Firezide Chat #1 (extended version)

Firezide Chat is a weekly newsletter where you get to know the people behind your favourite video games.🎮

Each week you get access to a new short-form video interview with an interesting person from the games industry. It is our belief that a well-crafted set of seemingly simple questions can reveal more about a person’s inner life than a conventional interview.
Every episode delivers life advice, a surprise, and hopefully a good laugh.

Welcome to our first episode. And if you haven’t subscribed already, please do, so you don’t miss next interview.

You may not have heard of him, but he turned down one of the biggest games of 2022 🚫 and now helps the devs behind hits like Among Us manage their success.

Callum Underwood runs a boutique games industry consulting firm and has worked in the background of your favourite video games for over a decade. We spoke about the industry, life, and death.💀 Watch here! (Or scroll down and read the interview.)

And for more interviews (great line-up, we promise) subscribe to our newsletter. It’s free, with paid options if you want to go deeper.

OCCUPATION: CEO of Uwu Biz, a boutique games industry consultancy. Co-founder at IndieBI.
AGE: 38
BACKGROUND: Worked for two years as a playtester before working his way up through the industry’

Kirk: Hi Callum, so what was your route into the games industry? How did you make your start?

Callum: So I started out doing customer service at Eutechnyx, which was a racing car developer with hits such as Pimp My Ride, Big Mutha Truckers and Ride to Hell, which I think still has a zero Metacritic score. I did customer service there on one of the early games, and I got that by doing playtests for pizza. So I used to turn up at Ubisoft offices and play Driver San Francisco in return for pizza. And then just kept asking for various jobs. Eventually, I got that job, and then I used that to get an internship at Intel. Stayed at Intel for a couple of years, then joined Oculus, and then the rest is history.

What's your job now? What do you do?

I run a couple of companies. I've got Uwu Biz, which is a business consultancy for successful game developers. And I co-founded Indie BI, which is a data analytics company that helps major publishers and developers sell more of their games.

And how did you make that transition from what you were doing to that? And when did you make it and be able to find your own companies?

So my entire career is accidents, one after another, right place, right time. When I was at Oculus, I signed a game called Superhot. And so when I left Oculus, the Superhot developer was like, “Hey, do you want to come and help us make a sequel?” We never did make a sequel, but I did work with them for a few years as executive producer, and during that time, we made an internal tool that we called in Indie BI. Eventually I decided to spin it out into its own company. So that was somewhat traditional. 

As far as owning my own company, my own consultancy, I just kept getting little jobs. I was working with Raw Fury. And then YOGSCAST called and said, “Hey, would you come and help us out?” So I said yes to that. Boneloaf, who made Gang Beasts, called and said, “Hey, can you help us out?” So at that time, they just looked like jobs to me, and I sort of fell into being a consultant, and then started hiring people and picked up Among Us, Vampire Survivors. Like I say, right place, right time, and a lot of hustle, a lot of hard work. But it doesn't always help.

Have you turned down many good games? Because it sounds like the ones that you've landed have all been pretty successful.

So, I've scouted for Raw Fury, Oculus, Kepler, Kowloon Knights, and I’ve turned down billions of dollars worth of games. I turned down PowerWash Simulator, like “no one's gonna play this.” Turns out everyone wants to play it, and I was wrong. Yeah, I've turned down a lot of games like that for my own business. I turned down a lot, actually, mostly because what I do is so niche, and really, you know, the problems that developers like Among Us face are very different to the problems most developers face, which is, “How do I get money?” Their problems are, “What do we do with our money? Who should we hire? What should we focus on?” So, yeah, I've turned down a lot that went on to be big. You can't regret it.

PowerWash Simulator ended up with Square Enix, right?

Yeah. It made, I don't know, hundreds of millions, maybe something like that. It's done very well. And then, yeah, Miniclip actually acquired the company behind it. So that was a big miss for me. There's been a few of those in the past, but I like to try and forget them.

What's the best bit of life advice you've had?

I don't like taking advice from people. Okay, I can answer that question. The best bit of life advice would be, treat people how you'd like to be treated. When I first joined the industry, I was quite obsessed with networking and meeting the right people and talking to people who could help me get a job and things like that. I learned pretty quickly that really doesn't get you anywhere. 

A friend of mine who I've known for a long time now, I saw him. He was running a games company, and I saw him hanging around with just whoever he enjoyed hanging around with. I was like, “Oh, I don't need to treat work purely as work. I can just make friends, and it doesn't matter what their job is.” And honestly, that's helped me more in business than it could have otherwise, because you never know where people are going to end up. People like Alexia [Christofi], right? I knew Alexia when she was just a junior producer somewhere, and we just met, and we hit it off and became friends, and now she's doing panels at Dice, producing Battlefield 6. So, yeah, it's something I learned pretty early on.

Is that one of the bad habits you've broken –  networking for advantages?

Yeah, I broke that bad habit pretty early on. You know what? I think I've embraced my bad habits otherwise. I'm often slow to reply to emails. I send very quick messages. I can be talking to people on six different platforms at once. I think a lot of it is just ADHD, and I just roll with it now. I just make it work. So, yeah, most of my bad habits are eating loads of food and not going to the gym, staying up too late. When it comes to business, I think I've just made it work. 

Are you like me? I tend to work in bursts – I’m super productive for a few hours and then wind down a bit, then back up. 

Yeah! This morning, I did not want to work at all, and so I sat down at my desk at 9am and I was looking at like, 16 Discord messages, a bunch of GDC meeting requests, my email full. And I was like, “Oh, I should just go play games.” And I didn't. I just sat down for an hour, hammered through it all and then it worked great. I just got done, and then I went and played games. So, yeah, I think that balance is necessary. 

When it comes to good advice, very early on, one of my first bosses at Intel, she was obsessive about attention to detail, to an insane degree. It was so frustrating at the time, because I was like, “It doesn't matter,” and actually it really does matter. So I always told my team in the past, whenever I've managed people, the only way that you get to go to parties and go to conferences and hang out with people and do all the cavalier, fun stuff you can do in the industry is by being very, very good at your job. And you become very good at your job by just having an attention to detail. Attention to detail would be the key trait I look for in people, but also it's something that I pride myself on, not forgetting to get back to people, not dropping balls, not forgetting people's names, making sure things are done properly before you go and do whatever else.

How do you organize yourself for that? Because I tend to have a bit of an issue with names. I forget people's names five minutes after they told me them.

So my problem is, for the past decade, I've been scouting for various developers and being someone that you can go to for funding. And so naturally, people know who I am because of that, because I'm a source of funding, right? There might only be 100 different scouts at one time that you can go and sign a publishing deal with. So I've met thousands and thousands of people over the years. I do forget people's names. I do forget who people are or how I know them. You can usually tell if someone knows who you are and if you've forgotten who they are. I don't like to let them know because it feels unkind. I also don't like to look at their badge, because if they catch you, instantly they know that you don't know who they are. So I’m just like, “Alright, mate, how are you? What are you up to these days?” You can make it work without offending people.

I stopped saying “nice to meet you”, and started saying “good to see you”. 

“Good to see you” is a good one. 

There was a party I went to once. It was a Gamer Network party, and this woman spoke to me, I said nice to meet you, and she was like “Kirk, we’ve met three times.” I was distraught. 

If I see someone and I know that they don't remember who I am and that we've met, I don't call them out on it, because it doesn't help anybody, right? And what I'll actually do is, I'll help them out, right? I'll be like, “I haven't seen you since I was running Robot Teddy” or something. I'll give them a hand, because I just feel it's not nice to be told you’ve met, because you just feel like a dick if you haven't done it on purpose. 

I spent most of that night apologising. It's very cringe. You read a lot, right? What you've been reading, what's the best thing you've read recently?

So someone asked me this question last night, and I was embarrassed…

Don’t say Harry Potter. 

No, so I'm reading Dungeon Crawler Carl at the moment. It's very easy to read. It's an easy page turner. It's like Dan Brown's version of fantasy. Goes into a dungeon, gets magical items and stuff. I needed a break. I'd read Malazan before that, like 15 books I've read – usually big, meaty fantasy Sci Fi series, so I needed a palate cleanser.

Have you read Between Two Fires? 

Yeah. So I've been telling people to read Between Two Fires for a year since I read it – genuinely one of my favourite books of the past few years. I read Between Two Fires, and then I started to read more horror books, because I've never really read horror books in the past. I thought it was very good. The beginning of it felt like Berserk meets Dark Souls. And I was instantly taken. It was so good.

I liked that bit with the statue thing.  

Yeah, though it was a bit Doctor Who.

It was a little bit, yeah, but it was done in a way that it was just…

I love the book. I finished it. I bought a few people the book. Do you know you can't really buy it because it went out of print? He's self-publishing it again. I got it digitally.

I've got a physical copy.

Oh, it might be worth some money now. Yeah, I read a couple books after that. One was about a cult, and one was something else. If you want more horror recommendations, let me know, because I never really read horror books.

I like horror books. Have you read Carrion Comfort? 

No?

Oh, that's very good. 

Is it “Carrion”? 

Like, meat for birds - Carrion.

No, I'll check it out.

Yeah, it's really good. What about House of Leaves?

I have not. I tried.

It's a hard read. It's a hard, hard read.

There's having to be switched on and thinking whilst you're reading a book, which is fine, like, I'm not afraid of difficult books with flowery language or things like that. But I felt like it was just too much work.

Annotations and everything.

It is a lot. There was another book I read called… maybe Strange Houses or something like that. And it's got a map, the layout of a house at the beginning, and there's something slightly off with it. And, yeah, that's really good.

What about the Southern Reach Trilogy – Annihilation? They're really good books. They're a bit like Remedy’s Control. Control is very inspired by that. I don't know if you've seen Annihilation, the film?

No. Is that with the bear? 

Yeah. 

No, I've just seen clips? 

Yeah, well, the bear's not in the book. What's the best game you’ve played in the past ten years? 

Binding of Isaac – has to be. It's the one I've got most time in. It's one of those comfort games to me that I just go back and play it and do a run. A run can be, you know, 20 minutes or an hour. 

To be fair, you can trace Hades and everything back to that game.

Everything came from it. All the synergies of different items working together, secret rooms. It's just very, very good. I'm looking forward to his new one, Mewgenics. I know it's different to Binding of Isaac, but I think that'll be good. And then, I've got a lot of recency bias, but Expedition 33 is the best one of the past year by far. 

What's the best thing about your job?

I get to work from home. I've got two kids. I get to hang out with them. I get to work with people whose games I play all the time. Like, that's incredible. So when my son's like, “Oh, have you seen this new game coming out?” I was like, “Yeah, that's Robbie's game.” So that's good, yeah. Honestly, getting to work with just creators that you genuinely respect. And because I run my own business, I don't have a boss. I don't have to check in at any point. I don't have to write reports. I just do my thing and hope it works out. And so far, touch wood, it has.

What's the worst thing about your job? 

The amount of calls I have to do. Genuinely, sitting on calls all day, it tires you out. I mean, it's not like I'm not down the mines. It is just for my brain. 

Social battery, innit? 

Yeah, just being switched on for such a long period of time and needing to focus. And as I said, I've got ADHD and autism, so I want to be all over the place. I want to be googling things and watching a YouTube video in the background. You can't do that when you run calls, because you're supposed to be professional. So yeah, I think the amount of calls, and then also the travel. For some people, travel is great. And actually, when I was younger I absolutely loved it. 

Having kids now and having my own house, I sort of just want to be a hermit and stay at home, but you have to do a certain amount of travel with the job. I find it harder the older I get, and the older my kids get as well. I'm going to GDC in five weeks, but I don't want to go. It might be my last trip to America. We'll see. But I'm not looking forward to it at all. So many people have pulled out. So many European studios aren't bothering to go. So it's going to be an odd one, but then I'm going to Bitsummit a couple of months later in Kyoto, and I won’t complain about that. Maybe I just need to change where I'm going. 

What's the worst job you've had?

My first job, I had to dress up as a dinosaur at one of the museums locally and entertain kids. But it was always like little chavers in Newcastle going, “I can see your eyes through the mask.” I'm literally 15. So yeah, and I got fired for that job for being a bad dinosaur. I got paid three pounds an hour or something.

That can't have been a good job for your social battery. 

No, no, not at all. And then, I worked in bars from the age of, like, 18 to 24 to put myself through uni and that. And I always enjoyed that. But looking back, it was hard – going there for 9am staying till 1am. It was hard, but I do think everyone should work in hospitality at some point.

I think everyone in the games industry should work some normal jobs for a couple years and see what it's like. 

Yeah, agreed, agreed.

Who do you admire the most in the industry? 

You. 

Other than me, that’s obvious. Do you have a mentor or something? 

I've often struggled with mentors in the past, and I think it's because I'm so headstrong and so I want to do things my way. That combined with the fact that most people who could mentor me, I end up working with in some shape or form, so it's kind of a little bit awkward. It's not like a senior artist at one company being able to kind of mentor a junior artist at another. In business, you all meet each other, and you all know each other.

That said, the person who I would say is most like a mentor to me would be Alexis Garavaryan. He's CEO of Kepler Interactive. He did Expedition 33, Rematch, etc. Also CEO of Kowloon knights, which is where I cut my teeth on funding larger games. He's very quiet. He doesn't have any socials. He doesn't really do interviews. But he is the best leader I've known. He's been a very good person to ask advice about anything. When I sold my business, he was the first person I went to. And he's always there. So yeah, if you ever get the chance to talk to him, you should take it, because he's genuinely an unspoken star.

I admire Kepler as a company as well.

That's all him as well, man. Like I mean, he's got a fantastic team, and he empowers the team, but he's able to make decisions like no one I've seen. I think so many companies fail because they're just not quick enough to decide what needs to happen, and they don't have the balls to just make fast decisions. Be like, “Yeah, let's fund this.” He's not on Facebook, he's not on Twitter, he's not on LinkedIn, he doesn't post anything anywhere. Doesn't really do interviews at all. But he's fucking great. 

I know you said you're a bit like a hermit, and you sit and eat and play video games, but do you do any physical or mental training?

I go through spurts of going to the gym. When I'm going to the gym, I feel happier, I feel healthier, I feel better about myself. But when life gets a lot and it's cold in the winter months and when work’s busy, it's the first thing that I drop. I shouldn't drop it. I should continue it. But I'm not gonna come out here and say I live the healthiest lifestyle.

We did have a trainer coming around the house for me and my wife, and then, because she was working out at the same time. I did it quite often, but he's a fireman now, and I don't want someone I don't know coming to my house. 

What time do you get up in the morning?

So it depends if my wife's gonna watch this, because the real answer is she gets up around six or seven and I try to stay in bed as long as possible, until about eight. Eight's the light cut off. So usually half seven to eight, I get up and then get the kids ready. I'm more about bedtime. Midnight's my cut off. Ideally, I'm in bed by 11. If I'm still doing stuff after midnight, I'm gonna have a miserable day the next day. 

What do you dislike most about yourself? 

I am really bad at keeping up with friends. If they don't text me, then I'm really bad at texting first and and I'm really bad at keeping up with people that I've been really close to. I just let it drop, and I've always not liked that about myself. Again, it might be the ADHD, the kind of object permanence, but I wish I was better at that genuinely.

I think, I think we all do, to be honest.

You've got no mates.

You’ve got too many mates.

That's also the problem, yeah. I mean, it's fine, but there's circles, you know, there's circles of, like, very close friends.

If you could travel back in time, where would you go?

The sacking of the Library of Alexandria. 

You could steal some books.

No – so that I can stop them burning everything, although that's a better answer, go and join in the looting.

You could retire on that. 

Man, yeah, that's right. I think to give a serious answer, I think the computing industry in late ‘80s, early ‘90s. I know I've got rose tinted glasses, but it seemed like a fun time where people were just hacking stuff away. Things were done very fast. You get commissioned by Atari to make a game and have three weeks to ship it and stuff. And like, you know, there's a lot of glorifying a crunch and so forth. And I'm not into that, but I do wonder if that was a kind of easier, more fun time as a developer to just do silly things in the industry, and now it's a lot harder to get in and do these things. So yeah, in work terms, I think those early heydays of British Industry, when you've got Midway, Rare.

People were still figuring things out as well, right? We've got established norms in games now. You can't be John Romero now, can you?

No, you can't. It doesn't work like that anymore, which is maybe a good thing, you know, not to have these solo heroes. But then you've got people like the Stardew Valley developer – these single developers who do just blow up.

Romero also invented the genre, right? Whereas Stardew Valley is Harvest Moon, isn't it? 

Vampire Survivors arguably started a new genre, right? 

I mean, there were other games like that. 

There were, but were they as popular? Lethal Company as well, right? Four player co-op, doing-things game that popularized friendslop, and really started that off. So I do think there's new genres coming out, but it gets closer and closer, same with music, right? Sub genres of sub genres.

So what advice would you give your 20 year old self?

Do you know what, I think I've done alright. I've got a nice wife, I've got a nice job, I've got good kids. I’d probably save a bit more money early on, invest in Apple. Maybe don't buy so many clothes.

Get some Bitcoin. 

Yeah, Bitcoin. I don't think I'd change a lot. Honestly, I'm pretty happy with how things have gone. Take more care of my body. As I get older, even though you're older than me, I definitely feel the aches and pains of just being an idiot for 30 years. 

Wouldn’t it be good to go back to like 12 years old and just get really buff at 12? 

Yeah. I think if I could talk to myself as a 12 year old, though… I got bullied a lot as a kid. I had a pretty unhappy childhood at school. I didn't really have any mates, because I was weird, right? And weird is now cool, so that's fine. I get on okay. But I think I would just say it gets much, much better. You'll thrive. You'll find people who you get on with. You'll figure it all out. Because, yeah, I had a tough time. 

When was the last time you cried, Callum?

I cry all the time. Man, I cry at adverts. I cry at songs. I just cry for no reason. 

Do you tend to cry at, like, fictional stuff more than real stuff?

Yeah, I would say so. I mean, I cry at books, right? I get attached to a character and they die in a book or something. I love a little cry. In real life, someone would have had to have passed away, or I would have to be so unbelievably stressed that I just can't hack it anymore. But I cry at fiction and songs and John Lewis adverts constantly.

How do you want to be remembered when you're dead?

Here lies Callum, massive knob.

You can take that two ways.

Both are fine. For a work answer to that question, I feel like I've made a small mark on the industry already in trying to do things my own way and being fairly unapologetic about that. I feel like I've helped people just as a kind of byproduct of trying to do my best and doing a good job. And so I'm pretty happy if that ends up being a legacy, or if I'm remembered for just being a decent guy who would take a call with someone and give some advice. I don't really feel like I need to be remembered, although I have this argument with my wife all the time because I want a mausoleum. She wants me to be cremated.

Those two things don't really mix. “No, I don't really care about being remembered, but I want a mausoleum.”

That's different, right? They won't know who I was. I just want a big, cryptic monument that people are like, “Whoa, look at that guy. It must have been cool.” Like, then they find out that, “Oh, he just had enough money for a monument.”

I want to get an Uwu car number plate, but my wife says only losers have personalised number plates.

She's not wrong, man.

She's probably right. 

My car says KOB on the back, but I didn't choose that. We call my car KOB.

Yes, lovely. What a nice anecdote. When are they gonna interview you? 

I know, I'm full of stories. 

Follow us on TikTok and Instagram
https://www.tiktok.com/@firezidegaming 
https://www.instagram.com/firezidegaming

If you have feedback on how we can improve, just hit reply or email us at [email protected]. We read everything.