WEBVTT 00:00.400 --> 00:05.520 We're at Gamelab 2023 in Barcelona, and it's so nice to catch up with the guys over at IOI, 00:05.520 --> 00:10.240 as one year ago, if you remember, we visited their new offices here in Barcelona in City Centre, 00:10.240 --> 00:15.120 it was really nice, and they've been running these sort of community events for developers 00:15.120 --> 00:21.760 in Catalonia and all over Spain to come by your offices, and you guys share technology, 00:21.760 --> 00:26.480 share knowledge, and that's so nice, and so Nordic, I have to say, so thank you so much for joining us. 00:27.440 --> 00:34.320 In this year, we can talk many things, you know, tech mostly with you guys, but in this year, 00:34.320 --> 00:40.400 of course, you've progressed in several projects that you guys are working on. We know about 007, 00:40.400 --> 00:45.920 origin story type of game, we know about a fantasy project that as of late we've heard 00:45.920 --> 00:50.480 rumours about being platform specific or exclusive, what can you tell us about this? 00:51.120 --> 01:00.320 Not much, actually, because this is not our domain, basically, this is also there's nothing 01:00.320 --> 01:05.840 clear for us, so I don't think there's any word came out about any specifics about this, 01:05.840 --> 01:10.240 so we cannot comment on it. It's not confirmed that it's exclusive to any platform at all, 01:10.240 --> 01:18.880 but it is an RPG multiplayer fantasy game. Yeah, RPG multiplayer online, and likely will be like 01:18.880 --> 01:23.680 any other game, probably will be in console and PC, but nothing is confirmed, it's still 01:23.680 --> 01:30.880 some years until it will release, so yeah. And we also can't get sort of a window to learn more 01:30.880 --> 01:39.600 about 007? 007 is under development, it's looking very cool, it's going to tell the story of the 01:39.600 --> 01:45.440 firstborn and how it becomes the secret agent that he is, but that's what we can comment on. 01:45.840 --> 01:53.680 All right, now let's talk a little bit about tech. At that time at your office, 01:53.680 --> 01:58.400 we got this very interesting panel by you guys and some work colleagues of yours, 01:59.920 --> 02:06.720 telling us how us, I mean the press and also other developers, how Glacier is your very own thing, 02:06.720 --> 02:12.240 and it's different in several ways, and it's sort of, there are things that you can only achieve, 02:12.320 --> 02:18.800 or at least you say so, you can only achieve with Glacier. So more for our viewers and for 02:18.800 --> 02:24.000 people who in the end end up consuming the games, what can you guys do with Glacier that 02:24.000 --> 02:27.840 they kind of find with games that are based on, for example, Unreal Engine? 02:29.120 --> 02:34.880 First and foremost, it is ours, so we can change anything we want with it. We also have the 02:34.880 --> 02:41.040 expertise to do so, because we have a very senior team that's been working on that engine for a long, 02:41.040 --> 02:46.000 long time. So yeah, I mean it's ours, we can do whatever we want. This is fantastic, 02:46.000 --> 02:50.800 this is not something you can do with some other engines. I mean some others you might have access 02:50.800 --> 02:58.800 to the code and stuff, but it's not yours, and so we can make it what we want it to be basically, 02:58.800 --> 03:05.600 and we can tailor it to our needs. We're not trying to be anyway a commercial grade engine 03:05.600 --> 03:10.880 or anything like that, so that also means that we can focus on delivering the features that 03:10.960 --> 03:17.680 we think we need instead of features that are for everyone, right? That means that we don't 03:17.680 --> 03:24.720 care that much about customer experience, we focus on power users. We want to have our users 03:25.600 --> 03:29.840 creating the best games they can, and they are usually very technical and very good, 03:30.560 --> 03:35.040 and we just want to give them the most so that they can do the best they can. 03:35.120 --> 03:41.360 One staple of you guys, of IOI Games, and I remember speaking with Eduard about this 03:41.360 --> 03:46.000 a year ago, are crowds. And one of the things I love personally about Hitman is 03:46.960 --> 03:53.200 that's always been the case, that's a staple of the series, that you can sort of interact with 03:53.200 --> 03:56.800 big crowds doing their thing, and a lot of things going on behind the scenes. So is that, 03:57.600 --> 04:01.520 would you say, is that some of the trademark of Glacier as well? 04:01.600 --> 04:05.920 Yes, Glacier, when we designed it, one of the principles was productivity. 04:06.480 --> 04:11.360 So we focus very much into empowering our users and to make them like the iteration, 04:11.360 --> 04:16.160 crash handling, what you see, what you get, the access packing. But then one of the things that 04:16.160 --> 04:22.320 is custom to our games is the AI. Most engines, like commercial engines and even proprietary 04:22.320 --> 04:27.520 engines, hit a lot the GPU and they make sure that there is like the rendering and they are 04:27.520 --> 04:34.880 very optimized. In our case, in the Hitman series, easily there is more than 200 NPCs plus the crowd 04:34.880 --> 04:40.720 and computing at all times. So we are very CPU bound and we hit it like hard. We are very much 04:40.720 --> 04:46.720 performing and optimized and like the last Hitman series would not have been possible in some other 04:46.720 --> 04:51.760 commercial engines out there. They would not perform, it would just crash. So we're very 04:51.840 --> 04:57.040 optimized like that when it comes to CPU. It's a very particular game. Like most games are not 04:57.040 --> 05:04.480 built like that. So I can imagine, I don't know, a fantasy RPG with big crowds and a James Bond 05:04.480 --> 05:09.440 game with big crowds as well. Yeah, that's actually like the one of the things that Alvaro said, 05:10.240 --> 05:14.800 it's our engine. We want to be good at certain things that we need and that's it. So for very 05:14.800 --> 05:19.200 long, we've been very good at third person shooters, sandboxes and then all in a sudden, 05:19.200 --> 05:26.080 project fantasy. So now we want to be the best at that, which is actually, I mean, it's a challenge 05:26.080 --> 05:31.600 that we also like. We've been like for many years optimizing performance, AI and solving the same 05:31.600 --> 05:37.120 problems to a limit of perfection. So now we have new challenges and that's also fun for us, right? 05:37.120 --> 05:43.840 It's like, okay, now a RPG and this new technology. So it's fun for the game creators or content 05:43.840 --> 05:49.360 creators, but for us in the engine, it's also super fun. And you mentioned AI and of course, you 05:49.360 --> 05:57.680 mean AI in terms of NPC behavior, et cetera, but not AI in terms of generating assets for your games, 05:58.320 --> 06:05.440 which is a topic here at Gamelab and before we've had Sloy, CEO, talking about generating 06:06.240 --> 06:11.600 3D assets via AI. Is that something that you guys are sort of fiddling with? Is that something that 06:11.600 --> 06:15.760 you're considering or you're more traditional in the way that, you know, we have these artists 06:15.760 --> 06:21.600 and we want them to design from scratch to the variant asset we're using in the 3D engine? 06:21.600 --> 06:26.400 I think that's pretty much it. We're actually trying to go for a more conservative approach 06:26.400 --> 06:30.320 there because we know it works, you know, it worked for us in the past, you know, so it should 06:30.320 --> 06:35.760 work again in the end. That means, that being said, I don't think we are completely closing 06:35.760 --> 06:39.760 down that door, you know, but I don't think we're actively looking into that at the moment. 06:40.560 --> 06:46.800 And on that note too, like AI can not only generate assets, they can also generate code. 06:46.800 --> 06:52.160 So you can go to AI and say, like, give me a class or a piece of code that sorts a string or 06:52.160 --> 06:57.600 something, but that also has copyright problems because AI learns from other code that is out 06:57.600 --> 07:03.040 there and then if you copy certain, there are licenses that will mean that we have to distribute 07:03.040 --> 07:09.760 our code or how we distribute, like, open source, and that's something that we are very cautious 07:09.760 --> 07:13.920 about. So we actually, like, we have a policy that we shouldn't be using these technologies 07:13.920 --> 07:18.560 as of now. We, I mean, we recognize that they're very powerful, we recognize it might be something 07:18.560 --> 07:25.040 for us in the future, but as of now, our games are done by us. Yeah, and they are everywhere. 07:25.040 --> 07:28.560 They are there for coders, they are there for artists, they are there for writers, 07:28.560 --> 07:32.160 they're there for everyone. So we have to sort of learn how to deal with them, right? 07:32.160 --> 07:36.080 I mean, one thing about AI is that now it's a big thing, right? But we've been, for instance, we have 07:36.080 --> 07:40.880 motion matching, you know, and motion matching has an intrinsic AI component. What is motion matching, 07:40.880 --> 07:49.280 please tell me. Motion matching is a technique to animate lifelike people, basically, and 07:51.200 --> 07:55.520 it's based on the fact that you have a large database of animations, like, you know, people 07:55.520 --> 08:00.160 just get shot, you know, in video with all of these markers and stuff, you know, and they do things, 08:00.160 --> 08:02.960 you know, and they do their thing, and it's like, okay, now you do this, you do that. 08:03.600 --> 08:09.280 And it's kind of unstructured data, so what motion matching does is like, okay, you have this NPC 08:09.280 --> 08:14.320 or this character that wants to walk in a straight line and has this kind of mood or whatever, 08:14.320 --> 08:20.160 you know, so motion matching will actually look at the current frame you're in, and it will try to 08:20.160 --> 08:27.280 find in that database the best fit for the animation at that point, you know, and there's a 08:27.280 --> 08:32.480 big component of AI there, or there could be, you know, one of the... Sort of matching for now, 08:32.480 --> 08:36.320 but there could be AI sort of understanding a context. Exactly, so actually matching, 08:36.320 --> 08:40.480 one of the solutions to actually do this kind of pattern matching problems is using AI, 08:40.480 --> 08:47.120 and it's not using anything outside of what we are using. It is our own animations, exactly, 08:47.120 --> 08:54.000 so we have this big AI now thing, but there's a lot of other uses. Yeah, of course. Are you 08:54.000 --> 08:59.280 telling young developers here gathered at Gamelab later today, during your panel, are you telling 08:59.280 --> 09:05.440 them about this? What sort of... And what makes the difference compared to your sort of regular 09:06.240 --> 09:11.840 open door sessions? What are they going to learn today? Today, I mean, we're very proud of our 09:11.840 --> 09:17.760 engine and some of the architectural designs that it was built on, and we're going to share 09:17.760 --> 09:22.880 three very cool topics. We're going to talk about entities, resources, and we're going to talk about 09:22.880 --> 09:27.120 processes, because it's very simple, and actually, technology, when it's simple, it's pretty, 09:27.120 --> 09:31.520 and we want to show that beauty, hopefully, and share it with the people today here. 09:32.400 --> 09:37.920 And now that I mentioned these open doors sort of sessions you guys have, you've been running those 09:37.920 --> 09:43.760 for a year now, so what's the takeaway? What's the feedback you got from both 09:44.480 --> 09:48.800 those who come and then you afterwards? How do you feel about sharing this space and this 09:48.800 --> 09:53.520 knowledge with other developers, which of course goes both ways, right? You also 09:53.520 --> 10:00.320 absorb from them, I guess. People love it. I mean, it's always a full house, and there's always 10:00.320 --> 10:07.440 people outside waiting and wanting more. That's because of the patio. Maybe, yeah. Wait for the pool. 10:08.640 --> 10:15.920 What? We don't comment on rumors, you know. The pool is not announced yet. Okay, okay. 10:15.920 --> 10:20.400 And you also opened, now that you mentioned the house is full, you also opened a new house. 10:20.400 --> 10:27.920 So, when we talked last year, it was Copenhagen, it was Malmo, and it was Barcelona, and now we have 10:27.920 --> 10:34.720 another studio in Turkey. Yes, we just opened, I'm not sure, like one or two months ago, we opened 10:34.720 --> 10:41.200 in Istanbul, and we are very excited, because that opens the door to new talent, and the new ideas, 10:41.200 --> 10:46.480 and yeah, it's just starting. Actually, we have our first programmers starting now, 10:46.480 --> 10:53.600 so it's very exciting. And the structure is the same as with the rest of IOI. It's going to be, 10:54.480 --> 10:58.160 you know, no matter where you are, you can be leading a project, you can be, 10:58.160 --> 11:03.200 even if you're sitting in Istanbul or in Barcelona, right? That's it, yeah. That's one of the main 11:03.200 --> 11:13.360 ideas behind IO, is that we are a single studio with three different offices. So, everyone, I mean, 11:13.360 --> 11:18.400 the teams are actually distributed across all of the studios, you know, and it works, it works very 11:18.400 --> 11:23.280 well, you know. We don't have, in other companies, you know, you have this kind of satellite studio 11:23.280 --> 11:28.320 idea, so you have the idea, like some studios are more than others, and stuff. This is not the case 11:28.400 --> 11:33.280 at all with IO, you know. We're all equal, you know, and everyone can be a lead or whatever, 11:33.280 --> 11:39.440 you know, in any team, so that's super cool. And you also jump from city to city, for example. 11:39.440 --> 11:44.560 You guys are Spanish, but you, for example, are based in Denmark now, so you can do that with 11:44.560 --> 11:50.240 Turkey as well, okay. All right, so closing one. We've talked about fantasy, RPG, multiplayer, 11:50.240 --> 11:56.640 no platform confirmed game, James Bond origins story, and we haven't talked about Hitman that 11:56.640 --> 12:00.880 much. It's still ongoing, right? It's still getting more content, and we can expect to see 12:00.880 --> 12:07.760 more from the bald guy. There is also a lot of cool ideas, a lot of things in there. We love 12:07.760 --> 12:13.600 Hitman. Hitman 3 is still putting out content. Again, I don't know, I know there is stuff coming, 12:13.600 --> 12:18.640 but I don't know what is announced or not announced, so I'm not sure. Will you keep 12:18.640 --> 12:23.760 doing the updating or sort of improving the VR version of the game? 12:25.760 --> 12:31.280 As it is now, right now, no, but in the future it might be, actually, so we'll see. 12:31.280 --> 12:35.200 We'll see, all right. Thank you so much for your time, guys. Enjoy your panel and enjoy the show. 12:35.200 --> 12:38.320 Thank you. Thank you.