Scott Hayman on Building Hammer Creative: Game Marketing, Social Media, and Industry Success

Episode Description

In this episode, Scott Hayman, COO of Hammer Creative, takes us behind the scenes of the video game marketing world. He shares insights into how Hammer Creative partners with major publishers like Epic, Bethesda, and Microsoft to bring games to market.

Scott walks us through the agency's process, from initial client briefings to developing tailored go-to-market strategies and creating captivating content for platforms like TikTok and Instagram. He highlights the crucial role of game capture in showcasing the best features of each title and explains how they evaluate campaign success through analytics and consumer feedback. Join us for an engaging conversation about the creative strategies driving the video game industry and the importance of connecting with audiences in the digital age.

Episode Outline and Highlights

[02:30] Producing Diverse Content for Social Media Platforms

[05:03] Ensuring Security when Working with Pre-release Software

[07:49] The Appeal of Simpler Games and Online Gaming

[09:41] The Shift from Couch Co-op to Online Multiplayer

[11:24] Starting the Project: Understanding the Game and Client's Goals

[18:54] Creating Key Art for Physical Copies and Digital Storefronts

[23:20] The Role of Game Capture in Showcasing Game Features

[26:32] The Unique Blend of Skills in Game Capture

[31:02] Game Capture as a Starting Point or Final Destination in a Career

[36:20] Evaluating Campaign Success through Analytics and Feedback

Scott Hayman on Building Hammer Creative: Game Marketing, Social Media, and Industry SuccessScott Hayman on Building Hammer Creative: Game Marketing, Social Media, and Industry Success

Today's Guest

Scott Hayman

Chief Operating Officer

Scott Hayman is the COO of Hammer Creative, a leading agency in the video game industry. With a focus on bringing games to market, Hammer Creative specializes in creating engaging content for social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, partnering with major publishers like Epic, Bethesda, and Microsoft. Scott outlines the agency's comprehensive process, which begins with client briefings to understand the game and its target audience. From there, they develop tailored go-to-market strategies and produce essential assets, including key art for physical copies and digital storefronts. A pivotal aspect of their work is game capture, where they showcase the best features of each game through high-quality footage. Scott emphasizes the importance of evaluating campaign success through analytics and consumer feedback, ensuring that Hammer Creative consistently delivers impactful results.

Episode transcript

Justin Levinson (00:00.878)

Hey everybody, welcome to the Agency Side Podcast. I'm here today with Scott Heyman, who is the Chief Operating Officer of Hammer Creative and he's been instrumental in their growth, a veteran of over 20 years in this space. Thanks for being here, Scott, appreciate it.

Scott Hayman (00:18.243)

My pleasure. Good to be here.

Justin Levinson (00:20.31)

Yeah, man. Yeah, so what I'd like to start in on is if you could just explain to the listeners who may not be aware of Hammer Creative what you guys actually do over there.

Scott Hayman (00:34.925)

Yeah, at a basic level, Hammer Creative is a creative agency. The industry that we serve is the video game industry primarily and really the video game playing audience. We're experts in the audience that plays video games, which is a broad one, obviously. We offer full campaign work. So that's, think what we're known for, is bringing games to market and finding the heart of what makes a game tick and radiating that outwards to audiences.

we're also really strong on the social content side. we have, expertise in producing content for Tik Tok and reels nine by 16 platforms. So, we have a number of relationships with publishers in which we are doing ongoing content creation for their Tik Tok channels. And we're tasked with growing their following and growing their, engagement rates. And that's a lot of fun too. And most of our audience now lives on.

TikTok, they live on Instagram. And so we're meeting them where they are. And it's important for us to be able to produce content that resonates in those different mediums because they're really specific and they have a really sort of specific aesthetic. The audience expects a certain type of content and we know how to produce content that hits those audiences as well.

Justin Levinson (01:54.264)

Yeah, is any of that tapping into influencers and any of that with these different social platforms?

Scott Hayman (02:00.933)

Yeah, sure. mean, you know, we would never position ourselves as an influencer agency, but we have done work certainly that involves influencers. We did a campaign for Alan Wake 2 where influencers were a part of that and sourcing content from the community was part of that. Really what our strength is, is producing great content for those mediums. Most of it is gameplay based, but we have strong capabilities in producing.

animation, motion graphics, cinemagraphs, live action, know, when that works with whatever product that we're working with. So it's a wide variety of stuff, but it's a volume play, but we're really very, always focused on quality as well. It can't just be volume. It can't just be quantity. Quality's gotta come from it too. Otherwise, you know, the audience is gonna tune out.

Justin Levinson (02:57.73)

Yeah, how does it all like start? Maybe you could like walk me through a little bit. You know, I talk to people in creative agency space all the time. But sometimes I still don't like, I can't feel what it's like to be inside of the agency. Even when I hear all the stories, it's like, what I don't always understand is like where, yeah, just like.

Maybe you can walk me through where it begins, like from the very first point of contact with the client, if you're reaching out to them, if they're reaching out to you, what does that sort of look like?

Scott Hayman (03:30.639)

Sure. So, I mean, look, we've been in business and serving the games industry for two decades now, as you mentioned. So the vast majority of our business is coming through people that have worked with us in the past or, my friend worked with you in the past and gave me your name and suggested you guys. So it's not to say that we're not out there doing active business development and forging new relationships and finding people at different places.

But the vast majority of our business is generated from having done great work for them in the past and had having forged a good relationship via that. So most of the time the, you know, calls come into us. We're getting contacted well before the game is coming to market, which means it's not, we, we don't even know that it exists until they call us basically. Right. So, you know, we'll frequently get contacted two years before a game is ready to come to market.

Justin Levinson (04:20.79)

Yeah.

Scott Hayman (04:27.225)

probably close to a year before they're even ready to announce it to the public. So.

Justin Levinson (04:31.182)

Do you get to play it? Are you able to like, are you getting that first dibs on it?

Scott Hayman (04:35.341)

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. mean, you know, the best case scenario, they're sending us the game as soon as it's ready to be played in any capacity. When a game is two years from coming to market, it's rarely in a complete state, in a great state to play through. But certainly there's usually what they call a vertical slice or some sort of, you know, demo level that gives you an idea of what the game is going to look and feel and play like, you know, across.

however long the game is slated to be a 15 hour game, 25 hour game, 30 hour game or beyond. So yeah, typically there's something for us to play through. It's just not the game that you're going to end up playing when it's in the market.

Justin Levinson (05:15.212)

Yeah, I imagine you still have to keep it pretty lock and seal, right? That's a lot of responsibility,

Scott Hayman (05:22.135)

Yeah, security is really important when you're working on pre -release software. you know, we do, I'm broadcasting to you live from my home today, which is my default setting of where I work, but our Game Capture team that's handling these builds and our creatives that are working with these game builds, they're going into our office space that's located over there by Universal Studios. And then that's where we keep it under lock and key. We moved into that space a couple of years ago. One of the big reasons.

Justin Levinson (05:49.71)

I said lock and seal, I need to correct my euphemism. But yeah, sorry, that totally makes sense. Yeah.

Scott Hayman (05:52.217)

You

Scott Hayman (05:59.221)

We built that space so that it could be as secure as possible. Every room has key card entry, know, a key fob card entry to it and spaces alarmed and cameras everywhere. You can't walk in our space without being on camera basically.

Justin Levinson (06:15.662)

I'm not sneaking in and playing, Scott. You don't have to worry about me, buddy. Right on. Well, I guess that's a different subject, but I just recently, I mean, it's still in the game subject, but recently I bought one of those. It's like you can attach it to your TV and it gives you like thousands of old school games to play. And I've been kind of nerding out on some of those things, which has been pretty fun. Little battle toads action.

Scott Hayman (06:18.787)

No, you're not going to be able to. Not going to happen.

Justin Levinson (06:44.046)

little Super Mario 3 and some of those old games. They don't have the playability that they did in their time when you actually had it. It's a little wonky with the standard PS1 battery powered, it's kind of a plastic, kind of cheap paddle. But it's, it's like a time where I plan some of those games really enjoying it.

Scott Hayman (07:05.189)

There's still demand for that type of game and it's not even just from, you know, people of our advanced age that are interested in playing those games. Obviously for us growing up playing those games, there's a total nostalgia rush from, my God, I can't remember. I can't believe I forgot about this game. I forgot this existed. I played the heck out of this when I was a kid. But, know, there's certainly a lot of games today are very complex and I think that there's a simplicity to some of those games that are really interesting. it's also like, you know, a lot of games today are

Justin Levinson (07:28.001)

Yeah.

Scott Hayman (07:35.205)

require a huge time commitment. just mentioned games that are 15 hours long, 25 hours long, some that are 80 hours long, 100 hours long, or unlimited really. And I think there's certainly a time and a place for a game that only takes a couple of hours to play and complete and be a satisfying experience.

Justin Levinson (07:37.623)

Yep.

Justin Levinson (07:49.304)

Yeah, yeah. And I also like, you know, for me and playing games, I really like to play with like another person next to me. Like, just like when I was a kid playing like Madden or even like earlier on like regular NES games, I remember playing like, there was a game called Caveman games, which was like absolutely ridiculous. You'd be like lighting a fire and then you'd have to like blow on it to get the flame and then you would win. And basically like the winner would be whoever could like

push the button the fastest. And we would be playing this thing all day, like hammering on the different buttons until our fingers were like in pain. But it was so much fun. We would just play and laugh and have a great time. But I really liked that that was, you know, a very like interactive thing I could do with another human with me. And like a lot of the games that I've, you know, we got like a fairly new, the new PlayStation. And of course my kids play the Switch.

yeah, the games are a lot more involved and sometimes I don't even understand it. I'm like, how can a kid even play this thing? This is like, this is like over my head. my kids do better at it than I do, of course, but, it also seems more, a lot of the game, maybe it's just the games that we're getting, but they feel more like independent or they could be played like online. Maybe there's somebody around you, but like that whole, like sitting right next to you. Sometimes that feels like that's been lost a little bit.

Scott Hayman (09:17.315)

Yeah, let me give you some, game industry jargon. What you're talking about is couch co -op basically. Yeah. Like there is, there are not that many games anymore that, that do that. that have that dynamic and it's, funny. You know, my kids will say I'm playing games with a friend. I'm like, why don't you invite them over? And they're like, cause it's better and easier if they're at home on their console and I'm at home on my console and we're connecting online.

Justin Levinson (09:22.414)

interesting. I like that.

Justin Levinson (09:41.367)

Hmm

Scott Hayman (09:41.445)

And the game doesn't set up the couch co -op to split screen it. And, you know, for us to both play on the same screen, you know, we kind of both need our own screens. So it's kind of an interesting dynamic that has, you know, online, certainly in many ways, online gaming is amazing. What an incredible, what an incredible concept that you could play Madden against a friend from, you know, that lives 2000 miles away. You know, that's like, that would have absolutely blown my mind when I was my kid's age that that would ever be a possibility.

Justin Levinson (09:49.816)

That makes sense.

Justin Levinson (10:01.528)

Yeah.

Scott Hayman (10:10.553)

but it has kind of robbed the industry a little bit of the priority to have games where you can actually sit in the same room and play them together.

Justin Levinson (10:18.58)

Yeah, that's really fascinating. I guess I'm... Yeah, they're still there.

Scott Hayman (10:20.569)

They do exist. There are games that exist. the Lego, a of the Lego games have that, which is great. There's a game called a way out that has that. It was really fun. Me and my son played that one together. so it's not like they don't exist. It's just that they're, they're, fewer and further between now.

Justin Levinson (10:37.472)

Yeah, couch co -op, I've gotta remember that one. But yeah, that's really interesting. But yeah, I kind of went off on a tangent when we were talking about sort of how the work kind of comes to you. And obviously you're mentioning that it comes pretty organically to you guys at this point because you've been in the game for so long and you're putting out really outstanding work.

And we talked about some of the security parts of things, is also interesting until I went into my big rant about how I like these sit next to my friends when I play these games. But what's it look like next? what does the client present you with? What sort of is next once you've got that game and you're demoing it?

Scott Hayman (11:06.884)

Yeah.

Scott Hayman (11:24.701)

Yeah, I mean, a little bit of it depends on where they're at internally and what they're asking us to do. So there's basically two scenarios in which people approach us. Number one is, Hey, I'm bringing you this project or this campaign and I want you guys to work on it. Great. You know, we'll sit down with them. We'll get a briefing on what the game is and then we'll find out where they're at internally from in terms of creating like a go -to -market strategy. And sometimes, you know, we have

clients that come to us that have a really robust internal strategy department. Maybe they've even created a logo already or some key art or some sort of visual identity. And that's the starting point that they're giving us. Other times it's, here's the game. We've done nothing, you know, help us, help us identify who our audience is, where they live and what should our campaign look and feel like and create a brand identity for this game. you know, it just really depends on the engagement. We are a

Flexible agency. We love opportunities where people bring us a game and say what should we do? That's that's a cool scenario. It's also you know It's also a daunting scenario because there's a lot to explore and there's a lot to figure out and we have to kind of gut -check people so But in most you know, pretty much all cases we love the opportunity to be able to meet with the developer themselves the developer of the game Really get an understanding of the game that they set out to make

why they wanted to make it, what they think is cool about the game, what's unique about the game. The more we understand about their motivations, the more we're able to figure out what to lean into with our campaign. And it's really important

Justin Levinson (13:00.076)

Yeah. Which, which point of contact would it be at the developer? Like the, the top person or like they're,

Scott Hayman (13:09.005)

Yeah, I mean, it's a crew of people, you know, that we would like, we like to, you know, we basically like to interview for lack of a way to put it, the development team. So it starts with, you know, maybe the studio has a general manager, you know, whoever came up with the whole concept for the game is someone to talk to the art director, creative director, technical director. There's so much stuff going on under the hood, especially for modern games now.

where they're putting so much emphasis technically into certain things like lighting, shading, and water effects. The way characters move and the way they animate, the way NPCs interact with people, there's so much technology under the hood. And lot of that stuff is what I probably Hollywood would refer to as invisible effects. They're doing amazing special effects work in a lot of movies that you don't even notice because it's so real looking that you would just think, they shot that practically. A lot of that's going on in the games industry too.

But it's good for us to know, hey, this is a huge priority. This technical thing that we did over here, the AI of the NPCs, non -player characters for those who are not so inclined with that acronym, the amount of time and energy that we put into making those NPCs smart and reactive was huge for this game. And it was a really big cornerstone of what we did. And it's not necessarily that we would create a marketing beat that would talk strictly about that, but we would want to try to.

make sure that our team understands that this was a motivation. This was important to the development team. They spent a lot of time on this particular aspect of how they built the game. They spent a lot of money developing technology. And we want to make sure that our campaign actually speaks to that in some capacity. So it's really important for us to know the developer, know their motivations. It's also important, obviously, for us to know what the marketing department is thinking, too. The development team and the marketing team

are not always 100 % on the same page with each other about what makes sense and how we're going to bring a game to market. And I think that's a healthy tension. That's an important tension to have. The advertising people are experts in advertising, and the game development people are experts in game development. And when those two things can intersect and those two different entities can really respect the expertise of the other one, that's when you start to really make some good

Scott Hayman (15:23.405)

magic there. you know, there's we've never had a good campaign where there's not a great partnership going on there between publisher and developer.

Justin Levinson (15:32.78)

Yeah, what are some, I mean, I've looked at your stuff before, but maybe you can tell us what are some of the developers you typically have worked with?

Scott Hayman (15:42.681)

Yeah, mean, we work mainly for publishers, not developers. Obviously, developers are a huge part of what we do. So again, if you want me to put it in movie terms, mean, there's the movie producers themselves, the production companies, and then there's the distributors, right? So we typically work for the game publishers, which is like the distributors in movies.

Justin Levinson (15:48.642)

Yeah, sorry.

Scott Hayman (16:09.381)

So, you the main companies that we work for right now are Epic, we do a lot of work on Fortnite. We've been working for Bethesda for a long time now. Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft. We've worked on a huge chunk of their major releases over the last five years, if not the majority of them. We work with Microsoft, we work on Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport. And we're talking to them about, you know,

expanding that relationship and working on other properties for them. We're doing some work for 2K right now. So, you know, and there's a ton of other publishers that we work for. We do work with PlayOn, we do work with Tripwire, and I know Riot. We do a bunch of work with Riot. We've worked on the past on League of Legends and we work on Legends of Runeterra. So, we made a really concerted effort to get as diversified as possible over the last five years.

Justin Levinson (17:07.768)

Do you ever get reached out to by smaller outfits that are more on the indie side?

Scott Hayman (17:15.011)

Definitely, you know that definitely happens It's you know, it's

Scott Hayman (17:24.837)

Let me start this answer over if you don't mind.

Justin Levinson (17:25.752)

Choose your words carefully, Scott.

Scott Hayman (17:31.695)

So yes, we definitely talk to indie developers, indie studios. They're typically not looking to work on a scale that we're accustomed to working with in terms of building full campaigns. They typically, if they come to us, they want something for an internal presentation. Perhaps they need a single asset produced for them. We love working on that kind of stuff. Our team loves working on indie games when they get the opportunity to do so.

our staff loves playing indie games, so that's why they like to work on them. So it's great when we have that opportunity to do so. It's challenging for indies though, because they don't typically have much of a marketing department. They don't really have people that are experienced in bringing games to market. So, you know, we definitely have had opportunities to work with companies that don't have a robust marketing department and they hire us as an extension of their team basically to be their marketing department for them. And those are always really fun opportunities when we get.

when we get that chance. But the vast majority of the work that we do is with some of the big publishers that I just rattled off before that have, you know, really robust and established and very experienced marketing and publicity teams.

Justin Levinson (18:40.738)

Yeah, that totally makes a lot of sense. When you're talking about key art, I know key art is print. Can you explain what that actually looks like? Like what is the key art asset that you are delivering?

Scott Hayman (18:54.383)

Well, there are still physical copies of games that you can buy in stores. And so they need to go into a box. And we'll create the artwork that goes in those boxes. a lot lately for the games industry, we're thinking about what does it look like on a digital storefront? And especially if you're working on a mobile title, which we do. The majority of our work is not in the mobile space. When we do work in the mobile space, it's important to think about how people are digesting.

Justin Levinson (19:03.308)

Yep.

Justin Levinson (19:12.461)

Mmm.

Scott Hayman (19:24.087)

and interacting with mobile content and how they're going to purchase mobile content. And usually it's going to be through a digital storefront on their phone, basically. So developing app store icons, developing banner ads and stuff like that. but a lot of it, know, we're a lot of the way we think when it comes to developing the brand's identity, the brand's visual identity, a lot of it.

now is we're really considering what it looks like in a digital storefront world.

Justin Levinson (19:56.428)

Yeah, so that's the main place that are there any other places besides the app store that people are buying games for that that these assets are going towards like.

Scott Hayman (20:06.147)

Yeah, I mean, a lot of people will buy them through their consoles or via if you're a PC gamer, you'll buy it via Steam or the Epic game store storefronts like that. But those are all digital marketplaces. PlayStation has its own digital marketplace. Xbox has its own digital marketplace. So does Nintendo. So it's not dissimilar from the way you interact with downloading an app from the app store on your iPhone. Basically, they all kind of have their own digital storefronts.

Justin Levinson (20:09.922)

yeah, yep.

Justin Levinson (20:35.971)

Yeah.

Scott Hayman (20:36.61)

And again, the physical, there are still lots of people that like to buy their games physical. They want to have that tangible asset. They want to have that disc. They don't want to be beholden to a game suddenly evaporating off of a digital storefront and therefore they can't play it anymore. And so they want that physical copy. that's still a...

Justin Levinson (20:55.832)

They'd rather be like me, like searching through all the different games because all the different, they're all in the wrong packages. I'm just like looking all through trying to find out which game belongs to which one. No, it's not Kirby. is, man, it's the of my life over here.

Scott Hayman (21:04.676)

Yeah.

I I certainly was happy to embrace the digital storefront era myself. I hate clutter and don't like having a lot of stuff around my house. So it works out well for me, but I completely understand the audience that still wants to buy games.

Justin Levinson (21:16.12)

Yeah. Yep.

Justin Levinson (21:21.954)

Yeah, that totally makes sense. So you've walked me through a lot of it, is exciting so far. So I'm getting the picture now of how the client has reached out to you. You've been speaking with the developer. You have these different assets that they're looking to have you guys create and deliver. But then the next step is probably you need to

brief your team on the needs. So is that sort of what comes next? I'm just guessing.

Scott Hayman (21:54.637)

Yeah. mean, once we, yeah, usually the, the team that is going to pitch or is going to develop what this brand is going to be, we'll be involved in that whole interview process. So when we get briefed, we usually have our team together at that point, which consists of anything ranging from our creative directors and writers, our art team, art directors, designers, and then certainly, you know, whoever's going to lead the charge on

A game capture, which is a huge part of any campaign that we're doing for a video game is we got to be able to show the game in its best light. So whoever's going to be our game capture director is usually involved in that process.

Justin Levinson (22:35.234)

And not to keep double clicking on everything you're saying and being annoying because I can be that guy. But when I also think it might be an interesting point for people that because the point of this show is I'm really looking to speak to people on all different walks of agency life. So people that are in gaming or influencer or in just social digital or just print or brand basically every walk. So

I imagine maybe somebody who is coming from the brand side or something doesn't have any experience in game. And they're like, this is kind of cool. Having this interesting conversation. What the heck is game capture? And when I think of it, I think of it's like, you know, it's photography. Am I correct? It's sort of like a similar vertical. How does that work within Hammer?

Scott Hayman (23:20.101)

Yeah, so I mean, right now, I think we have over 30 people dedicated to the art of game capture that I'll report to our, not 100 % of them report to our office and to Luca there by Universal Studios, but the vast majority do. You know, I've had Justin go out and try to find game capture artists for us in the past. They're honestly unicorns. It's a really strange profession in that there's just, know, in the entire world, how many people can...

really say that they are a professional game capture artist with years of experience. that's, know, but that's exactly what we're looking for. And that's exactly what we need. So yes, I mean, it's, basically performing a shoot in a digital environment. We get the game, we get special camera controls within the game. Most times, not always, sometimes we're working with them, the same consumer facing game build that you're playing at home basically. But for the most part, we typically get access to camera controls and which

One control is controlling the camera and the other control is controlling the player. So, but we're shooting all this footage within that universe, within their digital universe, basically. And we're just trying to make the game look and play its best. And it's a combination of having people who have film production background and directors of photography, as well as people who are really technically savvy with how to get around the technical glitches that...

you know, unfortunately, plague work in progress software. There's just kind of no way around that. And any game that you're building, no matter how great it is, when it's six months away from release, it's going to have some technical issues and getting it to bend to your will is really important. And then, you know, you also have to have an affinity for gaming. actually, there are games that we work on that are first person shooters. And the big objective is the footage needs to be aspirational and not like the person who is playing this game.

needs to be a bad ass first person shooter and look really great doing these runs through an environment where they're taking out their targets first person.

Justin Levinson (25:22.018)

So basically just to, so I have a clear understanding. So the game is being played and you're kind of recording that player. So that player needs to be a good player because you're trying to show like how cool this game is when that person. Yeah. So, yeah.

Scott Hayman (25:37.794)

Yeah, we want to show somebody like me playing a first person shooter who's like that's not going to be that's not going to get an audience excited. What's going to get an audience excited is seeing somebody executing a cool run through an environment in a first person shooter and like in the coolest and best and most badass way possible.

Justin Levinson (25:41.314)

Hahaha

Justin Levinson (25:45.718)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (25:56.152)

So is one, it's a two person job at once. So one person's playing, the other person's like recording it and screenshotting or doing stuff like that.

Scott Hayman (26:03.365)

Yeah, a lot of, a lot of times it is, and then it can get way more complex than that. we're working on multiplayer games, you know, we could have a crew of 10 or even 20 people working on a single shot. You know, we've got the, the, the, the, the, the players are our actors and we have a director who is moving the camera through an environment that is being, you know, doesn't again, to say invisible effects. We don't want the gameplay to look choreographed, but it is choreographed. are trying to, you know, we're very intentional about.

Justin Levinson (26:27.628)

Yeah.

Scott Hayman (26:32.791)

every frame of the shot that we're making looking really great and looking flaw free and looking amazing. You we don't want to have one, one character is kind of running around in the corner doing something weird. It ruins the whole shot. Right. So it is.

Justin Levinson (26:45.89)

And are you able to, by this time, do you have the full on game to work with or are you still only working with the demo to create the assets?

Scott Hayman (26:54.693)

It just depends. I mean, by six months out from a game, the game is pretty much content complete. And now they're just crushing bugs and making improvements, right? They're just trying to get the game ready for market at that point. For 12 months out, there could be much bigger hurdles. There might be full on missing levels. There could be artwork that's not even incorporated in the environment yet. It's still all kind of...

gray box and wire framey looking. you know, obviously we would not want to shoot in an area that looks like that. So, you know, just, just like a shoot, you know, we basically, before we start a project, we have, you know, what's essentially like a location scout go flying through the game and saying, this looks good. This looks like it be a good environment for us to shoot in. This is, this looks ready to go. This, this part over here is not quite ready. It's missing artwork. The characters are in T poses in this area and you know, we can't really shoot over here. So there's a huge process when we embark on

creating any sort of asset to plan that all out. And it's the same way as you would a film shoot. There's a whole plan that we have to put in place so that we don't waste a lot of time.

Justin Levinson (28:01.058)

fascinating because it's like you're capturing like a world within a world. It's like a real, that's pretty, that's pretty remarkable.

Scott Hayman (28:09.581)

It's just really shoot in a different environment basically. And a lot of the disciplines that apply to doing a live action shoot or producing CG animation apply to how we work on game capture. that's, that's, that's, that's all, that's all, it's it's all cut. That's why it is hard to find game capture artists. Cause you're looking for this blend, this really crazy blend of skills, which is film production or having an understanding of how to, how to, how to construct a shot.

Justin Levinson (28:20.322)

Yeah.

Scott Hayman (28:38.991)

how to tell a story with a single shot basically, and you're looking for someone who loves games and knows how to play games at a really high level and or at a minimum has a really good eye for what looks good in the game. So yeah, it's.

Justin Levinson (28:39.074)

Yep.

Justin Levinson (28:49.27)

It's interesting because the people that I've spoken to over the years that are in capture, it's one of those jobs, it's kind of like a recruiter, where it's like most people seem like they've just fallen into it. Like they didn't go on a mission for it, like they've either been like a musician or, and they, you know, started, you know, as an intern or a production person, maybe they had a background in photography or some sort of adjacent thing, and they sort of just kind of

found they had an affinity for it and worked their way up. I haven't found too many people that were like straight out of school that's like, I'm to be a game capture director. It's been a it's an interesting thing. But the people that do it, they really love doing it. And when I talk to them, they can they seem like they really can geek out and they get excited by really good capture and they know what it looks like.

Scott Hayman (29:38.285)

If people don't know it exists as a profession, and it's been a challenge for us certainly to, to, to try to broadcast that out to people who are graduating college and moving into the workforce. Like this is actually a career. can make a career doing this whole thing. it's why we've really gone all in on creating a extremely robust mentorship program internally. We're really focused on. Certainly we will hit, you know, we'll hit Justin Levinson up and say, do you know, but, but we really have come to realize that in order to.

Justin Levinson (29:51.917)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (30:02.872)

Hahaha.

Scott Hayman (30:07.855)

have a game capture department that is firing on all cylinders and is future proof, we have to create the next generation of gameplay capture artists ourselves. So mentorship is huge. We think it's a really good selling point for anyone that wants to come work for us, that you're not just going to come in here and sink or swim based on your own skill. You're going to have a lot of people around you that have a lot of experience. They're going to help you get up to the next level.

Justin Levinson (30:17.613)

Yeah.

Scott Hayman (30:33.341)

And a lot of people that work in game capture end up parlaying that into lateral moves in the other areas. We've had people move into becoming creative directors or writers that way. We've had people move into becoming editors via game capture. It's a really great place to start. It's also a great place to end a career. You can absolutely ride being a gameplay capture artist and director all the way up to a really lucrative and awesome full career.

It's also being, it's because it is the lifeblood of the majority of the content that we create. It's, it's, it's a great foundational place to start your career. If you have an interest in branching off into other areas, if you understand gameplay capture,

at a deep level, you're as a creative director going to be able to know how to put a concept together better. As a writer, you're going to be able to know like how to write something that's realistic. You know, we've run into many times where we hire writers outside of the games industry. They come up with a really cool concept. That's really fun. It's awesome. Great copy lines, great tagline, but it's actually not grounded in the reality of what we can actually produce content wise. And so that concept becomes kind of useless when they do that. Right. So

Justin Levinson (31:47.233)

Yeah.

Scott Hayman (31:48.09)

It is a great place, certainly, as an entry -level position, but it can also be your final destination, and that's what's kind of fascinating about Game Capture.

Justin Levinson (31:56.3)

Yeah, I've definitely had people over the years ask me like, we're looking for a creative director who can lead creative on game trailers that comes from a game capture background. Like they know that, or maybe they've done editorial as well, but you know, specifically looking for that, or maybe they're looking for someone that specifically comes from a copy background. But it's interesting how there's like, you know, how that can be sort of like how you rose to the ranks can really be advantageous to.

when you hit that director level, you know? It's kind of cool.

Scott Hayman (32:29.453)

It's unique. It's a really, really unique profession. It's a really cool one. you know, people are like, you know, say to our capture artists, so you get to play video games all day. It's like, no, that is not what they're doing at all. They are not playing video games. They are, they're shooting, they're, they're, they're shooting footage all day and it's, it is not exactly, it is not playing video games all day. I promise you that is not what they're doing.

Justin Levinson (32:52.748)

Yeah, they do have to probably play some, how do they get, how do you know who's gonna be good at that game to get that, those good shots and stuff? Is it one of the capture artists? they practicing playing it before you guys go into shoot? Or like, how does that work?

Scott Hayman (33:10.499)

Yeah, I mean, you know, there are certain games that automatically like, look, we like when projects come in the door, we love to be able to give people who are super interested in that game personally the opportunity to work on it. So there are certain people on our staff that love Japanese RPGs. If we get a Japanese RPG into the studio to work on, of course we're going to want to give that.

project to the person with the affinity, they're gonna give their all and they're gonna give their best effort on it and they're gonna wanna make sure that we're promoting that product in its best light, right? Other people are great at first person shooters, they love first person shooters, so we kinda have specialists across a lot of different disciplines, so I don't know if I'm answering your question right now, but the long story short is, project comes in the door, we're always going to evaluate who has an affinity, who knows the background of this game.

Justin Levinson (33:55.596)

Yeah, no, totally.

Scott Hayman (34:04.911)

Like we're working on a JRPG right now that is so deep lore wise that I think it would be very, very difficult for you to try to get to expert level on all of the lore basically. But we have people internally that totally know the franchise and like their starting point is just, it's a starting point that you or me probably couldn't get to as non -JRPG fans basically. So, you know, we're always going to like look for our experts, look for the people that have affinity and you know.

Justin Levinson (34:25.44)

Yeah.

Scott Hayman (34:33.893)

Like I mentioned, got like 30 people in game capture alone right now. So, you know, across 30 people who are all a bunch of gamers, you're going to find an expert on anything that comes through the door.

Justin Levinson (34:45.23)

That's cool. I know in this conversation, I've spent majority of my time walking through what the whole process looks like, but a lot because I just find it really interesting to a lot of the point of the podcast to is I'm trying to learn more from industry leaders so I can offer more intelligent conversation when I'm working to and really know what people are doing. So it's an educational process for me as well with sharing information with other people that might be looking for a job or starting their own company.

So this is just really interesting for me personally. But I guess in terms of the sequence of, you know, the order of operations here, let's, you know, for sake of time, let's say you've delivered your assets and they are, you've got them to your, to the publisher, everybody's really excited. And now they're going out. Is there anything further that you guys are, are you dealing with any the, any metrics or?

Changing things fixing anything down the line. Like what does it look like after delivery?

Scott Hayman (35:50.763)

The vast majority of the games that we work on have a long tail, meaning they're going to have DLC drops post launch, or it's a live service game that is intended to be played for years and years to come. And they're going to constantly update with new content. But we're always evaluating our work, no matter what it is, even if it's a launch campaign pre -launch, we drop a trailer. We have analytics tools that analyze the sentiment basically from consumers. They'll go through the...

Justin Levinson (36:06.14)

Mmm.

Scott Hayman (36:20.097)

it comes through the comments section on YouTube and tries to pull out commonalities of what people are saying and what people are thinking about the game. A lot of times that the comments on YouTube on a piece that we create aren't even necessarily about the trailer. They're just talking about the franchise or, you know, wanting to say great things about the publisher or sometimes bad things about the publisher. That's what the internet is basically, but it gives us a really real window into every time we release something, we want to know what the public is thinking about it so that we can.

Justin Levinson (36:39.426)

Hahaha.

Scott Hayman (36:50.435)

course correct if necessary, or make sure we continue to lean into things that have gotten people super excited. So yeah, mean, post launch though, it really kind of depends on the game, but the vast majority of games at this point do have post launch plans. You know, they're going to continue to promote that game because they're going to continue to drop new content and it's going to have a business life beyond just the launch of the game, which is again, unique.

Justin Levinson (36:56.099)

Yeah.

Scott Hayman (37:19.717)

to today versus the games that you were referring to earlier that you're playing on your little console that has 1 ,000 games on it. Those were pretty much one and done. We released a game, and that's the whole market for it. And today, the whole market for a game lasts well beyond its initial release date.

Justin Levinson (37:23.256)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (37:37.442)

Yeah, that totally makes a lot of sense. Well, Scott, I really appreciate you hopping on today and having this chat with me. And it's called Couch, what again? Couch Co -op. If you ever happen to be in the Green Mountain State and are interested in doing a little couch co -op out here, we can bust out the Madden or the Caveman games if you're interested in having some carpal tunnel and we can make it a day.

Scott Hayman (37:50.031)

That's co -op.

Scott Hayman (38:06.831)

Sounds good. I'm all about it. I'll talk to my wife and see if she's cool with me making a trip out to see you so we can play games together.

Justin Levinson (38:14.35)

Cool man, well have a great rest of your week and yeah man, really appreciate it again.

Scott Hayman (38:21.677)

My pleasure. Hope you have a great weekend. Enjoy your long weekend. All right. See ya.

Justin Levinson (38:24.738)

Thanks, Scott. Take care, Bye.

Agency Side host Justin Levison

Agency Side host and the creative matchmaker extraordinaire at Coming Up Creative. Connecting top talent with leading agencies by day, uncovering industry secrets by night (well, whenever we record).

Justin Levinson

Entrepreneur & Podcaster