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Linus Tech tips coverage of pxs 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital Intel

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and steel Series so we're here with Steven Baker the lead sound designer on

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strife and we're going to get into exactly what his unique contribution is

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to this game after we talk a little bit about the general stuff so you guys got

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to differentiate from other mobas how are you going to make it accessible for

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the noob and yet customizable enough for the experienced players well there's a

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lot of fresh Design Tech techniques that

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our designers did uh some of them include the gold sharing mechanic when

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you are in a lane with someone and you

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get a last hit you actually share that gold with your lane mate and that helps

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to really uh reduce player

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toxicity as well as uh allow you to

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collect gold even though you're not last hitting so tell me about the load out

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system well that's going to be basically pregame before you queue you're going to

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be able to select your hero select your pet and select items that you like to

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play with okay so I'm a new player my whole thing is okay I you know some Pro

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that I like to watch uses this particular kit usually so I just set

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everything up before the game I don't have to go to the store and Shop no not

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if you don't want to I mean it really depends on uh how the game is is going

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like you could have a load out and you

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know think that you're going to do really well but if it's not going your

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way you can actually go back into the shop and reconfigure your Loadout for

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maybe more armor magic armor stuff like that okay so if I'm a pro and I you know

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I feel like the whole loading out ahead of time is beneath me I can still go

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full custom oh totally yeah okay that's

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awesome now let's talk about you you talked about crafting in pets are pets a

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purely aesthetic thing absolutely Ely not they they actually serve a great

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purpose in the game when you first start

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the game you get to select a pet and

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it's very it's like a baby basically and

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it has only a small amount of abilities

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but as you play the game you get Commodities at the end of the game that

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include food you use the food to feed your pet and the pet evolves and

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actually develops its powers it grows stronger it unlocks new passives and and

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makes your active ability much stronger so basically you guys are trying to make

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anyone who bought a tamagachi 10 years ago feel really stupid about it because

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they could just have played this game had that experience and they get a game for their money absolutely speaking of

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money you guys are aiming for what 15 heroes six pets at launch now your

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monetization model we all know how League of Legends does it where you pay

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for the heroes if they're not on rotation uh how are you guys handling

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Heroes and and pay pay to play so to speak well first off off the game is

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free to play and the heroes are free to play so anytime that we design a hero it

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will be free to play uh the 15 Heroes

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that you'll be able to select from freeo play you know the the things that we

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monetize will include uh commodities for

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crafting and also your skins for your different Heroes so I promise stepen we

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wouldn't talk about gameplay mechanics the whole time lead sound designer he

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wants to talk about sound if you guys have been watching me for any amount of

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time you'll know I do believe that sound is incredibly important one of my

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mantras is go buy a bloody sound card get some decent headphones not gaming

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headphones good headphones enjoy your games more it's incredibly important and

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the conductor which is your baby is going to make what I'm saying right now

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even more true tell me about this well the conductor is an Adaptive music

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system that es and flows the music based

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on what's Happening to your hero in the game right so so you start the game

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you're in the laning phase not a lot of action is happening you're just worried

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about last hitting creeps and maybe harassing the hero a little bit so it's

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very lowkey very easy to listen to you know uh but but as the game progresses

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say maybe you go into the jungle it's a

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little more tense you know because uh no

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one can see where you are and the music really uh signifies that um and then

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maybe you're in a situation where there's a team fight happening which the

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music goes huge there there's a lot of

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different layers that are happening at that time to to to add excitement to the

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player's experience so your goal here then is to get the players heart pumping

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without them really necessarily knowing get the adrenaline flowing at the right

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times without them even really even having to think about it yeah it is a very unconscious subconscious kind of

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thing that's happening to music I think that's absolutely cool and I think that

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getting away from games being designed to be looked at while you have your

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music going in your ear in your ears and you're completely ignoring it I mean the

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immersiveness is incredibly exciting so thank you for taking the time to talk to

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us about this this is absolutely great and uh good luck my pleasure now we're

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here with P who is the director of monetization for strife and you do a

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bunch of other stuff as well right yeah I also worked as a lead system designer

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for strife and I work with a game design team as well making awesome Heroes

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hopefully all right so we're going to have some great conversation with you because it's a free to play and as as a

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monetization strategy free to play is anything but mature it it there's so

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much more to be experimented with what are you guys doing with Strife to make

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it work for you I think you're seeing hero uh free-to-play games popping up

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all over the place and a lot of them are going with a cookie cutter kind of dual

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currency one you earn and one you get for free right or sorry when you

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purchase and one what you get for free for playing and what we've done with

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Strife is rather than having having that we've developed Commodities and

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commodities are something that you earn still but each of them serves a specific

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function so this allows a lot of Dynamics as far as what trade-offs you

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have when you earn food you can feed your pets and when you get ore you can

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craft your items but when you get Essences you can either harmonize your

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items or it can make them better so there's a lot of trade-offs that don't really exist when you only have one

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earned currency that exists when you have this more higher level commodity

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currency okay now speaking of uh of crafting items and all that I want to

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talk about uh okay it's not related at all forget the segue but tell me about

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the orts strategy for stri what are you guys doing to differentiate yourself

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from the other stuff that's out there for orts we really want to uh respond to

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the demands of what our community wants so we're still prea people haven't

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gotten their hands on it the only people who played on played it are like our friends and our families and our

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co-workers so we want to see what our community wants if they want a topheavy

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system in which there's just one Invitational Tournament that's the you

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know the Hub of all that um then we'll respond to that or if they want

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something that's more Grassroots more regular automated tournaments that anyone can get access into and maybe the

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prizes aren't as high for each of them um but everyone can participate then

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we'll respond to that as well so we want to see what our player wants to do

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because at the end of the day we believe that Esports is a service for the community for everyone to gather around

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the game and to get really hyped up and really amped and excited now the word

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everyone is interesting because you guys don't want to abandon the hardcores of

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course because hardcore gamers are are going to be your biggest supporters but

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what have you done if you were to pick three things that have made this game

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more accessible and that are going to help to draw in new players well there

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there's um as the mobile genre is developed there's been a lot of issues

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brought forth so four years ago when we were developing heroes in new worth and R was developing League of Legends and

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whatnot they we were all focusing on scratching the surface making sure the

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genre is going to be fun it's going to be successful people are going to play our games now that we kind of have the

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luxury of sitting back and saying okay mobas are a good formula we we can talk

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about more of the in-depth issues the issue of toxicity and a lot of people

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have brought this up about the mobile Community people are kind of

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sometimes and um we it's we really come

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back and put our fingers on that people are to each other generally

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when they're on the same team and they disagree about how to win a game so int

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team conflict has been a huge thing for us and with Strife we've done several

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things to tackle that we've developed the game from the ground up from the

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game design to try to alleviate some of the tensions within your team as far as

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competing for last hits who's going to play the support role that no one wants

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to play who's going to devote all their goal to buying the awards so there's no

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purchasable vision there's no um supporting by sacrificing instead of

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sacrificing we allow our support players to still get items and enable their

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teammates and support that way instead so tell me about the way that gold gets

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split when you're either sharing a lane with someone or you're in your own lane

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and everyone else is all over the place in order to make people not be not

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behave selfishly yeah so every mobile veteran has probably gone through the

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argument of I need the last hits no I need the last hits and it comes down to

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this All or Nothing whoever gets the last hit gets all the gold and so you're

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competing with your Lan mate as to who gets the last hit in strip however you

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split the gold and how this works is if you're solo you get half of the gold

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Bounty of a creep so say a creep is worth 70 gold you get 35 and the other

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half is split across your team evenly including yourself so you end up with 42

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if you're with another Lane partner you each get half of the goal so you each get 35 so realistically if you're

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soloing you might get last of the last less of the last hits then when you have

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a partner helping you out as well so you actually want your teammate there but when they're there you're not fighting

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over it you're not taking something from them they're not taking something from you you're working together toward an

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end goal together I mean the way that I see this is this helps the Casual

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players as well as the as as the more

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competitive players because this does two things is number one is it makes it

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so that that uh that one player on a competitive team doesn't have to be the

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who has no who has no items by the end of the game and it was basically

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just kind of running around doing everyone else's Dirty Work and it also

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means that for someone who's a more a much more casual player they're not

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necessarily get left behind to the same extent I mean as someone who only ever

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really played DOTA one as as as far as the mobile genre goes I can tell you as

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someone who kind of played it casually and jumped in by you know 10 15 minutes

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into the game there was that one guy who was just going to completely dominate

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the match and then there was me and every time I saw him he was going to just totally kick my ass and what have

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you guys done to to to change that besides just the gold splitting so

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another thing we've done is that when you kill a player the gold you get rewarded with will be dependent on their

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relative Effectiveness and power to you so gold per minute is a really important

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metric for us that basically calculates how much gold have you been earning this

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game and if you kill someone with less gold per minute than you do you'll get less gold and and on the uh on the flip

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side if they kill you and you have higher than them they get bonus gold so this really really incentivizes our top

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players to go pick on someone their own size and leave the little guys alone a

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little bit and for for us Strife is a game that we don't want and we've all

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all had this experience where you play a game with your friend you're trying to introduce him to to a game you're not

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really playing with them you're playing the same game as them but you kind of shove them off in a corner it's like you

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learn the game while I go and Win It On My Own we really want stri toam an

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experience where you're playing with your friends with your girlfriend with your with your kid not just shoving off

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shoving them off in the corner buy you Awards whatnot well that is incredibly

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exciting is there anything else that you'd like to add for for the audience in terms of the Innovation that you guys

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have put into this game yeah I think the last really cool part is that you get to

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pick your hero before the game starts so what this allows us to do is not only

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take the stress off of it a little bit it's like I got 90 seconds I got to pick

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my hero everyone's going to yell at me um no you get you get to take your time

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pick your hero pick your gear set pick your crafted items um pick your pet do

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everything that you want to do to set up the experience that you have in mind and

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then the other thing that does is allows us to assign a hero specific ELO so if

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you have a hero that you're really good with CU you played it 150 times we know

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that we we'll know your record with that hero and we'll be able to sign you with

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teammates and opponents of an equ equitable level so that you have a good

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game whereas if you're a really high level player but you're trying a new

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hero you might not be rated as high so you're not punished for trying something

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completely new very cool thank you very much this has been absolutely fantastic

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and enjoy the rest of the show thank you