Howdy folks. I'm Curtain Deina. This is Whoa. Lucy James. Sorry. And we're here with Benjamin Lavender, technical director. Daniel Knight, CEO. And they are the folks behind a great scary spooky game called Phasmophobia. Phasmophobia. God, we should have rehearsed. There was no rehearsal needed. I'm really excited you two are here because I'm a massive fan of Phasmophobia. I've been playing it for many, many, many moons. Don't know if you can tell. He's a spooky boy. But I I love your game. Um, and I've been playing it for ages from its its infancy, if you will, uh, up until what it is now. Like, what is the feeling now that this game is on consoles, you know, like or at least exists in that way and is like kind of in its form, but still going? Yeah, I absolutely love it. It's um, this year is now the fifth year. God, has it been that long? It's been been a while for me. This is my ninth year. Oh my god. Five years prior. It's been Yeah, been going quite a while. But, you know, it started off as a hobby. It still is. I absolutely love it and the way everything's gone. Yeah. I think consoles just kind of like massively uplifted our kind of like reputation as a dev company within the dev industry. I guess it's been really nice to kind of welcome brand new players in mixing with the PC community and having the combination of like PlayStation and PSVR, you know, working together. And what was the toughest part about bringing the game to consoles? Uh probably the it's uh wait for most of us is yeah it's a big challenge but um for most of everything that we're doing this is like our first time doing all of it. Um so we've never done consoles before. Big learning c Daniel you've uh and since you know I think it's important to note or at least it's an interesting part of the story is that like it was you whole way through. Why did you want to make a a ghost hunting game? I just wanted to make a cooperative horror game and one that you actually had to like stand next to your friends and work together. Um, it's like a puzzle game at heart and then it's got like obly the horror elements to it. I was going to say was it inspired in any way, but what was that um the 80s British show that was the uh they aired it once and everyone thought it was real night um I I just Ghost Ghost Night Ghostwatch. Ghostwatch. Ghostwatch. Ghostwatch. Have you watched Ghostwatch? Yeah, I've seen it. Yeah. Oh my god. I watch Ghostwatch every year. I think it's like the best found footage horror film that's like not really a found footage horror film, but yeah. Was is was that an inspiration at all? Yeah, I mean I always watch like ghost hunting stuff as so like like ghost adventures and all that kind of thing. You like Zack Baggins. Yeah, it was He's not here. You don't have to pretend. I watch a lot of it. Me too. Uh maybe that's why I like it so much. But the thing I always appreciate about Fasophobia is like you mentioned it was a puzzle game. I like investigation stuff. I've always appreciate for feeling somewhat reserved in its scariness and in and how it how it kind of messes with the player. So you get in this zone of like investigation until something happens and I'm like what the mother I don't actually play horror games. That's probably why it's so effect. So that's why I designed the game so that it was like for everybody. Everyone can play even people who don't play horror games. That's why it's all just like tension based and not jump scares. It's kind of like a different experience whether you're playing with friends or by yourself. So like alone people say it's very scary and with friends it's super fun. Oh, I mean with friends I still like uh my wife has had to be like you need to shut up like you're gonna get a complaint from somebody in the other and we're playing together. Yeah. But moving on but now like it was just Daniel but now the team has expanded. So what has it been like for you? When did you come on? Well I don't know when after the release actually maybe 9 months after release I want to say. Yeah around that. Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah, so myself and our current uh art director, um we got brought on and Dan was super super busy with pretty much everything, you know, was growing the business, had this massive community of growing people to manage. He had a lot of help in the Discord, which is great, but yeah, still just like trying to develop the game, fix all the bugs, try and develop new content. It's just so much. So he definitely like, you know, needed some some help with that. So yeah, he brought Cory and I along and we kind of helped you sort of shape what 1.0 know it might look like along along coinciding with your vision and now we're pushing forward. Been there for 3 years and about 9 monthsish now. Um this time last year there was still only five of us in the team and now there's about 24 of us. So um I mean yeah it's going great. Yeah. I mean Daniel going back to the that time when it exploded and it's still just you. How do you how were you prioritizing your time like dealing with players adding stuff to the game but also bringing in new people and like what was that like? Yeah, it's pretty difficult uh at release. I didn't expect any of it. I'd hoped to have sold like maybe like a thousand copies or something like that. I think by the end of the first day, we're over 10,000. Um and then it just went crazy from there. I think what what are lifetime sales at this point? Uh we're uh closing in on 24 million now, I think. So, a little bit more than the 1,000. Yeah, little bit more than,000. Yeah. You're like shocked. I was really aiming for that 1,000. 24 million. I'm not interested. This is an important note because I first the first clip I saw of this game. Well, how I found out about it was uh it was a somebody playing in VR who had taken a picture of another player and I had bugged out and only the eyes only had appeared in the picture and it was I didn't had no idea what I was watching. I just saw I was like what is this game that somebody could actually take a picture of somebody else and like what is this? Um, but that being said, like the game kind that was my introduction was a bug. And in some ways, I would even say a part of that game's identity for a long time was its bugs, but there was still something there that was enjoyable to play. Do you feel like the bugs were part of its identity at some point? Do you think it helped you? Are you trying to eliminate everything, you know, to make it a different experience than what it was? Yeah, I mean, there's some bugs that we prioritize, like the fun ones that we kind of leave in. Um, what what would you consider a fun one? Demonstration of Bendy back. Yeah, like the bendy back bendy back stuff. Uh yeah, like you said what the camera thing that that's still in the game now. Yeah, I think it's still I don't know. I think it's it's a really weird balance between like we see it as oh okay it makes it look like a local lower quality game with some of these bugs. Um and then you know we talk about it but then we see in the community so many people having such a good time and laughing about it and like you know sharing it with their friends. Oh, this is so funny. Like it's always it's kind of like we're taking away models happiness in a way. It's hard to Yeah, the bendy backs right the whole way. Yeah, I mean it's I feel like I've created art with my friends. So now we are able to move those things. But the main thing I want to make sure is like and still is like I'm not playing it just because it's those bugs. It's like there's still an experience that happens between those. And I was just curious for a team your size who's now sold 24 million copies at what point, you know, that's it seems like a weird balance, right? you know, like like the game's done okay with the way it is. I just was curious if there was any sort of like deliberate sort of intent behind what you fix and what you don't fix. Yeah. I mean, we're a small team for a while. It was just me and Bend that were able to fix bugs and get new content out at the same time because there's so many people playing the game. The like uh expectations are just extremely high. Yeah. Um so we have to like balance fixing bugs, doing new content now. Now we're a lot bigger team so we can actually handle all of it. We're still early access, right? So, I think there's a really weird It's a really weird space where I think people have half expectations that you're a live service game because there is so much community interaction and community input and feedback. It kind of feels like we're constantly trying to turn out updates and, you know, fix things and new stuff for people all the time and seasonal updates. And yeah, in terms of the how we prioritize bugs, I guess we've been reworking quite a lot, whether it's a map or whether it's like, oh, we're going to, you know, we've announced on our public road map that we're doing like a player overhaul. we're going to make the the characters look way better and customizations and stuff like if there's a bug that like bendybacks for example it's a perfect time to kind of go about you know maybe thinking about removing that um but at the same time you know people love that so you know I think we're thinking about like sort of memorializing phobia classic like a nod to kind of yeah what that represented at the time obviously here at GDC um what have you seen whether it's a talk or a game that's kind of exciting you cuz Phasmophobia is such this this moment and it has clearly influenced many many games. So I I wonder what influences you, what inspires you, what you're looking at in the space. Um yeah, I mean I love coming to GDC just to sort of meet meet loads of people. Um yeah, it was fun. It's good place. Everyone just comes into one location for a week. It's just great to meet everybody. This is our third GDC now. The first year we didn't tell anyone we were coming. We were just like, "Oh, what's what's GDC about?" Like what's this thing? Uh three years ago it was uh blockchain. That's what GDC was. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. And then yeah, we kind of told people the second year we got invited to more things. We started talking to more people. Um just led to Yeah. Stuff like this. It's been Yeah, it's been really great. You had mentioned earlier about like making sure that you were getting Daniel's vision continue. How are you maintaining that while so many other games on either side are kind of entering that space now? Yeah, I mean the whole reason why I made Phasmophobia was because I was constantly searching for that type of game and there was just absolutely nothing. So I just decided to, you know, make it myself. Is that it? So yes. And now there's like other games coming out that's very similar and that's like basically exactly what I wanted. Do you get a sense of freedom when you get to play one of those games and not think about developing Fasmophobia? Yeah, I mean there's quite a few of those games that we we do play. Uh some of them we we just got get together a weekend or something and just just have fun playing them. I just love the the whole like aspect of people uh taking inspiration from us. Just expanding the genre and expanding, you know, the players that are coming in because they they might not have an interest in ghosts, but they might have an interest in mummies and vampires or something, right? And then yeah, and then there's crossover with that as well. So we don't really see anything as competition or anything like you know, you can still blow up by and play one or 20 titles in the same genre. So, it's just great to kind of be at the forefront and at the initial point of creating that genre, I guess. Thank you for creating that genre because like there's multiple of those games that I play. It's nice to come back to Phasmophobia after like maybe like a few weeks or a month of not playing and seeing like what has changed or what has been added. Um, you had a boom box at one point. Is that boom box still there? Yeah, still there. Yeah, I didn't see it. It might be. We've got like the event leaflet board now for like seasonal events and you can earn badges for playing. The boom box. The boom box is right under there. It's moved around quite a few times. But yeah, you can turn it on and you get the little funky dance. I know. That's I was like I was like trying I was like I wanted to do a dance party like I was like but I did notice at least you added a plaque for when your level reset. So I appreciate that because uh I was like what the hell did they do? How did they do this to me? So, it's very nice to have that. Um, before we we sign off though, is there any kind of like last thing you kind of want to say to the community, right? You know, like they've been a huge part of this, you know, is there anything you want to share or anything you want to say right before you know, like you go off and you continue to develop this game? Yeah. Just like we're so appreciative of all of it. Um, I never expected any of this to happen. Uh, 1,000 copies, the expectation. And even today, it's still like, what is Yeah, it's crazy what's happening, isn't it? Yeah, we we have so many people like on our Discord and we got like a really popular like subreddit and all the other social channels and it's just still quite weird to see. Um but yeah, absolutely love it. Like uh like Ben did a talk at GDC and there was just so many people there. It's like massive queue outside. But yeah, just having having so many like positive members of the community coming in um you know meeting new people, lots of laughs, lots of smiles, um you know, loads of you know content out there, YouTube videos. It's just it's just great to to see people connecting in a different way and you know people making friends. We have people message us all the time, don't we, in our Discord like, "Oh, I met my my partner through Phasmophobia." And that stuff's always lovely, isn't it? Even if it's just one person, it's, you know, it's it's worth it. Quick favorite ghost. Polter. Wow. You are no hesitation. Locked and loaded. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here. Seriously, it's been an honor. I'm Karan Deina. I'm Lucy James. These are the Phasmophobia folks. Thank you for watching. Till next time, get spooked. Go on a hunt.