Rod Fergusson Shakes The Jello

Rod: [00:00:00] No, it's, it's, that's totally right. That's one, the reason I like finaling is because you don't have enough time to second guess the decision. You know, when you make a decision on week one, that decision is going to get made and unmade and made and unmade 15 times or 1500 times. When you have four weeks left and you say that's blue, you know, it's not going back to red because you don't have enough time to make it red again.

Right? Like, and so you're like, it sticks. And that's a hard decision. 

Alex: Well, that was Rod Ferguson. The head of the Diablo franchise at Blizzard, talking about what he really loves about finishing a project, that whole process. Trust the process, I guess. I like finishing stuff. I like that about finis you know.

It feels good. We talk about how hard it is to make video games. It really is hard. It's very hard. Making a great game. Just finishing a game is hard, especially a big game. Big complicated project. So Rod's pretty good at that. He dropped a few really [00:01:00] interesting Stories and bits about getting over the finish line.

Yeah, don't spoil 

Aaron: it. I'm not gonna spoil anything. I'm just teeing it up I'm just teeing it up. That is the best feeling though, right? Like it's I kind of don't think it's the same anymore Finishing a game as it was or maybe something like the projects that Blizzard does because they have physical copies, you know There's something about the physical copy.

Yeah, I mean That really seals it, you know, no pun intended. That makes it like, 

Alex: like durable. Tangible. Yeah. No takebacks. Well, you know, I have always found it really interesting, kind of like the emotional project life cycle. It's like at the beginning, everything is theoretical, everything's possible. And then, you know, you get to a first playable and it's like, Oh my gosh, it's like we gave birth to something.

We created something. That's amazing. And then you end up invariably pretty much every project that we've ever been on, you end up in the woods somewhere, you know, it's like, okay, well, we got to take this nugget. We actually got to build a [00:02:00] whole thing around this. And I don't know what the rate is. Paths is or you know, whatever and you're like struggling to get all the ingredients to cooperate with each other But then when you get to the end and it's all cohesive and it's you're polishing and you're finishing It's like plating the meal, you know, and then yeah, they're about to eat it.

Yeah, you're picking the best 

Aaron: piece of chicken That's gonna go on the plate for that one. That's right. That's right. Yeah, 

Alex: there might be a couple bad green beans You're tossing overboard 

Aaron: Yeah. Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you're talking about there is like two stages of finishing. There's that final stretch.

Just before gold and that's the I was going all the way to like it's in the store or it's in the shop, you know Oh, right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm talking about like getting to the gold master, you know getting it yeah, that's actually my favorite time of the process because the game is fully playable at that point and It's the worst time for like engineers, right?

Cuz they're the ones that have to fix everything and QA is working like crazy, but like art is pretty [00:03:00] much done It's like very little bugs Yeah, 

Alex: you're just placing lens flares at that point. 

Aaron: Yeah. 

Alex: What does that mean? That's kind of a little Bungie inside joke. That was my job at the end of Oni, was placing all the lens flares.

So you did that? Yeah. Good times. I'm about to start reading The Witcher. I think I posted a link to, you asked me to post a link to which copy I was going to read. I put it on this one. Oh, no, I was going to start reading it with you. Yeah. Okay. Well, 

Aaron: I put a link to the, to the, uh. When'd you do that? Did you do it yesterday?

Okay. I didn't see. Where is it at? What channel? The general channel? 

Alex: Yeah, it's in the general channel on our discord. Okay. So if any of you'd like to read along and I don't know we can book club I guess. We're 

Aaron: all meeting up at Alex's house. He's gonna grill for us and we're gonna talk about the book.

We'll make some cookies and talk about The Witcher. You know, hey, so regarding the Diablo game, Or these games. I was thinking [00:04:00] about this before, like, we started recording. Actually, yesterday. Because I downloaded Path of Exile, which is a competitor. And I was watching videos on like, I don't know if you saw the, THQ did a huge, It was a really cool video they just released.

Of all their games they're doing. And Titan Quest 2 was THQ? I think it is right? Titan Quest. 

Alex: Okay. 

Aaron: Is it Nordic? Who's Nordic? Did I get it wrong? Now you're making me second guess myself. Well, there is a THQ Nordic. Is that Titan Quest? Yeah, I think so. Right? Okay. All right. Yeah, so there, uh, see now you have me looking it up, but anyway, so Titan Quest 2 is, well, what I wanted to say was that I was thinking about this with Rod and like the games he's doing, right, or just like his responsibility, and you know how we were talking about the whole, like, team stuff.

Every game like that is compared always to Diablo, to that series. It's like Diablo is a reference. It's [00:05:00] the gold standard. It's a reference game. 

Alex: Yeah. 

Aaron: Isn't that crazy? Like, that's gotta be, like, it's honoring that you have that kind of game in a way, but it's also probably really stressful. And I was thinking, like, when we spoke to Rod, I was like, oh, I could see this guy handling that kind of, that kind of stress.

You can kind of tell people's personality. Anyways, I was thinking about that. We didn't talk about team. So I wanted to mention it as like a little thing that it's got to be very hard on the team. Knowing that like everything you're building is going to be over. It's going to get scrutinized. It's going to get scrutinized as the gold standard for every game.

So like THQ, like they released this thing and they're not like, Oh, it's awesome. It's like, how does it compare to this game? Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like fighting games. What is fighting games? It's mortal combat and street fighter. Those are the two. Yeah. Those two are like the, the stand.

Like, yeah. Very interesting. The genre defining. Games, yeah that own the genre [00:06:00] and you have to be better than them or as good or else you suck like a chasm Yeah, like if you're not as good you suck like it. Well, that's how the community 

Alex: is You know what I mean sap but then there's also I think you know, not asserting that halo is genre defining But I guess in a way for console shooters, it is it was yeah And I think they went through, you know, all the different iterations through infinite with that same kind of pressure You And they took lots of turns along that path, you know, so it could be a good thing.

It could be a challenging thing, 

Aaron: you know. Also it's probably very stressful for that team. 

Alex: Or maybe not. I mean, yeah. Same with Call of Duty. Same with Battlefield. You know, both went different directions. Oh, right. We were working on Battlefield. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. I remember that stress. I've always approached game making very simply, that you're building for an audience.

And you need to build [00:07:00] something that players want, you know, so you have to set these expectations that from the player's perspective, when they hear your, Hey, this is what we're making. It's like, Oh, wow, that's cool. I want that. But then you have to deliver above that. You have to exceed those expectations.

When you deliver, it's like that whole thing we were talking about last week about being on time. You can't be on time. You can't meet those expectations. You can either fall short or exceed them. So you got to try to exceed them, you know, and it's especially true, I think with a genre defining game where you're working on version three, four, five, whatever, because there are built in expectations that, you know, the fans have earned because they've been loyal to the franchise for, for years.

So, yeah, I think that's an important consideration. So on that note, Let's jump onto the show. Let's kick off our conversation with Rod Ferguson, who has been living that, delivering multiple iterations of Gears of War, and now on Diablo. Really great guy, and [00:08:00] super accomplished. And if you're at all in the craft of production, get out your notepad and your pencil, because there's lots of great nuggets in here.

Hope you enjoy the conversation. See you on the other side.

Welcome to this week's edition of the fourth curtain, everyone. And what an addition it is. We have a very special guest today, somebody who's helped to mold. I was looking for the right word and I wasn't sure what the right word was. And I chose the word mold. Um, and we can talk about that a little bit, but, um, who's helped to mold some of my favorite games, hint.

Gears of War, Diablo. I'm sure there's some of your favorite games too. Welcome to the podcast, Rod Ferguson. How are you? Welcome, Rod. I'm 

Rod: good. Thank you. I'm excited and I'm happy to be here. I figured you, you started down your long list of people you cared about and now you've hit bottom, so now you're willing to talk to me.

Alex: I started with a list of people who owe me favors.[00:09:00] 

It's like a quarter of the intro and you're going to correct me if I get any of this wrong, but, and this comes from our crack research team. Got your start at Microsoft in the pre Xbox days. So maybe we can compare some notes there. And I think you actually worked for Shannon. Did you work for Shannon Loftus?

Or on her team? Or in the same building? We, 

Rod: yeah, like there's a lot of people like I worked around, like I think Bonnie Ross was my first, I think, studio head. But Shannon is the person who interviewed me to get the job, to join games. And it was the craziest interview because it's the first time I've ever had an interview that got aborted halfway through.

So again, I was a project manager at that point and obviously a big game player, but I hadn't done, I hadn't produced a game yet. And so I went to, there's a long story about, Two games were available at the time, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Microsoft Train Simulator, and the job for Flight Sim was the third producer, which was the person who cared about the ground [00:10:00] textures.

And I'd like to say, you look at Flight Simulator today, you're like, Oh, it's amazing how beautiful the world, and go back, Google search, like 1999 Flight Sim, and look at the very pixelated, very square, flat world like that. I was there. 

Alex: Were there even textures back then? Was it even textured? 

Rod: Yeah. I mean, you know, for the orange monochrome monitors we had, they were good.

I don't think there was actually like geometry or very little. And, and so I was like that. But at the time, as a Microsoft employee, I was at one point in Microsoft Consulting Services and I was with the Enterprise Division and, and so there was lots of gaming, like Deadly Tide and there's lots of games going around.

So I'm like, Oh, Microsoft is into games. Maybe this is my chance. And when I went to like the career web that they had there at the time, the only one they had was this flight sim thing. And I was like, it's a gig, you know what I mean? Like it gets me in the door. But I was not excited about being the scenery guy.

And so when I went to go talk to Andrew Silverman and said, Hey, because of Microsoft, you have this notion of an [00:11:00] informational and so this idea to go pre talk like a pre interview like, Hey, is this right for me? Am I right? Do we get along kind of thing? And so That day I'm waiting there. I'm nervous. I guess I get 10 a.

m. So I'm still I go on the web at 9 a. m. Killing time waiting for my informational. And I see that Microsoft train simulator got added to the career web. So when I went into him and we talked for a while, I said, Hey, I saw you have another job. And he goes, Oh, did that go up today? And I'm like, Yeah. And he goes, Oh, yeah.

I'm happy for you to interview for either. So I said, well, hmm, I could be the number three on FlightSim doing ground textures, or I could have my own game and be the only producer for Microsoft on TrainSim. I'll take the TrainSim gig, which is working with a UK partner named Kuju. And so then I had to do this interview loop.

And Shannon was on it, and at that time, I think she was working on a game called Midnight Madness. I think it was a driving game. And I went into her office. It was the best interview I've ever had in my life. I've never had a better interview ever since. But basically, she was very direct. So she showed me, she sat me down and we were talking for a bit, and then she showed me a screen from Midnight [00:12:00] Madness.

I think it was like the front end or something. And she goes, you know, what's wrong with this? And I was like, Oh, um, well, you know, you have these two buttons are the same size, but they go to different places and these things are different weight, but they do the same thing. And I just went kind of tore it apart from a game play or like a person who plays games a lot.

And then she went, Okay, that's enough. We're done. I'm going to recommend you're hired. We're only like, You know, 15 minutes into this interview, she's like, so you can relax. Let's just talk about stuff now. What do you want to know? And so, you know, and so I was like, Oh, what, what's happening here? And, you know, and so it was a great moment for me to have someone go like, yeah, I'm recommending you let's, you know, interview over.

Okay. Now let's just talk about games and stuff. So that was, it was awesome. And so I've had a great relationship. I, I love Shannon and, uh, I still have a great relationship to this day. 

Aaron: Yeah, that's awesome. I would have gotten nervous if, if they was like, all right, you're in, let's just chat. It's like, I'll screw this up.

Is this 

Rod: a trick question? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was not, I didn't nail [00:13:00] that loop. Like there was probably, you know, Microsoft was notorious for long loops. And I think there's probably like eight people in there and there's one I blew horribly, but I think there's other seven like overrode him and said, like, you know, he was a tech guy.

This is a classic. You know, the Microsoft type is like, he's an engineer barefoot at the office, you know, behind the desk, you know, and on the windowsill is his juggling pins. And, you know, like, it's like, it was just very, and so I'm like, I just wasn't tech. You're just 

Alex: being observational, right? 

Rod: Yes.

Observation, not judgmental. Yes. No, just observational. Yeah. And so I was not technical enough for this individual. And so he told everybody like, no, we shouldn't hire this guy. And so, but like people like Shannon overrode him. So I'm very appreciative of that. 

Alex: It's good when you get a practical. Interview like that where you can actually it's like intersects what you care about because then it's easy totally 

Rod: yeah Well, yeah I mean because but Microsoft's notorious for the wire manholes round and yeah You cut a cube in half or what are the colors on all the [00:14:00] sides and all that stuff like so Part of it was like interviewing at Microsoft at the time felt like you need to be reading Nick Some games magazine, like just puzzle magazines.

So you could figure out all the interview questions that people, they wanted to be like super smart. Cause I got you with a puzzle or whatever. 

Alex: All right, well now we're like a third through the intro world's 

Rod: longest. 

Alex: I'm going for world's longest intro. 

Aaron: What do I have? What's the record? You're almost there.

We, we, no way. What are we like 30 minutes? As long as he gone. 

Alex: No. You showed up on time. I can give you credit for that. Yeah.

So let's see. Formed some formative years at Microsoft, seven years at Epic, working on Gears of War. You know, one of the things that you made a joke about, like where you are on our radar. You know, when I read Cliff Blazinski's book, he talks about you a bunch, very flatteringly. Oh, that's good to hear.

Have you read the book? I have not. I like the book. I want to read the book, too. I haven't read it either. We'll [00:15:00] unpack that in a minute, too. Well, in any case. At Epic, for seven years, Gears of War, Bullsplorm, Infinity Blade, and then some time at Irrational with Ken Levine, finishing up Bioshock Infinite, and then to Blizzard.

Is that right? Have you been at Blizzard since then? No, no, no. The Coalition. Oh my gosh. I missed the whole chapter. 

Aaron: What's the Infinity Blade part? What did you, what was your role on Infinity Blade? 

Rod: Well, it's kind of like part of, there's a bunch of stuff in there where like I helped people ship. Um, and so there are things that like I was the leader of, or I helped drive, you know, the, the project, but there's a bunch of stuff in there where I supported teams or helped people kind of get through.

Because one of the things I, I was kind of people. Perceive me as being good at as triage and so I'm pretty good at being objective about what to fix and what not to fix and how you do that process and how you take the emotion out of it and what do you think about and so part of it was that Epic had got chair and so chair [00:16:00] was shipping bigger games or like infinity blade and they Did not have the muscle, the production muscle, um, because they were a small team.

And so I came in and kind of taught is too strong a word, but I sort of guided them on my production philosophies and how I ship or how I final to help them kind of cross the line. And it's sort of the same thing. Like we started up a project called infinity blade dungeon, which is kind of like, I remember that now is like foreshadowing.

And so that 

Alex: was in a Apple keynote. 

Rod: Yeah, which was like, yeah, that was, it was a crazy time. Cause like I actually got to go do the locked in a room, you know, for three days and Cupertino and you can't talk to anyone and you don't know if you're on or not and all this stuff and trying to be very rehearsed because they care a lot, but then making it sound like that joke you just made was off the top of your head, which are.

Not kind of allowed to do that. So it was like, you know, I was actually pretty proud. I went back and recently watched that. I was like, Oh, that kind of sounded natural. It sounded like my banter, my gamer banter sounded natural. You were the one that did [00:17:00] the demo in the keynote? Uh, me and Mike Capps. Mike Capps was the voice, like he's as he is, he's a good front man.

And then I was the person playing the demo. Okay. You were playing it live. Yeah. Playing it live and giving the. Aha, take that kind of, you know, like I was doing the gamer language and poking fun at my kind of thing. And so, but that was all rehearsed. And, and it was kind of funny that I was really shocked by after being at Microsoft with E3 all the time.

Like the production values are quite high. And it was kind of funny that like, what you've been doing this long enough, once you've done press and you do, you know, things that are on camera and, and things like E3, like the notion of like getting makeup is not unusual to you anymore. Like the idea, like I've now made it a thing that every time I get made up, I take a picture of the makeup table and I post it to Twitter going, like, I feel so pretty.

Like I do it all the time. And, and then, and cause the thing is like, when you're finished your shoot, they're all like, Oh, do you want a cloth to wipe the makeup off? And I'm like, Are you kidding? This is the best I've ever looked like, no, I'm going to stay like this till I shower. Like, what are you talking about?

And [00:18:00] so, but it was funny to me was that, so I was used to that. And I was used to like all the rigor and all that stuff. When you went to the Apple thing, there's nothing. So we were sitting in the green room, like, I'm like, when it's like hair and makeup and they're like, what are you talking about? We're about to go on stage and be on camera and talk to everybody.

Like, when did the makeup happen? And they're like, Oh no, we don't do makeup. And I'm like, really? And everybody else in the room was like, What's going on? And I'm like, there's no makeup. And they're like, what? And so the funny thing was, because I've been doing this long enough, I had in my back pocket, these package of papers, you can get that absorb oil, right?

Like right now, like I'm shining across like, cause I, and so you would like dab this thing and it would absorb all the oils. So you wouldn't be shiny. Everybody in the room like looked to see me like doing this thing on my forehead and they're like, can I have one? Can I have one? Can I have one? And it was like passing gum around because everybody's like, there's no makeup.

Like what's going on? Like, it was really funny. But, and that was the shock to me. And I was just like, I was expecting this to be so buttoned up and so professional and they're very professional, but they're not like nobody walking onto that stage wore makeup, which I thought was really [00:19:00] strange. 

Alex: That is, that is interesting.

Okay, I think I might have tried to speed run the rest of that intro there because I think I missed a few years with It was the coalition right where you were working on Gears of 

Rod: War Yeah, I went back to them like because I guess with the acquisition I'm on my third Microsoft tour duty So yeah, so, you know, I started Oh, that's 

Alex: right!

You're now back at Microsoft. 

Rod: My joke with Phil is like, Dude, you didn't need to pay 69 1 billion, I would have come back. Just give it to me directly. You didn't have to go and buy the whole thing. I would have come for one. It was Microsoft in Canada. I was what they call a Microsoft consultant. Then I did the thing we just talked about with Shannon.

Uh, like joined at that time when they were, it was simulations. But then when Xbox came along, we had to be more hip. So we became aces, which was action combat ampersand simulations. That's how we spelt the aces part. And that's kind of the time when you guys were around, because you guys kind of pissed us off because you were the ones who locked the hallway doors on us.

And we're like, what do you mean? My badge [00:20:00] doesn't work on this door. And like, no, no, that's a bungee door. You don't go in that hallway. And we're like, what? And then we go, like, cool. But they're having like a buffet with shrimp and stuff. Like, that's a bungee buffet. You don't get to have that. And we're like, what the hell's going on?

Like, so it was really funny when you guys came in. I deny. I don't think that ever happened.

A hundred 

Alex: percent.

Rod: You guys were like frigging gold standard. And we were like, no, you're just lowly developer. You're no bungee. You know, I'm like, okay, fine. Jesus. 

Alex: That I must've missed the memo on that. I don't know how that happened. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have let that up. Um, all right. So this one's your third tour, but in the middle, there was a second tour where you were working on Gears of War again, not from the Epic side, you know, and then like Microsoft bought IP, right?

At some point. 

Rod: Yeah. So that's what happened. So I basically. So once we shipped basically Gears 3 and then Gears of War Judgment, it was pretty clear, like Tim [00:21:00] told me basically like, Epic is going mobile. And so I was like, Oh, okay. And he's like, no, seriously, we're burning the boats. Like we're going mobile.

I was like, Oh, okay. And then Tencent came in, bought 40%. I'm like, Oh, we really are going mobile, like Tencent. And so we would go into these meetings and be like, let's teach you how Tencent does mobile games and all that stuff. So I was like, At that time I was like, I don't know, like mobile isn't kind of, I like being on magazine covers.

I like AAA quality. I like being telling big stories and mobile at that time didn't feel quite right to me. And so I said, okay, well, I think this is probably time for me to leave. And so that's when, and so my wife freaked out because I told her like, look, I'm going to quit. And she goes, but you don't have another job.

And I'm like, I know, but I'm going to quit. And she was like, well, but you don't have another job yet. And I'm like, and I said, well, I think I don't like the back room conversations of like whispering when you're leaving to try to find like the one person who might know somebody who knows somebody. I was like, I want to just put myself out there on a blast.

Like, Hey, I'm, I'm unemployed. Does anybody want it? You know, well, not me kind of thing. And so I did [00:22:00] that. Again, freaked out my wife and it ended up being funny because it's basically Cliff's agent, Ophir, who said, Hey, I also work with Ken Levine. He's in dire needs. It looks like Bioshock Infant is going to get canceled.

It's not going to make it. And so if there's any way that you could maybe, you know, work with him, that would be amazing. So I was like, and again, at the time I was really big and still am. I just love story. I love characters. I love that whole, the narrative side. So I was like, Hey, you know, I'm going to work with you.

If you're going to learn about story, like go learn from somebody like Ken. And so I went and interviewed with them and got that. And, and I said, I went back to my office and I sat down and I sort of reversed the schedule from where we were to where we needed to be. And I was like, look, Ken, you're at least three months late, if not more.

Like, again, cause we're, we're moving fast. I basically said, Hey, we're increasing hours or whatever, not thinking about all the people who are on contract. And somebody, after I made my big speech and everybody's like, okay, I get it. Let's go. Yeah. You know, you just spent like 2 million, right? And I'm like, Nope, I didn't realize that I did not realize that I just increased all the [00:23:00] contractors times to cost us 2 million, but it basically went to take two and said, look, how long can I go?

And they said, well, our fiscal year ends in March. So if you're going to slip the furthest, you can slip to March. And so I was like, okay, I'll take it. And so that's what we ended up shipping in March. So then when that was done, then. Take two didn't want to lose me. So they're like, Hey, we have some ideas.

And could you maybe come out to, you know, the West coast? And so I was looking at starting up a studio for them, um, which became hanger 13. So if you know, there's a studio called hanger 13, like I bait with Hayden Blackman, like basically got 60 percent of the way to making that studio a studio. And then.

I realized take two just wasn't for me at that time. And so I was, you know, I said, I can't do this. And so I reached out to a friend of mine at Microsoft said, Look, I'm going back. I'm on the street again. I just quit take two and I don't have another job. And then they were like, Wait, what? And I'm like, Yeah, I quit.

This was like November and they were like, well, we just bought gears of war. So if you're free, like, how would you like to, how would you like to come to Vancouver? And I was like, Oh, [00:24:00] that could be cool. So, and off I went, so that's kind of where, and then, you know, over the next two years, I became the studio head there.

And then we. And the thing I'm most proud of is that basically in six years, we shipped five games. Like we shipped the Gears 1 remaster, we shipped Gears 4, we shipped Gears 5. We shipped a mobile game called Gears Pop and we shipped a PC game called Gears Tactics. All five of those games were shipped in a six year period for a studio that hadn't shipped in five, six years.

So it was just the, the team really rallied, which was great. 

Alex: Wow. That's, uh, no pun intended, Aaron. Pretty epic. Yeah. 

Aaron: Wait, can I ask a question about Hangar 13? Were they the one, were y'all doing the Star Wars bounty hunter? What were the, no, what was it? 

Rod: It was, it became the next Mafia game. Oh, the Mafia game, yeah.

So it was basically taking people who had worked on a different kind of Bioshock game. I can't remember the name of it anymore, but it was a different camera. It wasn't the same. And then that studio ended up kind of collapsing on itself there up in [00:25:00] Nevada. And then, so we ended up, you know, kind of picking who the right people were to keep going forward with, and then working with a studio in, um, Eastern Europe that we were working with on the engine and stuff.

And it was basically make another mafia game. And the thing that I was trying to do for me creatively, it was like, I worked with Hayden and we came up with a pitch, which was. Instead of being a mafia leader, who's trying to create your mafia, what if you were a guy who came back from like Vietnam with all this military training, kind of the punisher and go, your job is to take down the mafia.

And so that wasn't received very well. And then I was just like, I don't, the way that that was received told me that maybe this isn't the best place for me. And so that's why I left, but, but ultimately it led me to the coalition, which was, you know, just a phenomenal experience. And that was where I was when I left there to come to Blizzard.

Alex: Now, when you left there, were you recruited by blizzard? Or did you quit there without having a job lined up? Did you put yourself on the, on the market? 

Rod: No, I didn't do that again. No, [00:26:00] no. What happened is they came a calling in like 2017 and said, Hey, You know, would you be interested in leading the Diablo franchise?

And, uh, cause we're working on, on Diablo four, it'd be great if you could come and at least talk to us, interview before, cause they're having trouble finding people that was Blizzard is a unique place. And so you finding people who could pass sort of the culture test and the interviews was challenging.

And so I said, no, I said, I can't, I'm one of those people. Like I will not leave a project. That's close to shipping. Like I just, you ride it out, you know, your ride or die with the one year shipping. And so I was like, we're too close with gears five. Like, you know, and so I can't do that. I'm not leaving. I got to ship this game.

And so then they come back in 2019 and near the end of the year. And I'm like, Oh, you're back. And they're like, yeah, would you be interested? And I'm like, well, This can't be for Diablo four. It's been two years. You have to be close to shipping and it can't be for the Diablo lead because you've been two years.

You must've filled that spot already. And they're like, huh? Funny. You should say that actually, no, we still need a [00:27:00] Diablo leader and we're still quite far from shipping. So I was like, Oh, Wow, you really are. You really do need somebody. So I was like, okay, well, if there's any place I would ever go to, or any game I would go to, it'd be Diablo over Gears.

And the thing is that, like, I like shipping, you know, and we had just shipped Gears 5 and I just met with my tech director, Kate Rayner, and she was saying basically that Hey, you know, by the time we have to switch engines and we're, it's going to take 18 months to get that happening. And then we've got to take, you know, whatever, five years to do another.

So I was like, Oh, wow, this is going to be like six plus years or five to six years without shipping anything. And that sort of got, I was like, eh, and so when I, they were like, Hey, we have all this stuff going on in Diablo right now. And I'm like, Oh really? And so. Part of that is if you look down, I've been with Blizzard for four years and I've shipped, you know, Diablo II Resurrected, Diablo Immortal, Diablo 4.

And so like that idea that I've shipped three games in four years It's kind of like I think if you look at all the things I've touched like the Infinity Blades of the world or the Unreal Tournament [00:28:00] 3s of the world or the Bulletstorms of the world like things I've helped That's basically almost, you know, 21 games in 22 years.

I, you know, it does 

Aaron: feel good. Doesn't it? 

Rod: Yeah, it feels great. So, but that's the kind of pace I like. So whenever somebody says like, Oh, let's go do a new IP and take seven years. I'm like, 

Alex: no, 

Rod: how about no. 

Alex: Rod, I'm with you. We have shipped. We shipped seven games, seven products in 13 months. What? We're in the UGC space.

We're making games in, uh, in Fortnite now. So it's a whole different ball of wax. We worked on Battlefield for how long? Five years? We worked on, well, I mean, I guess you could unroll that end to end five years between ship cycles. Yes. Yes. You could do that. Painful. Yeah. And 

Rod: there's nothing technically wrong with it.

It's, I think that's great. I just, there's just like my favorite part of game making is getting it out the door. And so the notion of spending, you know, two years in pre production or [00:29:00] in concept or whatever, like it's just, it's just slow. I love it from the creativity perspective, but it's just slow. 

Alex: You said something about your finishing or finaling process, which I want to ask you about, but before that, this is intriguing to me.

You talked about leaving. Epic, not having anything lined up, you know, freaking out your wife and all that, but what, what is it about you? Do you think that that's not the way most people would approach career management? What is it about you that made you look at the world that way to go, I'm going to stop this before I start that.

Rod: It just felt limiting because it was like, when you're trying to find a new job while keeping your current one, it all has to be on the down low. And so it becomes like. Who do you know more than who's out there? And so there were people who reached out to me because I could go on blast and say, I'm unemployed that I would never have had contact with, you know?

And so that was the thing for me is that it kind of, it actually, [00:30:00] because I felt like I had a desirable set of skills, I was the Liam Neeson of a moment. I had a, you know, I had a certain set of skills.

So I felt like because I had a certain set of skills, there was. People would want that, those skills. And so I wanted to see who was out there and, and so people, that makes a lot of sense. It does. Right. And yeah, I mean, you know, you're taking a risk, but you have to have a little bit of confidence, but I mean, the thing for me that was really great about that was I'd really come into my own.

At Epic, you know, I, I shipped games at Microsoft, but they were mostly like, I was the publishing producer for the most of them. And it was really Counter Strike X Box where I created my own team and shipped that game that it felt like, Oh, that's what internal development feels like. Not a publishing producer, actually, you know, game dev producer.

And that's what made me leave to go to Epic was like, Oh, you guys are drowning. They were missing milestones and they were having a terrible time managing the relationship with Microsoft. So in some ways, Microsoft was happy to see me leave because they were like, thank God now. Gears of War will have [00:31:00] somebody that we can trust and talk to.

And it was kind of funny because they sort of thought I was a mole. And I had many a time I had to go like, you know, I work for them now. Right. Like, like, could you tell us this thing? And I'm like, no, I can't actually, you know, I don't work for you still. Like I work for them now, you know? I know. So it was kind of funny from that perspective, but the notion of coming into my own, cause I went from like, I was like producer for Gears one and there was only one, so it was kind of crazy.

Like we were. Here's one was like eight. I was employee 63 when I was hired. And we were basically 80 people when we shipped gears one. And so I was the only producer. And then I went to senior producer for gears two, and then I went to executive producer for gears three. And so, and then basically I was the director of production for the company for a little while.

And then, so I kind of came into my own there, but after a while you're sort of going like, am I only succeeding because of who I've surrounded myself with? Right? because I hadn't. Phenomenal talent, you know, Chris Perna and Lee Perry, like all these amazing people that were at that company. [00:32:00] And so one of the nice things about going to Bioshock Infinite and being able to have that, you know, what was seen as a game that was not going to ship and actually ship it with a great rating was that it was actually very affirming to me that my, my skills were portable.

I didn't have to only have this set of people. I could actually do it. I, you know, I could repeat that process. Yeah. 

Alex: Thinking about how you describe. Putting yourself on the market, opening opportunities, it was deliberate choice. That sounds to me like you just, you bet on yourself and that's a bit of a thread we get with folks that have found success.

You kind of have to make a bet on yourself to come out the other side in a better state. So I think that's pretty cool. 

Aaron: Thanks. You said your first game was the train simulator for yourself. Before that, what were you up to? Like were you, you said you're a project manager, were you like software or? 

Rod: Yeah, it was literally what happened was, see you've opened this can of worms.

I don't even think we're off the intro, but anyway. 

Alex: Yeah, [00:33:00] no, at some point we got to get in the way back machine. I think this is a segue, right? This is a segue into the way back machine. 

Rod: Here's the deal. So. Uh, I'm in the University of Ottawa for computer science and I ended up starting my own company doing the computer consulting and at one point, to the point where I don't actually get my degree, I actually leave the university two credits short.

I'm two courses short. 

Aaron: And are you a gamer at this point? 

Rod: Yeah, but what I was doing was like, you know, IT type stuff or basic programming stuff. And so what ends up happening is that as a summer job, I ended up working on mainframes, doing COBOL programming. And so that, and it pays really well at that time in the, in whatever that is in the 1990s.

And so I've become a freelancer and I ended up on a project where it's being project managed by a Microsoft consultant. And I am supposed to be a visual basic programmer and we're working with the Department of Justice in Canada and we're making time sheet software for the lawyers because they have to kind of track everything to the six minutes or whatever, because of how their billable hours work.[00:34:00] 

And what was happening is that I ended up becoming this sort of business analyst because I could go talk to the lawyers and understand what they were saying so that I could turn those into requirements and give it to the programmers because I was technical enough to speak to the programmers. And so I was this go between all of a sudden.

So the project manager goes like, wow, we could really use somebody like you at Microsoft. And I was like, Oh, really? That's kind of cool. Like, you know, I'm just a small town kid from Canada. Like the idea of going to work for Microsoft was really appealing. So I ended up going to Toronto and I had the same basic kind of thing where I told you about Microsoft.

I was like, I have some really good interviews, but a couple of technical interviews that kind of, I didn't land. I wasn't the most technical person. And so, but they needed people. So I got it. And. But because of that lack of depth of technology understanding, like how to do an NT domain or, you know, third normal form in a SQL database and all that stuff, like I latched on because we were like that.

We had to have billable hours. We were like a lawyer, like because when they charged us out, they charge us out of like 1500 a day. I wasn't getting paid that, but that's how much they were charging the customer or the [00:35:00] client. I had to find a way to get billable hours or I was, it looked bad. And there was this course at the time called the Microsoft Solutions Framework.

And it was a course that taught enterprise customers how to make software, like how to develop the Microsoft way. And I started to teach that course. It was a three day course and I got really good at it. And so that was, became my way. I'm getting my billable hours. I just kept teaching this course over and over and over again.

So all these customers to the point where they go, I became the Canadian champion of the Microsoft solution framework. So then eventually Redmond comes to calling and says, Hey, we're making version two of this course, and we hear you're really good at teaching this course, would you mind coming to Redmond being transferred to Redmond and make the next version that we're going to send it to the field, to the Microsoft consultant.

And so like, Again, small town kid from Canada. I'm going to go to Redmond. I'm going to be on campus. Like it's the big leagues. That's 

Aaron: like a beautiful city too. It's like the best city to go in that part of the country. 

Rod: And so I said, yes. And so off I go. And then I had this amazing, like my first [00:36:00] night driving in and parking in the underground garage in a building where Auntie was being made and coming up and eating some of their crunch food.

And Just taking it all in. Like I'm, you know, I'm on Microsoft. This is amazing. But anyway, so I, for about a year, year and a half, I'd take the ship version two of that course and successfully do that. But then I'm like, now what? And that was when I hit the career web and saw the flight sim thing, but it was, so it was kind of this.

You know, from enterprise services, which was that, you know, uh, helping enterprise customers and helping the consultants that are out there to game making, and there's like a bunch of different fits and starts. Like once I did train Sim, Microsoft got on a real passion for internal development. And so they were like, we're going to start our own studios and all these things.

We're going to make our own games and we're not going to work with other developers as much. And then they realized this is really hard and really expensive. We're going to start working with a new type developers more, you know, and it kind of went. Back and forth all the time where, you know, Oh, working with outside partners, we don't have control.

And so we can bring it in. Oh, bringing it in is really expensive and we can't do it. We're going to go back out. And, and a couple of games [00:37:00] that I was working on that I can see the tea leaves. I'm like, this isn't going well, they're going to shut this down. I need to get out of here. And so that's why I was like, Hey, went back to the publishing guys going like, you guys got any gigs for in publishing?

And I'm like, well, yeah, we got this counter strike thing. And I'm like, Done. I'm on. Let's go. And so I got out of there and sure enough they riffed a bunch of people on the trying to start our own studios in there because it wasn't going very well. So I sort of dodged this bullet. And sorry, this is a long story.

This is a three hour podcast by the way. I hope you're all buckled in. 

Alex: You and our buddy Brian Reynolds. 

Rod: You know Brian? No, no, no. We have a two parter with him. I'm at two, Parker. I'm going for three. I want to hear about the gamer part, 

Aaron: though. 

Rod: Oh, no, sorry. But I was going to say, like, philosophically, there was this great night that we had where I was talking with a bunch of my other producer friends, and we had this notion, when we heard about the riffs potentially coming, we had this great conversation that I always, always Go back to which is, you know, you're sitting around having a beer and you go like, What are you?

Are you a game maker? Or are you a Microsoft employee? And so that's how we went [00:38:00] around the table. It was like this one guy is like, Okay, you got what are you? You're gonna make games? Are you gonna switch to another group inside of Microsoft? And he goes like, Oh, no, I'm a Microsoft employee. And sure enough, he went off to like Windows Media Maker or something because he got riffed.

And I was like, I'm a game maker. If I get riffed, I'm going to leave my, although it's a 200, 000 person company, I'm not going to go find another gig inside of Microsoft. I'm going to go find a gig in a game company. It was a solidifying moment when you realized, am I a Microsoft employee or am I a game maker?

And so that was that idea of like, no, I'm willing to leave Microsoft to go make games. And that was part of the, yeah. Eventually got me to leave to go, go to Epic. Right on. Yeah. But your gamer thing, as a Microsoft consultant, we used to have to go sell stuff, right? We were the representatives in the field.

We were the region. And one of the things when Deadly Tide and Motocross Madness and all these games that were sort of Microsoft labeled games, Monster Truck Madness, all that stuff. They would have us go to like the gaming stores and put up a projector and show the games and get people excited and stuff.

Or we would go to [00:39:00] some event and demonstrate. So that's how we kind of got involved knowing that Microsoft was trying to get into games. It was like, we were kind of the damnable guys to show off the games and we would sign up for it because it was something we love to do. It was like talk games. So 

Aaron: I, I meant more like what is small town rod.

Playing at home, 

Alex: like growing up. Did you have a computer in the house? Do you have like a console? What, what was that? 

Rod: No, I wasn't a console guy. And the thing I never played an original PlayStation or a PlayStation two. My first PlayStation was a PlayStation three. And my first console I ever really owned, I think was a, my, well, my girlfriend bought me in university, which she's not my wife, but she bought me like a, I think it was a SNES was my first, that's 

Aaron: a good woman, man.

You're a good guy. Yeah, exactly. And 

Rod: hence why I married her. I mean, but no, I played, the key thing is that friends. And so I had like, you know, I played the ColecoVision on the television and I played the Atari 2600 and stuff, but when I leaned in was like the Apple two days. And so there was a place in Ottawa where you could get, like, buy an Apple two [00:40:00] clone, like, you remember when the Apple two clones were the thing or the Apple two E clone, and so that was really the kind of like I playing wizardry and chopper and, you know, all those types of things.

And so there's just a bunch of. Stuff and my brother sort of turned me on to it because he's nine years older than me and he had a trash 80 You know monochrome playing, you know, the Olympics game or it's just triathlon I think was called and you know all the stuff about that like even like when people were like, what's your first video game?

I'm like, well, one of them was like a text adventure, which I think was maybe Zork, but it was connected to a university It was at my brother's friend's apartment, and it was a terminal You With no monitor. It was a terminal with a printer that connected to the university. And so you would go, go north and it would go, You know, and this dot matrix would tell you what you did.

And so you could actually like read your journey, like, because you had pages and pages of your thing. But that's how old I am. It was like, one of the games I played was like on paper, not on. 

Alex: That's awesome. That's awesome. All right. So I do want to ask you [00:41:00] about your process, your superpower. It sounds like you have, because.

You describe, I don't know, uh, finishing a game like maybe in the gears era was like this for you. But one of my core memories is when we were finishing Halo, um, which had a hard date, you know, we were, we had to GM whatever, however many weeks before the release of the first X Box. And that was like three teams merging to one, all of that.

And we had. A nightly triage when we got past as like after E3, probably in like the last eight weeks, every night we'd be triaging and prioritizing, jettisoning, et cetera. It's a core memory for me and it could have been horrible, but I actually enjoyed it and it sounds like maybe that's kind of where you're, I don't know, just listening to you, it made me think maybe that's kind of part of where your sweet spot is, is in that micro level, super detailed, actual decision making in the moment.

Let's try to do the right [00:42:00] thing. And here's why, I don't know. I'm putting words in your mouth, but 

Rod: no, no, it's it's, that's totally right. That's one. The reason I like finaling is because you don't have enough time to second guess the decision. You know, when you make a decision on week one, that decision is going to get made and unmade and made and unmade 15 times or 1500 times when you have.

Four weeks left and you say, that's blue. You know, it's not going back to red because you don't have enough time to make it right again. Right? Like, and so you're like, it sticks and that's a hard decision. And there was something I was comfortable with that. Like there was a bug in gears one. I still remember this like in my little office, cause I was one of the last people in the new building.

And so I got this basically broom closet for an office and I had all the leads in my office around my computer. And there was a bug and it may still be in it, honestly, but there was a bug in gears one, where if you're on your way to your father's house in that game. If you took your pistol and you shot the landscape on the other side of the river, the bullet decal that's supposed to draw there to show an impact would actually be the [00:43:00] entire size of the Hill.

So the entire Hill would go black. 

Alex: And 

Rod: so it would be like, Oh, there's a green thing over there. And you shoot one bullet over there and it goes, the entire Hill goes black. And I'm like, okay, punt. And the entire room just turns on me. And I'm like, what are you, what, what are you saying? I'm like, I'm saying we're shipping with that.

And I'm like, No, like that, you can't ship with that. I'm like, who is going to turn around on their way to the thing and shoot 180 degrees backwards on a Hill where there's no enemies are, we're going to put an engineer or an artist on to fix it. No, we're not fixing that bug. And they were like, Oh. Okay. I guess.

Yeah, that makes sense. So that notion of like trying to be sensitive to what actually matters to players versus what is just like, Oh, quality for quality sake, like the notion of like, I have to get rid of them all. Like, I think that's part of the thing that I think the average player doesn't understand, which is okay, but you know, Alex and Aaron, like, Probably every game ships with probably at least 4, 000 open bugs.

Like, you know what I mean? Like there's, there's no game [00:44:00] that ships with zero bugs. Like the fact that you didn't find it doesn't mean that it's not there. And I had to do that. Like, so what you're talking about, we were so underwater irrational. So my process is usually that like having kind of what you said, the nightly committee.

But when we were shipping Gears 4, we did it three times a day. We had a morning, afternoon and night triage section because we had, you know, around the clock, follow the sun bugs coming in. Yeah. Um, and there's actually an article. Every discipline? Yeah, the lead of each, like probably like six people, plus, you know, the QA director, tech director, art director, game director, that kind of stuff.

There was actually a guy, we brought in a reporter from Vice for, and he actually wrote about our process. So you can actually go on the web today and read the article about like us shipping Gears 4. But. At Irrational, I was looking at how underwater we were, and I realized that I couldn't take that much time from the disciplines.

Like, I couldn't take a, my tech director, my art director, my game director, and have them in a room with me for three plus hours a day triaging bugs. So, I just did it. And I [00:45:00] just made an executive decision. And so, when everybody went home, I sat there and I would try to triage about 400 bugs a night to stay ahead of it, and by myself.

Aaron: Wow. 

Rod: And so what the thing was, like, in order to do that, I had to come up with rules. And so one of the rules, like, this is a rule, I'm sure you could go find these bugs, but, my rule was, like, cause one of the things, We always deal with is what we call an AUS, which was an aggressive user scenario. And so like, there's times when if a player is purposely trying to mess with your game, there's sometimes you go like, okay, that's within bounds.

I'll fix it. But like, no, no, like you should expect the game to break if you're about to do what you're doing. Like you're purposely being, you know, bad. And so I'm not going to work real hard to save you from yourself. And so one of the things I said was like, if you're bouncing around the world in a rational, if I could jump.

And get stuck on one jump, then I would fix that. But if it took more than one jump in a row, like bunny hopping, We didn't fix it. And so I would basically be like, Oh, three bunny hops. I got stuck on a [00:46:00] handrail against a wall pun. Like, cause you know, what are the odds? Somebody is going to jump three times in the same spot, like bunny hop.

But it was for practical reasons, because it was just like, I have to come up with some sort of filter by which to process this is we can only fix so many so fast. And, you know, so there was just managing that. And that's kind of the thing that I think. One of my secret, it's not a secret because lots of people do it now, but one of the things that a lot of people weren't doing, and we do it on Diablo now all the time, it's funny is like, it feels so natural to listen to like, as we're shipping stuff where they go like, all right, everybody, we're raising the bug bar and everybody's like, yep, got it.

And I'm like, wow, four years ago, that was not the conversation when I talked about the idea that, you know, we don't care about low bugs anymore. And so now you have to make a decision. Are you punting it or are you promoting it? Like that low is now a medium because you care or that low is gone because you don't care, but we don't have time to deal with lows anymore.

And then two to three weeks would go by and we're going like, all right, raising the bug bar. We don't care about mediums anymore. Are you making it a high or are you getting rid of it? And then you have to do that all the way to, [00:47:00] okay, we're a week away and we can only work on critical bugs, you know? Like, and so that increasing the tension, but it allows you to get through the bugs is like, is part of how you can final.

And so that's been something that I've had in my entire career about this idea of raising the bug bar and how do you process it? 

Alex: Yeah. 

Rod: Um, yeah. 

Alex: Well, so back to you, you know, you're in uh, Quincy Mass with Irrational Finaling Infinite and you are personally taking on the burden of doing that nightly triage on your own.

Would you actually like, Here's an issue I'm looking at. I don't have all the context for it. I'm going to boot up the game now and play to this point and fill out my picture, the context of this, so I can make a decision on whether. It takes one jump or three because the tester didn't put that information in here.

We're like, were you doing that? Or did you find yourself like, all right, maybe 10 or 20 percent of the issues tonight, I have to park for more information that's some very weeds question, I guess, but I'm just trying to imagine my [00:48:00] memory of like doing cause the last year or so we haven't been doing that kind of process.

But my memory is like, every time you get an issue, there's always questions. 

Rod: It means making sure the bugs have the right information in it. And you sort of, as a team, over time, you get better at it. The tricky part is like, the thing we had to get out of is not getting either snarky or punchy. Because what would happen is you would be sending bugs back to QA.

You know, that you maybe it's one in the morning and you guys have been just doing it all day. And so you're just like stupid, like you're being punchy or you're a little cranky. And so you would send this sort of like, you know, harshly written response to like the not enough information thing. And then the tester comes in and looks at this thing, like, what the heck is this about?

And, you know, you're like, I'm really sorry. We were tired last night. I apologize for what I wrote in that book. You know, so the thing became like, how do you keep it like even keel when you're asking for more information? But to me at that time, anyway, like. A lot of it was around speed mattered. [00:49:00] And so a lot of it was, yeah, I would NMI and I was in need more information.

I would, I wouldn't try to guess, or I was trying not to make bad decisions. 

Alex: I can imagine that situation. Part of what would have had to make you successful there is training those around you. How to enable you and the team in general to be fast. 

Rod: Yeah, that was one of the big breakthroughs there was the idea that understanding that to make a level in a rational, like in infinite was essentially a 12 step process.

Like there were 12 things you need to do, like, you know, lay it out and put the textures and da, da, da, da, da, like, Put the mesh for the collision. Like, and so one of the things we did very early was to say, okay, there are 12 levels of 12 steps. So there's 144 things we need to get done to ship this game.

And we actually printed out a thing that was like an entire hallway long, which was essentially. The 12 levels and the 12 steps. And you could go up with a big marker and go like, we've completed step three on level five or whatever. And what it did [00:50:00] was it allowed to sort of concretize the product, like make it real and that it wasn't just some spreadsheet somewhere or whatever.

It was like, Oh, like every day when I go get my coffee, I can see, we still haven't done step six on level nine. Right. Like, and, and so it made it much more visible and made it more clear about like what, what we're doing. We had still had left to do, and there's lots of things around that in terms of filing and fixing bugs, but that idea of like, Hey, make level four still hasn't gotten past step two.

What are we doing about that? It was really easy to have conversations around that. 

Alex: Yeah. 

Rod: How was that displayed? Just like it was a big printer. Like. You know, whatever the widest you can get, which is probably what, I don't know, four feet maybe. And then it was just down an entire hallway. 

Aaron: That's awesome. 

Rod: I 

Aaron: love that process.

I love that too. We did that too, remember? With the dry erase board and like just seeing everything up there, I really enjoyed it. 

Alex: One of the most eye opening experiences I ever had, sort of production related, was going to visit Rocksteady. Do you know those guys? Yeah, yeah. Jamie and Sefton over in the UK.

I don't know them personally, but I know the studio, yeah. [00:51:00] I walked into their studio. It was after they had done their first Batman game, Arkham Asylum. Yeah. Arkham. And they had, it almost looked like something out of like a Terry Gilliam movie. They had like this desk with like a couple of producers at this desk, you know, operators and a huge board color coded post its with pretty much.

Replicated the entire project up there. So not only was everything like tracked electronically, but there was this visual representation, almost looked like a high tech train station. And they were like moving tickets around, completing tickets, you know, putting tickets back up. And there's just something about exactly what you're saying.

Like having that visual reminder. Of the full, you know, is it full? Is it empty? Oh, yeah. 

Rod: In the coalition we had full walls that were our Kanban boards. Like that idea of like in progress, you know, this watching this post-it note that was, get this thing done and watching it move through the four phases as it goes across when it doesn't 

Aaron: move and it just [00:52:00] sits there and everybody wants it.

Rod: Yeah. Or the, when you come in, in the morning and they've all fallen off the wall because it's too dry and they, and the, and you're like. Seriously? Okay. Where are we with this? Yeah. It was like, maybe we should make this digital. Like feels good to be practical, but like, we got to stop these things falling off the wall.

Alex: Yeah. Another question. I was kind of interested to ask you because correct me if I'm wrong. I think you are at Epic working alongside like Cliff Blazinski, Donald Mustard and Tim Sweeney. 

Rod: I mean, Donald was at chair at the time, but he was becoming more and more like Donald's creative power was very obvious when you would watch him pitch new ideas and stuff.

And so he was getting more and more, but he, at the time it was very much at chair. So we felt a little more distant, but yeah. 

Alex: Okay. Okay. For listeners, Donald eventually became like creative director on Fortnite, right? Um, so some impressive folks in industry there, and then with Ken Levine and then now being at Blizzard with such an incredible track record, that studio and Diablo, it's such an amazing franchise.[00:53:00] 

Do you have any like insights of like, what is unique or special about any of those contexts that have been able to produce just such incredible work? Maybe it's your idea. The one thing that they have in common. 

Rod: Thanks. Yeah, that's it. I was going to go with that. I was like, it's me. It's all me. No, no, I think it's actually the opposite.

I think the thing that I've learned, I think like movies, I think games benefit from having, you know, You know, the, the director, like people want to talk about Spielberg or Coppola or whatever, like, and so people go like, Oh, it's a Spielberg movie. It's going to be good. And so I think as humans, we like to attach a face to a thing, like as an entity, then you're just corporate or you're not real or so they want a tangible person to put and call it, Oh, this is a Spielberg movie.

And, and so the thing I've learned working with some of the people, like you're talking about, Um, is that it's not really true, like the, the, it's about the team and not [00:54:00] necessarily the individual that, you know, that without the people on the team and Cliff is great, but, you know, the, the machine behind Gears of War is Lee Perry, you know, and the art style of Chris Perna and stuff like that.

Like, Cliff is great at like finding something and changing it to make it better, but like a lot of the creative, you know, was Lee and, and the team around him. And the same is true for Ken, like the team around him as well. Like, and so I think it's good for games to have a voice and a champion and a face for players to connect with and go, maybe they like him or maybe they don't.

I think Ken, you know, a lot of people, think very highly of Ken and therefore they think very highly of what he makes, which is great. And I'm the same way. And so what I've really learned is it's really about the team. And that's what I try to be really clear with. And when I came, no one person can do this.

And this is, I like you, Bioshock Infinite is my example of this, where the people are like, Oh my God, that game was going to be canceled. And you came in and you shipped it and you did it. And that's amazing. I'm like, look, to be clear, no one person can do what that [00:55:00] game needed to get done. Like all I could do.

is kind of create the path and say, if you want to do this, this is what you need to do. And I could, you know, stop Ken from spinning and stop second guessing himself and undoing decisions so that we can actually make forward progress. And I can make it very visible where we are in the process and I can enable people to get more hours and so we can actually get it done.

And, but like the idea that I somehow came in and as an individual ship that game, that's not. And I kind of feel that's kind of true. Especially like when I look at a game like Diablo now, where people on the internet, when they're mad at Diablo, they get mad at me and they blame me for everything. And I'm going like, look, I'm that's part of my job.

I'm happy to be the target for whatever you're feeling right now. But the idea that I somehow made the decision to change the damage output of the whirlwind on the barbarian, and that was all my doing, like that's not possible. And, and it's not even the possibility necessarily of the game director, No one person can take the full scope of a game like Diablo and have it in their head all the time.

[00:56:00] Like if you're, can you imagine balance of five classes of 30 skills of four different difficulty levels that you expect one person to have that in their head? It's not possible. Yeah. And so that's what I kind of learned through this is that it's You want to have the best team around you and you don't need that individual as much except to be the person you send out to go do interviews or be the face and voice of you to 

Alex: take the arrows.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. No, I love that. You know, somebody, um, who I worked with at Disney, Frederick Marcus, who came from Ubisoft, he taught me that he basically, I try to do it. I don't know that I'm always successful, but it's like team is the project. You know, you get the team, right. And the team can do anything, you know?

Rod: Yeah, 

Alex: totally. So, I totally dig that. 

Rod: Okay, so enough of the intro. Why don't we start the actual

Alex: Part one. Uh, wait, did I actually, hold on a second, did I finish the intro? [00:57:00] I think so. No? Okay. I think Where were we at now? Oh, That's the thing. Well, you know, the end of my intro says it's really an honor to get to finally meet you and welcome to the show. So there we go. Now we've finished. There 

Rod: we go.

We're done. Nice. Well, actually, I have to say, like, you were very, the, I don't know about you specifically, cause I don't actually know who the author was, but Halo was very formative in my career because part of the work that you guys did to put a shooter onto a console, a two stick made me smarter and made me able to talk to people like Epic and Counter Strike because the thing was that you guys, I don't know, again, I don't know who authored it, but at the time, after you guys just sort of started to figure it out, somebody wrote a white paper.

Alex: Yeah, I think that was probably Chris Butcher, who was, uh, one of the engineers who, who did I don't know if you're going to get into the magnetism and just the mechanics. 

Rod: Yeah, it was all that. It was like the notion of gravity wells and adhesion and magnetism and all this [00:58:00] stuff that was just like what you need to do.

And so I consume that white paper and we walk around with it all the time. And basically we go like, Oh, we're doing counter strike. Yeah. Are you aware of gravity wells and adhesion and how to slow the reticle as you pass over the enemy and da da da da, and the same thing when I went to Gears. It was like, I was so much smarter because of the Halo white paper.

And there's another thing too, like, I said this on another podcast around Halo, they had a I think it was Halo 2, might be Halo 1, but it was, you guys had a beach scene with blue sky. And when they did a survey with a bunch of players, so what's your favorite level in Halo? And it was like, Oh, this place where you fight on the beach, the blue sky.

And cause it's like, otherwise it was like, some things were oppressive and it was nice to have this relief. And I took that with me for my entire career. And I used to drive the level design team crazy on Gears of War because every multiplayer map was this oppressive, Darkness and I'm like, look, just one, you got to give me one blue sky.

And so, and like, what are you talking about? Like, look, I even go in all the way back to halo, like [00:59:00] players want a blue sky once in a while. And so like, I even carried that with me. So I just want to say thank you for that. Like, is that right? As a person who makes shooters on a console, you guys blazed the trail.

And so we were kind of standing on your shoulders. So 

Alex: I appreciate that. Thank you for that. And just like you were saying, that's the village, that's the team. You know, when we got to Microsoft. We had a game running on PC and we had no idea how to, you know, we liked GoldenEye, but just the idea that we were going to be able to get the feel, you know, like we had no idea.

Rod: To me, the way I explained it to people is that I felt like Halo Was a lesson in player intent and people go like, what do you mean? I was like, well on a shooter with a mouse and keyboard you put your mouse on pixel number three to the left of the Year and you shot the pixel you wanted in halo The head was somewhere in a circle and you asked yourself, you know The game had to say, what's the player's intent?

Is the player's intent a headshot? Is the player's intent to shoot the gun? Is the player's intent? And then you have to kind of bend the bullet or do [01:00:00] the thing so that their intent is realized. So even if you had to fake it, cause I think your bullet adhesion, I think it was pretty high and halo in terms of pulling stuff in, but that was because to me, it was like, I want to translate intent, the notion of suddenly pulling the trigger and missing all the time, that's not their intent.

And so the idea that, Because you had, you're using oven mitts to control the game in a way because you're doing too little, you know, dual stick controller. It's like, Oh, I got to translate the intent because I can't get the precision. That's a good point. I thought that was really 

Alex: sweet. It is a good point.

I wish PC shooters would bend to my intent when I play. Alas, they don't. How do you, this is a random question, I guess, but I'm always curious about this. You're just talking about Diablo and like no one person can have. All the balance of that game. There's just so much that goes into, like, how do you even approach that?

I mean, is there arithmetic and tables that add up, like that are zero some, or is it all on feel I asked George fan this question, [01:01:00] cause I had the same question about plants versus zombies. I don't know if you're a fan of that game, but I'd love that game. And. His answer was, Oh yeah, I didn't model anything on spreadsheets.

I just said, 

Rod: it's all feel baby. I just played 

Alex: it till it felt right. And I was like, what really? Right. But I got to imagine Diablo is a little bit more complicated. 

Rod: Yeah, I would say it's a mixture of the two. Like I'm not the. There are lots of people on this team that are way smarter to answer this question than me, but I think that's the lesson we really learned on going to Season 1 with Diablo 4 is that, like, we kind of came out of the gates a little rough because one of the things we were doing, we had been for years, you know, balance changing to a dev team.

And so the notion of like, yeah, you just accept the changes because this is what the game is now and we're the dev team, so that's okay. And so when we did our first major kind of. Balance adjustment to the public. We didn't come at it from a, what does this mean to the players or how are the players going to wrap?

We were just like, this is a better balance. Like this is truer to our vision. [01:02:00] Right. And then when we did that and people were like, wait, you're nerfing this and this and this and this, and this isn't fun. And you destroyed this. And how dare you do this? And my bill's not valid anymore. And we're like, Oh no, like we were, we kind of.

Theoretically balanced as opposed to practically balanced and I think what you see as we progress through seasons two, three, four and five coming up in a week or two, that we had to get back into that notion of practical balance and saying, Hey, you know what? We weren't perfect, and people are kind of exploiting that, but you know what, they're actually having a lot of fun with it.

So maybe leave it for a while and then we can talk about it later. And also the fact that the balance is so complicated that things evolve over time. You know, someone will say on day two, This class is the weakest class in the thing and but if you give them three weeks, oh my god, like when they go in and optimize it and go deep and deep and all of a sudden you're like that's the most powerful class in the whole game right now because they found the thing, right?

The combination of passes and [01:03:00] skills and multiple creative versus additive and and all of a sudden the thing that everybody perceived as weakest is now strongest. You have to let it You Got to let it simmer, you know, got to let it cook as the kids would say, and then kind of go out. So that's why we sort of changed our philosophy of one, as long as you're not breaking our servers, because we do have things where the balance is so broken sometimes that like, you'll crash us.

So as long as you're not crashing us, and it's not too, too far out of whack, then we let you have the fun. But maybe at mid season, we'll try to bump up people and make some adjustments. But the metaphor I've been using is the spoonful of sugar. And so when we came out of season one, I was like, We're having meetings where I'm like, guys, too much medicine, not enough sugar.

And I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm look, I'm old. It's Mary Poppins, but you got to have a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. So if you're going to give the players medicine, which means nerf something, there better be some sugar. So find the sugar. And they're like, okay, we'll find sugar.

And so literally we're going over the patch notes for like season five and our designers are all going like, uh, not enough sugar. How do we, where else can [01:04:00] we find some more sugar for this? 

Alex: Cool. Thanks, Rod. I think we've kept you over an hour now. I am curious. Yep. What do you do for fun? What do I do for fun?

Outside of games. I don't know if you're still like, work until two in the morning every night. 

Rod: No, good. I work like I'm a 10 hour day guy, like nine to 10. Like, uh, I'm usually like an eight to eight or nine to eight kind of person, but that's just where I am in my life. I'm not recommending that for anyone.

I'm not saying that's the way it should be. I'm just saying my kids are all grown and, uh, I enjoy my job a lot. So I, and that's the thing is I'm really boring that way. And sometimes like. I've had hobbies in the past where I've golfed. I've had hobbies in the past where I played poker and those sorts of things, but I always come back to gaming.

And like this season, I have six level 100 Diablo characters in season four. Wait, are you at the studio now or are you at home? I'm in the studio now. And so, so video gaming and as part of like my brother, who's nine years older than me, we play destiny two together and Diablo together. And so like, it's [01:05:00] how I stay connected to him.

And so generally for fun, I play games. And so that's kind of why this, I don't know. I don't, and so it's really boring. And that's one of the things I, you know, to not overshare Alex, I have trouble making friends because when you're looking for 56 year old men, not all of them are playing video games all the time.

They actually have lives and want to do things. And I'm like, Don't you want to play a game? And they're like, what are you talking about? And you're like, oh, okay. We're not going to be friends. You don't play video games. I'm sorry. So like, 

Alex: that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, if you ever want to play any Fortnite with us, we'll invite you over to our Fortnite hour.

Yeah. Really? Yeah. I'm not good at Fortnite. Neither is Alex.

Come on, come on, Aaron. Um, last little, this is, this is as much of an admission as it is a question. Every year for. Thanksgiving and I know you're from Canada and Canadian Thanksgiving, I know it's at least a different day than American Thanksgiving. It's October, yeah. Yeah, but I don't know if it's sort of the same sort of feast kind of thing.

[01:06:00] It is. Okay, but so every year at Thanksgiving, I make a production plan for cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Oh, You know, it's like my ovens are resources and I have them scheduled out and tasks and all of that. Do you do the same thing or do you just wing it? 

Rod: No, I wing it. Okay. It's a bit of a problem for me.

I mean, I, I married a wonderful woman. Who's very much what you're talking about. Like she makes sure all that stuff's buttoned down and organized, but it was like when I was at Epic, there was another producer there and he was very clipboardy. Like he was very, Everything's written down and everything's in a spreadsheet and everything's very deep.

And I was a little bit more from the hip kind of perspective. And Mike would always say, if I could just get the two of you to merge, I'd have the perfect producer. But I have somebody who's like too much into the numbers and I have somebody who's too much like, you know, winging it as he goes sort of thing.

And so that's always kind of been my thing. Like, I don't know. I'm not the most, And I've realized like my youngest son has been [01:07:00] diagnosed with ADHD and people go like, well, that's genetic. And where would he have gotten that? As I'm sitting there with my leg vibrating next to me, I'm like, it's probably me.

It was probably me. I'm probably high functioning ADHD actually. And so, so the notion, but it's kind of funny that I do take, Like there's something about that. Like, I like to sit with a spreadsheet and do minutiae work. Like there's something very, that's why I kind of always enjoy the notion of going through a bug database one by one and seeing the numbers go down and making them sure the numbers are lower with every day, there's something very rewarding.

And so when people are like, why don't you get somebody else to make your PowerPoint or why don't you get somebody else to make your spreadsheet? I'm like, well, that's kind of like how I think, like I go into a zone and I just focus on it and. And you 

Alex: do that and then you'll sit there and you'll read it and redo it, read it and redo it.

Rod: Yeah, but I'm a collaborator. That's kind of hard. And I talked to my teams. I have to be careful, especially as I've gotten more senior, like when I got to studio head and now like senior vice [01:08:00] president, general manager, like I'm a verbal thinker. And so the way I think through problems or the way that I think through anything is to talk about it, but in the process of doing that, not everything that comes out of your mouth is good because your scenario testing or your boundary testing, right?

So when the head of the studio says something that's absolutely ridiculous, people will freak out. And so you have to say like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, we're just talking. We're just talking. I'm just working it through. Just relax. Like, so it's kind of that notion of like, Hey, we're going to talk for an hour.

Only at the very end are you allowed to like react to something that we say like this is what we're doing because I'm going to say good and bad things along the way right and figure it out and it's always been the way press would come to the coalition. They want to interview me much like we're going through right now.

And they would say, we're going to, okay, I'm gonna ask you this question. And I'm like, okay, so before we start, I need to explain something to you. And they're like, Oh, okay. What is it, Mr. Ferguson? I'm like, you're going to ask me a question. I'm going to answer it for probably three to four minutes, but I know you want pithy.

So what I'm going to [01:09:00] do is at the end, I'm going to sum it up. In the 15 seconds after it, and that's what you can use. And they're like, oh, okay, . So, and now they were like, so what do you think of it? And I'm, so, after all it's just this. And they're like, okay, cool. We got there . But I, I can't use that previous four minutes.

But it was like, I need to talk it out. I need to think like, and that's why I like Rod, go to this room with a piece of blank paper by yourself. And I'm like, oh, that's really hard. But Rod, go in this room with two other people and figure it out. Like I'm in. That's my dream. 

Alex: All right, Rob, now we've very much kept you over time.

Thanks so much for hanging out with us. It was really great to get a chance to chat, hear your story, and thank you for helping the teams that you've been on to deliver some of the most amazing games the industry has ever seen. Some real classics. 

Rod: I appreciate that. Thank you. Well, what's funny is that the people who worked with me have learned a phrase I use all the time when we're shipping.

And it's very funny now because I can hear it. And so it tells me that you've worked with me or you've learned from somebody who's worked with [01:10:00] me. And so that phrase is, When you're finally in a game, and it comes from Jim McCarthy used to run the C group back at Microsoft. He uses this phrase, and it's the phrase of don't shake the jello.

And what it means is that as you're stabilizing your software, your game, what you're trying to do is you think of your game as a jello mold. And you're trying to get that jello mold to set, but if you keep touching it and shaking it, because you're making changes and whatever, it never sets. And so, every time you poke it, so you get to a point where every bug you fix, you might create three.

And so you're shaking the jello. And so this notion is like, the more and closer and closer you come to a stable game, and you're like, should I fix this bug? And you're like, ugh, don't shake the jello. Like, how big is the ripple gonna be from that fix? And so, There's been memes in my teams or been people who like create like slides about it and t shirts about it and stuff about don't shake the jello.

And so it's very funny when I hear somebody like I was on a zoom call recently and somebody was like, all right, so make sure we don't shake the jello. And I was like, Oh, that's just warms my heart. Like that [01:11:00] actually stuck. That's nice. 

Alex: That's awesome. I love that. We're going to start using that. Don't shake the jello.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. All right, Rod. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. It was great. I had fun. And we'll see you around. Cheers. All right. How cool was that to chat with the leader of Diablo? That's like the game talking to the to, yeah, to the, the lead singer of you two or something.

Yeah. 

Aaron: the game. 

Alex: Yeah. Right. Okay. 

Aaron: Yeah, it, it's very interesting. I told you I just got Diablo, or I said it in the podcast. I got Diablo. There was like a collection on sale. That had like, two and three for the Nintendo Switch combined. And, I got two, because I wanted to play two, they redid it, you know? 

Alex: Yeah.

Aaron: And, there's video of the game. And when you see the game, you're like, yeah, that's the game. Like, you recognize it instantly. And then someone posted a video where you could turn that off. It's a feature in the game, you know, and you could turn off their remake [01:12:00] and go back to what it really looked like in the 90s, the original, like, and I thought that was the original and the 90s, it's like, whoa, but it's so crazy that like, you know what I mean?

It's kind of like Mario on the TVs, the pixelation, like no one knew Mario was pixelated because the pixels would blur. They were like soft because of the yeah, because it was a ntsc display or whatever. Yeah So it's kind of like when you see mario as a pixel, you're like, whoa, like it's you know It's anyways, it was just really weird.

I love me some 

Alex: switch. Diablo Was it three was the first one and then three was it had a subtitle didn't it? Uh, I think it was like Path of Destruction. Owen and I played that co op. That was fun. On the Switch? On the Switch, yeah. 

Aaron: Did you each have a Switch or did you play you can't do it on 

Alex: the same No, we played Oh, you did?

Oh, that's cool. I didn't know you could do that. I'm almost positive. I don't know, it was a few years ago and you know how my memory is, but yeah. 

Aaron: Well, I got it for 2. I want to play 2. 2 was very defining in my, uh, [01:13:00] early I think that's probably about as old school as 

Alex: I've gotten him to engage. Tattoo or?

Incisum Diablo. 

Aaron: Really? Yeah. Interesting. You should try, um, you know the stuff that we talked about with, um, was it Scott Miller? Yeah, he, he has the company, right? That does the Yeah. Apogee? Apogee. Yeah, maybe get him into some of those games. Those games are awesome. You know, they're all kind of retro y.

Well, 

Alex: I guess. I mean, sure, but he's like very much a social gamer. Oh, like Fortnite, things like this. It's actually Valorant. And I know Valorant isn't like a social game, but he's like on Discord with his friends playing Valorant. Yeah, that's cool. All right. Well, this is my last week in Chicago, everybody.

I'm heading back to LA at the end of the year. Oh, I was gonna ask you that. When do you go back? Thursday. Thursday. You driving? Yeah, just me and Argo. Oh, really? Dog is my co pilot. So it's gonna be you and the [01:14:00] dog in the Tesla. Yeah. Yep. The one that got hit by 

Aaron: lightning. Wow. Dude, that's like a superhero story.

Every superhero has 

Alex: that, like, pet. Did I tell you how I got stung by a wasp as well? No, how did that happen? I was just on my bike riding around Michigan and like, it's just What color was it? It was pretty painful. It was black, like really dark brown, big, nasty. Did it do one sting? One sting, but my hands swelled up for like two days.

What? Yeah. Okay. Let's 

Aaron: see. Lightning. Wasp. So you're going to be like, and you do look a little red. You're going to be wasp man or the electric wasp, you know? Oh, I like that. All right. You fly around, shoot bolts, the electric wasp. I'm going to go 

Alex: register that URL. But looking forward to, uh, getting back into, um, to a West Coast routine, I think, you know, it'd be nice.

Aaron: Oh, like time wise or what? Or [01:15:00] just like eating avocado toast? Just the 

Alex: routine, yeah. The California vibe? Avocado toast? I know where the tennis courts are, you know, it's like, it's, it's nice and cool in the morning, you know? Yeah, 

Aaron: I don't like going on vacation either, man. Or like, living, you know, Like when I was in Germany, I couldn't wait to come home.

That's been good. I have enjoyed it, but yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready to, but go home, man. Like going home is like the best part of a vacation in my opinion. Cause you're like, wait a second, you know what I mean? Like you go somewhere and then you like, you want to go home, 

Alex: you know? Yeah. Well, I mean, this hasn't really been vacation.

I mean, I guess it's kind of been. But it's You know what I mean. I 

Aaron: brought my PC. I've been working. Okay. Well, hold on. Let's say the world's ending next month. And they're on the news like, hey, the whole world's going to explode. You get one month, and that's it. And then you have to choose where you want to live for that last month.[01:16:00] 

Chicago or L. A.? 

Alex: The nervous laugh, folks. Oh, dear. I mean, we got more family here, so I'm pretty sure we'd be here, you know? I love Chicago. 

Aaron: I can't believe it's that hot there right now. I miss Chicago. 

Alex: All right. Well, with that petering out of our stimulating conversation, thanks for joining us, everybody.

Hope you enjoyed our conversation with Rod Ferguson, executive producer and head of the Diablo franchise at Blizzard, now part of Microsoft, as most folks are in the game industry. 

Aaron: Isn't that crazy? It's on Game Pass. Diablo 4 is on Game Pass. It's insane. It's very crazy. But thanks for joining us this week.

We shall see you next time. See you later everybody. Thank you for listening to the 4th Curtain Podcast. The 4th Curtain is a production of 4th Curtain Media with community management by Doug Zartman. Lovingly edited and mastered by Brian Hensley [01:17:00] at Noise Floor Sound Solutions in Chicago. To get a peek at upcoming episodes or to send in questions to the show, visit our site at the4thcurtain.

com. And be sure to follow us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening.