Marty O'Donnell Goes Total Audio

Marty: [00:00:00] John Mayer had come in on Halo two and Incubus and whatever, breaking Benjamin and Nile Rogers and Steve, I, and you know, I'd had some real amazing people who were musicians that worked with us on the music. And so he calls me and says, we were thinking about who you should work with next, and so we, we think you should work with Paul McCartney.

And I'm like, wow, okay. Like, that sounds amazing. You gotta be kidding me, but like, what's your connection? How, how could you get Paul McCartney? And he goes, oh, well we, we can't, we just were thinking that it'd be cool. And I'm like, oh. 

Alex: So that was Marty O'Donnell, good friend, old friend. Did you realize he's like 20 years older than us?

That's nuts. Exactly what I saw when he But 

Alex: Marty talking about how, how he got hooked up with Sir Paul McCartney. What a, what a [00:01:00]fabulous story. That was great. Catching up with Marty the other day 

Aaron: when he said that I like looked at me, you and I was like, he looks better than both us. He looks like he's 27.

I'm like, what? What is he eating? Is he a vampire? 

Alex: He is. He's, uh, he's getting, uh, he looks, he does not look older. I'm sure he is getting blood transfusions, you know, from like baby rabbits or something. 

Aaron: That's some conspiracy 

Alex: theories. So, um, you know what showed up in the mail for me yesterday? Your shirt?

I, I forgot about. No, I did an order on Amazon. I totally forgot about it. Um, okay. And this package shows up and I'm like, what, what is this? And I open it up and there's 10 bars of Irish Spring soap in it. 

Aaron: Oh, you were telling me about this. You have a subscription, right? 

Alex: No, no. I, no, I have a rat problem.

I have rats have been like, uh, like eating, literally eating [00:02:00] my car. I took my car in for service and the guy's like, well, you got a rat problem. Yeah. And he was telling me that they don't like the smell of Irish Spring. He was like, go get some Irish Spring and put it in the trunk of your car. Oh, 

Aaron: you know, I, I, so I live right next to a patch of like woods, right?

Like, it's like a, it's called a, it's not like a big set of woods. It's just like a bunch of trees and stuff. And every time the pest guy comes, goes, they always say, that didn't sound, that didn't make sense. But every time the pest guy comes over, he goes, that's the problem, like the forest. Cuz they just come out of there.

They're like an army that's, anyways, I was looking online for like, Similar to this, like something to get rid of the problem without using poison for spiders. And you could buy these little bags that you just place around. And, uh, apparently the smell, the scent is what pushes them away. And like rosemary and, uh, we put some of those in the front and the mosquitoes don't come.

I think it's Rosemary, [00:03:00] but Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's cool. How many bars of soaps do you have? 

Alex: You use any? I 

Aaron: got 10 bars of So you gonna use them after you use them? 

Alex: Oh no. Have you ever smelled Irish Spring? That's some strong stuff. 

Aaron: It's, it's like the, I mean, I'm Armenian. That's probably good. 

Alex: Four x. Yeah, it's like our, it's like Armenian strength, I guess I would say.

That's soap. 

Aaron: Yeah. Yeah. I used to use Irish Spring. That was our, that was our family, uh, soap. And it is, it, it's the kind of soap. You would think this podcast is sponsored by Irish Spring, by the way, because we're talking about it. Yeah, 

Alex: we're talking about it a lot. Well, you know, some of, some of the, when I was looking up this Irish spring, um, deter rats cuz this guy, this guy told me this and I'm like, I'm gonna fact check early Google.

And uh, I got, I got some of the old TV commercials and those are wild. 

Aaron: Yeah, yeah. Isn't like water come out of the sink or something? 

Alex: Uh, does water come out? What are you're thinking of? You're no, you're, you're [00:04:00] thinking of those gushers chewing gum, you know, or you chew the gum 

Aaron: and those two, but I remember like, they would cut a slice of Irish spring off and then they'd like teleport to, that was the thing.

They would always slice it off like it was like a potato or something. 

Alex: This morning I downloaded, um, sorry to segue, downloaded Hades. I'm gonna be, uh, playing Hades 

Aaron: today. Oh, cool. That's nice. Yeah. I'm, I, uh, I downloaded the remaster of metro. And I was like, you know what, I should probably play Hades too as well on this.

I was gonna play it on the switch. It looks nice. Which is the same as what you're doing, right? What are you doing? You're doing it on the 

Alex: steam deck? On I'm playing on the steam deck, yes. The, the bigger neck. That thing pretty cool. Although, you know, I had it sitting on the table for two days and just completely out of battery.

I, I, I guess maybe you gotta turn it off and let's just put 

Aaron: it to sleep. So you're gonna play that. That's a very twitchy game, just so you know. And it's kind of hard. It's like that Good. 

Alex: No spoilers buddy. No spoilers. I'm 

Aaron: not gonna spoil, but it's a little, it's a little [00:05:00] difficult. It's not that easy, I 

Alex: think.

I think you're trying to say maybe I can't handle it. Is that what you're trying to say? Kind me. My, my old, my old person reflexes, they must have an easy mode, right? I'm not afraid of easy mode. I'm not proud. 

Aaron: You, you were just telling me recently you got sick playing it, you were playing counterstrike or something.

Alex: I don't know if that's No, the original Halflife. Halflife one. Oh, halflife. Yeah. Halflife. Yes. And, and that's not a dig on halflife. That's like any, any, any gen one FPSs is gonna make me lightweight, me Motion sick. 30 minutes or less. Guaranteed. Are your money back? 

Aaron: Yeah, like in between the, the, when they went from like the 2D to 3d remember that like, there was like a, I think quake was the first one.

Alex: That's when you said Quake was like real 3D and like Yeah. Yeah. Those were easier for me. Like the original ones that were like, because, because there's like, when the camera moves around, like especially up and down, there's like a lot of tearing, you know? And the, the prescri [00:06:00] perspective's not Oh yeah.

Accurate. I think it's probably what sets me off. Yeah. 

Aaron: I don't know if I should tell this story, but, uh, what's the name of the dude that owns the company Valve? Gabe Newell. Um, yeah, Chris told me a story cuz he worked on Counterstrike and he was showing, they were showing Gabe Newell the game. And he's playing the game.

And then halfway through the demo he pulls the trash cat can out from underneath the desk. Oh no. And then throws up in here and then turns 

Alex: around, says, you know, the pitch is going good. You know, 

Marty: the pitch is good. 

Aaron: I don't know if that's a true story, but he told us that story he told me and Patrick, that's 

Alex: a story.

It's a good story. Yeah. Well maybe some, maybe somebody could help us fact check that story, but that sounds pretty, 

Aaron: yeah, it could be hearsay. That sounds pretty good. But I was like, it made me respect Gabe Newell. I'm like, that's awesome. The guy powered through Barfs and then like Yeah. And then 

Alex: signs it and, and it [00:07:00] becomes like an industry changing.

That's legend. Exactly. Exactly. That's legend. Yeah. Um, yeah, you know, I was, uh, taking the kids to school this morning and I look over and Owen's playing something on his phone and I'm like, what are you playing? And he said, plants versus zombies, which a was a little bit of surprise that he Wait on what?

Playing PV Z on his phone. On what he was playing PV Z two. What do you mean on Oh, okay. On his iPhone? Yeah. Yeah. On his iPhone. Okay. Yeah. But, um, I told him that's one of my top fives. The original game. PV Z. 

Aaron: Yes. Yeah. It's a very 

Alex: good game. Oh yeah. I mean, I've probably played that, I've probably played all the way through start to finish that game, like, I don't know, half a dozen times.

Yeah. It's so good. 

Aaron: It is good. It's, it's one of those industry games. It's so balanced. It's one of those games that when it came out, everyone's like, you know, there's like, the industry gets like stagnant and everyone's just copying each other, you know, like, oh, okay, we're gonna make a better zombie game.

We're gonna make a better, yeah. [00:08:00] And then when PV Z came out was like, this game doesn't 

Alex: exist. I was like, what the, what the what? Yeah. 

Aaron: Yeah. You're like, and it's like so bizarre. Plants versus zombies. These 

Alex: two, I didn't, I wouldn, you know, that wasn't the first tower defense game, 

Aaron: was it? Uh, no, but it was, the way it was played, I felt that was like, it, it brought a lot of people to.

Um, cuz Tower Defense, there's like multiple ways to do Tower Defense and this was more like Lanes. Yeah. And it was kind of like, yeah, you're right. It is pretty unique 

Alex: that way. Yeah. It's, it like, it's so, so much like flavor, so much hard to live, you know? 

Aaron: Yeah. You know? Yeah. It was, you know, it's like when Portal came out, when Portal came out, it's a first person shooter, but they're doing like this new thing, you know, and they're telling 

Alex: a story.

Like that's like also had some story. Yeah. Yeah. That's another, that's another one of my top five. We gotta get both Kim Swift and George Fan on here. 

Let's 

Aaron: do it. Yeah. That's 

Marty: a, that's 

Alex: a, that's a masterpiece. Yeah. I, I [00:09:00] remember talking to somebody. It wasn't George Fan. Cause I don't think I've ever met him.

Um, but I was talking to somebody at Pop about how that game was tested and balanced because it's one of those games where I feel like the balance is just so good. Um, oh yeah. And I had just, you could break it that it was, well, I just assumed they did it, worked it out on a spreadsheet and everything, you know, it was just like power and speed and all this stuff and it's like, no.

Oh, 

Aaron: I see what you mean. Yeah, yeah, 

Alex: yeah. I thought like just, just 

Aaron: play tested, shooting in areas and being able to get to areas you're not supposed to get to is what I, what I, what I was assuming you meant. Uh, 

cause 

Alex: you know, you can shoot, wait, you're talking about PV Z or Portal? 

Aaron: Portal, but you're talking about ppv.

I was talking about PV Z. Yeah. 

Alex: Okay. Yes. 

Aaron: They both start with P so that's why, that's why I got confused. Yeah. Yeah. 

Alex: They're 

Marty: both, yeah. Spreadsheet. Yeah. 

Aaron: Yeah. What's number one, Ben? Now I wanna. Number one. What's number one? You're like Halo? 

Alex: No, come on, Alex. I don't think it's, I don't think it's fair to put any of, [00:10:00] any of the games that I've worked on in Okay.

That's in my own. I like that. That's, yeah. But if I was, if I was gonna, if I was gonna sort of rank the games that I've worked on, um, probably the game I had the most fun of ours playing was a game called Minar, which is hardly Yeah. 

Aaron: You mentioned that played by anyone in the, in the, in the, in the interview.

Minnaar you. Yeah. You made that in your basement? 

Alex: Well, Ja, Jason made it, I think probably in high school or something, but when we started working together, he showed it to me like the, like what he had built so far. And I was like, dude, this is awesome. And he's like, ah, whatever. You know? It's not that cool.

Humble. That's awesome. And it, it didn't, yeah, it didn't, it didn't do all that great. But it was like one of those games where it was. It was so much fr fun. You'd run around picking up all these little fan kind of like fantasy combat items in a dungeon, and then you'd go attack each other and there was like a million different ways to kill each other, you know?

It just depended on what you found, you know? And like magic items. That's cool. And swords and stuff. Yeah, it was pretty cool. [00:11:00] Other games on my Top five ICO is on there. Did you ever play that? 

Aaron: Yes. Another one of those very unique games where it came out. Yeah. It like, 

Alex: it. It's one of the few games that Lauren and I played together.

Aaron: Yeah, you could, that was what I was gonna say. That was the, the first, uh, game you could play with. Uh, one of the first games with someone who didn't play games and they kind of understood it, you know? Yeah. 

Alex: It was watchable, you know, it was like, 

Aaron: yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty, it's very interesting. I felt like the other one, the, what's the other one they did where you climb on the, the shadow of the colossus.

I think another 

Alex: shadow. Similar classes also another really good one. Yeah. Yeah. Very vibey, both of those. Yeah. You know, that kind of like fog and mysterious Yeah. 

Aaron: Otherworldly atmosphere. Yeah. Atmosphere. 

Alex: Cyber atmosphere. Yeah. How about you? What's, what else is on your top five? 

Aaron: Oh, that's a good one. So for me, [00:12:00] my favorite game of all time, and I could say it cuz it's like they killed it, they sunset it, uh, was, uh, star Wars, uh, force collection, which I don't know if anybody listening to this has ever played this game.

Oh, 

Alex: I remember you talking about that game. That game back on Colorado Boulevard. You every day you'd be like, oh my, this game is so 

Marty: amazing. Look what they're doing. It 

Aaron: is amazing. Yeah, I remember. Yes. It was so good. And it's like the kind of game that I wished, it was the first game that made me think of how people sunset games and how I think there's gonna be a game that solves this.

Um, for people that really love a game where they sunset it and players that really want to keep playing, it can still keep playing it, you know? Um, even if there isn't servers and stuff, because I, yeah, like it really broke. It's like the first game and when it sunset, it really broke my heart. It broke my heart so much.

They, they told you three months ahead of [00:13:00] the sunset and I was so mad that I couldn't even load the game. Like, I would try to load it and I would get like, oh, sad. It was like, no. Well, 

Alex: you know, that's interesting cuz um, Yeah. You know, there, there's always been in retail software sales, you know, to like package goods or whatever.

There's always been a secondary market cuz you manufac, in old days you would manufacture boxes and diss and they'd be sitting in a warehouse and like, all right, we gotta move this stuff. You need to call up a liquidator. You'd sell 'em for a couple bucks a piece and they'd end up in Costco or wherever.

Mm-hmm. And they'd, you know, they'd find, find a home and sometimes even you'd, you'd license a game to somebody else who manufacture for cheap or whatever, a part of a bundle. And there was always this like secondary market and shovel player. Yeah. These, you know, live server based games. There's yet to be a secondhand, um, market where possibly there could be free games that still have an audience, but maybe not quite a big enough audience to warrant a AAA [00:14:00] studio in investing millions a year to, to maintain and grow.

Perhaps there's a sec. There's a business to be had for somebody who wants to Yeah, there has to be a business there. Keep some of those games alive. Yeah. 

Aaron: Yeah. Think about it like a server. So like, it's like Nick at night. Remember, you know how like Nick at night shows like, like reruns from like 50 years ago or 60 years ago?

I mean, there's still advertising there. So maybe there's a way that like when you set up your servers, you can like then move them to this like oldies server thing and like maybe there's like, it keeps running, but there's no like new battle 

Alex: path. You know what I'm saying? Oldies? Is that what you would call it?

Oldies server thing. Should we go register that url? Oldies. Oldies, 

Aaron: server old thing. Yeah, because think about it, like, if you could just, like, now it's a rerun because people spend thousands of dollars in these games. You know, it's like an investment to them, and then to just turn the game off, 

Alex: all right, is like some clever entrepreneur who's listening, you know, wrap that [00:15:00] up in some NFTs, call it a web three secondary market.

And boom, you're gonna get funded for 20 million in your seed round. Uh, hop on our discord and, uh, give, uh, Aaron and I seats on your board, and, uh, we will be in business. I'm there over a time. Should we get to the, should we get to the conversation with Mr. O'Donnell? That's a good one. All right. Yes. We're gonna, we're gonna roll.

Let,

okay, Aaron. Today we have the absolute perfect and best guest for a podcast. My good friend Marty, has been in this business for over 25 years, and this is his second career. He scored the game, riven the sequel to Mist, wrote the iconic Gregorian chance that set the audio palette for Halo, and somehow, somehow convinced the most famous rocker [00:16:00] of all time, Paul McCartney, to join him on his destiny soundtrack.

Let's welcome good friend and legend, Mr. Marty O'Donnell. Well, 

Marty: what's, what's up from one, some legend to another, Alex? That is, so that's the sweetest. Thank you. Thank you. It's such a pleasure to be here. Wow. Holy mackerel. Is that me? Really? All right. 

Alex: Well, that's just, that's just the tip of the iceberg. I think that's, 

Marty: yeah.

Yeah. You know, actually you did get one thing slightly wrong. I didn't actually score Riven. I was, this, I was so close. I had almost convinced Robin that I should do the score or at least help him with the score. So, so wait, wait, wait. I, I, I was the sound design, you know, guy for, for riven. So we did, we did sound design for Riven.

Mm-hmm. And got, and we recorded the voices and did, you know, sound design and all that stuff. But, uh, when it came to the score, Robin Miller, well, 

Alex: had I, had, I known that back in the, the late nineties, if I had known that, then [00:17:00] maybe this would've turned out so much differently. 

Marty: Yes. Actually, I think when I approached you guys, we were in the middle of getting the gig and I was, uh, I was sort of assuming that we were going to be scoring or at least help scoring the, the thing.

So we were doing sound design and, uh, I helped Robin build out his, his new studio. And we, we had a, I looked at a few keyboards with him and talked to him about upgrading from the Proteus to, uh, a Yamaha VL one. Let's see, what else? And then I, and then I sent him some stuff. I sent him some music that was of, of sweet from his, uh, mist music.

And then, uh, we helped do, uh, one of the pieces. And then he's decided, you know what? I think I just want to score the whole thing by myself. And he just sort of went away for two weeks at the very end of the project and came out with the score. So that was the end of that. 

Alex: I'm like, oh, thanks. I think, you know, I, I had a similar, you know, when, when, uh, TSER [00:18:00] introduced us, uh, in the late nineties.

Yes. Um, my first reaction was up, up yours. I did the music for our games. Thank you very much. Um, but I'm glad, I'm glad he did introduce us. 

Marty: No, and what it was funny. It's a big upgrade. The only, the only thing I knew about Bungee in 96, 97, whenever that was when we got introduced, was that the guys at, at Cyan who did Mist and Riven would spend two, three hours a day completely wasting time.

Not working, but playing marathon, uh, land parties. They, they, they, they land all their computers and played Marathon and they, they were all addicted to it. And I'm like, okay, so who, what are, who are these guys? Who's marathon? What is this thing? And then, uh, I was on a online chat. This was back in the day when the online chat rooms were kind 

Alex: of rare.

Yeah. Was this what a o, AOL or something? Aol? 

Marty: Yeah, it probably [00:19:00] was actually. Yeah. And there was some kid who was like, gosh, I wish I could, could you be a game designer? I joined Bungee cuz they'd right here, right here in Chicago. And I'm like, wait, Chicago, they're here in Chicago. I just figured you guys were, you know, in New York, LA something, you know, so that's, I I went online as, as soon as I heard that kid say that, and, uh, found T's name and contacted him.

And the rest is history as they say. But I didn't, I didn't know you did mu I didn't know you did the music, so I apologize for stealing your 

Alex: keyboard. You put, you put it to better use for sure. Oh. Um, but, uh, we, that was when we were down in Pilsen. I, I'm pretty sure, right? Is that where No, yeah, it was. Did you come down girl school?

What, what was, what did you think? What did you think when you walked into that office? Tell me because, because all right, so you, you're not like that much older than me, but like at the time I was in my twenties and you were, you [00:20:00] were, you had, you were way more professional, you know, than us. And, and for those, for listeners at home, our first off bungee office was in, on the south side of the city in Pilsen, up and coming neighborhood filled with boys just out of college.

So you could imagine the vibe. Um, tell what did you think? What'd you think when you walked in? 

Marty: Well, I had been to, uh, C'S headquarters, which was a brand new building that was, it looked like it came straight out of Mist and riven. They, they designed it, you know, with wood and carvings and balconies and in the middle of a, a forest with big trees.

It was a, it was an unbelievable place. And I thought, well, these, you know, game developers, this is pretty cool. I like, I'm, I think I'm gonna enjoy being in this industry. And Alex, I am a lot older than you. I was 40 when I pro when I met you. So that, just do the math. Now you know how much older. So I, I walked into [00:21:00] the former girl school in the south side of Chicago and immediately smelled, uh, sweat socks and sort of decaying pizza.

What? 

Aaron: Yeah. Are you, are you joking about being 40, by the way, when he was 20? No. No, there's no way. No. Are you 

Marty: serious? I was 40 when I switched industries. Uh, thinking I was too late to the game. I thought I was too late to the party. What? I, I thought, you know, it's the, the pass me by. There's nothing I can do.

There's no impact I can make. I'm too old. I've already got a career. That's inspirational. There you go. It should be, 

Alex: it's inspirational. And, and I was thinking about this. You, you made a pretty big impact on me. Um, because, oh no, you know, you, you came from, you know, you, you came from a, a, uh, a business where it was all about production value.

Um, so yeah, my impression of you was, at first I was like, oh, cuz you know, we were just, you know, young, super scrappy. We were, we were [00:22:00] trying to, you know, punch way over our weight and my, my first thought was, oh wow, some of this stuff is overkill. And then my second thought was, this is how a profession, this is how something that's professional and like, like high quality is done.

And that made I think, a big impression and that impact that a lot of how we attempted to, and did, you know, scale as we, you know, approached putting halo out. So that, so that was very influe. You know, 

Marty: it, you were very important. You've taken, you know, 25, 26 years to finally hear a compliment from Alex. I, I just love this.

Come on. That's 

Aaron: true. I still haven't heard one either. Yes. And I've worked with him for 20 years. You know, just something else. Every studio I've been at three with him, uhoh, and they're all the same. So you're like, are you describing one Luter? I, I learned what a slap bet was at industrial toys. [00:23:00] Uh, a little slap bet.

Anyway, sorry I cut you off. 

Marty: No, no, no, no, no. I, I, I am joking. I, I, Alex and I hit it off right away. I think, you know, I saw him as this like young entrepreneur, creative. Cool guy. And with, and that was running this, you're absolutely right. It was a scrappy seat of the pants kind of operation. Uh, uh, and it really did seem like you were punching above your weight.

Um, because I remember see the sort of the, the marketing PR side of bungee and then the reality of the studio were like two different things. Uh, but you know, you never lost that, that irreverent, scrappy quality, which I, I really, really liked. And the thing I said to TSA right away was, you guys need me.

The time has come. And I was speaking, not just bungee, I was just talking about the game industry in general is that the time has come for professionals, not [00:24:00] Hollywood. Because I had already sort of as a gamer, I had seen Hollywood try to sneak into the game business a few times. They didn't sneak in, they just came in with a giant sledgehammer and, and then left after they destroyed something.

Hollywood never got the game industry, but like I was always of the impression that someone like me, people like me who were doing professional work in audio in, you know, with actors, um, But that didn't have the kind of Hollywood ego that's like, I know the right way to do everything, but we're craftsmen and tradesmen and we're professionals for years could come in and put that last bit of polish in the game business.

That it really wasn't there very much. That was the one thing I saw, uh, innovation was, was rampant. There was innovation happening constantly and, and growth like that, but it was the Polish side, the sort of professional polish on, on voice work and uh, sound design [00:25:00] and music and mixing and just all of that thing.

Um, That's what I, I was hoping I could add. 

Alex: So I appreciate that you did. And I think the type that, that was, that was the right timing because that was when games started becoming, you know, richer in, in terms of the, the, the, the, the tools we had to, to entertain, you know, not, not just a few pixels on the screen and a few colors, but the whole suite of right of delight for the senses.

Um, what, how did you, like, what were you doing before we met? Like, cuz I know, I know, I know the Flintstones jingle, 

Marty: right? Yeah. Love it. We are classic. Yeah. No strong 

Alex: anchor growing. Yes. Yeah. I didn't wanna sing it because I, I'm pretty sure I'd have to give you a nickel if I sung it. Yeah, no, I 

Marty: used to every time they were delicious.

Oh my gosh. So you 

Aaron: wanna eat like three or four, six of 'em. It's like, you're not 

Marty: [00:26:00] candy. I have two daughters. And that was one of the other differences at the time meeting bungee is like, not only did I have a girlfriend, I had been married for like 15 years and had two daughters. So, um, 

Alex: wait, you had a girlfriend and your wife?

Marty: No. Uh, so yes, to be clear, my girlfriend was my wife and it still is, as a matter of fact, we've been married 40, uh, 45 years. 46 years. Wow. Wait a minute. I'm gonna get that wrong. Congratulations. I'll correct, 

Alex: yes. I think in the forties you can like, we'll just edit, we'll just edit that in Marty. Don't worry about it.

Marty: But the thing is, is that, uh, meeting you guys, um, not only was it. College guys e either should have been in college or dropped outta college, or were the college age, or just out of college. Um, and the bungee itself seemed like a dormitory. Uh, uh, you know, not even a very good dormitory, by the way. Um, sorry, [00:27:00] I don't mean to sound horrible, but yeah.

You've seen people online have seen, there was one night through video, 

Alex: there was one night to see videos. I'm in the office and, and I'm working on, I don't know what it was I was working on. It was like eight o'clock at night. I'm down at Pilsen and I'm like the only one in the office, and I hear this rustling out in the, the main room, you know, and I come outta my office and I'm like, what is, what the hell?

And I walk around the corner and there's this garbage can, and I hear this rustling and I look at it and there's a mouse in there and just trying to get out. He's like, he's like jumping up, saying can't get out. And he's just jumping up and down. And I was like, whoa, man. 

Aaron: We had, we had mice at it too. 

Marty: Well, at least it wasn't a wrap.

Yeah, that's, that's Chicago I guess. Was it a dance studio? No, it had, it was a former girl school. It was 

Aaron: a girl? Yeah. Okay. Cuz Wide Load was a dance studio and industrial toys was also a dance studio. 

Marty: Oh, interesting. Yeah. There might have been a dance studio at the girl school. 

Alex: It could have been. It could have been.

That was a very cool building though. [00:28:00] Like, it had like, actually no, it was a cool building on 

Marty: the top floor. Yeah. And the neighborhood wasn't really 

Alex: all that. Yeah. Had a pool, like a busted up pool in the bottom. Yeah. Yeah. 

Marty: Anyway, I, I met the guys at Bungee and I think Alex had a girlfriend who became his wife, I believe.

I don't think you were married yet. Yes. So you Right. 96. When did you get married? 

Alex: Uh, 97. No, we got married in 94. 94. Oh, you were married, remember that? Yeah. Probably just got married when we met. 

Marty: Yeah, well we were married in 77, so it is 45 years. It's gonna be 46 years coming up this year. All right. That's why I was confused.

Alex: Okay, but, so you had your studio, you were, you were in Chicago and, uh, before we met and you were doing like, uh, film, tv, commercial work, that kind of stuff? 

Marty: Yeah. Um, we had been doing commercials for since 82. Um, so we were, we were up on 15 years of doing tv, [00:29:00] TV work, commercials, radio commercials, campaigns, film scores, um, and had built a few studios and had a, a nice studio in Chicago.

And, you know, we're, you know, we were, we had arrived, we had done national spots and won some awards and Cleos and Addies or whatever they're called. And, uh, you know, we were professional, right? So the, what happened was, uh, the. Bloom was off the rose to, so to speak. I got to the point where, as a creative person, uh, all right, going all the way back to after I got my master's degree, I w was on a film set and I was go, I thought I was gonna be a college professor and, but I was spending the summer in 82 on a film set and the director said, Hey, can you do music for me?

And I'm like, I don't want to prostitute my art. And, uh, then he basically offered me [00:30:00] 500 bucks and I'm like, yes, I will do it. So it was, it was one of those deals where I guess I just didn't know what my 

Aaron: price was. That was like your line, 500. That's 

Marty: it. And, and, and of course the thing is, is I had no possible way of making anything, but I had this friend, Mike Salvato, who had built a little studio in his house.

So I went to him and I said, Hey Mike, I'll split 500 bucks. Let's do this thing. So my price was actually two 50. Oh. And then with taxes, it was about 1 33, I think is what my actual price is. Um, that's your breaking point. Yeah. So, so, so we get, we went into business and did that, and it was exciting because almost immediately music that, you know, I was writing and producing with Mike was on the television during a Bears game.

I mean, it was just like, how this is the greatest thing ever. It's like, how, how can it get better? Well, f 15 years later, um, I was really bored with doing these 32nd spots and, and these, you know, selling [00:31:00] hamburgers and vitamins and sugar water and whatever it was, it just, it stopped being creatively interesting.

And there was an actual moment where it was late at night. We were of course, crunching to get something done. The client was coming in the next day and we're working on this claymation spot. It was a spot with claymation cats, and we were be taking it very seriously. And, you know, the one cat lifted its finger a certain way, and I said, you know, I wanted the flute to cue that.

And Mike's like, no, let's do this other thing. And so we're having this heated argument about how to score the claymation cats for a kitty litter commercial. And it really, and this, I'm, I'm not making this up, but hit me like, bam. I have prostituted my art. Yeah. So it was like, 

Alex: that was your 15 year arc, but you were getting more than 1 33 for that spot.

I know. Yeah. Hopefully I can. I [00:32:00] know. 1 45. I understand. I under, I I I can understand that, that, uh, thought there. Yeah. 

Marty: So what, what it was, was I just didn't think I could do this the rest of my life and I started looking for something else and that that's, uh, you know, it wasn't long until I saw that the game industry, uh, was getting to that point where I thought maybe I can, you know, do something here.

And that's when I met, you know, the rive guys. And then I met the bungee guys, and, and actually Riven and Myth, the Fallen Lords came out the exact same year, 1997. Um, I remember being at the, the Mac, uh, game awards, whatever that was, Mac World Game Awards or whatever game of the year was myth. The fallen Lords or Riven that were the, both those games were up for a game of the year.

And I remember the, the Cyan guys didn't invite me to sit at their table, so I sat at the table with Alex, although I would've chosen Alex's table. Anyway, what what was fun is that, uh, [00:33:00] myth won Myth. Myth won. So it was like, we won. Okay. This is good. Right on. 

Alex: Yeah. You don't remember. Awesome. You don't remember that.

It was a, it was a long time ago. Um, here, here's a, I'm curious, Marty, so you, so you call up your buddy Mike, and you're like, Hey, help me with this thing. I'll split it. And you go into business, you're studio was called O D s, right? O'Donnell 

Marty: Salvato. O'Donnell salvato, 

Alex: yeah. How did you guys decide it was O'Donnell Salvato, not Salvato O'Donnell?

Marty: Well, of course I was pushing for O'Donnell Salvato. And Mike was like, well, why isn't it Salvator O'Donnell? And I'm like, because think about it. Number one, alphabetical order, just number one. Mm-hmm. Number two, salvato. That's the way that sounds Salvato O'Donnell. It's like no one's gonna but O'Donnell.

That has a nice ending. And then Salvatory, so the two consonants in a row, I, I was always able to [00:34:00] argue Mike that way. Like I would come up with something and he was just like, okay. So that's, I, I essentially, I bullied him into it. That's the truth. But it made sense. There 

Alex: we go. You, you, you do make a good argument.

Aaron: Is, is o, does O D S D have 

Marty: anything to do with that? Yes. I said we should call it O D S T because of O'Donnell Salvato. That's my favorite sound. 

Aaron: No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Oh, I was like, that's my favorite soundtrack, by the way, if I could nerd out a bit. Thank you. That's that's my favorite one.

Love. Yeah. Yeah. The whole, the whole jazzy vibe and everything. That was cool. Yeah. 

Marty: Yeah. That's, uh, I have a super soft spot in my heart for that whole game. Yeah. So what 

Alex: was it like working with Paul McCart, sir Paul McCartney? How did that happen, 

Marty: sir? Right. How did that happen? Well, yeah, how did that happen?

Does he carry a, a sword too? 

Alex: Like, I don't think it's that kind of, sir, is it? 

Marty: So we've had [00:35:00] finished the 10 years of Halo. We'd shipped reach 2010 and like six months later. Um, a guy named Love Chapski, who was our sort of Hollywood agent, uh, counterpart, counterpart to the other agents in Hollywood. So we needed our own Hollywood slime to go after.

The rest of the Hollywood slime. So that was Oh, Lev 

Alex: is not, that's not slime. 

Marty: No, but he can fight slime with whatever he speaks that 

Alex: language. Powers he has. Oh, he's your ogre. 

Marty: Yeah. So I, anyway, Lev is a good friend. I love him to death and he, he got us all the actors we got, um, out of Hollywood like Keith David and Ron Perlman and Nathan Fillion and blah, blah, blah.

All those people. How, how 

Alex: was that whole crew? How were they, how was that crew that, like those, when you got famous people in the booth, how wa how was it work? Were you doing the [00:36:00] voice direction? Were you going down there doing that? How were they to work with? So was anybody challenging? 

Marty: Uh, they actually were pitching Microsoft on, Hey, we're, we cast voices for a lot of animation.

Um, we'd like to do it in the game business. And I heard that they were coming to Microsoft to talk about this stuff and I reached out to them and I said, when you're done talking to the Microsoft Suits and it's a complete failure, meet me in the cafeteria because I'm the one you should be talking to.

And I'm not kidding. He'll, he'll tell you that story because I knew that Microsoft would never understand whatever they were trying to pitch. Wait, who is this? 

Aaron: This is Lev Chapski. Oh, I've never met this guy. Okay. 

Marty: Okay. And sure, sure enough, that's how that happened. And, and we ended up hiring Blind Light to do all the voice for Halo two three o s t in Reach and Destiny.

And, you know, they, they've, they've done so many game in terms of [00:37:00] contracting voice, talent and actors and stuff. It's, it's unbelievable. Um, yeah. What does it have to do with Paul McCartney? Well, um, after we had had this, Decade long relationship with Lev. He called me, uh, after Richard had shipped in 2011 ish, maybe?

No, yeah, it might have been. Or, yeah. And he said, Hey Marty, we were sitting around thinking like, who you should work with next? And so I had worked with John Mayer had come in on Halo two and Incubus and whatever, breaking Benjamin and Nile Rogers and Steve, I, and you know, I'd had some real amazing people who were musicians that worked with us on the music.

And so he calls me and says, we were thinking about who you should work with next, and so we, we think you should work with Paul McCartney. And I'm like, wow. Oh, okay. Like, that sounds [00:38:00] amazing. You've gotta be kidding me. But like, what's your connection? How, how could you get Paul McCartney? And he goes, oh, well we, we can't, we just were thinking that it'd be cool.

Alex: I'm like, 

Marty: oh, 

Alex: okay. 

Marty: Thanks. Whatever, dude. Thanks. Yeah. And so I said, he says, no, we really want to go see if we can make this happen. And I'm like, sure, go ahead. Like, knock yourself out. I mean, to me it was just like, that's insane. It's just, that's just insanity. Um, so like, fast forward, just like a couple of months, I was doing a keynote at G D C and I'm being introduced in front of the, it was a pretty big audience.

It was a combin. It was, I think it was game design, believe it or not, Alex, I was doing the keynote for game design and music. I don't know why, but there it was. And I was being introduced to the audience. And Lev comes up to the stage as the guy behind me is introducing me, and I'm about to get up and do my spiel.

And Lev [00:39:00] goes, Marty, I, I got a meeting. Well, let's talk. And I said, you got a meeting? What? Well, with Paul McCartney, and then no, Marty O'Donnell to give him the keynote, blah, blah, blah.

The, the, the, so you didn't do keynote, 

Aaron: so clearly the keynote was not delivered? 

Marty: Uh, no. I, you know, it was weird. I, you know, my, my head was vibrating. I was in some sort of weird trance and like, I'm trying to focus, but I'm like, did he just say what I thought he said, so, yeah, sure enough, afterwards, he said, I got a meeting.

It's gonna be a 20 minute meeting at our office. Uh, it's, it's a month from now. So I flew back to, to Los Angeles. Um, to have this meeting and, you know, walk in. I had set up a, you know, I'd set my little PowerPoint up and we had a little, I was gonna present what it's like to do music on games. You know, I wanna be able to ask any question.

Paul has. I got 20 minutes. End of the day. [00:40:00] End. The days get longer and longer and weird things are happening. Like he's asked for toasted bagels with cream cheese and a pot of tea when he gets there. So, I remember, um, the woman who was the assistant poppy was her name. She was from Australia. Uh, poppy was assisting Lev, and she had gone out and they got a toaster and they had toasted the, you know, English or the bagel and gotten cream cheese.

Well, had the whole thing ready to go, but I thought, you know what, this is not gonna happen. This is, this is insane. But at least I can tell people that at some point in my life I was officially going to have a meeting with Paul McCartney, and then of course he cancels at the last minute. But that was good enough for me.

And no, he shows up. What happened to the 

Aaron: bagels? He, oh, 

Marty: he, but I, what I'm saying is, my me, my mental attitude was, it was good enough if he, oh, okay. 

Aaron: See, I thought you said he didn't show up. It's like, well, who ate the bagel [00:41:00]

Marty: ate, I was so ready for, for that. It wasn't even gonna be a disappointment because I'm like, there's no way that Paul McCartney is gonna show up to a meeting.

You know, it just didn't seem possible. And he comes in and goes, but he showed up. Here I am. He just sort of walks in the door and like, it's me. And, uh, and it's like, yeah, it is. You. Right? It's like for me, especially, um, me growing up, uh, I was the perfect age to be, you know, a, a total fan of the Beatles. Um, uh, especially because when I was in fourth grade, they were on Ed Sullivan and the next day, like, all the girls were in love with Paul McCartney and the Beatles and or John or George or Durango, whatever, and I realized whatever chance I had with girls probably had something to do with being in a rock band looking like Paul McCartney, you know?

It was, it [00:42:00] is just like it changed everything. Like that was the thing. Uh, so to finally meet him, like, you know, I had studied his music and I, I, you guys pro, I don't know if you've heard the story, but I basically used as a template, um, yesterday for the Halo theme. I don't know if I ever told you this, Alex.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But I had to come up with a hooky monk. I, I wanted to do a monk chant for Halo, and I knew it needed to be hooky, so I was like, okay, I'm gonna do it. End Dorian mode, but I need a hook, a hooky melody. This is the way I approached all the jingles. It's like, this has to be like a jingle that can stick in people's heads represent this one product, and we can use it forever, which was like maybe two years at the time, I thought maybe this will last for a year or two.

So it was like, okay, what's a good hooky melody? Yesterday. Yesterday, okay, now a Dorian melody.[00:43:00]

Now. Wow. Look at this. It's not the same, but it's just, it has the, has the shape. Yeah. 

Alex: That's pretty cool. 

Aaron: Like a 

Alex: style. Neat. Was this your opener with Sir Paul McCartney when you finally met him? Is this how you 

Marty: met? I had never, I'd never told Sir Paul that. I basically, maybe he'll listen to the podcast.

Yeah. You know, that's okay with me. Uh, what, what it was, was like, there were four phrases in yesterday. Four phrases in the, the halo theme. There was one high point, one low point, you know, that's, that's, had the right had that same shape. I thought if it can have that sort of lasting hook, earworm quality, then, you know, maybe it'll, maybe it'll, that is super cool.

Alex: And so 

Marty: that's really interesting meeting him like 15, 20 years later. Uh, full circle actually meeting Paul. Yeah, it was, it was unbelievable. Actually. It was, Yeah, it was only like 10 years later now that I think about it. It was 2011, so it was 10 years. And so, and so you have this [00:44:00] meeting. We did Halo in 99.

We did that first theme in 99. So 

Alex: yeah, 12 years. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So you have this meeting and then, um, 

Marty: so I'm showing him everything. I'm showing him music, we're talking about stuff. And then he asked me about other things and I said, well, I have this idea that I'm gonna do called Music of the Spheres, but it's kind of, it's kind of a crazy idea.

And it's, you know, and he goes, oh yeah, you know, that's the way it came up for, I did Sergeant Pepper's Heart, the Only Heart Cub BA band, and I, you know, just wrote that name on a napkin and, and showed it to the guys, you know, and they said, oh, that's cool. And so, sorry. That's my, I could tell pardon? I I got it.

I got it. Yeah, I got it. I thought, I thought he 

Alex: was here. Thought he was, yeah. 

Aaron: I was like, whoa. He is Paul McCartney. 

Marty: Yes. So anyway, like almost two hours into this 20 minute meeting. Uh, I'm realizing the, I think this is going pretty good. Like, you know, this is, this is pretty good for a first date. And sure [00:45:00] enough, you know, he gets up at the end, gives me a big hug and, you know, we talked about kids and he told me about his grandkids and it was just a really nice, nice time.

Talked about music, talked about a lot of stuff, and, uh, I thought, I think he's, I think he might wanna do this. And sure enough, you know, a couple weeks later I heard through the, you know, his people that he was already working on stuff. Like he, he got really inspired and wanted to do things. Wow. And so 

Alex: That is so 

Marty: cool.

Yeah. We worked together for almost two years. Yeah. 2011 and 2212. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Two, two, I mean, it wasn't solid two years. It was like on and off, have a meeting in, you know, a rehearsal space in Los Angeles and then come down to Capitol Records and I met him there and then, you know, you know, a couple of things like that.

I met him at, at Abbey Road before the final recording. And then, uh, we did a session in New York, and then we did a final session at Abbey Road. It was amazing. It was a, it was, that is so [00:46:00] cool. 

Alex: Really, you know. Was it mostly write writing music or was there ever a moment where the two of you were like, he's got his bass out, you're on the keys and you're in a room and you're just kind of riffing together.

Did that ever happen? Um, that's 

Marty: what I, it was almost, yes, it was almost that, you know, he's a, he is a keyboard player. He's, he's a good keyboard player. He's a good guitar player. He is a good drummer. He is a good, uh, bass player, of course. Uh, but yeah, he, we, we, he, when I met him probably six months before the final session, I was at Abbey Road, was at the Penthouse Studios and there was a, uh, keyboard there.

And so he went to the keyboard and would play a little something and then he had a CD with something he had done and he played that. And then I would sit at the keyboard and play him a bunch of stuff and then show him how he incorporated some of his stuff into it. And that's how we worked. We didn't actually, we were never actually kind of jamming together, which would've [00:47:00] been pretty intimidating.

I would've been just like, I don't know what, but the, the thing 

is 

Alex: I gotta miss a few notes on purpose just to like Oh yeah. Like make him look bad. 

Marty: Yeah. Uh, yeah. Which reminds me of the story of when Justin Timberlake actually came into the studio. What, during, I think it was around Halo two time. Uh, because we had all sorts of fans in the, you know, who were popular people, uh, who wanted to visit Bungee cuz they were big Halo fans.

And Justin came in, he sat at the keyboard. And Mikey Ward and he started playing a little something and he, his thumbs were dangling below the keys. So he was playing with like his three middle fingers there, you know, and I was standing there and I'm like, oh, self-taught. Huh? So, and uh, he actually cracked up.

He knew I was joking, but I, I, I, I said, you know, if you wanna, you know, make something to yourself, you want some lessons, I'd be happy to. [00:48:00] Um, but no, I did not pull, I could pull that with Justin, cuz he's a, a lot younger than I am. But I, I wasn't gonna do anything like that with, with Sir Paul. That was No, I was in awe.

Alex: Good move. He'd probably have you killed him. Good move. Yeah. So were you, did you say you were in a band in high school? Oh yeah. What was the name 

Marty: of the band? Oh, well we were, I was in a band called the Royal Coachman. That's cool because Nice. Because it sounded sort of like it was, had a British 

Alex: feel to it.

I was in a high school band, art band was called Rights of Passage, 

Marty: rights of pa. Oh, see, that's a much better. How did you spell rights? Rt? 

Alex: R i t e s. Yeah. Yeah. 

Aaron: Where the backwards r or something to be? Eds 

Marty: what? What kind of band was it? What kind of mu what kind of music were you doing? We did, we did 

Alex: like Billy Idol covers and stuff like that.

Oh, 

Aaron: that was eighties sense. Eighties, yeah. Awesome. [00:49:00]

Marty: Yeah, I was, you know, you were on the Keys. Yeah. Yeah. See, you never told me, uh, when I went to to Bungee the first time, that whole time we worked, I didn't know that you had done the music for, for the marathon series. And people love that. Sad. 

Aaron: He never stops talking about it.

It's so weird. Like he has it on if you visit his house, he just has it on. He has it on all the, 

Marty: the time. Well, you know, there's one piece I 

Alex: taught Alexa how 

Marty: to play it. We, we had done a, a sim, we had done a, I had done a simple piece for some TV commercial years ago, um, I think in like 1983, and then we brought it back again for Kemmer Insurance and did another version of it.

And then years later it's, I, I did it for some little marketing thing we did for a Halo two something or other. And then I, I, I'm, I expanded it a little bit more and [00:50:00] actually used it in Halo two. And that's the piece that people go, oh, you, that's Alex Zorian wrote that piece. And it's some piece, I don't know what it is, but if there's a progression that is the same progression.

But of course I can show you that I had written it in 83, so if anybody stole it, it would've been you. But it's one of those progressions that's sort of a, just a really common progression, but it's like, yeah, it actually, if I had known that that piece was in. Uh, marathon. I would've been more purposeful in sort of rearranging it cuz it was close.

So people are, there's still people who are absolutely convinced that the, oh boy, somebody on the podcast in the thread below here will say, yes, it's this piece. So that's obvious that he copied it and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. 

Alex: Pretty much, you know, put 'em side by side and, yeah. 

Marty: Same exact thing. 

Alex: So what are you, what are you doing now?

Marty: Marty Gonna do what I [00:51:00] wanna do and spend time down here with my grandsons and my two daughters who also live in Las Vegas. So I'm, I'm spending a lot of time with them. And then I have a home recording studio and I'm doing music that I wanna write. I'm actually working on a, I know this is gonna sound weird, but I'm working on a, uh, a mass.

I'm gonna do an acapella, I'm working on an acapella requiem mass. I've done the cur. That's awesome. 

Aaron: Yeah. Wow. A mass like Catholic, 

Marty: mass. Catholic, mass Orthodox. Just a good old, the, it's not like, uh, composers haven't done this already. This is not an original thought. This is, so 

Alex: I think even most are d Are there, are there, what, what defines a, what makes a piece of music a mass?

Like what, what 

Marty: is Oh, it's, it's, there is a, it's a liturgy, right? There's an order of service and there are, um, moments in the mass that are not spoken, but are usually sung, like the [00:52:00] Gloria and the Hallelujah and the Curer. Oh, that's cool. And all that. And so composers, you know, even, you know, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, they've all done some something to the, for the mass.

Yeah. And, uh, I've sort of in my old age here, I've kind of. Taken a, a return to the church and very interested in the music of the church and the liturgy. And so that's why I'm doing that. That's cool. And I might do a Christmas album. A Christmas 

Aaron: album. Hey, what, what do you think about all the, cuz so, so that's, that's more Catholic, are you using like, organs in and things like this?

Marty: No, no. Uh, the, my vision for this is pure, um, acapella choir. So it's just voices. There's no instrumental accompaniment, which there's, there's not a lot of that in the liturgy. There's a lot of masses that are orchestral or, you know, have choir and orchestra acquire an Oregon. [00:53:00] Uh, I'm doing it without instrumental accompaniments.

So it's just singing it, it's sort of, it might even just be my sense of guilt for taking. What sounds like a Gregorian chant, medieval church Melody, which like I already said it, it's, it's half Gregorian Chant and half Paul McCartney. Um, it's gonna be 

Aaron: Paul McCartney again. Huh. 

Marty: I feel slightly guilty for like injecting, you know, high church.

You're 

Alex: a, you're atoning. 

Marty: I'm atoning. That's what I'm doing. Those 

Aaron: are really great. My, my, uh, my mother-in-law is in the, uh, and she, I don't think she is anymore, but she was in the Hamburg Official Choir, so I got to see a bunch of, like, all the time the symphony, we'd go watch or just choir and uh, wait, Hamburg.

Like in Germany. In Germany, yeah. Okay. So we'd go all the time to go. It is awesome. Like at first I was like, what? We're gonna go to the choir. 

Marty: And then so now wait, what? [00:54:00] You're 

Aaron: from, you're from Germany? No, my wife's German. Actually, I was working with Alex before. You're your mother-in-law. Okay. Yeah. So we moved to Germany and then.

We got invited all the time, and when you're there, it sounds amazing. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, 

Marty: yeah, yeah. I mean, this is the thing, uh, I hate to a admit this, but like the, the world of music of course, is huge. It's broad. It's so much that happens in music, but in the video game music in the, the mid nineties, it wasn't super broad, so it wasn't hard to come in.

As someone who had some musical just general musical background and like, yeah, I think I'm gonna use cello for Myth of Fallen Lords. And it was like, oh dude, that Cello rocks. Um, and that was not Alex or Jason who said that? That was a guy named Jason Rague. You remember Jason Rague, right? 

Alex: Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah.

Think he's, uh, he's he's big [00:55:00] time of 

Marty: Blizzard. Oh, he's big time Blizzard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm making fun of his, he didn't say it exactly that way, but he did say, Marty, that cello rocks. And I thought, well, good. That's better than that. Cello sucks. So that was, I, I 

Alex: felt good about that. My recollection was that he was pretty musical.

I, is that right? I think he was, was he a musician? Yeah. 

Marty: I don't remember exactly what he played, but he, he had good, I, I felt he had good taste, so I felt very affirmed by that statement. And, but what was nice is that I knew that a lot of kids who were playing video games probably hadn't heard a lot of symphonic music or acapella choir or Gregorian chant monks or it, it just like, it's gonna be easy to bring in, you know, a, a wider experience of music into this sort of narrow field of video games.

Yeah. Uh, and now of course there's dude, it 

Aaron: was everything. Awesome. Yeah. We, but that era was so cool. That was like, we were, remember the magazine ads for the games? Like, they were [00:56:00] always like super edgy. Everything was edgy. Like, it was like, your eyes are popping outta your head. It's like all Metallica and like Yeah.

And then it like, there was like a renaissance period of like this Yeah. Halo two had really, like, I, I feel like that one really took it to the. Yeah. Like really? What? Well, I mean, pushed the 

Marty: envelope. Yeah. I the even using, well, I mean, Alex, you probably remember the, the opportunity to do, uh, introduce Halo to the world at Mac World 99.

Like, I'd love to hear, like, Alex, you tell your side of this story and then I'll tell my version and see. You can see 

Alex: it on YouTube. Which part? Where you, where you handed YouTube, the CDD to Jason and he dropped it in on the middle of Ontario Avenue. Yes. And you're like, you don't, don't worry. I gotta backup.

Marty: I gotta backup. I still have your, uh, I still have a recording of your, uh, voice message that you left me that day. Um, oh my gosh. [00:57:00] Marty, Alex, uh, yeah, we kind of busted the cd. Do. Is there? I don't know if there's anything you can do, but like what? You're gonna have to fly it out tonight. Yeah. 

Aaron: Wait, what happened?

I thought y'all were just messing around. You dropped the cd. No, 

Alex: no. So, so we, we, like, we did the big unveil of, of Halo was with Steve Jobs on stage. Yeah. In one of these It's on YouTube notes at Macworld. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And uh, you know, we had, we put together this, the, the demo and uh, Marty, I think you probably touched it last cuz you were putting the audio on it and the dvd, was it a dvd, v cd or a dvd?

It was probably a CD back then, right? Um, like QuickTime movie 

Marty: was on a cd. No, no, no. It wasn't even, wow. Alex, Alex, come on. It was like 

Alex: 30 years 

Marty: ago.

It was, uh, a actual live. Uh, scripted, but it was a live demo that all [00:58:00] Jason had to, to do was, 

Alex: are on the Mac, the build. Right. Okay. So you guys had to build self running build. 

Marty: Yeah. Yes. And there was, but sound wasn't working cuz we had, we had been developing everything on the PC and with the idea that it would port, you know, at some point to the Mac and then Open GL came out, and this is why I think it was Pete Tanty that got the, the, that moment so Steve Jobs could show it to the world.

And Pete, I'm Surette, sold it to Steve, like, oh, this is perfect. It's gonna, it works great on a Mac. And I think you guys had to scramble to get it to work on OpenGL and on the Mac. I don't think you had more than a week to make that work, if I remember correctly. Uh, you, you never had more, but there was no sound.

There was, we had no sound engine, so I couldn't do sound effects, which were already well along. At that stage, and I couldn't put music on it, so it was just like, let's do music for the [00:59:00] demo that will play at the same time. Jason, the demo plays, that's so E three, 

Aaron: that's like, yeah, I mean it was, and three E three demo is like, so bootleg, like 

Marty: that.

This was just complete, you know, just by the skin of our teeth, we get this thing done. And so I, we had the weekend to do the music and I had gone to Alex, so I'm, I'm gonna tell my side of the story that I'd gone to Alex and said, look, this is a great opportunity. Let's, let's blow the, the doors open here.

Let's, let's do like orchestra and choir and the whole thing. We finished it on a Monday mid-afternoon. You guys were flying out late afternoon and I hadn't slept most of the weekend, so I got the CD into your hands. The, this was back in the day when actually burning CDs, like took time and I was having the studio burn the second CD as, as I had gone to Bungee to give you guys the CD and, and play it for you, for Jason [01:00:00] and Joe.

And then you guys got into the car, went to O'Hare and flew away. And then I went home and slept. And then when I woke up, like at 6, 6 30 that night, I had this message on him, my machine from you saying, uh, yes, we sort of busted the cd. It's like, do you have another one? Or, it's probably too late. I mean, it was just, I was just like, mortified.

Mike had taken the other cd, so I called him, he was on his, on his way going to to dinner. We met in a parking lot someplace, literally with him handing the CD out of his car window into my car window. And then I sped off the FedEx at, at, uh, O'Hare to get it to you guys, cuz it you needed to have it by Tuesday morning, cuz that's when the dress rehearsal was.

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. And the rest is 

Alex: history, so to speak. But, uh, I, I, I, I remember a good portion of all that, but not all of it. That is so good. But 

Aaron: yeah, I'm gonna totally bring this up if [01:01:00] I ever screw anything up, dude. Well, at least it's not cd. Hey Lou. Yeah. Steve Jobs. Yeah. 

Marty: No, but you are con you're confirming that Jason is the one who stepped on it and broke it.

Is that true? 

Alex: Jason definitely broke it. 

Marty: Oh, absolutely. 

Aaron: Unbelievable. Just throwing someone under the fence. Absolutely. Alex put it in his back pocket and sat on it. Yeah, 

Alex: that's what happened. It worked out. It 

Marty: worked out. It all worked out. It worked out. Yeah. Kind of. No, I remember that Wednesday. So, so dress rehearsals was on a Tuesday and you guys told me that it went pretty good.

Uh, and Steve Jobs liked it. And so then that Wednesday was the Live Mac World thing, and that show happened and I was watching a live stream of it in my little home studio. On my computer. I remember back then the live stream, 1999, it was like a tiny little, the little tiny frame, you know, like real skippy and like the music, [01:02:00] the sound was horrible, but I just remember sitting there.

I I, it was a thrill to watch that thing happen and hear the crowd response and everything else. And then I went down to Bungee later that afternoon. You guys were still in New York, but the rest of the bungee crew was there. And, and, uh, we were invited over to Apple something, some sort of Apple office on Michigan Avenue, and they had a big high death, uh, version of the whole show, and we all got to sit there and watch it.

So 

Alex: that was really cool. Really? I didn't know that. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. I do remember the, I, I do, I remember that rehearsal and I remember. Steve Jobs giving Jason some pointers on the ba basically, I think we had like a little bit of a spiel before playing it and just simplifying it down to, hey, this is, this is real and this is running.

Check it out. You know that that was right and let the software do the talking and that was good advice. I think it, it worked out [01:03:00] pretty good. So you've worked on some, some, um, it is, yeah. You've worked on some other games besides Halo? 

Marty: Yeah. Oh, a biggie called Subor? Nope, I've heard of it. I see. Aaron, you just did like what my dog did.

You just, I've never 

Aaron: heard of hardcore. You did this. What is that? Where did that land in the time? 

Marty: Uh, that actually landed almost exactly the same time. We were working on that just after Riven and Myth two. Oh, yeah. So Blight and when we were started working on Halo, we were also working on a game called subor, which was actually a very cool game.

It had more dialogue in it than any rpg up to that point. And possibly even since one of the goals was, it was, it was in the style of a Japanese R ppg, which I've, I've heard recently is like some sort of bad term, but it, I, I never think of it as a bad thing. I, my gosh, [01:04:00] final fantasy is spectacular. So how couldn't that be a bad thing?

I think of J R P G as representing, you know, an R PPG that has set characters, not characters you make and turn base, and there's just certain things that I think J RPGs is sort of shorthand for. That's the way I look at it, but maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, this was an American company from Viacom. Do you remember Viacom, Alex?

Yeah. Viacom's, uh, game 

Alex: Studios. Were they now they, they, Viacom's Game Studio was in, was near Chicago, wasn't it? 

Marty: Yeah. Yeah. That's why I got the gig. It was close to home again. Yeah. I, 

Aaron: I, I just looked up a picture of it and I remember the guy, the, the character with the blue hair. 

Marty: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it wasn't a guy, it was a girl.

Okay, well 

Aaron: wait, I also cut that part out. 

Alex: Nope. Why do 

Aaron: that? I, I have a question about Rivet actually. Sure. Did your, so we, we talked to someone recently and we, we [01:05:00] realized that Riven was five CDs. Yes. And the first game was one cd. Was it five CDs because of video and sound? Or just video? Was it sound as well that c that caused the game to multiply by five CDs?

Marty: Rhythm was the first, uh, game. I was able to convince them to not do eight bit mono. I said, look, this whole thing, this is 

Aaron: like gonna be a long answer for Yeah, it was. The, the sound. No, it, 

Marty: it, it's gonna, it needs to be stereo. And, you know, I just couldn't, I, I thought when I found out that all these games were eight bit mono, I was just like, okay, well it's not, I can't do this yet.

It just, I can't be in this business. Yeah. Because it was just too depressing to do something big and good and then have it become a bit mono. It just was horrible. 

Alex: So have it, have it play through an analog telephone basically? Yeah. Yes. 

Marty: Um, so I, there was new technology out. [01:06:00] MP3s was starting almost exactly at the same TA time as a DPC m So if you guys know what a DPC M compression is, it allowed you to do 16 bit stereo.

Uh, that was compressed at, it was basically the same footprint as eight bit mono. But it was 16 bit stereo. And I was like, we have to do that. And, um, that's how we did, you know, myth of Fallen lords and, uh, riven and all the games after that were all ADP CM compression. And the Xbox, by the way, in 2001, shipped with ADP CM Compression.

So everything was 16 bit stereo. Um, so once again, I, I look back on that and I'm like, yeah, I got in at the perfect time technologically because I just, I couldn't produce eight bit mono, I just couldn't do it. So it, ADP CM compression was brand new and it just changed the fidelity. Everybody's ex, [01:07:00] the player's experience was so much better.

But no, that's not what caused Riven to be five CDs. What caused Riven to be five CDs? This is a little known fact, was the, the idea that wherever you were. You could go any other place. So they had to, and I'm sure there could have been more intelligent or not intelligent, maybe just smarter programmatic ways of organizing the data.

I don't know, but they just, those CDs had massive amounts of copies of stuff on them so that no matter which CD was in the drive, you wouldn't have to change CDs. Mm-hmm. You could go from one place to another. So there was a lot of stuff that was duplicated on the CDs. Interesting. 

Aaron: Oh, I thought it was just like the video, you know that, it's funny 

Marty: cuz that actually there was, there was a lot of video and that did take up a lot of space.

But like, because you had, you know, if you were on, on the fifth [01:08:00] island or whatever it was and you wanted to teleport back to the first, they didn't want you to. To swap, uh, CDs. But you still ended up swapping CDs sometimes. Mm-hmm. But it was a lot less because of how they organized the data. Hmm. You should ask Rand.

Rand Miller would remember that. Well, 

Aaron: I'm sure of it. I remember that being a positive for the game too, cuz it was like, you get five CDs. What? Yeah. And then it was like a plus and then over time it was like, oh no, it's five CDs. Like, you know, it started to becoming a 

Marty: negative. Well, by 1999, uh, they released the, uh, dvd.

V D was the very first DVD D uh, yeah, just like the first CD was missed and the first DVD was Riven in the 7 99. It was one dvd and you never had to swap a disc for anything. You could just play through rive what is one. And now you can play through Riven on your phone. I mean, it's 

Alex: just like, I'm sure Yeah.

We're, it's amazing. Just like. [01:09:00] That was so cutting edge, you know, missed when it came out and Oh, yeah. Oh, CD is like, what, 650 megabytes? I mean, it's like, that's a tiny download right now. You know. Crazy. 

Marty: Well, Alex, Alex, you had what? You, you still, I mean, I see it behind you. That's not even a, an se behind you, is it?

Is that just a, is that 

Alex: the first Mac? That's my original, that's my first 5, 5 12. That was a one, is that, it was a one 20 AK Mac that we upgraded. One 20. The five 12. The five 12. It's got the, um, the single floppy, it's got the signatures inside the, inside the case. Yeah. Oh, wow. Nice. It's one of those, it's a first gen, 

Marty: my old ses that I still have.

I, I'm sort of like you, I like to keep these old things. I never had the five 12 or the 1 28 Mac, but the plastic has gotten really yellow. Have you, like, do you have some way of making it look better or what are you doing? Somebody 

Alex: told me that, uh, Oh shoot. What is it you rub on [01:10:00] there? There's something simple you can rub on there like hydrogen peroxide or something.

But um, but don't try hydrogen peroxide cuz that's, that's something like that 

Marty: just 

Alex: melt it. Shirts exactly that. But there's something, you just rub it on there and it like it cleans it, right? Oh, oh yeah. One of our engineers was telling me this cuz he was saying that's kind weird. Restoring some old control.

Bradley Clemson was telling me this, Aaron Oh. Um, concepts, my recollection is it was always that color. Like the, the original five 12 was the little yellow. The ses were white. You know the plastic was cle. Yeah, they were 

Marty: white and they, they, yeah, they didn't stand up. Well I still, I don't know why it 

Aaron: can't be good though.

Am I plastic that sweats toxic chemicals? No, 

Alex: it can't be good. None of this stuff is good Aaron. We, technology not good. 

Marty: Well, when you did the, uh, Well, I'm not even gonna ask you what you did nap on, but you, you did you do kn on a, uh, on a, on a, 

Alex: it was a, it was an se, yeah, [01:11:00] an SE that was like, it was an se Okay.

App apparition desert store in, I had an SC and then I had, I had, uh, oh, what, what was it? 

Marty: So you were doing Matt, Matt games from the beginning. Okay. 

Alex: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I had the, uh, the, that little device you could clip onto the floppy drive and stack like 20 in there and, oh, no, I didn't, didn't like that.

It was like a dis duplicator thing. So like it, you'd start a disc copy, it would spit the disc out. And then your little device would like in had batteries. It would like insert the next diskette into the machine and then it would copy another one. And you just let it run overnight and it would like, you'd get like 50 copies of your disc the next day.

That was our manufacturing facility. 

Marty: That's your manufacturing facility 

Alex: to, well, your first, that was like, uh, the first few games. Uh, Minar was that way. Jason and I were in the basement. Jason, 

Marty: the plastic plastic bag. Yeah. 

Aaron: Yeah, dude, that's awesome. I didn't know that. You never told me that story. Oh yeah.

Look 

Marty: at [01:12:00] that. Thanks Marty. And there's another part of the story, Aaron, that you don't know, but Alex uh, interned. At Microsoft and Pilfer many three quarter, three and a half inch floppy. No, that's, that's, that's 

Alex: hearsay. You know, 

Marty: that's Alex, that's hearsay. 

Alex: That's, I caner, confirm nor deny any of something, what 

Marty: really 

Aaron: I'm gonna use.

Well, 

Alex: so it all came back around. They, they, they bought the company. It 

Marty: was okay. Yeah. Yeah. So come on. It all came out in the wash. Uh, speaking of that, I have, do you remember our going away video that Joe Staton and I put together for you? Oh my gosh. In 2002. 

Alex: I, I remember that evening. Yes. 

Marty: Well, it's good.

You remember the evening? That's actually good. Uh, I still have a, I'm gonna send you a copy of that video. Oh. Because I've never released it. I'm telling people about it now, but it will never be, we will never see the light of day, but, uh oh. Send it to me. [01:13:00] Yeah, it's a, and frankly, if you wanna release it to the public, it's okay with me.

Alex: Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. You said hold something 

Marty: special. Yeah, there is a scene in there and I, I shot all the video and then, except for the scene with, uh, I think Joe was acting as like the interviewer. You know, the whole thing is talk, talks about Alex and his, his, uh, addictions and how he had to keep the company rolling just to pay for all of his addictions.

And I was talking about my cocaine dealer, Vinny or something. And, uh, it's, it's all apocryphal, but I have a feeling a lot of people will think it's true, including a shot a, a scene where Jason Jones is talking about doing a bong. And anybody who knows Jason, Jason knows how far from reality that could be.

But we got him to say all this stuff and there's a great scene. With Joe and Jason and Ed Fries, where Ed Fries is talking [01:14:00] about how he bought Bungee and how, how easy it was to get you guys to roll over. What? Yeah, I remember now. It's a classic. It's a classic. 

Alex: It's like one of those, it's like one of those be behind, behind the music videos.

Marty: It is. Exactly. That was the bottle. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, but that was never been publicly released. It was just for that night. Yeah. Just for your benefit. And, which is a shame. I mean, Aaron, you should know that, that Alex was a absolutely beloved and continues to be a beloved figure in the bungee, especially these spicy Oh, 

Alex: despite my, my drug habit.

Huh? 

Aaron: He has a, he has a fan that reached out to him because of the soundtrack for Marathon. Yeah, I think I saw that. A fan. 

Alex: Hey man. 

Aaron: Hey fan. No, this guy was really cool. His name's Craig. Hey, uh, 

Alex: shout out to Craig. It's really easy to, it's really easy to make like a ghost Twitter account and No, we met this guy.

[01:15:00] It's really easy. He exists. He 

Aaron: exists. Yeah. That's cool. This guy drove the, he drove the, uh, he was one of the guys that would handle the, uh, the rover on Mar. That was like his job. Oh, really? Yeah. And he, he used, used to hang out with us at wi Oh, he came by the office? Yeah. And he brought a bunch of Mars Rover swag 

Alex: and stuff?

No, he came, uh, he came back? No, it was a, uh, in Pasadena at I Toys. He came over, I remember. Oh, 

Aaron: yeah, yeah. He goes back. Yeah, he's a professor in Arizona now, I think. Wow. Yeah. Anyways, that guy, he remixed the album, the whole soundtrack. 

Marty: I'm crazy. Oh, you know what, uh, this is, this goes back a couple years, right?

He was doing that. Yeah. Yeah. I think I remember him. Uh, yeah, he might have reached out to me at, at some point to find out if I had like some sort of source material. And I'm like, no, I don't even know who Alex is. First time I've heard the name pronounced. 

Alex: That's how you say it. That's good. Set. Yeah. All right.

Okay, [01:16:00] Marty, thank you so much for hanging out with us. We, we kept you, uh, we kept you over an hour though. In all fairness. You were like, what? Half an hour late? 

Aaron: We said weren't gonna 

Alex: say anything. 

Marty: I think you me, the line. That's what I was late. I apologize. With all of my free time, I just, I, things just fritter away and I set, I set my alarms for the wrong time.

I've, it's, it's not good. It's not good. So I 

Alex: apologize. Thank you for coming me. This was a blast. Absolutely. Worth the weight. Yeah. No, it was so, 

Aaron: so good. Can I ask one last question? One last question? It, it'll be, you could just, just say yes or no, or Oh yes. 

Marty: Oh. One did ask the question. Paul 

Aaron: McCartney like the bagels.

And do you think that that had anything to do 

Marty: with this decision you're working with? I think that was the key. He did have the bagel. He put lots of cream cheese on it and we made him a, a nice pot of tea and he, he was crunching and chewing and, and enjoying it the whole time. It was [01:17:00] like four in the afternoon and we, you know, we got done by about like six, but that bagel kept him going.

I think that was, let's get the whole thing. All 

Alex: right. Thank you. All right. Thanks Marty. Thank you. 

Marty: Cheers, Marty. Cheers. Yeah,

Aaron: I'm really glad that he told us what happened to the bagels. Cause it's one of those details where I'm like, he's like, he spent so much time talking about the bagels and then. Yeah. And then we had the interview and then we, you know, we worked together for two years and it's like, what did he like the freaking bagels?

Alex: Well, I, I notice, I noticed when he was, he, he was clarifying at some point along there that he, he accidentally referred to them as English muffins for a second. Did you, did you catch that? No, I didn't catch that. And, and well then he corrected himself, I think. I think that's a little, that was a little racist.

I think 

Aaron: you could be racist. I've been watching London food. Speaking of London, English food, uh, there is kind of like a [01:18:00] stereotype, right? Like, oh, they don't have good food. Which I, I think is one of those bad stereotypes, cuz I've been watching, um, uh, YouTube. YouTube has these, these people just show like top 10 things to eat in London.

Uh, cause I'm gonna be going there, you know? And I was like, I don't know what to eat, like what to do there. So I started watching these food shows and there's so many, there's like, so much. Interesting food there, you know, and apparently the, the food of the country is Tika masala from what I keep saying, seeing people say, which is an Indian food.

Anyways, but that was a good interview. I really enjoyed 

Alex: talking to, to him. Yeah. It, uh, it made me think, sometimes I reflect on what we do making video games. And I think, you know, sometimes that we've chosen a very difficult line of work, you know, it's a very rewarding and exciting Yeah. Um, uh, endeavor to make a video game.

But it's a combination of, of technology, which is always moving of artistry of [01:19:00] sound, this thing called game design. You know, just design principles in general. Yeah. And then you layer in on top of that, you know, the, the, um, things like, uh, uh, casting and talent, you know, that, you know, for motion capture and, and voiceover and music and all that.

And it gets, it can get exceptionally complicated. 

Aaron: Yeah. And then there's people, there's like 

Marty: personalities 

Aaron: and it's like, oh my goodness. Yes. Just navigate that is hard enough. You know, there's a video of John Carmack and they're like interviewing him cuz he started making like rocket ships or something.

And, uh, he, he tells the interviewer, he's like, rocket science is easy. Making video games is hard. And he explains it and it's, and like his points are really true. There's so many moving parts. It's crazy. And everyone has to know what they're doing. Uh, there is the people element. Um, and, and they've only gotten harder.

I remember there was a, there was a time where it would take, um, [01:20:00] like maybe a week to do a character for a game, maybe a week, maybe less. Uh, you know, that's designing it, getting it approved, getting it in the game. Like two weeks was like the average, you know, a week, two weeks. And then whenever, like epic, un un uh, release the new version of the, um, They're unreal editor and they normal maps and all that stuff.

Remember it went, a character turned into a month long process. You know, like getting it modeled. Yeah. Getting it rigged, getting it, all these things. And it just keeps, and now it's even more complicated, like when you get into these, uh, with face rigs and all this stuff. Um, but yeah. So going back to what you had originally said, talking to him made me realize, um, that there is, and I kind of brought it up in the interview.

Um, it didn't pick up steam, but I wanted to talk about how, I remember when I was getting into games, there were, there, there was like seasons that kind of encapsulate the entire industry and. One of them was that [01:21:00] edgy market. Remember you'd read 'em, you'd be reading a magazine and every advertisement was like people's eyes popping out of their heads.

People wearing bondage gear, like whipping each other to play a game like hands on fire because the game is so intense. And then Halo came around and it was a little bit before ha actually around Halo, and it started to introduce like, like he was saying, like the cello, right? Like adding in it, it stopped being this like sugar.

Cereal, you know, it turned more into like brand flakes and, and you, you know what I'm saying? Like right now,

brand flakes taste good. They can taste good if you had, uh, frosted raisin 

Alex: anyways. But do you remember? You know what I mean? I remember. So, yeah. So you were talking about the, the, the age, the age of in your face. Do you remember the advertising campaign for Dai Gaana? 

Aaron: Yeah. Like, you're gonna, I remember that was, uh, I remember that every, they got in trouble for it.

It was like, yeah, sh you're gonna get your, she's go, you're gonna [01:22:00] be her or something. Like, you're going to be made their bitch or something like that. 

Alex: John Romero's about to make you his bitch. 

Aaron: Yeah, that's what it was. And ev thinking of it now, it actually doesn't sound that bad. I've seen so much worse since then.

But that's, that sounds 

Alex: pretty bad. I, I, I pretty bad. I, I don't know John Romero, but, um, he seems like a pretty laid back, cool guy and I think he kind of regrets that whole campaign. Um, but it was, that was the time. Why That 

Aaron: was the time. Yeah. I don't know any. Okay. I don't think I would do that. It's probably not, it was the time.

I think it was at the, the end of the time. Yeah. You know, it was, we were about to shift into this non 

Alex: edgy, I guess if you, if you think of, uh, our industry as growing up, those were in the shitty teenage years. 

Aaron: Yeah, that's so true. Yeah. Yeah. Like now there's like the indie vibe, you know? Yeah. And everything's indie and 

Alex: everyone's, I was say, a, I really like that.

I mean, I [01:23:00] really like the games that are made, uh, for the craft, you know, and that have, have heart to them, you know, have a soul, you know, have their, have, you know, they, they don't have to be works of art themselves, but things that are mm-hmm. Um, you know, bigger than just some of its parts. I think that's really cool, especially when done by a small team.

And even if it's in a small scale, that, that's part of why I really like plants versus zombies, is it sort of has that, um, that vibe to it. 

Aaron: Yeah. Like the fez, I think Fez really, you don't know if you've seen that 

Alex: team or not. Fz, I played 

Aaron: really set the tone for indie games. Yeah. The braid as well. 

Alex: Um, Brad also.

Yeah, those games had a, I think we were about too, and they did really well. They did fantastic. Yeah. We're leaving that think we're about what's happening. Are we getting too big for that? Hmm. I think we need like a game festival circuit, like a film, you know, like there, there's the film festival circuit where, where these smaller projects can go get an au find an audience and get funded.

We need [01:24:00] like a, a game festival circuit like that. There kind of is a lot of that. We, we kind of have that. Yeah, it's, 

Aaron: yeah, there's like a bunch of 'em. I think the deal is though. Oh. And like, uh, the guys that did Super Meat Boy, so that was kind of the peak. And I think that those games super, they, they made a movie about it.

Super Meat Boy, uh, Fez Braid, and maybe a couple others. Oh yeah. Um, that's right. You know, around the time, remember that it set the tone that you could make games too. If you just work hard and, uh, you don't need like, you know, a lot of money. If you just work hard and dedicate yourself, you can get it. And everybody that's been influenced by that.

We're seeing the fruits of it now and it's super saturated. Like you could go to, um, game Pass and play a lot of these games now, right? Or like Apple Arcade. There's a lot of like, there's just so much. And I think we're about to, we're about to have like a drop off of people leaving the industry [01:25:00] and then seeing, uh, some kind of new, um, new shift.

Cuz like web three's about to be the next big thing. Right? And what does that look like? Like I can't even imagine what that looks like. I don't know what it is. Right? It's like I couldn't have imagined 

Alex: portal. Aaron. Aaron, I, I, I hate to break it to you, but I don't think anybody knows. How to define web three.

I've talked to a lot of folks that are investing a lot of money into this space. Oh, I know. Oh, my friends are over, have a different definition. You know, it's, it's a, there's a, there's not one common, I, I think the promise is that everything becomes decentralized and that content that's made, like if I make something and, and I put it o out, it's a still mine.

It doesn't belong to, that's the next thing probably. Or whatever. Right? Yeah. Like a trading game. That's the, that's the promise. I think that's the promise. But yeah, nobody's quite figured out what it really means yet. 

Aaron: Yeah. But yeah, I think we're about to leave that indie vibe. There's gonna be, Something.

I think we're seeing the edge of it right 

Alex: now. You know, in some, in some ways though, if that's [01:26:00] really, if that, if that, if Web three does have that impact on distribution just in general, where you, you, the, the aggregators, those walled gardens of Apple and Microsoft, et cetera, become less, uh, powerful and, uh, you know, individuals can distribute their own content and own it, um, directly.

That might, that might be a real boon for, for independent creativity, independent games maybe. 

Aaron: Yeah. In a good way. Yeah. Yeah. And, and Apple will still profit from it. I think they'll charge you a tax every time you trade something, you know, like you pay. Yeah. That's like you, you already do. Yeah, they already do.

But yeah, I, I don't, I, I find myself less, less, and less, uh, Every indie game, like, we're starting to get a lot of indie games that look the same. Right? Like, you can't tell which, which company did what Cuz the art, the art is kind of, um, and that's not to be mean [01:27:00] to them. It's, it's like they were inspired.

Like my art is inspired by other people, right? And it's like comic books, right? Like you go to the comic book store, there was an era where all the comics looked like they were drawn by the same person. Um, and then there was like the indie push that brought all these other art styles and you know, and I kind of feel like it's going to, something's gonna happen and it's gonna st Like, I feel like Marvel Snap.

I think I was telling you this. It's at the end of that like free to play era. Like, I don't know how, where free to play is gonna go. Um, like everybody went free to play. It was like the m m O stuff. Remember the m m O stuff? Everybody wanted to make? Mm. M o after. Wow. There was so many mm m o studios. I was in Austin at the time.

Almost every studio was working on an M M O. And, uh, where'd that go? Right? Like, I think it's like game pass. What, that's what's next. I think it is. And I think that's where the indies will go, because I like indie games too. 

Alex: So you're just saying the next, so the, the next sort of, [01:28:00] um, model that's gonna support the development of games is, are, are these aggregation site game pads or what Netflix is trying to do?

Do Apple. Exactly. But Apple arcade, that's et cetera. That's not an, that's not an unreasonable thought. Yeah. Okay. Thanks for stopping by everybody. We'll see you 

Marty: next time. Yeah. Thanks. 

Aaron: Cheers. Thank you for listening to the fourth Curtain podcast. To get a peek at upcoming episodes or descending questions to the show, visit our site@thefourthcurtain.com and be sure to follow us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.

Thanks again for listening.