Andrew McIntosh
Appearances
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
That's a good question. Mike, do you want to jump in? I'm just going to reiterate.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
And I think at the indie level – You have to do one thing that really stands out. And if you're operating at something that's more AAA level, that's not my world. So I don't know. I'm speaking somewhat out of turn here. But you need your audience to...
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
to feel like it is going to be something, you know, expansive, like that's going to be the equivalent of a Marvel movie or the equivalent of like gladiator or something like that. So you need, that kind of pushes you more towards orchestral. It pushes you more towards, you have those, you have those resources to you and stuff like that. So I think that sort of,
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
creates a certain type of sound, whereas indies kind of have to sort of say, pick me and kind of try to find something that fits their voice. You mentioned Hollow Knight, which is a soundtrack I love. And that game... has its own look and it has its own feel all the way through.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
And it has that, you know, and it couldn't have anything other than those kind of mournful, kind of very lonely tracks that kind of flow through everything.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
And I'm Chris Rogers. I'm creative director at Harebrained.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
We'll make it happen. The right now that's the track. So, uh, But I think they would expand it for launch. Well, I love it. I'll sign us up for that.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
Sure. So Graft is a survival horror RPG combo, taking the best elements of survival horror where you are going to be up against it in terms of how much resources you have, but combining that with an RPG element.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
So you'll have the option to sort of choose and influence how game events happen and you can upgrade your kit and sort of choose how you fight back against the horrors that you're facing off against. I love it.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, I mean, I think, I think we can, you know, those of us who've been around for a little bit can remember what it was like when Akira started to like make its way, uh, sort of across the Pacific, you know, and, um, Another big touch point for me just growing up, I saw Alien when I was way too young.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
It's Star Wars. It's like Star Wars, right? Especially this movie. What could go wrong? oh it just went out of her chest oh my gosh i literally watched that movie like hiding behind the couch and like just just frozen and i was at a friend's house and the mother was like i don't think you should be watching this i think you need to stop and i was just like i cannot stop.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
Like I have to finish this. And you know, when something like that happens, it's just like, it really touches you.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
You know, it's like, it becomes either something that you never want to see again, or it becomes something that's like deeply like a part of like how you experience things and kind of wanting to capture that feeling both for myself, but also for players that, that feeling of like being that riveted by like, just, you know, an empty hallway basically, because I know that it's not really empty.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
And so like, I think that was like, um, you know, when we were coming up with this and we were kind of kicking around some ideas, that was one key element. And, um, and the other was this idea. We kind of tossed it off as we were trying to get close to the idea, but we were just said like, you are the ship of Theseus. And then we were like, um,
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
And then whoever, the person we were pitching was like, that's backup. Roll back. Tell me about that. And so those were the two big moments when we were as a team coming up with this.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
Sure. So I think we touched on it a little bit already with that song, right? Which is just the combination of really... scary, tense exploration and combat with some bigger questions and some real questions about identity and the choices that we make and how we sort of think about ourselves and literally, in this case, but figuratively in our cases, construct ourselves.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
We like to say, you're going to shoot first and ask existential questions later. That's a tongue twister. And that is kind of where... Yeah. It's a tongue twister. But it is kind of what I would hope is the hook. A lot of times when we're working, we're thinking about, what's somebody going to say to me about this? What do I want them to say back to me? What do I... what I come away with.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
And it's like, wow, like it was so scary. And then I just kept thinking about it. Like, and I kept thinking about the choices that I made and, and how it would have turned out differently.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
That can be tricky. And I would say that when you're crowdfunding, it's... Anytime somebody's giving you their money for something they want to return, your crowdfunding, their return is they want something fun that they were hoping to get back. And in a publisher relationship, it's a much more kind of... we'd like a profit, please.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
We'd like to give you a certain amount of money and we'd like to get that back. So it's a, it's a little bit different. And like Mike said, you're talking to a lot of different people and they can have like in a crowdfunding situation and they can have deferring things and conflicting things that they want.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
In a publishing situation, you have a smaller set of stakeholders, but they, you know, they, they want fun. They want fun as a sort of on the way to profit. Yeah.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
The time that you're devoting to it is... If you're a solo dev and you're working on it by yourself and you haven't taken any publishing money or anything like that, you have as much time, as much that you need and everything. As soon as you start to...
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
need buy-in from other people, including players, you start having to listen to what parts of your creative are coming through and what parts are maybe missing and what parts are causing a lot of friction. So as long as it's just you and your machine and it's after hours and you're just cranking away, you have all the creative control that you want.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
And sometimes it really works, like Stardew Valley. I think that's more or less the story of Stardew Valley, right? Yeah. So, yeah. So asterisk.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
Yeah. Gotcha. What can happen is then things take a little bit too long or the game's not making progress. And then people who are, you know, minding whether or not they've made a good investment and are wondering kind of what's going on with their money. Then you can sort of get into questions about, well, what's going on, guys? Why isn't this here yet?
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
A place where you start to see that kind of like, well, we have some questions about the creative mostly, but usually like where is it or why is it not fun?
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
I think it's possible. I think people do shoot the moon occasionally. I think we mentioned Stardew Valley. There's Bellatro. Oh, yeah. There's Manor Lords. There's some games that have done really, really well. And if your team's small enough, it's a big deal. Like Inner Sloth and Among Us and stuff like that. And I think sometimes the team's bigger or... or something happens with the business.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
I think, uh, there's, you know, there's quite a few documentaries about kind of what kind of happened to, to Zalm, uh, on the heels of Disco Elysium, where like a lot of revenue was generated and it's not entirely clear necessarily, like how it all, where it all went. Um, so that can happen, but yeah. Yeah. Like Mike said, let's manifest big wins.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
GTA 6 is going to be a big one for everybody, but I want to give you something that is really exciting. I think I'm curious because the visual design has been so amazing, and I'm going to mess up the name of it, but it's like... 33, Claire, Expedition 33.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
So just like on the business side with the executive producer, the creative director is mostly focused on the creative side. So that's everything from game design to the narrative, which is always really important in our games. And it's not being like...
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
the single voice, but it's the person that can organize the creativity and work with everybody and kind of set the vision and say like, this is in, this is out. We like this.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
We're coalescing around certain ideas because there's, when you're making games and we sit down for the first time, there's so many good ideas, but you have a limited amount of time and a limited amount of effort, money, everything that you can put into it. So you have to find exactly the right kind of mix to make something that really stands out.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
We've always been a really collaborative studio. So it's always been everybody working together. These jobs are much more kind of – they're less the sort of deep focus that the people that put the headphones on and they can just dive and dive and dive deeper into their concentration and –
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
It's a little bit more kind of catch-as-catch-can and kind of keeping everything going, as I'm sure running a podcast probably feels a lot of little things that you've got to do all the time.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
That's a good one. Um, you know, I think, I think when you get to a launch, like, uh, we always have a studio tradition, uh, like Mitch would come and bring cigars and, and everybody would, uh, have a cigar and everything. And every time that that happened, you know, like when you're doing your life and you're just kind of going through things, you don't really notice the passage of time.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
And then all of a sudden, like some moment like this would come back where it's like a tradition. And every time we had one of those, it was a moment where I'd go back home and be like, whoa, a lot's changed. Like a lot's changed in my life. A lot's changed in everybody's lives. Like people have gotten married. They've had kids. I felt ill because I don't smoke cigars that often. Yeah.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
oh i know that mistake but i think i think each one of those times like as a slice you know just each time is like oh like times jumped forward again yeah that's a big moment how awesome that's so cool yeah
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, so we've been working with a guy by the name of John Everest. Ever since Shadowrun Returns, right, Mike?
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
He's been amazing. He's gone on to work on Overwatch, the Star Wars Outlaws.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
He's got some upcoming awards, too. I think GDC, they're coming through. Just... super talented and also really collaborative and so we had an idea and we had like a rough animatic of what we wanted and we had like a temp track in there and we were kind of talking about that we wanted this to be something that was
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
a little bit against type and a little bit maybe that we hadn't necessarily heard as much before. And John listened and he was like, okay, I'll be back in a little bit. And he came back and he had this amazing start. And then he said, you know what? I know this amazing vocalist. Oh, yeah. Her name is Rachel Hardy. I think we can bring her in, and I think she's going to elevate this.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
And I think Rachel, correct me if I'm wrong, Mike, but I think Rachel wrote the words that she wanted to sing.
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
If you're lucky, and we are, you have somebody that you can trust so much. You can just be like, this is the vibe. We want it to be essential. We want it to be something that really touches on, without saying too much about the game, but just kind of touches on this idea of like,
Video Gamers Podcast
Getting Down with Graft - Gaming Podcast
There's horror, there's terror, but there's also this sensuality and this aspect of memory and personality that's going to be really important to the game. And we wanted that to show up in the song. And for her to sing these kind of aggressive words that are also very breathy and this driving beat, and then combined with the visuals, I'm so glad it hit for you all. Oh, it's so good.