747: Psychonauts 2 And Knockout City

Larry Hryb:
Hi, it's Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson. Welcome to the show, welcome to the podcast. Let me bring the whole gang in here, and we're all ready to go. Where's Jeff? Jeff's not here. So just you and I this week, Rebecca.

Rebecca Gordius:
We've officially kicked him off now.

Larry Hryb:
Well, you know what we're going to do then? If it's just going to be you and I, then we're going to do something because you and I have something in common, and we know what that is, right? Let's go to the two box.

Rebecca Gordius:
I already know what's coming.

Larry Hryb:
There it is, baby! Syracuse Orange since we are both Syracuse University graduates, I wanted to put that there. Of course, the problem is it clashes terribly with the green, but... Looking like your name's all messed up there. Got to fix that. But it's good to see you, it's good to see you, Rebecca.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, thanks. I had a nice week off, but it's good to be back.

Larry Hryb:
Well, we're happy to have you back. In fact, not only are you back, but I spy a new microphone under your chin.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yes, I hope I sound better. Now I feel like real podcasting person.

Larry Hryb:
The comments in the YouTube comments and on Twitter were very nice, and people were like, "Oh, let's get her a new mic." I know. We've been working on that since you joined the show. We finally got one because these mics are tough to find because everybody's working from home and wants to up their quality. It looks like you've got the Elgato Wave there, right? That's a great mic.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yes, it's very nice. I like it a lot, and it's nice and small too, so I can pack it with me.

Larry Hryb:
Compact, and it's good to go. Anyway, it's great to see you. Jeff, who is not with us this week as you can tell by the empty green box over here. See? No Jeff. No Jeff.

Rebecca Gordius:
When's Jeff's not here, let's just agree to do this format with the orange.

Larry Hryb:
I agree. As I just said a moment ago, Rebecca and I graduated Syracuse University. Not together. We're quite different, but we were in the same Newhouse School and Communications. We are go orange. And I figure we'll drop that as a background. In fact, that's why I was so excited when I remember joining Xbox and we're launching Xbox Live back in the day. I was so excited when the color was orange. Remember, it used to be that crazy Xbox Live orange?

Rebecca Gordius:
Oh, yeah. Now everything is just green. It's the same shade of green for the last 10 years.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, it's just one big thing of green. But you've had a busy week. I mean, but you had a busy week doing some Minecraft stuff. Would you tell me about that, or tell everybody else here about that?

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, so I have a bunch of games on my backlog that I've been wanting to play, but I went to go visit some family now that everyone's vaccinated, and then after I got back, we were in full swing of getting ready for our first ever Minecraft Virtual Creator Summit, and so Minecraft has this huge community of YouTubers, influencers, Twitch streamers, Facebook gamers, and so we brought them all together for a virtual summit. We did a live stream, and it was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun. We used to do it in person in Stockholm, and it would be really amazing. One year we rented... There's this island that's an amusement park in Stockholm, which is super cool.

Larry Hryb:
I remember that. That was really cool, yeah.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, took speed boats through the Swedish sound or whatever that is in Stockholm. We've done some really fun stuff with them, but they create really amazing content, and obviously people really enjoy their content, and it's just been awesome to get to have that opportunity to mingle with them and hear how things been going with them and thank them for their work. Yeah, we were super busy with that the last couple of weeks, but it's good timing because we have a lot of fun stuff coming up for Minecraft in the next month or two.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, it's funny. I was recording something with... Oh, God. I can't remember her name, who does Minecraft EDU. Because a lot of people, certainly people that listen to this show know that Minecraft, it's a massive game. It's one of the biggest games in the world, but there's also this other part of Minecraft that a lot of people forget about which is the Minecraft EDU part., which unless you have kids in school or you're actively involved in the educational environment, you may not know. Can you explain some of that to me because I had a chance to chat with the head of Minecraft EDU yesterday. It was great.

Rebecca Gordius:
Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, so Minecraft actually, we have an entirely separate edition of the game called Minecraft Education Edition and it's technically only available through educational licenses, so teachers and we have some departments of education around the world who are licensed to use it, but we release a lot of new lessons and history and art and science and math and engineering and really complicated stuff, but we've actually started releasing some of those lessons in the main game too. So we have an education category in the in-game marketplace so that way a lot of the kids who are stuck at home these days still have something educational that they can play through. It's pretty cool being part of the franchise.

Larry Hryb:
Like you said, if you don't have a relationship or a license to look at the EDU version, you can still take a look at that content on your regular Minecraft because this content is... Can you give us an example, just a high level a couple of the pieces of content? Because this is stuff that's really amazing.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, so we came out with a Good Trouble category last year, which is based around different civil rights movement throughout history. So, there's the US civil rights movement, obviously, but then also Malala in Pakistan pushing for girls education, there's the British suffragettes' movement pushing for the women's right to vote. There's another lesson on Mahatma Gandhi in India, but then we also have some other science and technology ones too that are really cool. There's one that takes you through the International Space Station, there's one that explores the anatomy of the human eye. There's a lot of cool stuff. I did a couple of the Hour of Code tutorials, learning how to code. Spoiler alert: Not good at it. So I'm going to stick to what I'm good at, but-

Larry Hryb:
But you were trying, and you were learning. That's the most important thing.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yes, yes. But there's some really cool stuff in there. So I would recommend checking it out. Even as an adult, you can learn something and some of these lessons are really detailed.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, it's a really great resource both for education folks, and then if you don't, just go in there if you just have kids and you want to check it out, go do that. By the way, we usually talk about what we're playing, and I want to talk about what we're playing. What are you playing? What's your backlog look like, and what's in your most recently used?

Rebecca Gordius:
I think my most recently used is still Minecraft. Admittedly, when I'm really busy, I tend to just kind of hang out in Creative Mode, and I've been building a house into a mountainside, and it's going to have a really big sprawling garden, and so I've been working on that for a few months now. But I have a lot of games on my backlog. I have Spiritfarer downloaded, and so I was just chatting with a friend this week who was highly recommending it, so I really want to play that, but then there's also a couple games coming to Xbox Game Pass I really want to try too, and so it's... I don't know. I think this is the problem you get to when you're an adult. It's like I have all these games I want to play and I finally have the money to buy them, but I don't have any of the time to play them because I'm so busy with work.

Larry Hryb:
Well, that's the other kind of hidden secret of working in the games industry is once you get in the games industry, you just don't have any time. You have no time to play games. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at my most recently used. I've got Psychonauts 2. I've got an interview with Tim Schafer. We're talking about Psychonauts 2 and it's on the Game Informer cover, and there's a whole bunch. There's like 30 pages of it in Game Informer this month, so we're going to talk to Tim later on.

Rebecca Gordius:
30 pages.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, Psychonauts 2. Judgment. I mean to your point, I just haven't had much time either because I've been working on a lot of other things as well, I can't really talk about those things yet, but I have been working on a lot of other things as well, so my gaming time has been rather limited unfortunately. You know how that is.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yes. Well, I have one more thing too that I wanted to mention that I've been working on. Next week, and we can chat about it more next week too, but we're releasing the Hidden Depths DLC for Minecraft Dungeons, and we're going to have an anniversary event because the game launched on May 26th of last year, so it's already been an entire year with five DLCs and tons of free updates. This is a good time to jump back in, but yeah, so next week is when all of that kicks off. So, stay tuned.

Larry Hryb:
We're going to do news in just a minute, but we've got a pretty tight show today because I've got a couple interviews and Jeff isn't here to kind of wax on about coffee and all the things he waxes on about. You're welcome to do that, by the way. I want to be very clear. But we've got Knockout City is coming to Xbox Game Pass, and we're going to talk to Guha Bala, his team is working on that, which it's a dodgeball game. Do you remember playing dodgeball when you were in middle school?

Rebecca Gordius:
Yes, of course. We're not that far apart in age. Everyone still plays dodgeball.

Larry Hryb:
Dodgeball is one of those universal things, that's why hopefully it's going to make a great game. And then I'm going to talk to Tim Schafer and Ben Reeves. Tim Schafer of course for Psychonauts 2, which is coming out later this year. And then Ben Reeves from Game Informer because Ben had the chance to spend a lot of time with the team. Those are the two interviews this week, so I've got those kind of queued up ready to go. I didn't know if you had anything else you want to talk about before we get into those?

Rebecca Gordius:
I'll save it for the news, but I'm excited to see the interviews.

Larry Hryb:
Psychonauts 2 is on the cover of Game Informer this month. Joining me is Ben Reeves from Game Informer. Ben, good to see you.

Ben Reeves:
Hey, how's it going?

Larry Hryb:
It is going great. And of course in the middle box is the legendary Tim Schafer. Tim, how are you?

Tim Schafer:
I'm feeling very legendary now that you've introduced me finely.

Larry Hryb:
By the way, Ben and I were just chatting before we started recording about your epic lighting and the red background there. I don't know what it is, but it's menacing.

Tim Schafer:
I'm in a room that's completely red. It keeps me calm and it keeps me creative. Yeah, I've moved. This is a blank office.

Larry Hryb:
Is that actually your officer, or is that maybe the bathroom or something?

Tim Schafer:
How dare you talk about... This is where the magic happens. I won't say anymore than that.

Ben Reeves:
This is how he intimidates the press.

Tim Schafer:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm sitting on the toilet right now. Only the best for you.

Larry Hryb:
Psychonauts 2, anything can happen. Ben, you've got Psychonauts 2 on the cover. Tell us a little bit about what we can expect for those people that are getting their hands on it now, or checking it out.

Ben Reeves:
Yeah, we went all out for this, I'll just say that. Normally we do a cover story, and we'll do 12 to 14 pages, and we certainly did that with Psychonauts, but then we went above and beyond the call of duty here, which really was props to you guys, props to Double Fine there for giving us access, but we have a big feature where we talk all about Psychonauts and the journey to create the game, which has been a long story, but we dive into Tim's background a little bit, talk about his time in LucasArts. My colleague, Blake Hester, he wrote a couple of fine features as well as just explained the history of Double Fine, so we kind of dedicate the whole issue to Double Fine and their work and why their games are special. Because they are.

Larry Hryb:
They certainly are. Tim, I mean, that's a lot of press. That's a lot of ink as they used to say. Tell us a little bit about what you showed for Psychonauts 2, and then Ben, I want to talk about some of those other segments that you guys did in the magazines. But Tim, tell us about what you showed.

Tim Schafer:
Yeah, it is an exciting amount of just focus on the company, and I think we showed them a lot. We showed them everything. We gave them really full access because we love attention, and specifically, I think we really focused on showing them details about the gameplay of the mind of Hollis Forsythe, which is this mind that is a combination of her memories of medical school and plus her interest in gambling, which Raz may or may not have had some influence on with his psychic intrusions.

Larry Hryb:
We have a little bit of a B-roll here, so if you could just kind of tell us what we're seeing here because this is first time we're seeing this, right?

Tim Schafer:
Yeah. So, this is the inside of Horris' mind once Raz has kind of been messing around in there with his new powers. In the game, you have some of the old psychic powers in the first game and also a new power called Mental Connection where you can connect various thoughts in someone's mind, and Raz was trying to achieve his goals by making some connections in her mind. He accidentally makes her way too interested in gambling, and so it gets mixed up with all our memories of medical school to create this environment where it's a hospital where doctors are rolling the dice to decide how the patients will live or die, and it's one of the kind of strange juxtaposed themes that I think Psychonauts games are known for. I say, "Psychonauts games," there's three of them, but I can say games.

Larry Hryb:
The franchise?

Tim Schafer:
Yeah, the franchise. This is one of the levels that really exemplifies that and that's what we shared with our friends and Game Informer.

Ben Reeves:
Hey, there were once only three Star Wars'.

Larry Hryb:
That's true, and now there's a multi-billion dollar empire. Ben, tell us... You got to play the game, you got to certainly play this and kind of get a broader look, but I want to really talk about the coverage you have. You teased it a little bit at the top and told us broadly what it was all about, but what are some of the things we can expect as we're reading this?

Ben Reeves:
Yeah. Well, we go all in on what Tim just talked about on Hollis and the new Mental Connection power, how it works, that kind of stuff, and then some of those other features we talk about Tim's history in the industry because I think he has a really interesting journey just starting out at LucasArts. LucasArts being a really weird, quirky place in the industry. It was an opportunity for George Lucas to spend some of the money he was making and didn't know what else to do with, and so turns out one of the things they did was make games and Tim had the unique opportunity to be a part of that, and I think that's a really cool unique little part of the industry that we don't always hear about, and Tim's journey was super interesting. It sounds like it was a magical time for sure.

Larry Hryb:
Tim, I was looking at the article and it looked like... Correct me if I'm wrong, but looked like there was an interview some notes from one of the interviews you were having or maybe it was the job posting. What was that? Because I mean, you got to see this thing.

Tim Schafer:
Yeah, I think we gave them all our documents. I remember being on the phone. I was just out of school and I was really nervous, and I can't imagine. It's all my dreams coming together, video games, Lucas and Star Wars, of course. And I like Star Wars, but I really liked the games that Lucas made on the Atari, Rescue on Fractalus and Ballblazer. So, I'm sitting in the interview, and I'm all nervous, and so I doodled and I found that paper where I had written down all the names and phone numbers during the interview, like someone does, but I also think you have the cover letter in there, don't you, Ben?

Ben Reeves:
Yeah, the cover letter. I mean, this is old news, it's not breaking news or anything, but you wrote a cover letter to LucasArts because you didn't think you were going to get the job and then you're like, "Well, what if I turn my cover letter to make it look like an old point-and-click adventure game," and that's what did it, I'm assume. You got the job.

Tim Schafer:
Yeah, because when I was talking about my favorite Lucas games, I had mentioned Ball Blaster, and I said, "I love Ball Blaster so much," and they're like, "That's the name of the game when it was pirated," and I was like, "Oh. Whoops. Awkward." So I went all out with my cover letter and made a fake text adventure. Maybe that's what did it. Who knows.

Ben Reeves:
I assume so, yeah. Because when I first started interviewing you, I was like, "Oh, I love Telenauts," and you're like, "That's not what the game's called." So I repeated the mistake.

Tim Schafer:
I would feel honored if someone pirated the game and changed the name to Telenauts. I'd be like, "That's a lot of effort."

Larry Hryb:
Tim, maybe we'd like to have that point-and-click game show up in one of your games as an Easter egg, or maybe it already is?

Tim Schafer:
Maybe. No, it's not.

Ben Reeves:
It's a good idea though.

Larry Hryb:
Ben, I want to talk to you about some of the... You talked about the main Psychonauts 2, which again, is in Game Informer this month, but you have some other pieces that some of your colleagues wrote about. Tell us about what some of those are.

Ben Reeves:
Yeah. Blake Hester, he was my wingman for this whole thing, and honestly, he could have done it himself. He's just a pro. He did a deep dive. One of the things he did was looked at some of the more notable games on Double Fine's gameography, and he kind of looked across the years at what they did and then the other piece he wrote is more a in-depth dive on the history of Double Fine, so kind of picking up from my article on Tim Schafer's LucasArts years, you can kind of read through the whole history, and then read up about Double Fine, which they started out in a garage in San Francisco. Actually correction: They started out in a haunted clog shop apparently and they moved to a smoky garage, so I don't know which one's... Is that a step up or step down, Tim?

Tim Schafer:
Well, the clog shop was really nice, but very small and really expensive, and we got kicked out of it for... We don't need to go into that, but the garage is really convenient because you could park your car right next to your desk. But there's this one day when we're all almost passing out. We're like, "I'm really sleepy. Are you sleepy? I have a headache. What's going on?" And it turned out someone had this old sports car that had a leaking gas tank, and it was this puddle of gas under his car, and we're all just like, "Oh."

Larry Hryb:
You're all inhaling fumes.

Tim Schafer:
Yep.

Larry Hryb:
Not good.

Ben Reeves:
People would just drive in. I mean, I didn't work there, but according to you guys, people would just drive the car in right up to next to somebody's desk, get out and walk in, and it's like, "Oh." I guess it's convenient if I need to run to lunch, but...

Tim Schafer:
It's a testament to how exciting it is when you're starting up a company. Everything's cool like, "Oh, my God. This is so great. We can park right next to our desk." That's what I thought. Maybe the employees didn't think it was that good. I mean, parking in downtown San Francisco, I think it's pretty magical.

Larry Hryb:
When you were starting in the garage, and that's a great San Francisco Silicon Valley story, as we've all seen the garages that Google started in and Apple and HP, and so on and so forth. Do you ever go back by that garage, Tim, and just kind of take a look at it? Is there still a gas stain on the driveway?

Tim Schafer:
I mean, it's locked. I've poked my head through the bars. It turned back into its natural state of being a pipe fitting shop or something like that, and so I look in there... I mean, the clog shop is now a hair salon and my wife got her hair cut in the corner of the room that used to be my desk, where my desk was, so it's all full circle now. Yeah, you walk into a hair salon and be like, "Hey, everybody. Guess what? My company started here," and they're like, "We don't take walk-ins."

Larry Hryb:
The circle of life. The circle of urban life, right?

Tim Schafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That is the circle. It goes clog shop to video game developer to hair salon to pipe fitting shop too, and then it just repeats over and over again. And the rent goes up.

Larry Hryb:
We've got a little bit more footage here that we were showing a little bit earlier. I wonder if you can kind of walk us through, Tim. You set this up already, but there's a lot going on here, I mean, in terms of the characters and the skills and some of the game. Tell us about it.

Tim Schafer:
Yeah, there's some old and some new here. The first game you recognize the sensor. This is a sensor which is a part of everyone's mind that gets rid of thoughts that don't belong and Raz doesn't belong in this mind, so it's trying to get rid of him. And you'll see a new enemy, which is the Bad Idea. The Bad Idea makes these light bulbs appear over its head, and then throws them at you and they explode. But if you look at this gameplay, you'll see how what we tried do in this game is really integrate the psychic powers with the combat in a deeper way, so you can use... That's Mental Connection there to kind of tether the enemy towards you where you can melee attack them and you can use your telekinesis ability to pick up the bombs they're throwing and throw them back at them. Here he's using pyrokinesis to burn this adorable little dog. It's just a psychic animal. No animals are actually hurt in the making of the game.

Larry Hryb:
Which is important to point out. What kind of-

Tim Schafer:
Which I think is actually true. I think that's true, yeah.

Larry Hryb:
You want to wait on that? Do you have the little tag, the note at the end of a movie from the ASPCA, that it was made okay with them, or you didn't get that? No? Okay.

Tim Schafer:
I'm willing to say on the record, "No animals were hurt."

Larry Hryb:
We saw a little bit of gameplay, but there's a lot of different style of gameplays in this game, right?

Tim Schafer:
Yeah, there's platforming. Raz is a trained acrobat, so he has a lot of skills of climbing poles and swinging on poles and a lot of the deep platforming mechanics, but also it's an adventure game, so there's puzzles, there's dialogue with characters like in some of the old LucasArts adventure games, dialogue trees, and then there's combat and an action in it too.

Larry Hryb:
Ben, you've got-

Ben Reeves:
That was the coolest thing about the original. Sorry to jump in, but that was the coolest thing about the original game was like every level was different. One level you're a kaiju knocking down cities and one you're exploring some crazy suburban area, and one thing that I really took away during my time talking to you guys is you really wanted to bring that back, and every level has its own theme. Every level has unique gameplay stuff, which I'm sure is just a pain to make, but for a player, for a fan, that's exciting because every... I don't know what to expect from one minute to the next.

Tim Schafer:
Yeah, we do really try to make every level have its own art style and a gameplay twist, something different than all the other levels, and it's part of the reason it takes so long to make these games, but I think it's really important. It's part of the big appeal. Yeah, you never know what's going to happen. It's set inside the human mind a lot of it, so we can do anything we want in this way. It's so creative and inspiring to make a game like this and fun to play.

Larry Hryb:
That's why it's important to point out that it's not like you're taking a character and with a weapon and you're just kind of designing levels. You have to re-go through and have a new look and a new style and a new way to play. Certainly got the main character, but I'm just saying the levels are just vastly different so it's also like each level is its own game, right?

Tim Schafer:
It feels that way, for sure, and definitely its own look and its own... It's a narrative game, so there's a lot of meaning to the story, and with the characters, they really pull you in and you feel like these characters are real to you and you get really involved in their emotional state and stuff, which is not really like a typical platforming thing, but it's there as deep as you want to get into it. You don't have to really totally psychoanalyze all the characters, but we tried to put a lot of thought into making all that solid and fun to explore, if you're into that.

Larry Hryb:
Ben, you've got so much coverage in the Game Informer. How do people absorb this coverage? How do they find it? What do they need to do to grab this stuff?

Ben Reeves:
Yeah, go to gameinformer.com/psychonauts2. That's our main coverage hub for everything we're going to write about. We have different deep dive video dives that includes some of the footage you just saw, but we'll explore Mental Connection a little bit more in-depth, we'll talk more about the characters. We have several interviews, not just with Tim, but with other people on the team, and then we do... One of my favorite interviews was the rapid fire interview we do with Tim, which is always a good time. A lot of jokes in there, so it'll be a good time. You can watch that one. Yeah, gameinformer.com/psychonauts2.

Larry Hryb:
All right, Tim. We've got to wrap it up, Tim and Ben, but Tim, people are probably saying, "Well, how do I play this? Where do I find it?" And you're going to answer the question like this.

Tim Schafer:
Oh, my gosh. Well, if you want to play Psychonauts 2, it's coming out later this year on Xbox and through Xbox Game Pass and on Windows 10 PC.

Larry Hryb:
That's all you need to know. All right, gentlemen. Thanks so much for your time today. Ben Reeves from Game Informer. Check out the great coverage, and it's not just a story. There's a whole bunch of other stories as well about the amazing Double Fine. And then Tim Schafer, always good to see you, Tim. Thank you for your time and thank you for letting us into your bedroom.

Tim Schafer:
This is my toilet, my bathroom.

Speaker 5:
You're listening to KO City Pirate Radio. I'm taking over the airwaves to welcome all you new brawlers out there. Lace up your shoes, tie back your hair and kiss your mama goodbye. This is Knockout City.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh, when I saw that Knockout City trailer back in March, with the pirate radio DJ, and the vertical city, the colorful visuals, even the logo, I was reminded of the original Jet Set Radio. For me, that's a huge compliment. I'm a huge fan of that. But Knockout City, it's not rollerblading. This is dodgeball, and these players can do a lot more than Ben Stiller. It's available now on Xbox consoles and through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Here to tell us all about it is Guha Bala, the co-founder of Velan Studios coming in from upstate New York. I don't get to say that too often.

Guha Bala:
Thank you for having me, Jeff.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Very happy to have you here. Look, like a lot of kids, I played dodgeball growing. I was pretty good at it. Helped that I was super skinny. But one of the things that I thought was just so fun about the game in general was how you quickly shift from defense to offense, from, "Oh. I don't want to get hit," to, "Oh. I got the ball and now the tables have turned." It happens very quickly. So I'm just curious, how do you capture that in a game about dodgeball?

Guha Bala:
What we wanted to do right out of the gate when we started the early prototyping for Knockout 2, that was before Knockout City was Knockout City, was to make a different kind of action game, and we thought a good place to start was, "Hey, let's look at ball games, and make a game about throwing and catching." As simple as that. It turned out that a dodgeball inspiration that's much more than dodgeball as we understand it, gave us a perfect context for it, and we thought that this would really give rise to a different type of game experience because when you're throwing and catching it's very different than playing a shooter because if you're attacked, you can defend yourself immediately, and then turn that action right onto the person that sort of aimed at you in the first place, and it also gives rise to a number of new phenomenon too when you're playing socially because you can pass. You can actually work as a team in a totally different way. And so passing allows you to position yourself, passing allows you to assist in a unique way to team members.

Guha Bala:
And with ballgames that really lend themselves to sport style of gameplay structures where a reversal of fortune can be very dramatic, can really lead to those clutch moments. Anyway, this all didn't come through a big master plan, it just all started with saying, "Can we make a game about throwing and catching?" And then we did successive prototypes for over 18 months really to be able to nail that core gameplay feel where you get the sense of, "Hey, I'm doing something different and I feel really connected to the action. I feel something social way to play with my buddies, with my friends in a manner that feels really fresh, and can result in these kind of dramatic reversals, where I get to show off my skill and I can do it in style." So, that's actually eventually what gave form to what Knockout City is today.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I think it's really interesting. If you were making a new basketball game or a new shooter, you've got a lot of sort of things that you could build off of like, "Oh, we'd like a little bit of this and we'd like a little bit of that," but I can't remember ever playing a dodgeball game, so you really are having to build this from the ground up, which I think is really interesting. Now, so many games today, they're all about offense, as we talked about, but it's nonstop shooting or attacking. So it's can you shoot this person more accurately or more faster than they can shoot me, and then one of us survives, like two knights tilting at each other and jousting? And I think players are kind of comfortable with that. They're used to that. That's so many games, but how should players really be thinking about when they don't have the ball? What should they be doing? Where should their mindset be and how can they help their team?

Guha Bala:
Well, some people come from the school of thought that the best defense is more offense, and it can work. It can work, but actually, in Knockout City, as you play, you quickly realize that, "Okay, there's individual skill and there's team skill." So when it comes to individual skill, you can master the throwing, the fake throws, the anticipation of your opponent's moves, and then figure out how to be able to get to the ball spawn points, intercept the attacks, and then keep a full-on press, but you quickly realize that the team that has a better team dynamic dominates. So, you're going on the offense and you get flanked, and you get flanked by a player that doesn't have a ball, but receives a quick pass, so it's harder to anticipate.

Guha Bala:
And so you quickly realize that all offense, especially in a situation where you're facing a coordinated team, not a good idea. And you learn to be able to assess the position of your own teammates, the position of the opponents, where the actual balls and the ammo are, and in Knockout City, there are lots of crazy balls, lots of different ball varieties each with unique properties, so you learn the characteristics behind those things. And it gives you all the tools for sort of emergent both offensive and defensive team play, and that's what really makes it exciting.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, I always thought of... Playing as a kid, really being focused on those one-on-one experiences. So if teamwork is this important, I'm curious about communication. These days, I don't want to keep my microphone on that often, or I'm playing with my kid, I don't know who's going to jump into game chat or there might be two of us, and then we party up with a third person, but we're in a party. And I really love games Apex that allow me to have sort of this non-verbal communication with a ping function. So how are you handling folks that may have their mic off, or they can't chat, or they don't have a microphone at all? How do they communicate with their other players?

Guha Bala:
Well, one of the things that was really important to us was a notion of healthy competition, a sense of kind of joyful competition, and we wanted to see what we could do to be able to minimize toxicity, and so just from a chat enablement standpoint, you really need to be in the same group to be able to do the voice chat in the first place. And while voice chat is available on all systems and really is a great part of team play, we also have a series of emotes, "Pass to me," or, "Ball up." Actually, one of the cool things in Knockout City is that you yourself can become a ball, and so coordinating these moves... There are a variety of non-verbal techniques to do it as well as verbal techniques to be able to do it.

Guha Bala:
There are lots of gameplay mechanics and incentives to do it as well. So for example, if you pass, you immediately charge the ball up one level, and so that gives you a little bit of an edge in terms of throw speed when you're doing that. If you pass a team player that's already balled up, that person immediately overcharges and can go into an ultimate throw, and so it's a variety of both voice-based chat in your group, there's non-verbal cues through emotes, and also mechanics that consistently reinforce sort of team play.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I like sports games, but I will say most of the time I play FIFA or NBA sitting next to my brother on the sofa. He'll come by and we'll play some sports games. Because online, my experiences have honestly been a bit mixed, sometimes lag, sometimes people quit, whatever it might be. But I read about an interesting way that Velan studios is handling latency to definitively determine did the ball hit you or didn't it, so do you mind explaining how that works?

Guha Bala:
Yeah. I mean, to manage sort of fair online play and a good online play experience, there's lots of different systems that we have, but specifically in terms of making a competitive ball-based game playable over the internet, we had to kind of take a totally different approach to what most multiplayer systems do today, and this is also the reason why we said, "Hey. Look, why isn't a game as simple as throwing catch been done successfully before with scalable online play?" And that's really because you and I could be playing. Now I throw a ball. On my side, it shows that I hit. On your side, because your latency behavior is going to be a little different than mine, you may have dodged. So what actually happened? And so we take a server authoritative model as other games do, and let the server decide. So the server is essentially the umpire in this case, what actually happened in the game.

Guha Bala:
Now, for you and me looking at it, we don't want to call after the fact. We need to see it in real-time. What actually happened on the server happens on our local units as well, and so we developed our engine Viper, and our engine language V-Script to be able to have a general purpose reversible computation model. What that essentially does is it says, "Okay, the server saw the hit, and it will roll back the simulation on both of our systems," and so for you, that's one roll back, for me, that's one more roll back. On every system, the number of players means that number of rollbacks, and we all do it within a single frame. So this kind of general purpose technique has never been practiced in games before, and actually, in general competition, it's very new as well. But the reason why we came up with it is not to be able to invent some new technology, it's to be able to have a fair competitive game that involves throwing and catching.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Once we get use to that, maybe you might want to license that to international soccer so we don't have to take four minutes to figure out if a guy's a millimeter offside because it's a thing. They don't even get it right after taking all that time, so I like the sound of this.

Guha Bala:
I think it's actually pretty good.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, it is. So, if you can do this in a frame. Just saying: Keep it in mind. FIFA. I'm sure a lot of professional soccer players are watching the show, referee Mike Dean, please go ahead and take a look at this V-Script. Very interested to see that. Last thing I wanted to talk about was customization. A lot of online games... Of course, you want to customize your character and stand out. But at launch, I scarcely can think of a game that has more options than Knockout City. Do you mind just talking a little bit about what you've got ready for people here on day one?

Guha Bala:
Knockout City is not only about skill, it's also about style. We have so many customizations to be able to help players express themselves, and actually, all of these items are either earnable directly through progression that's included for Xbox players through Game Pass Ultimate, through the standard edition that's available at launch. So there's essentially a 900 tier progression system, and as you progress it, you can grind for HoloBucks to be able to redeem in the item store that unlocks these cosmetics, or that will entitle you to these cosmetics, or you could just play through progression where you'll unlock all of those items as well. Now, one of the things that we learned early on with Knockout City is you're playing, and we started with these nondescript characters just to be able to prototype the game mechanics.

Guha Bala:
It became so obvious to us the need that we had to be able to stand out, one, to be able to identify each other as a team and actually crews themselves... We have a special social structure in Knockout City, which is our riff on clans. We call them crews. Crews can uniform similarly. They can have common back-of-the-jacket logos, for example. And you really want to stand out to be able to say, "Okay, this is my team. This is my crew, but here I am as an individual as well," and the modifications/customization's just really crazy. So we have outfits, we have body types. We have heads, we have visors, we have hair, but we also have cool things like gliders, and those are just the accoutrements. Now, all of these are cosmetic-only, so there's no skill impact.

Guha Bala:
We always keep the play flat, so it's all about the individual and the team skill, and not about the unlocks for the actual gameplay outcomes. But we have all of those that are sort of how you look, but then we also have a bunch of expression type of customizations, knockout effects, ultimate throw holograms, taunts, all kinds of things like that to be able to just express yourself on the field sometimes cheekily, sometimes cute, sometimes rude, and it's actually loads of fun to be able to unlock and then express yourself in those ways.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Okay. Well, it's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for them. I totally blew the Dodgeball line. Doesn't matter because you shouldn't be listening to this, you should be playing Knockout City. It's available now. Part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. It is optimized for Xbox Series S and Series X. Guha Bala, thank you so much joining us. Very interested in trying this out. I know that you'll have a lot of cool things planned for the community over these first 10 days of launch. So, if you're a solo player, you're looking to play with the devs, if you're looking to find new folks, this is a great time to get involved. Back to you Rebecca, Larry. Take it... Oh, no. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Guha Bala:
I just wanted to thank you, Jeff, and I really hope all the players on Xbox have an awesome time. We just have loads of programming in Knockout City live ready from the get-go on the 21st when we launch.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Awesome. And that is today, so have at it. Rebecca, Larry, take us home.

Rebecca Gordius:
Thanks, Tim, Ben and Guha for those interviews. Awesome to learn about Psychonauts and Knockout City. Speaking of Knockout City, that's going to be one of the new titles that has just arrived on Xbox Game Pass. Some others that have arrived on Xbox Game Pass, there are actually three of these that I think will be particularly interesting-

Larry Hryb:
Wait a minute. Did you just drift into the news section seamlessly, is that what you did?

Rebecca Gordius:
I'm trying.

Larry Hryb:
Because that was smooth.

Rebecca Gordius:
I'm trying it out. I mean, it was smooth.

Larry Hryb:
Let me bring up the ticker here to at least support you. Go ahead. By all means.

Rebecca Gordius:
All right. So, there are a few of these titles on Xbox Game Pass that I'm kind of thinking my dad would really be into. One is Snow Runner, if you've ever wanted to play ice road truckers in real life, try that out-

Larry Hryb:
I'm sorry. Is that something your dad likes? I'm curious to what that comment was.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. These three, Snow Runner, Maneater and The Catch: Carp and Coarse Fishing, I think my dad... These games were designed for older dads. So, Snow Runner is what I mentioned. You're driving the kind of heavy duty trucks through the wilderness, really challenging climates. Maneater, you're surviving... I think it's kind of like, what's the Bear Grylls show, Man vs. Wild. It's that, but a video game. And The Catch: Carp and Coarse Fishing, I don't think I need to tell you what that is, but my dad would love it. So some exciting... Maybe these are coming out in advance of Father's Day. I don't know.

Larry Hryb:
Did you go fishing with your dad when you were little or even now?

Rebecca Gordius:
Oh, yeah. I kind of joked that my dad wanted a son. So I always helped him fix cars and throw the football around and go fishing.

Larry Hryb:
Oh, that's good.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, it was fun. I mean, at the time, I was kind of like, "I don't want to do this. I want to watch TV," but now I'm glad that we had that time. So, it's all good.

Larry Hryb:
And is he very excited that his daughter now works on Minecraft?

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. I mean, he's been telling people that I do marketing for Xbox or I sell Xboxs for a very long time, but now that it's Minecraft and now that there are some examples on the internet, it's a little bit easier for him to talk about my work. Yeah, they're very happy.

Larry Hryb:
Fair point. Anyway, go ahead. You've got more news.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yes. All right. Other titles coming out on Xbox Game Pass this week: Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, Peggle 2, Conan Exiles which is also optimized for Xbox X and S.

Larry Hryb:
I'm peggling out over here.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. We have Fuzion Frenzy, Joy Ride Turbo, Mechwarrior 5, Slime Rancher, Solasta, SpellForce 3, and then also Secret Neighbor, which I'm interested in, but I don't know if I could actually play it. Did you play Hello Neighbor?

Larry Hryb:
I did. It was very stressful. If you remember what this is about, there's different... I only played the first two levels, but you have to sneak into a neighbor's house and do a couple of tasks, and then if they hear you, they come running after you. It's very stressful, Rebecca. It's very stressful, I'm telling you.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, I actually tried playing it a few times. The first time it was at night and I was like, "Nope, no more," and then I tried it the next day during the day and even then it was too much.

Larry Hryb:
Is it like Resident Evil? I mean, that's kind of a next level one. Hello Neighbor-

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, you see him sprinting towards you, and you're like, "Ah!" I don't know if I can handle Secret Neighbor, but maybe I'll try it out with a friend just for kicks and giggles.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, that's fun. Secret Neighbor.

Rebecca Gordius:
Let's see, some other things coming our this week. Destiny 2 Season of the Splicer. Good Time to hop back in. Gears 5 Operation 7, and then Minecraft also released the How To Train Your Dragon DLC, which I've heard really good feedback for so far. It's pretty fun.

Larry Hryb:
So, this is based on the franchise, the How To Train Your Dragon movie franchise, right?

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. Yeah, it was a big partnership that we did with I think it's DreamWorks. Yeah. Let's see. And then also, we have free play days now through Sunday for Xbox Live Gold Xbox Game Pass members, so if you want to try out Gears 5 or F1 2020, and then that's a good segue into we also revealed some new details around F1 2021, which if you preorder, you get three days of early access ahead of its releasing July 16. And then the pre-order, the deluxe version also comes with a bunch of different content, the icon packs so that you can play as Ayrton Senna, and is optimized for Xbox Series X ans S, which is very cool. And then something a little bit more kind of feel good. So yesterday was also Global Accessibility Awareness Day. We launched a ton of different-

Larry Hryb:
Depend on when you're listening. It's May 19th or May 20th. May 20th.

Rebecca Gordius:
May 20th. Yeah, May 20th, which I'm wearing my Xbox adaptive controller pin in celebration.

Larry Hryb:
Hold on. I'll get my adaptive controller. I'll wear the pin too.

Rebecca Gordius:
That's great. Wow, that's cool. I didn't know you had one of those.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, I have one. These are just a great device. And I have friends that come over, and they're like... I always want to have something. Now they have it also so they could have something to play if there's some people who maybe can't play games, and this is easy to do. And also maybe eventually, my daughter will be able to use this maybe because when she's little, she's got two little things to do something here.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, it's very cool.

Larry Hryb:
Anyway, go ahead. Sorry.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. Anyway. Xbox, we have a lot of good activities and different ways that we're trying to make gaming more accessible. So first is we launched the Xbox Accessibility Insider League so that people who self-identify as having a disability can provide feedback on their experiences. Engineers and developers will get that directly, and developers can also share content with the community in the Xbox Accessibility Insider League and get their feedback, which is really cool.

Larry Hryb:
And also, just a quick reminder. Last week, we had someone on from our team talking about the Mental Health Awareness month at Xbox, which is now and then of course there's this as well. So, tune into the previous episode, number 746, if you want to check that out.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, May is a busy month, but there's a lot of really good initiatives going on. A couple of other really exciting things. So now we also have speech-to-text and text-to-speech for party chat. So if you're hard of hearing, or if you're not able to verbally speak, now you can still get involved in party chat and have that two-way communication, which feels like something small, but I feel like that would go a long way for people who want that. So, I'm very excited. Yeah, we have a ton of different games that... We have a game collection on Xbox Wire that we recommend if you are looking for games with particular accessibility features or solutions.

Rebecca Gordius:
And then Gears 5, Minecraft and State of Decay also had some new announcements around accessibility and things that they are making available for players this week. And last, if you want to donate, you can use your Microsoft rewards, so not taking any money out of your own pocket. The rewards you earn for interacting with different Microsoft programs and Xbox programs, you can donate those to AbleGamers and Warfighter Engaged, and Microsoft is going to match those donations this month, which is awesome.

Larry Hryb:
That is fantastic.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, and then last but not least, today we have some exciting game releases. Sorry. I know there's a lot of news this week. It's Jeff's fault.

Larry Hryb:
Lot of news. Let's be clear: Jeff couldn't handle it. He had to take the week off, so you're doing a great job, Rebecca.

Rebecca Gordius:
Thank you. That's why, yes. Let's see. So starting today, Scarlet Nexus demo's available. It's a new action JRPG from Bandai Namco. Think Sci-Fi anime art. I was actually kind of surprised when I saw the characters. It really does look like anime. I don't know. The art style is really interesting. I would definitely recommend checking it out, and it's also going to be optimized for Series X and S, so that'll be a really good demo if you have the newer consoles. Also, Rust-

Larry Hryb:
I'm looking at it right here. There it is on the store, right?

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, show it to us.

Larry Hryb:
Go ahead. I'll let you... Hell yeah. Look at that style.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. See? There's another anime that it kind of reminds me of. I can't remember the name of it, but it's like mecha warriors in space and you're fighting some aliens. I watched it a very long time ago, but it was really good. It's anime, but it's not like the seamless cartoony style. So it's pretty neat. I would check it out. And then also today, Rust Console Edition is launching, which is developed by Double Eleven, which if you haven't heard of them, they contributed to Goat Simulator and also Minecraft Dungeons. And Rust, the Console Edition has crossplay so you can play with your friends on PC as well.

Larry Hryb:
I'm showing you right here.

Rebecca Gordius:
I actually haven't played Rust. Have you played this, Larry?

Larry Hryb:
I think I played it when it was in game preview a long time ago because it looks familiar, but after a while, everything kind of flows together. I think I have played this, but it was certainly a very, very, very, very early version.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, I'm tempted to check it out. It looks pretty cool, and every time I go to my friends list and see what my friends are playing, I have seen a lot of people playing Rust or my friends on discord too. And then last and one I'm definitely going to download is Wild at Heart, which is launching today into Xbox Game Pass. If you have Xbox Game Pass, you can try it out for free. Wild at Heart is another one. I think it's the games with really unique art style that get me. Unique art and a really good story, which is why I'm excited to try Spiritfarer, but then Wild at Heart also looks really cool. I love puzzle games too.

Larry Hryb:
I'm looking for it right now.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, show it to us.

Larry Hryb:
It's not up here yet. It's unfortunate. That one's not appeared yet, but it will be up at the time this podcast airs, so that's the good news. That's a lot news this week.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yes. I think that that is the end of the news actually.

Larry Hryb:
Well, thank you for all that news. You did great work there. Jeff should be pleased. I don't know where he is. I've got to find him. He just kind of vanished. He's supposed to be here.

Rebecca Gordius:
Jeff should be shaking. His position is threatened.

Larry Hryb:
Well, I'm telling you, if you what you saw with Rebecca reading the news, hit the comments, the like, the subscribe, ring the bell. You know the whole dance.

Rebecca Gordius:
It's not a competition, but...

Larry Hryb:
It's not competition, but if you like what you heard... Anyway, thank you for all the guests that came in for those interviews this week as well, and thank you to Rebecca for kind of... I want to say filling in for Jeff because you kind of did a great job with that, so thank you for that.

Rebecca Gordius:
Thanks. Go orange.

Larry Hryb:
Go orange. We'll be back next week. Rebecca and I and hopefully Jeff will be back next week, and then we'll have some more reviews for you and a great bunch of other stuff. If you'd like what you heard, make sure you let us know. Leave the feedback positive or negative down in the YouTube comments or hit us up on Twitter. You can find me @majornelson, and then Rebecca's is on screen right. Rebecca is one of the people I follow. By the way, sorry about that following you on Twitter because you probably got a lot of noise now, don't you?

Rebecca Gordius:
No, it's good. I like it. Give me the noise. I don't tweet a lot, but I'm on Twitter a lot.

Larry Hryb:
That is true. That is true. You're also-

Rebecca Gordius:
I'm @rebecca_yeun. Rebecca Yeun.

Larry Hryb:
There it is right there on the screen. And you're also on Instagram as well, if people want to follow you there. I don't know. Is your account private? I don't remember.

Rebecca Gordius:
No, it's public. Same username.

Larry Hryb:
Okay, there you go. All right. We will see you next-

Rebecca Gordius:
It's mostly Pumba.

Larry Hryb:
It's mostly Pumba. Well, we'll look forward to getting some Pumba action over there on Instagram and on Twitter. Thanks for your time this week, by the way. I know you're busy. You're working on all that Minecraft stuff, so thank you for your time. We'll be back next week. And until then, have fun, play fair, file feedback and let us know what you think of the show. Bye bye, everybody. Everybody. Everybody.