How do you tackle [the legacy stuff]? Is that building a team here that only focuses on old stuff? Does that become boring and terrible for new hires, because who wants to come in and only work on legacy stuff?

It's actually the opposite.

So the first thing is to analyse what is the legacy stuff and divide it into certain categories. For me, the priority is vehicles, so I have to analyse all the vehicles, the ships, etc. Then we've got creatures, we've got Foley, which I'm sure everyone knows what is. Excuse me if I'm teaching you to suck eggs: which is the feet. Right down to the surfaces and the soles, I'll be analysing all of the stuff. We will be analysing weapons; we're going to update all the weapons, ambiences, the ambient systems, the rain systems, what happens on planets, the flora and fauna, analysing all, plus building on top of that. So it's breaking it down into its component parts: the music, the diegetic music, how we're going to elevate the music more within the game and how it's going to react with all of the greater content that we're going to produce. It's as if you're coming to a meal and I'm trying to pick at the little bits: right, that's got to change, and that course has got to be changed. No, let's not offer that salad anymore. Let's push that one away. Let's have something fresh. So it's breaking it down and analysing each thing. And then the stages of the arc of the way I want to achieve towards version one, we're in alpha obviously, is: right, I want to do that first. This is the most important thing. And I want to do this. So the first thing is vehicles, like I said. And that will feed into the next areas I want to focus on. That doesn't mean those areas are going to be neglected, because I'm going to have a department that's going to be focusing on all of it. But I need to prioritize stuff. And the way I prioritize stuff is going to be influenced by what is needed at CIG, but also what the community are upset about. I'm kind of not interested to hear about the stuff that's good. I really need to react to the stuff that people are disappointed with. And then I can get a better game, really. I know what's good. So don't tell me what's good.

And to expand on that, and something you touched on, Jared, is because we're able to now increase the team, we'll be building the team to be able to look at early concept work. So getting in early doors with new features, content, mechanics and whatnot. We'll have people be able to focus on the here and now: what is the current release, seeing that through. And have the people then to go off and look at all the legacy content and actually do all those backlog fixes. We're very fortunate as a department to be in a period of growth and to be able to facilitate that. Whereas in the past, we may have had the resources just to focus on the here and now and not address the backlog or not jump on the things earlier on.

And one thing I'd like to say is that the backlog is fun, right? Because there's nothing a sound designer likes more than working on a finished product. There's all these ships that are ready to go that sound designers would absolutely love to get their hands on, given time in the schedule, to make them sound amazing.