#71: Patrick M. Howard and Ben Kanelos (RustBit Studios)

No game design is a smooth path.
I think people have this misconception that you will have an idea for a game,
and that is the perfect encapsulation of the idea and the mechanics,
and nothing should change from the moment of conception to the moment of release.
And I find maybe one or two art tours can pull that off,
but like really, especially in the digital space, more so than the tabletop space,
like game design is collaborative. Like I'm working on a team of four, I've got two
game devs I gotta work with who handle the programming and tell me what can and
can't be done. We have a wonderful artist on staff who brings her own ideas about
what the theme and such is. And we have all of the play testers who like tell us
when things are working when they're not working. And so it is not a straight shot
to the final product. It is a wobbly line. You want to give yourself a couple of
guide stars to sort of aim at so that you don't get lost in the wilderness. Let's
discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its
entrepreneurs and those supporting them.
Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast where we are exploring what people are
building in Cleveland. I am your host Jeffrey Stern and today I had the pleasure of
speaking with Patrick Howard and Ben Canales about video games, game design,
and building a gaming studio. Patrick is the CEO and a game developer of Rustbit
Studio, building games like The Grip of Madness, which we cover in great detail in
our conversation here today. He is an entrepreneur passionate about building memorable
experiences that keep players coming back. Ben is an architect by day and a game
designer by night. He comes to the table with a decade of experience designing board
games and now video games, where he is the lead game designer at Rustbit Studio.
Rustbit itself is a software accelerator client out of the bounce innovation hub in
Akron, born out of another gaming startup called Strife AI, and is currently in the
process of releasing the grip of madness, the studio's debut game. I very much
enjoyed getting into the weeds here on game design and game mechanics and what the
overall process looks like for bringing a game to market. So please enjoy my
conversation with Patrick Howard and Ben Canales.
and introduce yourselves, tell us a little bit about yourselves, and we'll dive in
shortly after to the story of Rustbit. Yeah. So, hi. My name is Patrick.
I'm the CEO and Director of Experiences at Rustbit, originally from Cincinnati,
moved here to Akron for college and everything. And I met one of our co -founders
here who happens to be my boyfriend. We both love video games and we love designing
experiences. And we started this journey a couple years back with that with another
friend It's like we ended up kind of jumping ship going from a couple more startups
to where we are today And I'm Ben Canellus. I'm a lead game designer at Rustbit
studio my background at least in the game design space is I freelanced as a
tabletop game designer for probably close to a decade at this point. When Patrick
and the rest of the team reached out to me about bringing me in to handle the
game design for the studio, I jumped at the opportunity. It was always been a dream
of mine to work on video games, and it's just been a great experience being able
to get into the guts of it. Yeah, yeah. I'd love to pull on that thread a little
bit more if you guys would mind just speaking to where your desire to work in the
video game industry came from and really where that crossed with an interest in
entrepreneurship. - Personally for me, it's like, so I have a background in customer
service. I worked at a history museum as a teenager. So I loved to like, I dressed
up in like costumes. I like, you know, talked to people about history and I loved
like creating like really memorable experiences There also a bit of a software
engineer and I loved being able to create like creative memorable experiences there
as well and Honestly just finding like you know where where those two paths cross
in like video games and everything It was just something that I just really you
know enjoyed the entrepreneurship aspect of it I would probably say like I've always
been also into you know tech startups I I always really admired Bill Gates and
Steve Jobs, the stories of how they came to be as a kid. Really admiring being
able to run your own business. It was just personally, just always an aspiration of
mine. It just led me to this point, I guess. I have friends and people that I
know in the tabletop industry that run their own companies. And the ship angle of
it has never been my strong suit, let's say. I've always sort of been the game and
the experience first, but I always watched what they did and thought like,
"Can I pull that off? Is that something I could do?" And this is my best
opportunity to sort of get my feet wet, especially with Patrick as the in most of
the businesses, business heavy lifting, as opposed to me having like crunch numbers
and all the stuff on that back end. And I'm also been really excited at the
opportunity in the tabletop design space, when you're working with a publisher, you
seed a lot of control over the final product to the publisher in a lot of ways,
kind of it's a bit of a black box, You sell your design to the publisher and it
comes out the other side, you know, a year or two later with art and rule books
and different, you know, revisions to it. And some publishers let you be pretty
hands -on, some not so much. And being part of this entrepreneurship, you know, being
part of a company that is doing the design, this is hands -on all the way. So I
get to really get to craft the and some start to finish, which is thrilling
actually. - So how did Rustbit Studios come to be originally? - Well,
so we were working with someone else, Michael and I a couple of years back,
and things ended up kind of going, we ended up having a lot of disagreements. So
we ended up leaving Strife AI. Personally, us, Michael, me, Ben,
and Lexi all wanted to basically build a really polished, really like coherent,
like really good like, you know, game experience. And so we ended up basically going
into this software accelerator at bounce and, you know, just basically just starting
everything up there. And you know, we've been basically going about the approach of
not building the game in this stealth mode, which is kind of one of the common
mistakes that mistakes that a lot of startup founders can make is they'll build
something in stealth mode for a couple of years, which we were doing in our
previous company. So we've been kind of like, we want to get this into players'
hands quickly, we want to get their feedback as soon as possible and figure out how
can we make this better, how can we improve, so on and so forth. And what was the
founding insight, if you will? Did it come more of the desire to create this
quality game and trying to figure out the story that comes with that, or was there
this draw to the vision that you had for a game and creating the mechanics around
it? What kind of comes first as you were thinking about, "All right, we want to
create something here," getting started on that process? I would say the experience
that I had was it was sort like we had we had a really good core team at strafe
AI that was focused on doing the game design and When it seemed like we weren't
going to be working on the game design much anymore We kind of got together and
we're like well We we really want to focus on doing game design that that's where
our hearts are and that's where the passion is and
So when we went into doing founding russ bit like we had ideas for what we wanted
to do to do. But as Patrick said, we're not building a self -node. We were
iterative and we were building the smallest MVP that we could to get our minds
wrapped around what we wanted, what was possible, and how big we could make the
scope for that. I would say the company came first and the game came second. We're
working on the grip of madness now, but We definitely kicked a couple of other
ideas around and have little tiny prototypes built on some server sitting somewhere
where you're like, "Is this fun or not?" And the Grip Manus was the first one that
had that bit of lightning in a bottle feel, or like, "Yeah, okay. We're onto
something here with this one." What about it was, as you put it out there,
not building a self -mode, getting feedback early, what are those indications that
you're on to something relative to some of the other ideas that you were working
through? I've been running playtest groups, participating in playtest groups for a
long time. You can sort of tell when you've got something that's a little bit
electric. The players respond in a certain way. People
let's give it another go. And the sort of core tenets of the game design in Grip
of Madness had so much possibility space. It was exciting from the smallest nugget,
and I could just look in each direction all the way to the horizon with great game
ideas all along the way. Some of these are going to work, some of these aren't
going to work, but it's not like the game design didn't feel hemmed in, and it was
already sort of wrackling with energy. So I was like, yeah, like this is, this is,
this has got, you know, potential here. Yeah. And then when it's like, you know,
you see, so we took our game to we exhibited the game at a convention in Columbus
called GDX. Basically, we had like, you know, players just sit down and just try
the game and everything. And like, honestly, we just saw like their reactions. We
had several people come back to play like dozens of times, you know, and just
people were just having like just all around like a great time with it. Like, you
know, you, we have people like kind of, you know, bickering yelling and screaming at
each other, you know, having like a really good time and everything. It's like
building like those kinds of memorable experiences is really what kind of like helps
to just know that you're on to that that thing. Yeah, it's something you can't fake
like you when you have something that hits, you can you can see it and, and
players, you know, you can see it in the way players act, you can see the way
players talk to each other and to you, you know, all the signs for there. Ben,
one thing I'm curious about is as you kind of made the transition from tabletop
board games to, to digital, right, video games, what is the transferable aspect of
that, that process there? I mean, a lot of the skills at the core of it are
transferable. So when you're building games, be them tabletop or digital,
you're trying to come up with core gameplay loops that are satisfying and build on
themselves. It's a lot of progress through iteration. So you'll come up with an idea
and you have to play test it and see how things react with the players because
you'll, you know, you'll theorycraft something in your mind. You're like this is
going to be so great. And then the moment you get in front of people, it just
dissolves.
You know, and you have to listen to your players about like, what are the parts
that they are excited about? You know, the thing that you think is great about a
game might not be the thing that players think is great about a game. And so you
really need to, it's a lot of like listening to feedback and being iterative. I
would say it's easier to prototype and tabletop. So, like, you know, I don't need
no any code when I'm doing tabletop design and I can print something out, cut it
up and have the physical components right in front of me. But it's way easier to
play test and video games. I get to maybe one, maybe two play test events for
tabletop games if I'm lucky a month. And with a video game,
you can just boot it up and kick the tires on it whenever you want, and then come
up with ideas and and run it to your to your dev team and say like this is these
are things that we could do or these are ideas that I had and and you just don't.
You don't have to wait for everyone else's schedule to line up to get six people
in a room to play a game. To set the stage here for the rest of the conversation
so everyone has a sense for what the game actually is. And then we can kind of go
deeper into mechanics and the market and the way you're thinking about the business.
But what is the grip of madness? How do you describe it? - So the grip of madness
is a, it's a cooperative first person shooter with a betrayal mechanic. And that's
how we normally, how we pitch it and everything. Basically, the idea is, is that
there are these eldritch horrors that are invading our world and it's up to you and
your friends to stop them and everything and you do that by fighting off the
monsters that are invading gathering clues and completing this ritual to save the
world. In our current demo that's basically finding the three objects of power and
bringing them to the special ritual location. However at a random point in the game
there's one person that gets randomly selected as a trader. So no one else knows
about that and everything. They gain a special trader ability and they basically are
turning against the rest of the team and their goal is to basically prevent that
ritual from taking place and doing it at any means necessary by you know stealing
and hiding things you know causing just all around mayhem to just downright you know
backstabbing their former teammates and throughout the game you know there are things
that are kind of changing in the environment so it's like you know you know you
might see things that are there that weren't there anymore so it's like kind of a
it's it's a horror game that has multiplayer elements in it mixed in with social
deduction so if you're familiar with games such as like Among Us or Werewolf or any
kinds of games like those we've taken a lot of elements from those kinds of games,
both in the tabletop space and the video game space. I want to just pull a little
bit on the horror thread and where that kind of comes in and just the,
I don't know, again, as you're thinking about, I'm just kind of fascinated by the
designing of games and the baking in of different incentive models and all the
mechanics, just as I was like thinking about the work that you guys doing where
like the story and all of that just comes from originally, like the creative
process, if you will. So honestly, we love like horror games, horror movies, and
like, you know, things like that. I'm particularly a big like retro 1980s VHS horror
fan. So that's actually kind of a pivot that we're making in terms of like style
going forward for the grip of madness. Honestly, we wanted to build a game that had
like a lot of immersion and that had like a very tense feeling to it and going
down with the kind of horror aspect. I probably would say is the,
it's a very great way to make a game that has like a lot of atmosphere and a lot
of like just building a lot of tension and distrust between each other 'cause it's
a social deduction game. And so I'd probably say that that was probably like our
inspiration and why we chose to go down that path. Plus horror games are just fun
and just really popular and people sing, people love them. So, you know, why not?
When I think about what it might take to build a game, I feel like the typical
understanding that people might have is very, teams of like a hundred people at this
point to your point about working in stealth, working over years before a product is
out that someone can actually use and play in the wild. One of the things I'd love
to understand is just how the actual development of the game works from a financing
perspective, from a process perspective, from a timing perspective, and how you guys
have thought out from an indie game, just kind of the macro view of what's
happening in the whole video game industry. Yeah. So the group Madness is on a
projected development timeframe of about two years, which is pretty standard for most
video games. A lot of indie games can be shorter, sometimes it can be longer. It
ultimately really depends on kind of what you want the scope of the game to be. So
when it comes to like, especially AAA games, it could be, you know, upwards of 100
to 300 people. And even nowadays, like in the indie game space, it could be like
100, like 100 people. What we're doing is a little bit different because of the
fact that we are, you know, constrained by the number of people that we have and
everything. We are actually kind of coming up with more of ways to basically build
a game that is not, basically we're able to get a lot more use out of our assets
that we create. So for instance, we actually built a really cool technology that is,
it's a procedural generation system in which like our artists can basically build
like a bunch of small pieces of these maps and everything. And it literally like
stitches them all together and everything and creates like a different experience
every time and like we just need to just throw more content at it really and it
just gets more and more complex. A lot of you know indie game studios that want to
build like really polished experiences will often reach for you know building games
that have things like procedural generation games such as like Minecraft or Deep Rock
both have them things like that so that way you can get kind of more use out of
your assets that you create for a game. So it's not like, you know, you're having
to create like a new map with every meticulous detail, like put in, you know, you
just build like small pieces of it and it just, it expands all out. So which is
pretty neat. So it's like, we're able to kind of like come up with like, you know,
things like that. So we're able to, you know, create technologies that helps, you
know, accelerate the development that way. I'd also say also say like being able to
do what's called Steam Early Access is a really significant part too, where basically
you can release the game to the public and everything on Steam and there's just a
disclaimer that hey, this game isn't done yet, but you pay for it and you get the
opportunity to collaborate with the developers on it, get feedback and basically kind
of build out the game and make it even better. A lot of indie developers have been
going down that route, where they release onto Steam early access, so that way they
can start generating revenue. So that way they're not years into development and
everything, and they're not making a dime off the game. Yeah, I imagine with the
proliferation of video games, particularly indie, in addition to kind of the
mainstream video game development, there's just kind of an ever -increasing amount of
options for people, for players, right, who are participating in these games.
I'm curious how you thought about differentiation, and it sounds like Steam gives you
some of that distribution up front, and maybe you can build a cohort of folks who
feel invested as players as they get to work with you. But how do Distinguish
yourself as signal from from the noise of the video game and game world I would
say like one of our key strategies is we are building this game to be social out
of the box We we find that the the the strongest way to spread the game is word
of mouth And if the game our game is multiplayer only so you need to find a
couple other people to hop on and experience it with it So it's not just one
person playing in isolation. It's people playing with their friends. It also makes it
much more streamable. So we're hoping to get some streamers. And plus, because we're
doing this open dev policy, we highly encourage people to join the Discord with us
and give us the feedback. So we're hoping that with that extra level of basically
hands -onness that have with the, with the shape and development of the game itself,
it'll foster investment and, you know, you have people excited like,
Hey, you know, like I, I gave feedback for this game and the devs were responsive.
And, you know, perhaps some idea that somebody wanted to see in the game has, has
made it in. I mean, some don't. Some things are just not feasible in the world of,
of game development. But, you know, a lot of times our players will come up with
things that we hadn't even thought of that are doable, that just get us get us
really excited. So yeah, we're open, we're small, we're scrappy, and we're social.
Yeah. And I would probably say like to add on to that too, especially with like
steam sales as of lay, you know, and things of the like is that players aren't
actually afraid to like spend money. They're more conservative with their time, as
opposed to spending money, which is interesting. So it's like, really, it's a matter
of making a game that's worth people's time. Are they willing to drop 60 hours into
a game and everything? And it's like, if that's the case, then you made a game
that's like a worthwhile investment. The whole dynamic of soliciting this feedback and
input from the gamers and kind of incorporating into the game, it's a really cool
just mechanism. I am curious, like you mentioned some ideas that you guys haven't
even conceived and and brought to you by the players. How you decide an idea is a
good one and to run with it. I mean, I've been doing it for a decade,
you know, doing the game design. So I like to think Perhaps I have a little bit
of ability to to to sift through sift to the pile But like you'll see people say
something at a playtest event and other players will go. Yeah, that's a great idea
and you're like, all right, let's get that down because and I mean like like an
easy example is this game in this game when you take damage and other things They
can hurt your sanity. So as your character loses sanity, you start to have what we
call our madness effects. These are in -game hallucinations that change the way the
game appears to you. So you might see one of your friends as one of the enemy
characters, or you might see an enemy that's not even there. And we have a whole
bunch of them that are planned out, but like the moment you tell people like,
"Yeah, you know, we have these madness effects in the game," people like Immediately
spot -off like oh, it'd be so cool if like I heard gunshots coming from a room and
there was no one in that room I'm like, yeah, that that's a great idea And that's
just us playing sound at a random interval at some some spot. So like that's easy
enough to include so People get excited and and they want to they want to
contribute and it's just up to us to you know Especially, you know, we are a small
team and what I one One of the things is we always talk about is scope. It's
like, what is possible, what's not possible, what's within our budget? When you talk
about budgets, budgets is also time. And we're on a development cycle. So it's like,
well, we could include this, but it would be a week worth of programming. Is it
worth it? Where other things is like, yeah, I can get that done in 20 minutes. I'm
like, by all means, throw that in there because it'd be great to What has been the
the reception so far as you've got in the game out there? What what are what's the
kind of feedback that you're getting? What are what are folks most excited about and
and in turn what are you guys most excited about hearing the the sentiment? Honestly
by and large like the feedback has been It's honestly been like on like a lot of
things that we've we've kind of been thinking about already So it's been like a lot
of like, honestly, like a lot of like minor polishing details, a lot of like
balancing things, you know, figuring out how like, things like kind of interact with
each other. Oh, you know, this certain weapon in the game doesn't do that much
damage, but it's like, you know, this needs to be a more powerful character, you
know, things like that. Oftentimes, funny enough, right? You know, we've had like a
lot of like feedback where it's like, you know, we've been thinking that too. And
so like, just hearing this from you like you know it makes a lot of sense but
overall like the the the reception that we have gotten is just honestly like just a
lot of people getting like really really excited about the game. I mentioned about
it earlier about uh GDex and everything and that we had like you know people who
are like oh you were the trader and they're just kind of you know they would like
argue with each other and everything and but but overall like having like a really,
really good time and everything. And it was, I actually remember even getting like
called out as like, oh, you're the guys who made the grip. Men is like just like
randomly on the streets in Columbus with my, my rust bit t -shirt on and everything.
And, you know, like I've seen, I've seen people at the University of Akron with our
stickers on their like phones and their water bottles and whatnot as I walk through
like the student union. So it's like, it's like just honestly like just super
exciting to see like other people like just like checking out what we're doing and
having like that overall positive reaction to things and just, you know, just being
able to see the potential where the game can go. You know, we want to we want to
bring all we want to bring everyone on that journey with us. And we're just like
really excited to just see where where everything goes.
When you think about the kind of evolution of the game over time, is there a point
at which it is done? Right, is the game ever done?
- Games aren't done, games are shipped. That is a maxim that exists within the game
design industry. But we've been very good about setting benchmarks for ourselves and
then having real, real tough conversations about like what is possible.
We have a big demo update coming up here on May 2nd that we're super excited for
as the procedural generation that Patrick was talking about. And we have like real
conversations about like, well, what additional features Are we going to prioritize
and put in and and like I said, you know Like our game has three like main,
you know, it's like a three -pronged stool. It's got the co -op shooter it's got the
trader mechanic and it's got the madness effects and We we always come back to that
core and ask ourselves like is the thing that we are working on Building on those
on those three prongs and it that that helps three prongs. That helps us funnel our
vision so that we're not getting ourselves lost in the wilderness. As long as the
experience feels complete, we think we are on the path.
The MVP felt like a complete experience, short, but a complete experience. Now we
need to build and experience that'll keep a player for five to 10 hours. And so
that's what our next build is. And then after that, we're like, all right, let's
see what we can put in here to extend that play time to give players more value
for the money and the time that they put into it. So we're players first and
foremost. We're doing game design because we like games. And so we approach our
design decision saying, like, if I was a player purchasing this game, this game,
we're interested in the grip of madness. What would I want to see? What would keep
me playing? What would get me excited to tell my friends? And then we say,
as long as that aligns with our core values of what we're putting into this game,
let's see if we can't pull it off. Yeah. And even after the game goes into what's
known the industry as a gold release, so that just means that the game is done.
It's ready for packaging and shipping out to stores. It's a really antiquated
metaphor and everything, but it's basically like where you get to that 1 .0 release.
And even after that, there's often the expectation that you plan on updating the
game long after that, adding in new content, introducing,
you'll hear a lot of other games do it where there's like new seasons and
everything where they add new content, and just things of the like. When it's done,
and it's in that 1 .0, it's like, it's not really done. There's still more stuff
that you can just add and everything. You really just have to see, like Ben was
mentioning, does this compliment the core mechanics of the game?
Yeah, we're building with an eye towards the future. We have plans for what will be
in the initial release, and we have plans what, uh, as long as the response is
there, we would put in app for us. But the, the other big benefit of doing, you
know, a gold release is that we can then read the reviews and see what the players
like and what they don't like. And we can put in more of what players like. Oh,
yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a nice feedback loop there. I feel like relative to
under other industries, it's, it's, it's such a Feedback and and kind of symbiotic
relationship gamer and designer I'm pulling on that thread a little bit more I am
I'm curious as you think about what to build next for the game You're taking a
step back as a gaming studio. How you think about the future generally like are
you? Planning the seeds for for other games or is really there a focus?
purely on The grip of madness right now and and kind of the the nature of how you
start to think about prioritization of what comes next and Ultimately, you know the
direction the impact that that you want to have as a as an organization Yeah, so
honestly, we've been you know, we have been kind of keeping an eye on that that
aspect It's like we've been wanting to make sure that like our company culture is
set up so that it's like, you know, we have like, we have a really positive
company culture, you know, we have, we have like libraries that we can like,
basically take out of the group madness and use in future games. And, you know, we
have so many like shelved ideas for future games that Rustbit could develop.
And I'm certain that Ben can generate 50 more because, you know, when it came to
like building the grip of madness, what Ben basically does is that he will is that
he will go into a Google Doc and he will just write out 50 game ideas and
everything, complete with mechanics and ideas and themes and everything. And it's
like, okay, we'll just pick from that list. And, you know, so it's like, we can
easily do that again. And like, honestly, you know, with the technology that we've
built in the grip of madness, and also all the experience that we have gotten from
growing a business And everything like I'm honestly, you know, I'm focused right now
on making sure the grip madness is, you know Poised to be a success. It has at
least that chance to be that success But also, you know, we're hoping that we're
we're we are, you know, planting those seeds In rust bit and making sure that it's
like, you know, we're also building this business to be sustainable and everything
Like We're a great team. We want to keep making games after the grip of madness
together. Right now, we're fully focused on the grip of madness, but I mean,
I've freelanced as a game designer for so long. I've got a roll of decks of things
that we can bring to the fore. And on top of that, what I did learn working with
Strife, we were doing a lot of that machine learning game stuff, it sort of
retooled tools, my approach to game design be like, if we have to include certain
mechanics, or as Patrick was saying, certain libraries that we developed for previous
games, like, what is the best way to retool work that we've already done in a way
that we can efficiently build like the next project? So we don't have anything in
the works. Currently, we have ideas about things that we can do. And like I said,
I'm always working on game designs, and that is also a benefit. I still do
freelance tabletop game design, and sometimes I run into ideas that I'm like, "Ah,
this would be better or easier to implement digitally." And before, I used to have
no way to do anything with that, and now it's like, "Well, I'll just put that in
my back pocket and save it for Rustbit Studio." From the outside in,
what would you say, generally, are people's biggest misconceptions about what it is
to build games? Well, as a business, I would probably say the fact that a lot of
people, for some reason, have this perception that running a video game studio is
somehow different from any other business, like, "Oh, you know, there's a different,
you know, paging process when it comes to getting funding or, you know, there's just
some sort of secret society that's involved in the game design space.
And the truth is, is that it's, you know, you know, building video games is no
different than, you know, doing a technology startup, like build like building a game
studio. You know, honestly, like when it comes to like talking to people and
everything, there's some, there's some minor differences, you know, so it's like, you
know, you might not go for in terms of like the pitching aspect, you know, you
might not go for, you know, VC money, but you might instead go for, you know, go
and pitch to publishers instead. So it's like kind of got like kind of a parallel
to like book publishing, for instance, has some similarities to that. But you could
also go down a VC route. And there are like, you know, venture capital firms that
are interested in video games. So some are, most aren't, but it really depends on
how you're pitching it and what you're actually doing. But yeah, it's like, really,
there's just, there's no difference to it. And so being able to kind of clear up
the air about that, and it's like, if you have like a compelling game,
a compelling product, it's like, and you market it, people are going to be
interested. But what was your your approach to those same set of options from a
funding perspective, like getting it off the ground? Yeah. So currently right now,
we're in the pitching process of pitching to publishers. We're currently pitching it
as what's called, in the video game space, there is what we call the premium model
and the free -to -play model. The free -to -play model is the one that most people
are familiar with. The Premium model is basically, you go out, you buy the game,
you own a copy of it, you're able to download it and play it, and what not. We
are currently going down the premium model, so we're going to pitch it to publishers
as such, and that has certain implications. How much money do you need to build
this game? What's your planned price point? What's your update schedule look like?
Those things are important from a free to play aspect as well. But there are also
really focused like on like the economies, you know, what are your micro transactions
look like, things of the like. So for the grip of madness, it is primarily going,
we're planning on making it a premium game and such. So, and so we're kind of in
that pitching process right now for it. - Bennett, it looked like you were gonna
introduce some of the misconceptions people may have. I was fine if we could if we
can rewind time like that, Prince of Persia, Santa Time, but I would just say no
game design is a smooth path.
I think people have this misconception that you will have an idea for a game And
that is the perfect encapsulation of the idea and the mechanics,
and nothing should change from the moment of conception to the moment of release.
And I find maybe one or two art tours can pull that off,
but really, especially in the digital space more so than the tabletop space,
like game design is collaborative. I'm working on a team of four, I've got two game
devs I got to work with who handle the programming and tell me what can and can't
be done. We have a wonderful artist on staff who brings her own ideas about what
the theme and such is. And we have all of the play testers who tell us when
things are working when they're not working. And so it is not a straight shot to
the final product. It is a wobbly line. You want to yourself a couple of guide
stars to sort of aim at so that you don't get lost in the wilderness. But, you
know, you will take detours and off ramps and find things.
But like the key to like making the process work is look at these things as
opportunities when you run into a problem. If something is not possible, it's not
that you are compromising on your vision. You have to see, "Well, if this is
impossible, are the things that I can do that would accomplish the same goal, or is
there things that I could do that are better that I haven't even thought of that I
should just talk to the team about?" The procedural generation, I didn't think was
possible.
We were originally talking about building static maps and using the item placements
as the way to sort of drive the replayability. But then, Michael's like, "I think I
can make a procedural generation engine that builds these things custom." And I'm
like, "Well, take a flyer on it. If it works out, it really reduces our scope,
our load on our artist because it's not like we're going to have to be designing
handcrafted levels every month to try put out like a new level because we can
basically create more assets and then even backfill additional pieces into the back
of it. So like it was a solution to a problem. And if I had thought like no,
like I have drawn hand little maps of exactly how the way I want the player flow
and the hot spots to happen, I would have been much more instant to something like
that. But no, I'm glad we pulled it off. It's super exciting. Oh,
it sounds very exciting. What have been your biggest learnings through this journey
so far? Things that have taken with you along the way? I would say I have learned
to collaborate better.
The tabletop industry, I've never done a code design and a lot of people work with
code designers and stuff like that. And yes, I work with, you know, I do take
feedback and stuff like that and work with people in the team. But working in the
creative space on a team really requires a lot of killing of the ego.
And you kind of have to learn to say, like, my ideas are not me. My output is
not me. Like I, you know, me. It's team above I, and as much as I'm relying on
other people in this team, they're relying on me. You have to learn to collaborate
and sort of find where the guardrails are and then respect those guardrails.
We're not perfect, and I'm not perfect, so I will put that I in there. But I
think it has been actually incredibly freeing to have people whom I trust to fall
back on. I will send stuff out into the ether, and then the rest of the team will
just absolutely kill it. Make it the best implementation of that with extra ideas on
there that I hadn't even considered. You guys, y 'all, made this better than
And so, you know, it's it's a lot of that trust and I probably say for me, you
know, honestly much like Ben It's like, you know, you you have to really detach
yourself from like, you know The actual creative work you, you know, you make and
everything, you know Because otherwise you're going to become very defensive over your
own ideas and everything and I have seen that, you know So many times where, you
know, just because like, you know You the developer thinks that this game is fun
doesn't necessarily mean that everyone else is going to think that's a fun game.
So it's like being able to really listen to your players and get their feedback and
everything is honestly probably one of the most important things you can do because
it's like you can just go out, spend six or seven years building a game that you
think is super cool and if you're doing it just simply as a passion project, that's
great, that's awesome. But it's like, if you're under the expectation that you want
other people to enjoy it, you have to make a game that other people are going to
enjoy, that other people are going to like. And so it's like being open to that
feedback that those people provide you and just seeing where the trends are, I think
is probably some of the biggest learnings that I have taken away. - I realize I
would be remiss if I didn't ask you both for what your favorite video games are.
Oh dear.
It's like asking someone what their favorite movie is. I can tell you. I can tell
you. You don't keep a spreadsheet of that? Come on now.
So currently right now, I've been probably one of my favorite games I've been
playing through right now. I'm a big fan of Flight sim games, combat flight sim
games. So I've been playing a game called East Combat Seven. It is an immensely fun
game. I have a blast with it every single time. But then there's also like, you
know, 50 others that I could list. I mean, I could probably spend in the next 50
minutes just talking about my favorite games. So, but I'll just leave it at there.
- I think the new hotness that's out there right rings. I've been, I've been kicking
around. I've always been a big souls player from the dark souls one. So I wasn't
on the original train with demon souls because I didn't have a ps3. I'm sorry. But
those are great. If you're at if you're wondering like what game really inspired me
for the grip of madness, I would say the first couple dead space games were just
killer, so atmospheric, such a good use of seeing new mechanics in ways to sort of
drive home the horror. And if you're asking where my soft spot is, like all those
old SNES titles, like that was my childhood. So like Super Mario World, Final
Fantasy six, Kirby superstars are all like, man, there was so much,
so much gold on that on that system. So I guess I've been,
I've quite the long history of sitting in front of a television and blasting my
retinas with lights in the house. Me being slightly younger than Ben by a couple of
years, I grew up with the PS2 and everything. So like, you know, all of the games
on there, you know, like, like Jack and Dexter, Reggie and Clank, a lot of like 3D
platformers, I'd probably say are also my soft spot as well. I want to maybe book
in the conversation here with any plugs or calls to action you guys have for the
game and what's coming next. Well, so like we mentioned, we've got a major demo
update coming on May 2nd, so I'd recommend just checking out the demo then steam
.grip @madness .com is an easy way to get to the Steam Store page. If you like what
you see, give it a wish list. Wish lists are, you know, kind of really one of
those key metrics that helps us really grow the game. I'd also say like join our
discord, you know, we love hearing what people have to think about the game. And so
that's at discord .gripmanus .com. And then you can also, we also have a mailing list
as well, which you can check out at rustbit .com. Awesome. Well, the closing question
that we have for everyone on the show is for not necessarily your favorite thing in
the area, but for your favorite hidden gems in Akron. I am a,
I play a lot of disc golf. So yeah. Yeah.
And Cleveland and Akron have some actual good quality courses there.
I'd throw out out. Parma disc golf course in Veterans Memorial Park is fantastic and
their group does a great job of maintaining it. I like Sims Park in Euclid. It's
on the water, so you get a lot of weather conditions you don't necessarily get in
other courses if the wind is really whipping off the Lake Erie, but probably my
favorite course is called Roscoe Ewing in Medina. it is the oldest course in Ohio,
so we're lucky to have that here in this Northeast Ohio area. And it's beautiful,
well laid out, well maintained, just Jeff's kiss, just a great course.
So if you have any interest in disc golfing, I would say the Northeast Ohio area
is kind of brimming with with good options. And I'd say for me,
you know, I am someone who, I'm a big coffee lover. So I personally,
I don't know how much of a hidden gem it is, but Akron Coffee Roasters in downtown
Akron has some of the best, you know, highest quality coffee that I've ever
experienced. Like, I know almost everyone who works there. It's honestly like just,
and it's really amazing just to be able to like nerd out over coffee and everything
like literally about coffee like I actually I have some ACR coffee right here right
now and then like right next door to it is a single screen like art house cinema
that's a nonprofit the nightlight it is a it is an amazing little movie theater
that's just filled with like just passionate people who just love cinema I'm a big
cinema I'm a big cinephile myself so yeah I just I think that those two places are
just like absolutely my faves. So I haven't been to Cleveland enough, so I don't
have any favorite hidden gems there quite to see. - You haven't been up to the
cinema tech yet, so. - I've not, I've been up to this theater up on the east side
off of Lee Road. - Oh, the Cedar Lee. - Yeah, the Cedar Lee, that's it. - It's
great, very old school. - Well, awesome. Ben, Patrick, really appreciate you guys
coming on and sharing the story of Rustbit and the work that they are doing with
the Group of Madness. I'm looking forward to giving it a shot and really appreciate
you guys coming on. Thanks for having us. It's so, it's so glad to be here and
then get the chance to spread the word. Yeah, thank you so much, Jeffrey. It's
really been a pleasure. Awesome. Well, it sounds like if folks have anything they'd
like to follow up with you about maybe Discord is the best place, but any other
shout outs for where folks can follow up with you guys. Yeah, I mean, if they're
interested, they're welcome to email us at hello @rustfit .com, or you can just join
us on Discord, discord .gripamandus .com.