Behind the Scenes of Game Development

Gregory (00:21.709)
What is up, everybody? Welcome back to another week of the GZ Chop Shop gaming podcast. I'm your host, Greg, joined by my good friend and fellow host, Daniel. If you remember, Patrick started a little thing there. So Daniel, he's our fellow host. But as always today, we have an amazing episode lined up for you because we are joined by the chief advisor of services for Midwest games.

Her impressive career spans 20 years, including working as an executive for Bungie and 2K games. She's led the charge for tons of gaming projects from publishing, content acquisitions, platform relationships, sales, marketing. Honestly, the list goes on. Ladies and gentlemen, Elizabeth Howard of Midwest games. Welcome to the podcast.

Elizabeth (01:10.222)
Thanks so much, y'all. I'm happy to be here.

Gregory (01:12.899)
So we are honored to have you here. When I first got the email and, you know, Sean sent the email and I saw that you had worked for Bungie in 2K, I immediately got excited because I was like, I have tons of questions that I want to ask about your time there. But first, I want everyone to get familiar with you and ask, how did you get involved in the gaming industry?

you know, like what, what was the starting point for you?

Elizabeth (01:45.952)
Yeah, I have, you know, I have sort of just a fortuitous story. I totally lucked into the games industry. So I'm from Austin, Texas. I went to the university of Texas for college. got a psychology degree. thought I was literally going to pursue like a PhD in behavioral psychology at one point. And then I traveled with my friends to Costa Rica and I was like, life's too short to stay in school for eight years. Like I'm going to go travel.

That resulted in me living in London for a little while. And I got to see what it's like to live outside the US and was like, you know what? know it's a lot easier to work and have a job back home in Texas. I moved back to Texas, I don't know, this was like 2003 maybe, I'm like 22 years old or something. And a friend of mine worked at a company called Aspire Media here in Austin, Texas.

and they were tiny, there were like a 20 something of them at the time. The co-founder, was hiring for a role doing contract administration and front desk. So the receptionist and then helping with contract admin, something I didn't necessarily have a background in, but I'd like, I'd always like worked a ton in college. and so Aspire's primary business model was licensing AAA games and then porting them to the Mac and then doing like the sales and marketing for the Mac platform.

But what was really cool about it as somebody new to the industry is I got to learn all about the industry because we licensed the biggest games. So at that time, that job became working with like EA, Activision, Ubisoft, LucasArts before they were acquired by Disney, like you name it. And identifying good games that we should bring to the Mac. And so I did those, I started mostly in business development. I pretty quickly gave up my front desk duties like that.

was not my strength, but I loved the biz dev stuff. So I grew up doing biz dev and then eventually took over all of publishing, which was also the sales marketing, go to market side of the business. And then we grew into multi-platforms. So I managed the relationships with not only like Apple, obviously, which was awesome to also be a part of that rise, but as we grew into new platforms, was Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo. So I think a big part of that.

Elizabeth (04:03.274)
growing up in the industry was like being exposed to kind of the industry at large as it's gone through all of the changes for 20 something years. And so yeah, I got really lucky and didn't even mean to do this. Didn't even know it was a real thing. And yeah, I always think of like, man, I could have ended up in insurance or something. Like I am so lucky, so lucky.

Gregory (04:07.606)
Mm-hmm.

Gregory (04:24.085)
Yeah.

Daniel (04:27.084)
That's that's hilarious to me. Like you're just on a beach on a vacation. You're like, I just don't want to do that much college anymore. And then just life goes.

Elizabeth (04:33.986)
Yeah, it's like YOLO.

Gregory (04:34.196)
You

Gregory (04:38.497)
You know that?

Elizabeth (04:38.55)
Yep, it was. was like life's too short. I must experience it. And you know, I've gotten lucky in that because I've been in this industry, I've gotten to travel a decent amount just for work and stuff. it kind of worked out. Yeah.

Gregory (04:51.766)
So you've worked with a lot of these major companies and major developers. What are some of the things that you've picked up over the years? Like experiences, things that us as gamers, we only see the finished product. So we don't know everything that happens behind the scenes. So what are some of the things that are going on back there that keep the wheels turning?

Elizabeth (05:12.47)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (05:21.314)
Yeah, I think it's really interesting because me, my experience was on the business side of things. when oftentimes if I meet somebody new, they're like, you're in video games. Like, do you make them? And I'm like, you know, I'm more on the, I'm the, like, how do you build a business plan for a business or a product and like look at sort of opportunity, cost? Is there something in between? Because like, that's how we all keep jobs and like keep this machine going.

Daniel (05:48.888)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (05:50.328)
So I think that that is probably, like that maturity across the board is probably one of the more interesting parts of like learning about the games industry. So once upon a time, the games industry was largely fueled by just like super creative individuals that had really cool ideas. And there were only a few ways to get those ideas made. back, you know, when I told about my early days, like back in my day, back in the early 2000s, when I started in this industry.

You got a game made by getting a publisher to give you money. They got the rights to publish and distribute that game. You as the developer were on the hook to obviously deliver that game. You're probably paid some milestones that showed that you were progressing and delivering that game. And then like, maybe you were lucky if you made anything thereafter, like the publisher often owned that game, that IP that you made, even if it was your creative idea and they got most of the revenue, but keep in mind, they took most of that risk, right? Like they were like writing the checks.

And so that model over the last 20 years has gotten, I don't know how much as gamers y'all dig into the business side of what's games industry stuff, but there have been a number of articles recently that have sort of illustrated what once was five million went to 20 million went to a hundred million. Now the likes of something like GTA is assumed to be like a billion dollars. So that economics of

Gregory (07:10.626)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (07:12.974)
hey, I'm taking a bunch of risk to help a game come to market has gotten harder and harder and harder and bigger and bigger and bigger. And the harder part, I mean, you it used to be, you put a game on a shelf, your customer went into GameStop, they probably read about it in a magazine. you know, like when I started YouTube, wasn't YouTube being like the way that a lot of people like make their lives around games didn't exist. So it was just like a much more sort of like a linear transaction journey.

And now all of that has changed. And so I think that's the thing to keep in mind as a gamer is like what used to be sort of not a safe business. It's always been really hard making games because it's like a creative endeavor combined with technology that's both like constantly moving. But now we also have this audience that also was constantly moving. So it's just like, it's a challenging space to make a business that is like predictable.

Gregory (08:11.51)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (08:11.716)
And that predictability is what gives people job security and all of the other things. So I think from the outside, it's probably like, why can't this happen? Or like, this seems so obvious. But I think the thing I would remind people of is like the growing complexity combined with how long it takes to make games. Maybe it's harder to guess, like it's harder to create like sound business theses, I guess.

Daniel (08:38.292)
I imagine, I imagine like modern, the modern gaming industry has an even more difficult time keeping up with trends and what's popular with like social media and how interconnected everyone is things change so quickly, frequently and on the fly.

Gregory (08:38.433)
So.

Gregory (08:46.55)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (08:54.276)
So frequently, mean, you're hitting the nail on the head. And I think one of the things that's emerging now is like, I'd be curious, know, when we jumped on this call, y'all were chatting about games. I, my guess is a lot of people play games like actually based on like word of mouth, like their friends literally telling them either in their shared discord, their iMessage or like in real life, like, you got to try this game. And

Daniel (09:13.155)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (09:20.516)
I think as an industry, we're probably way more reliant on that than we know how to be. And there's not a way to really get in there right now. So we have all these other, we try to communicate to our players in direct ways, but how do you sort of connect with that word of mouth? And that's kind of the crux of now, I think, a lot of discoverability that again, once upon a time, we probably relied on billboards and magazines for.

Gregory (09:50.431)
And yeah, when you said, you know, word of mouth, I was like, yeah, that's 100 % true because, you know, just among us, a lot of the times when we like a game, we mentioned it was like, man, you know, this game is amazing. And then one of us will be like, you know what? I got to give that game a try. And then it just trickles, trickles down from, from there.

Elizabeth (09:50.658)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (10:10.126)
Yep.

Daniel (10:11.128)
Lethal company is a great example because nobody, when that game first dropped, what was it? Was it two years ago? It dropped on steam or maybe a little bit before that, but nobody was really like, it wasn't something that was in your face. And now a couple years later, it, because everyone was like, you should play lethal company. You should, you should, know, it's, fun and friends and all this. And now it's part of a fortnight skin. And I think one guy made that like, it was like one or two guys that made that game.

Gregory (10:13.109)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (10:35.116)
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we're seeing so much of that now is like absolute disruption coming from not always the most experienced or most funded teams and, and like those sorts of disruptions that like honestly couldn't have existed when I started in the industry. And there are a number of like sort of gateways to where we are now, but a lot of it has to do with the ability for people to make games, leveraging existing technology, be it unity or unreal. then

being able to access distribution. Like the only way to get on a store shelf once upon a time was to go through a publisher. Now you can self-publish, you can make and publish a game yourself on Steam. So yeah, it's super interesting to see what all of that means for the business and the ecosystem and players and all of that stuff.

Daniel (11:25.558)
Now, just out of curiosity, because you're with Midwest Games now, and I was reading about the shadow publishing and some of the, I guess, options that you guys are trying to have to help, I guess, gamers or creators publish their games. Is that something that you're trying to help like loan creators or smaller, maybe smaller companies with is getting their game out there?

Elizabeth (11:54.796)
Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, when we started chatting, you're like, what are, you know, tell me about your up and commons. And I described the sort of the first chunk, but I think, you know, after I left Aspire, I went to 2K where I ran publishing production. So that was the group that basically was the intermediary between all of the games and all of the publishing functions. And so when you think of publishing, think of all the stuff that's like not technically making the game. So sales, marketing, QA, localization, technology, sometimes third party development.

analytics, all sorts of things, like everything that's not like creatively executing against the game. And so I was able to see a lot of games and studios and where sort of ideally how that engagement would work. And the big takeaway was like publishing and development are actually part of the same process. And so, you know, when I described like back in the old days and a publisher did this and like, was far more like.

And now I take the game and I do the marketing part. But now because of all of that, who's my audience, who's my player, how do I talk to them? That stuff's gotta be in lockstep from the very beginning. so therefore publishing is a part of development. Yet because there are fewer publishers investing in game creation, there are so many people that don't have access to those publishing capabilities. So.

in game development now, if you want an artist or an engineer or an entire game made, you can go outsource that through a third party developer and all sorts of functions. But that same ability doesn't really exist on the publishing side. So all of that go to market stuff. And so that is the thesis behind shadow publishing is like, how do we help serve all of those developers that are left holding that game and like, shit, how do, who is my target audience? How do I talk to them? It's like a lot of work.

Gregory (13:41.058)
Yeah.

Daniel (13:43.598)
Yeah, that could be a whole game changer for smaller creators and small studios, though, that don't have all these different resources and outlets for them. That's amazing.

Elizabeth (13:53.804)
Yeah, it's completely critical. Like it's a critical part of it. And a lot of times people, you know, we can name a lot of examples of people who figured it out how to do it really well by themselves. But then we can also talk about thousands of others that didn't. And like in that lump of the thousands of others that didn't will be examples of like good games that didn't have the right sort of like player strategy or community building or publishing plan.

Gregory (14:04.258)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (14:20.9)
to reach that audience. And so that's the gap that that shadow publishing is hoping to fill. Yep.

Gregory (14:27.554)
I also, know, with Midwest games and shadow publishing, one of the biggest things that stood out to me on your site is that the developers, they retain the rights to their games. So I wanted to ask, is losing ownership of a game a bigger issue than developers realize when they're entering this industry and say a publisher comes to them and says,

Hey, we'll publish your game. You know, we'll write the checks. We'll do X, Y, Z. And then, you know, lot of developers are like, Hey, this is my dream getting realized. I'm jumping at it. And they don't understand that once they get that, give that game to the publisher, that it's the publishers game and no longer theirs. Is that a bigger issue than, you know, new developers realize?

Elizabeth (15:18.96)
I'll be honest, I think in modern, in the modern days, like how we approach that, and I'm to get kind of like boring and legal on you as through first right negotiations. So back in the day, it would have been more, like sign your rights away sort of agreement where like you literally don't have ownership. Now, a lot of that has entered in more, a little bit more collaboratively because it's, it's pretty frowned upon like in, in sort of the modern publishing era.

So the way those parties protect themselves are through the first right. I have the first right to make a sequel if I'm the developer, and as a publisher, I have the first right to your next game. And then we have a bunch of terms on what happens if we don't come to an agreement versus the outright, it's mine no matter what. But I will say part of the attractiveness also of the no IP model is like,

If you're developer that's taken on equity funding, meaning somebody's given you money to exist as a studio, then you really want to be specific and protecting your rights to your game, your IP, and your ongoing revenue. So part of shadow publishing is also not just the IP rights, but the future revenue. So while we might do a revenue share, it's usually really small compared to what a typical publishing structure might look like.

Gregory (16:40.098)
So what would be advice you would give to say someone like me? I'm actually toying with the idea of creating a game in the future. And you, thank you. And you know, I've been pulling the pieces together and as you would have it, I have no idea what direction I would go after it's let's say done. So what would be the advice you would give me?

Elizabeth (16:50.756)
Cool.

Elizabeth (17:00.163)
Yep.

Elizabeth (17:06.008)
Well, first of all, you already started on the wrong foot by saying when you were done, remember I already lectured about this being like part of the same process. So step one is do what you can to understand like what it means to publish a game right now. So by that I mean, STEAM, I think the statistic and I'm probably gonna botch it, but somebody could correct me. The statistic is something like,

Steam launched as many games in one day in 2024 as they did in the entire year of 2014. So the competition for finding an audience is like insane. So that means that you as a developer, you better be like solving a player's problem with your game idea or else like why would they stop what they're already doing that they love to like come play your game.

So there's like an element of just like understanding the ecosystem, understanding who your player is and understanding like what are your options for like building that community that I think are really important just in like codifying your idea. Because if you remember, I love that whole like what's the opportunity? What are my costs? In between is how you like have a pay rent and have food, right?

Gregory (18:17.698)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (18:20.076)
So it's important to not make a game that's so expensive that you'll never make your money back or else that'll be the one and only game you ever make. And then I think it's also learning about the ecosystem in terms of because Steam is so big, it's largely become a platform of algorithms. So the way that you get exposure on Steam is by having a big community. How do you get that community? You have to think of what are these numbers I need to hit to get enough momentum that people even know I exist.

you may have an advantage because you already have a community, right? Like there are some options for people who are making games to try to like increase de-risk, increase their odds of like finding an audience. One of those is often like licensing IP, like, okay, cool. People know what I'm talking about. The second I tell them it's blah, blah, blah game or leveraging an audience, know, partnering with somebody who already has like people you can talk to. But I think that, yeah.

understanding who your audience is, knowing how you're solving a problem for them, and then building a plan to bring them into your development process is how you start building some of that momentum that you can start like getting the bells and whistles and getting more and more visibility and hopefully finding an audience for your game. Yeah.

Gregory (19:36.077)
So one of my follow-up questions is, how do you plan, and I'll try to detail my thoughts here, how do you plan for the future? So say you're building, you start your game and you know the problem you want to solve for gamers today, but with how rapidly gaming is changing and how long game development can take, how do you keep that momentum if

the gamers problems change say, you know, look at GTA, GTA has been trying to for like five years and it keeps, you know, it keeps moving.

Elizabeth (20:10.083)
Yep.

Daniel (20:17.462)
And at this point, I feel like they're just doing it on purpose, building that anticipation.

Gregory (20:20.49)
Yeah. So, you know, how do you how can you plan for that if your game takes like five years and say in five years, like I make a battle royal, but three years from now, battle royals have run their course. Everyone's exhausted and turn based is the new thing. So how can you how do you plan for that?

Elizabeth (20:22.562)
Haha

Elizabeth (20:31.512)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (20:39.085)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (20:42.978)
Yeah, I think that there is a ton of examples where companies have fallen victim to exactly the thing that you're saying. At least on the AAA side, where games are so big, they take that long to develop that the market's shifted. But on the more agile, smaller games, by that I mean more smaller both in scope but also time that it takes to make them. Well, and actually my answer is probably the same in either

Scenario is and again like I'm gonna apologize for getting too nerdy about some of this businessy production is stuff But I'm like a big believer in having like a strong thesis around like what are you doing and? And having that be like a description not only of the game you're making like so the creative ambition But also the business ambition so like I think I'm making a turn-based robot game that does

Daniel (21:17.494)
No, no, nerd away, nerd away.

Gregory (21:17.73)
Go for it

Elizabeth (21:39.362)
that I'm able to have RPG elements that allow me to give people amazing achievements for accomplishing super hard things that will reach the blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah audience for within this amount of time and budget and this many players. So somewhere in there, you've got your creative ambition, your business ambition, and your business constraint.

you've got this hypothesis now that you're anchored around, like, okay, I think this is where we're going. And then the process of making your game is like testing your hypothesis, almost like you're a mad scientist. So like, am I making that thing? Like, am I doing what I said I was gonna do? Am I doing it at the time? Like, am I on track, like in terms of my time and my pacing, with like getting it done in time? And are they still there? Like, do I, am I like...

Is my thesis, is my hypothesis about who's going to play this game? Like, is that true? And so ways that you can test that part are through player feedback, user research, that kind of stuff, like getting testing that like community interest in that way. Um, so that's kind of my nerdy, um, like description of, think the way to kind of keep a tap on, is this going to still work? You can't just like have the hypothesis and be like, and now I'm going to work for six years and now I'm done.

Gregory (23:00.897)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (23:01.176)
Cause like, you'll be wrong.

Gregory (23:03.936)
basically you can't put blinders.

Daniel (23:03.95)
I love this because when I think of the gaming industry and I think of running someone who might be in charge of different parts of the game development or whatever, think business, you think someone might just be doing their job because that's their job, but you sound so passionate about this. Like you just really love it. And I, I just feel like that's really awesome.

Elizabeth (23:27.944)
thank you. I mean, I will say like, have this really weird ambition of just like, how do we create like a sustainable industry where people can do the thing they love and like keep doing it for years and years and years versus some of the volatility we've definitely seen over time. And I think a lot of that comes with sort of maturing business practices and also this concept of like aligning teams.

around goals. So this is like alignment at the company level, at the studio level, but even within projects and features. So after I left 2K, I was like, why is it so hard to make games? Cause I'd never worked at a studio. It was just like naive to what it's like to work on the studio side. And I was lucky enough to join Bungie as VP of production and got to understand like what it's like to make games at a huge, large scale. And you see like, holy cow, like connecting the work that everybody does to what the goal is.

It's freaking hard when you're talking about tons and tons of people. You'll find out, Gregory, that it's even hard for a few people. And so I'm passionate about trying to build systems and ambition around that, getting everybody marching toward the same goals, understanding what they are, and having that show up in the work so that you're more likely to achieve that goal and ambition. It probably still won't work 100 % of the time. It is still a hypothesis. We're still running science experiments.

I think you have a better shot on goal.

Gregory (24:56.704)
And since, you know, mentioning hypothesis, I guess this is kind of like a tough question. When a game fails and it's gone through the process, it's gone through all the steps. The first thing, knee jerk reaction for gamers is, it was the developer's fault. Developers put out a, you know, a crappy game. And it's like, there's so many things that happen in between before it gets to the gamer.

What is, what are your thoughts on why a game actually fails when it finally gets out to the audience despite going through all of those processes, all of those channels, what can really lead to a game's downfall?

Elizabeth (25:39.554)
Yeah, mean, my answer is like a million things, but also fundamentally not all games go through all that stuff that I just talked about. In fact, it's pretty rare for there to be that level of alignment within creative teams around what the business goals are. Like certainly in mobile, yes. Like when you're talking about a live game, active development, and you're like running KPIs on some mobile game, like

they probably have a lot they could teach me about this side of things. But in the more traditional AAA space and especially of people who grew up like I did, like the last 20 years, as I described, like it's almost like you're talking to a dinosaur in terms of the industry that I started in. Like it's just like unrecognizable, but a lot of the leaders who are in their mid forties or whatever, like they found success doing that thing, doing the thing where.

I have an idea and I'm going to be the creative leader and everybody's going to, I'm just going to tell everybody what my vision is. And then we're just going to, then marketing will go market that thing. And that's how we succeed. So there's a big shift still happening in the industry of getting to this like player focused development. And what does that mean? What does it mean to like know who your customer is and build them in? What, what, what did these constraints mean? It's like,

It's actually not somebody trying to be an asshole and tell me, no, it's like us trying to actually succeed toward the goal of like, we get to all keep doing this. Right. so I think there is it's, we actually haven't been doing that process much or consistently in the industry. And then I think there's like, yeah. And because of that, there's a number of misses. Right. And I think, sometimes it's creative leaders, like if you've been incredibly successful doing something a certain way.

who's gonna tell you you're wrong? Because it's like, you haven't been wrong yet, you know? So that's one, like deference, which a lot of people deserve. There's a lot of, I mean, shit, I've done this, where you have success and you're like, I'm so smart. And then you do the same thing again, and then it's like, shit, that didn't go the same way. So like, there was a lot of luck in my success, and you don't learn that, honestly, until you fail a little bit, right? And so.

Gregory (27:29.282)
Hmm.

Gregory (27:44.51)
It didn't work.

Elizabeth (27:53.452)
Success, there's like probably some really good metaphor adage of like success hides all sins or whatever. But yeah, there's so many reasons. There's like not knowing who your audience is. There's, I mean, there's a lot of good substacks on some of those, people who will like post more at their own failures. And they're like, I couldn't describe what my game was in like a sentence. And like, if you can't tell your friend, you got to try blah, blah, blah. It's da da da.

Gregory (27:59.202)
you

Elizabeth (28:21.196)
Like you probably don't have the hook in your game either. You know, it's not just hard. Yep. And not in the cheesy way, but like really in the simple, like, I get why I want to play that, you know? So, so many reasons.

Gregory (28:24.672)
elevator pitch.

Gregory (28:34.562)
I like how you mentioned success hiding the sin because the first company that came to mind is Nintendo. And I'm like, Nintendo gets away with so much crap, but we love them.

Elizabeth (28:40.29)
Uh-huh.

Elizabeth (28:47.96)
they just crush it for 30 years or whatever 40 years or yeah yeah

Gregory (28:50.358)
You know, and I think they have that mentality like who's going to tell me I'm wrong. I've been around for over 100 years. Yeah, you hate to love though. Yeah.

Elizabeth (28:56.278)
Right, right. I know. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they did do a Wii U at one point. Like, it wasn't a total mess, but they're like, old-ly perfect. They've done a little, but yeah. I mean, they've been such innovators.

Daniel (28:56.994)
You hate to love them.

Daniel (29:01.208)
So.

Gregory (29:07.2)
Yeah.

Daniel (29:10.334)
didn't know we didn't know we sell better than all the other

Elizabeth (29:15.278)
The Wii was awesome, but then there was like the weird inner step between the Wii and the Switch, which was the Wii U that just didn't kind of hit the same. You know what I mean? Like it was fine, but I'm probably being unnecessarily harsh on Nintendo. Like you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean.

Gregory (29:23.392)
Yeah.

Daniel (29:24.151)
okay. Yeah. I, totally forgot about that.

Daniel (29:30.44)
no, no, we like to be harsh sometimes on, on, some of the things that go on. on, a, on a different note, when you're not, you know, trying to make a game successful or preparing it to be successful, what are you doing on the side? Do you have, are there, do you game a lot yourself? do you have any particular hobbies that nobody would, would

Gregory (29:30.698)
I contributed to that little missed step.

Daniel (29:58.978)
know about otherwise.

Elizabeth (30:01.58)
Man, this one's tough. I'm a single mom. I'm raising two teenage boys. I've got a college age kid and a high school kid. And so that's a lot of my life. And I'm a little bit of a gym rat and I love to travel and hang out with my friends. Like I actually, my gaming propensity, this is where I'm always like, I never want to admit it, but it's true. Like I don't play a lot of games. Like I'm not good at 3D games. Like I can't.

just like go play a shooter. There are so many things I'm bad at when it comes to gaming. So I'm more of like a nerd about like consuming like what's going on out there and what are like, what are the big plays that different companies are making and just kind of like armchair quarterbacking like, that seems that doesn't seem like a good idea. And then seeing if I'm right over years. Yeah. Just watch. Yeah. Yeah, I know.

Daniel (30:49.518)
You don't say anything, just watch it, and then you're like, hmm, I was right.

Elizabeth (30:55.3)
But yeah, I live a pretty like normal mom life outside of this games industry stuff.

Gregory (31:00.738)
But are your sons gamers? I'm just thinking, I'm just like, how amazing is it that, that you're not a big gamer, but you walk by, they're playing a game and you can go and be like, yeah, I remember when I worked on that.

Elizabeth (31:03.185)
yeah, my gosh. You know what's interesting? Yeah.

Elizabeth (31:18.274)
Yeah, I mean, my older son used to know Life Destiny too. So that was pretty cool, like being able to like give him a little bit of the hookup and stuff. And then he would also be like, mom, did you do, and I'd be like, I'll explain it to you. But it's been interesting even watching their, like their gaming behaviors, like they used to be far more into like competitive gaming and now they're way more, like my younger son literally used to play Siege.

Gregory (31:34.39)
I am so glad you mentioned that.

Elizabeth (31:46.062)
when he was far too young to play Siege. And now he's like a Roblox dude because he likes to just hang out with his friends and goof off. And it's like, they, see them both like leaning more into the social aspects of games. So my older son will like for him, like Terraria is retro gaming for an 18 year old. So like, that's how we like bonds with his buddies that are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's that. Yeah, I know, see? But also just, yeah, like how, like,

Daniel (32:06.625)
no.

Gregory (32:09.026)
Okay, that hurts. That hurts.

Elizabeth (32:15.588)
It's not always great to have your, what's it like use case of one, but I'm always like, I think they're pretty representative of like shifts in like player behavior and awareness behavior. Like how do they find out about things? Like what games do they gravitate to and why? Like what are reasons that they might not competitively play when they used to? What are reasons, you know, that's really interesting to like dissect what goes on in the household.

Gregory (32:41.558)
Now you mentioned Destiny 2 and I saw Daniel's heart sink. So from your time that you were at Bungie, I guess the general question that he and I both have is just what was it like working at Bungie and what in the world happened with Destiny?

Daniel (32:47.291)
I won't talk about it.

Elizabeth (33:05.732)
I'll answer the first part of that. mean, Bungie is, you know what's awesome about Bungie? They are so freaking smart. Like immediately you're just like, huh, like we're moving. we're, yeah, yeah. And you still have leaders that like, you know, touched Halo or helped with it, like launching Destiny 1 and like.

Daniel (33:18.168)
They've been living in the game for a while now.

Elizabeth (33:30.05)
So that part is incredible. They care a lot about the people that work there. They have like a very open culture in that way, like especially for being a studio so big. So I really admire the teams and the leadership at Bungie. So that part was super awesome. In terms of like honestly what happens within the game itself, again, like I don't even, know, everybody has their own opinions on.

different games and how they've changed and evolved. And I think I'll just like remind everybody like what I started this with of like, it's really hard and complicated to get tons of people to be aligned on a single thing, right? And so that's, that's every single game team out there. And sometimes it works in your favor as a player. And sometimes you're like, what's that? But I will say that Bungie passionately cares about the players and listens to them. I actually give them a lot of credit for that. Like after seeing it from the inside, like how

quickly, they try to respond to what's going on. So I have hella, hella respect for bungee. Yeah, it was awesome experience.

Gregory (34:33.398)
I do remember when I had spoken to Lewis, who started his own studio, that we came across the conversation of shareholders and investors and stuff and how they have more involvement than people realize. How big is their influence? I'm assuming you get to see that.

Elizabeth (34:58.23)
in general in the industry, in general in the industry, shareholders and yeah, I mean, I have said controversial things such as like, are games the right place for publicly traded companies? Because to be part of a publicly traded company, there's a lot of predictability that comes with that, that's required in order to maintain like, shareholder momentum and.

Gregory (35:02.028)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (35:23.652)
I'm not saying that it's not, it's just like controversial question because like that fundamentally is the really, really hard part of games is like, how am going to consistently grow a company and predictively do that in a way that I can like maintain shareholder confidence? And I think that that plays a part in

Yeah, all publicly traded companies are impacted certainly around like the long-term and short-term planning implications of like running a publicly traded business. And then even on the private side, you know, there's a lot to be said. I think the industry right now is like going through, and I'm not, like, you know, this is kind of a beaten topic by now, but during COVID, we had low interest rates and

of money flooding into games because everybody was playing games and then those of us in games were like, I know they won't all stay, but they'll like, we'll get more out of this than we had going in, surely, right? Like everybody will be like, oh my God, I forgot I love games and now I love games and I rediscovered them. And so I think everybody was surprised about how sharply everybody's like, nah, I'm good, I'm gonna go outside and I'm gonna travel. like, so we've seen, we saw this huge like,

Lots of money going in, lots of investment, lots of hiring, lots of new games being invested in, money, money, money, private equity, publicly traded, all of it. And so what we're seeing right now is a big correction from that, where it was like, we were wrong about how much the market could sustain. And we're getting back to sort of pre-COVID norms in terms of like growth in the games industry, and then therefore like what the industry size and scale needs to look like within that new framework.

Yeah, so I think it's just like overall financial implications of stuff. Yeah.

Gregory (37:11.212)
Do you think that's what's also led to so many companies making a big push for live service games? Maybe not wanting to let go of that revenue that they got to enjoy. And they were like, hey, you know what? Mobile games got it. Let's see if we can, you know, bring that over here.

Elizabeth (37:31.372)
Yeah, for sure. mean, you know, when you talk about a sustainable, predictable business, then having like some sort of recurring revenue that you know that you can rely on like helps with that, like creating that, okay, I know how much we make and how much we spend. And therefore I know that we can do these things and maybe invest in new products in these ways. So there's like a smart like thesis behind that, right? But it may not always show up great for players or in products.

Daniel (38:00.536)
Correct me if y'all maybe think differently, but it seems to me like coming out of COVID after this past couple years, we saw an explosion with Battle Royales and live service games, in-game microtransactions, there were more people, there was more money coming in, there was more eyes on it, and it was what was popular. Now, and I think the last two...

Elizabeth (38:13.145)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (38:28.726)
last couple years have really showcased that with gaming awards. We're seeing a much bigger push now for story driven games. More particularly story driven games you can play with a friend and socialize with versus battle royales. It feels like battle royales are kind of going down. Fortnite's hanging in there. They're they're they're they're fine. It's a fun game though. It's fun. But story driven games are clear obscure.

boulders gate three Elden ring. this is my observations, but I'm loving it. I'm loving, story-driven games and turn-based games becoming something that's more, people are more excited about.

Elizabeth (39:14.244)
Well, I will say like to just try to go toe for toe against some of those like free to play live service games is a huge financial undertaking. So high risk, potentially high reward. But I think I saw the stat the other day that like since Valorant, actually haven't seen one like pop. So the ones that have tried to compete at that scale, like haven't actually hit. And so since Valorant five years, I think, yeah, like at that scale, at that like sort of AAA

Daniel (39:25.923)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (39:36.43)
Since Valorant? wow.

Gregory (39:40.022)
Yeah.

Daniel (39:42.518)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (39:44.386)
free to play, live service focused shooter game at least. And so in terms of, that business thesis, things that aren't that are a little bit easier to manage both on the opportunity predictability side as well as the cost side potentially. But I'm glad to hear you like it. That's good.

Gregory (40:02.274)
Yeah, because even with Marvel Rivals, it came out with a bang. But when you think about it, it kind of fizzled out before even a year. So.

Elizabeth (40:14.212)
Yeah, I don't know enough about their engagement metrics, you know, and like, I'm sure that it's still a sound business for them, but yeah.

Gregory (40:25.612)
So Midwest games, you guys have already helped from what I saw, you guys have some games already that you've helped publish out there. Is there anything that you would like to let developers know, like how they can get in contact with you and I guess the beginning steps that they to get with you guys?

Daniel (40:52.214)
of reaching out to Midwest games.

Elizabeth (40:54.934)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Midwest was founded as a just more prototypical games publisher where we picked up games and publish them on the platforms. Then I joined us in advisor specifically on the shadow publishing stuff. So the services side where it is the for hire model. And that's definitely the focus right now. So I'd say if you're a developer and you realize like, my, I need publishing help, then please come chat with us, check out the website.

There's ways to get ahold of us like through email and form submittals there. You can find me on LinkedIn. I obviously love talking about this stuff. I probably a little bit too much, but we're pretty friendly, like to share information pretty freely and would love to help you.

Gregory (41:39.2)
Yes, and thank you so much for joining us. There's not enough time to pick your brain for this, but I know you are a busy woman, so I don't want to take up too much more of your time. But I would definitely love to have you back for a future conversation down the road. So thank you so much.

Elizabeth (41:44.77)
Hahaha.

Elizabeth (42:00.002)
Yeah, absolutely. It's been a pleasure. It's been a joy talking to y'all and I would love to be back. There's always more to talk about.

Gregory (42:08.2)
yes, I'm definitely looking forward to it and.

Daniel (42:10.978)
Yeah, I definitely loved your passion. Seeing someone in the gaming industry that loves what they do, I think is so amazing.

Elizabeth (42:13.412)
Thanks.

Gregory (42:16.426)
Yes, yes, 100%.

Elizabeth (42:18.212)
appreciate that. Well, I hope you all get some awesome achievements between now and the next time I see you.

Gregory (42:23.351)
Yeah. Gonna hop on PlayStation and grab me some more. But thank you everybody so much for tuning in. And if you guys haven't already hit that like and subscribe button so you guys know the next time we have an amazing interview on the Jeezy Chop Shop gaming podcast. Take care of yourself and each other and we will catch all you wonderful people on the next episode. Later.

Elizabeth (42:28.306)
Hahaha