The Making of Friday the 13th: The Game

behind the development for Friday the game. Would you be interested in talking with them so we could have a special Friday that thirteenth episode. And I thought, I've never done a Friday the thirteenth episode. I've done Halloween episodes, and I've done other holiday episodes, but never Friday that thirteen. And I thought, this is an opportunity I cannot pass up.

And so what you were about to hear is an interview that I conducted with Chuck brun Gard, the CEO of l Phonic, that's the company that developed Friday the thirteenth the game, and he was very forthcoming and very straightforward about the development of Friday the thirteenth the game, the challenges that is company faced and the reactions of that. I mean, it's it's a very honest interview, which I appreciate.

So I hope you guys enjoy this and I will join you again on the other side of the interview. I'd like to welcome Chuck brung Gart to the show. Chuck, thank you so much for joining tech Stuff. And Chuck is a co founder of el Phonic LLC. It's a company that developed Friday thirteenth the game. Obviously that's uh, you know, there's the relationship between game developers and game publishers, something that I think a lot of people who aren't really familiar with the way video games work, they kind

of conflate the two. Of course, they're some companies that are both developers and publishers, and that makes it even more confusing. But you're the guys who actually went and started making a game that now is Friday the thirte As I understand it, when you were first looking at developing a game in this space, uh, it was it was certainly inspired by properties like Friday the thirteenth or something like Sleepaway Camp, but it was from what I understand, it was a kind of an original. I p at

that point. The licensing agreement came later. Is that correct, Yes, definitely. And really kind of how it all started was, um, you know Gun Media, who's our publisher on this project. They actually kind of came up with the original concept and it was, you know, a game that they always wanted to make that they were kicking around. And I remember I got the call from West Suser CEO one day and said, hey, I'm you know, looking for a developer to develop this game, and you know it's uh,

it's called Summer Camps. And the first thing I thought of was I was like, well, I don't know if you did too much research about us, but we don't make kids games, so I'm not sure if we can help you. And he's like, well, let me show you this trailer. It's actually called Slasher Volume one Summer Camp.

And I think immediately I got it, like you know it it it kind of oozed Friday the thirteen, even though it wasn't yet that um it was, you know, it was called Summer Camp at the time, and um, but they brought on a lot of the original people from Friday thirteenth, like um, you know, like Harry Manfredini

and uh. Um, you know, like just kind of all the different guys, Tom Fazzini and I think they you know, they were all talking about making this game and it was really just a game that they wanted to make from growing up and watching these films. And uh so I think that was always the tricky part, is like, you know, what do we do uh for the killer um if we can't really you know, have the hockey

mask and all that. So so yeah, when we were approached eventually it kind of all made sense and really tied together that we were originally moving forward on a prototype and had you know, put out some some material that we were kind of showing early of what Summer Camp was to hopefully build interests within the consumers in the press. Um. But then that led to uh, you know, Sean Cunningham and his estates seen it and approaching Gun and us about it, and it was such a clever idea.

It's it's an example of a type of gameplay, the asymmetric approach, And for people who are not familiar with that, asymmetric means that you typically have at least two teams or or two parties of players. Uh and in this case, we're talking about a single player taking on the role of Jason Vorhees, obviously the antagonist of the Friday the Thirteenth series, the iconic character who through parts two and

on is the main antagonist. Obviously, if anyone is listening, I know Mrs Vorhees was the bad guy in part one. Everybody knows that. But from part two forward we have Jason, and asymmetric means that you have one person acting as Jason Vorhees, you have the other players acting as camp counselors, and the the goals are for one side to escape. That would be the counselors to get away or potentially even to take down Jason, although that is particularly difficult,

as is warranted by the mythology of the movies. Of course, Jason's goal is to eliminate as many, if not all, the counselors as he possibly can. And UH, to me, it's interesting because it combines elements of gameplay that I find really compelling. You have the competitive aspect of Jason versus the counselors, but you also have co up with the point of the counselors. You know, if they if they work together, they stand a much better chance of having success. At least for some of them than they

would if they all go Lone Wolf. Yeah, definitely. And I think what was so crazy about the concept is when I first heard it, I'm like, oh, that's that just works right. It works in and you know, almost a real life scenario where uh what, you know, everyone wants to know would you survive a horror film? Like what would you do? And I think early tests it was kind of funny because, um, you know, Jason is so powerful and that's definitely intentional, and I think the

the asymmetrical aspects behind it. We worked on other asymmetrical games in the past and that was one of the reasons why Gunn reached out to us. Um, but we didn't really um you know, a lot of times it was trying to make it balanced, and you know, trying to make one person or one thing against multiple people balanced was very tricky and it could also sometimes ruin a bit of the fun. But when we kind of threw that out the window, I mean, there's still balance

that goes into this stuff. But when we realize, like you know, Jason is going to be able to take on um, you know, more than one person at a time, it really started fitting, and it kind of essentially created almost a few games where you're either the powerful Jason hunting people down and and killing them and um, you know, stocking and kind of just all the different elements involved

in that. And then as counselors, you're you're getting away and you kind of have those big horror elements and everything like that where you know, you're you're scared, you're trying to hide, and really just saw everyone kind of playing into what happens in horror films, like when you know, you're always like, oh, don't go in that room alone, or you know, if you're with your friends, or you're gonna stick around and like help them, but you know,

everyone just kind of scatters and runs all different directions and that's usually when when all the bad stuff happened. So it was really, uh, it was really interesting because you have the human element and I think that um, that power, you know, the power struggle or power balance. It really worked well with a symmetrical gameplay and I think, you know, there's so many things you could kind of apply that to you when it comes to either other films or other ideas as well. Oh sure, and and

it's interesting. It's very in a way. It's affirming, in another way terrifying to see that the tropes of the horror film play out in actual gameplay, because I've I've I've watched more than my share of let's plays in this in this game, and I've played a couple where as you say, it is more frequently than not. As soon as the game starts, you just see the kels are scatter like ants, and immediately you're thinking, like, well, we're we're all gonna get picked off one by one now,

so that's gonna be interesting. I am a little curious about this because, as you say, you know, you you didn't have to worry. I mean, obviously, balance is always something you've got to think about. Otherwise, if you create a game where it is impossible for one team to win, then really you've just created a murder simulator. There's not really any way to to to get out of it. So you have to figure out, all right, well, what are the what are the parameters here for victory on

both sides? And uh, and how can we make sure that if you are not the killer, that you're still having a good time. Can you talk a little bit about what that process was like about just kind of

finding where that balance was. Yeah, I mean, you know, uh, to be to be honest, I feel like there's a bit of a pendulum swing, um, you know, and even uh you know sometimes little Patch and we think we're we we take a lot of feedback in from the community what they like, what they don't like, so UM, you know, I guess to back up and kind of start from the beginning. We did prototype really UM early on and I think you know, the biggest thing we found is it was really fun to play Jason, but

it wasn't fun to play counselors. UM. So we spent a lot of time on the counselor angle. And you know, uh, we have a lot of things like fear, and the more you get scared, there's things that happened, the screen darkened, you tend to lose your hud. Um. You know, there's just an alteration that goes on, um like visually as well. And then there's some audio cues that happened, uh to

kind of intensify everything. And we have this tripping mechanic where you know, the more scared you were, the more you attend the trip and stumble and that was you know, a very delicate mechanic because it was very frustrating in the beginning when we first tilt it. So you know, you're running around and then you have this thing kind of constantly taking control of your characters. So we made this figure out how do we give that effect that

not make it as annoying. So um So there were some levers to kind of pull there and and you know that'll balance back and forth um on that end. But it's just you know, in the beginning, it just wasn't great to be a counselor because Jason was your sails with powered But then we kind I've got the counselors still in right, but then it wasn't fun to be season So we had to figure out how to kind of just go back and forth. And it was

really just a lot of play tests, you know. I mean, you know, iteration is key in games, play test teams key, so he kind of went through that process and play tested a lot, and you know, all these kind of took feedback. There was we brought in some people early on and had them play the game and kind of got feedback from them. And the initial reaction as everyone really loved the game so that was great. But once you know, they spent a little more time with it,

we're able to kind of identify the problems. Um. But yeah, and even today though, I think we're still kind of potentially swinging the pendulum because well, you know, there'll be some really good ideas and thoughts if the community brings up and then just thinks that we've sat was for a while during our play test, and you know, we'll kind of alter some numbers, and then sometimes that goes out and people are like, oh no, like you know, now Jason isn't fun to play, or you know, and

and you know, now he's too over powered and a lot more fun to play, but it's too hard to be a counselor so it always is a bit of, um, kind of massaging to make it right. And you know, for the most part, I think we're we find a good balance between the two. But you know, I think everyone kind of has their own opinions, and sometimes even our opinions changed the longer we kind of sit with

the game. So it is kind of interesting. And I wouldn't tell you like we you have it exactly right, but um, but you know, for the most part, I mean there's a lot that goes into what makes it, uh, you know, kind of fun as it is now well, and I think it's really interesting. I mean, you bring up a great point in the idea of massaging this game and being able to tweak things and alter things.

It points to a very different landscape today than games just ten years ago, where once the game shipped, that was pretty much it, right. You didn't really have the opportunity to create a lot of patches or updates, and so, uh, you know, if you if you created a game that that had some mechanic that apparently just just displeased players,

then you were kind of stuck with it. But now you're in a world where if there's good parts and bad parts, one thing is that you can go back in and you can take in this feedback and you can make adjustments to the game and thus hopefully create a better experience for players so that they're having more fun, or or you're adding in elements so that the game is constantly fresh for players. But of course, the flip side of that is that you are you are fostering

a game much longer. You know, it's not that it ships out the door and you immediately turned to the next thing. So is that is that something that is I assume it's very different from your perspective, From a player's perspective. I love having a game where I'm constantly getting h tweaks and updates and it is refreshing the game and it makes me makes me want to play it again because I want to see what the new experience is like. I'm not sure what it's like on

your side of though. Yeah, though it's I mean I would say, um, you know, to be honest, it's it's a blessing and a curse, right, I mean, I think, um, we're you know, we were a small team that worked on this. We're a small company and um, you know, there was a certain amount of people internally that we're on this project, and um, you know, so being a small team, it's it's tough to um continue to roll out content and you know, luckily, with the success of

the game, we've been able to grow. But you know, when we're kind of getting towards launch, it's like, Okay, well, we know we're gonna need to keep working on this and we're gonna get feedback from the community, and we're you know, we're uh, you know, guns like five people.

They're getting a little bigger now. But uh and I think we had about you know, twenty people on the game as well internally here, so we weren't like with a big publisher where they could have hundreds of people that could go at it, and you get all these different studios and um, you know, people at the publishing company to kind of give a lot of feedback and

kind of help with certain areas. So you know, we kind of knew that we were throwing this thing out there and we would get some feedback, but we were committed to supporting that. So it is it is awesome from our standpoint because it's like we got to launch the game, people liked it. I mean, obviously there was issues when it launched, um but for the most part, people really liked it. They had a lot of fun.

We knew, uh, you know, moving forward that we would kind of fix and address these issues and constantly spend time updating adding new content into it. But it was

a bit of a growing process for us as well. UM. And really it's just it's it's interesting because um, I started before this actually in the music industry, and it was nice because when you finished an album, you know, there's so much work you put into it, and then you kind of you know, it goes off to like mastering and then you know, the artist tested them kind of take it from there and promoted. But we were more behind the scene, so we could just say, okay,

we're we're done. That's awesome. They could go to sleep at night. It's either gonna fell well maybe you know, is a hit or maybe not, and then it's kind of onto the next thing. But you know, with this kind of being a game as a service, we're constantly updating it, constantly thinking about it. You know, there's some night where you can't sleep just due to some issues you might run into or issues that end up out there. And then there's other times where you can't sleep because

you're like, how do I make this even even more better? Um? You know, how do I keep refining it? So? You know, so, like I said, I think it's a it's been a big learning experience for us in the team, and it's you know, we've been um kind of getting into the groove now is really kind of supporting it and turning around content and patches and updates and all that but you know, something that we had to really work into and we kind of as a company had had to

learn to work that way. And we brought on some really talented uh developers um here at the Phonic that actually had experience with that at other company needs, so they're able to kind of help us shift our company towards that direction. Um. But even before then, I mean I would say, like even our early games or work for higher games we did, you know, there's still were um online multiplayer games, so they were still updated and kind of uh you know, move through, but nothing really

to this level. UM. So yeah, it was definitely a learning experience, but it but it's great. I mean it's allows you you know, if the game wasn't that successful, it kind of allows us to you know, support it still until the community kind of eventually starts dying down. Um. But in this case, it kind of allows us to support it a lot longer and put a lot of things in there that originally were like this would be great to have, but you know it's not in the

budget or the scope at the time. So I think that's as cool as we get to really always kind of put those ideas that um, you know, games in the past to kind of leave on the cutting room floor, and and that kind of leads us into You've talked about community, and there's clearly of a very vocal and and active community in the Fright the Third the game. I mean, like I said, I've watched lots of let's plays in this as well as well as playing the game. I was one of the backers of Fright the thirteam

full full disclosure. Yeah, so you guys had a very successful crowdfunding campaign, which I assume was very gratifying because it showed that there were players out there who were feeling just as strongly about this concept of, uh of really diving into this world of classic slasher horror kind of fiction and bringing it into a a you know,

a playable experience. Uh. Can you talk a little bit about the the you know, how that how that worked when you did the crowdfunding and sort of the feedback you got, And I assumed that was pretty energizing to the group to see that kind of level of enthusiasm

before you you even had a game to ship. Yeah, No, it was really awesome because I think, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into you know, making a Kickstarter and are doing Kickstarter and just you know, all the videos and all the content we have to make to keep people engaged and to really have them buy into our vision. It's like, you know, we all have it in our heads, but how do we show

the community of people of that. So. Um, So we were really you know, really nervous going into it, like, oh, this are people gonna gravitate towards this? I mean, you know, luckily we had Friday their Teeth in the franchise behind us, but it's really tricky because we just didn't know. Um, we felt like people would be into this and were as much as we were, but we just didn't know.

So when a lot of people you know started kind of coming out and saying, hey, this is great, this is exactly what we're looking for and really supporting us and backing us, I mean, it was it was an amazing feeling, but it was it was a crazy, um, you know, months kind of thirty day roller coaster ride

of trying to make sure. Yeah, I mean, we had an initial plan and then I think you know, after we launched, probably three or four days into it, um, we still kind of executed on that plan, but there was a lot more we started doing because I think

that's when we started building a community. There became a lot of questions and you know, people wanted to understand how the game played more and what things are going to look like and how it's going to run and work and all that, and so I think it, um, you know, it was pretty crazy, but I think it became very I guess a lot more work than we figured it would be because we wanted to try to answer all those questions and um, continue to show people

we're building. Obviously we knew that would help the crowd funding, but we also wanted to just have fans really buy into the vision. So um, so yeah, it was. It was a great experience. Um, really cool, I mean it, you know, but also at the same time, it was a ton of work. And like Randy and those guys that on all really put so much into a um as well as they just kind of really stayed on top of everything in and made sure that everything was kind of laying smoothly and that people were getting a

question answered and all that stuff. So it was experience. I imagined some of those questions even lead to developing things that you had not initially considered because in my experience, uh, you know, you have a brainstorming group, you get people together, you start coming up with ideas, then you start to put those into some form of structure and you move on from there, and then you you think you've got a pretty good idea of what you have from beginning

to end. You you know, it's maybe not complete, but you gotta you've got You're fairly confident. And then you open it up and people started asking questions and they're asking things that you You're like, wow, I really I really should have thought of that, and I totally didn't. And that's a legitimate point. Yeah, or we did think enough about that, right, you know, because maybe that won't

work that we thought would work so well. But yeah, I think you know, once we got the ideas that there, I mean, it was kind of tricky though, because anything you would say sometimes could be taken as gospel essentially, So we would, you know, someone would throw out an idea and maybe we weren't communicating to each other, and then all of a sudden we noticed that that idea

would really stick in the community. So it's you know, I see, that's why games for so long have been kind of developed in this very closed, I guess dark environment where you know, you don't even really hear about it, and maybe a year or two years on some of these big Triple A projects before they come out, they might announce it, but they're careful with what they show, and you know, everyone starts having ideas and kind of

questions and and all that kind of stuff. But I think because we were so open with what we were trying to build, you know, you would throw out an idea and it would be something that we might have just talked about briefly, but we didn't bet it yet, and everyone would gravitate towards that, and then it's like, okay, well, you know, maybe this is a great idea and now we have to figure out how to make it work.

It was definitely a different way of developing. UM I would say, I mean it, but I think it it was for the better, right. I think it's allowed us to kind of talk about things early on that um maybe we were understanding like, oh, people don't really understand

what we're trying to go for here. Maybe two come to a complex of a mechanic, you know, how do we make it simpler, and I think you know, at the end of the day, there was a lot of There was one point where we felt no one was going to understand how to play this game, how to play as Jason, how to play as counselors, and what the missions and objectives were for. So we started going into this like, Okay, we need way more u I so people can understand this stuff, and you know, we

need way more feedback on things. And I think there were some parts where we started going a little too overboard um and hand holding, and then there was parts where it needed it kind of just made the perfect balance of someone seen a mechanic, getting some visual feedback and understanding what it was. So we're pretty surprised when we did the data that people are able to just kind of pick it up and play for the most part. Um. But it was kind of interesting because you know, we

didn't know if that would happen or not. But at the end of the day, we're kind of putting people in a bit of real life, you know, survival kind of instinct areas, I guess, so it didn't work out well. It's it's the sort of game that kind of rewards uh, some experimentation as well, where you know, if you if you're casting about a little bit, you might discover a strategy that works that you would not have necessarily thought of.

But at the same time, it's not like it's a game where you jump in and you can pick up absolutely everything and you have no idea which thing is relevant and which one isn't. I've played those style game games to which are you know, it's very immersive to be in a world where your character can manipulate practically anything in the environment. But then at that point you start asking yourself, oh, but is this does this matter that I can do this? Or is this just a

cool gimmick that's distracting me? And uh so that it's nice to see balance there too. I appreciate a game where where you can more easily hone in on what's really important, especially if you happen to have a seven foot tall behemoth with a machete bearing down on you at the time. Snap decisions are pretty important in that case. So let's talk a little bit. So what are some of the challenges that you did encounter in the development

of this game. You know, we talked about how obviously the balance was something and and figuring out, you know, how to communicate with the community, almost a collaborative process with the community in some respects. But but obviously this was this was a pretty ambitious project, and as you mentioned, it was a relatively modest team, A small team, not a talented one, but a small one. So what are some of the challenges you encountered throughout the development process? Oh?

I think, I mean, to be honest, I think we bumped our heads every which way. I mean I could probably I could probably go on on this topic, um for a while, but no, I think you know, anytime you're creating some something new and different, there's you know, especially in games in generals, you're pretty much encountering issues daily, right, I think you know, some of it would um would be I don't know as big as when you know, when we launched, our technology wasn't really able to scale.

We built a lot of this stuff internally, and we never had a game that was just successful. So we we would you know, on day one, we can him off the data basically said oh okay, well we had maybe I don't know, five thousand concurrent players or something on the data, so let's you know, if we get four or five times, that would be good, um, but I think we had let's see, probably twenty times that so we weren't really um in day one, so we really weren't ready for that. And you know, we didn't

have enough servers up. It didn't scale properly. I mean that was that was a big one. Um. You know, some of the technology and just that we used and um, you know, console development in general's pretty difficult and beam a small team working across three platforms is another big challenge as well. But even just gameplay, getting things right, it would always be you know, okay, um, you know, do we have players play more inside houses? Like? How do we draw more into the house? Like, I think

the gameplay styles changed a lot. Like in the beginning, I think Illphonic had lot of ideas for it being more of an outdoor game, where I think Gun felt it should be more of an indoor game, um because they wanted a lot more of those uh like survival horror elements of like hiding and barricading and you know, using the cabins as cover and all that kind of stuff um from Jason. But I think we had a kind of a different um maybe style of play in

our heads. So a lot of it was kind of coming together between both teams to say, you know, okay, we get what you want here, this is kind of what we're thinking here, and you know, we kind of meat in the middle and I think, um, and then sometimes it would even swing more towards uh, you know, one team's suggestions versus another. But I think we were you know, very aligned on what we wanted, and there

was a lot of communication. I mean there was daily talks, you know, uh, like we were in so many meetings with this game because I think a lot of things kind of swung forth. But another thing that was challenging too is you know, what features really need to go in there? And after a while we just felt early on like, okay, well this is a fun game, but it's it's starting to leave it's fun, so we need to give the players a bit more things to do. Um. And at first we never were going to have the

car driv a bowl. Um. It was just gonna be you know, you get the car parks and kind of put them on the car, and you know, you you end up um getting in there's like a cut scene or something, and then you escape um, but we felt after kind of testing a lot that that would happen

pretty quickly. Um. And then you know, I think Jotting those guys over there basically suggested, hey, we just think about a driveable car, and we were kind of terrified because they're like, well, we don't really have the time for that right now, and those are you know, that's

a whole new element to the game. So the car was really challenging, but I think we all kind of said, you know, it could be a little bit jaky, because, um, you know, we think it's going to bring enough moments to the table that if the car does have some problems here there, we just kind of try to figure out how to solve those. But we knew we were kind of opening up and buying off a lot, so you know, it forced us to kind of work a

bunch of eight hours. But I think we were all passionate about the idea because we knew would make it better. And I think we got the car in pretty quickly in a rough state. But you know, most games, when you look at like out of grant that auto or even like a um, you know, some of the other

racing games out there, I saw very track based. Those areas where the cars can and cannot go, you can take them a bit off road, but for the most part the games are built for vehicles, whereas this it wasn't really from the beginning built four vehicles, who are like, Okay, well, what happens if they started driving the car off into the forest or hit big rock boulders and all this

kind of stuff. So we tried to really, um like contain the car a little bit more of the road so that I would make it easier for gameplay, but at the same time it could really go anywhere the player wanted to go. But I think that was something that, you know, turn the game around to be really fun and add this extra element I think lent really well

for for streaming and all that kind of stuff. Even the voiceover I p and was was kind of an idea that came up at one point and said, Oh, wouldn't it be cool if you know, you could hear each other talk with proximity, so counselors could talk to each other. And then that kind of lent to the walkie talkie idea. We wanted it where it's like, oh, Jason could kind of yell at people or you know, you could have people as Jason running after stuff, you know,

after them saying stuff to them. So we thought that would add an important element. But that was very challenging because we didn't really have you know, the engine UM has very basic voice over I P and not all platforms supported the ability to kind of take the voice over IP and put it in the three D space. So, um, that was a big challenge. But once we thought it was a good idea and kind of prototype it out, we had to have it, and you know, we did

whatever it took to make it happen. So did your team? Did your team actually, uh developed the various versions for each of the platforms, so PC, Xbox, and PS four. We actually ended up doing all three platforms. We used on Ronging four, which had um, you know a lot of that stuff already in there. So it allowed us to kind of develop one game and then um go to the other platforms and kind of hit all the certification standards. So I mean, there was still a ton

of work. They're getting me wrong, I name, I think, um, we did it very quick as far as supporting all three platforms. So that was a really big challenge because we're also you know, we worked on in Xbox one and a PlayStation flour game before, but not a game where we had to take it kind of from A to C you know, start to finish by ourselves as

a group. So there was a lot of areas that we kind of learned and you know, bumped our heads on and and uh but for the most part, I mean there was a lot that is, they're already from unrealni in four, but you still have to kind of view all the user facing stuff on your own and and there's a lot of work there, and there's a lot of work that goes into just you know, making sure that when you unplug a controller or something like that, that it displays the right message and the message and

it is different between the different platforms by different standards and all that kind of. Yeah, the reason why I was asking is because, uh, you know, obviously there are a lot of companies out there that will develop a game for a specific platform and then they end up using you know, a third party to go and port

that over to other platforms. So to have this this one type team working on building a game, you know, really building the game for the most part once but then having to make those adjustments for the various platforms. That is not a trivial problem. That's that's a lot of work, and I think a lot of people don't necessarily think about that when they're looking at a game that's across multiple platforms, not they don't necessarily know that.

In many cases that's been worked on by different companies, not let alone different teams. So I think it's just very impressive to see a single group tackle all of that. It's a very ambitious kind of approach. Uh And uh So when you talk about some of these challenges and bumping your head and things, I mean, you you guys were tackling really a big, big challenge. You're talking about a beloved property, so there's high level of expectation among

the the potential audience there. You're talking about, uh, fairly relatively fast turnaround. I mean, as I understand it, summer Camp was you know, you got started on that somewhere around and you know, there's some games out there that have infamously long development cycles, so that's pretty fast. And you had a relatively small team. So while you ran into a lot of challenges along the way, and the launch was rough, and the scaling was was an issue.

You know, when you know the whole story, when you know what was going on behind the scenes, you start to see like, well, it's it was a monumental undertaking really when you get down to it. So, uh, I certainly appreciate that. That's one of those things that when you learn more about how the industry works and you see this particular approach, you get a greater appreciation for the work you guys were facing on a day to

day basis. One other thing I wanted to talk about really, and this is something that my my producer Ramsey, really wanted me to talk about. Two is just how how much this fee les like Friday. And in large part that's due to the involvement of people who were who were part of the Friday the Thirteenth film franchise as well.

You mentioned Harry man Bernini, who made the music for Friday the Thirteenth, and he worked on the music for the game and did the composing for the game, and you know Sevini who did effects working on design for the game, and of course Kane Hotter, who played Jason Vorhees in various chapters of Friday the thirteenth doing motion capture for the game. What was it like working with people who actually created the stuff that you're trying to emulate in a video game format. Yeah, I mean that

was that was amazing. I mean because I think, um, you know, and I don't know, you know, like Mysonse, I pe games and they kind of get a bad rep because you know, they they don't necessarily go through all the details. And I think that's something in that

that really brought to the table. Was you know, even just when we shot the Kickstarter video at Sean Cunningham's house, It's like we all got to just sit around the table while people were doing interviews or you know or whatever, the cameras were setting up and all that kind of stuff, and we just got to kind of talk about, um, you know, oh hey, so in like you know, where did this come from? Or like what was this idea based on? I mean, I think there's a lot more

thinking that goes into this kind of stuff. I think where you know, I mean, these are people that these are their stories. They kind of created them, they helped tell these stories. They were around when it was shot. They were next to the writers, they were next to the actors, and you know, I think some of it just kind of happens to just fall together naturally and

they don't you know, overtake it too much. But then, um, you know, I think later on down the line, they start thinking about a lot of things like, oh, so you know, just different references to different part to the films and if they're going to bring something back or you know, what was the intention of making this part.

So having access to those kind of guys and and you know, in having came for example, just tell us like how you would get in the character and how you know why he moved the way he did in the films as Jason, and um, you know what his kind of uh stint is. Jason's like brought to the table along with him kind of knowing all the other

guys that played Jason, whether loss through convention or whatever else. Um, he was able to kind of understand like what their body types of like body language, so there's a lot of details there. And just being close with those guys and those guys just kind of living this for a number of years, um, you know, twenty plus years or whatever. It's they were able to, um really like they knew a lot of a lot of the answers the questions we had. I mean, I see, like Ronnie and West,

we're kind of the Friday thirteen Bible. I mean there were times where they knew more than I think some of the guys that actually worked on it or created it did. And and I think that's why they worked really well because they're able to throw out a lot of that stuff when we were talking, and they kind of got all these guys as blessing to Um really like either fill in blanks or kind of continue moving forward with certain things. And so I think that that's

what was really important between that relationship. But I mean it just helped us really study the films and and everything like that, so we're able to i don't know, really nailed down kind of what the fuel is. Like. I mean, there was a day when we kind of sat around and just talked about color all day, and I think having to be a conversation left had with

maybe as Tom Savini or or Shawan Tunningham. But at one point Um they were just talking about like, oh, you know, the cinematographer, like we would put you know, this kind of paint on the walls to indicate certain things, and I think it just really translated well into the game as we were just kind of talk about how they shot it, how they filmed it, you know, what kind of film it was shot on, Like how we would get that kind of effect and really go for

the cinematic look and feel. But I think, you know, bringing Keen into it and bringing Hearing into it, I mean and Tom, it really just kind of added that extra element of Now we got the movement, we got the feel of the mo cap, everything is coming from the people that originally business and I like also, you know, we didn't really mentioned this earlier, but in the game, there are different versions of Jason Vorhees based upon the

different film films, because obviously his look changes from some films to another. Sometimes it's a dramatic change, sometimes it's more subtle. His preference for weapons can change, and of course the iconic kills can change. So in the game there are iconic kills you can you can do as Jason against the Councils, and they depend upon which Jason

Jason you're using. Uh, my own personal favorite for reasons of nostalgia is that you created a Friday the thirteenth, Ney s version of Jason for the game You Get your Purple Jason. Uh. If people are not familiar, there was a Nintendo Entertainment System Friday the Thirteenth game that was a very odd take on Jason Vorhees and I love that that was a that was the character that you could play in your game. Yeah, so it's pretty awesome. I mean we you know, we we actually call it,

uh metro Jason. Uh yeah, but yeah, I think the uh, you know, for all these reasons there, but but we um, yeah, it was one that we were all like so strong about here. Um. I think it was even early on something we kind of did and you know, like you get a debug format. We would have like a lot of Purple Chases running around before we had to model all finished and stuff. So it was only kind of natural that we would kind of get that finished up

and release it out to the wild. But yeah, I mean that was something as as a kid, I totally well, I guess I don't you know, I would say I remember it well, I don't remember the exact game, and we kind of went back and watch YouTube videos and stuff, but I definitely remember playing that game. And you know,

Nintendo games are always super hard day. So yeah, now if you think, if you think winning as a counselor is hard in Fight the Thirteenth game, play any old school Nintendo game for five minutes and and just take a moment to appreciate how things have changed. Um, not that the old games weren't fun. They were, they were just maddeningly difficult. Uh So, I've got a couple of other more kind of goofy questions for you. One is, is there a particular, like favorite detail that you have

of the games? I mean, obviously it's like picking your favorite kid, but there's so much detail that goes into this this game. Is there any particular either an Easter egg or version of Jason or anything along those lines that you you are particularly tickled by? Yeah? I think. I mean it was cool with the savine Jason, just seeing how popular that became and how everyone really wanted

that case. And I thought it was cool to watch them, you know, to watch Tom and like create that new Jason right like it's like, oh wow, we're kind of adding on to that. I think the same for the Famili tapes as well. I mean that was something, um that that was really interesting because it kind of brought in a whole new story of of what happened kind of previously. Um, I won't give it away too much in case people haven't listened to all or collected all of them, but but it it was the new elements

of the story. I mean, I don't know. I was really tied to the audio of the game because that's kind of what I worked on a lot. Like I'm a programmer as well, so I wrote a lot of like the music systems and stuff like that. So that's just kind of the area that I was always in. But I don't know, the kills are really cool to see come along and just don't It's it's tricky. I don't know if I could kind of pick one one detail because there was a lot of attention to detail.

I think winning um came into the you know, came into making this game, and and that was something that that Gun did a really good job bringing to the table. There had to be all the little details because they knew, you know, they neither be a vocal community with the Friight third team community, and if we didn't do it right, I mean, I think we would have to run the other dittrection right so so they really to hit all

of that on the head. And there was a lot of times where it's be like even just a scratch on the mask, where it's like, oh, no one's going to see this, but you know, sure enough we would put it on there. We would think, oh, maybe we're wasting our time, and do we really need to go back and try to add this extra detail that we might have missed or something. And you know, when when that stuff came out, I mean it was analyzed under a microscope, so we're kind of like, oh, you know,

thank god we put that in there. Um, because the community noticed things like that, they noticed imperfection. There's there's a lot of like imperfections when it kind of comes to the mask and even just like the eyeholes for dimple or not symmetrical and kind of getting those right and just all the angles of that in the shape of them. I mean, there was details down to that level,

and it all went totally noticed by the community. So I think those were kind of for me probably the the touches that I felt in the game that just went a really long way. That works special. Well. My last question for you is what is your favorite film in the Fright of thirteen franchise. Wow, I know, tough one, right, Yeah,

it is. It is a tough one. I mean it's like I think when you know, when personally I went back to kind of revisit the films when we started this game, it's like I totally forgot probably as the

original Friday and thirteen. So I think that one was kind of special because you know, I think growing up as a kid, like, you know, we were watching them all, but they just all kind of playing together, and you always remember like the hockey mask, right, I think you know, seeing uh, seeing Sackhead and seeing um, you know, kind of Pamela originally being the Killers. I think that was

that was probably more interesting to me. But I don't know, I think I still really like Part three, probably just kind of when and everything started shaping up a little more. Maybe. So I don't know, it's you know, there's it's definitely like something you really love and then some that you're like, I don't think good, but you know, I don't know what about I mean, okay, so you're gonna laugh. It's legitimately my favorite. I like Jason X. I love Jason

and Space. It is. It is unapologetically ridiculous, but I it's kind of celebrating in that, and I find joy there. Um. I'm a big horror fan, so I love watching these two. And you know, there have been times where the entire series has been available for streaming and I would find a day and I'd say, all right, today, I'm gonna work through parts one through three, and tomorrow it's gonna be four through six, and I would just, you know, I just binge because I really like the filmmaking approach.

I love the effects. Uh you know, I like the the innovation when it comes to things like how are we going to top what we did in our last film and not get it in a way where it just becomes parody. Although I think you could argue Jason Next kind of falls into that line. But that's kind of why I like it. Um. And also, I'm friends with a guy who for a while was working on a scripted development that was was going to be the

next Fright the thirteenth film. It is since they've moved on to a different writer, but for about two years he was working on it, and to to see it from that side was really cool. This would have been the one after the reboot, so not the not the Fright the Thirteenth reboot, but it would have been the the next one. Um and uh yeah, so so chatting with him in Atlanta, we have a ton of of people in film, and this guy has been working in movies for a while and so it was kind of

cool seeing it from his perspective as well. So yeah, so I guess my favorite Friday the Thirteenth movie is the one that was never made. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, hopefully hopefully one day, right, Yeah, you never know, it may end up morphing into something else or or even yeah, you never know. Things come around. But this has been fascinating and I've, like I said, I've been following the development of the game since the crowdfunding days, uh and

watching as it as it came out. And one of the things I love about it is that it has become a a wealth of of content for people who live stream. It's one of those games that is frequently being live streamed, either on YouTube or on Twitch or other platforms, and so even if you're not ready to jump in there just yet, you can watch as other

people play. I've watched groups who play it together and then they'll which is great because you'll you'll get the the conversation that goes on within the room itself if they're all playing in the same room, as well as the action that's going on on screen. And those are some of my favorites because you get to especially when people do something like they happen to pick the car that only a lot has too seats in it, and there's a third person there. That's always the best idea, right,

what's gonna happen? Who's gonna get left behind? And it's fun watching a group a group of friends play it and just you know, a group of group, a group of good streaming friends that are kind of used to playing and streaming together. It's there's some real special elements you kind of see from that. It's it's pretty funny. I mean, there's just probably hours and hours of content that you could just watch that um that we see

and that's just I don't know, it's it's hilarious. It's awesome. Uh, it's funny watching people get scared sometimes, and just even just watching people that have played it for so long and have so many hours in it and they still have those moments of them like jumping or getting scared you know, yeah, yeah, those those I mean, it's clearly that hearkens back to the spirit of the films. So when you've got that, when you can see that happen, you could think, oh, yeah, we got that right, you

got got that right. That's actually the way you're supposed to be. If you were watching this, you have that that jump scare um and thankfully there's there's not like a thousand fake jump scares with cats jumping out at you everywhere. That's that would get old really quick. Uh well, Chuck, thank you so much for joining the show and talking about this. I really look forward to seeing how this

game continues as well as your future work. I'm really curious to find out more about that further down the line. And thank you again for joining tech Stuff. Yeah, well, thanks for having us. It was it was great talking to you. And uh yeah, thanks thanks for the support and everything. All right, that was it. That was Chuck brung Gart of Elphonic talking about Friday the thirteenth of the game. We are so appreciative for his time and uh and and getting to talk to him about what

this process was like. It's definitely something that I really was interested in from the it go, and I think it is a really fun experience. From a personal perspective, playing Jason is a thrill. Playing a counselor is a real challenge, and if you're playing with people who know what they're doing, you can actually get pretty far in this game as a counselor. It is still really really hard and you'll probably die, but there's a chance you'll

make it out. And so if you are interested in this game, you can always go and check out YouTube videos or or let's play so that you can kind of get a feel for what the game is like. It's available on PC, at PlayStation four and Xbox One, so it's on all the big consoles right now besides the Nintendo Switch. And you can check that out and try it out yourself see if you have the what it takes to be a killer Jason or a surviving counselor. Don't go in the lake. If you're a counselor. Jason

can move wicked fast in the water. I found that out the hard way. And if you are in a car and you see me, let me in the car please. I have been left behind so many times. But thanks again to Chuck brung Garten, the team over at Illphonic for letting us have this conversation. We really appreciate it.

We rarely get a chance to actually hear the behind the scenes process of what it was like to create a piece of technology and release it to the world, and to really get an understanding of where those challenges are and how do you overcome them, So I greatly

appreciate it. Guys, if you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, maybe there's a technology you really want me to cover, or a company history that you've always wanted to hear more about, or a person in tech, or maybe there's just someone else you want me to interview or have on as a guest host. I need to hear from you, guys. Write me an email and that email address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me a line on

Facebook or Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff hs W. Remember on regular episodes, not interviews, but regular episodes, I do stream live and you can watch as I record and make mistakes and cry and Ramsey has to comfort me until I've gotten through that emotional turmoil. You can see that happen. If you go to twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff. I record Wednesdays and Friday's. The schedule is right there at twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff. Pope to see you there, and I'll talk

to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, staff works dot com