

Fasahat Salim: You can follow me on Twitter @Fasahat Salim, just look for that twitter handle. And as for the beta, you can go on the homefrontgame.com, sign up and yeah request a key and you’ll surely receive one and enjoy yourselves.

Larry Herb: As discussed earlier in the show, Jeremy Dunham Vice president at Psyonix is here, welcome to the show gram.

Jeremy Dunham: Thank you Larry, really appreciate it, thanks for having me.

Larry Herb: It’s great to have you on, you and I have crossed paths many times over the years but we’ve never actually met or talked and we are doing it now under awesome circumstances.

Jeremy Dunham: That’s right, it’s probably the best circumstances that we could speak, Rocket League is coming.

Larry Herb: Rocket League is coming, so you’re at Psyonix, you guys are the guys responsible for Rocket League and a few people I’ve heard ... I’m sure a lot of people have heard about it, of course it’s available on other consoles, the play station and of course, Steam. But why don’t you give us for those few people out there that have kind of been in comma for the past few months (laugh) tell people about what the game is and what it means to Xbox owners.

Jeremy Dunham: Uh, well we’re hoping it means a lot to Xbox owners, we know that since we’ve announced it a lot of people, especially on the Xbox phantom side, they’ve really been hounding us to bring it to the system.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Jeremy Dunham: And we always wanted to the only reason we couldn’t is because we’re a small team so we had the ... We have to kind of go out at one platform at a time.

Larry Herb: Sure.

Jeremy Dunham: But in general the game itself is soccer or football depending on where you live, meets driving and it’s completely physics based and it’s just about going out there in the field and having fun and it’s, uh, it’s really that simple but where it gets interesting is because of the simplicity, there is a lot of layers to be had.

At first start, uh, you’re just hitting balls and the goals and the more you play you start to realize, “Oh, I also have a supersonic boost and I can go faster and I can drive on the walls, I can jump and then I can double jump.” And if you get really good, you can start flying through the air and that’s where you see a lot of the complexity come in despite the fact that’s it’s, just a, just a game of soccer.

Larry Herb: A lot-a lot of people listen to you describing, they’re kind of cocking their heads a little going wait a minute, “Haven’t we had this in a video game before?” Because there’s kind of been some attempts at it right?

Jeremy Dunham: Yeah and including one by us, we had a game way back when, in 2008 called Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Power Battle Cars.

Larry Herb: Right.

Jeremy Dunham: And it was a lot -

Larry Herb: By the way the name you might want to work, good thing you worked on that name in name and shortened it to Rocket League (laugh) because that’s a little clumsy.

Jeremy Dunham: Yeah exactly typically we’d run out of characters on the, on the store.

Larry Herb: Right.

Jeremy Dunham: Because you could, but yeah, and we learned a lot from that game, it was actually had a really good cult following, we had about two and half million people playing that game and five years worth of feedback. And that’s really what Rocket League was, it was sort of our love letter to the fans of who stuck with us and kept playing the game, year after year after year and let us know what they liked about the game and what they didn’t like about the game

And that’s really what it is, it’s just all those years of taking all that information and that passion from those players and putting it into a new game.

Larry Herb: Now earlier this week, you know you talked about how Xbox one owners are really excited about it, you announced it at the VGA’s in December that it was coming to.

Jeremy Dunham: Yes.

Larry Herb: Coming to Xbox one and then earlier this week, you announced the date which is?

Jeremy Dunham: February 17th. I’ve long time coming, we’ve been hoping to tell people about that as soon as we could, we wanted to make sure we went through all the processes of getting through Xbox certification.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Jeremy Dunham: And making sure everything was really good and, wow, we’ve been waiting for this moment for a really, really long time.

Larry Herb: Well I can tell you like on behalf of the Xbox nation, we’re very excited to have you on the platform. When people ... And then what’s really great is you guys do some really creative things. I mean the game play is always, I don’t want to say always the same but the game play is core but you have a little bit of fun with the skins and so forth, tell us about that.

Jeremy Dunham: We do. So one of the big, the big I think pillars of Rocket League is that, it’s all about player skill and a personal player experience without trying to push the idea of having power ups.

Larry Herb: Right.

Jeremy Dunham: All vehicles played the same but we’re more about personal expression, so we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different items that you can use to equip your vehicle with. You can change your rocket trail, you can put hats on it if you want, you can change your antenna.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Jeremy Dunham: Your decal, all those things. You can have a hundred billion combinations.

Larry Herb: Wow.

Jeremy Dunham: In the Xbox one version so we think, I think that that alone is going to give people plenty of things to do. Not to mention we have several Xbox exclusive items in there, some from Halo, some from Gears of War, some from Sunset Overdrive.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Jeremy Dunham: So, we’ve we have quite a few in there, we think people are really going to like, especially if they can unlock the Armadillo and hog sticker which is an alternative version of the war hog from Halo.

Larry Herb: Now this is really exciting because as you said earlier, they don’t impact the play at all, they are purely cosmetic but sometimes that’s where folks can really personalize themselves.

Jeremy Dunham: Yeah it’s really all about, just essentially expressing themselves and saying, “This is who I am, this is how ridiculous I am, this is how serious I am.” However you want to look at it, it’s really about them just kind of being themselves. And we find that one of the keys to being an effective ESL sport type game or just a competitive game in general is to allow the player to express themselves through how they play and not have them rely on power ups or choosing the best vehicle or the best item that makes their vehicle to tier. We want it all to be about them and how they want to experience the game.

Larry Herb: I want to talk about that for a second because you’re actually, your involved in the ESL, the electronics sports league. Tell us about your involvement and that’s been.

Jeremy Dunham: It’s been really great, it was the first step for us in a larger, in a larger strategy for us. Uh, and as you, as we were talking about this there were certain things afoot that we can’t quite discuss yet though, I think they can be very good for the game going forward in general, in trying to expand ourselves into E sports even further.

But we’re really excited about the prospects there and the fact that people have really launched on to our game and we never went into it with the intention of specifically saying we’re going to be successful E Sport. We know that we had the chops for it that we had the ground work but it’s all about the community and the players and whether or not they deem you worthy of being one.

And by our third day of release people were already playing the game and broadcasting on Twitch and the fact that they’ve been so dedicated to the game and are still playing it seven eight months later to us says a lot and we’re hoping that we can really give the players what they want and keep adding to that through more features over time.

Larry Herb: I want to talk a little bit about, obviously it’s releasing later this month and when people download it, you know they are going to be a little, maybe they are overwhelmed but I mean the game play is fairly straight forward of course it’s got a lot of wrinkles to it but what do you, give us a couple of tips to get folks started to get that ball on the go.

Jeremy Dunham: Well one of the key things is not to rush into it; you can always sort of tell the new players when they first try it because everyone starts rushing the ball to try to get it right away.

Larry Herb: Right.

Jeremy Dunham: And usually that’s not a good tactic because a lot of the newer players all attempt that and what you get instead it’s just this-

Larry Herb: Traffic jam.

Jeremy Dunham: Yeah crazy traffic jam and cars exploding and flying all over the place and it’s really a better, more immediate to advance move to kind of wait back and see what people are doing and then react. And you have to make sure that team work is definitely part of the equation unless you’re playing one B one obviously but being able to communicate with your teammates, setting up a specific strategy, “I’ll take goal, I’m going to charge, you stand back here, let’s pass to each other.”

These are all important elements of the game and one of the reasons is that we think is that it does play like a real sport because if you try to go solo, you will have some success if you’re playing against players who might not be as good as you but when you start playing players who do embrace the team aspect of the game, you’ll start realizing very quickly that without that communication, you’re in trouble.

Larry Herb: Yeah, it’s, it’s as with any, with any game I mean it’s all about communication and running at peace, how many, what’s the min/max players you can have on each side?

Jeremy Dunham: You can do if you want and then it can go all the way up to 44. We experimented with larger player counts in that but it’s just-

Larry Herb: What happened?

Jeremy Dunham: It’s crazy.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Jeremy Dunham: It’s too crazy, it’s, maybe one day we’ll revisit it, if we ever decide to go with bigger stadiums.

Larry Herb: Sure.

Jeremy Dunham: But for now, more than 4B4 we think it takes a little bit away from the enjoyment of the game, it’s a little too crazy. We found 3D3 to kind of be the sweet spot we considered that the standard version of play but we also have alternate versions that you can play., you don’t have to play against CPU or people in the standard TB2 to 3B3, it can also be 1B2, 1B3, 1B4 we call that unfair mode. And that lets you really test how good you are and that’s really fun. And we also have a season mode too so if players don’t want to necessarily get in there and be competitive against another player, or a CPU, a friend just a pickup game, they can take a team and then go through a season with a length of their choice and try to win the championship.

Larry Herb: Something I really want to point out is when you download, when Xbox lovers download it and they have any questions or comments or feedback

Jeremy Dunham: Just hit up Dunhamsmash on twitter because that is how you find me Or you can go to @rockelite twitter which there will be a lot more responsive to me. I won’t mind the followers.

Larry Herb: There you go. And I see, I was funny because I was looking through your twitter account from before we started here and I see that you’ve got the Xbox one elite controller.

Jeremy Dunham: I do, our design director Corry, he decided to get one before me and he just kept talking up how great it was and I saw it a bit 83.

Larry Herb: Right

Jeremy Dunham: But as you know E3 is crazy you know, to spend as much time with things as you like so I was playing with it at the office and I love it, I went out that night and I bought the only one they had at best buy.

Larry Herb: So you’re good to go.

Jeremy Dunham: I’m definitely good to go, I love my Xbox I have an 800 plus day streak of getting at least one achievement.

Larry Herb: That’s what I like to hear.

Jeremy Dunham: Yeah it’s a bit of an addiction but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Larry Herb: Now I want to talk ... Real quickly before I let you go, I want to talk about achievements obviously you’ve got trophies on the play station, I assume they’re very similar view, have you added in anything extra for the Xbox one version?

Jeremy Dunham: They’re similar we’ve consolidated some of them, we’ve removed some that were DLC specific since you get a lot of the DLC in this package for free.

Larry Herb: Right.

Jeremy Dunham: But we have added some unique ones, um, you do get one for using ... I don’t want to give too much away but if you use the Halo vehicle and the Armadillo vehicle against each other, that’s the way to get one.

Larry Herb: Okay.

Jeremy Dunham: Uh, and so we’ve definitely tried to make them a little more streamlined, we’ve learned a lot over the last eight months over to which ones people like and which ones might be a little bit too difficult, so we think these are these are the optimized list if you would.

Larry Herb: I’m excited to have to see you guys on the platform welcome and I’m also excited to Twitch stream that’s because you’re whenever I go over to Twitch, I’m seeing people play the heck out of this, I’ve got it of course I’ve been playing it on Steam but it’s going to be great to be able to sit back and relax and stream it right from my console. This is, this is really exciting.

Jeremy Dunham: Yeah we’re really excited, I’m really excited, we’ve been moving toward this day for months and months and months and have been really excited about just getting to this point and the fact that we’re, it’s almost here for us it’s a big thrill we’re having a big party this weekend actually so-

Larry Herb: I’m excited; all right I’ll let you give the date one more time because people want to write it down.

Jeremy Dunham: February 17th and be there, we’ll definitely be there playing with you.

Larry Herb: Thank you very much to my guests, a lot of great games out available for Xbox One. Of course you hear earlier about Quantum Break, thank you. Thank you for ... Tell me what’s going on there Aaron Greenberg. Oh by the way Aaron, I saw a couple of questions on twitter while we were, while all those interviews were rolling, do you mind if ask you a couple of questions.

Aaron Greenberg: Ask me anything.

Larry Herb: So people are, “Hey are they going to get quantum break on steam?” Is it going to be available on Steam.

Aaron Greenberg: So Quantum break on windows ten is a window store exclusive.

Larry Herb: Okay and the other one I think Jeff you saw this one.

Jeff Rubenstein: Well yeah just about achievements I was curious about this myself, is it something where that the progress will carry over on you know Xbox or am I going to have earn the achievements twice.

Aaron Greenberg: It is one game with shared saves. So the works is if you unlock an achievement it doesn’t matter where you do and so it’s one set of achievements just, it’s just as if you were playing it on your Xbox when you’re on a Win10.

Larry Herb: Okay so there you go one set of tooth. Anything else before we get out of the news?

Aaron Greenberg: No.

Larry Herb: I think we talked a little bit about how people ... There are some people out there pretty excited about this, it kind of a new approach it’s never been done before that I know of in the industry is that accurate Aaron?

Aaron Greenberg: I think it’s a first, you know and the other thing I just want people to know, I mean Phil went out today and what’s on twitter and responded to a lot of folks but you know, we love and I’ll tell you Phil and I everyday go on and talk with like our hardest of the hardest Xbox fans and we understand.

Larry Herb: What am I doing over here, playing solitaire?

Jeff Rubenstein: We understand and Larry, actually Larry.

Aaron Greenberg: Hey can I get those solitary achievements?

Aaron Greenberg: Actually Larry is.

Larry Herb: It’s a thousand chaos for grabs.

Jeff Rubenstein: Sorry forget Larry.

Aaron Greenberg: I was just meant.

Larry Herb: We do.

Aaron Greenberg: You were a little busier in the morning on the other stuff so but anyway you were right and we do, we understand their passion and people should know I can tell you and Phil I think you shared this on Twitter but Xbox is a big priority and a huge commitment and we’re committed to innovate, please do not let the fact that we’re also launching a game on the same day on windows 10 change your perspective on the importance of the console business is our commitment to innovating on console and continuing to invest and bring more council exclusives.

In addition to kind of growing the gaming eco system systems and so for our CEO down at Microsoft, as Phil shared you know there is a tons of commitment enthusiasm for our business, we’re having tremendous success, we saw fantastic holiday great growth year over year, we set Xbox live records, we saw double digit growth in our, at our exclusive title sales.

Larry Herb: Yeah

Aaron Greenberg: And so we’re just saying, we have the highest attach rates in the industry you know so. Business is good, healthy and the titles are doing well and we’re grateful for all the love and support and hopefully people will see what we’re doing and sometimes we’re innovating, sometime we’re experimenting sometimes we’re you know sort of charting new ground on different things.

Larry Herb: We’re going to go through this journey together, aren’t we?

Aaron Greenberg: Exactly and through all that we always want to hear people’s feedback. We’re always listening and they might not always agree with a 100% of everything we do, we love the feedback and that is a lot of what we do is we want to do different things, and try different things and say, “Hey what do you guys think of this, what do you think of that?” And, uh, because we involve them it’s just like we ask people to vote for what feature do you want to add, we added 200 new feature this year.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Aaron Greenberg: Backward compatibility.

Larry Herb: Right.

Aaron Greenberg: You want to know why that happened, it was the number one thing, people asked for it, so we do listen and good and bad we appreciate it. And so hopefully people will continue sending stuff our way.

Larry Herb: All right moving along, sorry about that, I just thought it’s all those important I should have asked those earlier but they, I want to make sure we grab them, thank you Aaron. Hey Jeff I understand you’ve got some of the headlines here about some of the games coming out this week.

Jeff Rubenstein: Sure.

Larry Herb: You use your mind tapping that through.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Herb: Since we, since we don’t have any feature to do this week, since Laura is not here.

Jeff Rubenstein: Just to, uh, just to follow up on a couple your interviews, so first Rocket League, Rocket League is coming next week.

Larry Herb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: This is a game that I think is going to be just incredibly successful. I have messed around with it on PC and I know that it’s going to get fervent following and I think that people are going to be really into this and there is exclusive Xbox themed cars.

Larry Herb: Yeah gears and Halo, you heard about them in the interview?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah exactly, so I think this is the -

Larry Herb: You did listen to the interview right listeners, you didn’t fast forward listeners go back, sorry Jeffery.

Jeff Rubenstein: Jeremy Dunham, they say he got the soothing voice.

Aaron Greenberg: I’m very excited about that title you’re right we get the Armadillo from gears and we also get the hog sticker, uh, which is, uh, a variant of the warthog from Hello.

Jeff Rubenstein: And, the other thing is Home Front the revolution so we had the close beta.

Larry Herb: Also you heard about that.

Jeff Rubenstein: Exactly, so we have a link in the show notes here, if you weren’t able to get a hold of the code, you can sign in over on homefrontgame.com, there is a link here in the show notes and you know hopefully you will be joining us this weekend.

Aaron Greenberg: Yeah, I’d love to see you there.

Larry H