2# Larry Kuperman (Nightdive Studios) Restoring the Mona Lisas of video games

So just let me rephrase that question. You're asking me about when I am called upon to restore the Mona Lisa, if that makes me nervous. Yes. Seriously, and I say this to anyone that's been on the side of game development, there's the night before something goes live and it's... ⁓

Steven Lake (40:52)
Yeah.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (41:11)
minutes of elation separated by hours of pure terror.

Steven Lake (00:00)
is how long have you been at night dive now?

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (00:02)
13 years. joined, Nightdive was started in 2012 and I joined in 2013.

Steven Lake (00:12)
⁓ It's funny, I actually had no idea that you would have been around that long. ⁓ But I've definitely been playing stuff that you've been putting out for quite a while. But in terms of the presence of the studio, it sort of feels as if the last couple of years it's kind of skyrocketed. I don't know if that's the same perception internally, but...

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (00:35)
Well, we've certainly grown. ⁓ Let me share the other side of that. It's something that I say to Stephen Kick all the time. It only took us 10 years to become overnight sensations. So yes, there was steady growth. The company started when Stephen acquired the publishing rights to bring System Shock 2 back.

So he's famously told the story. He was on sabbatical, found that there was no legal way to play the game.

used his, that free time to research who had the rights, contacted them at just the right moment. They were looking for a means to demonstrate commercial usage, which is a necessity for maintaining, know, trademark and copyright on things. ⁓ So he called them at that right time, got those rights. ⁓ The company was started and was successful almost immediately.

They had just acquired the most highly sought anticipated game on GOG.com. And in fact, it's something we'll talk about, but our relationship with GOG has been our longest, oldest partnership. But we started off there.

moved the game to Steam. And again, it was quite successful. ⁓ Steve was found himself in the position of where do we go next? How do we take the company to next levels? ⁓ he'd done some other acquisitions. I think there were a total of maybe five or six other games besides System Shock in the Nightdive portfolio when I joined.

And one day he gets cold called by this guy who's been in the industry for well over a decade. That would be me. And had contacts with every major company and quite a few minor ones because of the work that I had done ⁓ as part of Stardoc and then as part of GameStop. ⁓ So Steve said,

when we met at the first GDC we went to together, I asked him who he wanted to meet with and he was kind of surprised by that question. Gia, everyone. And I said, great, we're starting with Activision and we're not stopping until we get up to Zenimax. So there we are.

Steven Lake (03:12)
Mm-hmm.

And I mean, don't want to, but I mean, you know, looking at the roster of games, like how is that, does one have to sort of separate out their own kind of like dream wishlist of games they want to see sort of back out there on the market versus what is tenable and sellable, you know, I mean, I see, you know, I'm ⁓ big.

point and click gamer. for me, things like Blade Runner and I Have No Mouth, I'm a scream, it's just like the most incredible thing in the world to have those back in my hands, but I'm assuming that perhaps those are the lesser far reaching projects than others.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (03:58)
⁓ There are some surprises there. ⁓ I have no mouth and I must scream, even as my parental feelings for games that I've brought on, even that one was a bit obscure. Steve had a relationship with Harlan Ellison. That was one of the titles that predates my joining, but ⁓ that game...

became an internet sensation maybe a year or so ago. It got picked up on TikTok as one of the...

hardest games for a variety of reasons ever to be played. And I would certainly agree with that. Not only is the game itself challenging, but the subject matter certainly is. That being said, we realized that there was a huge potential console audience for that. And

Steven Lake (04:51)
.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (04:59)
There we go. was one of those titles that was a stretch outside of what we normally do ⁓ at Nightdive. ⁓ We always talk about how we make remasters, games like, ⁓ Star Wars, Dark Forces, The Thing, the titles that people are perhaps most familiar with, and we make remakes like the System Shock remake. ⁓

probably the crown jewel of Night Dive's titles. But sometimes we can't do that kind of full work. The resources just aren't there. ⁓ Source code can't be found or for whatever reason. ⁓

And so recently we've started working with partner companies, specialists in the emulation area so that we can do those. And we're referring to those as as restorations. I can't improve on it. I can't really do a full remaster. But what I can do is restore the original playing experience on today's modern hardware. And I'm really glad that you that you mentioned Blade Runner.

Blade Runner was really challenging for us ⁓ because also the source code doesn't exist and the game had been ported...

previously or close to simultaneously using SCUMM VM. ⁓ I don't think most of the people in our PC audience understand that the reason that we took on the project was because it was only available on PC and that there are vast numbers of console gamers who were requesting the title but couldn't play it because we were unable to port it.

Steven Lake (06:30)
Mm-hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (06:56)
didn't exist on console. So we stepped in. We couldn't do as full a job on it as we would like. We simply, the resources weren't there for us. And when I say the resources, I don't mean our resources. I mean, there things that we need to start from.

Steven Lake (07:10)
Yes.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (07:14)
But ⁓ what we were able to do was very successfully port the game onto consoles as is. Again, more of a restoration than a full remake or a remaster.

Steven Lake (07:27)
Well, again, mean, great job, at least on the me being on the receiving end of that, you know. mean, it's sort of one of the things. Well, again, there's so many places I want to start from, but I suppose. I'm assuming that, you know, the sense, you know, sentimentality is something that ⁓ works in your favor, right, for getting people to buy these games. ⁓

And I guess I would just like to sort of, and it's kind of broadening things right out about what it is about these games that made them the sort of treasures that they have become. And I know every single one has its different sort of traits, but there's definitely an era that you seem to be covering from sort of PC gaming.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (08:21)
We've kind of expanded somewhat. We really began in the late 90s era, but ⁓ we're now doing games that are ⁓ somewhat more modern.

involved in the early 2000s. I will also share with you that there is a considerable ⁓ jump in difficulty. The scope of the games, the size of the games, the art style of the games certainly makes those changes ⁓ more difficult. But ⁓

We continue to evolve and we continue to grow the company. ⁓ One of the questions that perhaps we would have gotten around to, I mentioned about my joining the company ⁓ about a year after it had started. ⁓ Joining the company sounds kind of pompous for what happened really. There were three of us.

Steven Lake (09:05)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (09:17)
⁓ Daniel, Dan DeGration from the UK, Steve of course, and me. And ⁓ the amount of work that we did in the early days that we were able to grind out. ⁓ I think people would have been impressed to know that there were a limited number of hands behind those projects.

Steven Lake (09:45)
So

it's sort of humble, humble beginnings, you know. Well, as you said, and that's the thing that I mean, who knows who coined the phrase overnight success, but I don't know if there's ever actually been one. And if there has been, it was literally maybe a 24 hour window of success and then it's done. Because I think when you build something from the ground up, it takes that much time just to be able to sort of get momentum going.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (09:47)
Yes.

That was always our concern. ⁓ I don't want to put on any airs. In the early days, we were happy to be surviving and working on what we loved. When I joined Nightdive, ⁓ one of my friends from both the Stardoc and the GameStop era, Mike Cresweller, ⁓ said about me, says, you're to be working on games from the period when you learned to love games.

And that's true. ⁓ That certainly is the case. ⁓ But what we feel the pressure on was to build something sustainable. The reason we were working on these games in the first place was because they had been lost. And we didn't want to have ⁓ another...

another era where these games came out and then would be lost again in the future. So we've been very careful to try to build something. ⁓ There certainly is, know, after I joined, the next employee that came on board was Sam Villarreal, ⁓ better known on the internet as Kaiser.

And Kaiser had been working in his free time on porting games, on creating what became known as the KeX engine, K-E-X. And that is really the brainchild of Kaiser. We wanted to have something that would be sustainable, that we've used the KeX engine for basically all of our remasters. There have been a couple of exceptions, mostly as we discussed in the point and click area.

Steven Lake (11:39)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (11:53)
But the majority of our games, vast majority of our games are built in in in kegs. Those titles that aren't, we have

⁓ One title that was built in ⁓ Unity that was from an outside developer, Spirits of Xanadu, ⁓ a corridor shooter that when we saw it, it was the closest to the aesthetic of System Shock 1 at the time. And so that was a natural for us. ⁓ Other than that, we use Unreal for our remakes of System Shock. ⁓ We're trying to stay where there's going to be

Steven Lake (12:20)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (12:33)
where years from now people will remember what Night Dive did.

Steven Lake (12:41)
And I mean, I'd love it if you could just talk a little bit about, again, that idea of sort of sentimentality and because I was assuming that's the driving force behind why say with GOG, you've got that, you know, the most desired game there, you know, ⁓ and how you sort of, well, firstly, I suppose, how that comes about for these games that they aren't forgotten, you know, and that they just seem to carry over like year in, year out, people still talk about them to people still write about them.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (13:11)
I perhaps sidestepped the question about how the games were originally created and focused on how we remastered them. But let's talk about the original creation and why these games are so special. ⁓ You can take a look at ⁓ what happened in Shreveport, Louisiana ⁓ when John Carmack and John Romero, Adrian, Kevin Cloud, when those people came together.

would create a series of games, the foundations of id software. There's no other way to describe it other than magic. There really isn't. No one told them that they couldn't do those things, so they did. From Carmack creating the first true PC game engine, again, it was magic and homage. I've gotten to work with and to sit down and to

to interview with not just John Romero, ⁓

War Inspector, mean, some of the greats of our industry. ⁓ The team over at ID, know, many of those people now at machine games. We've gotten to work with those people and nobody can tell you exactly why something comes together that way, why it resonates. But there are a couple of things. First of all, the video games from that era were all pretty much breaking ground.

⁓ Even all of the Doom clones, sorry about that, the Doom clones that came out in that era, all of them were innovative. ⁓ Titles that were described that way as a Doom clone, Star Wars Dark Forces. I mean, that was just a brilliant game. And that's not because we did a remaster of it, that was because it was a title that we loved. ⁓

Steven Lake (15:05)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (15:17)
things come together that way, especially when you're building the bridge that you're crossing on. You're making it up as you go. I remember...

hearing Matt Toshlog, who was behind among other titles, Descent, one of the games that really made me want to play games. I remember Matt talking about how he got started, how a project would start, and they would be at the whiteboard and step one was, okay, first let's build the engine.

There wasn't unity, there wasn't unreal, there weren't canned engines out for it. You started from ground zero. And I think that that was part of it. I think that the challenge of inventing things as you went ⁓ really came along. You go back to some of the early games. ⁓ You look at what games were before Doom came out. And Doom changed everything.

I mean, you know, so I just have a tremendous amount of appreciation for those those geniuses. ⁓ The other thing that that I've been reading about recently, a couple of good articles on it is ⁓ neurodivergence in the game industry. ⁓

Steven Lake (16:46)
Mm-hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (16:49)
I think it is perhaps more prevalent than people know. ⁓ I think that there were a whole bunch of us from 25, 30 years ago that were considered quirky at the time ⁓ that would now have a diagnosis attached to that quirkiness. ⁓ I think we were

I think the field attracted people who did not fit into other areas. ⁓ Just so that you know, I have a Masters in Business Administration degree. I worked for 17, 18 years in healthcare finance. I did other jobs before this industry. I never felt like I fit in until I joined the games industry.

Steven Lake (17:46)
Was it because I was thinking, you you're talking about, mean, it sounds like we were sort of playing Descent at the same time, but there's, know, if you don't mind me saying there's an age gap, you know, sort of finding those sorts of games, you know, and sort of being, sort of, I don't know, converted, irreparably so, into that world.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (18:04)
One

of the fun things, ⁓ part of the magic between Steve Kik and Larry Cooperman, part of the reason that Night Dive functioned the way that it did is because Steve was talking about games that he played with his father, and I was talking about games that I played with my son.

Steven Lake (18:26)
There's actually something quite touching about that.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (18:29)
If I can stay on that for a second, have done mostly mainstream games. I don't think anyone would think about my reasoning when Bethesda comes to us and says, hey, do you want to remaster Quake? I don't have to think about that one very long, right? But there are other games that we've done that...

Steven Lake (18:32)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (18:58)
Well, I'm going to take the game PO'd. ⁓ Zach Sweason's a friend of mine, reporter, Overd Kotaku. ⁓ I have a lot of respect for him. I hope he gets to see this. But ⁓ that was the only game that ever caused an interviewer to ask me why.

Steven Lake (19:07)
Mm-hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (19:19)
It's a quirky game, it's a fun game. ⁓ Won't go too much in the premise of it, but there are walking butts in the game. That being said, ⁓ when we remastered that game, not a vast number of people, but a number of people responded to me personally.

Thank you for remastering one of my favorite games. This game meant something to me. I played this game at a particular period of my life and playing it now invokes that same feeling, that nostalgia. ⁓ So, it just goes to show that...

Art can be meaningful to a whole bunch of people.

Steven Lake (20:13)
Well, and it's kind of burnt into our readiness, you know, and that's just the beauty of when you get a load something. mean, so, you know, like there's like there's games that part of the joy is like Discworld Noir is one of my favorite games. Child is like completely unplayable and it takes about three hours for me just to get things set up so that I can sort of get it running on something. Part of the joy is that and then we're going to spend 20 minutes playing the damn thing. But

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (20:36)
⁓

If somebody hasn't had that same experience, they're not one of us. I have a quote from an article years ago that in game development, the longest journey often begins with the words, you know what else would be cool? ⁓

Steven Lake (20:42)
Yeah.

Hahaha

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (21:01)
and who among us has not lost a weekend? When the instruction set began with all you have to do is

Steven Lake (21:12)
That was my Christmas break setting up. ⁓ I didn't have a PC to hand at the time. I was trying to get the longest journey up and running again, which was not very compatible. And again, I had a blast getting it together.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (21:25)
⁓

I play an obscure ⁓ match three game called Mad Caps. Again, it ⁓ takes me more time to get set up than I will spend playing it, but it just goes to show that I can conquer the PC.

Steven Lake (21:33)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, exactly.

And again, and you know, the thing about touching on again, thinking back and like I think about the huge dining room chair that I drag into my parents bedroom, sort of sit up on the Amstrad and have a crack at Prince of Persia, like...

I mean, you could get so broad getting into the idea of like what it means to sort of dive into those. I mean, again, when I get a chance to play one of your games, I feel like I'm just like rebooting a sort of a memory from my childhood. But I also don't want that to lean too far into, you know, regression or that I'm trying to escape the present tense. But there's kind of like a soothing nature to it that I just can't find elsewhere.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (22:28)
With full disclosure that I'm the business development guy that I'm the such as it is at night dive, the suit wearing his System Shock developer t-shirt. But

Steven Lake (22:39)
Mm-hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (22:44)
We understand that we are a lot more art driven in our internal discussions. And I don't mean, I don't mean graphics. mean, thinking about games as, as art, then then people perhaps realize our mantra is that, is that a night dive title should play the way you remember the original game play. No, it shouldn't play the way the original game is because you'd have a postage size, you know, a postage that

Steven Lake (22:56)
.

Please no.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (23:14)
size you know the game should you should you should be able to set it up effortlessly on today's modern hardware you should just play it right out of the box on consoles but it should evoke that 1990s feeling you should you should go back into it and have all of the things

Steven Lake (23:30)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (23:37)
whether you were playing it with your dad or playing it with your son, you should have those feelings, that emotion, and that's why our games are so successful.

Steven Lake (23:46)
Well, makes me, know, it's obviously was a remaster remake, but Ron Gilbert talking about Thimbleweed Park saying he wanted to basically make a game that played like how you remembered, you know, those older LucasArts games don't play like them, you know, but plays as you remember them. Well, just on that note, then, you know, about, you know, and it'd be great if there's a specific game in mind, because I'm guessing that, well, firstly, I imagine you sort of resurrecting the source code and having to

sort of protective gloves and thinking, you know, my gosh, we're holding something really precious here about the decision making process you have to go through when considering, all right, is this, I guess, A, going to be worth the fight to get it done? And B, can we even do it in the first place? Should we even do it?

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (24:37)
So there are two halves of that question. Let's separate them out. The first one is, should we do it? If we had unlimited resources and unlimited time, we would do them all. Because there's a title that only sold a few copies, but there's somebody out there for whom it's significant. But we can't.

So our decisions are made, we sort of use a matrix. The first thing is looking at the success of the original game. If the original game sold 10 million copies, then we know that there's something there.

If the game has an active fan base today, if there's a modding community keeping the title alive, those are all things that lead to our decision. But those aren't the only factors. One of the other things that we look at is, was the game influential? ⁓ I use the same analogy that...

comes from the punk rock era. That only 600 people bought the record but they all went out and started bands. There are games like that that influenced everything that came after. And that's not to say that those are two separate things. With Doom, ⁓ I'm really honored that my name, that when you play Doom that my name now appears somewhere in the credits. Because that was the game that made me want to make video games.

There you have a game that was both influential and popular. So they're not ⁓ separate, they're not discrete. But there are other titles, you mentioned, I have no mouth and I must scream, that perhaps had a longer lasting influence. I think that when you start looking at people that created games after that in the horror genre, ⁓ many of them would say that that was something that they played, that was something that was

Steven Lake (26:44)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (26:46)
influential. those are the kind of criteria for whether we should do it. Then comes up the next question about whether we can do it. And there are two things there. One is the availability of source code. Yes, that's the sin qua non. That's the starting point. And it's not just the source code. It's the original art assets. What do we have as a starting point? What can we work from? That's an important part.

Some of the journeys that it takes you down, ⁓ some of the engines. ⁓ Look, we just remastered two titles, Star Wars Dark Forces and Outlaws. ⁓

And Outlaws, I would say, really is one of those games that goes into the influential category. If people haven't played it, it redefines what being story driven means. But those were the two games that were made with the Jedi engine. That was it. You now have the entire universe of, you know, Lucas went on to different engines and there was that

Steven Lake (27:42)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (27:55)
But there was that period of time that ⁓ without those titles, you have a blank in the history of game development. And there was certainly important criteria. So having the source code and having the assets is really, really big. But there's one thing that comes even bigger than that, which is the contract.

Steven Lake (28:04)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (28:20)
So we go back into a period of time, and I was working during this time when not everything was digitized. So there are contracts that I won't say are lost, but are in a box somewhere.

And you can't even tell who the publisher was because the bigger fish ate the smaller fish, you know, several times over. So who did it get passed to? ⁓ There are titles like that. And one of those that ⁓ is still to this day kind of lost in that limbo is what has been described as our white whale, the one that we really love to do, the No One Lives Forever series. ⁓

Steven Lake (29:07)
Mm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (29:09)
great games, they really embody a specific period done with that sense of humor, their stealth, they have a female protagonist, there's a whole bunch of things to say about No One Lives Forever that were important. The issue is ⁓ finding a auditable, and when I say auditable, I mean that would satisfy the lawyer's trail of the documents.

Even when you find a paper document, you're able to digitize and say, yes, I've found it. The challenge is always, you don't know if that's the only document. So those are the challenges in the industry. And I think part of Nightdive's ⁓ success, even prior to Atari, was our ability to navigate those challenges.

Steven Lake (29:48)
Mm-hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (30:05)
That being said, since we have become part of the Atari family, it's easier now. We have a certain recognition and stability. There's nobody in the games industry that won't recognize the name Atari, so there you go.

Steven Lake (30:20)
Hmm.

Are you sort of finding yourselves getting faster at going through the legal loopholes? know, or is every game, you know, when it's going to be a problem, is it just always...

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (30:39)
We have benefited tremendously ⁓ from being part of Atari, especially because we have full-time legal, who's part of our company as opposed to external counsel. Not that our external counsel wasn't great for all those years, but now we have that internal resource. But the other thing that's happened, Stephen, is that we've achieved enough ⁓ notoriety ⁓ in a positive sense that we have...

Steven Lake (30:52)
Mm-hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (31:09)
opportunities coming to us.

⁓ that we no longer have to hunt, we can farm in the sales parlance.

Steven Lake (31:22)
Mm-hmm

Is there any game in particular that was extraordinarily satisfying to get over whatever the legal hurdles ⁓ were in the way for you to to actually make it?

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (31:41)
system shock.

Steven Lake (31:44)
first one.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (31:45)
Yes.

You know, it had before that, there are a couple of periods, there's a period where it wasn't available at all. There's the period where it was available, but only in the original form. Again, you're going to spend three hours setting it up for 20 minutes of less enjoyable gameplay. mean, think about prior to Night Dive, the game didn't have mouse look. ⁓

That would be certainly ⁓ unnerving for today's modern player.

Steven Lake (32:21)
I don't think I even realised

that. mean, it seems obvious when you say it, but...

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (32:24)
Yeah, so, you know, the game was made at a time when one did not assume that every computer had a mouse, one of those newfangled things. But that one really, to get the rights to be able to do the remaster, we started off with publishing rights, but those were publishing rights only and for System Shock 2, to be able to get the rights that needed, it took... ⁓

persistence and stubbornness. I had a weekly call for about a year with the attorney that I was negotiating with. ⁓ So every Friday morning I could look forward to doing an hour's worth of begging. So yeah. ⁓

Steven Lake (33:12)
It's a lot of legal hours.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (33:20)
The other thing that I found, and while we talk about the challenges, and there are real challenges with finding contracts, finding the source code, but I will say something else, that we've seen a quiet revolution.

Steven Lake (33:33)
Mm-hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (33:34)
When I worked for Stardoc, we had Impulse that was sold to GameStop and eventually killed there, but it was essentially a Steam competitor. But we were looking to do things that other people weren't. We had a couple of Activision titles on the... ⁓

Steven Lake (33:36)
you

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (33:58)
on the platform, but I get into a call with ⁓ my counterpart at Activision and I asked for some of their classic titles.

And they said, what do you want these old games for? And our conversation went, you know, that there was a market for these things. Well, how do you know that there's a market for them? Well, I'm basing it off of my sensibilities and ⁓ fan feedback. I don't have numbers to show to demonstrate.

We go through this and we launch a series of ⁓ classic ⁓ Activision titles that were not legally available. I won't say that weren't available, but not legally available. And they were a success. I think today companies are much more aware of the potential of the assets and are looking to either find time to develop internally,

Steven Lake (34:45)
Mm-hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (35:03)
We've seen some great remakes, some great remasters coming from the companies that did the games in the first place.

and more power to them. But we've ⁓ also seen companies like Nightdive and companies that are playing in the same space ⁓ thrive because companies now realize they own that IP. There is an existing community and an existing demand for the game. You don't have to build that up and that there is recognition for the title. So there are advantages that there's something commercially viable there. Now the question always comes up first

Steven Lake (35:39)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (35:42)
of all remastering a game is not not trivial and we have people who that's all that they do we have our own engine and and much of the night dive magic ⁓ really really comes from that ⁓ so but there's there's a sense that there's a sense that there's something there and that these games should be preserved

Steven Lake (36:06)
And then obviously the fan and player response kind of validates that right. Because you keep getting feedback that you're doing the right thing.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (36:11)
Absolutely.

One of the funniest things about being part of the Night Dive family, ⁓ when we go to shows like QuakeCon,

⁓ When we're kind of showing the colors we you know, our developers come down there and we meet there everyone's wearing night dive we tend to have ⁓ Last couple of years. We've had special t-shirts that are only available there made made up ⁓ So so you're as I said, we're showing the colors as you go walking through the hall people don't even explain the context of it They just shout out the names of games that they want you to remake as you go walking past

Steven Lake (36:42)
Mm-hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (36:58)
And it's the closest that I've been to achieving celebrity fame. ⁓

Steven Lake (37:07)
people shouting like decades old video games at you. I mean it must be extremely satisfying. Yeah.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (37:15)
I

have a funny story about recognition. ⁓ Be okay if this wouldn't be. So we go to New York.

every year ⁓ for Atari's ⁓ American offices there. And that's where we have our kind of end of the year recap. And the first year that Steve and I go there, we arrive on Sunday, Sunday afternoon, we have the afternoon and evening is kind of free time. And then Monday morning, we begin going into the meetings. So I'm from New York. ⁓ I grew up born and bred in the city. And I say to Steve, I have to take you to some of the places

Steven Lake (37:56)
Mm-hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (37:56)
We're heading down to Greenwich Village ⁓ to eat at John's at Bleaker Street, know, very venerable pizza place, but we have to stop off, I insist, for two New York Street hot dogs. And so we're at the hot dog cart and a young man comes past us and ⁓ says, excuse me for asking, but are you actually from Nightdive?

And when we introduce ourselves, he says, you know, I was a backer from System Shock from the beginning. And that's a really cool thing that happens. Fast forward a couple of months later, sometime later, we're in Los Angeles. It was there, we had been promoting, it was the announcement that we were remastering the video game, The Thing, one of our best works.

I'm wearing not night dive stuff. I'm wearing a trioptimum shirt, a short sleeve trioptimum shirt. Now trioptimum is the company from System Shock. Okay, but this is kind of obscure. This young man with his girlfriend are walking past and you know that meme? He does that. His head swivels back to look at me.

And he comes over and says, are you guys with Nightdive? And I'm like, God, this has got to be a real fan. If he recognized the tri-optimum shirt and figured out that that was from System Shock, you know this guy's invested a lot of time in it. Well...

When we had our next meeting, ⁓ one of our coworkers at Atari said, you don't know about these guys. People stop them on the streets of New York and Los Angeles. So that's ⁓ the fun part of notoriety. On the other hand, ⁓ when people recognize you, they will also tell you about that one skip that they have in the music that occurs in the scene.

Steven Lake (40:07)
Mm-hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (40:09)
While you're standing here, could you fix that?

Steven Lake (40:11)
Well that

sort of and that kind of brings up a really good point about you know understanding that there's there's a sort of pressure right in what you're doing because ⁓ you know I mean you've got a reputation now for like doing good work which which must help but do you still sort of get a nervousness you know when you know that you're sort of going to be basically picking up someone's plaything from their childhood and

handing it back to them as adults.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (40:42)
So just let me rephrase that question. You're asking me about when I am called upon to restore the Mona Lisa, if that makes me nervous. Yes. Seriously, and I say this to anyone that's been on the side of game development, there's the night before something goes live and it's... ⁓

Steven Lake (40:52)
Yeah.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (41:11)
minutes of elation separated by hours of pure terror.

Steven Lake (41:16)
Mm-hmm.

That's a pretty good summary of it.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (41:24)
That's why we feel about our games the way we do. ⁓ We're very invested in them and we really do do our best. It's not always ⁓ without hiccup. You truly cannot please everyone at the same time. ⁓ As I've mentioned, and there are a couple of them, where we've done work to satisfy the console audience.

Steven Lake (41:41)
Mm-hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (41:54)
and the PC audience somehow takes a front at that. It's challenging times.

Steven Lake (42:03)
And that, know, again, talking about reputation or the positive association people have with the company, I want to sort of go back, back, back, you know, and I sort of mentioned wanting to speak about this, about the, you know, the decline of physical, you know, copies of games. ⁓ And I just wonder, you know, and again, I don't want us to get too nostalgic, but what do you feel was lost?

in the passing of that era. I mean, was inevitable. It's not about necessarily, that should come back. But what did we lose?

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (42:39)
I'm going to say something very, very few times that anything that I say will ever be labeled as controversial. I work very hard at that, but I'm going to say something perhaps a bit controversial. When people think about that bygone era, they remember the positives, not so much the negatives.

Let me give you some examples. I worked at GameStop on the time. Once upon a time, games were only sold physically. Cartridge for the consoles, PC boxed. Floppy disks in there. ⁓

If your game didn't, if you didn't find someone to make your game, to do a physical version of it, you were done. If you did have a physical version of it done, there were three or four stores that you had to go in front of the buyers and convince them to take your game. And if you didn't, if you weren't successful there, you were done.

Steven Lake (43:47)
you

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (43:49)
When you look at a studio like Looking Glass and you think how did they go out of business? ⁓ Understanding that all of us game companies were at the prey of the physical manufacturers and of the retail holders. If you're in the games, if you're talking about games today and you don't know what an end cap was, if you don't know about marketing development funds,

⁓ You have an overly rosy picture of it. You would go into a store and it was, you would go into dealing with the buyers for a store and it was like negotiating with Tony Soprano. You got a real nice game here. It would be a pity if it only ended up on the bottom shelf where people kick it. ⁓ you want your game at eye level? Well, let me see how much that's going to cost you.

you want posters for your game in the store? ⁓ well there's a fee for that. And that was hard, but what made it even harder was that many of the people that you were negotiating with not only didn't play games, they didn't like games. ⁓

Steven Lake (45:08)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (45:11)
I worked with a buyer, I won't say where and I won't say when, but he started off every meeting, I mean with the triple A's by saying, don't like games so don't show me your game. Let's talk how many copies it's going to sell and how much you're going to pay me. And those were the decisions. Let me tell you that there are whole classes of games that wouldn't have gotten made.

those quirky original titles that you relate, know, all of the past three or four years we've talked about the years of the Indies, well, you wouldn't have been able to buy those games at the store. I mean, I can tell you right off the bat, when we were selling first-person shooters, no one would ever have allowed Stardew Valley. They just wouldn't have. It didn't fit the mold.

I went down to demo a... ⁓

real-time strategy game. And the person that I was demoing it to when I was done said, you know what kind of game I like? You know that card game that you play on your, and he's talking for five minutes and I go, solitaire? And he says, yes. I just wanted to take my, you know, I knew there was a no sale sign there.

Steven Lake (46:34)
You

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (46:41)
right, that he was not going to play my 4X space strategy game. So I...

Steven Lake (46:48)
What happened to these

people, you know, when the inevitable happened? Where did they all go?

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (46:56)
They all got golden parachutes and are living on the Riviera someplace. Some people made the jump, some people didn't.

Steven Lake (47:05)
you

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (47:09)
I was fortunate. ⁓ Stardoc, and I don't say enough about it in talking about my success, grounded me in the importance of digital. We had

a digital platform even before Impulse that went back to our earliest days. We were doing software as a service in the late 90s. ⁓ That was even before I joined Stardoc. So that was there. I had a company that was future looking. ⁓

Steven Lake (47:41)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (47:44)
But I regret to tell you that many of the people that from the old school are still in positions of authority. They're still buyers for some of these companies today.

Steven Lake (47:58)
And I suppose, again, it's sort of like the beauty of what you're doing digitally now is sort of getting, especially as you're sort of, know, there's more and more better association with your brand and the quality of what you're putting out there. I'm guessing with that comes more autonomy.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (48:12)
Well, yes, and one of the benefits about working with about being part of the Atari family, one of the big benefits about being with the Atari family is physical distribution. have partners in place. ⁓ So it used to be that if you wanted a physical copy of Night Dive Games, because we were working with limited run and there was questions of availability outside the United States, you had to have a friend buy it or

get it from a scalper on eBay. Well, we've solved that now. We still continue to work and it's again one of our longest and most cherished partnership relationships. still work with Limited Run, but we also work with people that can provide the games to our European customers. So that's a big thing for us. ⁓

Steven Lake (48:57)
Hmm.

think something that I love again, especially over the last few years, where I started to realize, ⁓ this company that's the one that's making all of my favorite, you know, when they're bringing these games back,

I think what's nice about there being a a kind of quality stamp of approval from Night Dive is you know that there's no that there's extremely low risk of getting burnt you know that you're actually going to be playing a really quality game again

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (49:33)
Without reservation, I'm going to say first of all, thank you for that. And we've worked really, really hard about that. I'm going to also say, until you've been in game development, and I don't mean even casually, mean, mean, hip deep in it, anyone that's done it will understand what I mean when I say every game that ships is a miracle. It's hard and it gets harder.

Steven Lake (49:58)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (50:05)
Things that worked on the Switch One don't work on the Switch Two. More importantly, things that work on the Switch Two don't work quite the same on the Switch One because it has lower hardware specs. You're now dealing with multiple generations of PlayStations, of Xboxes, plus all of the eccentricities of PC. When you do a PC game, you're more or less saying, yes, it will work with any combination

of CPU, GPU, RAM, you know. So that's more of challenge. I don't think anyone, I don't think...

I don't think remakes and remasters, I don't think anyone is doing cash grabs. I don't. I think when a game doesn't meet expectations or ⁓ ships with something buggy, which has happened to us multiple times, we just keep on fixing it, we keep on iterating on it until we get it right. ⁓

Steven Lake (51:05)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (51:14)
That's our guarantee. But I wish I could say that every player will have a perfect experience right out of the box, but I can't say that. I think we are at least as good, if not better than anyone else out there doing the same kind of thing. But it's hard and it keeps on getting harder and we're not static. We keep on pushing the limits of what we can do.

⁓ When we remastered Quake, the folks over at Bethesda, was really their idea, asked us if we could... ⁓

we could put some of the original art concept stuff to show people how the games were created. And we said, absolutely, it is a phenomenal idea. And so we've been putting a vault in all of our games since then. It has material that is nostalgia, but it's also inspirational if you want to look at how the Masters did it. But some of it's also additional content for Star Wars, Dark Force,

Steven Lake (52:10)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (52:20)
there was a level developed for E3. It was an E3 demo level. You couldn't complete it. It timed out. That was how it ended. ⁓ And it was only used for the E3 demo. Well, the folks at Disney and Lucas are absolutely wonderful at preserving everything. I mean, they really do get that this is art.

And so they had that for us while we were able to complete the level. And when you bought that game, that previously unplayable level that only people saw at E3 was now yours. We do that all the time consistently. So we keep on pushing the envelope. ⁓ Once upon a time...

with ⁓ cutscenes, we had to work with what we had. We were able to somewhat up-res them, well, we've been able to higher up for Dark Forces, and again, it's one of my favorite titles. All of those were redone by hand. So there's that. ⁓ That's the Night Dive promise ⁓ that we'll do our best on it, but.

Steven Lake (53:28)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (53:42)
If you're looking for something that's going to ship absolutely perfect, don't play video games.

Steven Lake (53:50)
You

That would be a good Reddit response to about a million posts or a billion. And I suppose just on that note, just around, I'm guessing that you all have gotten good at learning from like past missteps or where you've had to sort of learn from your mistakes. So I don't even know I just want to call them that, but if you're not learning and growing, then you're not sort of improving as you...

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (53:56)
Ha ha.

That is true and there are games that are made, there are games, there's a whole series of build engine games, there's a whole series of Quake engine games. So having worked on one gives you insight into the next and there's actually code that you can use from one to the other. That's true. On the other hand, as you begin changing eras.

Steven Lake (54:42)
Mm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (54:49)
It's okay boys back to the drawing board. We're going to have to learn it all over again.

Steven Lake (54:55)
And just, mean, the main thing I want, the last thing I just want to talk about is what, you know, what you've got coming up and what sort of keeping you busy that you're actually able to talk about.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (55:05)
We're we've been cranking out quite a few titles. And when I say cranking out, I don't mean shipping them before that they're ready. our our our path has been you know, we had a lot in the works. Part of that is is due to what happened to change over when we joined the Atari family and the benefits that we've gotten. There are variety of things there. ⁓

Steven Lake (55:28)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (55:34)
So and we've been able to able to staff up, but but in answer to your question, our fans should know that they're going to see a lot more of the same. The one that I can disclose that will be coming out this year is one of my personal favorite titles, which is sin.

the remaster of Sin, long overdue. And that's something that really excited about. If fans haven't played Sin, ⁓ there are a whole lot of YouTubes out there that will give you a taste for it. It was very much in that Duke Nukem period. It's both...

both challenging and push the envelope in non-technical ways. So I think that's going to be a lot of fun for our fans.

Steven Lake (56:25)
Mm-hmm.

And in terms

of sort of, sorry, go on.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (56:33)
We also have, you know, even after games are shipped, we'd like to add additional content. Calling a DLC implies that it's paid, but there are things that will be coming out. have some new content coming for Blood Refresh Supply. So there's quite a lot on the back channel. And then there are some projects that I can't disclose at this time.

Steven Lake (57:01)
And

in terms of sort of long-term ambitions, I is it just that you all have this kind of infinite laundry list of games that you kind of need to get around to? mean, how does it work in terms of the long-term business planning for the company?

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (57:16)
Let's see, let's see, GTA 6 is supposed to come out November, is that the last date? So, so I figure 10 years from that November, I'll start remastering it.

Steven Lake (57:23)
I can't keep up, yeah.

Okay.

That makes me think of a great, I guess it was a meme I saw where, you know, those, ⁓ it's kind of those things like, I'm so glad I grew up with this and not this. And it's sort of like, you know, a yo-yo and then like something crapping in the present tense. And there's one where it was like, I'm so glad I grew up with this, GTA on PS3 and not this, GTA on PS5, you know, just.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (57:56)
There's a lot of quality. We have not reached the point where we say, well, gee, there are no more remasters coming. That's not even close. And again, as things change, I'm hopeful that one day I will see a ⁓ boxed copy of No One Lives Forever for the...

Steven Lake (58:04)
Mm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (58:22)
Switch 3 or whatever that has that that night dive logo on it and and I will think to myself my work is done.

Steven Lake (58:31)
It's a beautiful thing to end on. Bring that into existence. Let's manifest it. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Honestly, for me, it's just a pleasure just getting to it's the sort of questions that run through my mind at night when I can't sleep so I can get them out.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (58:43)
All good.

the things that run through my mind, did I do everything right on that new release?

Steven Lake (58:58)
Yes.

Well, you'll probably find out because someone will tell you if not.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (59:06)
That one damn pixel that really bothers me.

Steven Lake (59:11)
I feel the same way watching stuff on a theatre screen, know, I sort of spot it. So I'm really glad that Mara's sort of got us linked up. This has been brilliant. Really enjoyed this conversation. And if you're happy for, know, what I'll do is I'll sort of put, you know, publish the full conversation, then I'm sort of do a more digested sort of piece that pulls on some of the sort of specific themes and things we've spoken about.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (59:21)
lot of fun.

I

will let Mario and his team take a look at it for me. I cannot watch myself. I have to tell you this, So my bachelor's degree, my college degree is in theater education.

Steven Lake (59:40)
Absolutely, rightly so.

Mm-hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (59:53)
I didn't feel I was good enough to be an actor, but I did train New York University. I appeared in 25 dirty off Broadway, off of Broadway shows when I was a, wore a younger man's clothes. I had the opportunity to go to England and study with a young Vic company. This is, this is over 50 years ago.

Steven Lake (1:00:15)
Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (1:00:20)
and it is still one of my major life regrets. I was too poor. The money was there, but I didn't feel comfortable ⁓ spending it, so I didn't.

Steven Lake (1:00:27)
You

Hmm.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (1:00:37)
And all these years later, as Brando said on the waterfront, I could have been a contender, but instead I'm a bum.

Steven Lake (1:00:48)
Well suppose instead of remastering Shakespeare you're remastering these games instead which you know, depending on who you speak to as equally as important in the cultural world.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (1:00:58)
My son lives in London. He used to live over in Chalk Farm. I'm trying to remember he's moved someplace else. But the last time that I was out, we went to the Globe, the redone Globe, and I had to.

Steven Lake (1:01:03)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

That must have been quite special to go and see based on that. Yeah. It's a stunning, stunning building.

Larry "Nightdive" Kuperman (1:01:20)
⁓

On that note, let me go do some work or at least pretend to.