AiC Episode 130

In this episode, Teri welcomes Clint McLean, the founder and VUI designer of Budgie, a Toronto-based startup voice app design studio.

Welcome, Clint!

Budgie develops and markets Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice apps. They have five skills/actions that are currently published with more in development. Clint leverages a variety of experiences from both his creative and business background to create high production value voice and multimodal experiences. Their most famous skill at Budgie so far is Detective X, a high-production choose-your-own-adventure-style game built into a Hollywood narrative, and Clint will talk all about it and so much more.

Journeying into Voice Technology

  • When Alexa became available in Canada, he was in a place where he felt burnt out on most of his creative outlets, and so he got his first smart speaker immediately they were available and starting experimenting with voice apps.
  • He realized the potential that it had and found it very exciting, but he didn’t know how to code, so he kept a notepad of voice tech ideas, and then started consuming every content he could get on voice technology.
  • In 2019, the Alexa in Canada podcast featured Braden Ream from Voiceflow who explained that Voiceflow was a no-code alternative for building Alexa skills.
  • Clint immediately signed up for Voiceflow and that’s how he was able to start creating voice apps.
  • He started working on basic voice games and apps, and he initially made a game to learn about APIs, a sing-song game to learn about capturing utterances, and an Easter egg-like skill to help people learn about integrating audio files.
  • He, later on, started taking on more ambitious projects.

Detective X

  • It’s a high-production choose-your-own-adventure-style game built into a Hollywood narrative, and it’s all about detectives trying to stop a killer.
  • With his background in audio production and storytelling, making interactive fiction seemed like a good fit for both his strengths and he was genuinely excited about it.
  • He worked with voice actors and employed sound effects and soundtracks to create an immersive experience that was unlike anything else in the market.
  • He tried watching a movie with his eyes closed and imagined what it would take to have such great audio in a movie that anyone listening to it without watching would understand and enjoy the plot. That’s the mindset he had when he started working on Detective X.

Detective X Alexa Skill with Clint McLean of Budgie

Creating Detective X

  • He started with a basic storyline, the same way movie scripts are written. From there he started using the poly voices within Voiceflow to start constructing the dialogue and make up each scene.
  • He voiced one of the characters himself and hired voice actors on Fiverr to voice the rest of the characters.
  • He included a game-saving functionality since not everyone has the time or patience to play the game straight through.
  • Detective X was launched in all English speaking regions and is also available on Google Assistant.
  • The game officially launched at the end of May on both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, and it just so happened that the Amazon Alexa team was hosting a gaming week on their Twitch channel at the same time, so Clint got them to play Detective X and the game got a lot of positive feedback.

In-Skill Purchases

  • He has given a lot of thought to it and has even tried it out on some prototype versions, but he concluded that Detective X could easily be turned episodic with different cases, different mysteries to solve, and different killers. That would be a successful approach, and so in the long term, he wants the initial case of the game to be free with future cases being in an ISP paywall.

The Future

  • He’s interested in collaborating with other developers and stakeholders in the voice technology industry while also continuing to work on his own projects.
  • He also plans on expanding on the Detective X universe and experimenting more on visuals and APL with the Echo Show.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

Other Useful Resources:

Subscribe on your Favourite Podcast App!

Subscribe on iTunesSubscribe on StitcherSubscribe on Google PlayButton SpotifyButton-AnyPod-small

For more information about the podcast or to get in touch with me, feel free to click on the button below! I look forward to hearing from you!

Hit me up!