Outer Wilds' Alex Beachum's Cool Weird Emotional Prototypes

Alex Beachum: [00:00:00] I remember I was struggling to figure out like what was like kind of, we were all struggling about like what is our thesis gonna be? And he suggested, he's like, what if you make an emotional prototype instead of trying to figure out the mechanics of what you do in the game? What if you just try to like get the vibe that you want?

And so one of my other prototypes from that class was you roast a marshmallow over a campfire and then in the distance the sun explodes. But it's more like a firework show and you just kind of sit there as it gradually gets bigger and bigger and like the planets go explode one by one and eventually you're the one you standing on explodes.

And that is, I, I think that's where the supernova came from, but that captured that vibe, right? That like, we're just gonna chill. It's hard to explain with words because it really was, the purpose of it was to communicate that emotion and feeling. And then that really became sort of the emotional core of like everything we built around after that.

Alex Seropian: That was Alex Beam, the creative director of Outer Wilds, Aaron. You know how much I like outer wilds? Yeah. That [00:01:00] quote I thought super fascinating, building an emotional prototype, not just focusing on the mechanics. Mm-hmm. That kind of says to me, spent a little bit of time finding the soul of his game early on.

Mm. Which, uh, that's a really cool way to man, like Genova was talking about. He starts with a piece of music. Yeah. Mia Moto does that too. Yeah. Yeah. And then Alex was talking about making a campfire at the end of the world. I think that's super cool. So I have 

Aaron: two things to say about this game. Mm-hmm. The first thing is, and this is no lie, the day before you texted me and said that he was gonna come on the show, I went to pick up my daughter from a birthday, from like a kid's birthday, and the guy I went to, he like makes his own beer and stuff in the garage.

He's not really a gamer. He's like an award-winning broom Master too. 

Alex Seropian: Okay. 

Aaron: And he has a fire in the driveway and he's just hanging out. And I show up to pick up my daughter and he just starts talking to me about video [00:02:00] games. He's like, dude, there's this game you gotta play. And it was outer wild. 

Alex Seropian: He's 

Aaron: like, it is cha.

He said he was crying. It changed his life. So I'm gonna tell him about this episode. Okay. Uh, I didn't know we were gonna interview the creative director of Outer Wildes, and it's just funny that he brought it up. The next thing is, oh, I already forgot what the next thing was. 

Alex Seropian: Wow. Two things. You're such a professional, Aaron.

Oh my gosh. Um, no, you just reminded me. Check out my merch. I'm repping the merch. I got a fourth curtain coffee mug and a snazzy t-shirt. Um, do we have a way for people to get one of these? 

Aaron: It's on the website. Go to the website. I don't think the mugs on the website. The mug's, not the, the mugs get exclusive.

Alex Seropian: Hey, 

Aaron: anybody go 

Alex Seropian: and you and me, anybody join our Patreon this month? Uh, I'll send you a mug. Just do really? Yeah, for sure. What I, this mug is like extra big. I get a lot of coffee in here. Yeah, it's huge. I have a similar outer wild [00:03:00] story. I was having coffee with one of Owen's professors at uch Chicago.

Told me this game changed this life. That's why I downloaded it. Who? Who? Oh, it was the professor. I thought you, I thought it was somebody else. Yeah. Patrick, if you're listening, thanks. You know what I did this last weekend. What's that? I planted a vegetable garden. What? I planted a vegetable garden. Yeah.

Oh, like a hobby garden like that? No, no. I'm, I'm ready. I'm ready to go off grid. Buddy. Like got solar. It's like 

Aaron: two. It's like lunch and dinner. 

Alex Seropian: I can make a salad as long as thing. Yeah, you salad. I can salad as can make half a salad. Yeah, half a salad. All right. Well, thank you for joining us, everybody this week.

This was such a thrill to have Alex Beam on the show. He's our third Alex, right? This season, if you count yourself, really? Oh, hey Alex. We fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, all right. Random story. I was at a dinner at [00:04:00] GDC and at the table I was at, it was a pretty big dinner. Lots of people there. There were three Alex's.

And one of them was the founder of Valex who just bought the Brookhaven game for like a hundred gazillion dollars or whatever. And I referred to him as, oh, here's the first Alex. 'cause you know, he just did a big deal. And he looked at me and said, no, no, no, no, you're the first Alex. 'cause you're older. I, you know, I can't, I can't believe that I flipped them the 

Aaron: bird.

Yeah. How much they, I can't believe they bought that game. Yeah, those, 

Alex Seropian: those, those guys did really good. Those guys did really good. That's amazing. Alright. But sorry, I was in the middle of transitioning us to the interview. So welcome everybody, and thanks for joining us. Hope you enjoy the interview with Alex Beacham.

Hey everyone, and welcome back to the fourth curtain. Today we have a stellar. Guest, quite literally. See what I did there you get it, huh? The pun. Yes. [00:05:00] Planetary. He's the creative force behind one of the most mind-bending, time looping existential crisis inducing games of recent memories. One of my favorites, Alex, I don't know if I told you this before, uh, in our email exchange, literally one of my favorites.

Oh, and that's, that's outer wilds we're talking about. Um, and we're talking with Alex Beam who led the charge on this adventure. I think, tell me if I got this right. Was this your first commercial game? 

Alex Beachum: So our studio, Mobius Digital, um, was not, no. The, no, the short answer is no. Um, we did a few mobile titles before.

Alex Seropian: Okay. Okay. But was this the first game you were a creative director on, or was it the This was, this 

Alex Beachum: was the first game I was personally Yeah. That like first commercial project where I, I was the Yeah. Director on it. 

Alex Seropian: Well look at that one and out of the park. Yeah. 

Alex Beachum: No pressure. 

Alex Seropian: And there's no like shooting or, or killing either.

So. Well, I mean, I guess there's plenty of. Dying 

Alex Beachum: the player. Yeah. Like the player can't kill anything. A a [00:06:00] lot of violence is done to the player. 

Alex Seropian: Right. Well, I say bravo to that. Welcome to the podcast. So great to meet you. How are you? 

Alex Beachum: Uh, good. Yeah, no, 

Alex Seropian: thanks 

Alex Beachum: for having me on. 

Alex Seropian: Doing, doing pretty good. Pretty okay.

Right on. All right, well here's my first question for you. Just based on what I know. I gotta imagine you're probably a little younger than me. 

Aaron: I, he's 

Alex Seropian: like, I'm 62. I had a guess like, um, well my, that's not my question really. Yeah. My question is, do you ever, did you ever play Mist? 

Alex Beachum: Yeah. Yes you did? No, I did.

Um, no, it's funny. Mist was actually, so, 'cause I Wild started, um, originally as my thesis project, uh, when I was, you know, in grad school, um, at the uscs MFA Interactive Media Program. And Mist was one of the games I looked at as sort of like doing prior art review for outer Wilds. 

Alex Seropian: Oh, cool. Okay. Okay. Well that makes me feel good because that was basically, I was kind of curious if Mist was, uh, influence because [00:07:00] Mi Mist was a pretty big game for me.

I mean, I guess when did that come out in the, must have have been in the eighties, late nineties. It was, it was nineties, early eighties. It was definitely nineties. It was, it was, well, it came out a little bit before we did Myth, because I remember we got into this big conversation with those guys about the name because Oh, myth was kind of close to myth.

Why, you know, 

Alex Beachum: we, we have some, we, I can relate to the name thing. 

Alex Seropian: Oh yeah. What, like story time? Let's go. Did, yeah. Did you get a little close to some other, 

Alex Beachum: the, uh, obsidian did a little RP g um, the Outer Worlds. Oh, 

Alex Seropian: okay. Uh, 

Alex Beachum: that was our, that actually still happens, right? That we still get people being like, wait, what?

Which one are you talking about? It's pretty funny actually. We're, but, uh, no, no. Yeah. Myth mis No, I can understand. 

Aaron: Yeah. What else did you look at in your thesis? Sorry, Alex, were you gonna finish your, your, your question, was it a 

Alex Seropian: No, no. Go go right ahead, Aaron. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I'll just get, well, I'm curious.

Aaron: When he said, when he [00:08:00] said he did this, he looked at Mist. It's like, well, what else did you look at? 

Alex Beachum: Fair. Oh man. Okay. It's been well over a decade now, so like, gimme a sec. Um, so there weren't that many that I looked at like really intentionally because like I, I, I was, I was and am a huge like Zelda fan.

Uh, and so there's a lot of Zelda DNA in it. Um, I was drawing stuff from Wind Waker, obviously Major's Mask. Um, um, oh man. What are, oh, Antichamber. You ever play Antichamber 

Alex Seropian: Uhuh? That sounds familiar. It's an 

Alex Beachum: indie puzzle game that does like non-Euclidean space stuff, but it's one of the first games that I can think of that I, where like you learn the rules.

Of how these mechanics work and, but it's something you could have done the entire time. 

Alex Seropian: Hmm. Okay. 

Alex Beachum: Um, so it's way more, it's like kinda like doing the systems e kind of like, oh, it's like very knowledge based. Um, and definitely there's some DNA from that in there. I don't know how intentionally, actually I didn't, I, I think that was a game I played at the time and wasn't like thinking about it as prior art, but then in [00:09:00] retrospect it's like, oh yeah, yeah, that probably left an impression.

Um, it's like portal 

Aaron: on acid is one of the images they come. 

Alex Beachum: Yeah. It's a cool, it's a really cool game. I haven't played, I haven't played it since, honestly, I keep meaning to go back and, and, and give it another go. But, um, 

Alex Seropian: Antichamber, is that what you're talking about? Anti 

Alex Beachum: chamber Antichamber? Yeah. 

Alex Seropian: Um, yeah.

Okay. Other, ill check that one out. 

Alex Beachum: I mean, other inspirations like there, a lot of the inspirations for outer wilds were less video games actually, and more like a lot of movies. Uh, Apollo 13 in 2001 were big reference points for just like the style of like how space travel was portrayed, especially since.

At the time now there's like a million space video games, it feels like, uh, in a good way. In a, in a, but at the time, I feel like that was a genre that just like, wasn't very represented in like the modern, in terms of like, like you get in a spaceship and go explore. And so like one of the original goals was to make a space exploration game that was doing, like capturing more of the feeling of, of those, those films that I mentioned and not trying to go [00:10:00] as heavy.

I mean, you mentioned combat earlier or like, you know, you're not going out to fight things or to con, you know, colonize Right. Or to, uh, like stake your claim on, you know, it's, it's very much just for knowledge sake. 

Alex Seropian: Yeah. I mean I, so after I played while I was playing, maybe after I played it, I was describing it to somebody as a rogue light mist 

Alex Beachum: that actually, I'm sorry you're bringing it back.

Yeah, no, no. It's funny. No, no, that is, it's also funny that you say that because way back at the very beginning, I initially wanted it to be a rogue light. Okay. Um, that's kind of where the death mechanic comes from. Um, originally it was gonna be, I was like, oh, every time you do a run, you know, you wake up.

And every time I was gonna have like randomized elements, like planets maybe in different orbits or so Lowen who, um, uh, helped out on the design team when it was a thesis project. We went to school together. And then, um, he's the other co-creative, uh, head at Mobius games right now. And um, or right now he literally like founded it with Mossy.[00:11:00] 

I came on a year later. I just like, um, uh, he was the one who was like, he was like, everything you're talking about, I don't, I don't think you want the, I don't think making this a rogue like is gonna help any of your other goals. And I was just like, yeah, you're right actually. And so that's when it was like, okay, well this is gonna be like a fixed, the same solar system every time.

And then it was like, well, I still want you to, there still needed to be a fixed time limit because. We needed to hit the reset button 'cause we had all these physical Roberto Hollow falls apart. Right? You can't, like, once it falls apart, it's done. And so it's like we knew we needed to reset. And so it was a question of like, well, is is this gonna be like part of the story or not?

Uh, and I just thought it sounded more interesting if that was part of the narrative in the world. And that's kind of how it became a time loop game, weirdly. 

Alex Seropian: Okay. Okay. Basically you realized there was some finite nature tree or simulation that you couldn't really design beyond. So it's like, all right, we're just gonna restart it.

Alex Beachum: Essentially, like, wanted to get away with all this crazy stuff and, and, and the idea of the [00:12:00] player being fragile and we knew there were gonna die a lot and, and it being this thing and the rogue, like DNA. Meaning that like, oh, it was meant to be like we, the idea that you were gonna do runs was there from the very beginning.

But it actually, the idea that being like a time loop that you do runs over and over again through, um, came a little bit later. 

Alex Seropian: Okay. All right. Well, so how did, I got so many questions. So the genesis of the game, like the beginning, where did it start? I mean, did it start with the structure of the game or did it start with, did you wanted to make a space game where you explore?

Yeah. Did it, like when did the story and the narrative start happening? I'm always curious, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody does things in a different order or, or has a different point of view of like, what's important to get at. I'm kind of curious where you started. 

Alex Beachum: It's a good question and fortunately I've spent some time, like a year or two ago going back through all of our old design docs and all of my, you know, personal notes and journals.

And I feel like I have like a pretty good sense of, 'cause it's been so [00:13:00] long, it's been so long and I've, I have a really bad memory for this kind of stuff. Um, but I'm fairly confident in like the broad strokes. So because it started as a student project, it started out as, okay, some context I guess is that the MFA program at USC is a three-year program and the third year you spend the entire year working on your thesis project.

Um, which can kind of be anything. Um, at the time at least they sort of wanted us, they were like, try to do something that, you know, pushes the envelope of. Interactivity or like the interactive medium to some degree. And so the year before, uh, we have a class called Thesis Prep and everyone's, it, it's, you're doing like a bunch of prototypes and then you're getting feedback from classmates and your professors and everyone's trying, you know, kind of just stressing out, panicking like, what am I gonna do for a whole year?

What do I want? You know, is this what I wanna do? Is this what I wanna do? And I had, I had a thing that I had made the previous semester, so this is like a full year before a thesis I had made for this. It was called a world building class. [00:14:00] We just had to make a, a little, like a world essentially. And I don't know why, but I remember just being like, I wonder if I can get kind of Mario Galaxy style physics, but in first person, like running in Unity.

'cause I was still learning kind of how to put things together in program and all that. And I just started noodling because I always liked the idea of having a game where you're like, you have a ship and, but you can. Get in the ship and walk around the ship, right? That's like the, you know, there's not like a loading screen or whatever.

And so I kind of got that stuff up and running. And for the world building class, I think I have like a video of it on my YouTube channel, actually. It's called Space Worthy. And it has the prototype for what became Brutal Hollow. It's actually called Brutal Hollow in that assignment. And then there's also this foggy area full of angler fish.

And those were like the two things that kind of like somehow persisted. Um, and, but the ship looked very different. And so from that early, just, I wanna make miniature planet, you know, like minute big miniature planets. Oh, and the meteors hitting Brittle Hollow. And it was like [00:15:00] flying apart. I was kind of just messing with spaceship simulation physics and planet physics and unity maybe is like the simplest way to say it.

And then in thesis prep, we were doing all these little prototypes and I was clearly gravitating towards wanting to do something like space. Space game exploration related. I had a prototype where you flew a little model rocket and then, and they, you, it was really hard, so you like crashed them and then you got to go get into the big rocket.

And of that led to, you know, the little model rocket in the village of outer wilds. Um, one was this cabin that moved whenever you weren't looking at it. And all the trees did too. Um, one of them had this little camera on a little object you threw at a, at a, so, so you get the idea, right? It's like all these little prototypes that I thought were standalone, we just kind of ended up taking them and like duct taping them together.

Even ones originally, I remember the quantum one was never supposed to be part of outer wilds for the first few, at least months of development. And then one of my, um, my thesis advisor, I remember. [00:16:00] Um, he expressed some disappointment 'cause he was like, I thought that was just gonna be your thesis. That was so weird and interesting and you're doing the space thing.

What's that about? And I was just like, oh no. Like I, he's calling me not weird. And I was just like, I really like, felt bad about that. I was like, oh, I'll show you Peter. I, I can be weird. We're just gonna take this qu, we're gonna make a whole moon that, that's quantum. Um, I'm really grateful for that. He gave me that feedback.

'cause that's like the only, that, that became such a core part of the game. Yeah. Yeah. So I, this is, I'm scattershot and rambling because that is sort of the way it kind of came together. 

Alex Seropian: Well, that's super cool. I mean, it sounded like you started with basically building things that were neat and you kept the stuff that Yeah.

You really liked. 

Alex Beachum: Yeah. The, the, I guess the other through line. 'cause it, it wasn't quite as simple as like, oh, all these prototypes and we just jam 'em together and boom, it, you know, here's video game. That stuff was happening. And then on the o this, in this like parallel track, I guess I was starting to think about, I.

What would be the thesis of it, I guess, and quick aside, I guess the through line of Outer Wilds is just [00:17:00] like, I know a lot of wonderful people and I've gotten very good advice over the years and, um, someone will just say something like, oh my God. And then that ends up being like the next piece of the puzzle.

So my colleague Simon Whis Gum, who's also one of our classmates in that, and we were all in that thesis prep class together. I remember I was struggling to figure out like what was like, kind of, it was a str we were all struggling about like, what is our thesis gonna be? And he, um, he, he suggested, he's like, what if you make an emotional prototype instead of trying to figure out the mechanics of what you do in the game?

What if you just like try to like get the vibe that you want? And so I made this, one of my other prototypes from that class was, you sit. You roast a marshmallow over a campfire, and then in the distance the sun explodes. But it's like a, like more like a firework show and you just kind of sit there as it gradually gets bigger and bigger and like the planets go explode one by one and eventually you're the one you're standing on explodes.

And that is to my best. I, I think that's where the supernova came from, but that captured that vibe, right? That [00:18:00] like, we're just gonna chill. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You see, I, I almost don't, it's hard to explain with words because it really was, the purpose of it was to communicate. That emotion and feeling and then that really became sort of the emotional core of like everything we built around after that.

Alex Seropian: Right on. Cool. I very much have a lot of sensory memory of that piece of music starting and then the screen starting to go white, so it works. It was very good. Why don't we roll back a little bit. I got way more outer wilds questions, but where Alex questions? Where'd you grow up? 

Alex Beachum: I grew up in Michigan.

Hey, Michigan. Michigan in 

Alex Seropian: the Midwest. The Midwest, right On the Midwest. Yep. Nice. And then you got A MFA at USC, which I think Genova Chen's may be two episodes before this one. Oh, that's awesome. Also, I think he has an MFA from you. I know. Oh, oh, oh, no. 

Alex Beachum: He went to, because his thesis, I believe was, I wanna say Flow 

Aaron: Cloud.

Yeah. Oh, it was 

Alex Beachum: cloud. [00:19:00] No, you're right. It was cloud. And then he did flow. And then of course, um, flower and Journey. No, 'cause when I, 'cause when I was in a student there, uh, journey came out I think, while I was there. And that was a huge thing. Everyone was, you know, 

Alex Seropian: okay. 

Alex Beachum: Yeah. 

Alex Seropian: Yeah. Where did you, uh, go to college before that?

Alex Beachum: Uh, Michigan State. 

Alex Seropian: Oh, right on. Okay. Yeah. Michigan State. I know the colors for Michigan State are green, right? Ooh, yeah. Nice. 

Alex Beachum: Green and white. 

Alex Seropian: Green and white. Green and white. And I can't remember the mascot. What I, a Michigan statement, yellow. 

Alex Beachum: Ooh, blue. 

Alex Seropian: No, no. You're think you're thinking of the other one.

You're thinking University of Michigan, the 

Aaron: other one. Yeah. We had a University of Michigan guy at, at our studio and he always wore the colors. That's why I got it. So there's another one and it's green and white. Okay. Good to know. Sorry. No offense. Please don't get back. We're the, uh, 

Alex Beachum: we grew up Spartans, which is in funny 'cause is the Trojan.

So it's just like, I've got a, you know, this is, this is the same. Yeah, 

Alex Seropian: right on. Okay. Okay. And so were video games part of your life growing up and were you [00:20:00] thinking, this is what I wanna do, like when you got to college or other? I think 

Alex Beachum: it's funny, I think the through line of, um, people who make video games of around my age, and this isn't universal, obviously, but there's, it's so common.

It's like. None of us wanted to make video games 'cause we didn't know that was a thing people did. Um, like we didn't know humans made video games. I don't know. It's hard to, yeah, it's just really, it's, it's funny. Um, well I actually originally wanted to be a, a filmmaker 

Alex Seropian: Right. On 

Alex Beachum: my undergrad. I try, I got it.

This didn't work at all, but I tried to dual degree in mechanical engineering and the closest thing Michigan State had to a filmmaking degree. Um, and then at the 11th hour I was just like, Nope, we're gonna do video games. And it somehow worked out just a little bit. Yeah. 

Alex Seropian: What, what was the closest thing Michigan State had to a film degree?

What was that? 

Alex Beachum: It used to be called telecommunications and then they switched it to Dmat, which was Digital Media Arts and Tech. And then I did a specialization in [00:21:00] video production. I. 

Alex Seropian: Okay. 

Alex Beachum: All right. And they also actually act, they started a specialization in games, um, which is pretty awesome. And so my final year I was actually able to take some classes in like Unity and Maya, uh, and start learning some of that stuff before going to grad school.

But yeah. But growing up we had, we had a family pc. We played like, that's cool. The magic school bus point and click Adventure Games was probably like one of the earliest things. And Oh, and to Star Wars Rebel Assault too. Yeah. Nice. Like the, the full motion video one. 

Alex Seropian: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

Oh, it's not Rom game. 

Alex Beachum: Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, it's. Like, well, you had to boot it off a floppy. We had like a joystick. So, and then, and then, and then later we got Game Boys for like, car trips. Um, we didn't have a council for a long time. First council we had was a Game Cube. Hey, that's a good one to start with.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. No, it was good. But so, so it was more so before that it was like the thing where going over to Friends' house, so you had video games, it was kind of, you know, it was like a treat. You're just like, it made them more alluring in a way. [00:22:00] Uh, my sister Kelsey and I, who, and Kelsey was the writer on Outer Wilds.

Alex Seropian: Oh, right on. 

Alex Beachum: We like made a lot of movies together growing up. Um, and we would also do things that, like, in retrospect I'm like, that was essentially making a video game. And then like in middle school, I got into making stuff in RPG Maker. But looking in retrospect, it's one of those things where it's like, oh, of course I'm a ended up being a video game designer.

But, um, at, at the time it just, yeah, it just didn't occur, I think to 

Alex Seropian: What made you realize it was something you could do? 

Alex Beachum: Uh, a couple of things kind of all swirling together. I think a, a big part of it was, uh, my sister, uh, started dating, uh, their current spouse, John at Michigan State. And John knew from a very young age that they wanted to be a video game programmer.

And so they were going through the games, the game path at MSU and also doing a CS degree. And I remember seeing this project they were working on in Unity, it was where you control the manatee and you were eating cabbages and swimming along and just [00:23:00] being like, oh, wait a second. This is pretty neat. And I started thinking about those old RPG maker projects I used to, to work on.

Boy, I don't know. And like, I don't know, there's this realization where I was like, I, I was just like, wait, I have like way more opinions and I spend more time reading like news articles about video games than I do film. And I. The, the engineering I had decided I just didn't want to be an engineer and finish that degree.

The video games have this technical side to them that has always kind of tickled my brain, the idea that you're still building these narrative worlds and experiences, but they have to work in a way that films just don't. 

Alex Seropian: Yeah. Right. And 

Alex Beachum: so, I don't know, I just, just thinking about, it's like, oh my God, like maybe video games are the, the perfect in-between, between and just straight up engineering and filmmaking.

And there was also this, I think this general feeling, which sounds I, I think might've been accurate, where I literally was like, because I wasn't very confident in my, um, storytelling abilities, especially in terms of film. Like I, um, I took a screenwriting class my senior year of [00:24:00] undergrad. That was awesome.

The prof, prof was awesome. Um, and it boosted my confidence a lot, but I was still just like, not. In my head, I was like, well, video games are a much younger medium. It's still like the wild west. The bar for that like story in games is so much lower than film. I'll, maybe I'll be fine. Um, and so, and also, and also because it's a younger medium, I think I, I was excited by the idea of getting, like there was just more unexplored territory than with film, right?

It's just easier to do something that no one's ever done before. Something just really inter like, yeah, like again, like what they said with our thesis, like try to kind of push the boundaries. Uh, and I thought that idea was very exciting in addition to the perceived bar being maybe lower 

Alex Seropian: because it was so younger.

Yeah. I think that's an entrepreneurial trait, you know, that's like, it's exciting to go and try and do something that hasn't been done before. And I think you're right, video games, uh, have that sort of built into it. 'cause it's half technology, half creativity, you know, 

Alex Beachum: it, it is really even now, [00:25:00] 'cause I, I mean.

It's been a while since, since, you know, I was going through all of that and even now it's like, I feel like the bar has been raised considerably. Like the stuff that's getting released now is, it's just so impressive. But just, just the sheer, there's just so many, there's still so many unex. It's like the possibility space is just so high.

Alex Seropian: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What, what kind of games do you play? Like now? 

Alex Beachum: Oh, let's see. I'm, the last year I've played way more video games than normal actually. 'cause I had a period of about four years where I had a really bad RSI kind of arm injury and just like, couldn't play anything for essentially four years.

Um, and so I've spent the last year kind of making up for lost time. Um, oh, what are you doing? And, uh, so recently I mentioned I was a huge Zelda fan. Um, I'm finally going through tears of the kingdom, which actually I, I tears of the kingdom didn't even come out that long ago. I'm, it's not like I missed it by that many years, but I've been, so, I've been playing that.

Um, and I just played Chance of nar, which is really cool. Oh, cool. 

Alex Seropian: [00:26:00] Right on. Right on. All right, well, so back to, uh, MSU and then USC you, so you get outta msu mm-hmm. With a degree in digital media arts, 

Alex Beachum: something like that. 

Alex Seropian: Something like that, 

Alex Beachum: I think. Yeah. What 

Alex Seropian: was the process like applying to USC, like for the Master's program?

Is that pretty competitive? I. 

Alex Beachum: As far as I know, fairly, I'm pretty sure I got my application in on the final day they allowed it too. So that was, that was a close run thing. Yeah. I applied to a few different grad schools. Got, and I, I was just so lucky to be able to even consider grad school at all, especially given it was a, this was like 2010, so like we were like in the midst of the recession and everything.

And so there were a lot of folks my age that were like, what if I went to grad school for a few years, um, before entering the workforce. Yeah. It was the reason, the reason I really, I, of the ones I looked at, my preference was USC was, they were the most clearly narrative focused of, of the kind of, at the time [00:27:00] interactive media kind of games programs.

Um, it was the longest program too. I really, I remember really liking the idea that your third year was just this thesis that you just get to do your own project. Yeah. Um, I also, 'cause I looked Sounds cool. Yeah. Like I looked at the ETC. What does that stand for? The. Entertainment Technology center, I wanna say in Rochester.

Alex Seropian: Okay. 

Alex Beachum: No, not Rochester. That's Carnegie Mellon. Carnegie Mellon. Yeah. 

Alex Seropian: Yeah. 

Alex Beachum: Which is cool program. And I know people who, um, either taught there. That's a 

Alex Seropian: Jesse Shells program. 

Alex Beachum: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Alex Seropian: yeah. 

Alex Beachum: And 

Alex Seropian: oh yeah. 

Alex Beachum: Um, no, I looked at that and that was cool, but that one clearly had this more like industry focus, like you go work like for a company kind of as your thesis almost kind of a thing.

Alex Seropian: Yeah. Pro probably Jesse's company. He's smart that way. 

Alex Beachum: Or, or I think, yeah. He was making something like whatever you made was a little more little. So uscs thing was, 'cause there, uscs program is literally part of the cinema school. Um, is that George Lucas's, uh, thing, did he start that one? You know, I think there's at least one building named after him there.

Definitely. It [00:28:00] probably was involved. There 

Alex Seropian: definitely is a building with his name on it. Yeah. The over there 

Alex Beachum: were, it's, it's the reason it's 'cause there's, there was a George Lucas one, we were in this at the time, we were off campus and this a Mecca center. Um, so Robert Zuma has had his own his own building now that, that the, um, the program has its own building, like on campus with the rest of 'em.

But, um, well, I completely lost my train of thought. 

Aaron: That's my fault. I'm sorry. No, it's fine. That's just, that'll happen a lot here. 

Alex Beachum: We'll just, I'm just gonna just settle in used to. 

Alex Seropian: No. All right. But so I, I was just kind of curious like what, what it was like being a grad student at USA. I mean, I got kind of a, a good vibe on it sounds to me like at that program you're encouraged to try new stuff, you know, that's, yeah, I know Genova kind of said the same thing.

He said, one of the professors set sat them down and said, if you're here to just learn how to make a game and get a job, you're wasting your time. Get lost. Like, you're here to try stretching. 

Alex Beachum: Yeah. And I'm obviously not, [00:29:00] I don't know what it's like to go through that program now, obviously, but I know people who are going through it.

I'm actually advising, um, a couple of thesis projects, uh, for the first, I've never done this before, so I'm like, like trying to, like, this is useful. Hope this is helpful. Um, and it's interesting to see how the program has changed. I, it's one of those things where I don't know if it's changed. It's not like good or bad necessarily, it's just different now.

It does feel a little more focused towards like, like when I was there, not even everyone in my class wanted to make games, much less kind of like mainstream industry kind of stuff. Um, and I think it's very under, like naturally shifted towards more what the, the rest of the cinema school is where it is a little more focused on people kind of wanting to do.

Um, uh, definitely video games, but, but I still, but, but so like the two pe the two, uh, people whose, um, thesis projects I'm advising though, I mean, they're both very much trying to do really interesting stuff still and very much kind of trying to push the boundaries. So I think at least in the grad program, that that kind of currents definitely there.

But I'm really grateful that I went [00:30:00] through it kind of when I did, because there was a little less pressure maybe to make something polished is maybe the best way to say it. I think, I think the program still has that kind of experimental edge to it, but I see what people are making now and I'm like, oh my God.

Like I would've like, like outer wild's Alpha was so Jan. Um, 

Alex Seropian: well, I mean, I think it's awesome that there's a place where people can invest themselves in projects that don't necessarily have to be commercially successful. They just need to be creatively successful or, yeah. Or, or, or interesting. Or new or, or learn something from it.

And that's, I, I think kind of rare. You know, I think it's awesome. 

Alex Beachum: I, no, I agree. And that's why part of me is like, like with, I almost don't wanna, it, it's, it's tough, right? Because it's like, well, on one hand it's like, well, no, you, every like these, I want people to get jobs in the state of the industry these days is rough.

Um, and on the other hand, I just wanna be like, no, no, no, just, just [00:31:00] don't worry about like market viability. Make the cool, experimental weird thing and, and while you're in school and you have the chance, right? It's like, how do balancing that with like, yeah, I get it. People want good portfolio pieces. They wanna get hired.

It's completely like, as well, they should. Like I just got lucky as hell. 

Alex Seropian: Well, 

Alex Beachum: are you working from home or are you Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I'm at my place. Okay, that's cool. The whole studio we have, so we're not, we're not fully remote. Um, we have, we still have our office, uh, in kind of near downtown la. And kind of like the Southern Arts District.

Um, but ever since, ever since Covid, we just, 'cause obviously like everybody, we became fully remote. Um, well, specifically for us, it's while we were working on the outer wilds, DLC. And so we kind of got used to that process. And so now we're just a very hybrid studio. Like our head of production just lives in Seattle.

Um, our art director just moved to, uh, uh, oh my god. New Hampshire, 

Alex Seropian: huh. 

Alex Beachum: Um, but I, I still go in occasionally. Not as much as I used to, but once, once we ramp up in production, I'll, I'll be back in the office more along with Lowen and [00:32:00] everyone else. 

Alex Seropian: Cool. Right on. So what happens after you get out of the, the Master's program?

So you have, you did a bunch of stuff, I'm guessing it wasn't called Outer Wilds at the time. Maybe it was. It was actually, I remember when we 

Alex Beachum: named it Outer Wilds, 'cause I had kind of, it was still called Space Worthy when I pitched it to 'cause in, so in addition to my thesis, it was also what it's called an advanced game project where it's sort of like you pitch and you get people from the Viturbi School of Engineering working on it.

In addition to you have a bigger team, you have more resources you work with. We worked with some external, um, art schools, which was really cool. We had, we had a fairly sizable team for even the student version. Um, but it was called Space Worthy for a while as a holdover from that like, uh, world building class.

And I knew it needed to ch I I think there was feedback at some point, like, you know, the title's generic, you should, should, and so we were all, we were in a class and we were all just spitballing ideas. And I think, oh, at some point I was like, cosmic Wilderness. And then someone was like, no, wilds. It's like, oh yeah, and then Outer Wild.

I don't know. It was, it was [00:33:00] like a combined, it was like a group chat and we were at, at the end of it. I was like, outer wilds. I kind of like that. And it never had a reason to change it. Cosmic Wilderness is cool too. 

Aaron: That should be sequel. 

Alex Seropian: So you, so you, you, you get your degree and you've got this project with a name.

Mm-hmm. Then how like. 

Alex Beachum: The, the reason I'm so like, no, we had the name is 'cause of the obsidian years later comes out with the outer. Like no, this if I seem like No, we had the, it's, it's, it's obsidian fault. 

Alex Seropian: Okay. All right. You had prior pri prior use. I, I didn't, I didn't have that with Mist. Um, and, uh, but, um, okay.

Well, so how did you meet up with Mobius? Like how did that come about? 

Alex Beachum: Yeah, so the summer between my second and third years, um, I did an internship up at Microsoft and hey, 

Alex Seropian: yeah, 

Alex Beachum: I did an internship at 

Alex Seropian: Microsoft. 

Alex Beachum: Yeah, right on. Nice. Uh, and I was lucky enough to get a job offer at the end of the internship as part of [00:34:00] their college hire program.

So I got the luxury of doing my thesis here with just, I, I didn't have to worry about looking for a job. I just had one lined up, which was awesome. I could just do, like you're saying, I could just be like, I have a job lined up. This can just be my experimental, whatever the hell I wanna do with it. Kind of like.

You know, maybe I'll never get a chance to do something like this ever again. Better, like make the most of it. So I was very fortunate in that sense. So then I went to work for Microsoft and I was on Project Spark. You ever heard of it? It was like a GameMaker Oh yeah. For kids kind of a thing? Yeah. Yeah. I, um, I know a 

Alex Seropian: bunch of people who were on that project.

It, did it ship it did ship or did it not ship it Finally Ship? Yeah, it did ship. Okay. 

Alex Beachum: Yeah. That, that, God, that project had a lot of cool things going for it, and it had some other issues, but, uh, I, I, it was, it was cool. Um, I was on that for about seven months and essentially, so I was hired into the college hire program.

The idea was that you kind of go between teams until you find like a fit and you get hired on permanently, but. At the [00:35:00] time there was a bunch of, there was like some shakeups happening and people that had joined, 'cause you're supposed to do a rotation for a year. Um, but nobody was rotating between teams.

Everyone was just stuck on one team. And then people who are reaching their ends of their rotation were not getting hired full-time. And so the writing was sort of on the wall. It was like, okay, there's a good chance I hit the end of this period and I just get let go essentially. And so at the time there was an opportunity, so Lowen, my colleague at Mobius, who we went into, he was the classmate who we worked on each other's thesis.

So he had worked on outer wilds, I had worked on his, while I was going to work at Microsoft Masi OCA was looking for someone to start a game studio with essentially. And so he went to our thesis show and he, I think maybe he reached out to like. The department and was like, can I have some names of people to like maybe, you know, contact or whatever.

Anyway, he got in contact with L they hit it off and they founded Mobius and hired like an artist. And I think, and I've written a [00:36:00] programmer and they started working on a mobile title called Terra Chroma. And then seven months later I'm being like, oh well about this Microsoft thing. And he actually just reached out outta the blue and was like, Hey, um, our programmer just got hired, uh, at Dreamworks.

Do you like, do you wanna like move back to LA and make indie mobile games? Um, and start as a programmer, I guess, which is funny 'cause I do not have a CS degree. Um, Lowen does have a CS degree. Um, um, and, and yeah. And so, and so that's kind of what happened. I was like, well this seems, you know, I was in my mid twenties, I was just like, if I'm gonna like go do the indie startup thing now would be the time, I guess.

So moved back to la, started working at Mobius, helped them finish and ship Terra Chroma. I. Um, we started working on another project and then a year after I started working there, it was 2015. That's when, um, uh, IGF ha, that's when I outer Wilds was at IIGF and we ended up winning the design and word in the grand prize and just everything started kind of going nuts from there.

'cause we were like, you know, L and I [00:37:00] were like, wait a second, what if we just did outer wilds at Mobius as our next project? And Mossi was super on board with the idea. And we did that FIG campaign. Oh my God. That was ancient ages ago. Uh, Anna Perna got involved about a year later. Yeah, just stuff started happening.

Aaron: Wow. That's awesome. Did Anna Perna shut down? Is that the one that had 

Alex Beachum: that recently? Anna Perna was the one. They had essentially their entire games division quit. That's what it was. Yeah. That was recently, like a year ago. That was, that was very recent. Yeah. But, but Anna, but they still, but then they exist.

Yeah. Yeah. They have hired, they came, 

Alex Seropian: kind of came back. They've re-hired some pretty impressive folks. Mm-hmm. And I, mm-hmm. I, are you guys still working with them or do you know, like, uh, um, do you have feature projects with Annapurna or, no, 

Alex Beachum: I'm actually not sure what I can say. Okay. I was gonna say we could edit this out.

Yeah. Don't Fair enough. This is me. No, it's probably not. I sh I should have, I should have vetted this with Jack with our, uh, head of [00:38:00] production. 'cause I was, we, we were like talking briefly about like what I, it's because it's not that big of a deal. It's, um, it's, yeah. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna air on the green side of caution and not answer that.

Yeah, do that, do that. And we'll, we'll just interpret that however we 

Alex Seropian: want. It's totally cool. It's, no, 

Alex Beachum: no, there's no, it's not, it's not. It's, there's, there's nothing. Oh, my, my biggest worry now is people are gonna like, read into, I'm just like, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's fine. 

Aaron: Can I change the subject and ask you about your film stuff?

Because you wanted to be a film person? Yeah. What, what was the, like, was there like a movie? Was there like many, like a se, you know? Mm-hmm. What is it about film, because I'm sure you have your favorite movie you've watched 300 times, you know, all the lines and 

Alex Beachum: three. Oh, I don't know if there's any movie I've watched that many times, but, but yeah.

Yeah. No. Um, I mean, so I guess the, the reason I was super, I, I got into movies as a kid, um, 'cause my mom showed me how to use the home video camera and specifically showed me how to do stop motion with it. Oh. [00:39:00] Um, and that just sort of like, cool. Yeah. My little head exploded. Right. Like, I was like, oh my God, this is, this is magic.

And so I always really loved the, um. Initially, especially kind of the VFX side of it. 'cause it's, it's, I was also into magic tricks as a kid and stuff. This idea of creating illusions for people. 

Alex Seropian: See we got another magician in the room.

Alex Beachum: You just always have that handy. That was, that was really fast. Um, that was good. Um, and even now, I, I, I mean, I'm sure um, you can like, know what I mean? What I mean when I say like, I love it when you do something in a game. 'cause now we do everything in a, in a game engine, obviously it's like nothing's practical like with a movie, but sometimes there are things we do like in the scene where I'm like, God, this feels like a trick.

This feels like a magic trick we're doing because. I get like, okay, the dumb example being like, there's like a mirror in outer. I think it's only there if you do the DLC actually. [00:40:00] And it's just, you know, we just did the thing where you like, you just duplicate the environment and flip it around. It's just a copy of the set and then you just, everything's duplicated.

And I just, I love that kind of stuff where I'm like, this isn't like some fancy rendering trick or anything. It's just the dumbest possible thing. Movie magic. Yeah. And it just, in 

Alex Seropian: the biz we call that a hack.

Alex Beachum: I, yeah. I guess I love hacks. Yeah. I, 'cause it feels, it feels to me like, uh, doing like a practical VFX for a movie almost. 

Aaron: Oh, totally. Like painting, painting the effects on the glass or something. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's just, there's the sense of like, 

Alex Beachum: yeah, I'm into that too. Yeah. It, it's just 'cause the player doesn't care about movie be magic.

Exactly. Magic. Its just that sense of like, God, this is so stupid, but it totally works. Yeah. So, yeah, I was really into that kind of angle. And then I got more and more into just as like a storytelling medium. I just, and I still love the language of cinema. I love editing and cinematography and just, just all of that.

It's, I think it's just really interesting, a really cool way to tell a story. 'cause I've never [00:41:00] been much of a, um, my sister Kelsey is the one who words, she's so good with words and like, storytelling with words. Like, just, just, that's just never really been my thing. Um, and so, so yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

It just, we, and we just made so many movies and little projects over the years growing up and stuff. Um. It was just, I just always liked having a project. I was, I, I always, I just, and even now I'm just like, I just always need a project. Uh, and so creative. One of the many reasons why I look back and I'm like, yeah, obviously I'm in.

Like, it was either gonna be film or games. The engineering, well, I guess engineering. You've got a project too, maybe, but 

Alex Seropian: yeah. 

Alex Beachum: Anyway, anyway, yeah. No. So film. Yeah. No, I just, I still, I still love movies a lot. And actually the outer wilds DLC was actually really one of the things I love the most about working on it.

I won't like spoil anything here, but, um, 

Alex Seropian: yeah, don't spoil it because I haven't actually gone, I have the DLC and I haven't gone through it yet. Okay. This, 

Alex Beachum: this, this I don't think is too big. This isn't really a spoiler. Um, but Outer Wilds told the [00:42:00] story in, in a lot of different ways, but was very, very, um, text focused.

And so the Outer Wilds, DLC, the story is far is told way more through visuals in a way that I got to kind of like. Get a little back into like, like I, I got like, I, I did storyboards. 

Alex Seropian: Nice. And 

Alex Beachum: it was just really fun to get back to bring a little bit of that kind of filmmaking, um, background into, into the game.

I'm reluctant to say background. I've never done film professionally like hobbyists through and through. And also all of those storyboards were immediately handed over to the art team who like, you know, made them not garbage, but 

Alex Seropian: just 

Alex Beachum: to be super clear. 

Alex Seropian: But it was a lot of fun. That's super cool. Uh, so you work with your sister and your sister on Outer Wilds?

Yeah, it does. Outer Wilds. Okay. How close are you in age two years? 

Alex Beachum: Uh, she's, I'm, I'm, I'm the oldest and then Kelsey's two years younger. Okay. And then we have another sister who's six years younger who we joke is the black sheep of the family. 'cause uh, she's a lawyer instead of us. [00:43:00] 

Alex Seropian: Hey, I know some great.

People who are lawyers, you know, can have, she, she's also awesome. And they're your lawyers? They're your lawyers. No, she's, 

Alex Beachum: she's 

Alex Seropian: great. No, that's awesome. I'm always curious when family members work together, what the dynamic's like. Mm-hmm. How, like, do you guys ever disagree, have table flipping arguments and things like that?

Or is uh, what's it like? I'm the older one, I mean, 

Alex Beachum: we're, we're, we're siblings so we, we never fight, ever about anything. Uh, no, no, of course, of course we butted heads and stuff. Um, but because we worked together on things growing up, um, there was definitely a, you know, we just kind of are on the same page about a certain, like, there's a lot of stuff we just are immediately kind of onboard with, like with, 'cause for Outer Wilds.

The, the closest thing we had to a writer's room was the narrative meetings we would have with myself, Lowen and Kelsey. [00:44:00] Because Lo and I were kind of handling the more like, kind of narrative design. Like, okay, where does this information, where does the player encounter X, Y, and Z? Um, I was involved with a lot of the, kinda like the high level plot kind of stuff going on.

Um, so we're, and so we're Loan and Kelsey, and then Kelsey was way more like, you know, doing 90%, 99% of like the actual text. And there'd be a lot, all the back and forth kind of, so just, we were just throwing ideas around those, those were, those were really fun meetings. 

Alex Seropian: Cool. So the, the story in outer Wilds, like, so like it's no spoilers.

Yeah. I, no spoilers. I don't think I'm gonna, I Well, I was just gonna ask if you, you guys consider thought about the alien language? Like, you read, you read everything in English, but it is like written in a different language, right? 

Alex Beachum: You mean like the visuals of it? 

Alex Seropian: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Alex Beachum: yeah, yeah. If you're asking is there, is there is to code there a 

Alex Seropian: language?

Yeah. Is there a language or a logic there? No. Like, [00:45:00] 

Alex Beachum: like, I mean, I, I love the, the, the texture that our art director Wesley like, kind of came up with for that. And it's really cool and the way it branches of course and everything, yes, it's definitely meant to feel a certain way, but, but no, you can't, you can't.

We weren't that hardcore. He started speaking it. 

Alex Seropian: Yeah. Got my idea.

Alright. This question comes from Owen, who's my son and I, I think I told you that we Oh, you did that you played the game together, which is Yeah. We played, we played kind of co coplay on our own devices. No, I, I love it when people do play the game like that. Yeah. And he finished it before I did. In fact, I, I got, I got.

An ending and I told him I finished it and he is like, well, what happened? And I told him you didn't finish it.

But any case, um, he was kind of curious. I think that was actually a really good question. Mm-hmm. So I would say the game is kind of guarded. Not the game, but like people guard themselves when they talk about the game 'cause they don't want to give away stuff. 

Alex Beachum: Yeah. Have you been on the 

Alex Seropian: subreddit? [00:46:00] Well, I've, I've been, no, it's stupid.

In some parts of it. Maybe not all of it. I, I'm sure it gets very, is it all black quickly? Yes. It's like the redacted. 

Alex Beachum: Exactly the redacted 

Aaron: black text. Yeah, no, 

Alex Beachum: people are, I mean, in which I love, like, we love the fans, uh, and the way that they're so, they're so careful 'cause they want other people to have the same experience they did, 

Alex Seropian: right?

Yeah. But like, what's that, what's it like working on a game where you put it out, it's spoiler view, spoiler v spoiler, and, and people have to be really guarded. Like, does that, does that impact sort of like, you know, word of mouth is still like a huge part of how people learn about games and all that.

Like, has that, was that a thing at all? Like, did you have to worry about or think about or, 

Alex Beachum: I mean, I mean the game has done so much better than we thought it would that we weren't, I think we were, I'm trying to think how to answer it. Sort. It's sort of like, 'cause now, now I think it almost helps the word of mouth.

To some degree, it gives it this sort of like, well, why, why can't you tell [00:47:00] anything about this? Like, what do, what do you mean? I just have to play it? I'm sure that also goes against it 'cause people just have to, you know, trust people essentially who won't tell them, uh, a thing about the the game they're recommending, I guess, I guess.

I mean, we just didn't really worry that much about it because it's like, what were we gonna do? Right. We did spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what level of kind of spoilers, I guess to put in trailers and promotional material because you, you gotta show people something, right? There has to be a hook.

And so I think where we drew the line is we were like, okay, we're gonna, like, we have to market this as a time loop game. Like we can't not tell, like it'd be great if we didn't. And there still are people that go into this and don't know it's a time loop game. And those have been some of my favorite playthroughs to see because I.

That's just such a big moment when they're like, oh my god, it's a time loop. Um, but no, like that's on the steam page, right? It's like it tells you I went in 

Alex Seropian: 100% cold, 100% cold. Oh, fault. Yeah. Me, no, me. [00:48:00] That's the dream. I 

Aaron: love that. Yes. Yeah, 

Alex Beachum: me too. I was like, okay. 

Alex Seropian: Um, 

Alex Beachum: no, it's on the steam page. It says it's a time loop.

It doesn't say how long it is. It does not say what happens at the end of each loop. And that was something we like. There's nothing in the trailers about that either. So we, yeah, I don't know. It was an interesting problem 'cause we were like, oh, we've gotta be very careful about what we show for this. The DLC was, I think because we knew that we had a fan base and people would want to hopefully play an expansion to it.

We were, we felt more confident being even more cryptic with the DLC trailer and, and it was really fun. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. 

Alex Seropian: Yeah, I could totally see how it, it. Ends up working to the advantage because people are, it's like curiosity now. I want to know. 

Alex Beachum: It's still tricky though. We had, I remember there's like one, there was one review of the DLC that, like, they, they mentioned the trailer and they were like, wow, that was pretty, uh, that was pretty crazy.

They, they, I think they called the, they were like, yeah, the trailer's kind of ugly. They really buried the lead. I'm like, [00:49:00] Hey, it's ugly. Like, think you mean like, just 'cause they were trying to, they were like, yeah. The degree to which they just, we just don't show the cool stuff. Yeah. Right. Of the DLC in that trailer.

Um, it was just pretty funny to see it called out in review like that. 

Alex Seropian: I'm also curious how you guys put together the, like the, the story. Mm-hmm. I mean, the game has a fairly unique structure. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know it because it is then, this is no spoiler, right? It's a time loop. Yeah. Yeah. So in some ways the game basically takes place.

For a certain amount of time. Yeah. Yet there's, there's more story to consume than that amount of time. Like how even could like, figure out like, like what to write, where to put it, how to sequence it. Yeah. You can't really control the order. I'm 

Alex Beachum: gonna try so hard to answer this in a way that isn't me just like [00:50:00] tangenting a million places.

Um, because, because it's kind of, it's kind of like the question of like, how did this game come to be? It's like a complicated answer. 'cause the story, the story we, we started thinking about and working on the story very early on, like essentially when it started as a thesis, because after, after all of the swirling massive prototypes and ideas and thematics and inspirations all kind of started to coalesce.

One thing that became very clear was this idea of, oh, this is gonna be a game where. It's about making an exploration game where players are only motivated to explore out of their own curiosity. That's sort of where I landed as like the theme, like the core, like the question of the thesis, so to speak.

Like can you make a game that does that essentially, because I guess to answer one of your earlier questions, what kind of games do I play? My favorite kind of games are the kind of games where they throw you into the kind of this crazy world and you, it's up to you on some level to figure out what is going on there.

There's this kind of parallel track of here's like the narrative of the game that's hopefully interesting. And then you have your [00:51:00] own player narrative of like the actions you're taking that matter in some way as well. And so the way we kind of went about trying to tell a story that's based on the player's own curiosity was, okay, it's gonna be oriented around answering really major like questions about the world that you're in.

And so the structure, the way I originally went about the structure was, okay, there's gonna be four main, um, I called them curiosities. Just 'cause these are like internal dev names. And so there are four curiosities and it was like, okay, well we've got the solar system. And the solar system was kind of designed around what are interesting ways planets can change over time.

The planets were not really designed initially with the story in mind. It was almost like, okay, here's a cool solar system. What kind of story can we like almost, what can, what history can we add to this world? And then start drawing threads between them. And so the big curiosities in the final game are, and they, I'm not gonna spoil like what questions they [00:52:00] answer, but it's the Ashwin project, the quantum moon, um, the core of giants deep and the vessel.

Um, and so all four of those are things that are hidden in very, but you have to know how to get to those places, right? Right. They're in very dangerous or very cryptic hard to reach locations. But the idea was they each tell you a really, like they were, they have a big plot reveal essentially, but we wanted those to be where it wouldn't matter what order you did these in.

So it's like four mysteries, but it doesn't matter what order you do the mysteries in. And then everything else in the world that you find kind of points or tells you some, gives you a clue to one of those. And that structure was inspired by, there's a portrait gallery in the Wind Waker where there's this character who takes photos from around the Great Sea.

And if you ask him about any specific photo, he tells you a little story about it. And I remember playing that and just being really enamored with this idea. Like him telling me the story of this photo always made me want to go find the [00:53:00] quote unquote real version, right? That's like actually in the world.

And so Otter Wildes is a very elaborate. It's like, what if, take that idea and like turn it into a whole video game where it's all about, you read these texts about these characters and they're referencing other places and people and ideas and all of the things that they reference you can go and find as a player.

And that's kind of where the curiosity angle comes in. And so the ship log where it's like this crazy conspiracy board, um, it looks really complicated, but it really is actually four distinct kind of mystery webs. Ah, okay. And that's kind of how, 

Alex Seropian: right. 

Alex Beachum: And there's a lot we did to kind of make that work.

It's like we made, we made really sure that. Nothing that you find, let's say in like the vessel web. None of it is going to spoil anything else in any of the other webs to make sure that it works in any order. Uh, and I think that's why people, people play the game. They're like, oh, whoa, how did they, this is so complicated.

How does it work? No matter what order, I'm like, it's four things and they're all mutually excluded. Like they don't [00:54:00] overlap too, too much. Um, and then we started, the ways they do overlap and connect are in ways that don't ruin kind of the, like the player kind of angle, like the clues and that, you know, it's, it's more like character relationships overlap or theme motivations or.

Um, yeah. Yeah. That's cool. That's 

Alex Seropian: super smart. I, I, I, I'm thinking to myself, I wonder if this makes sense or is interesting to anybody who has not played the game before. I think it is because it's, it's just a really smart, it's like, from my perspective, playing the game, it does appear to be very complex in terms of all the different things you can do and the simulation that's happening, and it all sort of like, it, it, there's, there's a story and a th I like, I had a through line, you know, it felt like a linear story to me, but clearly not.

But when you break it down, how you built it, it's actually pretty simple. Which it's, I think are the, the coolest. Yeah. You know, it's like, yeah. It's like we had these four [00:55:00] storylines that we built mutually, exclusively, and you could kind of go through them however you want. It's, makes a lot of sense when you say it.

Alex Beachum: I think, I think the part where it ends up getting caught, I think we started, and I think this goes for all aspects of the story. 'cause it was like. Because those are like, those are almost very mechanic centric in a weird way. 'cause it's like, well each one of these, like the quantum moon's a good example.

There's like three rules you need to learn. And so we were like, cool. Now they'll, that's three locations. Uh, and then as we started out with these fairly like simple on paper kind of structures, and then as we worked on it over the years, um, and it really was like, we got very lucky that we got so long to work on this game.

Otherwise, I don't think it would've been very good. Um, um, we, the more you work on it and the more things start, it does start to get messy, right? And it does start to get a little more complicated. But because there's sort of this core underlying structure, it gets complicated in a way that's still like manageable.

Alex Seropian: Yeah. 

Alex Beachum: Because once we have like, okay, these three locations are gonna give you clues you need to learn to reach this location. But then we [00:56:00] start having questions. Like, I would sit down with Kelsey and we'd be like, okay, well what's like. What's the narrative thread for this particular clue? Okay. A no has gone missing in the caves.

Okay. We're gonna, the player's gonna find, and so there's like tears, right? You've got like the really high level stuff and then you've got like the mid-level, like, okay, where do these clues go in the world? And then you get down here and you're like, what is this individual narrative thread? So the moment to moment gameplay is telling you a little story and so, but it makes it manageable, right?

Yeah. And then by the end of it, you're like, oh God. Um, was, was the 

Alex Seropian: ship log in the design from the beginning or was that something that you added as you were building? The, 

Alex Beachum: the idea for the ship log was in from the beginning in the sense that we didn't want players to necessarily have to take pen and paper notes to play the game.

Right. It, it was originally intended as, yeah. And it's still intended as, as just a way to help you keep track of things you've known. We really don't, I tried really hard to make sure the ship vlog doesn't tell you anything you technically don't [00:57:00] know. So there's two modes in the ship log. There's rumor mode and there's map mode.

And map mode organizes everything by planet. And then rumor mode is the detective board, the, the crazy conspiracy map. Originally it was only map mode and we actually had a play test at Anna Perna that went very poorly and players. And I remember, 'cause afterwards L and I were like, oh no, like this is, this could work.

But players aren't like, like, it's not clear to players like what this game is essentially. And so we came up with the idea of, um, what if we, what if the ship log just looks like our own internal design documents? 'cause that's how we represented all this stuff internally with sort of lines drawn between things.

And 

Aaron: that's cool. I 

Alex Beachum: remember that. I was like low and I don't think we can do all four curiosities on the same board. Without like it being a complex nightmare. But then I tried it and I was like, oh, he's right. It works somehow, like with like all getting them all to like, not, you know, all the wines not crisscross.

Uh, it's just like, I can't, I can't believe these all fit on one image. Yeah, [00:58:00] it's on everything right, too. It's on like Switch pc. Yes. Export. Yes. The Switch was the most recent edition. Um, can't believe it's on Switch, but Yeah. Yeah. It's it's not a mobile is it? No, no. God no. 

Alex Seropian: Yeah. 

Alex Beachum: The the big thing, uh, yeah, no, the funny thing is modern mobile's probably more powerful than the Switch, but, um, it's, the controls would be a huge problem.

Alex Seropian: Oh, right. Yeah. That was the only thing that I knew going into it. It's like, you may wanna bounce off of this game, but 'cause of the controls, but give it, I think I was told 20 minutes and it, it'll be, uh, yeah, it, it'll be like second nature. I really like the controls. Oh, I'm glad. Yeah. I, I did, I did struggle.

It's, it's hard, right? It's hard 

Alex Beachum: to communicate. That's, that's one area of the game, um, where like, you know, if we, if we had a second crack at it, that's one of the few things where I'd be like, yeah, there's probably a better way to not, not make the controls easier per se, but better communicate to players that like, no, no, [00:59:00] no.

It's gonna be okay on onboard. Um, yeah, yeah, this is, 

Aaron: yeah, 

Alex Beachum: some, 

Aaron: so you played on Steam Deck, Alex and Owen on Switch? 

Alex Beachum: Correct. Okay. Oh, he played on Switch. Nice. Cool. I, I'm really, no, I'm really happy that, uh, we worked with a, a team at Unity to do the switch port and Oh, cool. They did just really incredible work.

It, but it still, it still looked like way longer than anyone thought it was going to. We were like, yeah, it's the way, like, I just, I just can't believe it runs, frankly. Like, yeah. All the physics stuff going 

Alex Seropian: on. So, at a while, came out a little while ago. What are you, what are you working on? Can you talk at all about what you're working on now?

Alex Beachum: I can say. Did good. Jackie did, did do a quick, uh, where I was like, what can I actually say? Um, we can say that we're working on something, it's gonna be years before we release it. Okay. Um, and I really, yeah, I really can't, I can't talk about anything else, um, other than, uh, yeah. Yeah. Team's working on stuff.

Alex Seropian: Okay. So you are working on a new game. 

Alex Beachum: Mm-hmm. 

Alex Seropian: And it will be out [01:00:00] in years, in years, 

Alex Beachum: in some number of years. That's, I'm allowed to say that. 

Alex Seropian: Well, good for you. That you get Yeah. The space to, I mean, I guess you'd kind of figured out from outer walls that experience that you'd need time to, to make it special.

Yeah. 

Alex Beachum: No, we're, we're very lucky in that regards. And, and, and, and again, we, you know, the switch port was, um, was, we was an undertaking, so that, that obviously took some time. And, uh, but no, no, we've, we've spent some time, we didn't been doing, you know, did a lot of prototypes and stuff, and. Just had time to explore kind of Yeah.

What we wanted to make next. And, uh, are you, are 

Alex Seropian: you still working with, uh, Kelsey on this one with your sister? 

Alex Beachum: Um, I, it's, it's too, I, it's too early to, like, we haven't, that's too early for story. It's too early. Like, like it's, we're still very early days in terms of like Okay. Like the structure of the team and all of that.

So I, I, I pretty much, pretty much no comment on in terms of any, like who, who's working on what. [01:01:00] Yeah. 

Alex Seropian: Well, well done. Very good. Yeah. All right, Alex, we, we kept you a little over. Uh, thank you so much for spending, uh, the afternoon with us. It was great to hang out. 

Alex Beachum: Yeah, 

Alex Seropian: yeah. No, this was meet too. 

Alex Beachum: No, thanks again for having me on.

This was fun. Um, 

Aaron: yeah. Nice meeting you, Alex. 

Alex Seropian: Right on. Yeah. No. Nice meeting you both. Sweet. All right, cool. Well, best of luck with your new project. We will set a reminder on our calendar for maybe two years out and we'll check back in three years, see how it three years.

Awesome. All right, cool. We'll see you around. Cheers. All right, thanks. Cheers. Bye. 

Aaron: Okay, so what I was gonna say was the emotional thing. Mm-hmm. When I lived in Germany, and it's connected to how they make games there. So I didn't know this and you know, he started with this emotional, not the mechanic, right.

In, in Europe, the game designers give Americans a lot of like, I don't wanna say [01:02:00] crap, but they say like, this is how Americans design games, and this is how specifically Germans design games and board games in general. It's that German games are mechanic based and they're like a really good mechanic. And they're usually not that pretty, you know, they look kind of boring, but they're like really fun.

And then American games are all about the emotion, the theme, you know, the haz and like mechanics are attached to it. Huh. Does that make sense? Uh, okay. And it made me think of that. And I like American Games. Like I'm not, you know, saying that one is better than the other. But that's what I was gonna say is that it reminded me of that, like, when I was over there, I had never know, like even thought about this.

And then, you know, when you're out there, yeah. 

Alex Seropian: You have an example of a motion for Kaan. American board game. Well, that's a mechanic for a German, uh, board game. Yeah. 

Aaron: Kaan would be a straight up mechanic. Uh, there's, if you look up Spiel de Yara, which means Uhhuh Game of the Year. Yeah. And it's a board game.

Every board [01:03:00] game. Like RiNo, Kinia and those guys, they, no, no, no. 

Alex Seropian: But an American one. Okay. American one. American one. That's an emotional first monopoly. Okay. 

Aaron: That game is broken. It get a little 

Alex Seropian: long in a tooth pretty quick. 

Aaron: Yeah. Is that what you're trying to say? It's broken, uh, shoots and ladders. Hey, we got, we got a 

Alex Seropian: lot of friends over Hasbro.

You gotta, we, we got a, you know, monopoly. It's the best game ever made. 

Aaron: It is a great game. Like, that's what I was trying to say is you can have fun with like, I, I'm gonna be honest, I don't have fun with Ka Tom. You guys can. I 

Alex Seropian: don't like it. I had more fun with Monopoly. You're out of the, you're out of the nerd club.

Yeah. Alright. Here was my takeaway from that conversation. I love that he had this crazy mechanic idea that he started with and then basically spent four, five years with a tiny team making this game. But they could, right? I mean, I don't know that they had money. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean they, he worked on it, uh, as a student, worked on it for the IGF.

Mm-hmm. Then worked on it commercially and then worked on it commercially [01:04:00] with funding. So the development went through this long period and I'm not necessarily saying, Hey everybody, let's spend a million years working on one game. But the idea that you can build, uh, on top of something super creative without, uh, necessarily that kind of quarterly shipping pressure and that, you know, the, the artificial, uh.

Momentum that like, you know, like when we were at ea, I'm not bashing ea, but like in commercial. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, game development, uh, puts a lot of these artificial goals in front of a project where he kind of found the fun organically, uh, found the emotion, uh, and was able to take his time to explore the development around a few really cool key concepts and make a whole greater than some of its parts tells a cohesive story.

It's got a lot of extra bits to explore and it's super cool. Yeah, I love that. It's rare, but what, it's a rare thing. It's [01:05:00] part of what, it's part of what I think, uh, we're kind of starting to capture with our journey on, uh, UEF and, and UGC, where the, the budgets are low enough that we can take our time and we can experiment and try things.

Aaron: I was gonna say, would you fund, I. My game idea. No analytics. It, it's fun. I know it's fun. Mm-hmm. You know what I'm saying? Yes. It's like, of course I would, no, I'm being, I'm being serious though. It's like that's 

Alex Seropian: what you're saying is Yes, but I would say more likely I would fund my game idea. That is Yeah.

Aaron: Of 

Alex Seropian: course. Exploratory. But if you're talking theoretically, sure. Absolutely. 

Aaron: Yeah. Well, that's what I'm saying is it is very rare because of there are real life reasons why. Right. And a lot of people right now, oh yeah. You see it on UEFN. People gotta eat. Yeah. And let's like what happened in iOS, like whenever you load up any iOS game that's in the [01:06:00] top 10 grossing 

Alex Seropian: mm-hmm.

Aaron: Everything, every mechanic in that game. Is, is there for a reason, like it's not there because it's fun. Yeah. Like, I don't know how much is there because it's fun. 

Alex Seropian: Right. Maybe we should recognize, like uscs master program. We should recognize the IGF and I think platforms like UEF should fall in that same category as safe places to develop without necessarily the the pressure to deliver.

Aaron: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Like how do they do that? 

Alex Seropian: Elevating art. Elevating our art. Yeah. Maybe they have like an award 

Aaron: show. It has nothing to do with how many people are pulling because they, well, they do have one. Right, but that's the IGF. Yeah. The IGF. But they, no, not the ig. Is it the ig? Yeah. No, no. Not the IGF.

The one, uh, Jeff Kees, they do the UEFN island thing, which is kind of cool. Yeah. 

Alex Seropian: Yeah. Okay. We love Jeff, but that's a very commercial show. That's a big production with a lot of ad dollars, et [01:07:00] cetera. Okay. It's a popularity contest too. It's not, it's not really a, you know, a proponent of the arts maybe. I don't know.

I see what you mean. Come, come some to Jeff if, if I'm wrong 

Aaron: to, to some degree. I know what you mean. Okay. Yeah, so it's just straight up igf maybe does IGF have A-U-E-F-N or a Roblox or um, a utc No, but I category, 

Alex Seropian: I see no reason why a UGC game wouldn't fit the spirit of the community. 

Aaron: Yeah. Yeah, man. We should do, we should bring that up to igf.

Yeah, that's idea. And have like a little That's a great igf. Like we could be judges. We'll get hats. We'll get judge hats. 

Alex Seropian: Oh God. 

Aaron: You would do anything from merch. 

Alex Seropian: Okay, everybody, thank you once again for joining this week. Hope you enjoyed our conversation with Alex. I did. First, Alex, second Alex, I don't know.

I I, I am gonna admit I'm older. [01:08:00] I'm older than most Alex. True Alex. 

Aaron: True Alex. True Alex. 

Alex Seropian: And we shall see you next time. 

Aaron: See you later. Everybody. Thank you for listening to the Fourth Curtain Podcast. Visit us@thefourthcurtain.com to find our monthly newsletter and support the show via Patreon. The Fourth Curtain Podcast is a production of Fourth Curtain Media, lovingly edited by Brian Hensley of Noise Floor Sound Solutions Production support by May Lee, with Community Management by Doug Artman and Art Production by Paul Russell.

Thanks again for listening.