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And all of them are available on Steam. So first things first, just give us a brief rundown. How many are you guys in Yangyang? How did you start? Yun. Okay. To think John and I, mga around 17 tayo, 16 to 17. And we started Yangyang Mobile. Actually, kaming dalawa ni John are like graduates on game design and development sa bineald. So that's how we got into game development. And then, yeah, we graduated. We, you know, we worked for game loft and Gumi. And then afterwards, we decided na maybe it's time to, you know, to take the lunch and start our own company. So yam pa kaminon. So kahit na ito na kaming kahit, okay lang. But we have a lot of, you know, years left to pick up the pieces. Wow. So it was really ka na ba? Parang shot in the dark po ang baga. I mean let's try it lang. Parang adventure nalang, I mean let's see how it goes. Yeah, because at that time we were like seeing like, you know, indie game studio's fail rate are massively high as well. Yeah. Like most of the studio that started closes down and even that some that's, you know, a little bit more established that's been around for like five years or more. Still have a, you know, like closed down in some of them have closed down as well. So how, you guys worked classmates in college in Benil? Yes, parang blockmates. How long did you guys work for another studio before deciding na to take the plunge? At game love around seven months. So until, you know, they decided to parang shut down the game development, you know, department name alone. Yeah, so we were there for seven months. And then for Gumi, man kanay ka ito sa Gumi? Well, yeah, I think we stayed there for around a year as well. John, no college pa lang kami kasi yung parang yung end goal na talaga namin is like to start our own company. So eventually balak talaga namin mag start-up ng own company namin. Pero ayun na, since I got pregnant sa first child namin, which her name yung pala is Yang Yang. So did namin na yung yung Yang Yang. So since I got pregnant with Yang Yang, parang we decided to like, parang we fast forward namin yung plan namin. Kasi being new parents gusto din kasi namin may control kami sa sarili namin time. And we want to be there, you know, watch her grow up. Pero kapang kasi full-time employees kami may jumbos mahirap yun. So, you know, the link to suicidal kami. Let's, you know, become new parents at the same time. And at the same time. So you had your, kumbaga you had two different babies. I mean your first baby in the company. So how many are you guys now? Like artists and holders, developers. How many people are under Yang Yang? Um, how many artists do we have right now? I think we have three artists right now. Four. Yeah, we have four artists. Oh yeah, four artists. We have three programmers. Three programmers. Tatlong admin, me, John, and is a office manager. Isang QA, and then the rest writers na. So we have a big team of writers. Wow. Yeah. So actually the writers, just in terms of number. Six writers. Six writers compared to like four artists. And then of course, the overall control management. Dami pa lang writers, eh? Yeah, yung mga games kasi namin, we focus talaga na. Narrative heavy talaga kasi siya. So we're investing kagapit sa writing namin. Kasi apakiram namin. Anong sila yung isa sa maupinakang nagdadala sa games namin. And are all the writers local, like here sa Philippines? Yes. Yeah. I was looking kasi through the credits of Perfect Love, which is your latest game. Sorry, perfect gold, sorry, perfect gold. Which went gold last month, last April. So it's out now. And then some of the writers like Sar Esteban was the senior writer, I think, and then Best for Fox was parang. They're all Filipinos, they're all based here sa active. Yes, yes. Ah, wow, okay. So if you see the credits, I think there's just like two or three writers. So that's kind of like a spoiler that most of our people are working on other stuff. On other projects. Okay. Yeah, I did want to touch on that like what the next project would be, but we'll get to that like, we'll get to that in a little bit. Do you hire mostly, like how do you hire, how do you find people to hire? Is it word of mouth or like you also, kasi you're both from Benil, I'm sure you're familiar with alumni there and stuff. Do you bank on like your Benil connection or how do you find people to hire? We started Yangyang Mobile, mostly Facebook lang kami and then we just, parang would post na kami sa Yangyang Mobile page and then repress na kami sa mga friends kami na po. So mga walls niyo, or kasi mga groups na alam niyo that are dedicated to Yangbeb. Yeah. And then after that, nagkaroon na kami na kong ting funding, we actually, you know, start posting na on Job Street. Yeah. So I think in our experience, we would say that word of mouth really gets a huge chunk of the employees because instead of a job post that will invite a lot of people that might not be that qualified in word of mouth kasi like, they already know that, you know, they're probably suitable for the job before they refer to it. Okay. Speaking actually of funding, I've noticed you're on Kickstarter or you're also on Patreon. In your experience, like what's the most effective way to kind of bootstrap your game? Which platform or which method? Okay. Pag-deng more nang cake Kickstarter versus a Patreon. Yung Patreon more, like, parang every month, kasi every month nagsikami na kakakar ng money from that. So we get money from our list. Yeah, compared sa Kickstarter, yung Kickstarter parang isong booong big chunk of injection. Itang balsang? Yeah, itang balsang. Compared to Patreon, yung tit-richled down every month. So they help a lot sa, you know, kong start ng game namin. Pero... So the letter, yung nakatulong talaga sa'me dito. First, yung kasi namin si the letter, pa kami-sales from previous games. So yung, yung ginamit, yung ma-is-a-self, pinakamit yung ginamit ng din, is yung funding from the Kickstarter. And then we also did outsourcing jobs. Yeah, we also doing outsourcing job. Yeah, and aside from that, we burned all our savings. Yeah. Pero after nang Kickstarter, nang Kickstarter, nang the letter for Love Squad, it's a mix na of yung Patreon, and the sales from the letter, chaka six starters. You know, you mentioned outsourcing. I know a lot of local studios. They kind of like take on outsourcing work from abroad. So yung tipong the other games need art assets or something. Is that something you guys also do like as a sideline while doing your main games or you're exclusively focused on your games? Yeah, so before, we actually do a lot of it, like a lot of it. Because we haven't have any income yet in terms of our own games. But then as time progresses on, I think right now at this moment, we're just supporting very few like old clients, either old clients that still need some help or like or like just some friends that need some help and we just have additional resource to kind of like blend out. But so it's not. And so like you have three games. The letter, Love Esquire, and Perfect Gold. And I noticed they usually come two years apart, so 2017 for the letter, 2019, then last month, 2021 for Perfect Gold. Nagkaton ng ba talaga yun? That it's usually a two-year development process or do you are you sort of want to ramp up or speed up production or two years is okay na? So, it's a lot of delay. It's a lot of delay. So, I mean in a year, ma-delize na sya, but in day na delay sya to two years, tapos ke Love Esquire, alay like 1.5 years, pero na delay na naman sa two years. So, yeah, ano sya mostly I would say poor planning, definitely play a big part on it. But yeah, I think moving forward, I think we're slowly trying to plan better. But I think we will still be making bigger games in the future. So, it's gonna take not as long, much longer then. Like without having to go into detail, what are like some of the things you learned? Like dun nga, you mentioned na lack of planning. Is it like a situation na oh, one asset is done, but the other asset isn't done. So, parang you can't get everything together or you're waiting on specific people. Like oh, di pa tapos atong segment na to, but the art isn't ready for the next segment. Like just in terms of planning, what lessons have you learned after three games? Yeah, so instead dun sa, well ba ramin kami courses of delay. Pero instead dun sa naging course namin ng delay is we really put emphasis talaga dun sa stories ng games namin. So we spend a lot when it comes to our writing. So kapong sinabi ng writers namin na, hindi po siya maganda, hindi po siya ready, we extend. We want lessons, they say we want an additional month for editing. And we're gonna add additional month. So actually our writing is the one that's mostly bottlenecked, I would say, in a way that we'd have to wait until the writing is mostly done for the script to be sent out to voice actors, for the script to be sent out to director type namin which is like directing what's gonna happen on screen based on the script. Yeah, those process take a long time as well. But we'd have to wait for the writing process to finish first. So moving forward what we're trying to do is parang pinapasimula namin ka-agad yung writing bago kumasak ng iba pang mga departments para hindi event na kumasak ng si Art Team Maramin ang natapos sa writing side, hindi namin, nabababuasang yung battle. You guys mentioned the voice acting and parang I was going out through the voice actors that you've gotten. So parang yun yung mga big time, parang they worked on other games, they worked on triple A games, they worked on other anime. So how did you how did you put that team, that voice acting team together? How did you get those talents? There's a there's a big story behind that Danny do you want to tell it? Okay, so I'll just summarize. So basically during the letter parang siniraan kami ng isong voice actress. Wow, so grave. Yeah, so I that's like a very untesent memory. Ayaw hong matandaan. Pero yung buso basically naman kami isong voice actor. So yung voice yung voice director namin si Amber Niconers approached us and said that that she's on our side and she's willing to handle all our voice acting needs. So it started from there because si Amber meron siya meron siya malaking network of voice actors kasi voice actress din siya herself and she has a studio in the United States. So every time namin yung game kami we just send her the details of our characters and then she gets back to us with a list of auditions from different actors. Recomendin yung for the role. Ah, wow. So definitely we are recommending her so Amber Niconers just look her up. If anybody out there needs voice talent Amber can hook you up. Ang galing. So it was really that one contact and then from there you guys were able to access that pool because I was looking at it like one guy worked on Dragon Age Inquisition one of the ladies worked on Dragon Ball and things like that. So brang and even if you watch the cinematics like the ones that you have available on YouTube yung mo traders in yung alam mo na professional natin parang ang galing nung voice acting. So just that one contact was the one that made it happen. Yeah, most of our voice actors in our game are from from Amber's contact. We do have some others though I think that auditions directly with us. Yeah, so normally like sa Love is Square and to the letter parang magpo open audition kami so basically panang free for all siya. But for the big times I think it is most Yeah, for the big time mo big datin sa Amber dalo gaya yung. We won't get auditions from big times. It's not for her. Do you have any local like do you have any local talent for the voice acting? For wala although yung nagboses dun sa isang character naman sa perfect gold si Mario isa sa main character I think she's half-Pinipina. So yung lang yung alam kung malapit sa local so far. Yeah. I think we tried but we tried finding sometime before but it just didn't work out as as we hoped. Yeah. Um say, let's touch a little bit on the local scene. Is it because the voice talents here aren't as organized? I mean kasi in the States, it's like a big business. So and the actors become associated with their characters like you're playing Mass Effect, di ba parang shepherd's voice and fem-ship's voice parang sumitikati mo voice actors or like the overwatch characters and then the the voice actors will play them. So there's like really I mean di ba parang it's a very established profession. It's a problem here na medyo di pa ganun ka professional or how did you find it like trying to look here and then you couldn't find anybody. So we actually got in contact with some contact persons but um I guess at the end it's a business decision between like the summary of cost things and um and just like overall how much the writing team and the directing team like the talents. Um did you ever have a situation like basically you guys are the top management. And then like a writer comes to you or a director comes to you and they'll say like you know I really want to do this in the game but you're like eh I don't think it works or parang ang weird or ano. Um did you ever have to push back and say na no no we really can't do that or I don't think that's a good idea. Yeah so very you know very heavily realized on teamwork talagang game development. So usually kung may mga big decisions like it's a team it's a team decision hindi na kami ninyo ang yung nag-de-decide non. So may mga times kung may gusto sinang features sinasabi namin parang yung giyata kaya ng budget yun ang gika kaya niin sa timeline. And at the same time ganan din sila sa mean like kung may ano may request kami na puwede magan ito yung maging direction ng story tapos pa sabihin sa sabihin na mga writer kami hindi pwede kasi like ma sa sacrifice yung integrity no writing palang ganon. So you know it's a mutual you know back and forth. Yeah I wouldn't say that you know it's always like that I think misunderstandings do happen which is uh it's unfortunate sometimes but yeah just have to kind of like communicate through it. So it really is like a team I mean of course it's a very collaborative effort it's very rare that you have a top-down decision okay we're gonna go do this that's ba wala mga la I mean that's the that's the way we're going sobrang sobrang dihira noon. We started on a game siguro yung mga times nang nagnag is like kapag nagkakam up ang kami ni John ng next game kasi usually kami ni John yung nag-de-decide na nila kung anong genre and then once we selected on the genre next game kami ako ikusunami ng horror and then we leave it up na to the team kung ano yung kung ano kasing horror yung gusto na nila para mag-pubinch na sinasamin and then from there it's a very collaborative effort nang para madalas na pag madalas yung tactic namin na pag-votation kami like oh guys yung pag-vorsa ganito tapos nini yung pag-vorsa na ito niya parang dano niya Kamusay yung gaming industry is infamous for having yung crunch time like parating ng parating na sa gold and then even like we've been talking about it sobrang sakit sa ulo yung managing the time and you know having to making sure everything is carefully planned out so when you have that deadline yung effort let's say for perfect gold o'y release natin April siguro by March dapat tapos na yun or some point before April deba did you also experience that kind of rush to get it out and then yung yung crunch time na 22-hour days ni nang balan na mo tatulog parang ganun I'll add something on that so yeah I think crunch times are not healthy we try our best to avoid it but I think for our end it still happens it still happens in a way that that people have to work harder definitely kapag malapit na sa lunch but I would say that we are we're doing very well compared to a lot of other studios that we know in such a way that yeah we we very heavily promote work-life balance so I would say that in our past few games we probably have like our crunch time is a little bit different I think I would define our crunch time as just like a month or two that you'd have to work seriously a little harder normally we just poop around everybody just poop around or you know maybe yeah maybe like put in 5 hours in our work day kind of thing so most of our crunch time is just doing more serious work for a work day probably around 8 hours sometimes we do some unexpected stuff do appear and there might be some people that have to over time for like an hour or two for like a couple of weeks that do happen and maybe when the game is actually launching like you know the last few days we might get some quick touch in then you know there's people that might work a longer are like maybe even a double shift but only for you know probably like the last few days like 2-3 days before the you know game goes out for a for a day one patch yeah so i definitely compare din sa norm ng ano ng game industry when it comes to crunch time like parang child's play lang yung sayang yung moment okay so bro minimal nang kami magpag crunch sa kahit kami dyan ayaw namin naga crunch so tamad, tamad kare kaya din kami kaya din kami wag dung mga 20 or 20 20 to hour days so wag ganyan so yeah yes kasi no oh yeah no no not encouraging or yeah na natin yung yung yes it's also kind of nice that you named your daughter i mean your daughter your daughter no um your first yeah and then the studio is the same sa parang i guess the kind of values that you want to inculcate in the studio you also kind of want to share for your daughter i mean you also don't want her to have a boss that demands 20 to hour days deba or parang crunch time like that i mean it's it's a nice connection to have actually i do have some like just prepared questions should we um sige um the especially for love eskwar i love the marketing of the game it's very tongue-in-cheek kind of you know wing wing kind of medyong pay makatnoti e deba and that and that's the game i mean you have the one of the trailers is titled na i thought this game was about boobs and get good get laid deba parang gano it's very like a um it's like a fun game you can feel the vibe of the game um you know it doesn't take itself too seriously um but for the like for the content of the game did you guys really like because i would describe it as naughty but not explicit did you guys really draw the line we're not going to have like you know full-on you know sex scenes in the game or i heard a polygon article and ang galing parang you guys had a polygon article um you know written about you guys and then you know it was saying na well the devs did that because they didn't want to run a foul of filipin lo um wasn't really the reason or wasn't more of an internal thing na aneep kasi if it's a sex game deba then there are a lot of connotations and maybe people have the wrong idea about it so was it was it because of an external thing like because of a platform issue like steam or the filipin or filipin loss or was it more of an internal thing that made you decide na ano so i think that's you know a combination of a lot of factors right you mentioned the filipin law i mean yeah there is a law in the filipins that said na none of those yeah but i would say that it might be a little bit loosely enforced but yeah yeah um i think we want still wants to be in the safe side of that and aside from that there's um there's also a lot of restrictions since a platform like for example steam if your content um borders more on mature content then your visibility will be so drunk at first day to oblivion okay so there's there's a lot of issues and we also cater to mobile platforms um which is uh yeah it's impossible to get any mature content into a mobile platform ah so once team actually it's the current um policy it's allowed now but the visibility is so low like if you're full on explicit yes like if you're might as well not allowed it kind of um basically kapag kapagadot only yung game sus team tapos hindi ka nakalangin never siyang a appear kahit na sa front page ka kagusayin ka nakalangin hindi siya appear don't ah o ganun tapindi yung drop sa visibility ay kusya i guess you really need to yeah they want you to log in so you can say na yes i'm 50 years old or something yeah yeah yeah ah okay um it's not the same one itch um doesn't have the same restrictions kung itch yung platform itch not that i know of i think itch is very very flexible it's more like a facebook of no it's more flexible than facebook it's just like i just really i think it's okay okay okay i think it's okay um how hard was it to get on steam like um so did you have to submit like yeah we're little legit developer and we have this game ah how hard was the process of getting on steam process ng getting uh uh ng game sa steam sa panahon nida letter compared sa ngayon yung sa the letter before parang may steam green light process ila wherein you submit your game to the steam green light and then parang yung players yung magbubot if they want to see this game on sale sa steam parang hindi ano nila no uh oh yeah so kapag nakakawakan ng mostly no do it but hindi ka parang yung magbeta sa steam pero right now must pinadalina ni steam yung buhay uh i think you just need to pay up can i just pay a fixed fee i think $99 per game yeah and then they're gonna restore game i mean of course they're gonna check your game but yeah basic ah so it's much easier now parang pay to play as long as you pay the fee you're kinda yeah uh okay um sorry just to get back on the so uh we're actually off air now but it keeps reconnecting connecting i'm just gonna but i'm i'm recorded naman and then i'll just release it as a video uh nakakainis pero i'm super like learning a lot they are finding it super interesting just about again about the naughty versus explicit i notice that's a love and square there is a mod that that unlocks that like kind of the the full on explicit scenes and then you guys as the developers you're not you don't like announce naman actually you do kind of announce it but it's not officially supported by yang yang yes yes um yeah so the mod is actually created by one of our um super patron super super patron yeah and uh and a good friend he's from spain yeah and uh he's really passionate about our games and uh yeah we just we just actually met him on Kickstarter for the letter before um and he's he's been very supportive so um yeah we we we um like he he he like ask us if um we want to do um like is it okay and then we we kind of like help him to make like we do have a lot of the um we do like um what do you call that the modding feature for for love for love and square we publish a lot of um public document about it later on but he's the one that you know kind of gets to test them and and stuff he's the first one that gets the internal versions of the document uh okay um I think it's a I actually thought it was a neat way to get around like whatever issues whether it's like legal issues or censorship issues because it it's it's a fan it's fan made deba so the developer doesn't actually have you know you can always say that well it's out of our control and you know things like that but at the same time you you do put a spotlight on it na oh if you want that kind of content there's that mode for the game so you can just enable it for love and square so I thought that was a neat way of resolving everybody's issues because you do you I I assume you do have players that that want that kind of content yeah yes especially for the game in the kind of game that love and square is oh yeah for love and square I don't really know what I like Sige if you had like unlimited budget and like no restrictions at all what kind of game would you produce or what kind of game would you put out like in my panang the the game like with no restrictions everything you you want at need would be provided like what game would you produce so I think what our company direction is heading towards is very similar to what CD project red type of a company is doing like we we have like you know like very immersive story we don't have the their budget to create like a super beautiful world um to to we don't also don't have the budget to engineer a lot of features around it to go with it so I think that kind of a game is definitely something that you know we we are you know like we are heading heading towards if we have um unlimited budget unlimited budget yeah but um more like an RPG or like lift hybrid kind of thing like what you did with love S4 and that's like a visual novel slash old school RPG diba panang may pag ka final fantasy yung um fight mechanics and things like that um so would you like lean towards an RPG or like RTS kung ano lang probably gonna be leaning toward some kind of open world story based kind of a thing the open world yeah open world pero narrative heavy pwede kasi if it's more fantasy then it's more sordant stuff if it's more modern then it might be guns sometimes right yeah yeah yeah that kind um yeah yeah you mentioned it before now when i was doing research of like waw panang you guys really put story first so that's especially i was reading some of the comments and the reviews on your games you're like wow this this story touched me so much it made me cry i mean yung very emotional responses to the games um did you like how much do you usually give the writers free reign or it's like okay we have like this outline of a story in place and then you guys fill it up or or it's really collaborative na talaga it's like back and forth like everybody figuring out like how to go about it how's like the story writing process okay so we usually give our writers free reign when it comes to our stories yung if if any sin yung nirerequest lang namin ni John is ka pagbay genre i think we give them the genre the scope yeah and you know some maybe some stuff that have relation to gameplay pero apart from those free reign na yung mga writers namin to be as creative and as emotional or kung pa naman nila gusto ispin yung story we might also give them some some structure right let's say like we need to have this many arcs exactly this many arcs or for them kind of like that so those are a little bit related to gameplay but in terms of the story you know what happens what i mean maybe sometimes we'll make a request let's add in this trope of a character but yeah aside from that um yeah i think and in the initial brainstorming process we do kind of like we might kind of like approve a little bit like you know it's this kind of a main character then this kind of main character to work because it's in the market kind of like but in terms of the story structure itself like you know how the story flows how the story outlines out those are i would say all all the writing team I notice the engine you use is unity no what's that also that's for love, aspire and for perfect world but what's that also the same for the letter unity then for the letter yeah unity then for the letter how hard is it sorry let's let's get a little geeky how hard is it to or to to create games in unity i mean and you mentioned like you have four artists and do you have two do you have just do you have one guy that just does the unity engine um so we have three programmers so programmers deal with the stuff in the in the engine um three not including me so i also do programming sometimes but uh just more needed if if if they need me nowadays it's just if they need me i'll might go yeah jumping you know if it's time to to release i'll be double checking some stuff but that's most me what i do but yeah we we kind of have like three and a half programmers sometimes um how hard is it to to do stuff i guess it's really easy to do stuff in unity what's hard is to organize it properly in a way that it's it's easily scalable it's easily reusable if you're going to add something it's not gonna you know take everybody's time all over and over again so i think that's the challenge and some additional features like for example we spend quite a lot of time to to do 4k textures that the user can also choose to kind of use smaller texture depending on their device so that's some just a small feature but it takes actually quite a lot of time to do so those kind of stuff could be hard but if you just want to make a game a simple one you know you don't really care too much about extending it then i would say it's quite easy yeah you say it's quite easy i actually tried to monkey around a little bit like way back when with the unity engine like i have no idea i have no idea what's going on parang like you have that orb deba then you have to move the orb to get the lighting i mean i think that's the basic yeah like what is go no idea what is going on oh it's quite easy for uh game for uh yeah for like if you have background and things like that how is the local development scene like there are some prominent local studios here but if there is parang you guys are the most visible in terms of original ip how like and i i guess you guys would know more you can come come to other studios like what do they do are they also pushing out games and it's super the like the triple A game that uh that comes to my mind for low for philippine developers was the anino deba parang parang jablo jablo yes game which is a couple of years ago anino yeah um tagal na nila oh deba parang that the last that the last super like hyped up release na i can think of how are the other studios doing so so it's it's funny that you ask this question dani actually just joined the game developers association the philippines as their marketing board so this is just a right menu for you to market the philippine game develop in the industry so um i think we have around like more than 60 plus game studios here sa philippines pero hindi lang sila ganan karine or hindi sila ganan kawisible kasi majority of them are focused on outsourcing so for example there's a studio called secret six and they are actually you know helping create the 3d assets for big time games like last of us kaka enchanted and to braid it so so yeah um i i get may do yung buhay hindi kasi like you know making your own game sobrang hirap niya like sobrang tatang failure rate that's why ko hindi lang dito sa philippinas yung nagtatang kong buhay hindi kasi mag focus on create original items so karamihan talaga ng game ko ang panis dito yung focus is outsourcing i would say most of the earnings in the game industry in local is from outsourcing so there's art outsourcing that's really big and uh 3d art outsourcing yeah 3d art outsourcing precise and game support as we are one of the call centers of the world our game support outsourcing is really big as well oh you um think just a rough estimate like 80% maybe of um the game games local game studios are geared towards supporting foreign studios 80-90% just very roughly so i think if we add in the game support peoples just in terms of raw headcount yeah i think we're at 95% 95% just a rough estimate yeah pero yung ipan naman sa kanila yung ipa kasi parang hybrid so while they focus on outsourcing they're also trying to make their own ids so yeah may companies na ganon kind of like you guys at the start yes uh yung baka hirap ko si talaga like kukapabusasar ka ng isang studio na focus on creating your original game sa halas yung posibuy mo siya makusustain na hini kong kong bukaw ng outsourcing works uh oh how hard is it to get outsourcing work let's say like so i want to put up a studio and then you know you have talented people is it relatively easy na may nagaharap talaga like from abroad na oh you know i have this triple A game i need these assets may nagaharap talaga and you know yeah i think it will be fairly easy what's hard is to find the talents i think um in even in the local companies especially in 3d art the art talent need is very competitive like companies bid each other for you know good 3d artists so um in terms of client i think definitely it's going to be there's some difficulty and especially i would say that it's more difficult for us because we're a little bit introvert and we don't really like to speak with other people but for you know actual companies with business development persons i would say that it's rather easy for them to find clients well since we actually joined in g-dup kani na so actually g-dup is the game developers association of the philipines so kapag yung company mo member ng g-dup um normally kasi kapag may client yung bong ba ka kay g-dup talaga lumalapit kasi sila um in the industry so susabili na kay g-dup na oh we need you know we need outsourcing work for 3d art and then g-dup will pass it on dun sa mga member companies na and g-dup is also affiliated with dti so a lot of other countries also ask dti for help dti like ask g-dup for help and you know in with your answer um okay so basically that's like the main pipeline for for incoming work we should need through g-dup yeah there's that and then there's conventions there's a lot of local big studios outsourcing studios that join some conventions in other um countries um for example like uh korea's g-star tokyo game show for uh tokyo and g-dc and you know some other conventions a lot of conventions around well if there's no covid yeah and you know they do trade emissions all over the place to find clients for the food in normal times um what what games do you guys like to play like when in your downtime what what games do you usually play okay so for me um ano talaga ako pan ako nung the games that we make so which one novel no which one novel nyo binabata ko anything narrative base like you know mga telltale in games and yeah yeah ragnarok online yeah so like ragnarok is like you know it's like it's my forever game it's forever game yeah up to now a little too many ragnarok because hindi ako mga get over I don't think I will get over ever recently in playing ragnarok ragnarok origins the mobile version that's out in korea so we're playing the korean server we just stopped playing recently wow three days ago nung naman na nang like three days ago um what about you john how about you um so uh I play a lot of different type of games I would say that I'm I'm a little bit too busy sometimes to play triple A games although I enjoy a lot of different type of game aro I play with Danny as well when when he says hey let's play aro I'll go okay let's do it okay okay but aside from that some mobile games I do play I'm still playing Crash Royale from time to time right now I am playing the monster hunter Ryzen switch so yeah I play a lot of different types of games okay um I mean we've mentioned like you have you your company has a lot of original IPs have you ever considered branching out like outside of the video game space like do an anime do a manga kasi ang everybody like the comments like when I posted like oh you know where I'm going to interview the yang-yang founders and even now in the chapter like ang gandangan no art gata nung story um and diba I mean those things aren't unique to video games they could be there in anime there in manga there in nano I mean very different medium so have you ever thought of experimenting with a different medium so we actually think of that so one of the a type of medium that we're seriously considering is a board game and card game so you know Danny has been experiencing a lot card game on that end so it's still game but physical game yeah yeah so mo hindi kasi kasi also board game um um we we also do consider that other mission mediums that you mentioned like you know anime those kind of things um I think it's it all boils down to we don't think any of our IP are mature enough to be in that space because in that space you have to be well more popular yeah but definitely like you know um one of my you know goals telega in life is to like create a mainstream game so like parang mga eight at or ni kasi kong pag gana na kasi katang games mo um the all the following stuff is gonna follow way like yeah at or ni gadan gano kumikariti ng anime yeah yeah just naturally gonna follow so for us right now yung focus lang mo nang namin is to make a name for ourselves sa game industry and then kaka na yung niba yeah because I think it will take a lot of funds to make uh uh let's say an anime um and uh yeah we'd have to be more mature to be able to do that hey you mentioned ace attorney or even like pokemon doa parang the origin sa pokemon they were like just da lang game developers talaga sila na medyo geeky and then but i just no rule diba i mean dami ng merch nga yun and dami ng ibang games na pokemon i mean it it originated from just one game but then yung yai just kinda yung yai it kinda steam roll then now yung yai everything follows na as long as you have like the a large number behind you and things like that so then you have t-shirts and caps and then you have anime and you have movies and you have different kinds of games so yeah as dami mentioned parang just need to get like this certain threshold of popularity and then parang tuloy-tuloy na siya but here like love as far and particular is uh quite popular i mean the the polygon article nga mention that it outsold rust and skyrim i mean very triple A games i mean establish games sa how how wild was that na when it was when your game deba on steam like you can see it on the top charts on steam and it was outselling like skyrim deba skyrim ma kakamusta how did that feel so i think may jubit information yeah that's a little bit false news it's not outselling per se pero like i guess during the time kasi nung release in that exact day yeah yeah that period try and have outsold yeah only on that day but at least or a day on the release day yeah on the release day we outsold skyrim but then after that they're still there we were like super far away it's not the same caliber not anywhere close well it's still true naman it's just a snapshot on that day deba like on that like for that 20 per hour 48 hour period love score naman was on top yeah that that is true that is true it's just a bit of a click wait lang yung dating niya talaga yung polygon article talaga niya na yun the security wow it's not but in fairness i mean it's good press no i mean either way it's a good publicity so you can't go wrong with that sige i'll i'll i'll actually there i have a bunch of other questions but i don't want para na iya ako na it's kind of late na and i don't want to keep you guys also and we've been at it for like 45 minutes na and hindi rin ganoon kong conducive in stream kong it keeps coming up but but i've recorded it in full and then yung niya i'll just upload it as a video sir with with the proper time annotations people can jump in and i've had a super interesting time actually and you know who doesn't like talking about games de ba and para na local industry but i'll just think i'll just have one final question yung niya i've mentioned like the games your games are quite heavily reviewed i mean they're always very positive on steam and things like that but has there been one review or one comment na negative na di mo talagang makalimutan like just because di mo talagang makalimutan like it's sobrang unfair or it's sobrang on point or like you read it and you're like poot poot di mo haiyo po sila lang sila lang sila lang nito i mean di pa parin that that kind of gut reaction na de and you'll never forget that one review okay nani probably kabual na okay so so it's between the two of us kasi ako yung mas you know attached sa mga reviews talagang mas emotional when come to reviews so and di di ba aso mo talaga like you read all the reviews especially na time being the letter like she gets hurt yeah actually ng time being the letter because the letter was our first game so maybe yung ng buong team so yung no siyempre kapag may nag-negative review masakin talaga so i think for the letter hindi ko na matandaan ne pero like madami sa kalina na sinasabing like yung no ang boring doon nito so ko arang kaming hindi nang kasi mag get to visual knowledge na so it's a horror visual now tapos na direct kaming andaming binabasa so i think yung isa sa mga mga kaka-tahil and it's a mobile it's a mobile na the letter din at most na nakakatawa parang sasabing nila ang pangit pangit doon ng game kasi ba yan siya gusto nila dapat compete nido for free yung game so that's a that's a lot of comments in mobile yeah yeah um yeah yeah i think i think there's a lot of misunderstanding around the visual novel like like because a lot of games nowadays are tagged as visual novel but um what we do is more of a you know we were closer to the type of a japanese visual novel that there's just like a a million words in the entire novel type of thing rather than the western visual novels that are just like well their story they call that visual novel so it's a little bit of a difference in uh in in in culture yeah of a thing i would say and and expectations on the part of the gamer it's more it's like the two words siba parang they think it's more visual but yours is more novel kong baga so yeah there's a there's a mismatch of expectations yes definitely yeah and i think where we're we're adopting a lot so we're trying to kind of like beef up the story and reduce the world word count to make it make it very acceptable for the for the global audience and so tapos we're trying to add in more gameplay din kasi yung din kasing reklamo nila na you know makit doh puro ba sa lang hindi naman video is game game to game to game to so right now na naman na naman future game kami tinat tinatray namin na you know mas more on lobby square siya in such a way na malaki yung emphasis sa story but at the same time malaki din yung emphasis sa gameplay yung xa a lot of people don't i mean it's a bn deba so it but by the genre itself para understood na na this is the kind of gameplay that you have in mind i mean you pick dialogue options para ganyan pwede sa lalas ba ka andaming gameplay options that aren't usually in a vn yeah so i think that's where we're headed in the future as a company to just add more gameplay story is still one of our biggest priority but we're trying to explore new ways to make the game fun as well for everyone to play okay sorry i i said last question but i do have actually have one last question na talaga was there any point during the entire run that you had with yang yang was there any point that you just wanted to say na grave na to parang pagun ako or you know there's just so much stress so much that you just wanted to quit and you know parang start over or leave the industry entirely after at least one point that you just want to give it all up because now we're at a point a lot of point okay but uh like a big point in our life um i would say that last year no at the height of pandemic and i would say that everybody's mental state is just very very stressed and uh maybe even borderline depressed because of all the things that happens in the in the society nowadays and then you know people just aren't able to meet with each other anymore so yeah we have uh we have like a long time where we are really down in in in in terms of you know wanting wanting to continue this or not but i guess um of anyone yeah you came out of the other side we're still in it so that means we need to quit yeah yeah you're yan yan still around and yeah your your your latest baby just came out last month perfect bold available on steam as well as your other titles uh Love Esquire and The Letter if there's one game then you would recommend like um a first time fan would play would it be Love Esquire or yeah i guess it depends like if they want more gameplay definitely in Love Esquire but if they want like a pure visual novel it's either you know perfect gold kung they're into girls love or kaya The Letter kong pangusunin ang horror so it will depend on what they like but yeah right now i think we would still recommend i personally would still recommend Love Esquire a lot because that's that's a funness one for me because it's like so fun like like all the conversations so fun there's a lot of gameplay so we're actually might release the actual version of Love Esquire mobile soon okay you know in a month or two we are not committing to a date yet because you know uh yeah there's still a lot of stuff being fixed but uh yeah i think a lot of people can start play picking it up like really easily it's gonna be it's gonna be free free free to play yes what what they want what people what people want yeah actually a lot of yeah i would do i would do i've seen i went through the comment section and they're like yeah when this is coming out on android when this is coming out doing there's a big uh push for and like like year i did not years but like weeks or months back di ba? Andami nagtokoment it's a year back already yeah it's a year back already um i think we've been focusing a lot of perfect bold for the past few months but right now um our number of priority is lava square mobile say yes sorry we do have a question from the chat i wanted to get more questions from the chat but because usually that's what we do but you know i kept cutting out but parang eyan stable na siya di ko talaga may tindi paminsan but um itx are they from youtube asks is there a game among your portfolio that you would recommend um more appropriate for young adults or are they all kind of like like medyo naughty yung games din yung so that will be perfect goal yeah perfect goal is really really designed for young adults it's very heartfelt very wholesome and uh just enjoyable yeah for young adults coming of age coming of age yeah okay um perfect for young adults yeah perfect goal which is their latest game which came out ya last month okay on that note um thanks so much for joining us i i really fun time to be honest uh i'm well i play games and i'm always been interested in the local industry so and then yung at your games really stand out on gana no artwork gana no art quality i to be honest i haven't played kasi so i can't comment on the story but i i find it super impressive that you have six writers on the team so parang narrative driven talaga um yung then danny mentioned telltale another great company and just just that DNA legacy deba telltale games because arts games diba yung mga narrative driven talaga na um that kind of gets lost sometimes in the triple a games now na it's all like shooting or ano deba parang all about the graphics and things like that but sometimes at least for me personally i mean i don't know about other gamers but i really i really appreciate a good story and it's it's nice to see a local game dem studio focusing on that then of course yung yung ganda rin um graphics so parang you have the best of both worlds talaga so thank you for your you know kind words and you know as you mentioned you haven't played our games yet if visual level is your thing um you know sure you can just tell danny um you know you can provide to me just thank you yeah i am super tempted but that's just it's okay i don't know i'll charge it to hard virtual work i'll say it's research and i just like to say thank you so much for you know for your phrases sa arts namin so our arts team and basically just everyone in our team are you know super talented and they are very dedicated and you know without them like you know our game could it be as wonderful as they are right now they are ang ganda ang ganda no artwork i mean it's really you can also what drew me to ask to interview you guys it's like the heart the quality and the art style and also yung at the voice acting you get these voice actors no dan um yung yung nasa dragon age ano in position things like that like wow parang yung yung yung yung kaya ang galing um we do have a comment from youtube na si jem um i guess uh suggesting a next game um game that will encourage someone to engage the outside world like the anime yua mushi pedal and dumbbell nan kilo maturo sorry hindi ako masyadong ma anime okay so i think that's a exercise game yaw a mushi pedal lang ako yaw a mushi pedal i didn't even know about the the dumbbell thing like i have no idea i have no idea but that's a suggestion from the chat um but yun so thanks thanks so much for joining us um yun stay on the line stay on the squad na for a little bit as i disengage the stream but yun um thanks to everyone for joining us so brang um i apologize for the stream yun in the last 15 minutes it seems to be okay parang di na siya nakakatakot and again i don't know why um i might either play the router napansin ko na nangyari lang toh when i trade it to the yung big witty dream machine i might need to go back on the asus one that i highly reviewed before um but anyway that's more for the technical guys um we do a lot of technical technical shows because super hardware sugar but it's super annoying when it cuts out but um but i will upload this as a full video because i started recording that was the backup plan and um anybody who is interested in game design or you know the local game industry i'm sure this will be a super useful resource um yeah and it actually says that he'll watch it later um uh you know so for everybody who stuck it out thanks for watching thanks to Danny and John for joining us and um stay safe have a good night