WWDC 2025: The AppStories Interviews with Apple Design Award Winners
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Hello and welcome to another episode of App Stories, a very special episode of App Stories, in fact. Today's episode is brought to you by Gentler Streak, a former ADA winner itself, and OpenCase. I'm John Voorhees.

And with me is my co-host Federico Vittici. Hey Federico. Hello. We're in person. We are in person. We haven't done this in a very long time. It's been a couple of years in fact since we've been together in a studio. We've seen each other two years ago in another podcast studio. That's exactly right. Right here in Cupertino. We are at...

Thank you very much to the people at Apple who have invited us here to do some interviews with ADA award winners. We have for our first two guests today, John Mills and Dave Merritt. Their app is WatchDuty, and it was the app winner for Social Impressions.

Welcome to the show. Thank you for having us. It's great to have you. I want to start off today's conversation by kind of rolling the clock back to where WatchDuty started. Like, what was the origin of it? What was the impetus for creating the app?

Yeah, I live in Northern California now in Sonoma County. And I spent many years in Silicon Valley, but I left five years ago. And after getting out there, I experienced multiple fires extraordinarily close to my property with very little warning or notification. So after you have that happen multiple times and finally,

One fire was about 50,000 acres, and that one I evacuated to all places, Fountain Grove, which burned in 2017, to a friend's house. And I spent day and night listening to the fire radio scanners trying to figure out where the information was. And so that was the impetus, really, figuring out how this happened, realizing it was my community members and neighbors who spent all night on Facebook and Twitter disseminating this information because the government wasn't keeping up. And that's really where this all came from.

So it's all based on human sources after all. It's incredibly human centric. That's correct. From the design to its implementation. Yes, it all revolves around a mix of paid and volunteer staff that actually do this 24 hours a day. Oh, wow. So if you're one of those volunteers, how does that work? I mean, what is their role and what is their duty in terms of working on the app?

Well, they are the ones doing the dirty work, right? The engineer's engineer, but the volunteers and paid staff are listening to the fire service radio chatter so they can hear them planning and organizing their operation in real time. And so they spend countless hours doing this and collaborating together. They all listen individually. They talk on Slack. They plan and communicate and figuring out what to disseminate, what is life and safety, and get it out there post-haste.

Okay. And what's your role in kind of coordinating those people, kind of bringing them together so that they can, you know, use their collective wisdom to do more than any one of them could do individually? Well, it's not really my role anymore. We'll talk about Dave's role in a second. But when I started, you know, Dave was one of the, probably the first engineer to join me to do this and became my co-founder of this project. But ultimately, you know, originally I had to convince all these radio operators that we were a nonprofit organization. We live in the community. We're not trying to profiteer off of what you're doing. Right.

convince them all to join. And now, thankfully, I have a COO who does that. But Dave does a lot of work to help the reporters see farther and do more with less. And I assume that putting together all this data, before you send off a push notification, before you tell somebody that it's maybe best to evacuate, you have to be absolutely certain

that that is going to happen, right? Yeah, I mean, we have a strict code of conduct. The reporters are all vetting things against each other, verifying information. Multiple people are listening to the same things. And we have processes that let us try to be as accurate as we can be while still realizing that

The speed at which it goes out is more important than being 120% verified. There is that balance between we want to be as accurate as possible. We also understand that this information makes a difference in the minutes that it's sent out simultaneously.

So there's always that tension, but we really strive for accuracy above all else. And I have to imagine that the circumstances change very quickly within these fires and that that is a real complicating factor for you. Yeah. I mean, from my position, I'm just trying to remove all the friction for the people that are really doing this work. So a lot of the engineering is automation, engineering.

making things simpler, easier, giving people access to all of this information in one place so that they can do the hard part, which is synthesizing very amorphous, unstructured, oftentimes hard to understand information and make that real for what we send out to the public. Right. And you're also accounting for data like wind speed or wind direction. Yeah. I mean, in general, we stay away from prediction because it's such a...

fuzzy and messy area that we really just report on what we have heard, what we see on a camera, what has been published by the government or a firefighting agency. And that keeps us out of a lot of trouble on the predictive side. Now, it's hard enough to just describe what's happened, but to try to predict what will happen is we leave that to giving people information to make their own decisions. Sure. It's interesting.

You mentioned it's so human-centric, right? And obviously these days in the tech scene, you kind of hear the opposite of it, right?

You often hear about delegating to an AI, delegating to a team of agents. And here you're taking like the completely opposite approach. You're saying, no, we need to be human centric. Yeah. I mean, I think there's so much of a place for AI and automation and engineering within a human centric approach. There's a human in the loop. We build a bunch of software and processes that make it so that they don't have to do any of the grunt work.

Less of the grunt work. And they get good information or better information that lets them spend their cycles on the valuable work that we wouldn't want to trust a computer with when it's someone's life and safety. Sure. There is no data stream. So like when there's no like...

API, what is the agent going to do? It can't go make data. It can analyze things that it has, but it doesn't have it. And so we have to then create it, synthesize it, smooth it. And now we're experimenting with AI in a bunch of different places to make them, the reporters, more efficient. But there is no silicon that can go solve this problem today. Have you thought about...

creating your own API to let others use the information that you're gathering yourself? Or is it simply going to be part of your app? Yeah. I mean, it's part of what we do, right? Like the problem is, is like, if we did that, people would start creating clones and copycats. And frankly, people would probably perish. Like this is not just an app. It is really a service. Right. And so it's important to us that like,

our users and our community trust us to do the right thing. That would be probably penny wise and pound foolish. That's the challenge. Like we are a nonprofit, we are open in public, but there's this tension between what's right for the humans, myself, my community in the woods, and then what's right for the business.

So what kinds of features does the app offer for the people in the community? I mean, obviously you're showing where people are seeing the fires, but there's more to it than just that, I know. Yeah, I mean, we have...

All the wildfire cameras on mountaintops are all on there. You get wind speed. You get air quality. You can watch all the tankers and air attack doing their job. There's more and more that we're adding constantly. Evacuation zones. You can see feeding sites, locations, temporary evacuation points, hospitals, things of that nature. And so it becomes...

much more than just here's the fire. It's, well, where do I go? What does it look like? Where is it moving? And so it helps you as a human deal with this reality that we're living in. And how was building on iOS in terms of like which technologies you've used? And also, what do you think of what you saw today? Yeah, I mean, I think that there's, you know, it was interesting. We've started as a web first approach for a lot of it because we have a really, really small team.

So we actually have a wrapped web page with Capacitor as a native bridge to Odd Native. But we still end up implementing things specifically in iOS. So it's been a really good experience developing with iOS. The developer experience, even with this kind of additional approach to it, has been very seamless. And I think one thing that we've appreciated is the consistency of the hardware. We get a lot less support tickets, a lot less issues because it's just a smaller subset of hardware.

potential hardwares that are running this on people's phones. So we just want people to have the best experience using watch duty. We don't want it to crash and we do everything we can to, to enable that. What's kind of your geographical coverage for, for covering fires these days? Yeah. So we started in just three counties in California four years ago and now we are in 22 States. So West of the Mississippi, including Hawaii, um,

excluding Alaska. Okay. All right. And have you, do you have expansion plans beyond those States? Absolutely. Yeah. We're going to continue getting across America and then we're going to start looking into what it looks like to cover floods and other disasters that are, that are plaguing us as humans on this planet. And so the company wasn't called fire duty on purpose, never about fire, right? It's about humans. It's about your neighbors helping each other. And that's a big challenge. That's, that's,

That sounds incredible. We like a challenge. Yeah, that's great. How about international? I mean, I know, for instance, right now. Why not? Yeah, because there are a lot of Canadian wildfires right now that are, you know, there's a lot of smoke filtering into the Midwest right now and that sort of thing. Yeah, we'll get there. I think one of the challenges of being human centric is that we can't just scale up servers to do geographic expansion. We want to maintain that quality of service. And that means hiring and being a little slower and more meticulous than we could be otherwise.

Yeah, I got to imagine that you have to really make sure that you've got the right people in place. That's really at the core of everything. A lot of training, a lot of retraining. I mean, a lot of these folks are retired first responders, dispatchers, sons and daughters of firefighters, and people who've been around this for quite some time. And so they get pretty darn good at what they do. Well, I mean, and obviously then winning an Apple Design Award is recognition, you know, that it must feel nice, but...

I'm guessing like the recognition from your community is also like... It's a different type of a word and that's real life. Not that this is not real life, but...

You know? Yeah, that's why we do it. You know, it's an honor, obviously, when we both use Apple products and use Apple forever. We develop on MacBooks. I mean, what else are we going to use? It's one of the best products on earth. That said, you know, it is really about our local community and about people, right? Like they don't care how it's delivered. They just want to innately know, am I safe or not? It's very like a million part of someone's brain.

And so how do we deliver a product, whether it's on web app, Android, iOS, it doesn't really matter. How do I speak to you? Really just want to tell you it's over there over that hill near Mrs. Smith's house. And they're like, oh, shoot, I better go that way. Right. And so like it's just how we deliver that product. But really, you know, we just want to deliver understanding of life and death. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having us. It's been a real pleasure talking to you. Appreciate it. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

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We're here with our second pair of guests today to talk about the game Dredge, which won the ADA for Interaction. And I'm here today with Federico and, of course, with Nadia Thorne and Hannah McIntosh. Welcome to App Stories. Thank you for having us. And congrats, obviously. Yes. Thank you. Huge fans of the game.

We are. We are. And I want to like turn the clock back to start things and just talk to you a little bit about the origins of the game, because I know you started it's been years now, obviously. And I want to understand kind of where did the game come from? What was the inspiration? Yeah, it came from actually we start with a round of pitching and prototyping just within our small team to to see what kind of resonates with with the whole team.

And this idea came from our programmer, Joe Mason, who basically summed it up in two words, which was Lovecraftian fishing. And just immediately you kind of got the sense of this, you know, sort of dark and foreboding world with mysterious and maybe a bit sinister fish.

out in the waters. And yeah, just really all of us kind of immediately clicked onto it, seeing the potential and hopefully the audience has also really enjoyed it. Sure. And that was a few years ago, was it? Yeah, we started development actually back in 2021. So yeah, it's been a few years now. And then our first release was on PC and console in March 2023. Got it. Got it.

So obviously, I mean, we're here, we're talking about the version on iOS, iPadOS and MacOS, right? And I wanted to talk about especially adapting the game. So you're coming from PC, you're coming from things like a Steam Deck, you're coming from consoles, and then you have a phone and you got to bring dredge to a phone. Sort of like what's the process for doing that?

Yeah, we all, um, uh, before we started Black Salt Games, we all worked together in a mobile development studio. So we always had this kind of inkling that, you know, we'd love to, to bring Dredge to, to mobile if, um, if there was, uh,

opportunity to do so. And as soon as we released it, it was kind of about the same time that handhelds, so the Steam Deck and stuff were released. And immediately people were telling us it was the perfect airplane game or the perfect commute game. And, you know, it just became more and more popular.

you know, kind of solid that we needed to bring it to mobile. However, there are definitely a few challenges with it. In Dredge, you basically, you know, you're exploring the seas by navigating your boat. And a big part of it as well is being able to, you know, kind of look around you and see this

big open world. And so on with touch controls, that of course means that we somehow have to allow you to navigate your boat and also to be independently able to move the camera. And so that was probably, you know, the first thing.

that we really wanted to make intuitive, figuring out our on-screen controls. And then probably the second big challenge point, in Dredge, your inventory is a really big part of the game. You'll fish up fish, dredge up equipment, and you need to somehow fit those...

those different shapes into your, your inventory. And you'll do some tessellation and some inventory Tetris thing. We, we call it, uh, and that again, being able to, to hold an item, rotate it around, slip it into your, your inventory, which a lot of cases, the, the cells are kind of smaller than, uh,

than your fingers. So yeah, we, and that was probably the biggest challenge, the one that we spent the most amount of time prototyping different interactions. So until we felt we got it right and hopefully this award. I mean, what an award for it. Yeah, right? You did the right thing. Very valuable.

Very validating all that work we put in kind of testing out our interactions. I mean, that's really interesting to me because there really is a big difference between the different kinds of platforms that you're developing for and when you're really going to a much more – it has to be –

refined when you're using your fingers, obviously. And a game like Dredge, really you do, as you said, there can be some really intricate manipulation of the inventory and how you fit things together. And that's kind of wild. Yeah. I want to turn a little bit, I guess, to the art design because, I mean, a big thing, a big part of the game, I think, is the

is the sense of oppression or foreboding and the dark, the things in the sea that you don't know about that are coming at you and kind of reveals itself over time. What was that aspect of it like in terms of the development process?

Yeah, do you want me to take this? Yeah, so I have an interesting kind of role where I came on after the kind of like post-launch. So I've come on from the mobile kind of side of it. Okay. So I'm the brand manager there. And Alex is an amazing artist and I've worked with him for years. And he's always had this like really catchy style that I've always really admired. So it's like an honor to be able to, I do the socials and stuff. So I'll be able to copy some of the posts kind of like his style. Yeah.

And he's just like really gestural. And I think that comes in the kind of like it's not quite messy. I wouldn't call it. But I think that helps with it's not imperfections makes you kind of like look at it a little bit more. Like, oh, is like sometimes you might see some other different shapes. You're like, do I see a face in here? Right. Right. He picked the style. It was really based on the amount of time that we had.

So we knew, you know, he knew that he was going to be, you know, sort of one of maybe two artists, if not just himself on it. And he would have to create the whole world and all of the characters. And so he went for this kind of low poly style.

which sort of breaks up the shapes and textures, and it really complements his 2D art style really beautifully. So even though in Dredge it's this mixture of 2D and 3D where you've got 2D characters but a 3D world, still somehow it really feels like it fits together. What I think is interesting is that typically you would think of fishing as a relaxing activity.

It can be quite relaxing. Some people call it cozy even. I've also seen those comments. You got that contrast, like Lovecraftian fishing, which immediately is like a contrast, like those two. But then, I mean, the game can be cozy. So I think that contrast is fascinating to me. I mean, there's plenty of cozy fishing games. How many have...

Love Grafton. Right. I mean, it's very unique in that way. And it was something that we didn't pick either to begin with, but it was, you know, again, once we launched, people said, you know, the daytime is this really, and it is a cozy, you can see for miles,

You know, there, you can just take your time and, and, and slowly go about your day, go about fishing. The, the juxtaposition comes when the, the sun goes down, the fog rolls in. Suddenly you cannot see anywhere near in front of you and you don't know now what else is out there with you. Yeah. I,

I think the fog is a great element because it really, it's almost like its own character in the game in a certain way. It is. Yes. That's awesome that you pick up on that. We definitely think of it as such because yeah, it does. It completely kind of switches the mood of the game. Now, let me ask you, what do you think, if you have enough time to sort of think about it, given the announcement this morning of the new games app?

So having this single place where in theory people should be able to find Dredge, for example, see the game in the libraries and maybe even

I don't know if you guys are considering the challenges that they showed off with friends. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, immediately as soon as it was announced, it was, oh, this makes so much sense, doesn't it? To have one place where all of the games live, to hopefully have those more personalized recommendations.

If the kind of games you you might enjoy. I'm really looking forward to that because, I mean, we're so spoiled for choice. There are so many apps out there and it can kind of be difficult to scroll through and decide on one. And so having those those recommendations are going to be great. The challenge is it stretches a single player game.

And so immediately, though, those kind of challenges, you know, how many fish you can catch, can you catch the trophy fish? Yeah, all of those then kind of bring a sense of community to what is otherwise, you know, a single player game. So we're looking forward to that. Yeah, I think the games app is really interesting to me because it, I mean...

Games are apps on the phone in a way, but also people go to get a game or get an app. There's a lot of different intentionality going on there when you're looking for those things and to be able to put all of the games in one place, I think will do a nice job of spotlighting Dredge and others. Yeah.

Yeah. There's some really cool games that have recently come on to the App Store. So keen to see more games come on. Yeah. When it comes to porting the game to Apple platforms, any particular technologies that you want to shout out? Like how was it, first of all, coming from PC, coming from consoles, bringing the game to Apple platforms? Absolutely.

It actually wasn't as difficult as we were kind of scared of. Really, it was the design and the interactions that really was the biggest challenge. And I think that was down to right from the beginning with Dredge, we built it and optimized it for other kind of handheld platforms, which...

quite restricted in terms of their specs. And yeah, I don't... Especially the latest kind of iPhones and tablets are way better spec, have these gorgeous retina displays. So, you know, we...

our first build on the, the phone, we were just blown away with how beautiful like our game was, um, was looking. Um, so yeah, we actually didn't run into many technical challenges with the, with the, um, I, um, iPhone, um, development. Uh,

we, you know, it was really important for us that we had the, the cross platform. So people, um, so the cloud saves and everything. So people could just jump, you know, sort of be at home on their, on their Mac book and then, you know, jump into their commute and, and pick up where, where they left off. So we really tried for those seamless kind of integrations as well. But yeah, it really, um,

we really didn't have to do a whole lot more optimizing that we hadn't already done for, um, to get it onto consoles. So, yeah, we were happy. We were very pleasantly, um, surprised. Yeah. As a, as a PC and console games developer, uh,

yeah, it was just so easy. And actually we got a lot of support from Apple as well. Um, the, the app store team, um, really gave us, um, a lot of support and encouragement, um, as we were building it. Nice. Can we ask what's next for the team? What's, what are you? Yeah, well, this, you know, gosh, probably a bit of a breather. Um,

It's been, yeah, sort of two years full on, you know, on this crazy, wonderful kind of ride getting to, you know...

Getting this sort of recognition like we have from the Apple Design Awards, it was just something that we never expected and also never planned for or scheduled for. So, yeah, we'll probably take a bit of a breather now. There's a few updates we want to do to our app.

Just to, you know, games. There's some games in Apple games thing now that we need to look at. But yeah, no, no big plans on the on the horizon. Well, well deserved. Thank you. Congratulations again. It's been really great talking to both of you. Thank you for having us.

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We're back with our third Apple Design Award winner today that we're speaking to. And that is Wout van Haldren from Playstack, the publisher of Ballatro. Thank you. It's so cool to be here. Great. We got to address something up front. Yeah. What's that? How to pronounce Ballatro. Ballatro. Okay. So in Italy, I would say Ballatro. Yeah.

And I think that's probably right because the word means jester in Latin. So I'm going to go with your pronunciation, but then like my best for it. But we did have a bit of fun with it in the beginning because he didn't really care how to pronounce it. So every time we did an interview, we'd pronounce it differently just to keep everyone guessing. But now I usually say Balatro myself. If you say Balatro, it's still good with me and nobody's going to get mad.

Nobody's going to say Balatro. No. Okay. No, I don't think so. But if you want, you can. Okay. As long as you say it with confidence, we're happy. Sounds good. Sounds good. So why don't we back up a little bit to the origins of the game and where did it kind of come from and what was the development process like? Yeah, so it was quite interesting for us as a publisher because we found Balatro on Steam because Local Thunk was...

a hobbyist game developer and for once he thought now I'm going to make a game put it on Steam and maybe I can get a job at a game studio one day if I have a right so almost like a resume building exactly what he thought

And then we saw a little spike on demo downloads. We're like, oh, this looks like an interesting game. So we reached out and offered everything we could do with a game like that. And then we signed an agreement to make it a little bigger than he had intended because for him, he was like, he was done. I'm going to put it on Steam and then go back to my day job. And he was like, how about...

don't go back to your day job and you work on this a little bit longer. Round it out a little bit. That kind of gave him enough time to really polish it up to what it is today. And it paid off, I would say. How many years ago was that? That was the summer 2023 that we picked it up. We got involved around June and then it launched in February 2024. So the extra eight, nine months that he got for the polish.

The game changed a lot, like a lot of extra features that weren't there yet that they now had time to do.

And then we had it ready for launch and then it kind of took off. Now let me ask you, obviously I'm guessing you were hoping for a success. Yes. But were you expecting that kind of success? No, like I think it crashed like all our expectations, like almost out of the gate. Because you kind of have the hopeful, like this should be a good number. You look at like your wishlist and like kind of the hype around it.

It wasn't, I think, until the night before the launch when the reviews started coming in and it was like 9s and 10s and the influencers started picking up. They were like, "Oh, this could be much bigger than we thought it would be." But even then, I think if we would have said, "Oh, maybe it does twice what we expected," it would have still gone above and beyond. And that is also very scary because then you can only drop the ball basically and it feels like, "Oh, now we have to be on it constantly because you get so many eyeballs."

But there was also nothing wrong with it. He was expecting like, oh, there must be like a million bugs that I'm going to find when so many people started playing it. But it was smooth sailing. So he could really relax a little bit after a couple of days and keep that momentum going. Interesting. And to expand to...

more platforms. Has that required bringing on additional people to help with the development? Yeah, so there's Martin, he's the man that does all the porting, including the mobile version. And that was very useful because LocalTongue did a lot on the UI and making it fit for phones, but just to bring it to all these platforms, that is a whole specialty that he didn't necessarily have.

And that gave us a whole new market to play around in. So when we went to mobile, I think that's when it even got amplified even further because it's so perfect to play it on your phone. Yeah, it really is. And I mean, it seems like it's one of those games that when you first try it,

There's always those games when you try them and you're like, you know what? I really wish this was on my phone. And I had that feeling the minute I played Bellatro because I was playing it on the Switch originally. And I just knew eventually it would end up on the iPhone. What are some of the unique challenges to kind of moving from...

those other platforms, things like Steam and Nintendo Switch and bringing it to mobile platforms. Yeah, there were a couple challenges just UI-wise, like how you open packs and how you add cards. And quickly it was like the UI was too close to each other. So if you would select a joke, you could accidentally sell it. So those are the things that you work on.

But we could have some fun with it because what you said, like people were constantly tweeting at us like, oh, this should become a mobile game. This should be mobile. I'm going to lose my whole life when this comes to mobile. So when we did the trailer for the mobile announcement, we made an absolutely unhinged trailer for it and got like millions of views. So we got right through the algorithm to get it up there.

But just building it in itself is to try to create a tactical feel of a deck of cards. You can only do that on a phone or an iPad, right? That you feel the cards when you play them. And those are little things that you can experiment with when you have the right tools. So that was super fun to add that to the experience that made Palatros so addictive.

Yeah. And that's very unique to iOS because you're using the haptics, right? Yes, exactly. And it just feels so good. Right. And, and, and game center. I know there's integration there as well. Very nice. Yes. Yeah. I, I have to imagine that like seeing this kind of reception, you know, and winning the awards being nominated for multiple awards. Yeah. Um, it has to be for, for local thank, but also for you as, as, as the publisher, like,

getting that kind of recognition, you know, uh, especially for this type of indie project from, from a, by and large from a solo creator. Right. Um,

It's that kind of a heartwarming story that you don't necessarily hear that much anymore, right? Yeah, it's true. And it's quite overwhelming as well. And I think we're currently seeing a lot of smaller teams doing big successes, but it's not like, oh, this could only be done by a single developer. Because even he, as a single developer, had a lot of help. He had a lot of support from family, friends, and QA testers and translators.

And he's definitely not the person that would go out and say, like, I'm a solo developer. Like, I did this all by myself. We did make a joke about it when he won a BAFTA. I'm not sure if you've seen that. We sent the clown up and he had a whole speech about as if LocalTongue would actually say those kind of things. I remember that. That was very good. But no, it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming success. And I think part of that is why he probably enjoys the reasoning why he stayed anonymous throughout this whole process because nobody knows.

knows who he is and he wants to keep that this way so he can enjoy it from a distance but it doesn't become his life right right he's canadian so if people talk about the game they are probably talking about a hockey game instead of his game and i think that's exactly the way he wants it to be yeah that's that's very different like that approach from

Like I'm thinking a few years ago when the creator of Flappy Bird, for example, this game takes over the App Store. People become addicted to it. And the creator decides, I don't think I'm comfortable with that anymore. The idea that people associate me and my name with this game on their phones. And all the attention. Exactly. But you don't get trained for that. You're a game designer because he loves making video games. He doesn't necessarily enjoy having published a video game.

like he just likes the tinkering he likes the the experimenting with with systems and then now all of a sudden it's about him it's about uh and then he's like no i'm gonna just take a tab back and let the let the game do its work um and we step in because you as a publisher you have to do this right you have to do the cycle and you pick up the the awards and and that helps him it helps the cycle of the game it helps the health of the game but

I think it was a good decision for him because otherwise you could get like a flappy bird situation, which would make me very sad if he would go into the boots and never come back with his game. But no, I think it's a healthy way how he did it. And if you have like this overnight success, like I think you should be prepared for that. Yeah.

see what kind of help you can get managing that if you didn't decide to stay like a little bit in the shadows. Let me ask you about the games app that was announced today. What are your thoughts on that? This looks interesting. There are a couple of things we could have some fun with. For him, it's probably another level of like, oh, that's a lot of work for one person to like integrate like those sharing scores.

But what I see online is that a lot of people, for example, like sharing seats, you know, for a ballad or see like, oh, this is where you get super cool cards. Or if you send a screenshot of your score to someone else now, that could be a fun integration that makes it a lot easier.

Because we do, Lokomotiv and I trash talk each other often about our high scores and our achievements. What's the highest? My highest is like E15, I think, which is like 15 scores. But we had a bit of a rivalry going on on who would have completionist plus plus first. And he publicly tweeted that I would never beat him. And then I did. And I'm like, okay.

Got you. Awesome. But that's good. Yeah. But it looks very interesting and it's more tools that we can tinker with. I'm curious, as a publisher, how do you go about...

trying to discover a game like like local thunks ballot yeah we have a very very good discovery team like it's their whole job to look at games that either get announced or they are put on platforms and they can use the help still with the publisher because if it's already on the store like you you're probably pretty far along in the process

So they try to find the games before they get put on the stores. And I think a game like Bellator puts us as a publisher a little bit more in the spotlight. People can find us saying, "Hey, I have some games." So we did a lot of outreach at first, and now we're seeing a lot more inbound of very interesting projects, which is, of course, great for us.

We also see a bunch of people that think they have the next the next palatial, you know That is the dream for everybody But I think what made a lot or so unique and so successful is he was never striving to get the next of anything He just created something brand new and that spoke for itself and those I think are the types of product project that were interesting you don't need to have

have someone get a good Bellator clone. We just want someone who comes up with a fresh idea and that we can work with very well. We should mention the music of Bellator. Yes.

Incredible music. Is there a backstory behind that? Oh, there's a super fun backstory to that actually. He found the musician on Fiverr. So he got a Fiverr contract to create the music. So he wrote the track. And then Local Thunk, because he's a tinkerer, he still slowed down the music by like 37.8% or something like a very specific number until it was just right.

And then the game blew up, so he kind of negotiated, well, not negotiated, local thunk, like changed the contract so that the composer would get paid way more than the Fiverr contract. So he gets 100% of the sales of the soundtrack, for example. And he's a super nice guy, Lewis, and I think he's always willing to make some cool music for people. So if

If you need a good musician, just find him. He's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Probably not on Fiverr anymore. I think he might still be. Yeah. Yeah. He's like a very, he's like local, like a very humble man in Spain and he loves doing cool projects. I think he's working on his own game as well, but so talented. Like,

LocalTongue brought him to the Game Awards in December, because when you are a nominee for Game of the Year, they play your music with the giant orchestra. So he flew them in just so he could hear a giant orchestra play his theme song. And that was super cool. I think he had a moment on that one. I bet. Wow. Anything that you can share in terms of what may be coming next?

I wish I could. No, he's working on the update. But what's important to understand for a game like Balotter, it's a fairly evergreen game. So it doesn't matter if you picked it up in last year or you pick it up today. It's the same experience. And thousands of people are still playing Balotter for the first time. So everything he adds from now on

has to be that same core experience. Like he can not just add a bunch of new, more complicated cards that are purely for the player who is waiting for new content. Because if you're discovering it tomorrow and say there will be a whole new update and it's more confusing or it's harder to get into, that kind of defeats the vibe of the game where everyone can pick it up. And that's quite a delicate...

act for him balancing act to get that right so we let him work on it and when because it has to be good it cannot be a bad update because there's so many people who love this game dearly and if like a rushed update would not do the game any favor so

So he can do what he needs to do to get it good. And as soon as he tells me, I will start to work on it. And then I will scream about it because that's when my job starts again. But he's got some interesting ideas. Good. Good. All right. Sorry. Sorry. No update. No leaks or big announcements on the Bellator update. All right. All right. It's going to be a good one for sure. All right. Well, I look forward to it. Congrats again. Thank you so much. Congratulations. It's an absolute honor to be here again and

to see so many people enjoy the game, it makes him very happy. It makes me very happy too. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome. And for our final guest today, we are joined by Stephanie Weitzman, who is from Speechify, the winner of the Inclusivity Award for the Apple Design Awards. Welcome to App Stories. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure.

Could you start maybe going back to the beginning? Speechify has been around for quite a while, I know. And I would like to kind of understand the origins of the app and why it was developed. Yes. So Speechify started in 2017, and that's how long we've had the partnership with Apple. So it's eight years already.

And the founder is Cliff Weitzman, together with his brother, Tyler Weitzman, who's a co-founder. I happen to be that mom, although I do recruit engineers from all over the world, and we're still looking for engineers and developers. And...

So Cliff was super dyslexic when he was young and he actually grew up in Israel. So his first language was Hebrew. And so reading from right to left apparently is harder for someone with dyslexia than reading from left to right. So at some point we relocated to the US when Cliff was 13 and then he had to start reading English. So it all started over again. And so he essentially was in eighth grade not knowing how to read.

And at the same time, he is brilliant. And I would say at three years old, we already knew that we had a very precocious kid. And we were in shock that he couldn't read. So we have five kids and he's the eldest. So as a young parent, I think it was a real challenge to understand what was going on. And I'm good at research. And I read about dyslexia and then I got him to be assessed. But

This is a real hard challenge. I think that even I as a parent, it took me years to really understand how challenging a disability this is. It's an invisible disability. It's not like having a broken arm. And if people see that you're smart...

They don't understand why you can't read. And even today in Speechify's Facebook ads, people often will say, hey, it's lazy to listen instead of reading. And my feeling is that they just have not experienced what it's like not to be able to read. And it's very hard to read because your brain has to do decoding.

And for someone with dyslexia, it's like doing multiple long division equations just in one sentence. And by the time you've got to half a page, you're falling asleep because it's like running a marathon with a broken leg. So that took me time to understand. Now, interestingly, Cliff's brother, Tyler, was born blind in one eye.

So they both had a commonality of a disability that challenged their reading. So Tyler used to get eye strain. And Tyler is a phenomenon. He is a genius. And he started to code when he was about six. Oh, wow. When he was 11, he came to me and he said, this was 2008. He said, Mom, there's this new thing called the App Store. I need $99. I want to be a developer. And I said, OK, you can have $99.

And I said, but like, how do you know how to do this? So he said, well, I learned online. I just went to YouTube and I taught myself. And so we were real early adopters of the App Store as a family. And because there was no one there at the time, he had a full ride of enjoying what it's like to make successful apps. So that helped Cliff afterwards with the dyslexia. So fast forward to Cliff.

When Cliff started college, he'd got by through high school because he's very smart. So he found ways to compensate. But he had a pre-summer reading. He got into Brown University. The book was Sons of Providence. And I was the one who had to read the book out to him.

And it was very tiring at some point. I said, listen, this is not going to work. So Cliff put together this piece of software where things could be read out to him fast. So the initial requirement that he needed for himself was something that would read out to him at 3x speed because he had read audio books all of his life. That was what he did. He couldn't read with his eyes. So he used listening. And

And now he reads everything at 3.5x. So if you listen to him...

Listening to his emails, you can't comprehend what is said. And so together, Cliff and Tyler then cobbled together the MVP for what is Speechify today. And it's interesting because this was before the AI boom. It was about six years before. And Cliff already was reading papers on deep learning, on speech synthesis, text-to-speech, OCR. And he...

He knew that at the time in 2015, that the product is not going to be good enough to have a good experience, but he had the foresight and vision to realize that if he gets everything in place, if he builds an app, if he gets the right product fit, if he gets users, then he's going to be able to do it.

then when the technology is up to par, it's going to be successful. And he really hit it on the mark. That is really what happened. And it was tough in the beginning because he was essentially, well, on one hand, it was amazing because he wanted to be the person he needed when he was young. And that was why he decided to,

to make this app. And when you have passion in your belly like that, you're not going to give up through the toughest of times. And this is what's so special about Speechify. It really is a company that leads with love. And the people who come and work there, they want to help change people's lives. And our principle is that learning should not, reading should not be a barrier to learning. And that every human on this earth deserves the best reading experience possible. And this is

first of all solves the problem for people who have dyslexia, for people with ADD. Often people with ADD actually need to listen faster in order to help with their focus. That was one of Cliff's problem.

And people with low vision, people who are aging, so people who want to read the Bible and it's hard for them. People who are second English language learners, you know, they might be able to listen very well in English, but to read with their eyes is hard for them. People have had concussions. People with speech apraxia, for instance, encephalitis and autism where you can't speak. We have people who've written to us regularly.

Finally, I can speak. They use the app to talk. About 15% of the reviews that we get are, I'm in tears. Your app has been life-changing for me. And so I would call those the early adopters because they have to have this product. Right.

Then there's the second tier of people who are professionals, academics. All of us are on the go now. I think all of us are listening more versus reading with our eyes because it's so time consuming. So we have academics who read research papers. They upload PDFs. They have them read out to them. The speed is dynamic. The font is dynamic. I think one of the basic things in the interface of the app is the fact that you have students

The words highlighted to you as you're reading. And for all of us, it just increases concentration to be able to listen and read at the same time. I know for myself, for instance, I was doing some financial exams. It's called the SIE for investment banking and, um,

It was hard just to listen to it. I wanted to see what was written at the same time. So this combination helped. And the app is just getting better and better and better with AI and with the amazing voices. So this is Tyler's magic. When he joined Speechify, he put together a huge effort in the language models. And we've had some amazing...

AI engineers and now with the largest supplier of audio AI in the world. They have billions of words read weekly, tens of millions of users, and it

the product's just getting better and better. Yeah, I think I've tried literally every single text-to-speech engine out there, and yours is one of the very best. I mean, if not the very best, I mean, I really have enjoyed it. I mean, it's a great way. I think you're absolutely right about being able to see the words and follow along as you're listening to it. It really is a reinforced learning situation, and to me it's really fascinating, too, that these accessibility features are

are something that's not just for people necessarily who have dyslexia or another disability. It's also that everybody can benefit from those. Absolutely. Have you had any personal experience with family members who have problems with reading or vision? I have not personally, no. Yeah. Yeah. I have my mom...

So what she does, I mean, beyond, you know, with aging, eyesight, you know, the usual. Yes. Well, what she's been doing is, so she wants to read my articles, but my articles are in English. Yes. And she doesn't really speak English or read in English. So what she's been doing is she's been converting, printing my articles as PDFs.

translating them to Italian and then listening back to those articles so that she knows what I do for a living because otherwise she has no idea what I write about. And so that was cool. But what really struck me, what you said, the idea of having an idea for an app

But then putting all the things in place for the technology to catch up. Yes. That is not usually the kind of thing that we hear. I mean, on this podcast or in general, like the idea of I have this idea and I'm so convinced that it's the right idea. But I know that the technology is not here yet, but I know it's coming.

Correct. And that insight, I think, is a powerful thing to have. I agree. I really think that Cliff is a visionary. And it was because he was trying to solve his disability. So it was live or die. And he always says, even if this app works,

was doing terribly eight years into the project, I would be still working on it. And there were more attractive magical opportunities in the beginning because fundraising for a dyslexia educational app is not very sexy. No. Right. But I think now it is.

Yeah, it's proven itself. And it's interesting because just earlier, Federico, I was just checking out the Italian voices because I'm going to speak to some journalists tomorrow. So I... There's...

Everyone who downloads the app, there's a story of Cliff, about Cliff and his story, somewhat what I'm telling now. And I just translated it in ChatGPT. And I put it in the app with the Italian voices. And there are about three different AI Italian voices. I think there are two women, one man's voice. And also within English and other accents, for instance, we have French-French and we have Canadian-French.

And we have Australian English, American English, English English. So it gets very exciting. And you can even if you say take the Italian voice and have it read out in English. So you have English and a heavy accented Italian voice. Yeah. Wow. And...

It must be so validating to see, especially over the past, what, two, three years, this explosion of large language models and speech models, right? Yes. And so you guys were in a position to say, well, here it comes. The technology that we knew was going to happen. Yes.

It's happening now and we can use it in the eye. Yes, I remember when they just launched the latest voices with Cliff's voice. Cliff's current voice on Speechify is almost indistinguishable. I, as his mom, cannot distinguish.

I can slow down his voice, which is nice though. Cause he talks very fast. Yeah. I mean, he's used to listening to 3.5 X. Exactly. Yes. Wow. That's fast. Yes. It's very fast. Wow. And, and so just, um, before we wrap up, obviously, I mean, um,

Congrats again. Thank you. And thank you to Apple. Is there anything you can share in terms of what you want to do next? What's next for Speechify? What are you looking to do in the future? Well, I think that one of the keys is to keep things simple. And we're continuing with charging ahead with making reading the richest experience possible.

So everything that pertains to that, that is what we're working on. And just to make the voices better and better and better, make the app so that it will be amazing. And I mean, the fact that we got credit now from Apple says...

and when we're ready, we'll forge forward. Excellent, excellent. Well, thanks again for joining us today. Thank you so much. It's been wonderful to talk to you. Thank you. It was a pleasure. I also want to thank our two sponsors for this episode, Gentler Streak and Open Case. Federico and I will have another episode of App Stories here from WWDC, so stay tuned. We'll be back before you know it.