Meet Vincent Donatelli
S1 Episode 03:
Vincent Donatelli is an animator, teacher, and the founder of Adonai Games. He has over 20 years of experience in the industry and loves the Lord.
Adonai Games
Adonai Games Youtube Channel
Discord Server
CGDC Virtual Talk: Video Game Production Pipeline
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Brock Henderson: Welcome to the Faith Forms Podcast, where we explore the question, what does it mean to be a Christian in the games industry .Today, Vincent Donatelli joins me. . Vincent has over 20 years of experience in the games industry. Not only is he an animator and teacher, he's also the founder of Adonai Games.
Vincent, thank you so much for joining me today.
Vincent Donatelli: Good morning, Brock. Thank you for having me on, man.
to give a little background context for the listeners.
Brock Henderson: Vincent and I have been friends now
for five or six months, and we first connected through the C G D C Discord
community and since that time we've been praying together and fasting and sharing life. And, I'm very thankful for your friendship. Vincent feels like God brought us together during this specific season, so we can encourage each other and,and just help each other through a hard time.
Vincent Donatelli: Yeah, I feel like you're one of the few people that I've met through C G D C that is like as authentic. I I wasn't expecting you to be as authentic as you, as you are.
Like your heart is like incredibly meek and it's very rare in this industry to find someone like that. And usually, the kind of people that I meet are really filled with ego and it's nice to not have to match that. Do you know what I mean? Like, sometimes when you're talking to somebody in the industry, it's like you have to come up to their energy level and it's exhausting.
So yeah. I'm, I'm grateful for you too, Brock.
Thank for saying that. I appreciate
Brock Henderson: Tell the audience about yourself. How long have you been in the industry?
Vincent Donatelli: okay. I, I think I lost count after 20 years, so I know I'm over. Oh, wow. I'm over that Mark. I've been an animator most of my life. I, I've owned five video game companies during that time.
Four of them have failed. , and this one is actually seeming to be doing pretty well at the moment. I mean, it's not as nice as I'd, I'd like it to be, but it's working. Mm-hmm. like the business model works, and that's the important part.
Brock Henderson: When you say this one, what, what's this one?
Vincent Donatelli: Yes, so have a company here in, in Houston, Texas called Adonai Games.
And when we started it out, let's see, on May, May 14th, Phish will be our fifth year in business. And when we, when we began it, it was just supposed to be a video game company. That's all we were start trying to do. But then, you know, once we started having the monetary problems of where the heck are we gonna get these investment dollars, the, the Lord started giving me these ideas on how to make money on the side, but it became a second business.
So it was like a business within a business and that, that became Adonai Game's trade school. And as we were working through that, I was like, okay, so like if I just do the trade school thing on its own and I'm gonna be like, no, no better than the Art Institute. I'm gonna be no better than any other college.
Which is like, once the students go through the program, how are they gonna get experience? So it forced me to have to go business to business to give my students experience. So like, I get the work and then I have my students work on it. And so now we have this trifecta of circular thing going on. And then maybe, maybe about six months in to the business itself, my grandfather's words hit my ear pretty hard.
So when I graduated the Art Institute the second time, so I went to Art Institute of Houston, I went to the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. When I graduated the second time, I, that's when I got my bachelor's. My grandfather, I, I, he didn't come to my graduation because he was out of town. Mm-hmm. But, I left Fort Lauderdale and I went to go visit my family in Daytona, and my grandfather was there and we were having this conversation and I said, Hey grandpa, you know, like, come look at my demo reel. And he's looking at my demo reel and he, he, he shakes his head like, we're wa looking at this one-on-one.
So everybody, all, every other family member, they're in the kitchen. They're in the living room, they're having a good time. And I'm in the office with my, with my grandfather, and he says to me, you know, I don't understand how anything that you're gonna do in, in your line of work is ever gonna help anybody.
And he turned around and he walked away
That was, you know, 20 years ago.
Vincent Donatelli: And so again, six months into the business that I'm like, I, I think he's right. I've gotta figure out a way. How are we gonna help, you know, the less fortunate. And so a couple students of mine, when I was teaching back at the Art Institute, we, we came up with an acronym at, at the beginning it was VOW, v o w.
It was Veterans, orphans and Widows. And then later on friend Chris Chris Horn, he, he was like, nah, we, we gotta make this more than that. And he, he started playing with some stuff on the whiteboard, and he came up with woven, and it was widows, orphans, veterans Emergency Assistance, and the Neglected mm-hmm.
And I was like, that's, that's what we need to do. So Chris Horn is very like, instrumental in helping me work through that. And then I applied for 501c3 status a couple weeks ago. And officially that side of the business is called el Should I, and the woven. we got approved. My paperwork I gotta send my paperwork into the Texas State Comptroller's office once I get the paperwork back from them.
Technically we're good to go. But the business, you know, I, I'm calling it a business we'll get to that in a minute too, but it's technically what's called a business as a ministry. And when that paperwork comes through, we're allowed to launch on May 14th. So it's like pretty much the same day that my natural business is being launched is the same day that the El Shadi and the woven could be launched.
Brock Henderson: Tell me more about the ministry.
Vincent Donatelli: So you know what the ministry is first is it's the ministry to the youth. So like the video game industry in general has the youth market on Locke and. . Like if, if you, I mean, you know this, but the average church goer when they go to church, they really don't see young people there. Mm-hmm. , they'd rather stay at home and play video games.
So it's like, you know, Yeshua, you know Jesus and, and Greek and Yeshua and Hebrews, I call you call him Yeshua. Yeshua said that we're supposed to go and, and bring the gospel, go and bring the, the word of the Lord to people. It's not, not bring them to church, not bring them to synagogue. Well, us to go to them.
Brock Henderson: So, so the El Shadai and the woven is designed to create video game content for the youth. Where they are and where are they? They're on their phone. They're on their watch. They're on their a ar vr headset, the, so we're, we're going to them.It seems like you have a big heart for teaching.
taught the Art institute and now it's a big portion of your ministry.
Have you always loved teaching?
teaching?
Vincent Donatelli: So I get my teaching thing from my dad. Okay. Like, my dad was a youth teacher. He was a, he was a youth pastor. And so you know, I'm Jewish. My dad and my, my mom, they didn't bring me up Jewish. They, they brought us up Christian and I didn't, I didn't switch over to Judaism until I was 23.
And we can get into the theology portion a little bit. I still still wanna answer this part of the question. So when when I was young, I just, like, I was, when I was in high school, I had a lot of problems in high school with debating people because of how often I would read the Bible in school. Hmm.
So the debates would end up kind of transforming into teaching time. So, So I, at a really young age, I was teaching the Bible and and it kind of carried over with me. And then when I got into the industry, I, I worked six years with a company called Shadows and Darkness outta Fort Lauderdale before they're now called Ghost Punch Games.
So Shadows and Darkness. My, my, my mentor was Devin Brown. He was like one of the lead animators on Borderlands. He was an amazing teacher. Like he was an animation teacher that I had through a friend. Like I used to go to his animation class, but he was like never my teacher. He was my friend's teacher.
So I'd go to his animation class to learn from him. I ended up getting like an internship with him for a little while. Ended up getting some work from them and just the way that he would teach me how to animate, I was able to then turn around and teach animation and it kind of turned into this thing, especially when I started teaching at the Art Institute that.
after class, we would have bible study. It would be all these people that would come in and they would want to ask questions about God. And so it turned into between classes, it turned into like Bible study time. And so it was like a really cool dynamic. And I get in trouble all the time, like, you can't be teaching.
I'm like, it's between class. You can't get mad at me because it's between class and like Yeah. Which is some of the stuff you're saying is during class. And I'm like, yeah, but how does it relate to the, the lesson? I'm like, are you only hearing the one portion portion that you don't like? Or how does it relate back to the lesson?
And they were like, mm, okay. So it was like, I was, I, and still to this day, I mean, I, I teach at Lone Star College and I, I was, so at t I taught at art Institute. I taught at Avant Media Institute. I taught at a University of Houston, and now I teach at Lone Star University. And I still teach at i I games trade school.
So same kind of thing. It's like. Between classes. If people have questions about theology, I usually don't bring it up. I'm not the one who usually says it. They're usually like, Hey, can we ask some philosophical questions? I'm like, yeah, go for it. So that's how that kind of happened. So I'm, I am literally teaching animation and all the game design stuff, and then I'm teaching philosophy, you know, at the same time.
Brock Henderson: That's really cool. How long have you been doing art and animation then?
Vincent Donatelli: I tell people I came out of the womb with a baseball bat in a, in a pencil . You know, I'm, I'm six two and I, I was throwing 90 in, in high school, and I, I didn't get a chance to, to pursue baseball. Like I really, really would've liked to, but I had my fallback career, which was art.
And so I was, you know, I went to four different high schools when I was young, right? I think it was three, three different high schools when I was young. And I was always like the best artist in every one of them. Hmm. So I thought I was gonna be an illustrator. I thought, like, for sure.
I, when I was done with high school, I was just going to do comic books, honestly. Hmm. That's, but then when the internet came out, and that kind of sounds weird, that , we have this conversation, but you know what I'm talking about. When the, in, when the internet came out, there was like, now this opportunity to make, you know, games in a, in a different kind of way.
And my parents, my, my mom was really, you know, inspirational on helping me with my, my career decision. And she was like, look, there's two colleges that you have an opportunity to go to. You could go to the art institute, or you can go to the Nintendo College, which is called DigiPen. She's like, I think you should go to the Nintendo College.
I think this would be a really good opportunity for you to go here. And so we had the brochures and I looked them over and I declined DigiPen because it was more programming and math based. And I'm not a programmer. I, I am terrified of math and I almost didn't graduate high school because of it. So I decided to go to the art institute because they had a 90% job placement rate, which was finding out later on that was bs like, and they got sued class action lawsuits over and over and over again, and they're still going through that stuff.
So I, I ended up, you know, taking the art route and suffering through it tremendously, like really suffering through it. We can get into that suffrage and what that looks like later on, but go ahead and continue.
Brock Henderson: It sounds like your parents encouraged your game development education, even though grandfather wasn't behind it.
Vincent Donatelli: You know, like it was, it is weird situation. So, so my, my grandfather, I've had three my, my grandfather Sal, which is my mother's father, was extremely instrumental in my career understanding of computers. I was able to get on a Tandy 1000, like at like, like seven, six or seven years old. So I've been using a computer a very long time, like more than an average person.
And I used to make art with literally, with ones and zeros. And my grandfather would teach me how to actually create art with binary. It was a very interesting thing. And then cuz he, he used, he worked for nasa. Oh, wow. Yeah. So he put the lamb on the moon. So, so after see when I was 14, my, my grandfather passed away in my arms.
Like we were in the same car seat, like he passed away right next to me. And my grandmother ended up remarrying one of his best friends because his wife passed away around the same time my grandfather did. , and his name was Tom. His name's Tom Franco. So Tom ended up remarrying my grandmother, whose name's Thomas ais.
So it was Tom and Tom. And so the four of them were literally best friends growing up. So it made a lot of sense that after Rose passed away, which is what my grandpa, Tom's wife and my grandpa Sal passed away, and my grandma and grandpa ended up marrying together. And so Grandpa Tom, I didn't really grow up with him.
I didn't really know him, but you know, he's an amazing man and you know, he, he comes from the sales era, so he's like, unless you're like a hardcore salesperson, it's like, what kind of benefit, real benefit are you able to give back to society monetarily? So it doesn't necessarily mean giving back with, with with, with money, but like, I know it, he, he doesn't understand the religious side of things about how I give back on that side.
That's important too. Mm-hmm. . Because he's like super Catholic. And I'm like, super messianic, Jewish , like there's a lot of tension in there. Yeah. But I think he's beginning to understand what I'm doing. Like it's taken a long time, you know, 20 years that has taken this long for him to kind of start to see what I'm doing.
And I don't hold it against him. I mean, it's just this era, you know? He, he just, he just doesn't know. So yeah. My parents are, are very instrumental. Like my, my mom was very encouraging to me to learn how to play the guitar. She's been very encouraging to me to like, to get into the arts, like all of the arts.
And because my dad is a is in construction, he's a stone cutter too. So, because he's a mason, like, okay, so my last name's Donna Tello, right? More than one is Donna Telly. Mm-hmm. . So it's is when you're making something plural in Italian, it's, you take the, the last digit out and you put an eye in there.
And so we were all stone cutters. So I'm, I'm like ninth generation. I'm eighth generation Donna Donatello. It's from the stone cutter Donato. . And then my son is ninth generation. So I was the first donatelli to stop cutting stone, but I cut digital stone , right? So I'm, I'm, I'm in with the, with the, with the Z brush.
So I'm still doing it, but I'm just doing it in a different way. And I did work in construction for a little while, but my son has an opportunity this summer that he's gonna go learn stone cutting with my dad and all that stuff. So I think that the, the family lineage is still gonna carry on in that way.
But yeah, the arts are huge in my family. Like, it's very, really respectable. But however, they told me when I was young that if you're gonna go down this route, artists don't get paid well. I mean, there's a, there's a reason why they're, they're called starving artists for a reason. And I was like, no, I can do it.
I can do it. And when the, when the money's in coming in, it's really good. , but when it's not, it's terrible , it is literally feast or famine almost year in and year out. So there's not a lot of job stability in this market. And it doesn't help that I can't leave Houston either. That's, that's something else that, that's tough, so.
Brock Henderson: Hmm. And
and that's family related, right?
Vincent Donatelli: It is, yeah. Like I'm just kind of in this situation. My son's gonna be 18 in just a couple more months, and we're thinking about moving outta Houston after that. But yeah, technically if I would've left Harris County, I would've lost joint custody of my son.
And just the way things went with that, it, I don't know if I'd ever be able to see him again. So I, I gave up my career in order to be a father, you know, which I know that was the right decision. I never, I never second guessed it. It was always like, this is what's gonna happen, you know?
Brock Henderson: I get that. I felt that the tiniest bit when we've moved back to a small town in Iowa to be near my parents.
I know I'm missing out on game development opportunities, like from networking and,
meetups and if I lived in a city like Seattle or LA.
but I just felt like the family element was just so much more important. I want my kids to know their grandparents and have those, those memories, and I've always
felt that God was bigger than that and could make up for that.
What's Houston like as a game development scene?
So, so the way Houston's kind of wired is that there have been multiple attempts to move video game companies into Houston.
Vincent Donatelli: Not only that, but not only the multiple attempts, but like we had six foot studios, which was really huge. And they, they ended up going out of, of business because of the failure to launch in their last, on their, on their biggest title, it was called Dread Knot. And I had a lot of friends that were working over at six Foot.
But it seems that whoever's kind of the higher ups who makes those decisions, the market gets choked out here. Mm-hmm. and I, I feel like in a lot of ways it's intentional. It's like they, whoever the powers that be, they don't want the video game industry to be in Houston. Like Houston is oil and gas.
That's the branding of how Houston is built. It's the energy sector. So there's a tremendous amount of work in oil and gas. And part of how I've been able to keep my career in the video game industry is because I work with giants like BP and technique, energies. . And so my company does corporate training on like sub-sea installations.
So what that is is like, let's say BP wants to do sub-sea pipe expansion, like mm-hmm. in the, in the, in the drilling industry. Subsea is drilling and then they have like little cities down there on how they harvest the oil and process the oil and how they pump it back up to the, to the to the top side.
And they expand. They expand the sea floor, and then they pull the stuff up when they're done using it depending on the situation. So sometimes they need to expand it, sometimes they need to do a oil pipeline and replacement. And so when you get to genius level engineer discussion, most of the geniuses don't have imagination.
So they have a very difficult time explaining how are we gonna v like communicate the process of this installation. . So they come to me and they say, Hey this, this is what we want to do. Can you make the visuals of this happen? So sometimes the videos can be three minutes. The biggest one I ever did was 10 minutes.
But yeah, we have to actually like show the installation process of how each of these things happen and we've actually turned it into an interactive video. So, so what that means is like you press play and you can watch the stuff take place. I can't show you guys. I'm under nda, you know, and then what would happen is, is that while the video and the installation's playing out, the engineers can zoom in and spin the model around and actually see it from a different angle.
So it's like they have control over how the video is being watched. And that's how I've been able to like kind of keep my career in video game development. Cause I, you know, we use Unreal for that, for that stuff. Mm-hmm. . But at the same time, I still end up fishing for freelance video game contract work.
So it's, you know, kind of seen it in, in the best of both worlds in that kind of way. I like the oil and gas stuff. It's really great money. The deadlines are kind of nuts, but , what deadline is it? You know?
Brock Henderson: You said that this was your fifth studio, the four other ones closed. What have you learned through that process?
Vincent Donatelli: That's a really good question. I didn't learn how major I was missing until probably the end of December of this year. I didn't understand it. So what I was, what what, what was really killing us, especially my fourth one. Fourth one was called Indestructible Cannon. That's when we worked with Sony on Starship Troopers. All right. And like my business partner Ron, he, he's since retired. He worked, he, after Indestructible Cannon closed, he went to go work with Apple and he, he retired with them.
And so same thing about with Jose. He was like, kind of like loosely a third partner in a way. He retired I guess last year, so I'm still kind of struggling in a lot of ways. But what, what happened was is that Ron and I were working for the government and so we, we were really good friends. We went to college together.
Ron, Ron was a genius because he was the only guy I had ever met in my life. And I heard people about like this, that he could go to sleep in school. He would sleep in class because he was a a, a UPS worker. He would sleep in class the whole entire class period. And once the lecture was over, he would jump up and start working so he could learn while he was sleeping.
And he never missed anything. He passed like every test all the time. And, you know, he ended up getting to work work for the government. And that's how, that was like my second job in the industry. We were making training videos for the US Army. and we kind of saw the writing on the wall with the business and we were like, Hey, let's go make our own video game company
And so Ron handled all, all the programmers and I handled all the artists. That was kind of the way we were, but neither one of us really knew the business side of things. So in this business, I made the effort to try to understand business, business. So I met a, met a gentleman who's we're vetting him to be in our on our, both on our board, and then also to be our operations manager for the business side.
And he taught me the value of the C-Suite, the, you know, it's not just the, the chief you know, executive mm-hmm. . It's the chief Operations Officer. It's the cto. It's the cfo. It's, you know, there's a suite of of chiefs that we have to deal with mm-hmm. . And he taught me the value of why we need them.
and I didn't. So it was kinda one of those situations that I knew that I was missing something. I didn't know what mm-hmm. . But the way I structured the business, I was already doing all of these things at the same time. So when he gave me this questionnaire, we were already doing it. He's like, how are you doing all of this stuff by yourself?
He's like, you need me to help you bring in these right people to do this. And that's kind of where we are. And that's kind of how we're dealing with the seed stage of our business. So usually, you know, when, when you're going into business, you want to try to get seeded, you know, six months to a year in.
Mm-hmm. , I waited five years. And the reason why is because I needed to make sure that this business model was viable because there was no way that I was gonna actually like do another business and then go try to find partners just to find out that I have a business that sucks and nobody wants to deal with.
You know, so, so I proved my business model, not just to myself, but to my own board. And then, then I had a breakdown like last summer after my son passed away, my oldest, he passed away. I had a, like a awful breakdown in the summer and, and I, I was paralyzed, but just, and the Lord told me, you can't do this alone anymore.
And that's when I started looking for partners. And so, but it's the right kind of partners. It was like Ron was my best friend and he was the right partner for production. Right. So, so the things that separated the first four businesses from this one is that yes, the production pipeline's important. Yes.
You have to get your product or your service or your video game out. Yes, you have to know all of the intricacies of all of the departments, but you still need the business side, and you still need people of business to help you run. Your business because it's like, you know, you, you hear this, you've, I'm sure you've heard this cuz you're, you know, we're the same age agent, but it's like you have your business owner that works for your business and you have your business owner that works on your business.
And I'm trying to transition out of working for my business. I don't wanna work for it anymore. I wanna work on it. Like, but the truth is, is all I wanna do, sit in a corner and animate Brock , that's all I want. And like the Lord's like, no, no, you can do that later. Like, I know that, that what I'm doing is groundbreaking in a lot of ways.
Like, this is, this is necessary. It's like I'm spearheading something. Nobody knows what this looks, looks like. It has never been done before. So you know, this, this whole web three market and reaching the youth on the web three is, is a, is a, is a huge deal that people are, are gonna, when they finally realize what's gonna happen is gonna be too late.
So like, I'll give you an example of what I mean. and I, we've talked about this on our own before, like when, when the Facebook churches came out, the idea of a Facebook church, they're like, churches was like, get that out of outta here. We don't, what are you talking about? Facebook, churches. Nobody's gonna go on Facebook, don't even bring up.
And then all these churches started popping up and they're like, oh, this kind of works, right? But then it's, it's like 10 years too late. So I, I was talking with his one investor, potential investor and I was telling him about how we're doing this stuff for web three. And he's like, do you realize that you're 10 years too, too early?
You recognize that you're, that you're probably way ahead of the church, he said, and I told him like, 10 years too early. How about you're 10 years behind? Like, why are you, why is the church in synagogue okay? Why are you guys so behind? Is cuz you lack vision. Like, you know what the, what the Torah says, you know what the, the gospel say.
but you don't know how to affect the culture. The only way that you know how is if you tell your people in the pews to get off your knees and bring people inside. But that's not how the kingdom was built during the time of, you know, first century Jerusalem apostles went out, they went into the homes, and that's what we're doing.
How in that five year period did you prove out the business model?
Brock Henderson: What were the things you were doing?
Vincent Donatelli: Okay. I don't know if you've experienced this yet, but I, I pray that the, the person who's listening to this podcast is going to, I'm, I'm gonna like, put their heart on a plate with this . All right. Okay. And, and it's. The video game industry is like 50 years old. Wait, it's like 1971. So do the math. Okay. I, I hate math.
When Pong came out, it was the first video game. So from a time then to now, we've seen this industry go to zero to a trillion dollar market in 50 years, which is absolutely insane. There's no industry on the planet that has ever done that. None. And I am second. You and I are second generation trained, which means the first people to ever teach us a thing about the video game industry, they didn't know what it was.
Mm-hmm. . So they were literally building the software and learning the technology as they were teaching us. So the education wasn't perfected. So we as students were helping the teachers figure out the technology. So when we graduated, when our generation graduated, , we had half-ass education because it wasn't figured out right.
But like the next two generations after that, because not only was the technology kind of like in a place where it's like, okay, we can be consistent with this education and now we can build a better curriculum because we know what this looks like. We have a pipeline of education. This next generation, these next two generations, they're the ones who are currently working in the industry and they like jumped over us.
So, so kind of like the guys in our industry that are our age, that are working in quadruple A, they're doing one of two things. They're either retiring or they're the heads of studios, but they don't want to be there anymore. Like they, they're done. They just want to go. And so what I learned in this five years is I spend somewhere between.
One third and two thirds of my time educating clients
But what I mean by this is when I sit down with clients and they say, Hey, I need some animation. Mm-hmm. , that sounds like a wonderful, easy transaction, but they don't understand that just because they need animation done, we have to check off all of these things. What are these? What is this checklist number one?
what software was your character rigged in? What do your character's edge loops look like? Where did you get your character from? In other words, excuse me, is that legal? Are you ripping it out of some software that you, you know, you, you're, you're scamming about, like, this is important and I have a company.
I have to be careful with this stuff. And so when I say, what software was it in? You have people using Blender, you have people using Maya, you have people using Max. So Max Animators don't work in Maya. Maya animators hate Max. Now they're, you got this person like, like I got that guy named Sean that I work with.
He's a hybrid animator. He'll work on both. And when you're searching back and forth and you're like, Hey, what software are you guys using? They're like, oh, well we use 3D Max. Okay, that sounds awesome. What engine are you on? Okay, well we're using Unreal. Please tell me in this conversation, are you guys using cat?
Are you guys using biped, we're using biped. Okay. Are you guys trying to use Unreal animations? Yes. Ah,
that's the worst case scenario because Cat, I mean, a biped is automatically not compatible with Unreal animations, but so where are they getting this education from? So, so it, I have to build multiple curriculums in animation. I have to build a pipeline for biped I have to build a pipeline for cat, I have to build a modeling pipeline.
I have to build a ZBrush pipeline, right? These are the things that I, that are, that are what matter and like mm-hmm. , the Art Institute doesn't understand this. The majority of students that the, the art are the mo majority of instructors that the Art Institute puts out there that are in this industry are one of two people.
they're animators. I mean, sorry. They're, they're, they're, they're people who know how to animate, but they're not animators. Mm-hmm. not the same thing. So that's the first problem we deal with. Second thing is, most of these instructors have never shipped a video game before. So the instructors that they bring in TV and film, so they don't know how to deal with a game engine stuff.
So when these students get out, their education is garbage. Same thing with University of Houston, Campon Media Institute and Lone Star are the exception. They're kind of the exception of the rule, depending on which Lone Star campus you go to. Lone Star here in Texas is a community college, and we have like three of 'em up north up where I am.
We have like one in Northwest, we've got one in Central North Central, and we got one in Northeast where I am. I'm sorry, I'm in Northwest. The other one in Northeast is okay. But the one in North Central, if you got stuck over there, you don't know anything either. So, so really what's happening is that the clients that I have, Are not educated correctly on how the pipeline's done.
The other part of it that I've learned too, is the majority of clients that I have, they're all programmers. So when the programmer clients, they both have money, they're the ones making the money, so therefore they kind of dictate the thing. But the programming clients, the kind that I deal with is like, they're either brand new to the video game industry and they have very bad knowledge, or they've kind of been in and out of the video game industry, and their knowledge is, I would say, still half complete.
Mm-hmm. . So I have to go in and I have to fix all of this stuff just to animate again. So, so, so like if I just want to sit down and animate, I can't do that. So I have to teach the pipeline correctly to a new generation of students who aren't getting that education. That's where that came from. Hmm.
Brock Henderson: That reminds me of Orson Wells. He,
one time lamented the fact that he had to spend something like 70 to 90% of his time courting people in Hollywood and trying to raise the budgets for the film
when all he really wanted to
do was make the films.
Vincent Donatelli: And that's, that's the other part of it too, is that because most of the people who are looking for the video game to hire the, the, you know, that kind of contract work, they had no idea how much the stuff costs.
Sure. It doesn't matter if they're trying to hire one person or hire a team of people, they don't know how much it costs. So you know, if you, you know, want to try to sit there and help them, you know, like, I don't like going to work with people if I don't believe in their project. If I don't believe that their project is gonna be successful, I'm not gonna work with you.
And if I don't think that you're gonna try to understand your own business, I don't wanna work with you. . And, and it's not because it's an ego thing, like I have to have to be really careful of that. But it's because I don't wanna lose a second family. I already lost one, you know, family in a divorce because of stress and because of trying to make people happy that don't want to make themselves and their lives easier.
Right? So, so if, if a client doesn't want the help on, like, being successful, I, I can't, I can't work with the people anymore. It's just like, I don't have the mental health to deal with it. Like, yeah, the generation of students behind me, like they want the work, but I also don't want them to have to go through what I went through.
Does that make sense?
Brock Henderson: 100%.
One thing I wanna circle back to. You talked about the missing piece of business.
It's a pretty common problem, at least in the C G D C circle. There's lots of talented artists, writers, programmers, but it feels like the missing piece for a lot of us is that is is a business person or that that business piece.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Vincent Donatelli: So I think that there's two sides of the business that needs to be discussed. It has to do with the leadership, but it has to do with the survivability. All right, so let's talk about survivability first. Like, if you're going into business, you have to have income.
So how do you get income? I think that's the first step. It's like everybody wants to make a game. Well, how are you sustaining your family? Why you're making your game? So what that typically looks like is you get a day job, you work your butt off all day, and then you do one of two things at night. You are either hanging out with your wife until she goes to bed or you're sacrificing your marriage and you're ignoring your wife to work on your passion.
So what you've just done is you've moved out of your mother's basement into your own basement,
and, and how long do you think your wife's gonna put up with that? And how long do you think that your kids are gonna put up with that? Like, how well do you think you can be an effective father and man of the house, if that's the example that you're setting for your kids? Okay. Like that's a, that's survivability.
So that means you have to be smarter than working on your passion after your wife goes to bed. And so what does that look like? Well, you gotta go get funding. So the strategy of the home should be like, Hey honey, this is the plan. , I wanna build a prototype of a thing, and after we have the prototype of the thing down, then I'm gonna stop working on the prototype and I'm gonna go get funding.
So, so what happens in that moment is a lot of times in, in my experience, just having these conversations with different clients, the wives like that, or the girlfriends like that plan, because it's like you're, you're setting a minimum. So how long on the prototype? Three, six months. Six months to a year, depending on how big it is.
Okay, that's fair. So what that looks like is, I have this prototype, but then what happens is the people that you work with on the prototype, they're constantly pounding you in the back of the head, Hey, when am I gonna get my next job? When am I gonna get my next job? When am I gonna get my next job? Like, Hey guys, it, it had happened.
We, we did what we were supposed to do. I, I told you guys that once we were, that's the communication problem. You gotta tell your team once we're done with this prototype, I gotta put all my effort into funding, not making more game. Because you, here's a, like, the thing is about game stuff is the game's never done.
So survivability turns into how do we market this thing and get it out? So we have like two choices at this point. , we either get this thing funded or you're gonna do it yourself.
So all of this still has to do with the project, but over here is the, still the business side of stuff. So what kind of happens, and this is kind of like the reality that I had to deal with, is like, I know art in and out. I know all the production pipelines of the, of, of everything related to games. But what I suck at is how do I communicate my ideas to someone else to get them invested into what I'm doing?
So I went to sales school to do that, and I went to Cardone University. I, I, I was on a year program and I got done in three months because I just day and night, I was, I didn't have work at the time, day and night. That's all I did was study, study, study, and invest in my, my closing ability because what young people don't know the differences between sales and closing.
closing is the ability to get something. Inked selling is just communicating about the product or service that you're doing.
if you talk to an investor, they're gonna want to know two things about, about you. Out outta the gate. They're gonna want to know, well, how's your product doing? But then how's your business doing? And most people can't answer that business part because they think that their product is their business and it isn't.
So what, what people will do is that they'll start to try and learn business and then they'll be like, I didn't go to school for this. And then they quit and they start, they, they go back to the project again. and they wonder why they can't get their project off the ground. So what that looks like is instead of talking to investors, they end up trying to do it on their own.
They try to go through Patreon or Kickstarter or what other crowdfunding platforms that are out there. Gift gifts, send, go. Okay. I think those are important. I think that how you do is more important so that when they actually try that stuff and it doesn't go well, they go back to the project again.
They think the project is the problem.
How many games have you seen on your phone or that have been shipped that are absolutely not the best project in the entire world? , and they're still getting funded. Mm-hmm. is because somebody learned how to communicate the idea.
Brock Henderson: last fall when we were praying and fastening together. You said you had a revelation. Would you mind sharing with the audience a little bit about that?
Vincent Donatelli: The church and the synagogue expects tent meeting a hundred percent of the time. So if they want to get to the youth, they think that what we have to do is bus in these children in droves to their tent meeting.
Whether it's a conference or a literal tent or youth night or concert, it's still tent meeting. You come here and, and the revelation was we have in our ministry, Brock's Ministry, Vince's ministry, we have been consistently doing tent meeting. Our tent doesn't look like their tent. Mm-hmm. So when you, when we, when I said to these newer investors, once I discovered this, it was business as a ministry.
I was now able to communicate on their vocabulary words, they wanted to hear the specific thing. And when I said, guys, we are doing tent meeting, just not the way that you do it. It was like, oh, that's kind of cool. We should talk about this. And I'm not trying to be patronizing, all right?
But it's like, why did it have to take me 20 years to learn that? Why did it have to take me five businesses to learn that? Now I say five businesses being cheeky because Adonai Games is four businesses, so technically I'm on business nine. It took me nine businesses to figure this out in 20 years. And I'm like, alright, so you have to ask a question, am I at fault or did, did Hashem decide that?
Now you're ready to know this information. , and that is probably the second. That is probably the more true of the two. I probably wasn't ready up until this point to know that that's what God wanted me to do. That's how all of this business stuff started making sense and cl clicking. And it's like, since I learned the business as a ministry portion, all the dominoes have just like slammed down all at one time.
Because now I was able to make the right pitch videos. Now I was able to write the, I was able to do prayer videos that are around that vocabulary now I'm able to, to talk to these people. So it was a definitely communication tool. Mm-hmm. , I'm 40, I'm gonna be 43 in two months and just, God decided when Vince is 42, we're gonna, we're gonna let him have this information.
It sucks cuz it's painful. Yeah. But, but it's for somebody else. The pain that we're feeling is for somebody else, it's, it's because it's, it, it, it is through this fire for the benefit of someone else. So that they can't say, oh, well he just because he because of white privilege, or he just because of, you know, he knew the right Jews, or he just because no, this is like God did this.
Mm-hmm. you, you can't explain away this. This is God that did this and he's, he can only bring glory to his own name. You can't bring glory to God. No one can bring glory to God. He can only bring glory through his own name, but he can use us to do it. That's why I'm saying that this discovery that we did, and it was because of our prayer and fasting time together.
Brock Henderson: That was the thing that, that God wanted out of us. He wanted us to know that he's gonna do this. One thing I want to touch on is something that you told me a couple months ago
is during this time when you've been seeking investment, you found yourself
in a kind of a weird position where some investors don't see you quite Jewish enough for them, and other investors don't see you being quite enough Christian for them.
Vincent Donatelli: Yeah. All right, so what is the, the religion of this crazy guy? Okay, so I'm gonna try going through this as simply as possible. So my name is Michail. No one can say that name. My name is Yako Michail Donna. That's my Hebrew name. Okay. My Italian name is Zo Michelangelo Donatelli. Those two things clash right away.
One super Jewish and one super Catholic. All right. We have boxing matches immediately, and I have my American name, which is Vincent Michael Donatelli. And I don't like it when my people, when people pronounce my, my middle name wrong, Micha. So we go by Vince, all, we're gonna start there, and it's from the beginning.
When I was 15, I died. All right? I had an experience between Hashem and myself. So God the Father, God sent me back. I have my testimony online. I'm a very unique individual and part of the uniqueness in the walk that I have is that the fruit that I have, so I, not very many, many people can say that they've prayed for someone, they got out of wheelchairs and people can pray for people, and they've had been healed of all different kinds of other stuff.
I have a resume full of things that the Lord has done, and it's because of the consistent fasting and praying that I do. So, When I said earlier that God can only bring glory to his name, I meant that. But there's a, a place, a secret place where when you give yourself up to God, you become marked. So what do I mean by you're marked?
Basically what I'm talking about is when you have the kingdom of God, you have the kingdom of men, and you have the kingdom of evil. Once upon a time, I label it kingdom and darkness. And that's not entirely true. The idea is, is that the more that you pursue righteousness and you start doing the things of Hashem, it gets it kind of like turns heads and brings mankind to a place of, well, what's the difference between good evil ande?
Because goodness and righteousness aren't the same thing. They're oftentimes, they actually don't line up. They're, they're not in alignment. We think they are, but they're not. That's why Hashem, when he created the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he was outside that because he's outside the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
That means he's not good or evil. He's out of that. So the third standard is actually the first standard, which is righteousness. When you start doing the things that are righteous, the kingdom and darkness, or, see, I, that's what I'm saying. I used to call it that the kingdom of evil is like, stop it. So that's when they jump in and they like want to steal, kill, and destroy.
So who, like, that's what I'm saying, you're marked by them cuz you're doing the things of God and they don't want you to do that. Now you're a threat. If you're a threat to their kingdom, then well, they're gonna be a threat to your, to the, to the kingdom of Hashem. They're gonna be a threat to you. But the key thing in all of this is, and this is where Christians and Jews kind of get.
A little off in their theology is that Jews recognize and understand that the kingdom of evil does not fight the kingdom of God. That's dumb. The kingdom of evil does not fight the kingdom of God. The kingdom of evil fights the kingdom of men. No one fights Hashem good and evil and righteousness.
He created it all. So no one's fighting him. But he steps back and he allows us to try to learn how we're gonna deal with the kingdom of evil. And the only way to deal with it is to acknowledge Hashem and to acknowledge yourself and where you are in your, in your walk With him, it's either you're walking righteous, separated unto him, or you're walking in sinful paths set away, separated away from him.
And what's gonna be the result of that? Because this, it's always a time of testing, you know. That's why part of our father prayers then lead us not into temptation. Well, the temptation is the test and Hashem will test us often, and that's the testing of the fire. And that's why we have to pay attention to where we are with him at all times.
So that's, that's, that's what I mean by we're marked. That's what I mean by, hey, this is, you know, there's a process and a procedure of how do we deal with God. So part of the religious aspect for me is who is God? What does worship mean and what does the law mean? Those are the three things in Western culture that we really don't know what those things are.
So worship is two parts. It's the sacrificial system and it's the bowing down part. And we talk about praise and worship in church, and it has nothing to do with these two things. So that's worship. , then you have the God part. And we have a problem with this part. The problem in church is there's two sides of Christianity, which is the father of the Son and the Holy Spirit are the same deity.
And you have another part which is more classical, which is the father of the Son and the Holy Spirit are three separate beings. So is it one God or three Gods? Most Christians don't know the answer to that. They don't know how to deal with that stuff, but Jews do. So Yeshua, when he was talking to the woman at the well, the Samaritan, I think it's Yohan, on John chapter four, he said, woman, I tell you that there's a a time coming where you will neither worship on this mountain, nor will we worship in Jerusalem.
But Hashem God the father, is searching for worshipers who will worship him in spirit and truth because he is spirit and truth. So spirit and truth. And so what the synagogue does really good at is the law. That's the truth part. And then the church part is the spirit part. , but they, these two things have gotta collide and become one new man.
They have to be one person in Ashem. So how do you test the spirit if you don't have truth in you? So if you can't test the spirit, what spirit are you under? And if you have the truth in you, the fruit is gonna be the spirit. There's a lot of people church chasing after spirit and there's a lot of people chasing after truth.
But what do they look like together as one new man in Messiah? So that's the beginning of my faith. So now couple that with, how does this fit in with being two Christian for Jews? Okay. So in general, in Judaism, there's two topics that seem to be in conversation as like the same topic, but it's two separate topics.
So topic A has to do with, is Yeshua the Messiah? Yes or no? , and here's the scriptures that say no. Then you have the other portion of it, which is the atrocities, holocaust, crusades, et cetera, that were caused in the name of Yeshua, in the name of Jesus. So because these two things, even though they are separate topics, even though they're so intertwine related, there is this intense, Hey, if you're a Jewish person and you're talking about Yeshua as the Messiah, then you're a traitor.
So typically, Jewish investors don't want to even hold a conversation with you because you're not valid in their, in their sight. When I understand that because I was not brought up Jewish and I didn't know that my bloodline was Jewish until I was 23, I grew up outside of that, but I completely understand their perspective.
and it's a perspective that needs to be respected and discussed in a civil manner. This, these are, these are, these are topics that are real. Okay? So that's, that's topic one. So now when I say I'm too Jewish for Christians, it's like I still hold to the Torah being the being the law of Moses, that it's still valid.
And so what happens is, is like, you know, because I don't have that intimate relationship right off the bat when people say, Hey, do you believe that Jesus is the Messiah? I'm like, well, yeah, but I just don't believe in the same way that you do. Then it turns into, well, what do you mean by that? And it's, it's a lot to take in when you only have like a five minute pitch.
Like you have to almost believe exactly how they believe. How most investors believe. It's like there's, it's this tunnel vision thing, and I understand it. And, you know part of that discussion is, well, are you a pastor? Are you a rabbi? And if you are a pastor, then why aren't you going to your same denomination?
Why are you coming to this denomination? Or why are you hopping? Like, why can't you find funding in the denomination that you're in? So or you know, even in Messianic Judaism, it's like, well, if you're a Messianic Jew, how come you haven't found funding with your people? Like, why, why can't you just find funding there so they think that you're the problem?
But it's like, well, if you knew anything about Messianic Judaism and say it's messy, b it's, there really aren't any entrepreneurs there. It's not a place for that. You don't discuss business on the Shabbat anyways. And there aren't very many business people in general in the Messianic movement. And then you have the whole issue between.
what's the difference between a Messianic Jew? Hebrew is Israelite and the Hebrew roots movement, that stuff gets just outta control. So most people don't want to take the time to know where you're coming from. It's either like the sim, the simple thing is, well, if you just can believe the way that we believe, then we can probably just move forward.
But, you know, I didn't go through eight 40 day fasts to believe the same thing that everybody else believes. That's not where I am with my walk with the Lord. So that's the short end of that.
Brock Henderson: So beyond some of the spiritual hangups these investors have, have any of 'em been able to see the potential for the games and the ministries that you're laying it out?
Okay, so I will say this because this needs to be said in the last two to three weeks.
Vincent Donatelli: I seem to have been introduced to some people who care. Okay. And I don't know what to extent. I, I want to believe that these people have a genuine interest in moving the kingdom forward. . I want to believe that, but I haven't been put in a position where I can test the spirit on that. And I'm not saying that I have all the answers.
What I am saying is that the things of God are sacred and you can't trust them to just anyone. So even if the money looks right, if the heart doesn't match it, what do you do? Where, what's more important?
The the, the one guy who I believe that God sent over to me to help me, I believe that he is extremely authentic because he uses vocabulary as a Christian, that kind of puts him more on the side where he's on the right side of the fence. And here's what he said to me. He said I wanna be honest with you, do you think that it's possible that some of the pitch videos that you're doing, that you're isolating yourself and that you're not appealing to what investors want to hear?
And I said, what do you see? And he said, I, I want to be honest with you. Do you think that the people who were going to understand the fullness of the gospel, like we understand it? And I said, I think that is a wonderful question. I said, what do you propose? And he said, can you create a pitch video that's five minutes that helps investors understand where you're coming from and why this is important and how this is affecting the youth?
And I said, I can do that. And he said, let me know. So I did it. I created a video. I can send you the link, you can put it in with the description or whatever. And I sent it back to him and he says, this is exactly what we need right here. And I sent a second video that was addressing the fullness of the gospel portion, which I thought was equally important.
And basically that video is like maybe seven minutes. And it's like to my Christians and brothers and sisters, this is who I am and this is what I believe. I'm on the same side as you. My ministry is, yes, it's to the youth, but it's also to the Jews. And I believe that the things that where God has positioned me is I can talk to Jewish people in a way that the Christian Church can't.
And when I sent that O back over to him, he was like, this is absolutely wonderful. He's like, between these two videos, it's kind of like this. You send the one video out as a shiny thing to get some attraction, and if they're interested, you send 'em, we send 'em the other video. He says, I'll make the introductions, I'll help you with that part.
So how can we help you on this stage of your journey? Are there things that we can be praying for?
Man, that's a loaded question. There's a combination of things. I would say, for one, the give, send, go thing. If you're really interested in trying to help support our, our project and our mission, that would be very helpful. The second one would be to pray that we find the right partners, and specifically that I suppose like rock.
There's, there's two sides of the podcast that every, every person has to deal with that's in the ministry. There's the per, there's the, there's the side where there's wonderful purpose. There's wonderful intention, and it's righteous intention. Those are the people who are. Praying for the right things and like just honing in on the heart of God.
Those are the people we want praying. And you have the other side with the kingdom of evil and those people pray the wrong stuff in. And what sucks is those people are gonna be quicker to pray than the other group is because that group, the kingdom of evil, doesn't want the righteousness to be in the land.
They're so fast to try to shut that stuff down. Like again, until you have an encounter with the supernatural from the suit, from the kingdom of evil, you have no idea how real it is.
Those the righteous prayers need to pray against that stuff. It's more beneficial to pray against that stuff than it is to pray for me, to me, because that's where the prayers need to, need to, need to, need to be directed to. , God will move me forward whether I decide I'm gonna do it or not. But that stuff is our call.
Brock Henderson: Vince, before we go, is there any last bits of wisdom or advice you want to tell the audience?
Vincent Donatelli:
The first thing is, is that if you're a Jewish person and you love God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul, I encourage you to keep the commandments. I encourage you to seek Hashem with all of your heart in the Torah, and to ask the Lord who the Messiah is with all my heart.
Mm-hmm. , I, I believe that Hashem answers prayer. I believe that he wants us to know him, and I believe that he will answer you because he is alive. He's not unreachable. You know, he tell, tells us in the tell ride, I did not give you the commandments. So you have to say, I have to send in heaven in order to do them.
That you have to descend into the depths or that you have to go here. You have to go there. No, he, he says, I have put the law on your mouth. It's near to you, it's close to you. It's in your heart. So on that, on that note, Hashem is close to us. So ask him these questions. If you're a Christian person, I would say the questions that I would ask you to ask God is the path that I'm on the right path.
Teach me how to test my pastors and my leaders and my how. How do I gauge whether or not that they're under deception? How do I gauge whether or not I'm under deception? You know, in Isaiah 11, two it says that the spirit of the Lord is sevenfold spirit. The spirit of wisdom, understanding counsel of power.
Of knowledge, the fear of the Lord and the delight and the fear of the Lord. Okay? The understanding portion that in Hebrew is discernment. So we are allowed to pray for the spirit of discernment, and we have to discern who is in our circle. If we don't discern who's in our circle, how do we know we're finding the truth of God?
And don't treat him. Don't treat God as if he is unreachable. It's the same kind of message I would, I would tell a Jewish person, treat him as if he's near to you.
And I would also say on the video game side, if you're an artist that's struggling to get recognized, I, I know the intention, the, the, the heart of an artist is to like, I don't want you to see what I'm working on, but you have to tell the world who you are, the number one enemy of every business is obscurity.
If people don't know who they are, they can't help you. So you have to push your work out to people, and you have to figure out what that means.
Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you for allowing me that opportunity to speak to them too.
Brock Henderson: Hey, this is Brock. Thank you for sticking around to the end. If you're on LinkedIn, I have a ask for you. Could you give us a quick follow? We're trying to grow our numbers and we could really use your help.
It only takes a few seconds of your time and would mean the world to us. Thank you. God bless.
