Gaming's Most Delicate Story — And How He Got It Right | The Light in the Darkness

0:01Spawn on Me is the premier podcast spotlighting people of color. Every week we talk news, what we've been playing, and tell you who's invited to the cookout. Our show is all about talking about gaming through a prism of blackness because we are the culture. Welcome to Brokago, y 'all. What's good, everybody in Brokago? This is Kahlief here for the Spawn on Me podcast. I have a very, very, very cool interview today with someone who I've been dying to talk to because I think their game that's coming out, is really important for the world to see and to absorb and to consume. Speaking about lots of different issues that I think are really, really important for today's conversation and for the discussion around so many things that we are seeing and discussing today.

0:43Luke Bernard, director of The Light and the Darkness. I'm very excited to have you on the show. How are you doing? I'm doing good. Thank you for having me. Well, first of all, again, thank you for spending some time with me here. You know, I think for folks who have been paying attention to your work for a while, they are really excited for this director's cut of The Light and the Darkness to come out. But for the folks who are new to your work, who are listening to Swanomy for the first time and having you on the show, let's go through a little bit of your background. I think, you know, a lot of the reasons why I love having devs on the show is because for me as a person who started in this industry and wanted to make games, I always find people's avenue and route to getting into games fascinating because it's never a straight line.

1:35There is no like, I wanted to be a game director when I was a small child and now I'm a game director when I'm old. You know, that's very rare to see. How did you get into games? What was the kind of impetus to be in the space and to be in the industry? So, okay, so I'm going to make that story as short as possible. But basically, I grew up in France, even if I sound British, and I grew up basically in poverty in a poor area of France. And when I was 16, I pretty much started managing to hack like Game Boys and Game Boy Advances. I did pretty much just making homebrew games. And that's how I got started kind of in the industry.

2:16And then I also, when I was around 22, I made my first video game, which was very bad. That's my one to mention title. It's one of the first Steam games. It got one out of 10 kind of everywhere. But that game kind of allowed me to make some money and actually just jump into the industry. So I've been indie for the closer to the past two decades. I have pretty much, very much until I did Light in Darkness. There was a lot of 2D games for PS Vita, things like that. So very hardcore indie, I would say. So when moving from that space, which I think, again, like the indie space, you know, I think it doesn't get the service and kind of love that it deserves in terms of how brilliant so many different kinds of titles we get a chance to see in that space.

3:07And stories like these, I don't think we would ever see really in the double or triple A space, right? We don't get a chance to see really thoughtful, really poignant, really brilliant and beautiful stories like these be shared in those larger spaces. What was the kind of impetus for making the light in the darkness? I know that, again, we're going to talk about some changes or some additional layers to what this game is because it's a director's cut that we're going to talk about today. But the original game that came out a couple of years ago, what was the drive to kind of share this story from this perspective?

3:46So funny enough, I'd been trying to make this game for close to two decades. I started like maybe around in my 20s. I did. I first wanted to make a game. And for everyone who doesn't know, Light in Darkness is the first video game about the Holocaust. And I wanted to make this game. it was completely different on the Nintendo DS back in the day however when I announced it kind of the mainstream press went absolutely insane they did like the New York Times were doing our headlines like no game about Nazis for Nintendo's things like that everyone saw I had lost my mind because people didn't quite understand video games they didn't they assumed you know a Holocaust video game they just automatically assumed the worst kind of thing possible and even within um i would say legacy institutions they were kind of going around saying you could never make a video game about the holocaust and i think that kind of showcases how a lot of the more mainstream don't understand video games video games can be whatever you want them to be they can they're not necessarily like pew pew pew you know those things but also why I believe this medium fits even more and so much towards this history is because Ralph Beyer, who's considered one of one of the fathers of video games, he was a German Jew whose family escaped Nazi Germany.

5:13So I kind of feel like a lot of these things kind of all go together quite well. So basically, for the original Light in Darkness, no one wanted to fund it because everyone saw I was crazy so I had to wait until I was successful enough as an indie to be able to put my own money into it and then pretty much just release it but then when I released the original it did super well pretty much great reception all those things but I did have to let my entire staff go because we basically ran out of money we did with the original and I just released it and it did actually incredibly well where with the mainstream press they actually praised it we got no pushback um and then i do believe we kind of have changed not only the holocaust awareness space but also i believe pushed the boundaries a bit more of what video games can be because also one of my big issues when i was in my 20s there was a lot of world war ii games but none of them address the Holocaust.

6:16And I kind of feel like movies can address it. Like, why can't video games? You're kind of ignoring a big part of history here. And I don't think it's because the developers were malicious. I think it's because they were kind of scared to get it wrong. A thousand percent. I mean, I think even folks who would, you know, have someone like you on the show to talk about things like that, there's a trepidatious kind of space where folks are like, I don't want to get things wrong. I don't want to step on toes by asking the wrong questions. There's so many conversations around the geopolitical layers of what's happening in the world now that there's, you know, misconceptions and conflations about what is it like to be, you know, Jewish and what's it like to be a Zionist?

7:03Like, what are the layers that are in those conversations that are often misconstrued and misplaced in a lot of different ways? And I think, you know, we talked about this a little bit before we jumped on air. I've been kind of like, peeking through your social media stuff. And you've been educating a lot of different folks about so many aspects of how to talk about this in a proper way, which I've really respected and really appreciated. You know, it is hard to talk about really hard things. Like, I haven't seen a lot of games around slavery that have done extremely well. And that's a part of the Black experience, right?

7:37When you were thinking about, you know, you said this is a 20-year in your mind project that has now come to fruition. When you had that initial discussion point in your mind to say, I am going to make a game about the Holocaust, one of the worst atrocities on the planet. How did you think about what that kind of push and pull was going to be for you? Because it's hard to gamify something that is such a terrible, terrible issue that has happened in the world, a terrible event that has happened in the world. How did you think about the prospect of how to take a very important subject and make a game out of that that feels not like it's trying to lighten the conversation in a way that a lot of games would.

8:25Or gamify it. Or gamify it in those ways. Talk to me a little bit about that process for you. so that was actually a very interesting process because at one point i did have advisors who wanted me to kind of gamify it a bit more and luckily enough a lot of all my advisors left because they disagreed with the direction which i was going in yeah but the economist on the original release they managed to really understand how i did it where there's choices all those things but all the choices amount to the same thing so it's kind of like not like a normal telltale like adventure game where you make different choices and the outcome is different this the outcome is always the same so it's kind of like we did use game design in a way but without the consequences kind of changing to kind of showcase the player the helplessness and how in a way there was no escaping the holocaust there wasn't it was very much a matter of luck it was Like, say, for example, I recently only just found out that OutSwitch, one of the most famous camps, only around 3 ,000 people survived out of 1 million who got killed.

9:34And I was like, even I was like, I had no clue about this, how bad this actually was. But also, I do believe that video games should be able to address, because you brought up slavery, should be able to address any topic possible. And I think the intent matters most. So even if a game developer gets some things wrong, as long as the intent is good, we should be supporting it and encouraging it. And if we think a game developer maybe might be doing something a bit bad, but his intention is good, we should instead be advising him to do things. Because that's been one of my nearly big issues with a lot of games for impact.

10:13I feel like aren't impactful enough. I feel like I want them to go kind of a bit further. I did love doing your Wolfenstein games. I loved them. I did. But I kind of wish in the storyline, because since the Nazis had taken over Europe, in the storyline they were like, yeah, the Nazis wiped out all the Jews of Europe. I would have liked them to have gone even a step further. But I feel like Wolfenstein in a way, which I thought was fascinating, did better in Call of Duty. Because even with Call of Duty, right? Even Call of Duty Vanguard, which I have a lot of criticism for, is say for example black soldiers were segregated they were they were segregated we have to bring up those painful moments of history but we could do a really awesome say world war ii game about the black panzer tank battalion who literally did actually pre-camps like camps where there was holocaust survivors so i feel like there's a lot of like interesting things that we could actually doing games and I feel like we're not exploring these things enough because I think that's also what holds us back in terms of us still not being treated as seriously as possible compared to the movie industry even if I do believe and I've seen it with the game with light and darkness that video games have a more profound impact on the player than a movie or documentary because a movie or documentary you're just watching it you don't become those characters You don't become attached to those characters.

11:42So I'm a true proponent of trying to break down a lot of taboo barriers in the gaming industry so we can make more serious games. But a serious game doesn't necessarily mean a boring game. Yeah, I agree. And thank you all that you said that because I'm in the same boat where I feel like we're still kind of working with kid gloves a lot. Yeah. And we're trying to not offend the audience while also understanding that games are products and that they're a layer of, you know, profitability that goes alongside with that kind of balance between how do you actually tell a really compelling and truthful story?

12:23which is what which is one of the reasons why i love uh light in the darkness is because not only are you sharing and kind of walking through the lives of this of this family and kind of in his family and also kind of surrounding parts of that of that you know ethos ecosystem that they are being uh connected to the neighborhood the people who are in it their friends their family but you're adding those moments those really smart ponient moments where you're seeing not only historical pictures of what happened in those moments.

12:59Oh, afternoon, officer. What can I do for you? Afternoon. Are you Mr. Abramovich? I am. Is there a problem? I have a letter stating you must appear at the Casar Napoleon. to examine your situation. Have a good day.

13:40One moment, officer. I don't understand. Have I done something wrong? No sir, we are evaluating immigrant status. It's simply protocol. Excuse me.

14:04What was that about? Is everything okay? I'm not sure. What's that he gave you?

14:14You're being summoned to do what? You must appear because you're a Polish immigrant? You're French now, as French as I am. This is outrageous. You're not thinking of going, are you? I'm not sure. I am a law-abiding citizen, and this is an official order. If I don't go, the consequences may be dire. I don't think I have any other options. It states you must bring a friend, if you'd like. I'd be more than happy to accompany you. Perhaps I can speak with someone and get to the bottom of this once and for all. I appreciate the offer, but it's probably nothing. I'll just have Bloomer go with me. You have a wonderful wife, Moses.

14:59Why don't I bring over my future bride to meet her when this all blows over? Bernard, you poor slump. Bring her over. We would love to meet her.

15:22That are connected to scenes that just happened, which I thought was really brilliant. They were like, you know, one that really struck stuck with me was, you know, there's a moment when the father I'm going to mess up names because my brain is shot today. Moses, Moses, when Moses gets that letter that says, hey, come down to the office so that we can check your check your paperwork, basically. And it was funny because in that moment, I had the feel the visceral feeling of knowing already what was going to happen. and being fearful for him and being fearful for his wife. Because I was like, I know she's asking the questions of like, why?

16:06Why do we need to go do this? Why is this a part of the problem? It seems out of sorts. And then going and knowing that that was like the precursor to going to a camp and being held and all of those things, that struck with me. But it stuck even harder when I saw the actual real world picture, the real historical picture of that moment come through. How important was it for you to, you know, this is kind of almost anti-gamification, right? You're like, no, you need to actually see what happened here. How important was it for you to be able to add that layer as well? Because I think that really drove home some of the kind of main through line story parts that I thought was really important.

16:47well i i thought it was incredibly important to kind of showcase the documents and the photos so people even if it has a super animated look because i want it to look like a french graphic novel it still showcases there was real what happened and interestingly enough the characters are a mix of different stories apart from samurai with this fox but all the rest are a mix of different stories of what happened during the holocaust so say for example there's one character who I quite like, who I describe as an idiot. His name is Bernard. He's a Sephardic Jew from Algeria. And he's so much an idiot that he converts to Christianity at one point.

17:26And he thinks, I'm fine. I'm a Christian now. It's going to be completely okay. And that was to showcase multiple things. Not only was true, because a lot of Jewish people converted, they did, but the Holocaust was a racial genocide. It wasn't a religious one. So it was important to put that in so people understood that. So lots of people tend to not understand that the Nazis did a racial genocide. It was racial laws, all those things it was. And it's kind of important to kind of get, because I've noticed as time has been going on in society, all those things, people are getting more and more misinformed, more and more extremist too.

18:08They are like, it's kind of sad in a way. Like when I released the original Light in Darkness, I thought I'd just release it and just be kind of done. I did a game about the Holocaust. Okay, on to my next game. But then sadly, Nazism has been rising at a rate which we have not seen in our lifetimes. I mean, social media, social media is the worst. Instagram is like just full of Nazi, pure Nazi propaganda, pro-Nazi propaganda, all those things. And it's grown at such a rate which I've never seen before. And what I find incredibly interesting is because I'm part of multiple anti-hate groups and advice like some companies, things like that, and some organizations.

18:49And I find it fascinating how come a lot of people who don't understand video games decide to go after video games, whether like video games are hateful, they have a bunch of incels, things like that. And I'm kind of like, it's not the video game developers. Right. It's social media. it is like from the gamers themselves when it's on social media i had a great reception but it's social media which is dividing us and making anything kind of worse let's not go after video games video games are positive saying they are you can make some kind of a positive thing like the reality is this on instagram you can see pro hitler everywhere right playstation xbox and nintendo would never have a pro hitler game right so that's what i think is is very interesting where I do believe our industry can be at the forefront for positive change.

19:39I agree. I mean, my running line that I say to friends in the industry is, you know, I don't think the games are screwing it up. The players might be in terms of how they're kind of sharing. And, you know, and again, like I think gaming in terms of where we all sit is a microcosm of the greater society. Right. It is a smaller piece of all of the things that we're going to see. So when we see an uprising in racism, Nazism, sexism, all of those things, those things always infiltrate themselves into gaming culture because it's a part of the larger culture in and of itself. The thing that makes it more scary in that respect is that there's a brazen and brashness to all of it now that has grown in a way that we hadn't seen before.

20:28I remember even a couple of years ago when the game Mafia 3 came out and there was a moment in that game where you had a mission where you were fighting the clan and killing clan members. And there was a smattering of people being mad about that. And I was like, why are you mad about that? One, because that's a weird thing to be mad about. But two, it winds up, you know, seeing games like Light in the Darkness happen and Wolfenstein be a part of that discussion. and you know the the new game from probably monsters nakome nazi hunter is coming out fairly soon it talks about another layer which which i i love the fact that character is a romani yes and and that is so not represented at all in general because again the nazis had one goal i mean they had multiple goals but the big racial goals elimination of the jewish race and the romani so that's the come i i absolutely love what they're doing with that game yeah i'm excited to see how they tackle all of those things because i'm already having played a little bit of it just seeing like the twist on that on that take on it is really really important and fascinating but i agree with you that you know we're in this space where all of those things are bubbling up and it feels like now uh we're trying to figure out good ways to use the art that we have to to do some work there um i will push back a little bit on bernard being an idiot only because I think trying to court someone with sausage is probably a very smart thing.

21:56That was great. That was interesting in the game. With the new director's cut, I actually made it longer, but also funnier too. I think a lot of people just automatically assume because you're doing a serious topic, you have to keep acing so serious and depressing all the time. but it was really to showcase these people are just human so they make human errors they do really dumb stuff which humans do like again you have a choice between you know getting your date could go good or bad it could but you could have a choice between getting either flowers or loads of sausages so i think that's that's really one big thing too is kind of humanizing the characters And I think only video games can kind of do that.

22:44They can. Because you actually do become those characters. You actually do get to explore the world and the characters kind of before things start getting worse and worse. And that's one of the reasons why I think this is so cool of a project is I think we forget that part in the game. Again, I'm going to use that word, but it's not apt for it. But like when you're making a game like this, the thing that winds up getting put on the shelf is sometimes that humanization of the characters in a way that feels really important. I love the fact that, you know, through the writing and through your directing of this of this title, that you show a very 360 version of the human parts of each one of those folks.

23:27I love the fact that, you know, there was that one moment where they're kind of all sitting at the table and the young child is coming back from school and tells a story about, you know, hearing the propaganda that was being shared and not knowing that it was propaganda until Moses was like, oh, wait a minute. They're doing this for a reason in those ways. And that felt very personal to me, too, because having seen a lot of that conversation happen in our community, how important that was to be able to do that thing. when you were crafting the the story and kind of thinking about those moments of how do we show not only the kind of day-to-day moment moments of those things but how do we do it in a way that feels very very um closely knit to the experience of the folks who were having those uh kind of very you know very human moments that were that were happening during that time when they were being literally taken from their homes and being the most scared they've ever been how is it kind of crafting that emotional thread that runs through this game without it feeling like you're telling the schindler's list story without you know you're not doing the the kind of kind of mode that a lot of folks do when they talk about the holocaust in this way well actually interesting enough if you notice too there's kind of no nazi main character there isn't it's just nazis and we just call them nazis it's because i wanted to kind of um showcase more the perspective of the victims rather than kind of create a big bad because what was happening during those times it's not as simple as like hey there's just one big bad guy hitler pretty much and everyone else was foreign orders is pretty much society was changing.

25:27It was like France is a very interesting art. So I did, I sat in France, not only because I'm French, but also France is a very unique case of the Holocaust where that's how come to say, for example, Moses and his wife, they immigrated to France. They did pretty much because anti-Semitism was less bad in France. That's why Bernard came from Algeria over to France. and France went in a matter of years from being really a safe haven for Jewish people towards actually doing the Holocaust. It happened super quick and I think it was kind of important to showcase that and like I tell people, I don't mind if the audience kind of comes up with their own conclusion, like wants to compare it to modern day things, I don't care, that's up to the audience how they feel.

26:18But what I thought was very interesting with the game, with the original release, is that I had people from all different continents, like I got a lot of messages, emails from Africa, who they literally saw themselves in those characters. And I thought that was very interesting where it's where you can make a game where everyone can kind of relate to the characters. So it was about making them as relatable as possible. But I also think one thing which I realized doing this, I can't get to realize that most people were the same no matter what continent we're kind of on. We are. We will have kind of like similar experiences we do, like things which matter to us and also how racism and all those things are on different continents.

27:06Because the people writing me from Africa are people who are ethnically cleansed from other areas of Africa. they were so that's the kind of thing it was very interesting i think that's again the power of video games so you can play no matter what kind of character you can and relate to it and that's why i think it's insane when you know there's crazy people online you know like the recent gta discourse you know things like that when they're like oh my god this character is no longer white or is x you know skin color things like that but i can't feel like most gamers again they can relate to any character they can i think i think gamers are smarter than sometimes we even they give themselves credit for you know what i mean like i think there is a space where you know and it goes back to a lot of the online discourse parts with which again i think are you know where we're spoiling the well a lot um but i do think that if you give most gamers a space to understand and have that empathetic space to be able to consume a piece of content And to really, you know, take the take that moment to kind of really put yourselves in the shoes of a character.

28:16They will usually come out of the other end with a good understanding of, you know, what the narrative was trying to convey and what what the emotional ties were that were coming there. I love the fact you talked a little bit about the kind of, you know, international refugee discussion, because I would love to know if that if that experience is similar to what most people are feeling, even within those groups. Right. Of like, oh, well, we've seen what happened over here with the Sudan. We've seen what happened here in these places. Like, what does that feel like? Does it feel like there's some connection there and some commonality there?

28:51I do want to talk a little bit about, you know, this being a director's cut. I think, you know, there are usually things that that that didn't get into the first game that you're now really excited to kind of share in the second version of it. Talk to me a little bit about what that has been for you to kind of go back to a game that you made. And I'm sure, you know, when you've given that space to say, I've done now, I can take a little bit of a break. But coming back to a project to say, there's something here that I'm missing that I want to add to it. What was that process like for you to kind of go back to it and say, here's something else that I want to put in this?

29:27So with the director, I would like to know this cut. I wasn't able really to do the original vision with the original game because basically I ran out of funds. So we had to just release it. We did. And the director's cut, so the original game is around like an hour long and the director's cut is around two hours long. So it has an extra hour worth of content. It has better graphics, fully voiced overcast, which I think also brings a lot more impact. it does compare to just text and also throughout like the past years too i took kind of two years off i did and i started i started working a lot in dc and things like that towards uh ending the war in gaza i was working with uh hostage family members i was working on getting people out of gaza all those things and i was able to see is kind of how much division happening in the world how much things can get in worse like again i've seen the rise of nazism all those things and i think that really did impact the director's cut because say for example we didn't show out switch in the original release in the original release it just kind of had the text well this time we actually do showcase it i don't want to spoil it but we actually do showcase it and so i feel like first one we did make the first game about the holocaust now we've actually made the first game it has out switch an actual one would could argue a death camp it was a work camp one could really argue a death camp in video games and i think it's kind of even pushing even more the boundaries of what video games can be again i don't want to spoil it because people get to see how we managed to kind of make it interactive all those things but that's that's really what changed to very much again everything which i'm seeing online or things like that like it it did influence me in terms of i need to tell more of the real story rather than kind of uh water it down but what's been interesting too because at the end of the credits we show photos all things like that of the holocaust i still had to censure that for example like i couldn't i couldn't show like because when the americans and the soviets survived in the camps what they saw was horrific and if i put that up uh yeah i would probably not get an esrb rating so i still had to kind of censure some things and just kind of showcase some other things so that that is what's interesting with this game like i started to censure myself a bit because if there was no esrb rating i probably would have gone fully into that i would have i that's a good i'm happy you talked about that too because That's a thing that I think when we are discussing the art form and we are discussing the ability to tell the fullest stories, I am always a little upset at the fact that we can't do those things without an art.

32:24What is it? Which reading is it that you can't show stuff anymore? I forgot what it was. Centering a bit. This one, I forgot the name of the reading. I forgot. There's like an N something reading. Oh, yes, yes. Adults only. Yeah, the AO. The AO rating. Yes, right. and it winds up being this really interesting umbrella that fits things that are more sexually usually the people are kind of making games in that way but i feel like a game like this that would be kind of more akin to almost a historical documentary should have a different rating for a different space to be able to live so you don't have to censor it in those ways i i would be interesting to see what the process would be to negotiate what that would be with you know the esrb with all those other entities we still had to kind of negotiate and talk with the german rating system because germany has like a hard ban on any kind of nazi symbols kind of for a while so we just had to just talk with them a bit i mean i'm even uh going to be doing a talk in austria and all the nazi symbols are banned and i'm trying to figure out okay how do i do the talk talk about the holocaust without showing these symbols so so it is kind of very interesting and what's interesting to a lot of people from outside the gaming industrial gamers they think this game is for kids because they assume video games are for children and it tells them non-stop yeah it's not for kids i don't want children to play us even if it has a cartoony art style because again the average age is kind of 30 and up it is but that's what i think is interesting too again how the mainstream still thinks because even the holocaust education orgs they automatically assume i made this for children and i'm like it's not like gamers aren't children anymore yeah i think i think we've gotten past well i mean look the the range is still what 16 to 35 is kind of the main range for for stuff but like we are the ones who are usually buying and kind of making those decisions in those ways and kind of driving that stuff um we're almost out of time which the time has flown geez um i do want to i do want to ask you you know i games like this i think are so important because they do um a lot of service to an idea a lot of service to history a lot of service to the people who were affected by it how much of that you know this has been two plus years of your life how much is this kind of taken from you in that way in terms of you know speaking about something that is very hard and spending so much time to get that story right for an audience and for a world that that often speaks about the the tragedies that have happened in the holocaust but also don't necessarily fully give it its full due in terms of how we talk about it and how we discuss it amongst friends family and and kind of in for the record right i think a lot of folks who have done that work have done it extremely well and have tried to really nail that so that we don't ever see that atrocity happen again but it does feel like we are you know again a lot of kid gloves conversations how has that felt for you to kind of work through this emotionally and kind of come on the other side with something that i think is beautiful and remarkable well it emotionally i i i think again i've seen over the past two years uh through my work in politics all those things the best and worst of humanity i have so i think i kind of choose to see the best in people i do and i i basically hope if anything this kind of creates a conversation again about what video games can be a conversation even about the holocaust again because i saw again like three years ago that you know everything was normal like we could all admit holocaust was a bad thing nazis were a bad thing and everything has changed in a matter of years so i hope you know that it could possibly have some more positive influence on people i hope that people who are racist i tell people i hope people are racist play the game and have some empathy and maybe change kind of their way because that has been an interesting thing where meta came in to help fund the director's cup because it was the anti-terrorism division who basically viewed it as something that could help maybe give people empathy so that's one big thing which i really focus on first and foremost is empathy i'm not trying to get the players to feel a certain way apart from just being empathetic so but i've just become i've become used to it i have like online it's just nazis i've become so desensitized to it but i'm hoping that culturally i'm hoping also culturally we can get back to the days of it's not okay to be a racist or nazi so i do have some kind of hope that's why i can't do this work now yeah so that's that's that's my hope funny enough as much as things are really bad i do believe that people can be good and i know that that might be naive but that's kind of my goal and that's why again that's why the game is free and so they just hope people play it and then become empathetic yeah i i thank you for sharing that because i i i struggle a bit as a person who does work in in the gaming space and a lot of that work in kind of the social media space um it's refreshing to hear um that level of empathy from you towards folks who may not necessarily share that back towards you but also um i'm just really happy that you've decided to kind of reshare this and and to do this you know it's going to be on pc it's going to be on playstation um i'm excited i'm free and free and i'm happy that those two platforms are are using their power to share a very important story um and i guess i hope that the next game that you get a chance to make is something lighter for you oh no i mean if it's my next game is even more about the holocaust is it really what yeah one of my next games is libyan it's about the holocaust in north africa oh okay because people don't know people don't know things The Nazis had kind of the whole Mediterranean.

38:52They did pretty much. And the Holocaust happened to also North African Jews. So that's kind of, again, another new topic to explore, to showcase to people. And I think that's why I do encourage all game developers, if they do World War II games or any other kind of game, to just jump fully into these topics, to try. Even if they fail, just try. Well, you know what? I take that back to what I just said. I don't want you to do that. I want you to continue to be a truth teller because I love that. Like, I think I think we need more of that in this space. And I think, you know, it's hard. It's a hard task to go through.

39:32And it's a hard thing to kind of engage with, especially in a space where games are hard to make, no matter what size that you're going through and having them be in a space where they can, you know, continue to be made because of the financial needs of making a game. But, man, Luke, I really just want to say I appreciate you, man. Like, I appreciate the fact that you're continuing to push forward. And I can, it is very difficult to kind of push through the darkness and find something on the other side of it. Ha ha, like a light in the darkness, as they would say. Literally. Again, I want to thank you so much for being on Spawn on Me today.