Gone Gold with Simon Hill
Welcome to Gone Gold with Simon Hill, a show that features fun, insightful interviews with some of the biggest names in video games. From developers, to actors - this show delves in to what makes your favourite video games tick.
Gone Gold with Simon Hill
Two Point Studios - The Journey
From a hospital to a museum. Where did it all begin for Two Point Studios? We travelled down to Surrey to sit with the team and discuss the past, present and future with industry legends Gary Carr and Mark Webley, we were also treated to some voice over work from Two Point's tannoy voice actress, Jayne Webley. Before we sat down with Design Director Ben Huskins and Lead Designer on Two Point Museum, Luke Finlay-Maxwell to talk about bringing your Museum to life.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of Gone Gold with me, Simon Hill, esports host, industry presenter and TV personality. Yes, we're back for another episode. How are we all doing? Another week passes us by with lots of fun memories made. I'm going to keep this introduction nice and short as we're in for a really packed episode. Before we get into that though, thank you to everyone who listened and downloaded our last episode with Weird Beluga Studios. We're working on one of the most anticipated indie titles in the industry right now, Duskfade. We got a few new insights into the game which launches next year and some really fun stories about development too if you haven't managed to check it out after you've listened to this episode go back to Gone Gold on your chosen platform and give it a listen a really fun interview with the developers at Weird Beluga Studios don't forget to go and follow Gone Gold Show across all of social media where you can check out video footage from our interviews including clips news on future guests and so much more that's on X or Twitter whatever it's called these days Instagram and TikTok Okay, let's dive right into this episode. I'm joined by Two Point Studios. In this episode, we'll hear from the studio heads and industry legends, Gary Carr and Mark Webley, alongside developers Mark Huskins and Luke Finlay Maxwell, as well as the voiceover artist and familiar voice of Two Point Studios, Jane Webley. This is an episode about exploration, adventure, risk, reward, and creating a studio that has become a household name in just nine short years ladies and gentlemen welcome to gone gold with two point studios What better way to start than to bring you the next episode from the hotbed of video game development here in the UK. Surrey isn't just a beautiful ceremonial county in the southeast of England. It is littered with multiple award-winning studios, including one studio in particular that has taken its players on a journey of nostalgia, creation, imagination and discovery. Curing the most outlandish illnesses in unorthodox ways to ensuring we're giving our students the most bizarre entry into education. Now we're sending out our museum experts to discover the latest exhibits, hopefully without them breaking a leg in the process. I'd like to welcome the team at Two Point Studios to the show. Gary Carr, Studio Director and Mark Webley, Studio Director. Gary, we're still waiting for Mark to come. I've just seen him. He's just wafted in fashionably late as usual. Mark, welcome to the show. Nice of you to join us eventually. I was here actually. Apparently you were changing your shirt. You look very dapper. I have changed my shirt actually. Firstly, thank you for this incredible hospitality. I imagine this is how Geoff Keighley feels on a daily basis. Let me begin by asking how the studio is feeling with the game now fully available since March. And you've seen players create these wonderful museums. How has it been as a studio to witness the reception from the industry and the passion from the community thus far well I mean we're probably going to say the same thing but the studio is feeling fantastic I mean this is the best game that we've made and it just kind of it was perfect really I think the team came together hit its stride and kind of delivered everything we wanted it to do and I think you know could we have done better and No. Probably couldn't. And I think, well, what we're doing is kind of following up with sort of extra features and extra cool bits that the community are asking for. But, you know, I think we're really proud and really pleased with what we delivered. Yeah, I think the, obviously, it's third in line. Hospital was a great start. Campus was a difficult project only because we did that in lockdown. So none of us were working together. And also, at a point when we were expanding the studio, we It kind of went from about 19 to 33 or four people. So a lot of those people we'd never even worked with together. We'd only spoken to each other over video conference. So we were hungry to do something really special. Once we got everybody back in the studio and we had this fresh start and there was a vigor to get on with something all together as a team, I think it was inevitable there was a bit of something special gonna happen. So yeah, as Mark said, the best thing we've done so far Two Point Museum. Have you had time to appreciate the hard work you and the team have put in over the last few years? Well, it never ends though, does it? I think you kind of, you release something, and in fact there was an opportunity to go out to Japan and China, but the timing of it was just straight after we released that it would have been great to go, but we were just going to be so busy. You never finish now, are you? You never finish, that's right. And I think, I kind of look at the stuff that Luke, the lead designer, got on his plate, and there's tons of really cool things we And I think that kind of successful launch gives us a springboard to kind of just keep making more content. And as long as people like it, they will hopefully be able to keep doing it. Yeah, I mean, those days of where you'd release something, stick it in a box, ship it out, it'd go into retail outlets, and you wouldn't hear anything for months, really. You don't know if you've done well or not. Now it's almost instant. You'd get a monthly report. Yeah, you sold this many. And usually that was only... localized to UK. Now with Steam backend and other analytics that the game can fire out as we know how it's doing. And that means you know where it's doing better and not so well. So you're constantly working to improve the bits which aren't doing as well or aren't being enjoyed. We can tell if it's too difficult. We can tell if it's too easy. We can tell where people drop off the game. So we actually try and fix that so people stay playing longer. So you're never finished. You're actually at the busiest point just as you finished it You think you're finished and you haven't because you've now got half a million people telling you what's wrong with your game or what's right with it. So we've been very fortunate that we've landed a very well-received game, but there's still a lot of stuff we can do better. So that's exactly where we are now. We're improving the game every single day. For those listening, I just want to say this, that the smiles on these two gents' faces when they're talking about their products is lighting this studio up right now. Before we delve deeper into the development journey of two point museum and its comparison to the previous two point titles let's take our listeners back to july 2016 two point studios was born with two of the most experienced minds in the industry that's you two by the way and there was also a third the talented ben hymers was involved as well before you began work on your first project which as we know is a spiritual successor to theme hospital what was the goal for you creating this wonderful studio Yep. Well, I mean, to be honest, it was Gary that kind of came to me. I kind of, I think I left the games industry after Lionhead, Microsoft. I kind of, we were running really big teams. And, you know, I love making games. I love having been a programmer designer in the past. Gary being an artist where we kind of worked really closely in those kind of roles on Theme Hospital. We'd always said, we should do some more of these guys, like do theme prints. and theme resort and it never happened. So this opportunity came up, kicked off by Gary really, to go back and do some of those games. It was interesting during the latter part of Lionhead where both you and I and other people in the senior team there were trying to get some new ideas off the ground other than Fable which was doing very well for itself but we definitely knew we wanted to try different things. Lionhead was you know on the back of bullfrog two studios that had built great god games and we weren't making a god game in fable we were making a fantastic game but it wasn't from our heritage uh so mark and i were really you know big fans of trying to bring something like that back into lionhead and we just struggled because they were saying it's too niche it's not big enough and we felt they actually said a phrase which kind of run true and we used it is we leave that kind of money on the table was was a phrase they used as in it's just not enough money to actually go and invest in well in fact i think uh after we left bullfrog uh the team started um theme resort but again they they dropped that they said yeah this isn't going to be a billion dollar franchise so we're not interested and we thought it'd still be a bloody good game we'll take that money if it's on the table let's take it uh so we actually just thought well, okay, maybe we need to do something a little smaller with a smaller budget, a smaller team, be a bit more of a bijou studio, a little bit boutique. And then perhaps if the running costs aren't too expensive, that money is still a very good business. And it kind of worked out that way, I think. It is, yeah. I think, I mean, we were lucky to end up meeting with Sega. I think we were probably at a point where we were maybe, I mean, we spent probably a year and a half before we actually kicked off Two Point just with presentations and meeting various publishers just to see and I think the reception was great but nobody had the kind of money and we didn't need a vast amount of money but then we met Sega and you know well I think they were looking they were looking for some in fact the story goes that they were thinking about starting a team in house and they went what we want is something a little bit like a bullfrog or a lion head and then within a couple of days of them thinking about that we knocked on the door and so Talk about timing. And they actually dragged a few people and said, look who's in here. Which was nice because we weren't that... I'm not saying we didn't have the confidence in our convictions. It's just when you start something... And we were in our early 50s. This isn't like kids with all the confidence in the world to go out and think they're going to rule the world. We were more realistic than that. We thought, is it too late in the day to be starting a studio? Are we past it? And all that kind of stuff. So when they came running back in with enthusiasm that we rocked up for a meeting, it kind of made us start to believe perhaps this is going to happen. Yeah, for quite a long time until we actually got signed. You said that. In one of the meetings where we went up to sort of almost sign a contract, Mark said for the first time in nearly a year of us planning this, he went, I think this is going to happen. You've only just realised that. Well, I mean, yeah. So day one, there was eight of us. of us, six developers, Jane and Karen supporting us. That's our wives, by the way. And of course, with Ben, the important thing with Ben is... He wasn't past it. He wasn't past it. He was significantly younger than us. He was right at the peak of his... And he could still do things. He could still do things. But the point was, I think we needed somebody who just... Because we didn't know about things like... Crowdfunding was a possibility. What the hell is that? We didn't know about necessarily emerging platforms like Steam. Or computers. We were more used to making a game for a console at that point and just everything else was done. He brought in a lot of understanding about supporting community and building on what you deliver isn't finished. So he was a key part of us starting again. And then we brought in some really important people because I'm fortunate for Lionhead, but very fortunate unfortunately, for us, was pretty much at the time we were about to sign a contract. Yeah, a little bit too early for us, but yeah. But Lionhead suffered the blow of being closed down, and a lot of the people we pretended were going to join us, or we gave Sega the impression were going to join us, actually could. So we were able to fish those guys out of the water. So we brought in some amazing talent. Tim Swan, Mark Smart, you know. Made them half their previous salaries. Yeah. were on good money we were going we can't afford to pay you anything like we can pay you what you're on probably in about 1993 um but yeah but luckily they they they they had the sympathy and a little bit of probably um redundancy money in their back pocket yeah and they joined us shareholdings as well we shared the company with with everyone that started of course we never thought that would come to anything because when you offer a share in your company everyone goes yeah right brilliant yeah x percent of nothing that's true yeah Well, I think for us, it was two-point hospital. And then, you know, maybe it'd be great if we could do another game after that. We didn't know the reception was going to be. And we were trying to sign up our second game with Sega. And they said, well, let's see how the first one does. And, of course, day one, as soon as you finish the game, that's it. There's no more money coming in from your publisher. We had £14. I remember we... Because Karen, my wife, was effectively our accountant. And the last payment was due, which was submitting the master of the game. And I think that payment was a very small payment because we had to divvy it up. And we had to have that one last payment. It was about 11K or something like that, which didn't run the company for a month. And Karen said, when's the next check due? And I said, oh, when we deliver... the Master Code build, and she said, well, can it hurry up because there's £14 in the bank? So that's how close it runs, right? But we released the game, and within two and a half days, we'd repaid the investment from Sega, which was amazing. I think we were projecting to repay the investment within about a year and a half, but it took two and a half days, which was great. How much were you able to bring into this new studio from what you'd learned in the past. There's a lot of wealth of knowledge here. What were you able to bring to Two Point? I think, I mean, they're smart people, programmers, and we were able to kind of bring the best of the people that we'd worked with in the past. But I think what we brought was a sense of fairness. I think we always kind of wanted to share the company and try and, and I think having a nice place to work was really important to us just wanting to come into work and just be excited about that I mean that was the kind of driving force certainly for you going from what you were doing and I guess for me coming back we got a little bit like it became a business not a pleasure it's meant to be a creative industry we're meant to have fun and we'd kind of grown out of the creative roles because someone had to take charge of teams and had to to take responsibility for big budgets, and that's where we were with Linard at that point. We were managing huge amounts of money because there was just a difference between small studios and big studios. It's big business and there's big risks. So we were becoming business people, and that's not what we wanted to be. And we didn't enjoy coming into work. I think you felt it sooner than I did, and you decided that's enough for you. And then when we set up 2.0, as Mark said, it had to be about fun. So we all got back to making things again. So Mark and I became deads again, not business people, bosses. There's no point in being bosses. There was only six other people working. It would have been ridiculous, top heavy management. The people that joined us weren't the sort of people you needed to manage because they were top of their game. So our first, our initial team was, you know, the cream of the cream. And I think we've managed to kind of stick to that. I mean, we obviously... It's great to have younger people in, which we've tried to add in. But having experienced people, I know what they're doing. You can do that for quite a while and just keep the quality of that team. And then we don't have to do anything. And we don't have to manage anyone. You've got brilliant designers, brilliant programs, brilliant artists. It's a pleasure to work with them. The old school nature of that is what we want to do is not have too much kind of... oversight. Just have people who know what they're doing and trust in what they're doing rather than saying, oh, could we see it different? Can we try a different approach? Because I think that's where things can get bloated and can take forever. Now, that's not to say we don't challenge each other's ideas and assumptions on things, but there was a lot more ownership. Let art do what art are good at. Let design do what they're good at. Let the engineers make the smart decisions. And let's not have too many meetings around it. But what I think that That's the beauty of having a small team in an open plan office. The fact that you can kind of... Catch it live. Gary's chatting to Ben, Ben Huskins, and I'm... I overhear it like, I'll come round and have a look and I'll add a comment. It happens organically. Yeah, and that's the best way of doing it. And that's why lockdown was hard because I wanted to chat to Gary and I'd message him on Slack. He might be in a meeting and then half an hour later, I've forgotten what I was going to say. Made of a certain age. I think just that immediacy of being able to kind of talk to somebody about something and just, you know, we kind of talk about standing on each other's shoulders. When you kind of do that, you can achieve really great things. I kind of love the size of the team, the size of the office. And there is a kind of bit of pressure to grow and have, you know, when somebody was doing two or three jobs, you kind of think, well, we need to They need some time off, so you kind of need to add more people into that. So we've done that, but it takes us a long time to find somebody to join the team. That's been a great thing with finding Jo quite early on in Two Points Live. So Jo Kohler is our, now, is an executive producer. At the time, she was just a standard producer, coming in, helping out. She's only part-time to begin with. But she's been with us for eight, nine years now, and And as we have grown, there is more responsibility to budgets and costs because we've just added two new people this week. We've just made an offer on a new community person and they've accepted and they've got a new starter today in the art team. So that would have been another 25% of our studio back in the early days. So now you do need to have some process. But what Jo knows is she knows not to break this kind of almost like unique culture we've managed to to build them. We say we're a design-led studio and Jo says that's what they think and I think that's quite funny but I think she has a particular skill to allow to have a design-led studio that doesn't just fall apart because if it was just purely design-led we'd probably be adding features willy-nilly until we've kind of missed all our deadlines so it's It's an art form, I think, to manage that. We're all just adding to... I thought you were going to say we're all just average. We're all just average, but together... Our combined skill is better than average. There's a lot to be said for that, though. I think checking in on yourself and not being overly cocky and confident, allowing other people to influence you and to sort of adapt. An adapted idea is better than a single vision normally. Yeah, and ultimately... when we're getting close to shipping the game we kind of include our like VIP players our beta testers and they're giving us feedback and you kind of think well they're all saying this and you know we think this maybe we need to rethink what we're or how we're approaching a certain aspect of the game and we will do that because at the end of the day it's the players that will go this is good or this is not good so we've got to get that right. Do you still carry some of those memories from your times developing Theme Hospital? There are quite some popular stories about your hospital visits for research purposes. The first one that comes to mind is when you were ordered out of the theatre during an operation due to the fact that the medical team were distracted by you. Yeah, this is Gary getting a bit carried away and fainty. I'm quite squeamish. I'm not very good with blood. Well, let's Let's wind back a little bit. First of all, we didn't know we were going to take part in being in the operating theatre during a live operation. And to give you some context, it was a gentleman who was having a disc removed from his spine. And the hole of his back was open. You could have thrown a beach ball. The worst bit was the sound. Oh, yeah. Like sucking up blood or something. It was
Mark Webley:disgusting.
Simon Hill:Well, the thing is, I had a little video camera and I didn't... realize it but my nerves got the better of me and I was commentating what I was seeing really loudly during this operation taking place and my voice isn't quite the best at times right so I'm kind of going oh my god I can see the spine I can see the spine and I'm sort of looking down the cavity with the camera and it was just quite revolting and then I just remember the the chief surgeon shouting get Idiot out of my theatre. In a kind of quite a posh voice. Hang on, you were missing out on the bit where you felt a bit faint. I did feel faint, but I thought I'd leave that off. He once, his cat bit him once years ago and apparently a little bit of blood came out. I felt the tooth hit the bone, that's what made me faint. And that made you faint. So Gary's not the sort of person you'd want in an operating theatre. But do you remember also, we were asked to change into green And what happens in busy operating theatres is that doctors, assistants, all the kind of staff you have in emergencies, they have to be completely hygienically redressed after everything they do. So they're constantly running in and out, changing into different greens. And they're literally naked, stripping, getting dressed, very confident in their own... They're used to seeing each other naked. Wear a couple of shy game days. They probably have knickers on and a bra and stuff. I know, but she just handed them. She said, yeah, put these on. Put these on, and we kind of looked at her as if to say, will you turn around, please? And she went, oh, for God's sake, and just turned her head as if I'd seen it all before, boys. But we weren't used to that. It was a new experience. So you have some really fond memories, and now you're creating new ones. There's clearly so much passion in this studio, which reflects in the three titles we've seen so far. Just indulge me for a second here, gents. Two Point Hospital, 83. Campus, 83. And Museum, 84. These are the Metacritic scores for your first three games. What is the philosophy of Two Point Studios and how has it felt that now you can reflect on the incredible start you've had as a studio? Well, I mean... when we kind of talk to the rest of Sega about what's important to us, it is quality, quality, quality. The Metacritic scores are really important and probably more important than the Steam user scores where that's a kind of live, constant update. You do an update, you don't want it to go down. Hopefully your score's going to go up. So that is really, really important. I'll be kind of... I think we're making games that we want to play, that we feel proud of. I mean, certainly we have sort of approachable but deep, I mean, games in our genre can be quite nerdy, I guess. I mean, we love those kind of games. Or really niche to a point where you feel that, I mean, they can be very popular in certain territories, like Germany loves a good techy business simulation game. We kind of wanted something that we could trick more casual players into enjoying. The kind of aesthetics are very deliberately unintimidating, that claymation feel we've gone for. doesn't make you feel like, oh, this game's going to be too stuffy. And the UI is... Yeah, very colourful, very tactile. We've gone for bigger than... Quite often the UI is just lots and lots of very small buttons. And then hopefully not overloading with too many... By the time you get to the end of Museum, there's tons of stuff that you've learned. We're kind of even sort of 10 hours into the game when you eventually get to a new exploration map. you're finding new game mechanics as well. Yeah, that is the real skill, I think, is how we slowly unwrap these systems. And that takes a long time. It gets redone and redone and redone. So, yes. It's quite an obsession, actually. I think we're lucky that... marking in your sort of camp with your guys and girls is that i think you've a lot of people there who kind of understand that sort of that the systems are literally the thing that hook you into the game and keep you in the game i i'm as a my designer thing is i i like to get people attracted instant attraction to something but i'm not sure i've got that kind of skill to keep people stuck in there you don't mean keep them you know retain them so it's good combination to have something that attracts people in it could be the humor it could be the visual style but ultimately if the systems aren't strong enough people will just spin out of it within a few hours and we've managed to retain players for like you know we actually got one negative review last week and it was like 115 hours of play right negative review um because of one small thing they didn't like but i don't mind that they've played it for 115 hours which is amazing yeah i think we're also we don't like ourselves into an idea. If it's not right, we'll change it. So playing it super early means that if we've got some assumptions wrong, there's time to find the right solution. Yeah, we often know, like for instance, the expedition system in Museum, we kind of knew that was going to be hard to get right. Yeah, I don't know if I had any confidence at the beginning in it. Well, no, but we put, Joe put the schedule together, we had iteration time, and I think by the end... What number did you get 15 or 16, probably Luke and Haskins will be more correct on that. But the great thing about that is, I think there was probably enough passion for it to stay. I mean, 15's quite a lot. That means that we've not been sure it was the right idea, but it got there in the end. But we build that time in. We're very iterative and very quick. I mean, our games are normally every two years, which is not bad for today. We're not triple A, we're more double A, I guess. We're not super indie. But two years from scratch is still, to completion, is still quite difficult to achieve. On, by the way, the 11th platforms, I think it is. So, yeah, we kind of want to keep that, actually. We want to keep that sort of, you know, a straggler line between sort of indie and, in fact, a lot of people still consider us indie, because nothing's changed. Since Sega acquired us, we've stayed the same. We act the same. They've been great. They allow us to run the studio. They don't really want to get involved in the craziness at 2.0 anyway, but as long as we're doing something when we say we're going to do it to the quality we promise, they don't get involved, which is fantastic. So we want to feel indie even though technically we've got the backing of a big publisher. As I mentioned before we went live, ladies and gentlemen, what makes this episode even more special is both Gary and Mark have given us access to a plethora of the dev team, which we're going to hear from very shortly. But before we do, gents, what's the ultimate goal of the studio? You're still relatively young. It's a small team in comparison to other studios. What's the aim for Two Point? Goodness. Keep going. Keep going, keep it fun. I think so, yeah. I mean, it'd be great if Two Point... I mean, to be around after nine years is quite an achievement. Yeah, it is. It's a tough industry, and I think if we were around in ten years' time, still making games would be fantastic. I think we're always looking to do something better than we did last time so we've got a couple of exciting projects in the pipeline some you know some interesting things we're doing so hopefully they'll all come off you know it's um but you're right keeping it fun and keeping it at the culture is really important to us um you know if it if it changes out of recognition it could be called two point studios but if i don't recognize it it's not what we set out to do so and and there is a legacy to piece, because Mark and I, as we've alluded to and joked about, we're not the youngest people. We started the studio in our 50s, so, you know, and we've been going nearly a decade now, so you can guess we're not the youngest developers in the industry anymore. So legacy is important. That is what we're here for. You know, we want to help take the next generation of Two Point Studio employees forward with hopefully the same... Like Star Trek next year. We could be like Doctor Who. We generally maybe we do that so I'll be John Pertwee who are you going to be? Tom Baker maybe oh god I wish I said Tom Baker yeah I bet you do oh no you'd be Patrick Troutwood because you're so old but there you go I mean that's it I think our job is to sort of manage it forward and sort of hand it over sometime in the distant future but you know I think that's important to us that two points a round longer than we are. So as we mentioned, we are going to be joined by multiple people from the studio today. And one of those very special guests, I'm so excited to have this person join me today, the studio and well-being manager and voiceover artist that you all know and love from the Two Point series, Jane Webley. Jane, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for giving up your time. Thank
Jayne Webley:you for
Simon Hill:having me, Simon. Let's talk about your experience with Two Point up to now. We're voiceover in a moment because I am obsessed. Where did it all begin for Jane Webley?
Jayne Webley:So I was there from sort of day one. I was helping set up the studio. I just did anything really that needed doing. So any job needed doing, I was there for it. But I did all the sort of HR and admin, anything really. The voiceover bit came a bit later. I
Simon Hill:don't think I've laughed this much playing a two-point game because of your amazing voiceover work. Talk to us about that process.
Jayne Webley:Well, so it started with two-point to hospital of course and in in that game I was putting on a slightly different voice so I had to sort of concentrate on putting a voice on that sounded a bit like the theme hospital voice that was so that was That was kind of a harder thing to do. And then moving on from that in campus, my voice became slightly different. I became quite a bit more bossy teacher type person, really. So that sort of developed in campus. And then in museum, I just completely flowed into myself and to be this sort of naggy, annoying person that everyone
Simon Hill:has to listen to, really. What was the writing process like? Was it a collaborative effort between yourself and the writing team? Were you able to ad-lib on the fly?
Jayne Webley:So Harry Puttock's done most of the writing actually for this and he's brilliant. He does lots of different lines that suit me very well and we work together on that. So we'll go into the recording studio and there'll be the Cedar Studios guys, Tom and Phil, in one room with Harry, and then I'm in the other room trying to sort of deliver the lines. I'll usually deliver them two or three times, and we'll try two or three different takes to see if we can put a bit more of a sarcastic, even more sarcastic flow on it. And we usually end up with something that works okay, so that's how we do it normally. How did you get into character? I think because it's been an effort over the years you know it's got worse and worse I've got kind of meaner and meaner I think and it's really nice to do that be like that when in real life of course you wouldn't get away with being like that would you? I think it's just developed over time and and I I've loved it, I've really enjoyed developing that and Harry who's been writing it and the design team of course have been fantastic at expanding on it as well.
Simon Hill:What's it like for you seeing the evolution of Two Point Studios over the years? You've been here from day one.
Jayne Webley:Yeah, I absolutely love it. It's really nice to see it develop. Being in the studio, you don't really see it day to day, so to sort of hear about that, it's great. We went to the Guildford Games Festival at GLive in Guildford and I went along as the tannoy lady and I sort of raced between the front of house and also the main stage doing the voice over and making some quite you know means expressions over over the tannoy and it was so lovely to see people smiling and enjoying the lines that were being delivered and it also gave me the opportunity for anyone visiting walking in if I was at the front of house and I saw someone walking in the main door I could announce them or embarrass them in some way and I loved doing that as well really
Simon Hill:I'm gonna have to to try and figure out something where you can embarrass me and put that as a little
Jayne Webley:sound clip. I'd love to, I'm always up
Simon Hill:for that. I think most of the listeners would be as well. And your other role within the studio as a well-being manager, a very important role now in video games, how has your role affected the studio in general and how has it grown over the years?
Jayne Webley:Well I think being here from day one I've got to know all of the staff and so I hope I'm approachable and I hope whenever they have any problems and then they can always come and have a chat with me and if they need anything whatever that is then I'm always there for them and I love that side of my job as well because that's that's quite a nice caring aspect to the job and I enjoy it.
Simon Hill:Yeah absolutely very rewarding I can imagine.
Jayne Webley:Yeah yeah it is they're a lovely bunch They're a lovely bunch of people.
Simon Hill:What's awesome about this moment right now, Jane, is you have a list of lines taken from the game that you're going to relay to us on the show. I'm very excited. So I'm going to be quiet and just let you do your thing. And yeah, I'm very excited about this.
Jayne Webley:Brilliant. Okay. Guests are reminded that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The ball is in your court. Guests are asked not to steal the exhibits. though I do enjoy a good chase. For everyone asking, toilets are located in the bathroom. You're welcome. Your ticket does not support re-entry. I can offer to stamp your hand, but it doesn't mean a thing. Guests are reminded that I don't know where things are. I am not a map. It's just a small sample.
Simon Hill:Thank you very much, Jay. That was incredible. I try not to laugh as much as I do at home. This is just testament to the great work you do. And I think you've now become many people's favourite voiceover within Two Point World.
Jayne Webley:It's amazing. Thank you for having me.
Simon Hill:Very excited now to be joined by two incredibly talented individuals here at Two Point Studios. First up, Ben Huskins, the design director at Two Point, and Luke Finlay Maxwell, the lead designer. Gents, welcome to the show. Thank you for taking time out of your day to be here.
Mark Huskins:Great to be
Simon Hill:here,
Mark Huskins:yeah.
Simon Hill:First of all, let's start where it all began, coming out of Two Point Campus, which was a phenomenal experience, by the way. Where did the concept come from for making a game where you're creating your own museum and
Mark Huskins:how did
Simon Hill:that begin to flourish
Mark Huskins:well i think that that initial concept of museum came about around the time that we were finishing music finishing campus and i mean really it was ben hymers the technical director who initially pitched it as a concept and it was one of those things where we started discussing it you know we had a few ideas on the table at that point but the thing with museum was it just immediately got us excited about the possibilities. I think the combination of that sense of exploration that you'd get from the game, that sense of adventure with how you're going to go out and collect these exhibits to put in your museums. We love the idea of this being a whole new dimension to the game that would take it beyond what we did in both hospital and campus. Just the idea of you're not just building a museum, you're having to send people out into the wider world to get the things to put in your museum, and that felt like that treasure hunt, that sense of exploration and discovery would be a really cool, unique aspect to this game
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:that, yeah, just was really appealing. Yeah, and I think when we started talking about what different themes we could have, we started to sort of go, wow, actually, there's a lot of things you can put under that umbrella of museum, you know, looking after fish, botany, you know, going into space, you know, they all kind of work, and so that kind of excited us as well, being able to sort of push the mechanics per theme and sort of get this really broad umbrella type of a museum.
Mark Huskins:Yeah,
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:exactly. I mean,
Mark Huskins:there was like so many museums of everything and we just felt like, oh, we can just do so much with this idea. As you say, there's just like so many different directions that we can go with this idea and just keep evolving it. So yeah, as soon as we spoke about those high level parts of the game, the expeditions system, the collecting exhibits, having way more creative control over how you lay out your museum and those customization tools. That felt like we pushed that a bit in campus, those creative tools. But it felt like museum, we were going to go a whole massive leap further with that. And really, you can make a museum that's unique to you. And that potential to be able to do that just got us very excited. excited at the start.
Simon Hill:I believe it's gone on record that Museum has more playable features than the first two games put together. The more notable one you've just touched on is sending your staff out on an expedition in the hunt for new exhibits and if that wasn't enough you decided to take it one step further and add a risk or reward system to those trips. Talk to us about the process of adding such a fresh way of building through that genre.
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:We knew that we wanted to make that such a core part of the experience, and so we put a lot of runway out of it, and I think we ended up doing 16 or 17 iterations of that system to get it right. But we knew we were going to need to do that. Yeah, yeah, exactly, to really find the fun. Yeah, for sure. And it started with just a timer, and you'd do the timer, and something would come back, and it was like, okay, that's cool, and then we kind of built it from there, and I think when it really started to click was when we started to get injuries and illnesses that affect you in the museum so yeah you know somebody would come back with tar all over their feet and they're leaving that all over the museum and you're kind of like oh now I need to think about how to get do I need a new janitor or how am I going to solve that and then we just sort of played on that even more and just kept going further with that and yeah I
Mark Huskins:think as you say like those early versions of the expedition system in some ways it was very independent of the museum it So they felt like two different things. But as you say, we then did a lot of work to really tie those both sides of the game together. So, you know, there's the outcome of the expeditions, people coming back injured, like you say, but there's also all that preparation that you want to do in advance of an expedition, like picking the right team, making sure they've got the right skills, making sure you've got the right cargo to take on an expedition. So really everything that you do does impact museum and and everything you do before an expedition in your museum is is important to how that expedition is going to play out
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:yeah yeah and it took a while with the the cargo items to sort of figure out the right balance of you know how much should you be building in the museum there's some cargo items that you can only find out in the world and um yeah it i think i it got to a sweet spot where you were kind of spending I'd say like 20% of your time building stuff preparing things for the expedition that sort of thing and it kind of all sort of slotted into place after that I think and the exhibitions really felt like they were a core part of the experience.
Mark Huskins:Yeah it felt like it was going to have that depth that we wanted it to have longer term we wanted to make sure the expedition system kept feeling fresh throughout the game and so all those layers gradually start to appreciate them as you progress into the game and as you explore the expedition maps which again was a real important part of the game is that exploring and you deciding which direction you want to go on the maps it all a bit clicked into place and it felt like yeah okay even 50 hours into this game you're still going to be finding new places on the maps and new interesting quirks of the expedition system and new strategies that
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:you can apply
Mark Huskins:to it as well
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:because that was one of the big things it was the putting objectives on the poise for a long time that wasn't the case and then suddenly we started to put things like oh you need a total buzz of whatever in this subcategory and then suddenly you're like well I really want to investigate that area so I now need to go make some changes back at base to make that happen and yeah it kind of gave you this sort of middle term goal like you've got your long term goal and your short term goal but then this was sort of oh okay I can start to think about 20 minutes ahead of how am I going to get that poi and it just it just feels really nice to sort of plan ahead for those sort of yeah because there's always a reward there there's always something cool yeah and yeah yeah
Simon Hill:what's going through your head how's the process when you're picking out a plant that can eat your customers or you know there's so many examples I could use here is this the funny part of your job
Mark Huskins:It is definitely a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's massive fun. And I think that, you know, part of that process was wanting that variety in the game, right? And wanting not just that kind of visual variety, but the gameplay variety that we get from all of the different exhibits in the game. Every exhibit having different requirements and different effects. Like even down to, you know, we had things like the frozen finds is one of the subcategories in the prehistory theme. And Frozen finds itself, that's, you know, the gameplay twist there is, okay, you have to keep these things chilled, otherwise they'll melt. And then, you know, if you've got a caveman frozen in ice and then it melts because you've not kept the air con next to it repaired, then that caveman is going to stomp around and cause havoc around your museum. But then there's other things in that category, like the frozen beehive, which is, again, another personal favorite of mine. Yeah. And, yeah, you know, if the bees thaw out, then suddenly they're chasing guests around, these angry prehistoric bees that haven't seen, you know, people like this in 100,000 years or something. They just go around causing absolute chaos. But that process of coming up with that stuff, it's just a lot of fun getting everyone on the team to chip in ideas, really. I think that humour comes from... It's a... kind of mishmash of everyone's sense of humour on the team.
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:Yeah. And with the exhibits, I think we tried to sort of cram it in every layer of it, right? So the bees visually are, like the bees as an example, visually, it's a good gag. Mechanically, when they break free, it's a fun, playful gag. And like even names and descriptions, anywhere we can put it in, we try, right? Yeah.
Gary Carr:Yeah, it's good fun.
Mark Huskins:And I think when it comes to the humour in the game, I mean, that's always a combination of, because it comes from different people on the team, sometimes it will come from, you know, a pun or something like that, you know, or it might come from the artist because they just think of something that's going to look amusing, or it will come from the design team.
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:You and me, we always lean to the darker, more creepy kind of humour. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, like the
Mark Huskins:mimic one. That's why I love the supernatural thing. Yeah, yeah. Because it's got all the haunted items. It's
Simon Hill:my favourite theme, by the way.
Mark Huskins:The creepy doll, the creepy haunted mannequin, there's so many different things and they've all got unique twists to them. You
Simon Hill:can play the game in complete chaos mode, ramp the prices through the roof, allow your exhibits to go a little bit mental which you mentioned just by not looking after them. Was it always about player choice by allowing them to either be cosy or chaotic?
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:Yeah, I think it's playfulness, right? Like, I think we want you to explore those things and sort of go, well, what happens if I let it melt, right? And we want there to be a payoff. And I think, yeah, that kind of chaos is always part of the two-point games, right? And I think it's just that sense of, well, yeah, if you want to see what happens there, we're going to do something. You learn from the chaos. Yeah, you learn from the chaos, yeah. It's a learning opportunity. Yeah. But it's fun, right? Like, you're like, yeah. I'm glad I let that melt. I probably won't do it again, but it made me laugh. Or you build your museum, you lean into the chaos. I've seen people have
Mark Huskins:outdoor frozen bee just living there. They just have a whole section of their museum in the corner. Just with bees. And there's just bees, like acres of bees. You
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:can also break thieves' interactions with the bees. I've seen some people on streams have a bee on reserve they see someone stealing something they do the bee the thief runs away and they just use it as a deterrent that's quite cool you get all
Mark Huskins:these little emergent interactions I think that was one of the things we talked a lot about throughout development was that idea of combining different exhibits like your choice about where you put the exhibits as you're collecting them you know oh what if I put my prehistory exhibits next to my marine life exhibits or my supernatural exhibits and what if I combine different subcategories and you know we wanted people to experiment with that stuff and and as you say you know sometimes it will cause chaos sometimes it will cause something amazing to happen that you never expected because there's quite a lot of easter eggs hidden throughout the game as well and really that I think that sense of discovery is something that we we wanted all players to experience yeah you know obviously you get discovery through going on an expedition and that sense of anticipation about what you might find and that excitement when they crack open the crate when it comes back. But you also get that discovery through just trying things out and seeing what happens in your museum. And
Simon Hill:before I let you go, gentlemen, I know you're very busy today. What are two of your favourite new features that you've added into Two Point Museum? It's been a long journey from Two Point Hospital through to Two Point Campus. But now, and I said this in a phone call with Gary, that I believe this is your most complete game to date I think not only is about throwing nostalgia anymore this has its own personality and identity as a two point game and can't wait to see where the future goes do you feel the same in the office and the studio as well amongst yourselves
Mark Huskins:I definitely feel like yeah we feel like we learn so much from both hospital and campus and really museum is it does feel like it's the culmination of everything that we learnt from those games and I think we've been able to refine lots of things that we had in the previous games but add a lot of new things. There's certain features that we wanted to have in the previous games and never got around to adding them properly and we've finally been able to bring them into Museum. So it does feel like it's this trilogy of games that we've released. It really is that culmination, that climax of
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:I think as well when you look at people's museums versus their campuses and their hospitals you can see the growth of customization right and you can kind of in museum everyone's museums look so different and so personalized and I think we you know we we increase the kind of tooling we gave players you know in campus as well with outdoor and all that sort of stuff and then increase that again in museum and I think it's just as you say that culmination of yeah this is now your space you've decided how to build this museum and it it's Totally is yours, right?
Mark Huskins:Yeah, yeah. We've, you know, with all of the games, we've received so much feedback from the community and, you know, obviously played them a lot internally as well. And so really we've got so much to go on in terms of figuring out what resonates with people the most, what works well with our games. We've been able to take all of the best bits from hospital and campus, add a whole new set of cool stuff and, yeah, mix that together to get the museum. I mean, you were asking about our favorite features. What are your favorite features in the
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:museum? To be honest, it's quite dry, but it's the partition wall and one-way door system because you can make these little rat runs and you can sort of create this sort of maze and they all follow where you want them to go and you can really optimize it to like, okay, I'm going to make you go through the prehistory exhibit area and then you're going to go to the gift shop and then you're going to maybe go to another gift shop. I I've seen you do one where you've had like this hallway of gift shops and you force them to go through each one. I'm very much
Mark Huskins:the sort of evil capitalist museum manager, where yeah, it's like, there's probably more time spent in gift shops than with exhibits, to be honest.
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:Yeah, totally. But it's the partition walls and one-way doors that let you kind of let out your evil side. Yeah, and the thing that's
Mark Huskins:cool about that stuff, like you say, it's actually quite, it's a simple feature in a way, although it's quite complicated to implement. you can create all sorts of bugs but it allows the player to play in so many different ways because you can as you say you can go down the route of oh I've just got a very linear long corridor museum where like I know exactly where everyone's going to go they're going to see this exhibit first then this one then this one that's one option or you can go very sort of non-linear like you know oh there's a big open section and then it goes off into three different sections and guests can go off in all sorts of different routes and there's like so many different in-between states as well. So that feature in itself just allows so many different strategies and completely different looking museums as well. Do you have a favourite feature? Favourite new feature? I mean I think I think the expedition system, is that too big a feature to call out as my favourite feature? Yeah, I don't know. I just think it adds that sense of adventure to the game that we haven't necessarily had in the previous games. And so it gives you that sense of excitement and that collecting of the exhibits that you get as a result of that. I think that building up a collection and wanting to collect more of the exhibits that just really resonates with me and then that was kind of what I got excited about at the start of development of museum was that the idea of you know sending people off not knowing quite what they're going to come back with and then you're sort of slowly finding more things and you go oh I've got my my treasure trove of amazing wild and wonderful exhibits and now I get to craft a guest experience
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:out of that and the stories as well with staff you know this guy comes back and he's got this illness or he's a toilet terror now because a dilemma went wrong and I think more than the previous games the staff kind of grow with you as a player and like you really do have this sense of yeah that's Barry and he's a toilet terror now but he did this amazing thing and then maybe in the next expedition he goes MIA and yeah you can really get this sort of sense of oh yeah they went on a real journey
Mark Huskins:yeah yeah yeah totally and I think you Luke you already know what my other favourite feature is uh which is perks. Oh, yeah. Of course. Of course. It's a while since I've said that. Yeah, I was like, oh, yeah. So perks, you can install perks on your exhibits in your museum. And it's a way of basically upgrading those exhibits and kind of giving them new features and functionality. You know, you can protect them against thieves or, you know, make them more attractive or make them more inspiring to guests or, you know, provide more knowledge to guests, that kind of thing. And there's loads of different perks that that you can find in the game. And you find them in lots of different ways, sometimes on expeditions, sometimes by analysing other exhibits. You're
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:just laughing because... I've heard you say this. You just love perks in the office. I
Mark Huskins:get very passionate about perks. Yeah, you do. I'm not even sure why. No, yeah. You really latched onto it. It's just cool because it's this extra layer on top. It's the icing on the cake of your museum, right? Where, you know, you've fine-crafted this incredible guest experience this amazing exhibition space and then even if you come back to it like 20 hours into that museum there's still more you can do you can still go and refine those exhibits install some perks on them to make them even more interesting so yeah there's so many little nuances like that little features that just allow the game to stay fresh and We kind of structured the game so that you could keep coming back to it. We wanted people to get attached to their museums, and we wanted to give them reasons to keep coming back to their museums. So having these features that keep you engaged, you know, 10, 20 hours into a museum, that was huge
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:laughing. I just, it's just, I've heard the perks so many times. Every meeting, it's like, and what about the perks? Yeah, so how are the perks? How are the perks coming along? Have you got more perks?
Mark Huskins:Before
Simon Hill:I do let you go, one final question. The game's been out a few months now, players are really enjoying it, there's a lot of content online, a lot of really cool museums and designs. What do you encourage players to do and what do you want to say to the community who have really been invested in the game from day one?
Mark Huskins:I mean we've been blown away by the response really like right since the game first came out and I mean yeah like more I think it really surprised us just how much how everyone got into like all of the nuances of the game in a way that we maybe we'd hoped that people would notice this feature and that feature but it's just incredible to see people discovering these things and you know talking in forums and sharing sharing anecdotes on social media and sharing screenshots of their museums. That's been amazing because that's where really they get to showcase their creative mindset and what kind of
Luke Finlay-Maxwell:experience they've crafted. There's museums I've seen in screenshots and I'm like, I didn't even know we could do that with the tools that we've had. It's amazing. I'm so impressed by what people have managed to make. It's so cool.
Mark Huskins:And that was really like... well more than we could have hoped for really is just that we you know we put those things in the game and then got to a point where people have surprised us with the things that they've done with it as you say and that's perfect that's kind of what you want as a game developer you don't want to see people doing the same things that you were doing throughout development you want to see people doing brand new things and making completely unique things and you know really exploring the full depth of the game and so But yeah, it's been amazing seeing what everyone's done.
Simon Hill:Well, I thought it would only be right to end the show the way we started, back with Mark and Gary. I think many would echo this sentiment. Two Point Museum feels like the most complete Two Point game to date. I know we touched upon it earlier. It's engaging, addictive, wonderful, witty, enchanting, and a joyous experience that will have you laughing out loud at random moments. What's next for Two Point Studios, and where do you go from here? upwards and onwards i mean as we said earlier it doesn't finish museum is a live project there's lots coming some to be announced very soon in in in in the summer we're going to make some big announcements about lots more new content surrounding the game and we have a usual it's a horrible term but roadmap of you know uh future uh supporting new additions to the the museum uh game so it's some really exciting stuff as well yeah i think some stuff that we obviously DLCs we've done before but I think there's some new very cool content that yes we'd love to say more today but some of it is super secret super secret yeah they wouldn't let me leave the building if they told me to kill you if I told you but I mean what I will say is we came with this idea expecting to get a lot of pushback and people saying no we can't do that and for whatever reason maybe it's the you know we've burnt the right over 10 years nearly and the game itself is everyone's saying yes to this idea so in the summer big announcement about some new cool stuff coming to tupac museum i think it's perfect time i firstly once again want to thank you for inviting me into your wonderful home into your wonderful studio for making me feel so welcome and giving up your time to be a part of this very special episode I always like to close each episode with my guest having the final word. So I'll leave the floor with you to reach out to the players, listeners, to those who continue to support Two Point Studios. Once again, gentlemen, thank you very much for today. Thank you, yeah. I mean, I'd just like to say, and I'm sure you'd like to say, just thank you to everyone that's played the game, everyone that's given us a positive review, and, you know, we'll do better next time for everyone that's given a bad review after 100 hours of playing I'm not bitter I think we love the feedback good or bad and I think we always will I echo what Mark's just said I think it's a privilege to still be able to make games and I've been doing it as long as we have it's still the best job in the world and I'd like to also say it's been great the relationship we've had not just with Sega but just this team this group of people we've brought together because each and every one of them makes some of our parts and it's been the best part of my career which is weird because it's been a pretty long career so to have your best bit towards the end well I guess it's perfect really unless you get fired next week as of today this is the best time best part of my career but no it's been great and it's and yeah and he makes me want to keep going so yeah it is hard it is hard to kind of we should have stopped it is it is just you kind of think you know Gary's getting old now and he should think about but then we think we're talking about the next project yeah oh wow that's so cool and you just want it's just something you want to be part of and it's just it's brilliant as Gary says it's the best job in the world and than being a heart surgeon which is probably the best or useful job in the world yes useless job but it's the best job You know, I've worked in this industry a very long time, and that has to be one of the most fun interviews I've ever had the honor and privilege of conducting. A big thank you to everyone at Two Point Studios who helped make this a reality. A very special and honorable mention to their community manager, Abby, who helped facilitate everything on the day, including the recording process and getting everyone where they needed to be. Really fun environment. You can see the passion and desire when you're around that studio and how much all of this means to them. It is such a beautiful, positive environment and I don't think I've ever stepped foot in a studio where everything feels at ease and like everyone's truly on the same page. And they've really created something special. There's been such a journey there. And to come out the other side, now producing arguably their best work, I really can't wait to see where this goes for Two Point Studios. And I can't wait to talk to them again in the future. Don't forget to like and subscribe to this episode. Leave a comment, leave a rating. That will help us climb the charts on your chosen platform as well as being able to approach more guests. So if there's somebody you'd like to hear from, whether that be a studio Please drop those comments below and make sure you let us know and we'll hopefully get them on in the future. I'm not going to take up any more of your time because this has been a really long episode, a really enjoyable one. We'll be back next week with a really exciting guest. Until then, you know what to do.
