That Other Gaming Podcast

The Post-Apocalypse with Vertigo Games’ TamTu Bui

December 09, 2021 David Jagneaux + Lisa Brown Jaloza Season 1 Episode 1
The Post-Apocalypse with Vertigo Games’ TamTu Bui
That Other Gaming Podcast
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That Other Gaming Podcast
The Post-Apocalypse with Vertigo Games’ TamTu Bui
Dec 09, 2021 Season 1 Episode 1
David Jagneaux + Lisa Brown Jaloza

This week, David talks with Vertigo Games Community Manager TamTu Bui, who gives us the scoop on their newest VR title: After the Fall. It’s a fast-paced, action-packed post-apocalyptic zombie adventure, and TamTu spills the backstory on its development and gameplay. Plus, Lisa and David sound off on which of them would survive in a post-apocalyptic world, and David shouts out a streamer who really knows what he’s doing—and gives a hot tip for leveling up your own streaming.


For more information, follow @OtherGamingPod on Twitter and Instagram and join our Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/thatothergamingpodcast.

Show Notes Transcript

This week, David talks with Vertigo Games Community Manager TamTu Bui, who gives us the scoop on their newest VR title: After the Fall. It’s a fast-paced, action-packed post-apocalyptic zombie adventure, and TamTu spills the backstory on its development and gameplay. Plus, Lisa and David sound off on which of them would survive in a post-apocalyptic world, and David shouts out a streamer who really knows what he’s doing—and gives a hot tip for leveling up your own streaming.


For more information, follow @OtherGamingPod on Twitter and Instagram and join our Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/thatothergamingpodcast.



Episode 1: The Post-Apocalypse with Vertigo Games’ TamTu Bui


This week, David talks with Vertigo Games Community Manager TamTu Bui, who gives us the scoop on their newest VR title: After the Fall. It’s a fast-paced, action-packed post-apocalyptic zombie adventure, and TamTu spills the backstory on its development and gameplay. Plus, Lisa and David sound off on which of them would survive in a post-apocalyptic world, and David shouts out a streamer who really knows what he’s doing—and gives a hot tip for leveling up your own streaming.


For more information, follow @OtherGamingPod on Twitter and Instagram and join our Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/thatothergamingpodcast.



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David Jagneaux:  

Hello, and welcome to That Other Gaming Podcast, where we take a behind-the-scenes 

look at virtual reality, online gaming, streaming, and more. I'm David, a tech comms manager at Meta, a full-time nerd, and a lifelong gamer that's obsessed with the future of video games.


Lisa Brown Jaloza:

And I'm Lisa, a fellow tech comms manager and nerd and recovering academic.


David: 

Yeah. Let's not leave out the fact you're my boss as well. Let's put that upfront, let everyone know that you are in charge of my employment.


Lisa:

Fair.


David:

What have you been playing this week?


Lisa:

Well, you know me, a lot of Words With Friends. I've also been replaying Chrono Trigger on my iPhone. Yeah.


David:

Oh, how is the mobile version?


Lisa:

It's surprisingly good. You would think that just being able to tap for the mechanics might be a little difficult but they worked it out really, really well. It holds up really nicely, even without a controller. Yeah.


 David:

That's awesome.


Lisa :

How about you?


David :

Well, I haven't been playing Chrono Trigger. That's one of the best games of all time, so good choice there. Good choice.


Lisa :

Thank you, thank you. 


David :

In VR world, I've been playing Resident Evil 4 VR of course, and Blade & Sorcery: Nomad, which is just such an intense, crazy game. The physics and the combat are so fun on that. And now, I no longer have to worry about ripping the cord of my headset out of the computer when I play because it's on Quest 2 now.


Lisa :

Definitely a plus.


David :

Yeah. And I'm not much of a racing game guy but Forza Horizon 5 might be the best looking game I've ever played in my life. It is gorgeous.


Lisa :

Wow, that's a pretty strong endorsement.


David :

Yeah, that one's just ... It's been wild, it's been wild. And Resident Evil 4 is really cool to play in VR because that's a game that I originally played on GameCube back when it first came out a billion years ago. And it's funny because technically, they're not zombies but it's basically a zombie game.


Lisa :

Yeah, you definitely would say that.


David :

Okay. I have a question for you.


Lisa :

Okay.


David :

Out of all the post apocalypses that you've experienced in pop culture, in movies and games, what do you think personally is the kind that you would have the most success surviving in?


Lisa :

I'm going to have to branch into the world of movies here and go with Shaun of the Dead. I

think, obviously, you've got the shotgun over the bar at the Winchester but really, any world in which a cricket bat is a viable weapon of choice, I think I have a pretty good chance of surviving in.


David :

Yeah. I think the zombies in that movie are a little more killable than zombies we've seen in other movies. I think, isn't there a scene where he throws a record at one of their heads to ...


Lisa :

Yes, yeah.


David :

Yeah.


Lisa :

Exactly. It's a little more Romero-inspired versus the post 28 Days Later zombie that can really move.


David :

Yeah. I think all of those are faster than I've ever been in my entire life. Yeah, even at peak physical condition, I wouldn't stand a chance.


Lisa :

Yeah. How about you? What do you think is your best bet?


David :

For me, I'm going to piggyback a little bit, I'll also name a movie but this is a very different answer. For me, I'm probably going to say I Am Legend, and that's not because I think I'm a badass like Will Smith, because I'm not. That's not the case at all but actually, I'm a bit of a loner. If I could just hang out with a mannequin and my dog, I think I would be fine. If my wife and kid could come along, huge plus but I think I'd be okay just hanging out by myself and being the last person alive and seeing how that goes.


Lisa :

All right. Well, speaking of apocalypses, today we're talking about After The Fall, the latest VR title from Vertigo Games. You might know them from their previous zombie survival game, Arizona Sunshine. We've been catching glimpses of After The Fall for a while now since 2019, but good things are definitely worth waiting for. It's really intense and fast paced with tons of action.


David :

I'm super excited for this one. I was able to talk to TamTu Bui, Vertigo's community manager. Let's cut over to that interview so we can hear a little bit more about the game. 


Can you tell me a little bit about how you got into game development originally Tam, and what your background is like in the game industry?


TamTu Bui:

Before I was community manager at Vertigo Games, I was a host and video editor for a YouTube channel, Zoomin Games, and being on the press side of the game industry, it's been pretty fun to be on the other side of the fence and actually seeing how it's made.


David :

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That's similar to my background. My background's in journalism as well, so yeah. It's been exciting being on the other side, so I'm glad that we can give people a little bit of insight here to what goes into game development. And After The Fall is shaping up pretty nicely.


TamTu :

Yeah.


David :

Why don't we go ahead and kick things off by you just telling me a little bit about the game, what it is, the setting, give me the elevator pitch version of what After The Fall is.


TamTu :

All right, elevator pitch. After The Fall is a four-player co-op shooter, set in a frozen shell of Los Angeles, 20 years after the world ended. And it's the closest thing you'll get to be an action hero with how badass we'll let you be.


David :

Okay, that sounds pretty cool. And a lot of the gameplay you've released, there's a lot of focus on the gunplay, on the co-op element like you said, on fighting the creatures. Can you talk a little bit about what the gameplay feels like for players, what they're going to be doing on a moment-to-moment basis?


TamTu :

You will be going into the missions equipped with guns that you get to upgrade throughout the game and just take on hordes, hordes and hordes of Snowbreed. That's what the enemy in our game is called. And different from the normal usual zombie games, you are the one that they should be afraid of and not the other way around. You're the badass, that's the power fantasy that we want to introduce.


David :

This isn't really so much a survival game as it is an action game set in a post-apocalypse.


TamTu :

It's been 20 years since the apocalypse and the survivors of that time have developed tools to actually fight back. And they've got some form of civilization back on track in a certain way. And that's what we're really trying to sell with After The Fall, that you and your squad go into these slaughter houses and you go in and farm those Snowbreed. Of course, they're still super dangerous, but you have the tools to fight back.


David :

Got it, got it. It's almost more of a hunting experience then, in a way, right?


TamTu :

Yeah.


David :

You're calling them Snowbreed, so they're not technically zombies. Is that correct?


TamTu :

Yeah. For After The Fall, we created the enemies ... We didn't want just a regular zombie like we had in Arizona Sunshine. What we did in Arizona Sunshine was that they were a bit more aggressive and some of them actually ran at you, which didn't really happen often. And we just wanted to really push further on that and have different enemy types. And we couldn't really explore that further in Arizona Sunshine. We took After The Fall as the opportunity to really go crazy. We thought, "How would a zombie or an undead mutate or evolve into something more fierce in our world?" And that's how we ended up with the Snowbreed.


David :

That's an interesting delineation because with Arizona Sunshine, that's obviously a game set in a desert and here in After The Fall, it's set in a snowed-in apocalypse. And so it's clearly an evolution of what you started with Arizona Sunshine but this isn't the same game world, is it? It's not a sequel. Or how does it relate to your previous game?


TamTu :

Oh, it's not a sequel. It's a complete clean slate for not just the players who are used to our offering of games at Vertigo but also for the dev team. We took the opportunity to do something completely different from Arizona Sunshine and take what we did well. And that was just the co-op aspect of it, the gunplay and bringing more variety to the zombies.


David :

Got it. You mentioned co-op a few times.


TamTu :

Yeah.


David :

Is this a game that you can enjoy solo? Is that possible or should it really preferably be experienced with other people?


TamTu :

We market it heavily to, "Bring your friends and be a squad of bad asses together." But when you don't have the capacity to fill out a full squad of four, then we fill out the rest of the squad with AI companions who will just go along with you and just shoot at whatever you're shooting at.


David :

Oh, that's great. Because I know sometimes people ... With VR being the way it is, it's still fresh, still new. People are still getting into it. It's a big commitment, not only in terms of time but effort and energy to have the play space and be like, "Hey, I want three of my friends, so I'll dedicate a room and an hour or two to play with me."


TamTu :

Yeah.


David :

Having AI companions is a great middle ground that you found because I know it seems like a lot of VR games don't have AI companions for a lot of their co-op elements. And so that's a great feature that I think you've included.


TamTu :

That's something we saw with Arizona Sunshine, right. We noticed that people play the co-op campaign a lot and the horde mode, which allows for up to four players, even more and ...


David :

Yeah.

TamTu :

Yeah. We felt like that's something we want to bring to our next game and just being bad asses together, like I keep saying, but it also felt like a natural evolution to really bring an experience that wasn't there in VR quite yet. It was also a technical challenge for us to like, "How can we make sure that there will be always people to matchmake with so they can have fun in After The Fall together?" That's why we went for the cross-platform approach.


David :

Awesome, awesome. I know with Arizona Sunshine, that was a relatively linear game. It was level based, go from the beginning of the level to the end of the level. What's the progression and structure of After The Fall like?


TamTu :

After The Fall has a campaign that onboards you to the experience. You are a harvest runner. You go into these slaughter houses where you go in and you farm the Snowbreed, but in the campaign, you're onboarded onto that experience where you learn more about the world and how these harvest runners actually do their thing in this world. And throughout the campaign, you become part of that group. And once you finish that campaign, it's like, "Okay, you're a full-fledged harvest runner now. Let's keep doing our thing and just keep progressing to become better and get better weapons so you can farm  more effectively and bring your resources back to the hub where you can improve your gear." That's the loop that we have in After The Fall.


David :

Got it, okay. It sounds like you've structured the game in a way that would be conducive to post-launch support content after release and all that stuff. Do you have planned releases or DLC or just post-launch support in the works already?


TamTu :

The launch of After The Fall is only the beginning of the journey of the player as a harvest runner. The team just had so many ideas that it wanted to implement. The main focus was to make sure the infrastructure of the game supported cross-play, so that everyone could connect to each other and play with each other properly. And once we had that sandbox ready, that's when we started to think, "Okay, now we can focus on developing more content for it, right." What we have at launch is already pretty meaty but post-launch, it's going to grow further and further.


David :

Got it. That's really reassuring because with games like this that have co-op support, that have that in-game loop like that, it's something that can get repetitive if it isn't expanded upon, but it sounds like you guys have really taken that into consideration and are wanting to make sure that there are reasons to keep coming back to the game.


TamTu :

Yeah. We have a really talented team working on After The Fall. The artists, they have so many ideas and it would be a waste to just have them make all these concepts, right, and just never use them. Yeah, it's a world that we all fell in love with to developing as well. The designers, they have all these crazy ideas on how to make really interesting level progressions, how you go through a level and making sure that each map is different from the other. The concept is the same. You go in to farm Snowbreed, but every map has its own little flavor.


David :

Got it.


TamTu :

The challenge was also to not make everything look like a frozen apocalypse, right. There are some interesting ideas that they put in there. It's really cool.


David :

That sounds awesome. And with the gameplay progression that you talked about with the farming of the Snowbreed and the constant progression and getting better and better ... And a lot of the gameplays and trailers we've seen, it definitely looks like things like looting and crafting are going to be a big part of the gameplay in After The Fall. Looting and that kind of thing, is that a big part of what you'll be doing during the levels? Because I know in Arizona Sunshine, it was much more of a linear game like we said, but in this one, it sounds like you'll have more incentive to explore and to uncover and try to find things during levels more.


TamTu :

What you're mostly going after are new attachments for your weapons. And so the weapons that you have, you can upgrade further, right. It also allows for players to find their own play style, right. Because in Arizona Sunshine, we had a variety of weapon types. And what we do in After The Fall, is that the attachments allow for players to customize weapons to maybe have a different firing rate or have a bigger magazine or use different handling. It's a great sandbox weapon-wise for players to explore.


David :

Yeah, it certainly sounds awesome. I know for me, whenever I played that demo, that was at this point, two and a half years ago, it was a very fast-paced game. That was something that I really noticed is that compared to Arizona Sunshine or even compared to a lot of other co-op shooters, zombie shooters that I played in VR, it seems like there's a heavy leaning towards a slower, more methodical, survival, tense pace. But in this one it was very fast-paced. Like you said, it makes you feel like a badass, like you're in an action movie going down zip lines and blowing things up. Can you speak a little bit about that pacing and why you settled on something that was so intense like that?


TamTu :

Yeah, definitely. Over the years, we've seen VR evolve as well, right. You see people getting more used to being able to play in VR but the onboarding on VR in recent years has exploded. There's a lot of new VR players as well. We want to respect their ability to be in VR. And that's why the mission maps, the first time you'll play them, it'll be 20, 30 minutes you'll spend exploring and really getting to know the maps. But once you get more used to it, the session will be shorter. But that doesn't mean that the game is shorter. Once you complete the campaign, you can go back in and go back into the loops and do the missions multiple times to go for that grind, right. It allows for people to dictate how long they want to be in VR. Some people can only be in VR for 30 minutes, others can go on for hours. That's what After The Fall offers for a pretty broad variety of players in VR.


David :

You mentioned the first time someone does a campaign mission, it could take 20, 30 minutes or so. Around how long is the entire campaign if someone were to play for the first time, roughly?


TamTu :

The onboarding campaign for After The Fall, if you're comfortable in VR, you can go through it pretty quickly. On average, I think it would be around three to four hours for you to really get familiar with all the systems that we have in After The Fall, what the game is about. And after that, it really depends on how many hours you want to put into that yourself. If you really want to max up all the weapons then yeah, you'll be playing a lot longer than someone who just wants to jump in and do a quick run of harvest running with their friends.


David :

You speak about returning to missions, replaying them, farming. That's a term you've used a lot. These missions, are they going to adapt and change at all when you play them on subsequent times? Or the spawn point of the enemies or the locations of loot, is all that the same or does it change at all?


TamTu :

It absolutely changes. We designed the levels to be the same every time but the variety comes from the different spawn locations. Loot also spawns in different maps. There is an incentive for you to explore, check out the rooms that are in the maps, like something you found in the previous one won't be there. Even ammo crates won't be spawning in the same places. There's always this fresh loadout of a level for you to go through.


David :

The layout of the missions are pre-made because it's a custom-tailored, handmade level. It's not procedural but the locations of loot and enemies and some of that will shift and change each time. And then also, it scales on difficulty as well, right?


TamTu :

Yeah, definitely. On the easiest mode, that's generally what most people will probably go through during the campaign. But I know some people bump up the difficulty sooner because during the campaign, they might already find better attachments to upgrade their weapons that they have, to make them even better. Or they might find looking for a little challenge themselves. It's up to them.


David :

There's been a lot of talk about loot and crafting of your guns, customizing with different attachments and all those things. But what about the player's appearance? For their actual character in the game, do they get different gear that they can wear? Can they change how they look and present themselves to other players? How does that work?


TamTu :

Customization is primarily focused on the weapons and player skins will be added at a later time. The focus was on getting the cross-platform functionality of After The Fall to work properly. They also really need to iterate on player customization. We do have a lot of ideas of what we allow for player customization but we really needed to look at the platforms, each platform on what they can and cannot do before we really roll out that system. Weapon customization was a priority because it ties so deep into the gameplay loop, right.


David :

Yeah, that makes sense. And I think if you're listening to this and you're not super tuned in to VR games and you haven't been playing them for years, one thing that's interesting is whenever you're in VR, it's almost like your hands and your weapons are the characters of the game more so than your character's body, just because you embody that character physically. And so what you're seeing and manipulating is the weapons. And so it makes more sense to focus on those as a VR game, as opposed to a non-VR game that might be third-person or might feature different cosmetics. But for VR, it's so important what you interact with. And so that's why the guns are such a crucial element, for sure.


TamTu :

Yeah, yeah. Developing After The Fall has been quite a rollercoaster right, because we learned so many things from Arizona Sunshine that was so important for us to make After The Fall what it is because originally, we made it for PC and then we made it again from scratch for PlayStation and then made it from scratch again for Quest. One of the biggest requests for Arizona Sunshine was cross-platform play, because people would be having different headsets but wanted to play Arizona together, but they couldn't. That was crucial for us to get right for After The Fall.


David :

Speaking of the Quest version of the game, can you talk at all about any of the compromises you had to make to get it running on a mobile portable standalone device? Is there pretty much parity with the other platforms? What optimizations did you make?


TamTu :

We develop a VR tool set for ourselves in Unity for all platforms to draw from a single wireframe, so to speak right, to bring everything to parity. And it allows for the different VR platform layers to be placed on top. That's how we get parity with enemy and object placement. The level designs and the core systems are the same but visually, they're all optimized for each platform independently. In a cross-platform game, it is important that all players see the same objects and walk through the same areas, right. Visually, it might look different but the wireframe, the framework of After The Fall is the same for everyone. If I can give an example, in playtesting here, I switch between the Quest and the PC version a lot. And it feels like the exact same game. It looks different but it plays and feels ... The guns feel the same and walking around feels familiar because yeah, it is still the same level.


David :

When you say looks different, what exactly is different visually?


TamTu :

From what you can expect from a Quest, everything in there is ... We've had to be really clever with textures indeed and baking in the lights. On PC, you have more freedom to do that more dynamically. And it doesn't change anything about the gameplay itself but visually yeah, it is what you would expect from a PC versus a mobile system but with what the Quest 2 can do, it's a really good looking game still.


David :

Yeah, I think for me, as someone that came from playing primarily PC VR titles to now spending the vast majority of my VR time on Quest, I've really been impressed with how good everything still looks. And I think optimizing for the platform is so important. Like you said, handling it in a way that's scalable is super important for a cross-platform game like this. And I guess, if you had any tips for developers listening, if they wanted to make a cross-platform game and hit as many devices as possible, what would be I guess your one hot tip for a developer aiming to do that?


TamTu :

Gameplay is key, always. People need to experience a game in the exact same way on each platform. And allowing yourself to have the freedom to specifically optimize for each platform without compromising on gameplay, I think that's the way to go.


David :

Makes sense, makes sense. One of the other questions I wanted to ask you is for new players, people that obviously have never played After The Fall, it's a new game, just came out, what is one of your main tips you would give a new player entering the post-apocalypse for the first time here?


TamTu :

Stay together and keep your head on a swivel. If you play in a group, then you can warn each other, right. But if you play solo, you have the AI companions that will give you direction and give you a heads up on where enemies come from but in the end, in the apocalypse, you have to rely on yourself.


David :

Makes sense, makes sense. Strength in numbers but at the end of the day, you can only trust yourself.


TamTu :

Yeah, pretty much.


David :

Exactly. I do want to ask you one other question, one of our topics and themes on this debut episode of the podcast is about post-apocalypses in general.


TamTu :

Okay.


David :

From your personal point of view and pop culture, whether it be zombies or something else, what do you think is the type of post-apocalypse you would have the best success surviving in if you had to pick one?


TamTu :

Oh, well clearly the ones where zombies don't run or climb because I know in those apocalypses, the ammo won't be as generous as they are in our games. But my girlfriend and I have been recently binging Buffy and Angel, and I discovered something really funny because Angel takes place in Los Angeles as well. And when the show ended, it continued in the comic books and the comic books are subtitled After The Fall.


David :

Really, interesting.


TamTu :

Yeah. I don't know if the dev team, when they came up with the concept all those years ago, if they were all Buffy fans as well.


David :

Vampire DLC confirmed. All right, it sounds ...


TamTu :

Absolutely, yes. Hundred percent, hundred percent.


David :

Awesome, I can't wait. Well, thank you very much for the chat, Tam, best of luck with the game's launch and reception and everything.


TamTu :

Yeah, thanks.


David :

And before we go, can you just let the listeners know everywhere that they can purchase the game, how much it costs, and all that good stuff?


TamTu :

Your journey begins on December 9th on PC platforms, PlayStation VR, on Oculus Quest 2, and we're committed to at least a year of content drops and DLC for the game, as well as the Quest 1 client arriving later in 2022 at 39.99.


Lisa :

Man, that was a really great interview. I loved hearing about TamTu's background in press and how he found his way onto the community management side of gaming. It was also really great to hear about Vertigo's evolution through the zombie genre, how they have transitioned from the zombies that they went with in Arizona Sunshine to the bigger, badder, more impressive bosses that you face in After The Fall.


David :

Yeah. You can really see how they were influenced by their past work like that. And it sounds like they're going to be really ambitious this time around. I'm super excited because Arizona Sunshine's a favorite of mine and I'm excited to see how they've evolved that formula. And can you believe it's already been five years since Arizona Sunshine came out when the Touch controllers launched? Yeah, that's crazy to me. It's hard to even imagine.


Lisa :

Yeah. And now that you mention that, what's really missing is a zombie survival horror game where they actually use hand tracking.


David :

Oh, there it is.


Lisa :

Yeah. Wouldn't that be great?


David :

Yeah. Hopefully someone's listening.


Lisa :

We can only dream.


David :

All right. Now, it's time for a segment I hope people really eat up each and every episode, I'm excited for it. It's called Jaloza vs. Jagneaux, where we each get one minute to make our case for a chosen topic. And then maybe everyone listening can help us decide who won.


Lisa :

For this episode, we'll debate which post-apocalyptic zombie VR game is better on Quest 2: Resident Evil 4 or Arizona Sunshine. And they say age before beauty, so I'll go first. All right. I'm going to have to go with Resident Evil 4. Obviously, it was a genre-defining title when it first released and each iteration has just been progressively better but for VR, they've truly knocked it out of the park. IGN gave it a 9 out of 10, and the fact that they took that over-the-shoulder third-person perspective, which was pretty groundbreaking when the original RE4 came out, and then reimagined it for VR in this truly immersive first-person perspective, that just ratchets up the horror in a way that you don't usually see. Yeah, I think it’s just a pitch perfect survival horror game and being able to experience it in VR, lots of people are saying it's like the first time that they've ever played it. That's got to be my pick.


David :

All right. For my pick, I'm going to say Arizona Sunshine, one of the original zombie VR survival games out there. And no disrespect, Resident Evil 4, Leon Kennedy is a cool guy, has a great Nick Carter haircut, don't get me wrong. But at the end of the day, do I need good hair or do I need to kill zombies with my friends? And only Arizona Sunshine of these two lets you play co-op. And I think that's a real big selling point because despite what I said earlier about being a loner, I really do like playing games with my friends whenever they're not eaten by zombies. And Arizona Sunshine is a great option. It has a ton of interactivity. There's a really awesome horde mode, where you can fight waves of zombies. The whole campaign is playable co-op and the entire game was built and designed from the ground up specifically for VR, which I think is a really big selling point. It was one of the first VR horror games and it's still one of the best.


Lisa :

All right. Well, there you have it. Now, it's your turn to tell us what you think. Head over to our Facebook Group and Twitter and vote in the poll on which post-apocalyptic zombie VR game is better on Quest 2: Resident Evil 4 or Arizona Sunshine. And make sure to let us know what you think about the show on Twitter @OtherGamingPod.


David :

Before we go, I want to drop a quick little live streaming hot tip from my fellow content creators out there.


Lisa :

All right.


David :

The most important thing I would say, is remain as interactive as possible during your streams. That means responding to comments as soon as you see them, referring to people by name or their username, remembering your regulars. If someone mentions something in a past stream, you don't see them for a week or two, if you can remember what they were going through that last time they're in the chat, that is going to go a long way to making them feel part of the community. And it makes people feel more comfortable chatting and talking and getting to know you. Also, it helps to practice your improv skills, as weird as it can sound. But a lot of the time as a beginning streamer, you're going to probably be streaming to just one or two people for hours at a time. Being able to talk to yourself and talk about the game, think out loud, those are all things that you really have to get comfortable doing.


Someone that does a great job of this is a streamer that goes by 1 Coin Only on Facebook gaming. He plays a ton of different retro games. He's a really hilarious guy from Australia and I highly, highly recommend checking him out.


Lisa :

Awesome, I'll have to see what he's all about. And who knew that streaming was so much like bartending, that you have to remember your regulars? That's a really great tip. Thanks so much for joining us on That Other Gaming Podcast from Meta. Remember, we'd love to connect with you on our Facebook Group, and you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram @OtherGamingPod.


David :

The show is produced by LWC, Cedric Wilson is our lead producer and composed our theme music. Kojin Tashiro also contributed music.


Lisa :

Jen Chien is executive editor. That Other Gaming Podcast is executive produced by Steve Gray and Juleyka Lantigua, art by BJ Prema.


David :

Thanks for listening, everybody, and enjoy the awesome outro music.





CITATION:

Jagneaux, David and Jaloza, Lisa Brown. “The Post-Apocalypse with Vertigo Games’ TamTu Bui.” That Other Gaming Podcast. Meta, LWC, December 09, 2021. 



Produced by LWC