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Jun 18, 2026
Graham Wylie crushes on The Last Of Us
Graham Wylie crushes on The Last Of Us
00:00
23:11
Transcript
0:00
So give it two hours. Uh, and if you walk away after two hours, that's great. I've misread you as a person, I shouldn't have pitched it to you. [laughs] Which sounds terribly judgmental, but there you go.
0:10
[gentle music] Hello, Graeme. Thank you for joining us for this first episode of My Creative Crush. Uh, how are you?
0:25
I am very good, thank you very much, and I think it's a lovely new format, so it'll be interesting to see how the conversation develops. Well, we're gonna see. It's gonna be interesting.
0:32
Before we, uh, find out a little bit more about you, first of all, can you tell us what you're going to be talking about today and why? Yeah.
0:39
So My Creative Crush is The Last of Us universe, from game through to soundtracks, through to podcasts, through to TV show. You've come this far, [dramatic music] then you know what's out there.
0:55
You're not gonna scare us. Scared him. Fantastic. I'm so looking forward to jumping into this because it is a huge, uh, it's a huge universe, so... But before I do, I want to know a little bit more about you.
1:09
Can you tell us who you are and what it is you do all day? Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, I definitely don't spend all day playing The Last of Us.
1:17
Um, so in my daytime life, I'm a marketer who works with businesses at an inflection point, um, really trying to take marketing, uh, teams and marketing execution beyond the expectations of the organization, beyond the expectations of the teams that I'm working with, um, to really help businesses grow or transform.
1:37
Great. Can I just take you back to 15-year-old Graeme Whiley, and, uh, ask you about what was it you wanted to be then? How did you imagine yourself in the future?
1:48
Is this what you imagined yourself doing at 15 years old? No. 15-year-old me wanted to be an Air Force pilot.
1:53
In fact, 15-year-old me had been in the Air Cadets and, uh, was actually probably about to go, or had gone to the Officer Air Crew Selection Centre. Um, so the life plan was to be a Royal Air Force pilot.
2:06
And how did that divert? Where did the, where did the change happen? So passed the Officer Air Crew Selection Centre, which is an amazing experience.
2:13
At the end of each day, they basically would call out a list, and people go home, and at the end of three days, if you're still standing, you've passed the Officer Air Crew Selection Centre.
2:20
Um, but I ticked a form that said, "Have you ever had a sick headache?"
2:24
Um, and I'd had one or two, no diagnosis of migraines or anything else, but then went off to see a specialist in London, um, and got offered a scholarship, and then lost the scholarship in the space of a couple of weeks based on one tick on a form.
2:36
So then needed a new life plan. That life plan was off to university and into a graduate job back in the day when those things still existed. Oh, man. That tick in a box, such consequences for one's life.
2:47
Yeah, and I mean, who at 15 ever thinks through the consequences of ticking a box? I'm just like, "Yeah, I've had a couple of days where it's difficult to get out of bed 'cause of a migraine."
2:54
And the irony is I've probably had five or eight, uh, since that day, but if that's the day they need you in the, in the aircraft flying in the defense of the country, it's not really a good answer to say, "Sorry, I've got a headache today.
3:07
I can't do it." Ah. Well, um, you've had an incredible career so far. Uh, so I'm sure there are no regrets there. [gentle music] I wanna talk a little bit about the show.
3:20
First of all, can you tell us a little bit, what, what's the plot and what's it about? Yeah.
3:24
So, um, I think a lot of people might have seen the TV show or the game, but the general premise is it's a kind of post-apocalyptic world. Um, and it's a really kind of well thought through how did humanity collapse.
3:40
Um, and the TV show actually develops the ideas in a lot more depth than the game. But essentially, it's how do you survive? What happens between interactions between people? Um, and it's about character relationships.
3:53
And at the core of it, it's a story about fatherhood, and that is what really struck me, um, the first time I picked up the game to play.
4:02
So thinking about the very first time you picked up the game to play, can you just take us through it? How did you discover it? What was your discovery point? I bought the physical disc.
4:13
I don't remember where I bought the physical disc or why I bought the physical disc, but back in kind of 2014, '15, I was working for an ad tech business, very fast-paced business. My kids were kind of 10, 12 years old.
4:27
Um, and life was sort of changing a little bit in that I had a bit more time to do things that weren't directly related.
4:34
You know, when your kids go off to secondary school, they gain a little bit of independence, and you get a little bit of time back. Um, and I'd bounced off a lot of games. I'd, I'd been a gamer for forever.
4:42
I had the first PlayStation. Before that, when I was a kid, I had a Commodore 64. So it's been a part of my life, but it's really easy to bounce off a game if you don't have much time.
4:53
And the way The Last of Us starts with a prologue scene, um, just grabbed me.
5:00
And from that point, it was clear it was going to be something a little bit different, and I made time to play it in the evenings once folks were in bed and, you know, life goes on around you, um, and just get drawn deeper and deeper into the game.
5:14
And prior to that, I'd been playing kind of 20-minute sessions playing FIFA, 'cause that was the only time I could spare. I think I probably put 30, 40, 50 hours into the first time I played The Last of Us.
5:24
Can, can we go back to that grabbing you moment, that scene? Can you remember what it was exactly about that scene that, that got you and, and made you go, "Okay, I know I'm in for the long haul here"?
5:38
So, uh, spoiler alert. [lively music] So it opens with, um, uh, it starts with a teenage girl. Um, she's waiting for her, her father to come home.
5:48
There's an interaction between her and her father, and then this is clearly then outbreak day, and it's their experience of going through outbreak day.
5:55
And the thing about gaming that's different from a filmis you are in and you are immersed.
6:00
So when your neighbor comes crashing through a, a window and you watch your father shoot him, it's like, "Okay, things are different here. What's going on?"
6:07
Then you get into the car and you drive away, and you're able to look around. I mean, the rendering of this world is insane.
6:12
The amount of work that the Naughty Dog team put into the graphics and the production and the visualization of the story, that's why it's a whole world kind of creative crush rather than just one, one part, because everybody involved in this project has brought their A-game and, and delivered to the max.
6:27
[footsteps] [grunting] But the critical thing is within the first opening sequence, your daughter dies in your arms.
6:44
And as a parent, it's just, I couldn't believe how much that struck home. And there's a making-of documentary.
6:52
When you get to the end of the first game on the disc, there is a making-of documentary, and part of that shows the production sequence they went through and the acting and the, um, production.
7:01
And people dismiss gaming, I think, a little bit as a, as a lightweight platform or historically have done that, but the acting, the, the work of the production crew, it was just beautifully, beautifully executed.
7:13
Tone perfect, um, and just hit right at the core of who I thought I was as a father.
7:20
Can you remember anything, can you remember an occasion, uh, either before or since when that had a similar thing, that just that one moment, as you say, you put it down to that very moment where someone dying in someone's arms.
7:33
Can you remember another occasion when you were watching something when you felt quite that, that power? Um, not quite the same.
7:42
I think there, there have been a few instances where, you know, lost family members in a particular way, and then you'll see on TV show someone struggling with the same situation and that'll strike home.
7:52
But there's something particularly immersive about gaming, and it just, the, the character was a similar age to my daughter at the time, so there was just a confluence of circumstance that made that hit particularly hard.
8:05
Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about, little bit more about, um, the immersiveness of the game? Because in the game, you, you have agency.
8:15
As you said, you've watched a TV show, you listened to the podcast, but in the game you have agency- Yeah... which you don't have when you are watching. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah. So, um,
8:24
so that, that opening sequence, um, is quite scripted and, and narrative and controlled, and there are true open world games where you can go anywhere and do anything.
8:33
But within The Last of Us games, they are pushing you down a particular narrative pathway, but you have choice, you have agency, you have direction.
8:40
Um, you can decide how you experience things, the route that you take through the game. And it's really interesting. I've subsequently gone on having played the game, both games, there's two games in the series.
8:51
One of the things that has sort of built it into a, a cultural touch point for me is I've played it with both my children, and they each have very different play styles. So my son is a regular gamer.
9:01
He will walk into the room, and he will shoot anything and blow anything up and, and try and kill it straight off.
9:06
My daughter doesn't play a lot of games, but played this one with me 'cause she was interested in the, the story and what I'd said about it. Master tactician. Tech- uh, tactician.
9:15
Will crawl around, will play to the stealth mode.
9:18
And when you play in stealth, um, the combination of the music, the combination of the sound effects, the stress levels that they've built into the game of almost being discovered and then being able to get away, because at some point you're just a girl with a knife and, and you're going up against zombies and all kinds of dangerous things that you couldn't beat in a, in a straightforward encounter.
9:40
So sometimes you have to work your way around them, and they ratchet the tension just beautifully. There's not that many jump scares.
9:47
The second game introduces some massive jump scares, which are so much fun to watch someone who hasn't played it before go through those jump scares, and they still make me jump at different points, and I've played it multiple times.
9:56
But it is absolutely that immersion that you get to decide how you're going to play the game, that you can choose between those tactics, and then you develop your skills based on those tactics.
10:05
'Cause it's a long duration game, your ability to use weapons and things gets better as you progress, so you can try more sophisticated tactics.
10:12
And it's just that agency and involvement in the story, and the regular, Neil Druckmann, the producer of the game, just is a master storyteller in terms of dropping in the story beats, the emotional impacts of the, of the narrative.
10:25
So it, it's really interesting when you think about, you know,
10:28
as a, as a marketer, part of our job is storytelling, and I, I, as outside of my life, strong stories, great use of words, great scripting, song lyrics, all of those things touch me, but games are just different because you, you get to embed yourself in them.
10:46
Can I just touch on something? Um, as a father myself whose children are now fathers themselves, um, there are moments in life where you do things with your children that is probably just for them, but you take part in.
11:02
You know, you, you go to a cinema or go to a show or something pantomime that you might not be as interested in.
11:08
There are times in their life where they have to come along with mom and dad and do things that they have to maybe feign interest in or, you know, begrudgingly.
11:18
But there are times when you both get equal pleasure out of something, and those for me have always been the most magical moments in my life when we're doing something together and we are...
11:27
You know, in my life this happened a few times. It might be a game of football. It might be a gig that we've gone together where we, you know.
11:32
Can you talk a little bit about that, about what it feels like to be so deeply immersed in something with your children at the same time? So it's funny, I'd gamed quite extensively with, with my son.
11:45
Um, so we'd played a whole bunch of different games before we'd gotten to The Last of Us. The Last of Us has quite mature themes. He was younger than my, my daughter.
11:51
So I first played The Last of Us with my, with my daughter because I felt it would be a story that she would resonate with.
11:57
And, um-We have, uh, a setup that's kind of two armchairs, and then there's a, the TV sitting on a, a wall unit, and it's kind of used to be a dining room, but we never used a dining room, so we just converted it across.
12:09
Um, and so you're sitting side by side, and you are spending time together immersed in the same world.
12:17
So I played The Last of Us all the way through with my daughter, then I played it all the way through with my son, and I'd done gaming with my son before, but a- again, watching the difference in tactics.
12:25
But I'd never really gamed with my daughter, and we, we subsequently played a couple of narrative-based games together.
12:31
But you're talking about a, a 30-hour commitment of time spent together in a universe that gives you a common understanding and a common perspective.
12:40
And at this point, my wife's probably feeling a bit left out because there's the, there's the, we've all lived in this world, and she's watched the TV show.
12:48
But, I mean, to, to just give you an illustration of the impact, we went to Canada this year for our holiday. Um, for various flight reaching reasons, we routed back through Seattle.
12:57
Seattle is the location for The Last of Us Part II, the game.
13:00
We spent a day doing a walking, a self-created walking tour of Seattle put together by me and my kids, which took in the main, uh, buildings and inspiration from the game.
13:12
So, you know, we were walking through the environment that we'd played, and because the Naughty Dog team produced such a graphically rich and beautiful world,
13:20
you're walking down a, a, a, a, a, a, an archway that you have seen in a post-apocalyptic scenario with bl- you know, broken things, broken down cars, grass, but it feels exactly the same, and it's something that we did together as a, as a, as a family because we'd all watched the TV show.
13:35
Most of us have played the games, and then we went and just, it was a great excuse to walk around Seattle.
13:39
I mean, Seattle's a beautiful city, and, you know, don't get me wrong, we didn't spend the whole time talking about the game, but it gave structure to a, a shared experience.
13:45
[electronic music] Because of the relationship, the, the fatherly relationship, uh, father-daughter relationship of the, the main characters, um,
13:56
over time, as you've got older and your children have got older, has your relationship with their characters in the story changed? Has it kind of made you think in a different way about relationships or, you know?
14:09
I don't, I don't think so. I think my father once said to me that it's almost impossible for a child to understand what their parent will feel for them, um, until they are a parent.
14:21
And, um, he, he sort of said it's like walking around with your heart on your sleeve in terms of how exposed you are to their emotions and, and their world. I think it,
14:32
I think it gave them some insight into that in terms of what the parental experience or the proxy for a parental experience can be. Um, but who knows? Maybe they just like running around shooting zombies.
14:45
We haven't tried to overthink it. [laughs] Yeah, yeah. Your heart's much more vulnerable when it's on the outside, isn't it? Yes. So. Yeah.
14:52
And, and they are effectively your heart out and about in the world walking around, right? Which I didn't understand at the time my father said that to me, and I do understand now. You do now.
15:01
You've definitely learned that lesson.
15:03
[electronic music] I know we're sort of doing this in terms of the Creative Crush, but it is that context against what we do as a day job, and with a global remit, I travel a lot in the day job.
15:14
So, you know, when the kids were small, um, and I'm dating myself here, but it was pre kind of FaceTime, so I would be in Canada, and I would be phoning them, um, and you're talking to them when they're really small.
15:25
As they grew up, I was traveling to South America, to China, all across Europe, um, and you're away at times, and although the technology has gotten so much better, right?
15:36
FaceTime was just such a godsend in terms of being able to talk to the kids when I was traveling with work. There's nothing quite like being present and 100% focused on something you're doing together.
15:48
Now, this isn't the only thing we do together, but there is something particularly immersive about that experience that lends itself to that.
15:55
You know, when they were growing up, I do karate, for example, so I took my kids to karate. Didn't take them long to go, "Yeah, that's your thing, Dad, not my thing." Right?
16:01
Same as my dad used to take me to cricket, and I'm like, "Yeah, that's your thing, not my thing." Yeah.
16:04
So you've got to just put a whole bunch of different things, but this one has stuck, and so it becomes a, a shared experience and a shared unit.
16:11
Ha- has it been i- in the work context, uh, have you taken many lessons from it? Any lessons from it? Has it-- Or is it just 100% escape, assume you don't even want to start looking for parallels?
16:23
Yeah, it always makes me laugh when you see those LinkedIn posts of, "Well, I did this," and the parallel to that is the other. I think there are, there are passions and outside interests that
16:35
flow into who you are as an individual and who you are as an individual shapes how you show up at work. Um, when I think about, you know, other things that I love,
16:46
people who use the English language creatively, from Lin-Manuel Miranda through to Taylor Swift through to Eminem,
16:54
the, the expression of feeling in words, um, is just so incredibly powerful, and this universe manages some of that, but it does it in a immersive. It's not just about the words, right?
17:09
You're, you are seeing a beautiful landscape. You are living in a... You're feeling fear. You're feeling tension. You're feeling excitement. You're feeling relief. Um, you know, you escape from a situation.
17:20
You go and pop, put the kettle on and come back, and you drop out of that reality and back in. If I do B2B marketing, I help buyers buy complicated stuff like payroll and HR tech. Um,
17:34
one ounce of that emotion, one ounce of that joy brought into that buying process adds an unexpected touch to their experience. Then I'm bringing in all those experiences outside of my job. That's The Last of Us.
17:46
It's the music that I listen to. It's the podcasts I listen to. It's the books that I read. You know, most of those books by me, this isn't a fake backdrop.
17:51
I've read most of those books, and yes, the top shelf is all business.
17:54
There's a vast selection there of Brandon Sanderson's work 'cause he's a brilliant world builder, and part of our job as marketers is to build worlds where buyers believe in the brand and are comfortable buying.That has to be rooted in fact.
18:07
It can't be a work of fiction, otherwise you end up with very unhappy buyers. But I think you carry some of that.
18:12
But no, I've never deliberately sat there and gone, "Right, I've played The Last of Us, and my lesson for that is that, uh, everybody needs to be able to throw a bottle first and then a Molotov cocktail in order to take out their opponents."
18:23
Given the chance, is there anything that you would ask Neil Druckmann or Craig Mazin about the, the game or the TV show? Season three, where's, where, where are the characters going for game three?
18:33
And it's really, it's such a difficult, and this is the world of fandom, right?
18:37
When, when fandom becomes toxic, whether it's around Star Wars, whether it's around The Last of Us, people want more stories in their worlds.
18:45
But if you've already told the perfect story, if you've finished the perfect arc, and the end of The Last of Us Part II is a perfect arc, you- you're very clear on where all the characters are.
18:56
You're very clear on what they've gained and lost. You're very clear on the journey that they've been on. But if you love that world, you'll wanna go back to it. But the only worse thing than going back to it,
19:09
or the only, the only thing worse than not going back to it, is going back to it badly.
19:14
And, you know, I think that's been proven by the Star Wars universe, where it's like, this would be amazing, but what were the final three films around, and how did they not have a narrative control, and what was the direction they were running in?
19:24
So yeah, it would be that conversation, and he's alluded to a few times that he has some thoughts around kind of where a Part III might go.
19:34
Finally, we are in a pub, and I've not watched it or played it or listened to it. I want you to sell it to me. Tell it to me like we're sat over a, a pint or an orange juice or whatever and convert me.
19:48
Ah, that's really interesting. So I have, I lent the game to a friend of mine who I've known for 40 years. Children are a similar age.
19:59
I said to him, "Play the game because it's just a world that is very interesting, and there'll be some emotional surprises for you in there, and I'm not gonna tell you about it. I just want you to experience it.
20:12
And you have a PlayStation, so here's the disc. Go do it." He bounced off it. I have no idea how he bounced off it in that first, you know, if he played through that first sequence. Um,
20:23
but it's also recognizing the place that gaming sits in our world, right? And, and for the longest time, my sole exposure to gaming was 20-minute bursts of FIFA because that was all I could do, right?
20:33
It was a great way to, to kind of switch off, but I only had 20 minutes of time that I could allocate to it.
20:40
The Last of Us requires time, so I suspect that's how he came to bounce off it, just not enough time to, to get into it. Um, I would say to somebody who was thinking about it,
20:53
set aside any expectations and stereotypes you may have of gaming as a platform, um, and approach it as if you were sitting down with a good book or going to watch a film.
21:07
Actually, more a good book, 'cause a good book really encourages that immersion and that almost agency, 'cause you're following, but you're in the world.
21:14
If the book is well-written, you, you fall into it, and then you struggle to get out of it. Um, so give it two hours. Uh, and if you walk away after two hours, that's great. I've misread you as a person.
21:25
I shouldn't have pitched it to you [laughs]. Which sounds terribly judgmental, but there you go. Fantastic. Um, is there anything that we've not asked you that you would have liked to have spoken about?
21:36
It's an example of craftsmanship. That's the last thought I'd leave around the, The Last of Us universe. We all aspire to be the best we can be at what we do.
21:45
For me, that world is lots of people performing at their level best. Yeah, for me, that's the ultimate in craftsmanship.
21:53
It's, it's people who spend the time on things that most people might not notice or sometimes might not even see, but you just know that is a level that you aspire to, and therefore you, you go to it. So, fantastic.
22:06
One final question that I'm gonna ask every guest. Uh, what are you watching or playing or listening to? Is there anything that you'd like to recommend at the moment? Uh, I'd like to recommend Stranger Things on Netflix.
22:18
[gentle music] I'm going to see the stage show, um, in January, and I watched the trailer for Season 5 the other day.
22:36
We basically back-to-back all four seasons 'cause we'd left it incredibly late to come to that world. But I'm incredibly excited about Season 5 and looking forward to, uh, seeing the Stranger Things stage show.
22:46
It's a similar level of world-building and tension in the story, just doesn't quite, it's not immersive in the way that the, the games world is.
22:56
Graham, thank you so much for being our very first guest on My Creative Crush. [gentle music]
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