00:04Mixtape is a coming-of-age action-adventure game about three friends on their last night
00:10together.
00:11And they listen to this perfectly curated mixtape containing music from Devo and Joy
00:16Division and Lush and Smashing Pumpkins and a whole bunch of incredible music that takes
00:21them on these reveries of their formative moments together.
00:25And through gameplay, through music, you relive their finest hours.
00:30It felt important at the time.
00:33Hello, I'm Johnny Galvatron.
00:35I'm the creative lead at Beethoven and Dinosaur.
00:37And today we're talking about mixtape.
00:44Mixtape definitely started with the idea of the music first and Devo, that's good, which
00:49has been the number one on my Spotify playlist for five years in a row.
00:53And every single day I hear it and every single day I like it even more.
00:59So the music that went into it I think is like inspired by my musical career.
01:04I got a record deal when I was 21 and toured with Def Leppard and Cheap Trick and played,
01:10you know, everywhere from the worst pub you've ever seen in Geelong in Australia to Hyde Park
01:17in London with the police and collecting all the music along the way.
01:21I really wanted to show how that music made me feel and use the medium of video games to
01:28try and express things that aren't usually expressed like betrayal or freedom or the feeling of rebellion.
01:35And I love to try and get abstract concepts across through the medium of gaming.
01:41And that's what drove mixtape.
01:43Mixtape has three main protagonists.
01:45The one you play as most of the time is Stacy Rockford.
01:48My mixtapes bend others to my will.
01:51It's a strange, almost cosmic talent.
01:54And she wants to be a musical supervisor, which is someone who picks the score and the sound for music or TV.
02:01And that really helps, too, when you're trying to secure the rights to music, when you ring up a music supervisor and say,
02:06Hey, we're making a game about someone who wants to be a music supervisor.
02:10It really helps you along the way.
02:11She's really just inspired by people I know throughout the music industry and what you're like when you're 17
02:17and you judge everyone by what kind of music they listen to.
02:21I know I was absolutely guilty of that.
02:23And then we have Van Slater.
02:25While the people around him have these grand ambitions of what they do with his life,
02:29I love the idea that he read this book about someone who studied their insects in their garden,
02:34this lady from London who just studied this one patch of her garden for years.
02:39And she found all these different kinds of bugs and had this amazing input of science.
02:44So he loves the idea that, you know, small spaces, when carefully observed, can reveal wonders.
02:50And I love this idea that he's kind of viewed as a slacker, but really he just has this different philosophy on life
02:56and studying what's right in front of you and the normalcy of life can be beautiful.
03:01This year, I want to ride a flaming stallion of delinquency.
03:05Yes!
03:06What's your name again?
03:08And then you have Cassandra Marino, who is the sheriff's daughter in a state of classic rebellion
03:14and is a lot of the catalyst for the emotional heights and lows of the game as she tries to find herself and break off the shackles of parental expectations.
03:25It's time to look back on your greatest hits.
03:29The music is a mixtape and so is the gameplay.
03:32There is everything from skateboarding to pulling slushies.
03:36There's an amazing level where you toilet paper a house.
03:40And let me just say, I just want to say our toilet paper tech is second to none.
03:44The way you can toilet paper that house, I'm extremely proud of.
03:48And, you know, Grand Theft Auto, nothing, nothing on our toilet paper tech.
03:53So, yeah, there's a variety of kind of mini games.
03:56Some of them are vast and grand, like flying across fields or floating backwards through a town.
04:01Other times you're shooting bottles off cars with a slingshot.
04:05So it really is a mixtape of highs and lows of the teenage experience.
04:11And with the soundtrack this good, it's gonna be one hell of a night.
04:18I'd say one of the things I enjoyed most about making the game was collating the soundtrack
04:22and then getting the wheels in motion of how to get that music.
04:28I'm not saying it was The Cure, but I remember we were trying to get one song
04:32and one of the people who owned the copyright was up a mountain
04:35and we had to, like, send a Sherpa to go and find this guy
04:38so we could get the rights to Plainsong by The Cure.
04:41Yeah, like, trying to, like, get onto Billy Corgan
04:43so we could get the Smashing Pumpkins in the game.
04:45And Billy's like, I don't know.
04:47I'm like, come on, Billy, please. Come on, man.
04:49I loved Melancholy.
04:50So that was definitely one of the most exciting things,
04:52was, like, tracking down these artists.
04:54I remember we were trying to get Roxy Music.
04:56We were trying to get More Than This.
04:58And, of course, like, Brian Eno is in Roxy Music
05:00and Brian Ferry, two of the greatest Brians of rock and roll.
05:04And they said, hey, Brian wants to know how it's gonna be used.
05:07And I was like, which Brian?
05:08They're like, oh, we didn't ask.
05:09I'm like, I need to know what Brian was asking about this.
05:13So that was a great part of making Mixtape,
05:15just tracking down the music and picking the soundtrack.
05:18Mixtape, I think, is based on a lot of Hangout films.
05:21And Hangout films generally don't have overtly complex or high-risk plots.
05:29And examples of that are, like, Days to Confused is a really good...
05:34I mean, I think that's the quintessential Hangout movie.
05:36No one's gonna get killed.
05:38There is no bag of money.
05:40It is about friendship and it's about those small moments together
05:44and how important things feel when you're 17,
05:48how everything's the end of the world.
05:49And we wanted to go down that road of looking at the boredom
05:53of the teenage riot.
05:57There have been noise complaints.
06:02Okay.
06:03One of my favorite things about video games
06:05is the clubs that you have in your bag, right?
06:08You can use cinema, you can use music, you can use film,
06:11and then you have this extra club that no one else has,
06:13which is gameplay.
06:15And when you get those things to all line up and hit a crescendo
06:19where that music hits, the story hits,
06:21the gameplay accentuates it, grabs it in your hands,
06:25you know, that's when I think everything comes together
06:28and that's the magic of gaming.
06:30And I think there's a few high points that I don't want to give away,
06:33but there's a few crescendos throughout the game
06:36that I think we hit out of the park.
06:38And that's when I think games are special.
06:40I think if you really love Hangout movies like Dazed and Confused
06:45or Ferris Bueller's Day Off or you're really into Wayne's World,
06:50I think that a lot of those references that you will get into mixtape.
06:54And I think game-wise, it's hard to draw some comparisons to what it is.
06:58I think it's a weird mish-mash of different things.
07:01I think maybe like What Remains of Edith Finch is something you could draw on.
07:05Obviously, it's tonally whiplash from that game.
07:09But like I said, it's a mixtape of craziness of music,
07:13of different emotions, of different eras even, and a different gameplay.
07:18Mixtape, it's coming very soon, wishlisted on Steam.
07:22You're going to be able to play it on Xbox and on Game Pass Day 1,
