Interview
A Meal With Neal
Our friend Neal invited us to share in an epic feast at Kellogg's Diner. This is how it played out.
Kevin: Can we get fried
pickles?
Neal: Let's go! The pickles here
are giant. They're crazy.
shen: Actually? I was imagining
like the tiny little wimpy ones..
Neal: Oh no, they're like..
[indicates with his hands]
Kevin: Do you have projects that
you
put out that were co-opted or
taken in a dark way? Or surprising? Or dark.
Neal: Infinite Craft was definitely
the one people ran with
the most. It was scary because you don't know what the AI is going to say. There were a lot of
problematic
things it would put out. The Mormons got really angry at me, actually. When you put in Utah and
polygamy,
it would get Mormonism. They objected to that characterization and I got a lot of emails. I'm
Mormon
and I put this in Infinite Craft.
Kevin: Wait, so they tried
it?
Neal: Yeah, I guess so.
Kevin: Have you collaborated with
other people?
Neal: I try to, yeah. Cursor Camp
had collaborations. It's
usually artists, so for Stimulation Clicker, a bunch of YouTubers contributed videos. I reached out
to
some, some reached out for other projects, and I was like, I want to be in this new thing.
Researchers,
too. For Absurd Trolley Problems, some researchers were like, we're going to do a paper on
this.
Kevin: Was there anything
surprising
about the trolley problem
one?
Neal: I made all the questions
before I knew how anyone would
answer. And then some ended up being like 90% one way and 10% the other way, and everyone was like,
why
was that even a question, it's so obvious. And I was like, I thought it was a moral dilemma.
Kevin: Whoa, that reveals more
about
you, I guess.
Neal: There was one where you run
over five crabs or a cat.
Everyone was like, the five crabs. And I was like, but there's five of them!
Kevin: The crabs would be more
satisfying to crunch.
Neal: It actually has crunch sounds
now in there. A sound
effects guy reached out and was like, this would be perfect for my skillset.
Kevin: Alright, walk me through
your
day to day.
Neal: I worked on updates to
Infinite Craft. The updates did not
go well.
Kevin: What do you mean?
Neal: I was trying to replace the
LLM that I'm using. The one
I'm using right now is kind of old and also really expensive and not very efficient.
Kevin: How did that change
things?
Neal: I thought not that much. But
as soon as I changed it, the
Infinite Craft Discord blew up and everyone was like, what happened, Neal? And I didn't even say
anything. They've been playing so long that they're attuned in a way that I'm not. They notice these
subtle changes and they have all these hacks that only work for Llama 2. So I reverted it because I
got
scared. Someone made this thread called General Complaints About the New AI.
Kevin: Whoa, that's long! The
techs1techsInfinite Craft slang for
a discovered crafting hack — a reliable "technique" for coaxing one exact element out of the
model. are no longer working. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, what is techs?
Neal: That's just a term they
invented for a specific hack.
There's so much that I don't know. Most importantly, the sim2the simA behaviour veteran players are
convinced Infinite Craft secretly runs under the hood. Neal maintains he has no idea what
they
mean. is now gone. I don't know what the sim is!
Kevin: Do people have reactions
like
that to other games?
Neal: That one's the most intense.
Internet Road Trip, too.
Kevin: Why would people be upset
there?
Neal: I can control the speed of
the car and the logic behind
which Street Views get picked and which ones don't, and how intersections work. People have tools
that
can see what's going to happen at that intersection. So if I change the logic and their tools don't
line
up, they get angry.
Kevin: In my head, I don't think of
you playing games. I don't
picture you at home playing games.
Neal: I feel like games have the
best user interfaces.
Kevin: But then you're studying
them. What's the last long
session of a game you had?
Neal: Recently I've mostly played
indie games. I'm not binging
a game, I guess, but they're five hour stories that play over like a game. I'm so excited for you
guys to
play games. That's where I get like 90% of my inspiration.
shen: Where's the other
10%?
Neal: Everything else.
Kevin: Man, birth, death.
Neal: Philosophy, religion.
Kevin: Pickles!
Kevin: Can we just come and watch
you play games some time? I
like watching people impose their free will.
Neal: Games have solved so many
interaction problems that
nobody else in web development or SaaS has. Designing a game, you have to solve so many different
problems
about how that's going to work.
Kevin: Are there any recent
interactions you saw in games that
you really liked?
Neal: The Playdate crank.
Originally from the store it was, to
buy something you had to crank to buy it. But they said it was so fun that people were buying games
and
refunding them just to crank. So they had to change it.
Kevin: Have you thought about
making
physical games or a toy?
Neal: Sounds tough. In the long
run.
Kevin: That's like, before the
theme
park you probably need
something first.
Kevin: Where do you draw a line of
game versus just an
interactive experience? Is Wiki Spy a game?
Neal: I wouldn't call it a game,
there's no objective or goal.
Kevin: Is Infinite Craft a
game?
Neal: It's interactive, but I feel
like it stops short of game.
People could make it a game, but as it is, it's not a game itself.
Kevin: So open world sandboxes
wouldn't be a game?
Neal: Well, even Minecraft has a
goal and an objective.
Kevin: What about in the sandbox
mode?
Neal: I would consider it more of a
toy. Toys are open-ended,
and games are like, accomplish this. It's actually a big controversy in the gaming community.
There's this whole genre of what people call walking simulators. Like Firewatch is considered
one. There's a story, you walk around, you kind of interact with things, but it's more like a movie
than
a traditional game. Some people get really angry at that. They're like, we shouldn't consider these
games
because they're glorified movies.
Kevin: What would you say is a
significant game for you?
Neal: Team Fortress 2.
Kevin: What about Team Fortress 2
was so captivating?
Neal: The community aspect. There
was a whole economy
behind it. I would come after school and I would start day trading, basically. You trade hats3the hat
economyTeam
Fortress 2's cosmetic hats became a real speculative market — some rare ones traded for
hundreds of dollars. in the game, so you're basically predicting which hats
will be
popular. I would make like 30 cents per trade.
Kevin: Real money?
Neal: I mean, it's like an in-game
currency, but yeah.
Kevin: There's another one that
I've
read a lot about but never
played. The outskirts of the map are more outlawed, fewer rules enforced at the outer regions in
this
spaceship world4the
spaceship
worldHe's describing EVE Online — notorious for player-run corporations, real
spreadsheets, and heists worth thousands of actual dollars.. And the more
central
you are, the more rules are enforced. It's such a steep learning curve.
Neal: The people who play it are
insane about it. It's like a
day job. They have spreadsheets, and they'll use Jira sometimes because they need to manage their
clan
and assign tasks.
Kevin: That feels like whenever my
friends are like, yo, let's
play Overcooked. I'm like, I don't want to work. Why are we working for leisure?
Kevin: I feel like the next
interview we do should be Mikey lets
us in and then we wake you up at 5am and Shen frog punches you and we're like, what's your biggest
fear?
Neal: It's this!
Neal Agarwal makes games, toys, and experiences at neal.fun. He lives in Williamsburg. He still hasn't been to clown school.
