Episode 2: Who writes the code now? Chris Wood on AI in game development

Ryan 01:43

Hello, how's it going?

Tom 01:45

Pretty damn good. We've made it to episode two. Just so you know, most podcasts fail by about month six. If we get beyond the month six point, we have basically better than 96 per cent of podcasts out there, so that's our long stretch goal.

Ryan 01:58

I can fully see myself being replaced by month six. You'll you'll have someone else. Maybe AI.

Tom 02:05

Maybe. Today is the first real proper episode where we've got a guest on. So what I'd like to do is that when we have guests on that are very much of the games industry, then we'll talk less about our game and more about the deep games industry chat and when we get guests on from the military side then we'll give a bit of an update of development on the top side of that podcast, just to keep sprinkling in a bit of that games development magic. Having said that, it's worth mentioning that we are Tom and Ryan. We're good pals, but also we are the makers of Contact: Wait Out, which is an ops room simulator command game. So we are trying to create the most realistic version of being a commander in an ops room that we can based on my personal experience in a war zone and Ryan's experience in the industry. We're mashing that together and we're ensuring that players get an opportunity to experience the complexity.

Tom 02:56

The stress, the pressure, and also the fun. Again, because all games have to have an element of fun in it as well. So, if you want to learn more about what we're doing, stick around to the end of the podcast and we'll give you ways in which you can follow this conversation. But today is all about AI and our fantastic guest, Chris Wood. In this conversation, we cover a quite sensitive topic. We speak about the use of artificial intelligence when it comes to the games industry. It's a very emotive topic. Really quite a challenging one to cover, but I think Chris does a great job. One of the areas that we talk about is the Unreal Engine and their pivot towards being AI first. Ryan, I know you've been doing a bit of research about that, but can you just give me kind of top level what they've announced and what does it actually mean?

Ryan 03:35

Yeah, certainly. So the timing couldn't be better because recently Epic have just told us what's coming next for Unreal Engine 6, which is the next variation of their engine. Tim Sweeney, Epic's boss, said the company has a huge pivot underway towards AI earlier this month. What that means is Unreal Engine 6 is going to be driven a lot of it under the hood by AI. We can expect early access of that version of the engine towards the end of 2027, but full release is probably going to be like a year and a half later. All early access means is developers can get their hands on it early and start testing those features out. There's three big changes to talk about. The first one is something called Verse. Verse is going to be Epic's own programming language. It started out in Fortnite's Creators Tools.

Ryan 04:22

It's designed to be easier to pick up than C++, which most Unreal games are written in today. The second is the idea that content and code can now be moved easier between games. So something you've built on one game, you can essentially port over to another game. And then the third one that everyone is talking about is the AI being built right into the engine, and that's through the MCP, which you can envision as a universal plug. So it lets AI tools like Claude or Gemini connect straight into the engine. That's about it. That's the gist of what's going on on Unreal's side.

Tom 04:57

That's fascinating. I mean, Tim's never shy of mixing up the pot, so it's obviously created a bit of a stir. And I'm so glad that Chris has come on. A veteran of the industry, lots of experience on the Unreal Engine. Let's talk about this in more detail. Should we get into the interview?

Ryan 05:11

Yeah, let's do it.

Tom 05:15

Chris, welcome to Making Contact.

Chris 05:18

Hey, Tom. Thank you.

Tom 05:20

When we thought about which guests do we get on for the first guest episode of the podcast, your name was absolutely top of my list, mainly because we've been talking back and forth for almost coming up to what, seven years now, eight years? And I've seen your progression from super respected and a kind of successful developer on the Unreal Engine through to business startup and then onto where you are now. And it's been an amazing journey to follow. And I think there's a lot that we can kind of learn from you on this. So thank you very much for giving us your time.

Chris 05:52

Oh, you're very kind.

Tom 05:54

I mean, I think the numbers speak for themselves, which we'll get into in terms of going from zero to a studio of fifty experienced, motivated developers and support team etc. But before we go into that, Chris, for people that are maybe haven't come across yourself or Tanglewood Games, would you mind introducing yourself? Give us a bit about your early career, then obviously later career and what you find yourself doing now.

Chris 06:17

I will. I'm terrible at introducing myself and it comes out differently every time. So let's see what we get. Hi, I'm Chris Wood. The CEO and founder of Tanglewood Games. I was a programmer for a very long time. So I had a 16-year career as a programmer, going from like a junior at 23 or whatever it was, for 16 years, and then started my own company. So I knew I knew what I was doing, I knew the craft, but I'd never run a business before or employed anyone before. So that was a completely new phase of my life. Since then, I've been running and growing Tanglewood from a one-man operation gradually up to we have 60 staff today spread across the UK. We have a few people overseas, mostly in the UK, when we're a pure service business.

Chris 07:05

So we help games companies with their programming problems, their engineering problems, the hard stuff in the guts of the engine. So we specialise in Unreal Engine. We fix the nasty problems, performance optimisation, platform issues, shipping, all of that stuff. That's what we do for them.

Tom 07:26

And they now come to us for that. So we build a bit of a reputation for it. And that's been built off basically your reputation, really. Certainly, at the start. And obviously, now you've built a team, and it's phenomenal. Did you take investment at any point or is this completely bootstrapped based on just building out from your initial client base?

Chris 07:43

It's completely bootstrapped in the most, I guess, raw dog way you possibly could be, where it was literally me and no money and a desk and I made up a name for the company. Not because of some kind of uh purity of like wi it it has to be approached this way and I've got some kind of moral attachment to it. It's I don't know any other way of doing it because I've never run a business before and I didn't have money to put into it. So it was literally me working as a programmer and building it up from there. I was helping with a class earlier in this week. I volunteered to help with a class teaching some budding entrepreneurs in Hartlepool. And I tried to get that point across to them that there wasn't any great leap or investment or pivotal moment in the history of the company.

Chris 08:30

It's just tiny steps, but there's like a million of them. But if you're going in the right direction, you build something.

Tom 08:36

I do want to get into the guts of this conversation today, which you know is all about AI and games development. But I think it's really important to dwell on this story because there'll be lots of people listening to this who have aspirations of getting into the games industry or building out their own small businesses, etc. So hearing this story, I think it's is valuable. From your perspective, I've got two questions really. How did it feel? Was there a stage when you realised that it wasn't just you anymore and you'd actually managed to grow it into a thing? And what did that feel like?

Chris 09:05

I've been thinking about this this week specifically, and it goes back to what I just said: that the entertaining, kind of satisfying answer is there was this moment, but there isn't one. Everything's been tiny steps because I don't know how to make great leaps. It it will be I have massive respect for people who go and raise a load of money and start a company or they have a crazy idea or they throw their life savings into something and or or develop a product or something like that. People who make games, people who have an idea and back themselves and turn it into a game. This is a service business, like you. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that.

Chris 09:51

This is a service business, so I could just do work for people and they paid me from day one. And yes, it's been bootstrapped, and there's been no kind of crazy moment where I'm like, oh, I'm an employer. I wasn't just suddenly an employer. I found some students who were really keen and wanted to do some part-time work. I always paid them fairly, but it starts as they're self-employed and you pay them by the hour. Then that kind of builds up and then you maybe employ someone and it starts on a self-employed basis. Then you employ someone on a my first proper employee was an apprentice. So it felt like just testing the waters, then a full-time employee. So it's been a gradual process, but that's how I do everything, really.

Chris 10:40

And it works. Clearly.

Tom 10:43

I think it's worth noting: look, Hartlepool isn't the first place that springs to mind when it comes to gaming development in the UK. So why was it important to you that the heart of the company stays in Hartlepool?

Chris 10:56

Um there's two angles to that. One of them's practical 'cause I live here and the other one uh and the other one is is more of a uh has more of a story to it 'cause this is my hometown. I've been in the games industry for a very long time. There really isn't a games industry in the town. There have been a few attempts at little indie indie startups and things. But we don't have employers in our industry in this town to work. So I, in the olden days, when we all used to commute to a job and we couldn't work from home, I had to drive a long way to do what I wanted to do. Then we're in the era of you can work from home. So I started a business from home. But it was important to base it here. You know, it's my home. There isn't uh games industry or a creative tech industry that really makes a difference to the town.

Chris 11:46

And something c something relatively modest could make a huge difference to this town. It's one of those absolutely brilliant places with incredible, strong, stoic people. But it's been left behind for generations 'cause we're a heavy industry a post heavy industry town. We used to make things from steel. And we used to make ships, and that's all gone. We can make virtual ones now.

Tom 12:11

Yeah, exactly. Having been to your office, been to the marina, been treated to a meal with you and your team, you can just see the passion and the drive of everyone that's within your office. They feel very fortunate to be part of the journey of Tanglewood. But not only that, they're competence just oozes out of them, which is really nice to see. For someone that maybe doesn't understand what an external development partner actually does, are there any kind of games you've worked on that people will have heard on? I know there are, but that you can actually talk about, and then what kind of things did you do with them?

Chris 12:47

Yes. So talking about games is always terrifying because you have to have permission. So the list of games that I can talk about publicly on something like this is always very limited. We worked on Hogwarts Legacy, but that's a few years ago now, so we don't want to keep talking about that all the time. It's an incredible example. It's a perfect example of what we do, the contribution that we can make and the size of game that we can work on, despite the fact that we're a small company and a relatively small company in Hartlepool. Another amazing example that we can mention is Star Wars Galactic Racer. Which we've been working on for a few years now with a brilliant client called Fuse, based in the UK, which is different to Hogwarts Legacy was the client was in the US and there were people working on it all over the world.

Chris 13:32

The list of games that I can talk about, treat it as a kind of tip of the iceberg kind of thing, where for every game I mention, there'll be 20 that are maybe as exciting, but also I just can't talk about. We're a pure service business. So we don't make our own stuff. We don't sell our own stuff. We don't make games. We don't have our own IP. That's a deliberate choice. And it kind of purifies what we do as a business. Our clients know that when they come to us, they are our highest priority. They're our only priority. So we provide a service. And actually, delivering a service isn't a trivial thing. There's a lot of there's a lot of expertise and process and delivery that goes into it. And if you can do that, you can actually stand out from many, many core dev service providers who some of them do that kind of work to pay the bills.

Chris 14:25

What they really want to do is make a game. Or huge core dev service providers that are massive corporate entities and you just don't get the service and the expertise that you'll get from a company like Tanglewood. But it's very different to what a lot of people expect. If you say I'm a game developer or I'm in the games industry or I'm a programmer or we make games, they imagine a game studio the typical game studio. Yes, designers and artists and everyone kind of clustered around making a game and testing it and playing it. That's the vision of a typical game studio. That's not really what we are. We're like a dozen small strike teams who are inserted into our clients' teams and we make games with them.

Tom 15:10

So s you're the special forces of the of the games development world, basically. I like it. It's a good analogy.

Ryan 15:16

It seems almost harder than being in a standalone studio and making your own game because it must be really tricky to switch between clients the performance criteria that they require and then obviously applying your own standards. That's quite credible actually.

Chris 15:30

It requires expertise and it requires skills that maybe a normal game studio wouldn't have, but also and this is very deliberate it creates a stable business model because people come along and they need help and we do it for them and they pay us. I have huge respect for people who try and get funding and gamble their entire company on whether a game will be a hit or not. We are shielded from that kind of gamble by just helping people with their with their games.

Tom 16:00

Yeah, I mean ultimately you're you know the industry is famous for being a boom and bust industry and you know by working on multiple projects at at any one moment in time you've got two really from my perspective two benefits right you've got the you're spreading knowledge about how lots of di games are being developed across your team which means I assume everyone can help each other if you you get stuck with loads of breadth of knowledge. And secondly, you're being insulated from the boom or bust because there'll always be other projects to be pivoted onto, which is fantastic. I think we can talk about this literally for all episodes. But I'm, well, Ryan and I are both, we've spent offline have been speaking about this a lot because it's an important topic for any budding game producer, indie game or mainstream is to how much, if at all, to lean into AI when it comes to developing of a game.

Tom 16:47

Now, more pertinent is that Unreal Engine 6, as it's been announced, is coming out with AI models built in. I think Tim Sweeney confirmed there was a huge pivot inside Epic Games to AI becoming AI first. So here's an open-ended question: What should a studio that lives on the Unreal Engine be getting ready for from your perspective, Chris?

Chris 17:08

We're talking about AI, are we? See you later.

Tom 17:13

It's good. It's a hard topic. I get it.

Chris 17:16

I know. It's a spiky topic because people are emotionally invested. And when people are emotionally invested, it becomes part of their identity and people get really upset. We've learned this from talking about it and approaching it and preparing and using tools and things that. Even if you think everyone's going to be on the same page, people have completely different opinions about it and they feel really strongly. So it's it's something that I've learned to tread lightly when talking about, to have sensitivity for everyone's point of view. Actually, it's a really good lesson in running a company. But to go back to the Tim Sweeney thing, I think when something's said publicly like that, particularly by someone with the profile that Tim Sweeney has. It gets massively amplified in terms of its importance in the the media craziness that goes on afterwards and everyone kind of grabs it and comments on it and everyone's got an opinion and then everyone has and it just becomes an online fight.

Chris 18:13

So that statement that he made is really just a commentary on an ongoing evolution within Epic and in the engine. From our perspective as developers, well and truly embedded in the Unreal ecosystem, is just a step in the d the direction that they've always been talking about. Moving their internal processes to be more AI driven is something that's been going on for a few years. I think the way he communicated as a big pivot or a huge pivot or something is probably maybe slightly bad use of language. But also, he should be allowed to kind of make a statement and and and cause a bit of a splash, which I don't think he's averse to. But yeah, it's been fixated on and turned into something that's not, I think, because they do have a coherent strategy and a and a roadmap for this stuff.

Chris 19:06

And what he said makes sense in terms of that.

Ryan 19:09

Yeah, there's uh been a similar situation. I've seen this with the Xbox strategy manager. He built a game in a couple of days, very basic and um released it and basically said that vibe coding's the future. This is the way now. Like if you if you're not doing this, you're gonna get left behind in the industry and it's kicked up a whole storm as as the topic so often does. I think it's even led to him deleting his account, his socials account. It's the same sense really, isn't it? Everyone's gonna have their opinion on it and those opinions are conflicting a lot of the time.

Tom 19:40

I'm really keen to understand your perspective on this in terms of how what you tell your team at the moment in terms of how much AI is or isn't being used. And again, share as much as you feel comfortable with. I appreciate uh the sensitivities associated with it. And then what you think Unreal Engine 6 might mean to the way that you develop in the future.

Chris 20:00

At a high level, the conversation about AI is something that I wanted to have a while ago and brought it up internally in the company so we could start discussing it. My approach to this is that it's a tool, but also it's a completely unprecedented tool that is going to grow in capability exponentially in a way that nothing has done before. So, some of the analogies to things that have happened in the past are valid. People talk about the Industrial Revolution and all kinds of things and Luddites and all of that. We won't get into that. But it's not the same because the Industrial Revolution was like a thing and then it it wasn't exponential. I mean, imagine if industrial machinery became exponentially more powerful every six months.

Chris 20:48

So it's not quite the same. But what I wanted to try and explain to everyone before we really jumped in and had any policies or tried to get people using stuff, and this is a while ago, was for a business to really benefit from the exponential growth that will happen in the capability of AI, it has to be the right type of business doing the right things with the right tools. We've got to be driven by process, we've got to be generating data, we've got to own the data, we have to identify everything that can be automated and repeated. We've got to understand the business inside out and know how to then engineer bits of it in the future. If you're not that and you're not staying up to date with the technology and using it, then you get to be the you get to use the technology and it'll probably make you better, but you don't get the exponential benefit from it as it grows.

Chris 21:46

To be more specific, there will be people who for the next few years still just chat to AI and get draft documents or it writes their email for them or they get some advice. That's not going to make them any more effective over the next few years. But the people who map all of their business processes and build them around things that can be done by agents or things that can be done by humans now, and then an agent with a human looking after it in the future. That's where the growth and if you don't do it, like if we don't do it as a company, this is how I presented it to the staff. If we don't do it, our competitors will, and we'll be ten times slower and we won't exist anymore. So individual members of staff. Can have their own approach and they can feel emotionally about it and they can be dead against it or they can be all for it or somewhere in between.

Chris 22:34

But I don't have the luxury of feeling emotional about it. I have to be practical and protect the company and protect everyone's livelihoods. And the way to do that is to stay at the forefront. And actually as an engineering company, we're in a brilliant position. To understand it, use the tools better than anybody else. And in theory, those tools are more powerful in our in our hands, at least for now.

Ryan 23:00

Does that mean, in your opinion, that AI is inevitable now? It's the writing's on the wall, it's it's coming, we need to to adapt to it either way?

Chris 23:09

I never try and use absolutes, so i it's inevitable. I wouldn't say it's inevitable. Something could happen tomorrow and all of a sudden I get there is an element of the capitalism of it, the commercial side of it, is this huge investment bubble. And I I don't know what happens with that. I don't know if it something about it becomes less viable in the next few years and it dies out. I don't see it happening, but I don't rule it out. The most likely path over the next few years is it just becomes more and more powerful and you have to learn how to use it.

Tom 23:44

You're absolutely right. I can understand and appreciate and respect someone's position who wants to fall on their sword when it comes to this because it's a moral position. Ultimately, if I could turn off AI right now and there's a switch, it was never invented, I would. I think that it's so much good that comes from it, but I think there's good, we didn't need it, and we still don't need it going forward. So, you know, and I think there's a lot of risk that comes with it. But we've got to be a realist about the situation, and we are. Kind of where we are. The threat that I see, again, for I don't know, your clients using development studios going forward is if there's a new development studio that starts who are all in on Claude, let's say, and they bring on board people that are really good at using AI, but maybe don't have the same developer depth of knowledge that you've managed to foster over the last six, seven years.

Tom 24:32

And then, and it has happened, it will happen, it gets turned off. MI6 have already said to Anthropic, and they've been in conversation, and Anthropic said: if you can prove to me that my model is a danger, we will turn it off for the UK, which is the definition of cutting your nose off to spite your face. But you can see it happening. And then suddenly, you are purely developing on Claude. It gets turned off. Your client, Chris, is using this development studio. Now, just development completely stops, it all falls over. So you've got to have both and you've got to have the depth and developer knowledge who knows how to use AI and not go with the lower cost chop shops, for lack of a better term.

Chris 25:09

Yeah, exactly. And as its capability, as the capability of AI increases, it will inevitably take away some of the demand for human beings doing the same stuff. We can't shy away from that. That is going to happen. Every CEO, including Tim Sweeney, will tell you. It's not about employing fewer people. But many businesses will employ fewer people because of the reality of the situation, whether they want to or not. But it will, at least at first, it will do the simpler stuff for us. Or it will do the stuff that doesn't require the level of expertise or the level of creativity. And as a business, we've deliberately positioned ourselves at the expert end of the the market, supplying small strike teams effectively to our clients.

Chris 25:59

That's a deliberate choice, partly driven by AI, because it will eat away at the commoditised part of the market. People selling mass QA, people selling huge cheap art teams. It will eat away at that first. And you could argue either way as to whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. If people uh or if a business isn't adding as much value, at some point it shouldn't thrive or it shouldn't exist anymore. But you're talking about people's livelihoods, which are always tricky. But that's the reality.

Tom 26:34

Here's a stupid question of mine: is who owns the code? If Claude builds insert game here, you then or or a portion of a game, you then deliver it to the to the client. Do we know who a who actually owns it, legally speaking?

Chris 26:49

Do we know who owns anything at this point? People, it's my only approach. Everyone thought they owned all of the stuff that was on the internet that belonged to them and then AI hoovered it all up and regurgitated it for everyone. I can talk about our business, in which case our clients own every single thing that we ever do. And that's as it should be. We're a service. And and we follow the letter of the rules of every contract that we've got. And those contracts a year ago, eighteen months ago, universally said you do not use AI, you don't send anything to any cloud services, you don't generate anything. And the work product that you hand over contains nothing that's been created by AI.

Chris 27:36

Fast forward today and the majority of our contracts have something in them that allows us to use specific tools or do specific things using AI for productivity that is then part of the work that we do for the clients. And they're all different. There isn't really a typical one yet, but you can see the direction it's going in

Ryan 27:59

So if the tools that you're using t something goes under the radar, something's wrong, who's responsible service is the external client that owns the IP. A are you then responsible to fix that?

Chris 28:09

Is is anything to do with the work that we've done for them? Then it's our fault. Yeah. All of those contracts have warranties in them. We we make warranties to our clients though that we will deliver something that is you know, created in the way that they say it has to be created. It's got nothing embedded in it that doesn't belong to us that we can't then assign to them as part of that work. So if it was anything to do with us, yeah, it it would be our fault, which is why we're very careful.

Ryan 28:37

You have to be, 'cause you can't really trust the code uh a lot at face value. I think there's also a creeping sense of complacency with AI. A lot of people just take what it says at face values.

Chris 28:46

Correct.

Ryan 28:47

I mean, look at Contact: Wait Out, the game that we're working on. It's essentially a whole game working around the idea of the information you're getting, you're receiving, you can't fully trust. And working with AI feels a bit like that. As long as you're checking on it and verifying it, that's the argument there, right, isn't it? We have to make sure what it's telling us is accurate, is actually accurate.

Chris 29:07

Yeah, and that's the good bit because it means we've still got jobs and we're still relevant. At the point where you don't need to check it anymore, we all might as well go and live in a cave.

Tom 29:17

I'm not against that at the moment. On that note, [unclear]. Anyway, so yeah, I'm going to get lynched next time I go to them. There's another potential threat coming down the road to employment and specifically for juniors. The low-hanging fruit at the moment for AI is the junior role. Like you said yourself, Chris, the roles that are just less complex. So, do you well, firstly, would you give me a story about someone that started at Tanglewood and where are they now? Because again, that's the traditional way that this has worked. And then I'd love to hear your thoughts on what it might be like in the future with a new AI reality.

Chris 29:55

It's a really challenging one for us, this because I want to give as many people as I possibly can their first job in the games industry, and we have but it's hard. Partly because we or we needed to make that decision to be an expert service and not about just hiring as many people as we can and getting the biggest contracts we can. It means we've got to be senior heavier, we've got to have a lot of years experience average across the team. It makes it harder to employ juniors, but we do. Not a massive amount, but we do. We've got so go back to I mentioned our first proper employee was an apprentice. He started on an apprenticeship. So he now is a massive advocate for AI coding tools.

Chris 30:40

So he's had a journey of I don't know how long it's been five, six years that he's been at the company, going from being an apprentice to like a bot uh an entry level programmer to a junior programmer to a mid-level programmer. And it's a good example of a member of staff who was fully engaged on client work, therefore was kind of shielded somewhat from AI because, until very recently, you just weren't allowed to touch it. So, if unless people played with it in their spare time, they couldn't touch it on client work. That's now changing. And we've started introducing the dev team to the kind of tools that they can use. And we use them on internal projects and training days and things like that. And this programmer was a little bit sceptical about it because he hadn't had to use it for the work.

Chris 31:28

And you pick up the tone from the online debate and people are very wary of it. And so many artists and creators and things that you know in the industry who you really have compassion for them that this is attacking their livelihood in a way that it isn't quite doing to us yet. So he was sceptical, and one of the voices where we tried to have discussions about it, and it was tricky. But I think the advantage with a programmer is you show them what a sandbox and what a creative tool it is, and it clicks in their head and they realise what they can create, and that they're still a programmer. But it's almost like they've got a team of assistants and that then those assistants, the AI, will do a lot of the work or the donkey work and it'll create stuff and then you can just review it and tweak it and improve it or just tell it to go away and do it again and it doesn't kind of complain or you don't have to pay it overtime.

Chris 32:24

So he's embraced this and he's one of the leading voices in the company now that's keeping everyone up to date with the the technology, which is which is brilliant. But it is it's a difficult, it's a really, really difficult industry for young people now. And we can talk about education because there are universities just releasing hun like releasing thousands of graduates into the job market that are maybe not brilliantly prepared for the work that they need to do. Or the reality of the industry.

Tom 32:58

You mean our industrial era schooling system isn't up to date for the modern AI world? Who'd have thought that? Luckily, we've got government who's always forward-leaning and thinking about how best to prepare the nation for anyway. Let's not get started. That's another podcast that we could probably talk about there.

Ryan 33:16

That's a whole new podcast.

Tom 33:17

That's a whole new podcast right there. Tom's Soapbox podcast. I'm keen to kind of not this all about us, but I'm keen to bring it back to kind of Ryan and I's journey and hear your thoughts on it. But before I do that, have you had thoughts about how you do approach the future recruitment of junior staff in an AI-enabled world?

Chris 33:38

Going back to education, we do we sit on a few advisory boards or we meet with universities whenever we can. To really highlight the reality of the of the work that people are going into and how they need to change the way they teach people. If they were leaning into all of the AI tools that we were using in the industry, I think there's an opportunity there because they could come out of university and actually be more savvy in that stuff than your average programmer who's been kicking around in the industry for a few years and is maybe setting their ways. But I'm not really seeing that yet. I think that's the hope.

Tom 34:15

And also, universities need to pivot as well, along with every other organisation when the realities of AI are hitting home.

Chris 34:22

Yeah, but I think they're teaching, they're spending a lot of time in school and college learning things that they're the exact things that AI can now do and will do even better in six months, in a year. There's an opportunity. There's a massive opportunity.

Tom 34:39

And so bringing it back to us and what Ryan and I are trying to achieve, we're very early on. We've been planning it for months, but only really started development in the last two to three weeks. We're trying to decide where to go with this and specifically this topic because there's risks from an indie development perspective if you're if you're known to be a pure vibe code. Game. You know, I saw an advert for a vibe-coded tower defence game. I think it was on TikTok [unclear]. And the guy was very honest about it, which is fair play to him. And the game looked good. But in my head, I was like, well, why would I play something that AI's built? What's the it's like, why would I read a book that's written by AI? Like, because it's not, the soul isn't in it, and it requires soul for you to connect to it emotionally.

Tom 35:25

That's my take on it. But on the flip side, we're a team of two and there are, I'm not a Luddite, there's so much value that AI brings me in my day-to-day life. And there are plenty of times I've used it for the first few weeks of development saying, look, how do I do this? What's the best way of doing this? So what's your advice for two idiots that have got a good idea in this modern world with the whole thing changing beneath our feet?

Chris 35:48

Um okay, so it's probably worth talking about the internal development at Tanglewood. So I said we don't make our own games, we don't sell to the public, we don't make our own tools and sell them, we're a service, but actually all of our processes and the software that we use to do things internally, to run our teams, to manage everything, our resources, we we move on and off projects all the time because we work with so many clients. That we've built that stuff in probably the way that you're building your game, where you vibe code a prototype in like half an hour, and then you put the time and the effort into making it right. You know what you want creatively, or you know how it should work, or you know how it should be structured.

Chris 36:35

A lot of our upskilling in terms of AI has been completely isolated from our client work, and it's how we it's how we we always say it's how we engineer the company because we're we've you know you you gotta differentiate yourself. So we're an engineering company, so we engineer the company itself and we've built a ton of stuff internally, and the workflow is probably not a million miles away from making your indie game. I don't know what my advice. I don't know what my advice would be, but I'm using I'm using the same stuff. So I understand the productivity and the tools. Obviously, you need to lean into it. You're two people. You can't just throw time and money. Why would you? And you can make something so quickly. What do you think of that?

Tom 37:20

Well, and that's, you know, we, Ryan and I really have spoken about this a lot. And I think there is a difference between something vibe coded because someone's gone. Research the highest-grossing game in the industry that I can vibe code, build me that, make it better, and make it make me lots of money. I think there's lots of games that are going to be coming out like that. And I think I define them as a soulless game. I think that they'd never want to be involved in that, and I wouldn't want to do that. But I think, like you said, and Ryan and I are going to talk about this a lot over the next few weeks as well. I think. There could be a place for a game that's AI-enabled, but with soul. And that's what I hope Contact is. You know, it's based on my personal experience of doing that job in a war zone.

Tom 38:07

So I've got invested passion in ensuring that it's accurate, correct, and enjoyable. Ryan's an utter history geek, of which his whole life's been spent on understanding kind of warzone in military history. So there's so much passion behind this. This is not, there's so many of the genres we could have gone down if you wanted to make loads of money. So I think there will be two different kinds of games that come out. I think they're going to be particularly quite obvious and transparent when you scratch beneath the surface. But I think we're going to explore with how best we integrate it, if at all, going forward.

Chris 38:40

Yeah, I think that's a really good way of putting it. And it's a hard argument to get across sometimes 'cause people feel so strongly about it. It either contains AI or you've you've used AI or you haven't. The reality is that it's a tool, it's not going anywhere. The way we build our internal tools, processes, things like that, it's similar. Everyone and his dog is building a a platform that you can run your company on these days. And they're like, We've got this thing, we've built this thing, look and it's it's like, what's the substance? What does it really do? Have you actually built a business using it? Does it do anything? Or have you just kind of vibe coded this thing that you think looks shiny in a presentation and that you hit all the buzzwords? Like we've built something using a process that probably looks very similar from the outside, but actually we know what we're doing.

Chris 39:28

We're running the business that we run. We're doing it successfully. And it now helps us run the business and it's very much helped us scale the business. So it like it does a real job with real expertise and real care that's gone into it. That's the difference. And your game will be the same, no doubt.

Ryan 39:48

My perspective is always going to be from the art side. My immediate reaction is very standoffish towards it because there is obviously a lot of backlash, a lot of concern. That AI could replace artists, and there is potentially an argument to say that that's already happening. But at the same time, it's about using it in the right place. Like you say, it's a tool. We should be not trying to shoehorn it into every corner angle that we can. It's okay, these are hero assets. These should have time, soul delivered into them. But there could be assets in the background and stuff that typically would take an artist two, three weeks that you could get done in a day using that tool. So there is an argument for using it just to speed up development.

Tom 40:30

Not just the games industry, but from a vibe coding AI software development perspective, it's almost going to become a game, a marketing game. If the playing field is levelled and let's say there's a tidal wave or a tsunami of indie games, and again, I'm not trying to step on your toes, Chris, here, because I acknowledge there's there's a step change between Triple A and indie games. So there's going to be a lot of shit basically that hits the marketplace and a lot of noise. So then it becomes who can market themselves better, who could demonstrate soul and then who can market themselves better. The game development might look after itself. I think your quick point about art, Ryan, I think is absolutely sound. And I think that that would be one of the last things I would look at because I think that it's an art form. You know, watching you work is an art form, but then again, Chris, looking at you now, I think you'd argue that watching a developer code is equally an art form.

Tom 41:23

So, I don't know, it is.

Ryan 41:26

I definitely agree with that. The programmers I watch at work, it's nothing short of sorcery. I'm always in awe of what they're doing, and I could never do it personally.

Tom 41:34

So, and sadly, we're coming to the end of this conversation. Chris, you are a veritable gold mine of knowledge and experience, and I, as ever enjoy every conversation I have with you. Before we move on to my closing questions, which is where do you see the industry going in the next kind of five to ten years? Is there anything you feel like we haven't yet covered or it's worth kind of stepping back on to make sure we cover it off in good, you know, appropriate levels of detail?

Chris 41:58

Yeah, I was thinking about the difference between where you use AI. So, in your case, you're really early on, you're trying to make a prototype, you're going to have to get it seen. Which is the the f the scary hard bit. Like, how do you you could make something incredible and no one might even notice it 'cause there's so much going out into the market. I think it's very, very different and I think we should treat it differently to huge companies with massive budgets using AI. And I'm not saying I'm for or against either, but um ju let's just get that clear. Um but I think the idea of tiny companies being scrappy and using the tools that are available to them is massively to be encouraged.

Chris 42:46

You can create a prototype in a day that would have taken months and would have cost too literally too much money for you for it to be viable. And then when you get some attention or you get some funding, and a bit of momentum, you know, then you can go and hire an artist and you can go and hire a designer and get that stuff done by a professional. I think that's worth differentiating and it will be part be part of your story as well.

Tom 43:13

That's a serious, yeah, food for thought, and a fair point. And yeah, I'm looking forward to having the post conversation reflection with Ryan at the end of this conversation. I mean, I feel like this is a bit of a hospital pass. Um of a final question, but what are your expectations for the games industry over the next five, ten years?

Chris 43:34

We've always been an industry that changes rapidly. We've always been an industry that with boom and bust cycles, console cycles. But where we're at now, it makes it almost impossible to say where things will be in three years, never mind, five to ten. So I'm I am an optimist, I am. And I'd like to think that for Tanglewood at least, which is all I can speak of really, is that I think maybe there's a golden age. Tim Sweeney says something similar. There's almost a there there may be a golden age of game development and I'm hoping there's a golden age of programming, of of software engineering over the next, say, five years. I think I think if we're positive enough about it, it will happen.

Chris 44:22

That the tools that now exist boost productivity and quality and the experience to a level that couldn't have happened, and that those tools continue to be most effective in the hands of the amazing people who currently make games. I may be clinging clinging to that for my own sanity, but I also believe it there are many risks, there are many ri there are many pitfalls potentially, but I think if we end on a positive note, I think that will be the story. And actually we cu we can make it happen if we if we do it together, where the industry is you said ten. Did you say up to 10 years?

Tom 45:03

Five or ten years, but I'm yeah, no, I think that

Chris 45:06

10 years. I mean, we'll all be we'll all be living on Mars and I don't know. Yeah, who knows?

Tom 45:15

I know it's a tough question, but I actually try to really enjoy that last bit of positivity. I think that's a really good note to end this on. I have no doubt there will be people listening to this. Who have been inspired by your journey. Tanglewood Games sounds like a place they want to be. So are you currently recruiting? And is there anywhere that you drive or send people to to find out more about you?

Chris 45:37

We are recruiting superb engineers, ideally with a lot of Unreal Engine experience. We hire software engineers, technical artists, technical animators, or anyone technical enough to do a bit of programming. Lots of unreal experience or you know, engine coding experience in different engines. But yes, we are actively hiring, we are growing, we're growing the team, and you can go to our jobs page of our website, which is very, very easy to find tanglewoodgames.com.

Tom 46:10

Perfect. Well, thank you again for your time, and yeah, look forward to... You took me out for a meal and I had a local delicacy. What do we have?

Chris 46:18

You had a parmo, didn't you?

Ryan 46:21

Oh, I love a parmo. Absolutely love a parmo. I've been screaming for them to go to the northwest.

Chris 46:28

Yeah, northeast delicacy. Middlesbrough claimed the parmo, but uh Hartlepool's pretty good.

Tom 46:35

Well, until the next parmo, I'll speak soon. Cheers, Chris.

Chris 46:38

Thanks.

Tom 46:42

I'm so glad we got Chris on at this stage. And, you know, I thought it was risky getting a conversation about AI this early on on the podcast, but ultimately it's reshaping the world as we know it. So it would have been probably a bit disingenuous to not cover it off as early as possible. What was your thoughts?

Ryan 46:59

Yeah, AI is certainly the elephant in the room. It's probably best to talk about it now. It's a hard conversation to have. I think we're doing the right thing talking about it now. Chris was really honest in his responses to our questions there. The underlining note to take away from that is AI being in its infancy, especially in the games industry, no one really knows what's going to happen. We can only just prepare and theorise. So, yeah, I really appreciate Chris's thoughts on that.

Tom 47:25

Ultimately, he's a business owner, he's an entrepreneur, is leaning forward into this because he knows which way the wind is blowing. And I think that we've probably to go away and probably do our own research really and see what it could or should look like from our production and pipelines perspective. Ultimately, his point about building out that kind of rapid prototype, I think it makes a lot of sense. We put a lot of time and effort into this. And we don't know yet who, if people will be interested in what we're doing. We genuinely have, at the start of this podcast, started our social media channels. It's a cold start. We don't have any audience behind us yet. So, anyone listening to this now, absolutely welcome on the journey. We really do appreciate you. So, it's you know, so we're not, we haven't got any of that kind of feedback, a tactile feedback yet.

Tom 48:10

So, we've got to get something to a stage where people understand what we're trying to achieve with this. So that's kind of one of my takeaways: just explore what pipelines from my side, from development side might look like. I think your point about the art side and hero assets being you can now focus on your time on those key hero assets. And then some of those smaller assets you see for split seconds during a cutscene, or maybe a droid just flies over it briefly. Like, do you want to spend weeks doing that? And that's not going to affect things. In terms of the quality of the game, I don't think you'll take the soul away from the game. It just allows us to build rapidly, right?

Ryan 48:47

Yeah, absolutely. Do players care about how a game was made if it looks good?

Tom 48:52

I still think they do. I still think, you know, for me, I'm going to coin the phrase soul and soulless game. I think that's going to be the key focus for me: ensuring that through everything we do, every step of the way, there is pure soul in every decision that we make. And that's how we I think we'll stand out from the crowd. I just do not want to be seen as a game without a soul, and we're going to start seeing quite a few of those coming out already, but in the next kind of year or two, especially if Unreal Engine does this pivot, then it's going to be an interesting time to see how and to learn about how games rise to the top, especially new studios. And that brings me back to one of my main efforts for my next guest from the games industry is going to be someone like the marketing, either on the indie side, that's an indie studio that's grown and succeeded.

Tom 49:40

I'd love to get some of the founders on or the CEO on from there so we can learn about how they grew and grew their audience and their following, or someone who's a marketeer, PR person within the industry, again, to get their advice on for a small indie studio. What do you think?

Ryan 49:53

I think that's the way to go. Chris made a really good point. In the episode about marketing with the emergence of AI-driven games, is there going to be an oversaturation in the market? Like, how do we make ourselves visible when there's going to be so many games pushed out to the forefront? So, yeah, that could be another place where AI is useful or equally disruptive.

Tom 50:16

Okay, stop talking about AI now. Right. Look, if you've got this far on the podcast, thank you so much for joining us on the journey. Two things that you can do to support us at this moment in time: maybe three things. If you're interested, join the Discord channel. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do share it to your communities, to your groups, and let them benefit from the wisdom of Chris Wood, CEO of Tanglewood Games. And finally, rating and reviewing on whichever platform you're listening on would be special. Splendid. Ryan, anything left from you to say that's intelligent or witty?

Ryan 50:46

Never.

Tom 50:48

So true. Right. Until next episode, mate. See you soon.

Ryan 50:52

You too, mate. Bye.