Firezide Chat with David Alpert

Oh, tons. I mean, we turn down way more than we do. Both of these big brands – Walking Dead and Invincible – they've been going for 20 plus years, and so we believe that if we handle these right, a franchise handled right lives as long as copyright, so it could be 100 years, depending on the law.

So we want to make sure that we're playing for that long game, we don't want to grab the cash and dash, right? It's not about a quick hit, it's about building a relationship with our audience and letting them know that if we make something, it's going to be good and quality. We've done some things that we’ve shut  down. I'm not going to say everything we've done has been amazing, but the most of the things that we continue to support and things that we continue to put out there, and the things that we introduce and get behind, I have to say at the very least, even if people didn't like some of the stuff, I would say that there's real quality behind it.

Yeah, I mean, like, you've got to give you props as well, because the Telltale Walking Dead was a kind of risky bet, and it was great, and everyone loved it. And then your VR stuff, The Walking Dead VR games, they were great as well, but the audience isn't there, so the fact that you even put like resources into that is, you know, good for the industry, I think.

Yeah, and the Telltale game was awesome for us, because it really, really was the first step of us trying to do a single product that really had the thesis of the company in it, right. It's clearly a game, but we staffed that writer's room with, with not just the typical Telltale guys who are super talented, but also we brought screenwriters and TV writers and novelists and playwrights into the room, so that we had like a real, traditional television style room building out a game. I don't know it for a fact, but I believe that was the first time that ever happened.

I think it comes through in the writing as well. It was one of the first games of that style where it felt like it was a water cooler moment, and everyone was talking about it at the same time. I can't remember a game before that that had that same effect – a narrative game, at least.

Yeah, I mean, we actually did the deal, and it's credit to Steve Allison. He was a real visionary figure. He's gone on to great things over at Epic, but he's a really smart guy. But when we did that deal with him and the Telltale guys, Walking Dead had not yet become Walking Dead, right? The comic was super successful. The show was coming, but nobody knew that it was going to be the franchise that it was. So, when we picked our first genre, it was really about, ‘hey, there are things like Resident Evil out there in the world, right? There's massive zombie franchises, how do we compete?’ We have to succeed on our terms, and the thing that makes The Walking Dead great is it makes you care.

So, we said we want to make a game that's going to make you cry. And that was sort of like a weird KPI, but that was what we were chasing – to get people to cry at the end of this game. If you didn't tear up at the end, if you play through season one and you don't tear up a little bit, there might be an issue with you, man.

My partner, she doesn't really play games, she's played a few, and The Walking Dead is one of them, and she loved it. She played all the way through, and I still think the first season is the strongest, but they're all really good still. Seeing the character grow from a little kid to a badass, is it's just something you don't get to see much in games as well, that longevity.

Yeah, you know, I think there's great stuff in the later seasons, I think the first season is the most surprising, right, because later you grow to have expectations, as opposed to the beginning, the first time you play, you're like, what? How is this happening?

What would you say the best thing about your job is?

The best thing about my job is that anything is possible, right? We literally work in every area of the entertainment ecosystem. If someone comes with a cool idea, we find a way to get it done.

I've made samurai swords, baby onesies, guitars, I made bourbon, wine. This is absolutely my playground. So that is really, really fantastic. I love getting to work with the amazing, creative people that we come across, and the best part for me, on top of it all, is that we're not just putting out widgets.

People come in and they love the work that they do. I'm at my home office, so there's nothing behind me, but most people's offices are filled with collectibles and all these different things that they have – before they even join the company, they're surrounded by Invincible and Walking Dead and the other things that we do, and I just think that that level of passion and engagement is just so rare to have in a job.

Is there any appetite there to do a big open world game based on your two major franchises?

Oh, yeah. I mean, yes. It's funny because people always say, ‘I want an open world invincible’, and I'm like me too, man. We're trying, we're trying.

We are an independent company, right? We were bootstrapped for the first decade, we've taken some investors now, but we're still a relatively small goldfish in a pond filled with giant rabid sharks, so we are doing our best to sort of keep our elbows up and carve a lane for ourselves, but that is ultimately our north star, we want to get to that place.

Yeah, I mean, people don't realise it's hundreds of millions of dollars and 6 years of investment, right?

Five or six years investment, and then you hope it returns within two, three years, right? It's a long life cycle. By the way, I cannot wait for GTA 6. I am so excited. The idea of doing that type of open world environment for Invisible or Walking Dead will just be absolutely insane.

What's the worst thing about your job? 

You know, the worst thing about my job, honestly, at this moment is just the uncertainty in the landscape.

It's always been tough to make something successful in games and comics and TV, right? There's plenty of great talented folks that don't make it.

It used to be, if you got a game onto shelves, you knew you'd sell a certain number of units. Now zero is possible, right? The alternative to our product is everything. There's no required choice. If you don't like one type of burger, you find a different type of food, but you still need food. You don't need entertainment. I think it's useful, it's critical, but there's also an infinite amount of free entertainment online that you can enjoy. So to stand out, the hardest thing to do is make sure that you're making something that people really care for, and then figure out how to make sure people know about it.

That's the hardest thing that we ever deal with right now. So, the worst part for me is I know that we make great stuff, we have amazing creators at this company, and I need to make sure that their stuff gets seen, and that's a much more treacherous landscape than it was last year, and I think it's only going to get increasingly treacherous.

Yeah, I mean, even the media landscape's been completely obliterated, right?

Yeah, I mean, when we started doing games for Steam, they're releasing 12 games a year, 20 games a year. Last year was what, 20,000 new games on Steam. You know, if you make a new sitcom today, you're not just competing with all the new sitcoms, you're competing with Friends and Seinfeld and The Office and Parks and Rec. And then you're also still competing with Spotify and TikTok, social media, and porn. It's a very different landscape than it was even 10 years ago.

Do you think that the attention economy is different as well? Because, like you said, you mentioned Spotify, and I know musicians have kind of had to change the way they do music, they put the hook at the beginning because people tune out and don't listen to it if they're not captured straight away. Do you think that seeps into games and on TV as well?

You know, it's funny. I think it, I think it's always been there. I think it's been there basically since the inception of any medium, right?

People talk about the three act structure as being this holy sort of handed down from God type approach, but no. Roughly 40 minutes of film fit on a reel, right, and so they needed to change reels, and they thought, oh, three is about enough, so that became the structure, so people then started writing to the three act structure. You know, Shakespeare was pretty good. He was doing five acts, six acts. There's no reason why three acts is something special, but it's become enshrined in our thinking.

But I think that right now, what we're seeing is the iteration between changes and algorithm or distribution method and the new content. It's happening so fast that it's visible to us, as opposed to, you know, that idea of the three act structure is from 100 years ago, so it's sort of become cemented as like a rule or law, and we haven't really seen innovation there, but we're seeing constant innovation here, and reaction to distribution changes. That is the hardest thing to really figure out – not only do you have to make it good, and you have to make it good on your own terms, but then it has to fit into the current distribution appetite, dictated by algorithms and other content that's happening at the same time.

And it's a moving target, right, because you build that right for five years, and in five years the landscape might have shifted again.

That's right. It's that well overused Wayne Gretzky quote: you have to go not where the puck is, but where it's going. And the problem is, games very rarely hit their dates, right? So, if you're like, ‘hey, I'm making this game for where the market's going to be in a year’, but it takes you 18 months, the market could have moved dramatically in that additional six months.

Who do you admire the most in the games industry and the movies and TV industry?

I mean, there's so many people, I have to say, first, and it's not a cop-out, I actually mean this. My two partners are pretty amazing people. Robert Kirkman is perhaps the biggest independent comic book creator in US history, so I think that's pretty, pretty awesome, and he did it all by himself. He had great artists that he found, but he basically did it out of his basement in Kentucky, and built it up by himself. And I find that inspiring. I find his innovation, his combination of creativity and business sense, is something that's rare for a creative person, so I really admire that.

And John, my business partner on the game side, he took a real interesting business approach to game development, which was, you know, there's a lot of central functions that can actually sync individual development studios, and that having one really great central function that you can combine with multiple game developers was actually something really useful, and that was amazing innovation in the space.

It's been done a number of times since, but he ended up building this amazing company called Foundation 9, that really was a business roll-up of game developers came from true passion for gaming, but really understanding where the landscape was moving, and so the ability of both my partners to sort of understand creativity and the intersection of creativity and business was the thing I think that was inspiring to me.

There's tons of people I find inspiring beyond them, but I really feel like it is an honour every day to go to work and get to interact with both of them.

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

You know, as a kid, I would often get overwhelmed by decision paralysis, the cost benefit of making one choice versus another, and my grandfather said, ‘make a decision, any decision, if you don't like it, make another decision’. That really was something that I've taken to heart, changed my life, and I've been using it ever since – the inherent bias to action, making a decision, not being afraid of the consequences, not doing it lightly, but really embracing that as a motto. I've really taken that to heart to improve how we can get to a decision faster, because sometimes that pause, that paralysis, everything else stops, and you become inefficient, and you become stuck. So I use it in my personal life, I use it in professional life as well.

What about bad habits? Do you have any? Are you trying to break any bad habits?

Tons, yeah. I try to frame myself to use habits as a good thing, but I also find that it works the other way too. I love to work out, I feel like it's been like a great habit for me, right. So, I work out every single day. I don't miss a single day. Haven't missed a day in 7 years, something like that. But the bad habits go the other way. Sometimes I can really sort of zero in. I generally find that habits are good up until the point they become bad.

Have you got any qualities about yourself that you dislike, and you're trying to work on?

How long do you got?

Keep it brief.

The qualities about myself that I dislike are kind of everything. Honestly, it's only through my relationship with my wife that I really found a way to tolerate myself. I have intense dislike, almost loathing for myself, so it's really more about, is there a quality about myself that I like or enjoy?

Surely, you must have some qualities about yourself that you like. You're a successful guy. 

You know, I have a loving and adoring family, so I must have done something that somebody appreciates. But I try to be kind, I try to be fair, I try to do what's right. I don't always succeed in all those things, but that's really sort of the core thing that I keep coming back to.

Do you do anything like for your mental well-being? Do you do any mental training or anything like that? Do you talk to someone?

Yeah, I've worked with therapists. My mom, when I went to college, stopped painting and went to become a therapist. So I kind of joke that I grew up on the couch, but it's kind of true, I do a lot of reflection.

I work with an executive coach. We actually brought in an executive coach to be sort of our head of people at the company, so to really focus on getting the best out of people is not just a HR function, but it's what we call people and performance. Like, how can we make people really find the best within themselves?

I do a lot. I do yoga. I find that very centering and calming. I do that pretty much every day. I go hiking, and I like a drink or two, and that helps with the mental state.

What's your tipple of choice?

Oh, I have many. I really love wine and whiskey,

Red or white?

Yes.

Do you have a party trick?

Not really, I'm not great at parties. I try to find my way through, but I'm not particularly great at parties.

What time do you go to bed?

I try to go to bed before 11. Honestly, I'd go to bed earlier, but my kids are staying up later.

Do you still find time for comics, games, that sort of thing?

Oh yeah, I am. I'm constantly reading, playing, watching, you know. I tell my wife that on the weekend, I have to play video games, I have to watch movies, I have to read books, and I have to drink whiskey, because this is all work. It's for business. That's what I have to do.

Is it Walking Dead branded whiskey, though?

It's, you know, I have to research other whiskeys. 

What's the best thing you've read recently?

Oh man, I just read a book called About Face, it's a biography of this guy named David Hackworth, who had this long distinguished career in the military, joined at the end of World War Two, changed his birth certificate to join, and rose up through the army ranks. Then he was fighting in Vietnam and then realised he was being lied to, and basically that the soldiers were not being supported, and that people were dying for no good reason. He came out publicly and got exiled from the army and ended up moving to Australia and becoming this massive hippie, and I just find him like this absolutely insane, crazy, but awesome guy, and I love that story. So I really found it really inspiring.

What about video games? What's the best thing you've played recently?

So, I'll be a bit of a homer again, apologies, but we have Invincible Vs coming out April 30, and so I was with my son at the Invincible screening on Monday night, and we were playing Invincible Vs against each other, which was like kind of an awesome moment for me to actually play a game with my son that that we made. He beat me, he did, he did beat me. He's got faster Twitch reflexes.

I really loved Invisible Vs. I think it's really special. If you haven't checked it out, you really should, but I also, over the weekend, I was just looking at Baldur’s Gate 3 again for a little while, and I was like, I could easily lose my entire weekend to this.

‘A little while’ doesn't compute with that game. If you could go back in time and tell your younger self something, what would you do? 

David: You know, I was thinking about this, and there's so many points at which I want to make different decisions, but ultimately I'm happy where I am now, right?

So I think about this, both from a direct question that you sort of laid out, but also from watching all the time travel movies, right? Like, you know, it's like the butterfly effect, right? 

I transferred colleges, that's only because I transferred that I ended up meeting my wife, and so I love my wife. I love my kids. I wouldn't have all that, so there's a version of myself that stayed at the other school that would have been awesome, but I don't know that path.

So I like where I am. I'm happy with where I am, so I don't know that I want to go back and say anything different, even though it might sort of get me to miss moments of pain, but I feel like those, those pains and those failings are the things that made me who I am today.

Absolutely. And what about if you could go back to a point in history, like bits, people get kind of confused with this question because they're like, well, I'm in danger, so let's imagine you're in a bubble and you're safe from danger, you can go anywhere, so where would you go to, like, observe?

I would love to be inside the Yalta Conference and hear how those guys ended up carving up the world after the end of World War Two. There's so many of these questions I would love to know, right? Like, what was actually happening?

That would be my first choice. How did that actually go down? What was really said? How sick was Roosevelt? Probably understanding how that played out. So I do think the entire world, from what's going on in the Middle East today, from what's happening in Hungary and Ukraine, all that stuff, all start right there.

When was the last time you cried?

Dude? I cry reading the news, man. 

That's understandable these days.

Honestly, since I had kids, maybe I'm a big mush, but I honestly, I cry like probably three, four times a week just reading the newspaper.

It does make you more emotional having kids, because you're like, shit, I've brought them into this world, you know, and you think about the abyss a lot more when you're a parent. What are yours like? Are they good kids?

They're very good kids. My daughter, I have a daughter, 15. She works hard, wants to do right, but she's also a teenager, so there's definitely moments of fiery independence, but she really does want to do the right thing. She works incredibly hard.

My son is much more mischievous, but is very smart and very dedicated in his own right, and he's incredibly clever. It's one of those things where it's like he could end up becoming Elon Musk in a good way, he could end up becoming Elon Musk the other way, it's unclear.

Hopefully he becomes alternate universe Elon Musk, not current universe.

That's the hope.

How do you want to be remembered when you die?

As someone who took care of his family, and

What about what you’d have on your gravestone?

I saw that you asked that, and I'm like, man, I honestly, whatever makes my family happy, because I won't be there to see it.

My wife is the planner of the two of us, and so we've been married now 18 years. We've owned our graves for 10.

That's some planning, nice.

Yeah, we bought our graves on layaway, and I paid it off 10 years ago. That's how long we've had our graves.

I mean, that's good. I'll probably end up paying for my parents' funerals.

So I went through.. there's a book called Being Mortal by Atul Gawande that I I tell everyone to read. It's an absolutely amazing book. It's a terrible title. No one wants to read it because they hear that title. 

But the book's amazing. And if your parents, I'm guessing that your parents are similar vintage, it's useful to read. And then, if you can get your parents to read, it's actually great.

Get my parents to read a book? I'll try it. Thanks for your time.