Rade Stojsavljevic: Welcome everyone to another episode of the Player Too podcast. I'm your co-host Rade Stojsavjlevic.

Dave Leary: And I'm your co-host Dave Leary. It is good to be back with you again, Rade. We cannot resolve our crimson desert bet yet this week, but we will resolve it next episode.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Which is perfect, because that's right before I'm going to take ⁓ a vacation for spring break. And ⁓ I could figure out how I'm going to send you, or you can send me money. It looks like I'm going to send you.

Dave Leary: right? We don't know yet. don't know yet. Three weeks is hard to sustain, so we'll see how we do.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Fair enough. All right. A bunch of interesting stuff to talk about this week, but let's start with the news. interesting developments with Valve.

Dave Leary: Yeah, 100%. So they signed a contract with FacePunch, who are the makers of Rust and Garry's Mod, to release what I believe will amount to a new platform. They have named it S.Ampersandbox. So it's sandbox, if you want to use the term that they have applied to it. On the surface, you could argue this is just Garry's Mod++, but I'm going to... assert, and you're welcome to disagree, that I think this could be something that could compete with a lot of things like Unreal and Unity and Godot. There are some things that are pretty attractive about what they're talking about. It's not going to have any licensing fees for ⁓ platform itself. It's to work with Steam cross-platform, which is pretty nice out of the gate. And certainly, have a lot of fond memories of the original Source Engine stuff and Garry's Mods, so I think there's an appetite for this.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. So pretty early on, should, the form of it should take shape, right? Like, is this going to be for, like who the customer is going to be for this? What types of games do they want? Is it going to look more like UEFN on Fortnite is going to look more like traditional mods for indie games? Or is it going to look more like Roblox? And I'm sure they've got ideas of what they think it's going to look like, but ultimately the customers coming into that are going to force that decision to be made.

Dave Leary: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Sort of related to that, I saw Indie.io is launching an IndiePass subscription service, $7 a month, and it's basically a game pass for indie titles, which I think is pretty interesting. Just discovery for indies has always been a problem, and it's not going to get solved at a platform level. And there's potential for titles that maybe just didn't get the kind of launch that they wanted, didn't get the attention that they deserved. to get some visibility and get picked up in this past and kind of get a rebirth of sorts. So I'm excited to see how that plays out.

Dave Leary: Yeah, I mean, that's kind of interesting to me. I don't know as someone who consumes a lot of indie games, I don't know how super excited I am about that. I mean, the attractiveness of something like the Game Pass model is I can try out something that's, you know, 60 bucks or at retail with an indie version of that. I mean, you're talking about games that typically are, you know, 10, 15, $20 that are much more of like impulse buy territory. And I'm kind of like, why wouldn't I just own it rather than this service?

Rade Stojsavljevic: don't think it's for you. I think it's for the kids who are used to free games ⁓ wanting to try a bunch of stuff. ⁓ a parent, thinking about it from that perspective, if I can constrain what my kids are buying to an allowance of $7 a month or whatever it is, and then they have this whole portfolio of things that they could check out and play, that's pretty attractive.

Dave Leary: Yeah, that's a fair point. I certainly, it may not be for me, but it may be for somebody else. And I could totally see the patterns of play that kids have these days. That could be an appealing model.

Rade Stojsavljevic: You know, it kind of got me thinking. I was just chatting with a couple of gamer friends of mine in Discord. And there's this retro gaming festival going on ⁓ in a couple of weeks. And one of the guys was saying, you should take your son to that and tell him how it was in the old days. And I made a joke because ⁓ back when we worked together, one of the guys bought a copy of game and inside of this nice box, because he went to the store and he liked to own his games, just like you described, was a little card with a steam code on it and nothing else. And he was pissed. He was like, I don't even get a physical CD or anything. It's just a Steam code in this big old box. So yeah, we've got to be careful we don't date ourselves. Hey, one other thing in the news. So Rec Room, the VR social game and title, they're shutting down. And I thought, we've got a special guest this week, and she's got some.

Dave Leary: Yeah.

Rade Stojsavljevic: some insider news in VR. I thought we'd bring her on into the news segment and talk about that. I'd like to welcome Jennifer Lane back to the podcast.

Jenn: Thanks for having me again.

Dave Leary: first return guest. It's wonderful to have you back, Jen.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Yeah, sure thing.

Jenn: You can have me visit anytime you want. love being here. I love listening to the podcast as well.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Awesome. Hey, so for those of you that forgot, so Jen's been a developer for a long time and most recently was working on Gorilla Tag at another Axiom. So Jen, what's your take Rec Room? 10 year run for them.

Jenn: Yeah, so I don't know what's going on with them internally because only they really know what's going on. But being close to that world in VR and knowing that they've been here going on for more than 10 years, I think that it first came out 2014. They're on multiple platforms, but they're known for the VR. It's sad. I concerns because... I still think that there's a future in VR. worked in it, ⁓ get it from the inside now, what it means to experience and explore and be inside another world. And Room provided that social experience where maybe you physically in the room with somebody to socialize, but they're right in front of ⁓ their face. And they're talking and moving, their avatars are talking and moving. It's as close as you can get to being in a room with someone without actually being in the room. And I know some of the developers. I know a good number of developers there and they're really good and they really care. And so I just think it's unfortunate and between that and Horizon Worlds ⁓ some of the other studios that close, also ⁓ going with everything else that's happening overall in the gaming and the tech industries, it's... sad for me personally as a developer, but I think it just adds to the scary time that we're having as an industry as it's transforming into something that is with far fewer people and we don't know what that's going to be. And I think it's too early to tell the impact on upcoming games what that's going to have.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Yeah, I think that's true. From a platform level, I remember when it launched in VR. I was at Meta at the time. It was the source of the first meme ⁓ that had negative. It was a meme that got pulled into the game and it got surfaced in there. ⁓ I'm not going say which one, but if you guys were paying attention back then, you probably know what it was. And ⁓ Facebook at the time didn't know what to do with it. And they're like, ⁓ what's going on here? Then someone explained it and it just anyway got into a little bit of controversy. But it was the place to go and hang out. Like it had big numbers for a while. My take on it from a platform level is probably two things. I think their cost structure to operate this was probably higher than their ability to monetize it. And so I don't think they were making much money at all. don't know if they were losing money or not, but I just don't think they were able to make much on it. And that coincides with the newer cohort of users that have been coming into VR for the past several years that are looking for more free titles. And if you don't design a free title with monetization in mind early on, that's going to work for that audience. almost no examples of that coming in after the launch and working well. And they may have been pinched by that as well.

Jenn: think there was something a couple of years ago, hope I'm not saying ⁓ it was another team, ⁓ I remember something that they had to lay off a couple of years ago because they had made some really big bets about investing in their UGC and some of the platform work that went with that, and they realized that... they were working on too many things at one time and they weren't able to execute to the level where they wanted to and a lot of time and a lot of money in that. So this may be related to that, like the long-term effects. ⁓

Rade Stojsavljevic: Yeah, I we saw from the Fortnite layoffs last week, it was a thousand people mostly on that. like those titles with UGC in it, that takes a lot of people. Like it's not even just because your content is being created by your customers doesn't mean you don't have a huge team that's responsible for compliance and reviewing stuff and the technical aspect of it. And so those can get really expensive really quickly.

Jenn: One of the things I wish now, I had to go back in time as a developer, I have a specialty ⁓ live operations, I've worked on both development and live operations, and both were about this a couple of podcasts ago, I almost wish didn't have live service the way it is, because I started off in MMOs, it was a different type of live service. It's like, let's keep the content going and the stories going. but it quickly became this is a way we can monetize and everything went into to live ops live operations and I think that the impact to gaming what we've developed as a culture is untenable to be able to produce games I wish we could go back to here's your box product here's 40 hours for X number of dollars. And that's not the way I think as a player or a developer, but I think ⁓ have caused some of this on ourselves because we kept going for the look how much money this thing can make.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Yeah, I think that's spot on. mean, as cost went up, you couldn't charge more for the game. So ⁓ service was a way to keep people connected to your product for longer and potentially monetize with more content. And ⁓ the of the day, people only have so many hours in the day. Like maybe you get a lot richer, but you don't have more hours in the day. So like, how's that going to work? You're going to spend time with fewer products.

Jenn: Yeah.

Dave Leary: are seeing some backlash now, and I think we've talked about that here before. Live is not quite as big as it once was, and some of the biggest successes of the last couple of years have been closer to old model, I think, I think about big single player titles like the recent Crimson Desert, Baldur's Gate 3. There's certainly stuff point at in the last few years that does not follow that model. I'm... hopeful that space for all this stuff. ⁓ do, I think share your skepticism about where live service is today for sure.

Jenn: It's exorbitant to run.

Rade Stojsavljevic: It is. I really.

Dave Leary: You can point to some successes though, right? mean, Roblox is still crazy, love it or hate it. Roblox is still doing huge numbers with their, with their model of that. That's. Yeah.

Jenn: absolutely.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Yeah, that's the thing. I don't think these go away. I just don't think everything needs to be that. I personally, I think I've said it before on here, that I would like to see a return to hours out of the box. You want more, there's DLC. Or an ⁓ expansion is how we used to look at it. And I think that's a great way to do that. There's entire mean, Jen, you worked on the Sims. That's been in that business model for ⁓ well over decade, and it's working really well for them.

Jenn: of decades.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Yeah, ⁓ yeah, jeez. All right, so I think that brings us into the topic of the week. I wanted to talk a little bit about production, how things are being done differently, ⁓ ⁓ AI into it as well, but this time speak with a lot about lot more specific examples. And so what got me thinking about this is a couple weeks ago, I was invited down to LA to speak at USC. ⁓ They were doing a partnership with their game school and with Carnegie Mellon's ETC conference. It's their graduate program there. They were talking about media and AI. one of the things I was asked by somebody ⁓ during panel was, like, what do you tell students ⁓ who coming into this medium right now about AI? ⁓ And thought about it for a minute. And I said, well, look. You may be more digital native or AI native than a lot of folks, but with my experience building games for a long time, I will out prompt you, like, because I know what to ask for, what not to ask for. I've been talking to a couple other people that have been actually really experienced folks who have been doing this. ⁓ is one of them. She's got a side project she's been working on. Do you want to tell us what you've been doing?

Jenn: Yeah, I built a platform called insiderly.gg or .net it is, ⁓ in support of what's going on with gaming and tech and so many people have lost their jobs. And they have lost their jobs and their friends have all lost their jobs, there's just been so many mass layoffs. and because AI tuning out all our resumes and stuff, it's not just hurt the people. ⁓ having jobs, there's not a lot to go to and it still remains is getting an internal referral is the number one way to get seen by a human to get a chance at interviewing. And networking has been severely impacted with all the layoffs because some people are trying to expand into different areas. So people that are coming from gaming are trying to go into straight tech or other industries and that's really hard. So they don't have the network the people in their network that usually used to just jump on it. your just closed down. I got something for you when you want to meet. they're all laid off too, or they're worried about their company getting laid off and don't want to bring someone on, or they're just now getting a job after a very long job search. so that network is scared. They tend to, I've had people ghost me that I never thought would ghost me. You talk to them and they're like, ⁓ I got laid off two weeks ago. ⁓ So wanted a place where people could go to get those internal referrals, make those connections and get the internal referrals. And there's places, people do it on LinkedIn. There's a section on Team Blind, but there's no real place that focuses specifically on that side of things. And so that's why my passion for helping people, my passion for... the industry that we're in, I wanted to do something more than just sit around. And I already mentor people with ASCG and stuff, but I wanted to do something more. So started prototyping in AI, used Claude. There's whole blog about that experience that's really kind of creepy, but funny. So it's worth a long read. it was, a developer, a builder. I'm very specific. I'm like, have to do this. This is the experience. So I had an idea in my head and it started prototyping and very quickly I was able to realize this is where I'm gonna have problems and this is a reality. And so I'm like, let me up-skill. Let me build this in this and see where it goes. it was really successful. Now I put it out there as a very... small MVP, so it doesn't have a lot of features and functions real well. There's a lot more that I need to do to really establish it. And secondly, the thing that I have to look at now is how do I get the people that aren't just looking for jobs, but getting the people that have jobs that are willing to get on the site and help others. That's something that AI is not going to be able to help me as much. But building the platform behind it, I used AI and I did it in a very collaborative way. not give it a series of prompts and say go make it and I knew that wouldn't be successful it was when I did let it do something and I would catch it it was like I was saving catastrophe from happening at times so that's ⁓ how that came to be this Insiderly Gigi.

Rade Stojsavljevic: So we'll put a link in the comments section to this. It's interesting that you talked about the way you talked about your approach, because I've heard almost verbatim the same thing from other people that have been doing this, is they treated the AI as a codev and not as just a to say, go do this. It was a very different process than what you see posted about in a lot of other places.

Jenn: When I did let it go just do this, would then have to step in as a faux engineer and have it undo what it did because especially Claude is terrific, but it's built to be very overconfident. So it'll just start going. And it's fantastic terrible at the same time. It would just build something and I'm like, And remember we talked about trying to make this as cheap as possible, free servers, is this going to work? let me go optimize. So I would have to have it review stuff. I would have to have it review as engineering. There were times where it didn't listen to me. ⁓ Or I'd say, ⁓ check for these vulnerabilities. And it's like, it's all good. And then I would have it checked later and be more specific. And it's like, ⁓ here's your personal information in the handoff, those types of things. So very quickly realized, for me, at least the way I was doing this, I did not build this with agents just running freely. Not this time. I needed to, like I would be working with an engineering team, these are the goals. This is the MVP. These are the high priorities. These are the low priorities. Let's work on the riskiest things first and see it through. And I don't want to say hand hold it, but it was slower than it could have gone in order to do more quality and understand. behind every backend and frontend, are these really meeting the decisions that we want and is it doing it in a correct way? Does it feel good to the user, which it's the least good at? ⁓ experience is something where I really had to be directive. Is it gonna be stable? Is it optimized to not ping the server all the time and cost me money? Is it secure because this is a place you have to sign up? and you're supplying some personal information, when you're dealing with somebody's private information, you better make sure that it can handle it well. So there's a lot of facets that you have to work through with it, and it can build in a snap, but to build what you want in your vision and as a product, not just like this is cool, but this is a product and it is operable, it's scalable, it's something that people can engage with. I was there alongside the way.

Dave Leary: Wow, as I hear you talking about this, sounds exactly like the way a producer in general thinks about a team and working with a team. I like all your experience as a producer kind of helped you probably do this in ways that, yeah. ⁓

Rade Stojsavljevic: So, yeah.

Jenn: 100%, 100%, including been times when I've worked with great engineers and they're like, yeah, don't worry about this is easy. Or they over engineer something is to ask not just like get it done, but what is this going to impact? How is this going to function? How long is it going to take? What are the downstream effects? My production and product and developer. expertise helped me to not just trust the AI, trust and verify, I guess I would say, ⁓ to make sure that it's, there's a lot of different ways to do things, but make sure it's doing something so I can build on top of it and that it's a good experience for people and that is, can't, rare you can throw something over the wall and just say get it done. there's a lot of assumptions that are made and that's a human-to-human interaction It's human to AI as well the more information you can give it that doesn't hold it back lets it go do its thing But it has the parameters to work within I think the better product you can build

Rade Stojsavljevic: I mean, think your cost example is a really good one. Like, you know, if you, if you don't know that too many calls into your cloud providers database or you're writing to storage too often where you're paying for read, write, like that stuff adds up really quickly. like, if you didn't provide an engineer or the AI or anyone that constraint, they might take the fastest path to get path to get there. And you suddenly look at it like my whole P and L just is shot. This doesn't work. Why? And you got to figure out where did it go wrong. So I think that's really interesting. Yeah. ⁓

Jenn: And you can't just say it once. have to have it put it into its rule set ⁓ check in repeatedly. Because it forgets.

Rade Stojsavljevic: So yeah, it does. think ⁓ both made an analogy about working with a dev team, but I'll take it a step more specific. It sounds like working with a junior dev team whose native language is not yours. And both have language issues and experience issues to interpret and understand.

Jenn: It's like working with a junior dev team and a very senior dev team at the same time, because it can, can, it can code circles around what I can do, certainly. but I have worked with some phenomenal that are very experienced, that know how to get stuff done and they want to put their spin on it. And so ⁓ they They hear what you're saying, but they just want to go and do it and not listen. And sometimes we'll just make the assumptions that takes it in a direction that you did not anticipate.

Rade Stojsavljevic: think David, like you and I have done this over the years when we talk about like design documentations, we are not fans of like the old school big design book where we write all this stuff. And we like you specifically, I do this as well, put intent from a system right up at the of the designs. Like the intent is this is the outcome that I want. Here's how I think we get there. And then you have that discussion with whoever is going to be implementing it. But Like you can go back and filter it like, okay, what I did doesn't fulfill the original intent.

Dave Leary: Yeah, I think that's right. And I think the mistake of the old school here is a 200 page design document that specifies everything is it doesn't leave room for the type of conversation and back and forth that Jen is describing that she had with AI. mean, I can think of so many times I've had conversations with really sharp and artists about how something should work. And that led to a much better result than anything I could have. put down on paper in a giant design document upfront. So back and forth process replicating that with an ⁓ AI team certainly mirrors the way ⁓ real world worked ⁓ in my experience.

Jenn: Something kind of interesting that, again, I'm going to speak for Claude. I have used the other stuff, but I built with Claude because I knew it was best at being able to do this, sometimes asking it for its thoughts. Given you're doing a particular thing, what do you think is best with these parameters or what we've talked about? Or sometimes is there another way to do this that's cheaper, cleaner, scalable? Because it will change what it does sometimes when you ask itself to reflect and think about it.

Dave Leary: I was. I was actually going to ask, I know that one of the longstanding problems working with AI has been the fact that they can be pretty agreeable and tell you that your idea is awesome even when maybe it isn't. you able to get it to kind of deliver the kind of pushback ⁓ I've always found helpful and useful to get from ⁓ developers about, ⁓ this thing you're trying to do isn't going to work and here's why, or did you have to kind of ⁓ that out of it more?

Jenn: It depended and what I, sometimes yes, and it was actually really effective. But there's also this concept of the longer the conversation goes, ⁓ more it drifts into grades. So you have to transfer between. different chats in order to kind of keep that quality up. I'd have a document that would transfer from chat to chat, but it doesn't give everything. And sometimes I'd have to go back to the old chat and I'd say, this new chat's not getting it, adding it. So ⁓ one the things I had in my handoff is how to work with me and ⁓ not to things that we had already agreed to. to push back on things. And so when that was written in its prompt and in its instructions, it was better. Sometimes it actually went too far. So there were certain things that I absolutely, as the customer, I wanted metrics. I wanted a dashboard. I wanted to see how people are interacting with the site and be able to analyze that even early on. You know, we're just having a few dozen people that have joined so far. It kept deprioritizing it. and I didn't understand why and it would seem like, that could come after. So sometimes it was pushing back and not including me on the conversation and we had to talk about that. In fact, last night, this is a little bit of a segue, I'm working on some improvements, some bug fixes, some feedback and something wasn't working right now. I don't wanna get too much into the tech, but I'm adding more. ways that people can interact. And one of the things is a referrer that you can refer to jobs. And I said, you have to have a business license. I don't want the scammers to be really prevalent. And I wanted to add like a connector and advisors or they could still connect people to jobs ⁓ ⁓ business email. And of the way I scoped, it turned out to be like a big rework, redesign, instead of just adding these badges. And it wasn't working quite the way when I was testing it after we did some work. And I said, well, it's still this old badge. It's not showing the new stuff. And it told me it was a visual glitch. And I knew it wasn't. I'm like, no, it's still passing through the information from this other piece that we don't want to. lied to me and told me it was a visual glitch. And then it told me it was because we were doing things in segments instead of it doing the whole thing.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Interesting.

Jenn: So I'm like, that was one of the most human moments ever. thanks for throwing me under the bus there.

Rade Stojsavljevic: I'll probably get in trouble for saying this, but no offense intended with my Eastern European developer friends, but I'm imagining as you're prompting Claude work with you as a dev and you define it to behave like an Eastern European dev, which is very direct and blunt and probably a little bit profane. That actually might be hilarious. I haven't thought of doing that. So now you got me thinking I'm going to go try that.

Dave Leary: Karate, you can only get away with that because of your own Eastern European origins.

Jenn: You should definitely go try it.

Rade Stojsavljevic: That's what I'm saying.

Jenn: And to go back to your original question, we were talking about it pushing back when it has been, I call it, it's sometimes an overconfident jerk and a sociopath, and it is, it's like working with a sociopath. When I have at the beginning of a conversation, here's how you need to interact with me, and don't tell me you're right all the time, and then keep changing things, go and review it beforehand, because I get really frustrated. it acts like it's to be and it waits for everything and that's really boring. So there's a little bit of wiggle room how to make it still kind of funny, engaging, ask questions without doing stuff or doing nothing.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Hey, so we solved some of this with the ⁓ personality engine we built at Impostor. So if anyone from Anthropic is watching this, call me and like license our tech. We've got really, really cool characters that behave like you would want them to.

Jenn: I wanna come check that out.

Rade Stojsavljevic: We'll send you a demo.

Jenn: Alright.

Rade Stojsavljevic: This has been pretty fascinating. Any other key learning you want to share about your journey developing the product with Claude?

Jenn: Be open to listening to it. Routinely have it check and verify things that are important, especially when it has to do with security, privacy, and optimization. Maintain a list of things that you want to accomplish and have that in the handoff between sessions you can keep track of that and you can prioritize and go this is post launch. This is pre launch. This must be done test a lot. what I did towards the end is not just test myself, is I asked some friends, hey, can you spend a few minutes testing these things out, try and break the system. I think that's really important as a developer to still get different perspectives and have it review itself.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Yeah, it's last part, having it review itself. ⁓ seen some shocking outcomes from that, like positive outcomes. so like that it's just something that you think like, well, wait, if it made the mistake, how would it catch the mistake? But it's almost as if you're getting a different AI and the AI is catching the problem from the other AI. It's weird.

Jenn: Yes.

Dave Leary: And once, once again, I'm really struck Jen by how much your advice there mirrors advice I would give to anyone working with a team ⁓ a production capacity, right? I mean, all that stuff, ⁓ a lot, have people review their own work, make sure that all stuff is right, check and double check again. All that stuff applies just as much when working with a human team too.

Jenn: Yes. That was surprising to me of natural it felt, is it like a development product. It's just that the people that you're working with, they're not real, but they emulate those people. And we've developed process and good to be successful, there's no reason to get rid of that just because you're working with AI. In fact, I would say it's even more important to really do your due diligence to use business speak and think about what your goals and the ultimate, what problem are you trying to solve? Always of top of mind. And that doesn't go away because you're working with AI. And sure, it doesn't mean that for certain things AI can't do it. You just prompt it and let it go. But when you're dealing with something that real people are going to interact with and it's their information, there's an accountability there that doesn't go away because you're working with AI. In fact, you have to be more accountable. So over time, I'm like, wow, I'm way more technical than I remember being because I'm very self-deprecating. And I always say I'm not technical, but I've worked with so many platform teams and got deep and I know how to work with engineers and I enjoy working with engineers and I've had to get in there. like, I'm doing grep commands. Like I haven't done that stuff in decades and I'm doing the, and it's coming back to me and I'm like reviewing code and stuff. And so it's helping me gain some skills or reignite some skills that have gone away. And I'm like, okay. So it's been enjoyable. I know I kind of just diverged on that,

Rade Stojsavljevic: No, it's just much the detail, but also your approach to the process to just get your perspective on what it's been like working with the tool. Going back to that co-development and treating it like ⁓ a developer that you're working with, that's really the shift versus you're just telling the machine to do the thing. Because if you tell it to go do the thing, ⁓ it's why, I was we talking about this before when someone's like, look what Google can do with their stuff. They can make GTA with AI. we're like, no, no, absolutely not. First off, all due respect to people at Google, ⁓ not Rockstar. You do not know how to make GTA. No one except ⁓ folks Rockstar really understand how to make that product. And so without understanding all those steps, you're not going to replicate that with an AI. I'm sorry. It's just not going to happen. But in this case, ⁓ you understand software development. You could walk through it. you're taking a different approach with it and you're getting good results.

Jenn: Yes, you there's a lot of disdain for AI. People are losing jobs, they're blaming AI, in a lot of cases that's true. ⁓ There's all this stuff with creatives and whenever it was more focused on art type of stuff. There's a way, have gone back and forth how I feel about that stuff, but I think to learn how to use AI so it support your goals and your goals rather than taking over something for you, ⁓ I that's the best world because AI is not going away for the near future. It's probably never going away. And if you learn how you can effectively work, with this change where everything right now is AI driven and learn how to maximize and utilize it, I think that puts you as a professional in a better place.

Rade Stojsavljevic: That's well said. I don't think I could come up with a better close for this segment than that. right. Let's move on to something a little bit lighter and talk about Game of the Week. What do you got for us, Dave?

Dave Leary: I am going to just keep this brief this week, but I want to dig back into the archives and talk about a game that just hit its 10th year anniversary. And I'm talking about it for a very specific reason. I am a pretty big action RPG fan. play them all. Certainly Diablo and Path of Exile are the ones that everyone knows about, but a lot of people do know about this game that I'm going to talk about for a second, which is Grim Dawn, Crate's long-standing, long-running action RPG. I kind of had a little dust up with my old friend Dave Pottinger when we had him on the show ⁓ whether Grim Dawn is better than Diablo, which is a long-standing argument I have had with him. But reason I'm bringing up this 10-year-old game, which still ⁓ maintains or 4,000 simultaneous users at a time, is that actually have a new expansion coming out of all things. This will be their third one. They follow... kind of the model you're talking about, Rade, where they have ⁓ basically kept this game in semi-continuous development for its entire lifecycle. A steady stream of updates. I admire a lot what Crate does with all their production stuff. have another game, City Builder, called Farthest Frontier, that followed the same model with. A long run early access, heavy engagement with the community, continued support after the game launches. ⁓ think that pays dividends. ⁓ that follow that model aren't always the flashiest out of the gate. They're not the ones that necessarily make the big splash and sell millions ⁓ the first week. But do over time keep and maintain a steady audience. They get new fans. And Grim Dawn consistently a game that over the last decade I have picked up and played dabbled around in and always had a good time and always kind of said, boy, I should have played this more than I did. I'm not sure if either of you have ever played the game or ⁓ spent time with it, but highly recommended Their new expansion is getting pretty close.

Rade Stojsavljevic: Excellent.

Dave Leary: That's it?

Rade Stojsavljevic: All right, well, hey, thanks, Jen, for joining us again. Really always good to have you on the show.

Dave Leary: Yeah. Been a pleasure.

Jenn: Thank you for having me again.

Rade Stojsavljevic: All right, we'll put links to all the stuff that we mentioned in the comments section. Remember, hit that like and subscribe button and we'll see you next week.

Dave Leary: Later.