Talking to Tommy Tallarico: Education & the Future of Video Games.

I think the other thing that's really
interesting so we talk tommy teller could I talk for one hour solid it was never about nostalgia there wasn't word I mean all of this is forward-looking it's like well how can we change the video game market how can we change the way children play video games and Families video games and again educational value and all these things and again a lot of samples about the economics it's kind of guy I am you know how can we change the lives of software developers and computer brokers to make them better so they're not in this miserable situation of being strung out between Kickstarter and living on ramen noodles and so on you know the role of the creative artists in games helped and that proved there were all these questions that are fundamentally forward-looking about the future and this project I think for him in terms of my interest in it it is not about getting back to the golden era of 1978 when the original television cannot it's not about we live in what was great about videogames in the 16-bit of 32 hours it fundamentally is not about nostalgia the other big question I asked him this was in the middle of the interview after we talked about veganism he was very equal passionate about answering was this I said to him Laura an intellectual property like toejam and Earl is basically kind of priceless an intellectual partner like earthworm jim is basically priceless right however the amount of money that anyone can make retro video games or independent game development is remarkably close to zero they're done as a labor of love than on a break-even basis they don't make money in the can make money not even if they launched on switch steam you know every possible PC based platform every possible console platform and today independent game developers can sell through shots to direct download through all the mainstream consoles as well as pcs therefore I have given these factors what is the argument for earthworm jim bringing out a new game exclusively on the Intellivision amigo why would anyone make any console exclusive game it's one question rather than doing what these other games was done and then beyond that why would these specific intellectual properties why would they be on your console and your console we just did a one-hour interview with Tommy Tallarico and when this interview wrapped one ended my girlfriend said to me that's the greatest interview you've ever done for your channel it was almost precisely one hour and then my computer my Macintosh computer had a 100% hardware software failure at a complete crash people say max never crash and that recording is lost forever it's funny I actually considered having a second computer record as a backup like to have two computers simultaneously record the conversation cuz I knew knew there was more than 0% chance that this would happen that the hardware or software would fail and I didn't do it because they didn't have enough plugs in the wall I just didn't have enough electrical oh that's the thing I had so there moral of that story which is always have a backup and Tommy Tallarico DS n did not record the conversation I mean that so I think he probably also has some regrets about that we did of course talk about the state of computer programming software video games Hardware the whole strategic approach they have in television what they're trying to do in the next 10 years in the video game market but conversation began with a long discussion about veganism and his decision to become vegan what motivated him to begin life and I think he's never spoken about that on camera before I only asked about three questions that each of which he answered at great length and great depth and with great passion but he kept saying nobody has ever asked me that question and by the way I wasn't asking about vegans and we open with that discussion as he wanted to talk about I think he appreciate the opportunity to come on camera and talk to somebody who was a vegan and who was shall we say politically moderate so we talked about the ins and outs of his life being a beacon I think he said for 13 years so he's actually a vegan you know he would have been vegan before most people knew what the word vegan was you know I'm veganism really started to take off in the public eye maybe 2014 before that I was a relatively unknown and obscure thing so he had his story with that and he asked me about my background veganism how I said it become vegan and then we very rapidly transition I think he doesn't know the extent to which my own life has been wrapped up in videogames I said look I think you were about half a generation older than me because for him videogames began with temple of apshai and for me video games began instead with something like nethack you guys who watched the channel will know a lot of the other video games that were touched on for me in my life I use music and images from those video games including toejam and Earl and what-have-you and we establish she's just about 10 years older than me so depends on how you define a generation but when he first gotten involved video games video games they didn't even have music I said look deep were you inspired to get vocal vide games because temple of apshai had no music at all or he thought the music is terrible you know go back to Atari 2600 you get a few beeps and Boop's at the start of screaming it and that's about it I also by saying to him that we really do know his work I mean his work on video games part of my own childhood but there are many soundtracks he worked on that you know it's not just they could be part of the kind of top 10 greatest video game soundtracks of all time I really said that the music is in many ways the durable part of video games is an art form it's what we can still appreciate about yeah famous games like toejam and Earl but also some of the obscure projects he was a part of he made the soundtrack to global gladiators for the Sega Genesis which is one of the very few cartridges I own on plastic I'm not a collector and it's not the defendants it's my childhood my mother threw away all my shell davidians I don't have any of the stuff continuously mojo but I bought globe letters there's one of his soundtracks you know but whether it's something obscurely global gladiators or some of the projects like earthworm jim that are of enduring Fame I want to say on the record the Sega Genesis version of earthworm jim has better music than the superintendent so if you want to listen one of the main things dummy was famous for in the past was his contribution to video game soundtracks and as children you might not be aware of the significance the soundtrack with a lot of the games you played as a child you or maybe just paying attention to the gameplay or the graphics or whatever but the significance of the soundtrack is tremendous and as I say with most of these games the music is now the main thing you can appreciate it the only thing you can appreciate as an adult I really have no interest in running around the glowing maze with a simulated shotgun shooting robots or most radio a troops don't interest me in many many different ways but in most of these cases you know the soundtrack really does still have some some enduring value and yet to talk about running around with a shotgun you know also one of his famous projects was the Terminator game for the Sega CD also known as as the mega CD so I started with some after we talked about veganism I gave him some sincere praise for the legacy of his work that way in videogames there are different things he didn't know about me and my work but where I was going with the conversation eventually the last question I asked them and there were like three questions and each of these questions he said Wow nobody ever asked him that that's a great question that he had a lot to say about it the final question and asked him when I was moving towards was to really talk about educational software and language education and pointed to that stage you know for me playing a video game like Dirk the originals or that no graphics or nethack which barely has graphics you know for me as a child that was part of language learning in language education even if the use of language wasn't so deep the repetition and the use of proper sentence structure and grammar and so on you are really engaged with language learning with those video games not all video games definitely you can be a complete illiterate and play Super Mario Brothers you know this is not true across all genres but there is some educational significance to video games in our lives whether we want to admit it or not and then I've talked about the struggle to try to get language education that you or even language adaptations of video games for obscure languages like First Nations languages the Native American languages Kriya Jim play mohawk Navajo you name it and my own passengers than that my interest in having software education sell foreign language adaptations for just some more obscure languages like the ocean and Cambodian I think if you google around the internet you'll even see me trying that with Palli try to talk about video games language education software and the point being here language education software doesn't always look like a dictionary it can look a lot like a Pokemon so I told him the story that when I was first studying creating a jib way at First Nations University these are American Indian languages they are indigenous languages native languages to tonight's it's a Canada all of which are in danger of going extinct quite early in the course maybe one month in his study of the language I made a board game and it was a board game and it involved also cards very very vaguely similar to Pokemon in some ways the actual board was more like monopoly you moved around a board and there were different symbols but there was also no one of cards fighting you know this kind of thing as part of because of what vocabulary at the time you know and you know this was like Pokemon but is using the real names in Korea forest animals like Fox Eagle that's it because this is a lot of vocabulary had just start the language and the professors were blown away at this and said we'll look this is the challenge we have you want this language to survive or hey if you want people to really grow up speaking a zymogen fluent in this language a video game or a card game or you know something even like Pokemon that's in Korea or Jib way then you have kids practicing and memorizing vocabulary and using that vocabulary and complete sentences this is actually a really powerful form of language education itself and then it also motivates people positively to use the language it also shows people hey this language is part of your daily life in the modern world in a meaningful way this isn't just something you have to study because of a guilt trip from your grandparents like oh you should study this language and guys a lot of what I just said is just as true of Chinese the difference being Chinese has a market of billions of people worth billions of dollars and language like Kree origin where Cambodia it's only thousands but it sends him on that front when I was talking to software engineers or programmers about the possibility of making lemon education software for these more obscure languages the easiest way to do that is to adapt an already existing product that's great and the problem was educational software is so dead that it's not as if the products already out there to be adapted right it's just not the case you're starting from scratch so he talked about so I gave him this opportunity to talk about educational software its significance for the television for his product project another interesting little setup i gave him there was to challenge him and say look you know you didn't have to name this disconsolate e in television right one of the things in television was known for was educational software math software spelling stuff that was part of what it was designed for there you know you could have called this the amico master system you could have dug out other obscure names of video game consoles including the Magnavox Odyssey Odyssey is a great name for a forum system you know if you called it the amico Odyssey that still has retro value and a step nostalgia value for people that is you chose something that specifically is branded for educational value and you know to what extent is this part of it so he really pushes that and again shockingly he said no no one else in any other interview had asked him about that but his company is committed to making 20% of their software educational that's a huge commitment so a number of other really interesting aspects that came on passing on I mentioned look you know if you're doing this educational software there will be charitable money for it like not just stuff like Kickstarter but there are the educational foundations we wanted to put up money for educational software support the publication of the educational software and even government money you know there will be government support for development vitiation suffer and he immediately said that already they are actually getting some government support that some public sector supported which is to me very surprising it's a system it's a medium system that doesn't exist yet I pointed out that the even if it's a minority of people care about educational software they'd care about it passionately right and even if children are drawn to games that have violence or sexually salacious imagery children don't make the purchasing decisions the parents do so the parents may be powerfully motivated by the educational software and I said even if you fail at making 20% the software education even if you only have 10% in being educational that's still infinitely more than once you get on Nintendo switch or Playstation or Xbox those systems really have zero educational software which is bizarre and remarkable and amazing that's that's the way it's it's been for such a long time and you can play Super Mario Brothers or a clone of Super Mario Brothers and by the way of any era whether you're talking about Mario Galaxy or Mario 64 or original Mario Brothers you can play that type of game on any hardware today whether it's a mobile phone or a laptop computer or any of the videogame systems so that's never going to be the unique selling point for your system it's never going to be what motivates people to be passionate about committed to your Hardware something get on any hardware anywhere but if you have some of this that's really unique to your system that people will buy the system they'll commit to it and then they'll probably buy a Mario type game anyway let's say okay I'm buying the system for educational software and then Alice went do this so that sparked a long passionate discussion from Kevin yeah I made some of these comments while I was speaking but I mean he you know he was really eager to talk about this side of the business and his his vision for the future and he reflected on his whole past career and how educational software had disappeared from console gaming had disappeared from mobile gaming mobile here meaning like game boy or Nintendo 2d s 3ds the mobile systems and that sense dummy mobile phones and how finally even disappeared from PC gaming that there had been this amazing collapse in educational software collapse in software made for children I mentioned a lot of guys don't know this there's an obscure sega system Sega actually split off a separate system for children's children's entertainment in the genesis era there separate division doing it and he knew the lists of all these companies that used to commit a serious amount of the resources to either really for small children appropriate software or explicitly educational software or both and that that was gone so this is one of those fundamental paradoxes lurking in the background this conversation is that the period of the greatest profitability for video games was right at the start when the audience was the smallest as an economic fact the most profitable video game of all time was space invaders so since then everything has been less and less profitable although the size of the market has increased and increased and so today the number of people in the market for video games is huge it's it's basically the whole world that has access to electricity you know the size of the market is in the millions and yet the diversity of software has narrowed so something he said he said if you walk into a big-name video game store today and say well what educational games do you have they will say nothing and I think that is true we've walked into a be doing service I think it is actually zero the only exception I can think of or a couple of language education games for an it not even Nintendo 3ds for the Nintendo DS it had a couple of educational titles they might have on the shelf somewhere but there are almost no exceptions and he said back in 1995 if you walked into a video game store they had this this this and this I mean he knows that history better the night if he knew what was going on at videogames in the 1990s and this collapse so the size of the market has expanded but the diversity of what's on offer has narrowed and it definitely seems like that sometimes with all the focus ok let's not get into stereotyping what what video games are available and and what aren't but that's that's alarmingly clear in terms of Education set aside about education software general Chilean software in general and for me the issue of language education sometimes being an implicit part of the game you know zorg wasn't meant to be educational nethack wasn't the games I played as a kid they weren't meant to be but they were educational for me and that pointed out that a game like animal processing if it's in Chinese and you're playing Chinese it can't have some educational value for you when a Chinese very easily these things could be adapted or other types of games could make games games that are first and foremost games but implicitly functionally actually they really are educational for children which all that are building up their their ability to use their first language or learning a second language or what-have-you and then beyond that there's the question of really explicitly educational software which I mentioned as many times just lately the stuff that's available even on mobile phones eating's will run more complete or it's a remarkably neglected mhmmm sector of the market okay so the other big question I asked and this is in the middle with each of you after we talked about veganism he was very passionate about answering was this I said to him look an intellectual property like toejam & arrow is basically kind of priceless no I mean 2020 and intellectual property like what was my debate example here your member papes or my girlfriend earthworm jim thank you intellectual property from Jim is basically priceless right however the amount of money that anyone can make retro video games or independent game development is remarkably close to zero several award-winning and famous games were developed on a completely non profit basis I gave the example of dustforce if you google it dust horses a game where they published the economics of what happened even though they had like Kickstarter money or another form of donation even though they won awards that gave them bursaries gave them free money to develop and finish the game even though they had all this kind of angel investment if they had paid their team normal salaries that would have been bankrupt it would not have been breaking down it was basically done as a charity project but everyone involved that was one of the most successful games of its year and then distributed on every platform it possibly could and so on right you look at something like Wonder Boy Dragons trap a retro beam project a lot of these things the they're done is a labor of love than on a break-even basis they don't make money in the can make money not even if they launch on switch steam you know every possible PC based platform every possible console platform and today independent game developers can sell through a shot to direct download through all the mainstream consoles as well as PC s therefore given these factors what is the argument for earthworm jim bringing at a new game exclusively on the Intellivision amiga dough why would the next toe jam and earl game be exclusively on the Intellivision amico and of course there's a broader question there why would anyone take the gamble why would anyone make why would anyone make any console exclusive game it's one question rather than doing what these other games has done and then beyond that why would these specific intellectual properties why would they be on your console and your console only and he had a very good answer to that question I think the answer he gave and again he was delighted to be asked the question nobody ever asked this question that's a great question sorry babe he he was delighted to have the question and he gave an answer that I think would have thrilled any board roomful of investors or any group of young people who themselves dreamed about having a career in video game development and the answer involved a lot of money a lot of talent and a lot of support for the developers themselves he spoke at great length about the misery involved with being an independent game developer he spoke about how awful it was to have to survive a Kickstarter money and to produce games exactly the way dustforce was created the way small companies operate these independent game developers operate and he said fundamentally the reason why people are going to commit to what he's doing in television is because what they're doing is the exact opposite he said these people actually get paid they get paid up front they get paid in advance to make a game so this is already this is already a significant difference right the idea you're getting paid today for an earthworm jim game that might exist one or two years from now whatever the talent development alright now again if you're thinking as an investor thinking about buying stock in this company that also changes the risk and reward balance considerably right as opposed to a company like Steam or the Nintendo eShop just sitting there and saying hey will passively develop will passively distribute your your product and will keep maybe 30% I know by the way whether you're talking about the Android Market for four games the selling of software for Android phones or the Apple shop whatever we call it the Apple II shop if you're selling games there you're losing at least 30% of the value of your game at least 30% of the ticket price is going to the owner of the shop the distributing website there is no shop you know so 30% of it is going to Apple Corporation or or more 30% or more is going to steam or Android the Google owned shop that's the strip name so the so you know if you're charging only $10 for a game and maybe $3 or $4 is going to an intermediate shop with that kind that's a really awful business prospect and again those people are surviving off of donations on patreon or donations their Kickstarter and then they're they may not be making any money at all afterwards after it's disturbed in the shop he bemoaned how lawful was for those people to develop those games and then they have no marketing department and no promotion the game all your hard work can just disappear into a list of thousands and thousands of games that are available on any of these platforms again this would have files of the iPhone shop but the Nintendo eShop or steam or whatever it disappears into the infinity of the internet and it may never be really appreciated or which region on its again and he is making the pitch that what they are doing is very fundamentally different both in terms of the economics that the developers are going to get that money up front and in terms of the talent that they have to back it up the talent they have of people who are on the payroll of in television who will do crucial piece of the process work so what I didn't say at that point this is one this was a one hour long conversation but it was action-packed so I didn't have a moment to say everything I thought what an interesting contrast that was to the failure of the Sega Saturn so in my distant history I was a videogames journalist I was paid believing her I wasn't wasn't a volunteer I'm like these days I got a lot of free stuff from these companies including Sega I was taking a Sega headquarters and given free free heart burns up or if I say again stuff you know it was a very different time in video games and games journalism rarely discuss chapter of my life but you know one of the biggest misconceptions about why the Sega Saturn fails that people just said it was hard to program for nothing is objectively hard to program for right the problem was that Sega didn't share the code the problem was that Sega didn't help people so Sega put all this work into building up so hold libraries software libraries just means code code that is done in assembly which is the hardest kind of programming right and keep in mind that'll include things like people they talk about physics and lighting and comics that it's gonna involve some of the most rudimentary elements of game programming like how to draw a line on the screen how to draw two polygons and have them come to a point like some of the real rudiments those are in so-called libraries right programmers wanting to create something for the Sega Saturn we're looking at this huge huge burden of work to do in working from assembly code to to make the rudiments of a game before they can even get on to the creative self-expression so it's not the case that the Sega Saturn was harder to program for and other systems the problem was the assistance and the software provided to you as an independent game developer by Sega Corporation the stuff they wanted to keep to themselves like their attitude at that time we've got we put all this work into making Sonic R the sonic racing game we're just gonna give that to other people so they can then take that and make their own game and that was that was a suicidal business decision from Sega destroyed Sega Saturn and the only other companies that could develop good software for the Saturn were huge companies like Capcom Capcom made great software for the Saturn but almost nobody else could could cope with it the burden of coding in assembly so he so what Tommy Tallarico is saying is that a television is not just paying money up front but they have this amazing rogues gallery of some of the most experienced to telling the people in the business who are just going to provide code but they are really going to provide the crucial consulting and enabling role to these independent programmers and he did give a few examples in passing that are that are telling you know a lot of the time if you're experienced game game creator or programmer what-have-you you still won't have experience with this specific controller with the specific hardware with how do you know how to get things to sync up quite right because you're used to programming maybe PC software or maybe for some other console or something and again it's a huge headache well do you want to deal with working from assembly code from the ground up to figure out how to get all the parts to work together this right and he's saying no we already have in-house the best people and he was mentioning people who have a 40-year record of doing amazing work in video game development on a whole bunch of famous platforms and systems and whole bunch of famous games again I'm not gonna try to reproduce her memory but he named off specific people on specific games and specific hardware platforms that they all had a decade of experience with each or more and he said these are the people are going to be able to answer an email and they're even the people are going to be able to take your code and optimize it to work well with this hardware with this controller and so on so that's massively empowering for a massively enabling for the people making this software now if you even went as far as to say this is very generous that he was willing to do the music for these parties you could have Tommy Tallarico this famous video even was doing the music your work so you don't have to worry about that means and he mentioned the people that art direction and animation seeing that they would provide her and he then mentioned the people in marketing just interesting he had people who were crucial to success of the Nintendo Wii in the United States of America is that we have people to do marketing and of course the artwork and so on well into that and we're willing to do that to promote your product so he's saying in television doesn't just pay you but they really take on the Congress public right um I think the other interesting thing that both motivated him throughout this interview and motivates him in this project and something he and I have in common is actually a really deep criticism of what's wrong with video games maybe you could say what's wrong with the culture of video game playing in video invitation to this day so if he and I have a number of really odd things in common in terms of veganism in terms of ethics he talked a lot about his veganism be motivated by compassion and ethics and so on rather than ecology or weight loss or health it was very rich in their perspective we have things in common politically I would say and you know obviously his whole life has been dominated by and devoted to video games but he is capable of seeing the fundamental evil of having a family sitting in a room where the father is off in one corner staring at his mobile phone the daughter as may be staring at her laptop you know the son may be playing video games on one or another isolated console let's say the Nintendo switch mini or whatever you know where digital devices are dividing rather than uniting people they're not bringing people together keeping them apart and I gave him a phrase I said yes people are isolated together as never before you're sitting together BR completely isolated by technology so he is a critic of this Ivan Turing really briefly back when I was a video game critic back when I was getting paid to write about video games or very soon thereafter maybe a year after I remember a friend of the family asking me about buying the Gameboy for her son think of the time it was Game Boy Color maybe and I said to her don't do it I said buy him a Sega Saturn instead and she said oh what she was really surprised she thought that the gameboy would kind of be less harmful because like the graphics are less impressive or whatever like it's like some outlet because it's less like it has less computing power so therefore it's gonna be less addictive and I said no if he's sitting on the floor with a real console like the Sega Saturn or natal 64 whatever right you're in the same room with him his friends don't think he can sit on the floor with his friends playing it you know what he's playing you talk to him about what he's playing when I'm living as my daughter I'm literally reading her the text on-screen it's on I've played Animal Crossing with my daughter and we'll play that she was barely capable of reading to what extent that was laziness is another question but you know she's she'd been talking to me about okay how does this work and you know game I came across you explaining the economics of it no no you know you dig up the beats now when you sell them later or the prices on the economics of farming and this video game but you're reading and interpreting there can be an educational and social thing that you know as Tommy would say it brings people together so I will bringing families together is this big hypothesis here rather than isolating people bring the part but it's interesting to know even back then maybe that was 1995 maybe was 1997 you know you're talking about the difference between the gameboy the isolating potential of a portable device which now includes the mobile phone much more powerful than a Game Boy ever was as opposed to sitting down with the console he is really he's really committed now on to challenging the evils of few games even though he's doing it from his perspective or the positive creation of a new video gaming platform so I mean my own ambivalence about this is is drawn out in many different ways I'm a parent who is willing to play video games with my daughter I wanted to buy video games for my daughter and sit there with her but I'm of course incredibly apprehensive but possibility my daughter becoming a video game addict and I really actively advocate on the Internet for other adults like myself not to waste their life not to lose precious your clears their life playing video games I don't think this is support weight and both my girlfriend and I you know we have regrets about how many hours were lost at our youth to play video games you know I've told her before we have we own a Nintendo Wii which is getting for my daughter now we'll see if my daughter is willing to put up with it maybe up I don't want to play I don't wanna play games of this low polygon count or something but we still own a Nintendo Wii and I was shocked when we popped in the I was gonna say the cartridge was a disc we popped in the disc for Super Mario Galaxy my girlfriend had a hundred percent for every level she'd come back in her college days she had gotten a hundred percent for every level of Super Mario Galaxy it's like guess what kid you could have been doing something else while you were in college there was something easier that what you were a university student that getting under for that so I do think it's something as a profoundly corrupting a negative effect on people's lives but at the same time as you can hear me say again again I recognize the intellectual partly I intellectuals good reviews this is the Intellivision I recognize the educational potential and it could be a positive part of people's lives intellectually it's a lot easier to have a video game that has positive intellectual content for a four-year-old a five-year-old sexual several than it is that video game that would have positive intellectual content for someone like me in their 40s but I think we can recognize in the last 20 years nobody has even been been trying to do that nobody's been taking on that that challenge so it is really interesting that a garlic Tommy Tallarico it is partly out of a critique of everything that's wrong with videogames today what's wrong with you know again you could have two brothers but they're sitting at opposite ends of the living room playing separate in Nintendo switch minis are playing separate 3ds or something um it's interesting you know the approach he sees as he puts it to bringing families together and how he is going to use you know again the talent pool the people he's brought together from decades of knowing these people in the industry and ultimately having the money investment to pay them a salary that he's gonna bring you know in terms of software and hardware creation to try to challenge some of the fundamental assumptions of the video game industry my optimism for this is that I think even if it fails it's still pretty positive here comes you know when I was a child the rate of technological development was so fast that that really propelled video games forward as an industry even if what everyone was producing intellectually or creatively was crap okay I can remember when the turbografx-16 came out to people like me it was the PC engine that was the first system to have 16-bit graphics so the leap from 8-bit 16-bit didn't matter what garbage she put on the console and not just because it was a child but because oh wow well before we saw Batman in four colors punching the Joker now here he is in you know 16-bit graphics punching the joke I had the I had the black-and-white Batman game for Game Boy by the way I think that was those more or less a launch Soviet the graphics are unbelievably primitive right like oh wow now I can see Batman's cape flutter in the breeze was money that has become banal and meaningless the progress in graphics even I mean even when you're comparing Nintendo Wii to Nintendo switch Mario has more hair you know because air moves in the breeze or something is you know that that issue of the rate of graphical progress and the rate of progress and music or sound quality that has become meaningless and there's now I think a much more meaningful challenge in terms of creative authorship for several creation and this question that Tommy Tallarico is at least asking what is the role of video games in our lives some of us are making that decision as parents some of us are making the decision as language educators right some of us are making that decision maybe as language researchers or that right and yeah some of us are making the decision has children begging their parents to buy them something and some of us are making that decision as fully grown men who are inexplicably addicted to a childish form that's the market I have the least sympathy for it at Amin and we will see we will see to what extent that market embraces or rejects the Intellivision amico as a project I think the other thing that's really interesting so we talked tommy teller could I talk for one hour solid it was never about nostalgia there wasn't one word I mean all of this is forward-looking it's like well how can we change the video game market how can we change the way children play video games and families video games and again educational value and all these things and again a lot of ulsan with the economics it's kind of guy I am you know how can we change the lives of software developers and computer brokers to make them better so they're not in this miserable situation of being strung out between Kickstarter and living on ramen noodles and so on you know the role of the creative artists in games helped and that proved there were all these questions that are fundamentally forward-looking about the future and this project I think for him in terms of my interest in it it is not about getting back to the golden era of 1978 when the original television cannot it's not about we live in what was great about video games in the 16-bit of 32 hours it fundamentally is not about nostalgia and in that sense even if it fails I think it really could be something right an experiment by definition is something you undertake with the outcome being unknown and it's really rare to see someone put millions of dollars into an experiment we can sit back and say okay this is something new and one way or another we're gonna see where this is going [Music]