Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly
@kiwitalkz • 13,923 subscribers
Game Developer Interviewer -Interviewed 150+ Game Devs Known most for my Retro Studios/Valve/Bethesda/Rockstar/Naughty Dog Interviews. 18mill+ views on Youtube,
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DOOM The Dark Ages Producer Andrew Willis praises Nintendo as a Tree where they feed it fertilizer and water it and as a result the company bears fruit. Where as western companies are just cutting the tree down and then are like where are all the apples? It's why I say Nintendo will long outlive both Xbox & PlayStation.
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly36,324 views • 1 day ago
One of the producers on DOOM The Dark Ages & Revelations says that Asha's comments about the 14 Layers Of Management is a "falsehood" and "fundamentally not true". I thought as much, if you look at the people who were laid off it was mostly the devs in the trenches and barely anyone in management positions.
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly78,117 views • 4 days ago
In regards to the PS6 & its Handheld, Shawn Layden says Sony in the past has struggled to sell 2 different pieces of hardware at the same time. Not just because of development resources but because of marketing resources. You almost need to set up a second company to do it I wonder if a unified library will mitigate this problem.
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly81,134 views • 11 days ago
During the development of Max Payne 3 the crunch got to a point where it was so intense that producer John Ricchio watched an animator for 40 minutes trying to animate a simple cutscene of a bartender putting a cork into a bottle and he couldn't do it and kept falling asleep at his desk. In the end John told him to go home to sleep. The messed up part is these types of crunch stories aren't even rare, I've heard countless stories like this happening at other AAA studios.
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly348,703 views • 2 months ago
Dan & Sam Houser are/were simultaneously the reason why working at Rockstar can be very hard but also why all their games are very good. They care on a level, most leaders do not. Sam Houser in particular will sit and play the games over and over and has thrown the controller on occasions where a Rockstar game isn't up to the Rockstar standard.
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly260,508 views • 2 months ago
Here's a bittersweet story about Gabe Newell. During the development of Portal 2, Gabe realised he was a victim of the George Lucas effect, where he could no longer be involved in a team developing a game because people would just agree with him because of his status so he made the decision to step back and just be the CEO. I very much worry about the day when Gabe is no longer in control of Valve/Steam
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly387,673 views • 5 months ago
Just so people are aware, developers at Nintendo aren't involved in the marketing. As Prime 2 & 3 producer Bryan Walker puts it "the developers would tell marketing what they were going to make and it was up to marketing to sell it." With some publishers, marketing has direct input into the game development process, that's not the case with Nintendo.
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly12,195 views • 5 days ago
The reason Naughty Dog games look so ahead of their time is because of 2 specific reasons. 1. Their tools are ahead of everyone else so it allows artists and animators to really hone their craft. 2. They hire unicorn artists and animators, the best of the best and give them the time they need. FULL INTERVIEW BELOW
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly44,823 views • 25 days ago
The reason why Rockstar games are so good is because Rockstar iterates over and over with no end in sight. The downside of this is that devs end up working late for what feels like forever because there is no cut off point. I am guessing everybody working on GTA 6 will be iterating on the game right up until the day it drops.
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly86,473 views • 2 months ago
When RDR1 was near the finish line the bulk of the development team got some reprieve and could celebrate, that wasn't the case for the multiplayer team. Kris created a chart with realistic deliverables based on current resources, while still allowing some of the multiplayer team to have some downtime, Rockstar NY were like "no" and provided a counter chart with dates they needed to hit and they had deliverables from the past. lol RDR1 in a lot of ways is a miracle game, given the clusterfuck that production was. I am not surprised so many people left after RDR1 released.
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly39,131 views • 29 days ago
With Sony pulling back on exclusives for PC it's good to understand why Shawn Layden pushed for their games to be on put on PC in the first place. My theory on why they are doing this though is because 1. There games on PC weren't really moving the needle and selling that much, nor were they creating FOMO for people to buy a PlayStation to play the sequels. 2. They don't want Xbox's new hardware to be able to play their games through the loophole of Steam. 3. Nintendo is closing the gap with Switch 2 and seems to have somewhat alleviated their biggest weakness.....third party support, which makes them having exclusives even more important. 4. Releasing elsewhere disincentivizes people from buying a PlayStation so that's less sales within their ecosystem
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly164,617 views • 6 months ago
The main reason why Rockstar doesn't release their games Day 1 on PC is due to lack of resources. As John Ricchio, GTA 5's producer puts it "if you are working on that that means you aren't working on something else." During the development of RDR1 they actually had a PC build running early on.
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly55,634 views • 2 months ago
Every time I see a failure of a live service game I think back to my interview with Shawn Layden where he explained why these games fail. The Highguard devs provided a mediocre product that no one wanted, in an overcrowded market. It really is that simple.
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly133,934 views • 7 months ago
In light of Jason Schreier's comments regarding Sony being unhappy with Naughty Dog, this made me think back to my convo with Benson Russell (Designer on TLOU & Uncharted 1-4) It's more than likely that Naughty Dog struggled to create the "it factor" for Intergalactic and the internal crunch was a way to try and find it but also...... This is their most expensive project by a wide margin, and is crazy ambitious but Naughty Dog no longer has a flat structure and has a lot of bureaucracy there now due to the studio ballooning in size and is now plagued by the same issues that studios like Bethesda have. If this game doesn't knock it out of the park, I bet there will be layoffs. Naughty Dog is becoming an insanely expensive studio for Sony to run due to salary costs in L.A.
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly66,090 views • 3 months ago
Gamers don't realise how much game devs sacrifice to make a game. The amount of stories I have heard over the years about marriages ending or coming close to ending because of devs doing crazy hours particularly at the end of a project is unfortunately very common! Here is one example, towards the end of Portal 2 the lead designers wife was threatening to leave him because he was pretty much living at Valve, so he made the decision to step back and delegate to another team member. (I've met his wife, she is lovely.) Even with my interviews my wife sacrifices a lot for me to be able to do it and it's something I struggle to balance. With great success, usually comes great cost.
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly81,380 views • 5 months ago
If you want a glimpse into how dire the video game industry is, look no further than Rob Carr, who was an Audio Designer on L.A. Noire, GTA 5 and RDR2. He has been unemployed for over a year now and despite working on some of the most prestigious titles ever, can't find work simply because he is competing against 35 other people in his field with the same skillset. We are living through an extinction level event in the video game industry.
Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly69,075 views • 5 months ago