Guild Chat - Episode 101
Guild Chat - Episode 101
- Title
- Working at Home
- Host
- Rubi Bayer
- Guests
- Alex Kain
Connor Fallon
Kent Benson - Date
- July 17, 2020
- Official video
- YouTube
The 101st episode of Guild Chat aired on July 17, 2020.
"What’s it like when a whole game studio works from home? We’re learning every day! Join host Rubi Bayer and her developer guests—remotely—for an inside look at how ArenaNet is adapting to safety precautions during the COVID-19 pandemic."
Transcription[edit]
Rubi Bayer: Hi Tyria and Happy Friday. Welcome to Guild Chat and thank you for spending some time with us today. I'm your host Rubi, and today we're going to be talking about something that we as a studio and a lot of game studios have been dealing with for months now, which is making and shipping a video game from our homes during quarantine. So we're gonna be talking with six of our devs today just about various aspects of how that works, how we're dealing with it, what's different, what's good, bad, and indifferent. So let's get started right away with our first three guests, and I will have you guys introduce yourselves and talk about what you work on or what you do at ArenaNet. Alex, let's start with you, and then Kent, and then Connor.
Alex Kain: Hi, I'm Alex Kane. I'm a senior writer and narrative designer at ArenaNet. I am—I was—the lead writer on Episode 4, which is launching next next week, week after, on the 28th. So that's coming up very soon yes and yeah I'm working on fun Guild Wars-y stuff.
Kent Benson: Yeah, hi, I'm Kent. I'm a QA analyst on Episode 4 team, and yeah it's coming out a week from now.
Rubi: Okay Connor?
Connor Fallon: Hello my name is Connor. I'm a senior designer and I am working on the new mysterious expansion. That's all you're gonna get out of me.
Rubi: Which, sorry guys, is not what we're talking about today. Let's just get ahead of that now.
Kent: He one-upped us.
Rubi: Right? He just came at the end with a—
Connor: You've got stuff that you can talk about, which is I think inherently more interesting. I don't know.
Rubi: It's certainly easier. Okay well, why don't we start with one of the most practical aspects, which is the equipment we don't have, like our homes don't come equipped with the sweet internet connection that the office has, and all of the the equipment we have to do our jobs. So how have you guys worked with that and what's different? Connor?
Connor: I mean I stole—I borrowed— sorry, I borrowed a monitor from work, and I basically plugged it into my laptop so I have have two screens still. That's really the only minimal disruption for workflow. Other than that though, I'm doing most of my work over remote desktop which means that like it's you know, very dependent on having a stable internet connection for me. But I mainly, you know, it's lucky I have a nice laptop that I can bring from location to location in order to do my work. If the internet connection is bad in one spot, I can go somewhere else. So yeah.
Rubi: Nice. How about you Kent?
Kent: I already had a computer set up at home, and it's actually fairly convenient that I built a new computer within the last two or three years. So, I have that, and as far as I guess the transitionary difficulties. They've all been relatively minor. So working over a remote desktop, there are things where I'll be using the clients on my actual computer and then I'll like take or make a gif for something like a bug. But then, I have to send it to myself to put onto my remote desktop, because I can only access JIRA via remote desktop. So yeah.
Rubi: That makes sense. Alex?
Alex: I didn't have to steal anything from the office.
Rubi: You guys they'll just give it to you if you ask.
Alex: Yeah, no, I mean it's more fun to seek forgiveness than ask permission. So what I've been fortunate with is that, you know, for the writing that we do, we do most of our initial drafts in things like Microsoft Word and Final Draft, which I already have personal copies of. So I didn't have to worry about remoting into my machine. So I've got a Surface laptop here that's plugged into an external monitor, which is the same monitor I use for gaming. It's a pretty wide monitor, so I can have all sorts of things on the screen at the same time like a command center or something. It's pretty cool. Because this is my sort of gaming area that I do my work in, however, I had to leave my work keyboard at home which is my favorite sort of typing keyboard. It's this Unicomp, it's modeled after the old IBM Model M, which is like those beige keyboards that you have when you're in school or something. And for like keyboard nerds, it doesn't have a standard switch, it uses a little spring inside the key. And it's actually called the catastrophically buckling compression column switch actuator mechanism, that's not like an MX Cherry or anything. But what it does is when I started typing on it, people start looking, and they're like "Are you a time traveler from 1983? Did you come from a high school somewhere?" Yeah so I missed that. I used the surface laptop keyboard, which is a fine keyboard, don't get me wrong, but it's not quite the same.
Rubi: So just to give a little look behind the scenes on, you know we joke about stealing equipment, there is not much left at my desk at the office. I will say that one of the things that ArenaNet did that I really appreciated was if you need stuff from your desk, we will work with you on that because I think all of us are starting to really realize "hey we're going to be doing this for a while". It happened when Washington was at its height of quarantine, like the highway signs said "stay home, stay safe" -cut-
Connor: Yeah so your call background is on point in regards to having like a nice display of things behind you. I'm curious how much of that was was what you had up beforehand and how much was you were like "I'm going to be doing this all the time. I'm going to make sure I have the best damn Guild Wars related background possible."
Rubi: Oh yeah. So let's see. I like ravaged my house. So like, all of my game boxes and my framed Tyria map, those were gifts from my husband over the years for like birthdays and Christmases. He had my game boxes put in a shadow box one year. So like, a lot of the stuff I already had. Like, we've all got the signed CD. I keep turning around to look. But I also had at my desk at work, I had a ton of fan art that I've collected over the years, and that's like all back there. I got all my extra life stuff. My whole family, we were tearing through the house going "What else do we have? What else? What's in bookshelves? What's in cabinets? What's on my desk at work?" And honestly, the extra life medals, the ones that I got, I was always putting up in our team's pod because it was a team effort, and I wanted to share. I took them back. They're mine now. So yeah, and like my nameplate, I took it off my desk at work. So yeah, between my desk and all over my house there's like 12 years of stuff back there. That was very a very long answer to your question, but that's where it came from.
Connor: I have a plain white wall because I haven't even been living in this apartment for the most part. So, I apologize.
Rubi: Yeah, you kind of. No, it's okay. It's nice and clean. It's minimalistic, as opposed to the massive clutter behind me. But yeah, my filing cabinet at work was literally wallpapered in fanart. There wasn't any space, so I just pulled it all down, and brought it home. So there's your answer. Yeah, so that's equipment. On a slightly different level, what about interaction with your team. Because, we're not really having to impromptu kitchen meetings, and we're not all fighting over 5-2 now. How has that changed for you? I'm not wrong. That's the good meeting room.
Alex: Yeah, 5-2, for those who don't know, the number of sizable meeting room at Anet HQ, we don't have too many of them. It's a very small number yeah. Yeah, I think that, for the stuff that I do, I really miss working with the physical team. The way that writers are set up is that we're sort of embedded in the episode team, so I sit with the Episode 4 writers. And it was easy for me to just you know ambiently hear what's happening at any given point. I can spin around at my desk and the whole team is right there around me, and I can ask questions, I can see what they're working on, I can see if they have a question for me, they can ask it. If I head a conversation going on and somebody wants to add something that I know is going to be a problem, I can just sort of enter into that conversation. But that doesn't quite happen as much now. So there's a lot more, you know, we have an open Teams channel that we use, that's for the whole Episode 4 team. And we have check-ins a lot more often to make sure that everyone's on the same track. It's been a change. It's been a workflow change, but the one-on-ones don't quiet capture the same ambiance the studio had.
like there definitely was an adjustment or figuring out because what what Alex is saying about like people just won't over here things naturally right so and yeah like there's no hallway conversation or anything like that where like someone will catch wind of something if they weren't they you know just naturally and so it becomes extra important for you to find like you know to actively put a lot of effort into keeping everyone in the loop and you know like having regular calls and like posting sending emails and posting you know confluence which is all we're always good practices to have but I think it really especially with with you know teams teams being like adjusting and people and people trying different things there's been a lot more of that right and a lot like like just having impromptu chats right or it's like hey let's let's talk about this in person because one of the other big things is text may seem like an okay substitute but it really isn't a lot of the time so even though it's not as good as being there in person like it's it's almost always better to talk over a team's chat even if no one has video right just because you can hear tone of voice you can you get a better sense of how people especially when you're like collaborating on ideas how people feel about things versus like trying to interpret their feelings from text so yeah that's that's my big thing is it's just you have to do as much as you can to keep people in the loop and keep it personal both of those things require more active effort I will say the opposite side of that coin is that now that we all are digital it's so much easier to set up a one-on-one with somebody whereas in the studio it's like okay well we'll set up a one-on-one will food you know we'll try to get a meeting room and there are like eight meeting rooms and a hundred meetings that everyone across the studio is trying to have at the same time but now it's just like you know oh I need to talk with Connor about something I'll talk to Connor hey do you have five minutes cool video chat done you know it's it's that aspect of it's a lot easier now that is something you've made me realize is how often I would be having a conversation via X with somebody in a different part of the office and we'd just be like hey do you want to grab a room because yeah you're right it's hard to get a meeting room but there were a lot of small side rooms where a couple of us would just like duck in there and hammer something out really quickly so it is it is super important communication just keeping that up at this point how about you can't yeah actually I I actually am one of the people that sits directly behind Alex so oh I miss you man yeah it's it's been that especially as someone who's um I'm definitely the kind of person that prefers to kind of like talk to people in person and kind of like gauge their emotional responses and all that stuff that comes with interpersonal conversation and it's just kind of like the just being able to like overhear things and pick up on things that like there's I definitely feel like in addition to like the overarching kind of like I would say theme of quarantine which is like alone together or something you know something like that it's if there's like there's like yeah there's there's kind of like this almost like invisible barrier between like humor like personal interaction when you're like separated everyone is in like their own I guess office as you will and it can be like difficult especially for people with like kind of like apprehension about like just poking people for like conversations there's like a there's like a degree of hesitancy I think there too like invade people's personal almost like their personal virtual space yeah that makes as far as not as first not overhearing and not being physically in there and Alex he reminded me we had a we were having a large teams meeting for something earlier this week and I was talking about a point and when I finished da he was like okay thank you for that and by the way I really miss hearing your voice and I just had this moment of madness hearing everybody's voice so does that human connection also is has become a bigger thing yeah so yeah yeah I like feeling kind of down and then they'd have you chat with someone and I feel better it's nice to see people it is it it makes a huge difference I don't I don't always turn my camera on in meetings we were kind of joking about that before the show just because half the time I look kind of ready and I don't necessarily want people to I don't want to inflict that on people but it's it's nice seeing and hearing people it's nice seeing and hearing the people that you miss seeing in the office every day even more so their animals their pets yes oh my gosh pets invading livestream meetings pets invading teams meetings and cameras is fantastic I love it I very much appreciate it alex is like water so I'm working around before so gotta be careful there's a lot of little things that people do to like spice up their chat as well our producer Kai keeps changing his like digital background she sings like there's a cave or like Jurassic Park and then one time he changed his digital background to be inside the office so everybody was in that meeting he's been in old lion's arch before like he's really been traveling during quarantine - a lot of fantastical locations oh yeah there she is yay oh thank you he's just lurking he's like whatever he yeah so team's meetings teams meetings backgrounds are fantastic my favorite one that I've seen so far was one of our guys had a background that was like a face hugger and it said free masks and that remains that remains the best one I've seen so far even better than Kai's office background if you're watching come on Kai get the face hugger mask background notes at the actually but you know what you've made me think of something drew our audio director was in the office for something a little while back and he went to my desk and took a picture of it and texted it to me and was like I can I can I can feel you here in spirit which initially made me sad but maybe I can make that my background somehow no no I still have that text so speaking of backgrounds what about fitting your workspace into your home life because this is we're all home offices now how did you guys how did you work that Kent well yeah I was gonna say um I just you know like so when I guess it's different for everyone and for especially I think there's a difference between like if you're renting a place or even just a room in as you can see my office is also my bedroom so that's it can be a bit it just weird sort of to like I mean it's the shortest commute I've ever made to work but yeah it's it's definitely a weird kind of like psychological I think space to be in where you what what is normally like where I work on like artwork or writing or just like recreational sort of stuff is now also my work space so it's like it's there's like a weird dissonance and for me it's like it's very much I wouldn't say it's my favorite thing but it's definitely because I think there are people who appreciate that sort of like work home disconnect and yeah the the setup that I have doesn't necessarily accommodate for that but yeah managing how about you Alex working from home the shift has been a lot more challenging than I thought like I have I said I'm set up where where my game station is it's this nook that sort of you know set into the wall so I'm kind of like staring at a wall all day but it's a nice wall so it all works out at the end of the day I suppose I I'm used to doing my writing in a space that's separate from from from where I live if I was you know in the office that was great it was away from my apartment I didn't have to worry about it I if I would if it was like after work if I was writing personal stuff if I was you know working on side projects or whatever on the weekend I would go to a coffee shop and I would write there there are no more coffee shops and everything is done from home now so there's this sort of conflicts of all this of all this stuff so I have to be a lot more diligent about stepping away from the computer I you know during the week this area is the work area and during the weekend it is the game area and every other part of the apartment is very much the you know you're not thinking about work when you're here don't even try it and that's that's generally how I've managed to keep saying also I'm getting a lot more use out of my patio which is over there which is a very small space which is about big enough for a single chair but I'm outside which is the important thing yes it's very true Connor how about you follow up on something Alex touched on so I've actually so I very early on in pandemic decided to move my family lives in Seattle so I decided to go back to them so I wouldn't be quarantine alone for a while they did internet yes for a while their internet was not good enough so it's actually commuting to my apartment and my apartment became my like 200 people in there yeah then they got there next and so I haven't had to do that until today or random reasons that we want to go into the I touched on something that is interesting which is I he and I both have like side projects ArenaNet is very good about like you've got indie games you want to work on on the side like you just talk to someone they like to do it but I find I find that the one of the side effects of quarantine and I feel like Alex lightly touched on this is that mental divide between like day job and side projects is it's it's like you don't get as much of a refresh from switching over because you're working on the same computer and like it's not as like I'm moving to a different space and doing a different thing it feels more like you're doing a different flavor of the same thing which was always kind of true but you deal more of it and that's been that's been kind of a bummer but I you know it's I still can do a thing where like I'll take my laptop and move it somewhere else right and sit somewhere else that helps but that's probably been the biggest side effect of quarantine for me is that that lack of a lack of separation that occurs between all those different things yeah yeah absolutely and touching touching on that lack of separation so it's confession time Connor you come into like my background looks really sweet out of camera he is so very carefully curated I got a little bit lucky in that we happen to have a spare bedroom because my oldest daughter had moved in with her fancy last year so we had this bedroom that we had turned into a gym because we're nothing if not a cliche and we had a computer room downstairs so I pulled my entire rig up here and now it's my office and while this background looks fantastic on the other side of these monitors like just behind the camera is a whole home gym and over here is like the hamper and luggage storage so kind of like making it fit in this corner is very much okay now don't let people see your dirty laundry because that's weird and nobody needs to see your elliptical but after once we got all of that set up at the end of the workday I leave this room and I do not come back in which means I'm PC gaming very little these days just because like Alex my my work rig is my game rig I'm playing with my switch a lot more and my son just bought an oculus quest and he's happy to share so I'm like playing the hell out of beat Sabre and other things that don't require me to be in this office but it is it's important to have that separation I'm gonna lose my mind because I'm so bad about taking breaks so yeah now you know now you know the awful secret of what's outside the camera view my TV yeah that's my TV like that like when I'm watching TV I'm always just kind of like looking over and there's the workstation and the part of me part of me gets a little sad but I love my job but I don't want to see it at the end of the day because otherwise I will work 80 hours a week and be miserable yeah that was a problem very early on right is that from home all of the usual cues that you have to determine when the day is over don't exist anymore you know like like for me it was always you know okay well get into the office and do this that the other thing and oh when these people start packing up to leave that's usually when I start to pack up to leave now it's just I wake up eat breakfast sit down oh it's six o'clock in the evening now I probably should eat something you know for for dinner that's it it's it's tough like the the first first couple of weeks in particular I would just you know be here for a lot longer than the company would prefer that I was working on things yeah and it was you know that so you have to start setting you know boundaries right you have to you have to say okay I am on for these hours and then I'm done and I'm leaving not you know I'm not still periodically checking email I'm not still available on teams like no I'm done and now I need to leave and then I come back tomorrow it's it's tough it's tough to set those boundaries when you're always on you know yeah I got I got super protective of that work-life integration a couple of years ago anyway so I've been and and like you were saying Alex it you don't have those cues I don't have like oh I have a bus to catch so I literally have to go or I will miss my bus and then I live here but I got it I got really careful because I was starting to burn out because I was working away too much and I got very protective of that a couple years ago so I'm kind of in that habit anyway but it fell away really fast at the beginning of quarantine because hey it's right here and at the time my desk was in the main part of the house downstairs we have an open floor plan no matter where I went there so it was that's that's been a lot of effort to make sure hey your workday starts at this time yes it's very easy because your commute is 40 seconds it's very easy to just go ahead and wander in there because you know it's an hour early but whatever yeah it that's so rad in the long run or alternatively at the end at the end of the day if I see like a new-build pop I'm like I wonder if there's any bug regressions I could not like sneak in I do fight guilt when I get up in the morning and I check my email when I start my workday and I'm like oh gosh here's emails that came in at like 8 o'clock at night and then I'm like oh should I be doing that no that person shouldn't be doing that either yeah what were you gonna say Connor I was just gonna say it is one of the things that switched notes a little bit to things that are kind of nice yeah I'm lazy being able to roll out of bed like 15 minutes before like I actually start it's very true it's like I don't have to wake up as long before work I can wake up like just a little bit before I tend to start working I have access to my full kitchen for every meal which is fantastic I had as we talked about show up randomly is a nice we did we did have a long conversation yesterday in our in our episode for team about how much we miss the food trucks though at work yeah it was a long wait that would be a mark question and I don't know the answer to that he should if he does your chop salad is fantastic yeah yeah they're yuzu aioli and the fries are really good too but I would say instead of picking something that I like would normally get I would say something that I'd been like try it like anticipating but I didn't get like the one time that I got there was a fork and fin I wanted to try there they're so good yeah yeah they're dangerously good yeah they are yes shortly before quarantine I guess shortly before PAX East my husband happened to have a day off work and I was like hey let's like come down to Bellevue and let's have a lunch date and I want you to try fork and fin because I thought he would really like it they weren't at our complex that day they were over like near bungee so we headed over there and it was cool cuz we got to see some friends just run into him in the parking lot but the fork and fin guy like recognized me as an ArenaNet person because that's and every time I went out every time I went out there when he was at a read on it he was like out there talking to co-workers and like he knew everybody by name the guy is ridiculously nice and I miss him and I had forgotten about that and now I'm sad there's a lot of food-truck people that were super nice and like would remember people and were always super friendly yeah ultimate melt yeah yeah oh gosh the ultimate melt guy was so sweet thank you morning two I think yeah well according to a schedule that was posted in our chat it's in Redmond today near tipsy cow Oh seriously yeah I want them to do well I like what all the food trucks to make it through I want all the food trucks to make it through the pandemic okay like the thing the thing that the food trucks gave us that helped a lot was that it would it was an element of randomness that would come in to the studio right you never really knew it we'd never seen before yeah it would just be like mm-hmm this is the new truck that no one's I've gotten there's always this mystery of like it's the farc gonna be good yeah yeah no yeah yeah all right we should all start asking each other what we had for lunch today and was it good and was it weird and should I not have it so but yeah I'm and a note on something that Connor said about good things because I don't want us to just sit around be like this is awful because there are a lot of upsides when we were in the office my commute was fifty mile round-trip most of it on 405 and that was terrible I hate totally worth it but it was not like on bad days I was on the road three plus hours a day to get to and from work yeah Big Five is a nightmare I don't I don't have that anymore I can sleep in I can like wander downstairs in my pajamas and make coffee and take my time drinking it instead of like grabbing it from my husband on the way out the door as I run for the car and that is like I've literally gotten up to three hours a day back in my life and that means I get to go out and I get to play in my garden or I get to hang out with kids and it does make a good difference I am a lot less tired stays yeah there's also some there's also some good collaboration tools on teams actually one that I've gotten a lot of use out of which allows people to coordinate in a way that's new that we weren't really able to do in person even is when you screen share on teams other people can request control which doesn't mean they take control away it means they get an additional mouse on your celina so you can be like if someone's working unlike in the map you could actually be like okay well hold on a second instead of me just trying to point describe the thing like I can if you let me you do it I can just like click and like highlight the specific thing I'm talking about right and in some ways that makes close collaboration with like map art and with with you know other designers easier and that's that's really nice yeah that's that's been handy screen sharing can be a little bit scary not and not in a bad and horrible and embarrassing way but I hadn't thought about this the other day I was go ahead I was gonna say one of the questions that we got actually was about how we how the writers actually use those tools to work on the story content yeah which you know we we we use teams and and the way it normally works is that you know someone you know Tom usually or Bobby Stein the associate narrative director will we'll have the script that we're reading up on up on screen and we'll use that screen sharing tool to read through it and you know we do what we do in the studio right it's all of us and we're just voicing out roll or we're voicing the roles and we're reading through it and it's it's still as much fun now as what's up that's what I said you're a fantastic voice actor by the way I would think you're taking those readings oh man I don't know how we get to that meeting no reason yeah I was thinking that you know you know because we're still dealing with the fallout from you know the the kovat situation in in Hollywood you know uh you know we're thinking okay well you know maybe maybe we should just do a stream when Episode four launches and it's the narrative team you know I think there's still a bit of you in one of the bits when I think when I watched something recently I think that's still Alex's voice and I'll confirm with you later Alex talked to me about this live stream after the show okay yes and maybe asura that usually yeah I get I get I get pegged with the asura voices usually Georgian timing they like to cast working timing for reasons that defy understanding I can't possibly understand why do you know I don't okay yeah everybody heard it it's a it's like it's a lot of fun it is a lot of fun these these recording recording be these voice-over sort of reads that we do we've been doing them for years ever since Tom became our narrative director we've been all getting in the room and doing these reasons we've talked about it a lot on guilt chat and honestly the thing that has changed is that more people are able to come to these things because usually we're limited by the size of the meeting room you know like we've got now we can have as many people listening in as we want that's been a huge help for things like table reads which is when we go through everything one last time before we lock it in and normally it's like okay well we've got all the writers in there we've got editing we've got localization we've got the designers of the content and the room is like bursting to capacity yeah but now we don't have to worry about that quite so much which is kind of nice that's handy you know what on that topic why don't we talk about general productivity what's what has affected for you guys well what's been challenging how's it changed overall or have you had to adapt kit this one's about a bit of a mixed bag from because in some ways a like there's like a familiarity or comfortableness with being at my like my usual desk station and so there's there's that but as and and you know and I'm pretty vocal about this on I think Twitter but I have like I have ADHD inattentive type so there are aspects of that of that condition that I think are kind of intensified or amplified by working from home because there is that familiarity and like comfortableness but it's like there's I think it's a little and and I think to touch on an earlier point I made er before the whole like work home separation that that's part of the reason why it's so important I think to me but one of the great things about you know being vocal about this is that I've actually kind of like discovered and run into a bunch of my own co-workers who also are going through the same thing I am and have them also have ADHD and we created a I guess like a neuro diversity channel on teams and so we kind of like you touch with each other and check in it's really nice I was I was literally sitting here going I wonder if he knows about that channel I wonderful yeah yeah yeah it it helps it helps a lot because that's my concentration has really suffered I am unbelievably forgetful and I am I am so lucky to have a team of people that we are always proactive about kind of reminding each other and picking up the slack for each other when we struggle yeah that helps me much like I'm more forgetful and I I lose track of stuff more easily now that I'm home yeah and like that's just like up for me it's like a big shout-out to my producer our current producer Matt Lambton and also Sara who did a production for episode 4 there they've just been like on the ball and especially also my design lead Kirk who's been just keeping on top of things and I'm checking in with me so that's also a fantastic James Richter in a big way as well like shout out to the whole production team without them yes I would I would be surfing YouTube all day probably seriously huge everywhere yes good producers are worth their weight in gold and we love you guys yeah so yeah that is but yeah it's it is a thing that I think a lot of us are struggling with right now and that's been the biggest impact to my productivity and again having your peers around you that both understand and aren't shy about giving you that push when it's needed and helping you keep track and remember things has been invaluable it sounds like to all of us yeah so for your working experience overall and we've we've kind of been touching on this under the umbrella of productivity but for your work experience overall what are some of the big differences for you guys and that can be hey I stopped wearing real pants or sweat shorts appalled like what does that mean I don't know Mesmer pants I don't know I'm I am a 100% wearing yoga pants right now because I want to be comfortable and I have no shame about it don't care cancer pain of a kind of a binary thing you don't have pants oh you do yeah overall how is your working experience changed it's inevitable water skiing because a lot of what the writing staff tries to do is you know we spend half of our time in meetings and we spend half of our time writing actually it's more like three quarters over times and meetings and a quarter for time right it's like that seems conservative yeah yeah it's more like yeah it's it's yeah we get all we get the download of what's going on and we talked to the design team and we hook up with our producers and then we try to sit down and focus and write and sometimes that can be difficult you know a lot of the time when we really have to crank out a script we will you know like this is alone time we need to get up and I need to go somewhere and they need to work sometimes we'll go to an office sometimes we'll go into the common room sometimes I would just say hey I don't have any more meetings this afternoon I'm going to take my work and I'm going to go somewhere like a coffee shop and I'm going to just bang out this script okay you know for the rest of the day now you know we have these digital meetings and we spend a lot of time in them but it's more it's easier to find that focus time for writing which is a good and a bad thing because you know without the ambience that you're used to it can be difficult to find that sort of creative you know mojo yeah but you know sometimes I'll I'll have no problem I'll click into place and I will just bang out a script no problem and sometimes you know I'll just be staring at a white sheet of paper for a day and you know it's it's it's a different it's a difference you know it's a change but you know we're still hitting we're still hitting our milestones and you know we're all pretty happy with how things are going and you know at least for a narrative things are still trucking along the the team support really makes it makes all the difference you know having people there to to collaborate with to talk with constantly is a is a huge boon so that that's that's really made the difference I think yeah how about you Connor how's your working experience changed overall what are some of the big impacts yeah the big thing for me is like I you know a lot of my style and a lot of how I did things was if I needed to talk someone I would just walk over and talk to them right and there's still some of that with IMing them but it's harder to tell like if what someone's up to right how much are you disrupting them yeah if you're doing that like often you could just find out what we're up by be like okay they're clearly working on something I'll poke them later right like but the place same time like it's also they can just ignore the messages until they have time to look at it yeah but so that's and so but when basically the side effects is that is I talked about earlier like not not only is do i I talked about doing work to keep other people in the loop I also do a lot more work to poke people about stuff that I'm curious about that it's not like directly my things but it's good to know about what's going on throughout the studio right like I'm not on living world but I want to know like how things are going over there so I'll like check in with Kirk and I'll check in with Cameron and things like that and see like what the what the latest developments are right because that's it's important for me to know even if it's not a daily thing for me yeah it's just harder to get that get that ambient information that with things you would have learned from like sitting down with lunch it was someone or like walking down the hall and running into someone in the kitchen what are you doing today oh I'm working on this oh that's neat right like that doesn't happen you don't have them prompt you like what are you up to conversations you have to be like hey I'm curious what you're up to and it's a little it's very different yes yeah how about you Kent yeah working experience overall it's it's been a lot of that and I know we touched on this earlier about like and the the whole like making sure you don't work past like how long you're supposed to and that's been a real challenge for me especially as we get closer to release there is definitely they're sort of this like pull to you know keep working and like until you're I guess satisfied with like how much work you've gotten done during a day it it's it's not it's not the best sort of kind of like habit but it's I also know like in a week it'll be over and yeah and I I'm looking forward to kind of like taking it easy for about a week or so after after episode 4 drops 11 days yeah yeah but I have on that note though Connor brought it up I have on occasion messaged him about because I'm gonna be moving to what he's working on afterward so we're gonna be connecting yeah you're getting no more no further comments on that though no further comment honestly I feel like maybe this is like a a symptom of how my workflow has changed I don't like reflexively go just like I trust you guys don't make me sorry please I don't trust myself so have some of my faith in its yes for you so peeking how has your guys's workflow changed with this like for example for me I don't I don't have a lot of I don't have those in house accountability factors where I'm sitting in the room with the rest of my team and I have to sit down and like make a very clear list every day of this is what's happening this it's Monday here's what's happening here the meetings you have I have to have that in front of me and I have to I have to be like okay hello Fifty's did this thing or it's not gonna happen what about you guys I always I always start today by checking my email and terrible I usually look and and end of end end of day just uh but just keep the track of because there are like things we get in like if QA requests are finished and you have to just to make sure that there's no feedback and I'm looping in the designers if there is and checking to make sure that just to verify them and kick them down the the request flow line essentially yeah what about you Connor what about you Alex uh no I I talk a lot Connor Connor she go now Connor uh honestly don't know if it's changed that much because I face the first thing i do is i log into raw desktop and then i basically go through the flow of stuff that i did before just over remote desktop instead of on my desktop so you know I open up my email I check my emails I open up whatever editing programs I'm using a day arrange my windows in a way that like I can look at them both same time and switch mean things there's always a little bit of you know make sure I have everything stinked like it's that honestly it's it's kind of surprising to me that my workflow has not changed it's dramatically the one thing that can destroy couse it if the internet is unstable I might be like alright this this period of time is a wash so I'll like I'll make my work hours like a little bit strange I'll just them like a little bit dynamically just to like - to adjust to whatever is whatever the constraints are that are rationally introduced into my life yeah that makes sense so I do want to where we're going on an hour but I do want to hit on some questions from our players just to get your guys's take on this a couple of these we've touched on a little bit but you can go into more depth if you want to what if anything do you do in your home office to make it feel like you're going home when the work is over do you have special rules you impose on yourself during business hours or if you complete or have you completely given up on wearing real pants like the rest of us [Laughter] yeah it does depends I I have to I have to get dressed in normal person clothes or I can't function as a professional light I I tried it like like initially we're like you know I was like oh working from home that's so cool now we could do like school's out kid you know no one could stop yeah like sweats for days yeah so like you know my go sweatpants and you know like like crunchy crunchy hoodies and stuff and ultimately I just realized I wasn't nearly as productive because Xena I'm you know be great if I just like watch television and you know like I can't do that you know I have to like have to be you know like dressed in you know at the computer working and then when the day is done turn off the turn off the computer like that's been a big thing is turning the computer off not just like closing the lid like like definitely turning the thing off and just stepping stepping physically away from it as as far physically as I can which in my case is about three feet that way because that's my couch and that's where I watch television but when you have that when you have a Bellevue apartment you you make do with what you can I do but now with the benefits of that don't really you know make a whole lot of sense like oh all the cool stuff that's right within walking distance that's close do it anymore yeah Mill Creek is not so bad right now yeah I would say for me the separation is like non-existent so like inside your home office to make it feel like like what I'm going home work is over but I'm like also in the place where I hang out the most I think because it's like there's not there's not much to the rest of the house really other than like the kitchen and the there's like a living room area but there's not much around there so it's really just like I like my separation is like me going up to go like make dinner like that's the end of my workday and then I come back I'm like work is over now now this room is you know like it's relaxation time but yeah yeah how about you Connor yeah I mean I I think I'm gonna sink with basically everyone else where there isn't as much separation as I should probably should establish right like I I know I know but getting you to look I am one of the things is I do I am also in the same camp if I have to get I determined fairly early on that I have to I get actually dressed every day because if I don't I'm just like well especially I think it's combined with the choice to having go back to my parents during quarantine I didn't mention my office set up in the basement so I'm like how much of a stereotype I really want to be oh my parents basement in like a bathrobe like my computer like now I got I got at least up close on so I didn't think about that yeah so it's part of my it's a matter of personal dignity more than more than anything else and there's also the lingering thought it was like what if my camera what if I accidentally turn my camera on and my bathrobe into people like oh you guys just like my nightmare so I I mean you don't we joke about not wearing real pants my my criteria has become would you answer the door in this if your son brings his girlfriend over would you die of shame and like that's that's my threshold like am i cool with other people seeing what I have on right now and if the answer is yes then you're good for the day so yeah it's but I think I think what Alex was saying for a while there was we were all kind of enjoying that stereotype and that joke about oh my gosh we're at home we're by ourselves we can just completely fall to pieces and I think we all kind of had that gradual learning curve this is not great for productivity and also my personal dignity like I said on gross yeah sure you know if I just going on for like a week or two then great no problem but then it's and had to race for myself yeah yeah I like that you do and become who you are [Laughter] so aside from not wearing not wearing dignified at grown-up clothes what are some of the things that are easier when done from home and what things are harder and I think I think that's intended like in the context of shipping a gain or shipping live content it's not in the context of like making up corn or brownies or something remember that time that Alex cut your own kitchen was like rice krispie treats and that's I don't get any it may not look like it but I've gained 18,000 pounds since we started working from home because I will I will bake things and I'll bring them in for the whole studio and that doesn't happen anymore so I bake things and then I have to eat all of them and it's very sad because that means I'm going to die soon but on the plus side you know in the context of making games not brownies yes some things have been made easier I think we've talked about a lot of them being able to collaborate with a lot more people than physical space usually allows has been very helpful being able to instantly collaborate with people who you know it's like oh you know normally in a studio environment these two people are always talking because you know they're always working very closely together and so they're sitting next to each other and they're always you don't want to interrupt their conversations because they're always very important now that doesn't quite happen as much you can you can just sort of say like hey you know I'm putting out a putting out a feeler if you're ready to have a chat you know let's do it and then Boop they're up on your screen no problem and now you're collaborating with those people it's it's that that particular element has been great being able to collaborate with people in departments that you usually don't collaborate with everyone is the same distance apart now you know so so it's it's it's been pretty great at facilitating that stuff I do flip side for things that are harder which I personally struggle with I don't know and I always feel like I struggle with it disproportionately but I know other people do is - which is the hues of when someone is done talking because of there's often delay or hard I don't know what you're talking about Connor this is why this is why I'm calling you that's actually the thing that we do a lot of the time now is we there's a feature where you can like raise your hand and it's the kind of like kindergarten right where's like I have a thing to say and then like people get called on like when they had but it does make thing a lot easier I that a lot easier I also have developed a habit of ending statements with and that's the end of my thought and that's the end of my thought yeah I yield my time over and out I yield my time goodbye we were in a meeting last week where that was happening and I jokingly suggested that we start using like like no Vera out and and it took and I was so happy for the rest of the meeting I had nothing else to say in that meeting after that I had already finished my thing but it was fantastic listening to every bit like Matt out was was like the best thing so I would like to propose that you all do that mic drop mic drop you're not done yes it Rubio now okay and then I'll turn off my camera and I will leave this room so the Alex it's now the Alex Kane show Alex I do want to point out as far as the baking that you have to eat yourself I've been mailing I love baking also I've been mailing boxes of cookies to friends so you can get rid of it and make people happy so I'm just saying I would give you my address later you can support the post office now I did get I ordered like a big stack of shipping boxes and started sharing with friends that way by the post office and I'm realizing that none of you have received cookies and I'm sorry now I feel bad Just My Luck I'll skimp and I'll get like a flat-rate envelope and I'll shove a bunch of cookies in there and you'll get it Oh cookie crumbs yay all right well let's see we there was a question about did you guys take equipment software and computers from the offices in order to continue working I think we've confirmed that we have all ransacked our workstations what is what is oh go ahead oh I didn't I I mean I already had like everything that I technically needed well I don't even feel a little bit bad I have three monitors here I have like an Origin laptop at my office chair and like all of my decorations I made two trips and I did not feel a little bit bad because we live here now I will have to go back and get my coffee making supplies I had my grinder and stuff in the office because I'm sorry nurse and I am yeah so I have to go I can get that that's it oh wait no okay Kent and then Conner Kent go oh please my hand I the one major purchase I did make was an air portable air conditioner which was yes like for most people is like most people assume that Seattle like is and generally most of the time it has pretty mild temperatures but there is like a period of time where it does get really hot and warm yeah and yeah I'm not I'm not a fan so I got a fan Oh meanwhile I hate these weather I just put that on the record I am I am sad and resentful of today's weather so Connor what were you gonna say no it's not unfortunate will forever remain a mystery fine by me okay why haven't you got that fancy keyboard that you love so much Alex from your office yeah it's really it it's really wide the keyboard is really wide and I don't really have enough desk space for it so what I do have aside from my surface laptop the keyboard I normally use for like gaming is this it's a key Crom that is a wireless keyboard that I can just sort of pick up and move around and the the the Unicom model M is like the size of a Volkswagen and I can't really just easily move it around then it's wired to so it takes your car so yeah I'm now that we're talking about it I'm thinking you know what okay if I like get rid of my speakers I move some things around okay all right maybe I could get a bigger desk this desk by the way like oh I'll show you like so like that's the wall right and that's like it's like right up against it so I really don't have a lot of space to expand to the desk I got lucky this you have an office next time I do I do have an office nook now I wonder if anyone has actually taken their like 6-foot desk table from the office I'm kind of curious if like they did anybody go that far serious yeah maybe holy crap okay that's intense and I'm impressed because I do kind of Miss my six-foot desk I finally got one last year I was using like a five-foot went up until then and I loved it so much as someone with a roommate it's someone with a roommate who has who recently just bought a standing desk I can probably see people possibly you know taking a standing desk if they can fit it in a vehicle but yeah if I had gotten one of those standing desks that some people have it would absolutely be here at home because I would not leave that in the office for this long people who were taking their whole stations at a certain point it becomes a question of what's easier it's probably easier to just roll your whole desk out and then take a I mean I don't it is to bring all the individual components I don't know it's true okay so I I love this question from one of our players what is management and leadership doing to organize everything right now and keep your morale up I want to talk about morale things ooh we did the go p-- thing yeah studio leadership did a cool thing where there there is I guess a an organization that takes people on video conference live tours of of this farm and they had all these rescue animals there they had it's called I can't remember these things it was like a million years ago and it wasn't good for a long time yes go to any day yes it was uh it was a lot of fun and I we were all kind of skeptical at first we were like hmm okay this like has all the hallmarks have a thing that sounds really cool but is probably gonna be super lame but no it was the coolest thing ever and I know that I'm still sort of riding on the high of that you know so so so yeah like long story short I'm Way more excited about this than I should be it was no right with you and yeah cuz we used to do regular morale events right there there used to be and it was very simple you know it's like Oh cake cookies nachos you know like like there's just stuff that gets people in the same space having fun and talking with each other um so yeah studio leadership has had to get a little bit more clever about that stuff so go to meeting go to meeting was was one of those things and that was great and I'm I'm hopeful that there's more of that stuff in the future that they decide to do they also gave us like in the adjustment to working from home a lot of people became overwhelmed you know they were doing that thing where they were just working on stuff because they didn't know how to stop because they never had to do that before studio leadership's been very good about you know like hey if you need a day take a day like everyone should just take a day don't worry about your any time off or anything like that just decompress get away from get away from the computer and that has also been extraordinarily helpful yeah those are the two instances I can think of in particular yeah here two days in the hole so I well I have two days like backlogged essentially that I can take off that I will it'll be part of the week probably that I take off after release but yeah how wide this goes in the org but there's a Friday night um virtual happy hour where it's like a teams meeting have a cocktail with you turn your camera on and let's just hang out for a while on Friday nights so that's like I think it's like at five o'clock after work is done for the day and everybody can just kind of have a little bit of social time as best you can right now and unwind so that's been ongoing things we've been at home there has been a few times now that are like are our teams has like bug triage meetings at the end of each day and there there's been a number of times now where those meetings have kind of like run longer past kind of like a OD just because we're we just end up talking for a period of time afterwards that's fantastic that's great so there's some things that you guys simply can't do away from the office are there are there things in your workflow that cannot happen remotely and that have to be in the office as much as we've tried I don't think we have a good substitute for standing in front of a white board and all writing things on the whiteboard like there's there's yes but there's nothing that quite hits that same feeling we've gotten creative but it's just there's that is that is an experience that is not easily replicated oh yeah yeah yeah prints just like whiteboard yeah yeah that is the thing that we've we've made heavy use of I think on all teams brainstorming for brainstorming upcoming stuff and just general ideas so yeah that's that's a thing that we've I think we've all kind of had to work around we need like digital whiteboard embedded in teams or something okay that's with your mouse okay yeah it's not great comes with a built in chalk noises ropes I hate it I would never use my fingernails hurt right now that's awful thanks man all right so let's see other than the camaraderie yeah we are going to talk to our next group here in a minute but there's one more question from a viewer that I want to touch on other than the camaraderie of in-person contact what do you miss most from the office work experience and I have to note that one of our devs Robert was looking at the questions and he would like that he misses the goldfish crackers more than anything they will give him goldfish crackers he wants goldfish crackers in the little woke up from the hamster feeder that's maybe that's it's the goldfish cracker experience from our kitchen so what about you guys yeah the hamster feeders were dangerous though like Oh forty thousand Reese's Pieces have some yeah I mean every every game studio has that problem right yeah it's the worst so so yeah that's or like become the camaraderie element is a big part of it you know the we were talking about like the lunch trucks so we were talking about like bringing in food for everyone honestly it really is just the the ambiance of being around physical people there's just an element to it that you can't quite capture in the digital space just that that that sort of low hum of activity going around you know when you when you're in a studio that's very difficult to capture in a digital environment and no one's really figured out a good way to do that and I think that that's had an effect on my productivity to some degree and I don't know Connor can't what if you agree but that to me has probably been the biggest hit to me like to the mental shift is that sort of that sort of constant hum of you know keyboards typing and you know computers whirring and the air conditioner and like all did all the sounds and the ambience of being in the studio were just gone now yeah I agree in Cup in college there was a place that I would hang out most of the time in between classes it was like a student-run coffee shop called the eighth note and we but you know there would be like a lot of students just hanging out there having conversations and had like that kind of like almost like bar setup so they were bar stools too so you could be sitting up at like the counter the bar counter and working on homework and that sort of stuff and we're projects and that yeah like I've got really used to working when there's like a lot of background and white kind like white noise and that was definitely one of I think the benefits of working in an open office environment which no longer exists so yeah I'm definitely with you there that looks on that right you toner element where the lot of the things that I feel like I miss most like working at home a lot of distractions in quotes I removed which are like a lot of those ambient people having conversations about random things stuff like that but I really becomes clear how much some of those things help you recharge and then actually help you get more stuff done in the long run like I will remember there's there were definitely times and we talked about this during I think the last when we were giving a post-mortem for when we gave the guild chat for a shadow in the ice about like how we'd have the entire living world team getting an argument about Twizzlers versus like red vines and like that's just random conversations like that can't happen and it it it they those things really served as a nice like right variety in the day that helped helps it not just become a grind I don't know if that makes sense yeah so yeah I miss I miss I miss those I miss those random exchanges cuz even now like you can't have random conversation with someone but there's always like there's because you have to take initiative there's almost always a clear purpose right it's not like I came across something and and I had that experience of having a conversation about something random with someone which then may have been inspiring or like you know helped me recharge or something like that so yeah absolutely for real though Twizzlers great why wait there okay so are you a red join Finn no I'm at whistlers fan how about you Connor your red vines I I was I thought I was a Twizzlers fan but when this debate broke out I tried both of them and red vines are definitely better all right Alex I don't care that much so Alex you have to be the tiebreaker yeah this is absolutely a conversation I'm going to get involved in right now there Connor there's here there's your argument I have provided I provided a fight for Erica tape to the white board that had an arrow pointing it tastes like shoe polish and please please let that still be there when we go back to the white green green apple oh no I did I talked to somebody last night at work and I I can't remember who it is now so whoever you are I'm very sorry this is this is part of what I was talking about earlier I'm super forgetful but the other morning I was doing something I was I was like making coffee or something and I had like this sudden spasm of panic remembering all of the dairy products that are at work and I was just like oh damn buddy clean out the fridge like or is there just like still oh no so I was asking somebody and they were like no it's fine the milk the milk got cleaned out so defer Everage did not get cleaned out and whoever was telling me that said it turns out that diet soda does go bad I had no idea it's like diet sodas barely food anymore it's just chemicals it turns out that we did at least take that precaution so yeah this is that hot Gil were stupid content that people people love this is our life now and yeah and my and my little quaggan stress toy more Guild Wars 2 stuff that I brought home so alright you guys want to add go ahead kid let's just say I have to tuck in my uh Charlie over there behind me yeah he looks very comfortable what about you guys Alex and Connor anything else before we go to break I know oh yeah mark do we did we get a picture okay yes mark says he has it hold on I'm here for ya right my my office door is too close there's because Sasha will come in here and just yell and bunny will get up on the desk and actually like alright it's time for me to sit on your entire mouse pad so I I try to like get a little modicum of peace and not allow them in so no cats here sorry they're just they're worried about you they are not they are hungry they don't care about me they're cats I'm all right there they are wonderful and I love them they're perfect babies so alright well thank you guys very much for sharing part of your day and for talking about what it's like should the game at home you guys watching we have three more of our dev team to join us after the break so stick around and we'll be back in a few minutes [Music] [Music] [Music] all right welcome back we are we are already like ruining Nick here so thank you guys or thank you guys for spending some of your time with us today why don't you get us started by introducing yourselves and talking about what you do here to redeem it we're gonna go Nick Megan Jason so Nick okay should I look into the camera okay hi yes and I am a game designer here at ArenaNet my most recent work is the assault on the frosted Adele for Episode four that's coming out on the 28th as multiple people have mentioned already in the last round that's me spoilers that was the party trailers a spoiler that's fair okay I'm Megan I introduce both of you very okay I'm Megan and this is moe moe we love moe um my other dog doesn't like to be held so she will not be here so my name is Megan I am a map artist uh you know me from such hits as Episode four which is not out yet so I also everyone and also Glenn's legacy and also other things hit list I love it and I love mo and his blip he's a very good boy all right how about you Jason hey I'm Jason I'm the cinematics marketing lead which basically just means I put together the trailers most recently the episode 4 trailer that launched on Tuesday thank you and I just saw the joke goes here behind what oh shoot I forgot to reset like Jason says that as if it's like such a minor thing but like the amount of work that he wasn't insane so I just want like everybody in the audience oh it's a lot of work that he does it is Jason isn't what he does and should just acknowledge that sure I'll absorb it and say everybody does awesome work yes okay we're also bad at compliments you got one of our producers come at me be like no I don't deserve it i'm tresh razor for shut down one of our producers complimented me and she said I could see the panic on your face good stop alright so let's talk about what this has been like since early March you guys we've been home for a while like with the first group let's do the practical stuff first and talk about the equipment needed for work that you had to either adjust to or bring back to your place Jason why don't you go first so I got really lucky in the fact that work had built me out this really awesome capture machine right before we had to you know start working from home so I got to take that beast home which allows me to do all that capturing at 4k 60fps and for me it was really easy to move over to working from home it was maybe a day that I had some downtime ease and then I was back up yeah yeah it you know being a little take that machine home and not having to remote in made it really easy and I was already pretty much for my job you know I mostly work you know it's most most of the most humble work that I do is on this one machine and I don't I don't need to access to all this extra hardware or servers and I think that it's all done locally so so you just bundled up that entire rig and brought it on home yeah I took the Beast home look all the beast and then a 4k monitor cuz I'm not up on the current technology at home and I didn't have a 4k display so took that home along with the capture device that that's capable of doing 4k 60fps and I was up and running like I said within a day that's awesome I I do like that and I said this in the last segment I really loved how easy the company made it for us to just get whatever we needed and get it home yeah super props to our tech ops team they they were on the ball I mean it was such a whole entire studio over to working remotely that as quick as they did negate I don't know how many people they have they were just turning on that for hours so yeah they worked incredibly hard so thank you tech ops we love you Megan how about you surprised this is gonna keep happening FYI oh cool yeah I had to take my whole tower so that was fun I knew Lee when I got there to go pick up my stuff they were like oh we're just gonna give you like a little work from home tower and I'm like that's gonna take forever why don't they just take home my regular tower and they're like you're right and then so brought home the pattern got it all hooked up in my in my little office area some my own monitors and then good so far but definitely carrying around a big PC tower up and down stairs time to so it was like oh please oh gosh please don't tell me you're like on the tenth floor and only have stairs oh no I'm actually Anna okay good house so that part was fine but going from the office down to the parking lot and yeah plus I like all of our computers stairs and like we couldn't get to the neck and like because they were like wishy-washy about like oh should we take home where regular pcs or should we take home beats working home pcs and so like I carried the work home PC down to the fourth floor and then nevermind so I had to bring it back up to the fifth floor and then I had to go get my PC and bring it down gosh the parking garage yes there's just a lot of running around carrying towers yeah but it was a great exercise so there's that how about you need it um I'm trying to think of like which part of it I should start out with so I actually was doing I was like remoting in on a laptop for the first portion of its like that was easy right you just opened up a laptop it's a remote into your desktop and it's great except our our like editor and our engine doesn't play very well over at desktop so it got to a point where I was like I need to bring my desktop home and then it was literally just like taking this giant Tower and bringing it into my like tiny tiny apartment and then being like okay how do i how do I get all this working so I like ripped out all of my old stuff like my like my old desktop and I just like stole like put everything else in storage and then just like shoved all of my work stuff onto my like very very small desk it's fun but it's working yes is it is working thankfully yeah and that's that's something that I have I had mentioned in the last segment we needed to we knew that we needed to start streaming doing like Gil chat and Let's Plays from home and my computer at home is fine for gaming but not really it's okay it's terrible for streaming it's garbage for streaming for the quality that we like had in the studio in office so I have like down on the bottom my desk is this tower with everything unplugged and I've just plugged everything into the origin gaming laptop that tech ops gave me I was like okay this is just this is my life now I know nope do you forgot to mention that I also took my chair home like a week later so the first week I'm same I was like okay this is a garbage chair and so I need to go to work and get my nice comfy I am worked in this for eight hours chair ladies there's a reason these are expensive I I didn't like you wouldn't really think about it until you have to sit in it for eight hours a day cuz like I have I don't know like a Office Max or IKEA chair like that I've had for years and I was like I should be fine and then like after three weeks my body was like it was all because I tried to I tried to martyr myself in the same way I was like now I have like this crappy old chair that I think is probably office max discount at some point that's fine for like an hour yeah but it's terrible for your job so good for you guys well we didn't know how we didn't know how long we were gonna be we didn't office so it's like for me it's like oh I can do this for two three weeks and then it's like oh this is gonna be longer than that I should probably get my nice chair yeah I can safely say I did not see this coming anyways did I feel bad yeah I feel bad because like I brought my office one home and it I like move like it's very easy to be a swivel and I like swiveling so just tell me that's distracting and I'll stop yeah I will find myself doing this a lot mm-hmm what were you gonna say Reagan Oh I said no one no one can blame you for not seeing this happening so yeah that's I I just have like a fancy soft velvet one that I got a while ago and it's fine socrata chair well I decided to be a princess when I bought my chair so I built my desk with my hands like a lumberjack or something and so the night had to get a nice chair for it I like the lumberjack princess dichotomy this is making me happier and I wanted on your business cards now lumberjack princess that's extremely cool that you built your desk oh yeah there's like a bunch of like like salvaged ii use places in seattle and so i got this big slab of cedar wood like a live edge and everything I just took it home and like sanded it down and stained it and seal them like and now it's my desk so that's extremely cool I love that I have a lot of thoughts on swanston I want everybody to know that yeah okay now you're even cooler yeah I'm now I'm like looking at my desk I was like I think I got it like Target and it was like in one of those flat packs it's it is not either with a live edge and it is not at all that cool so that's kind of Awesome later I would love to see a picture and if your princess chair all right so yeah let's see the princess chair that looks so comfy I like it yeah it's like a good office chair that I stole and then my plants you know what that's something else that I've noticed everybody has like everybody's investing in plants so much you guys can't see mine because I put them in my line of sight so they're behind the camera but I have like two pretty good sized ones that are thriving behind the camera yeah a lot of I mostly bought them during the winter when like I couldn't go outside and garden and like I eat green yes like I was gifted a few plants and there's this one particular succulent that I have that like it's just like this little thing but a singular like stems that are growing out of it and it's just grown bigger and bigger and bigger and now it like envelops an entire area and like I would bring it over and show it but it actually like the vines have entangled into like my blinds and I'm leaving it like that because I think it's awesome it's just this little thing with like this huge like vine that comes out of it I'm like you're so small how you make so big I love it yeah I'm I'm starting to collect inside and outside plants so but I think that's that and sourdough starter is like everybody's thing so let's talk a little bit about interaction with your teams and how that's changed Nick do you want to talk about that first sure I mean Alex Connor and Kent touched on a lot of the stuff when it comes to like us needing more like check-ins I think for our team for Episode four teams specifically I don't they mentioned it but like we every Tuesday and Thursday we do a like 15 minutes check in everybody kind of just older like stand-up even though we're all sitting and we basically just sit and like go through what we need to talk about our team lead Kirk like gives us any like high-level updates and then a biweekly we have like an hour-long team meeting which is like hard updates and then like checks and things like that and besides that it's like a bunch more teams communication a lot of like one-on-one calls or like you're having a one-on-one call and then it's like oh wow we like need to pull this person into it so then like you message them and then you just had like they're just some people that you have to keep up with