Official Title?
I actually have a few titles: Associate Producer, which means
that I'm responsible for overseeing production on a portion of
the game; UI Strike Team Lead, which is the portion of the game
for which I'm responsible; and Tome of Knowledge Design, which
is a part of our game (and UI) that we are especially excited
about.
What is it you do on a daily basis?
On a day-to-day basis, I oversee the production on all
levels (code, art, data, design) of the Tome of Knowledge
in order to ensure that the end product is awesome. That
involves me making a lot of seemingly arbitrary decisions
like "Yellow!" and "More Dwarfy!", and a lot of very
important backend decisions like "There will be this many
unlocks, and you will get them doing things like this."
I feel comfortable making these decisions because I try to
play as many video games as possible, I obsess about the
Tome of Knowledge almost around-the-clock, and most importantly I have a
lot of really smart people who help me make these decisions.
I do a lot of the same kind of stuff with the UI where I
work with artists and programmers to come up with the way
our UI should look, feel, and function. This involves what
I like to call “translating feel into form”, taking an
executive's preference - "This doesn't feel snappy enough" -
and communicating with the artists and programmers to draft
up how "snappy" can be converted into RGB values and LUA code.
What is your background? College? Degree? Has it helped with the job?
1st job out of school? 1st game industry job? How long have you been with
Mythic? Have you worked anywhere else? What other jobs have you held in the
industry?
A long time ago (lifetimes ago), I was a theatre major at NYU,
but I ended up getting a degree in philosophy where I
concentrated on logic. As far as writing and executing design
work, a philosophy degree has become absolutely invaluable.
I would recommend that for anybody interested in pursuing a
design or production role in the game industry. (Caveat: When
you major in philosophy, you may or may not get hired
anywhere... ever. So you need to be lucky as well.)
I've had a ton of jobs in the last fifteen years, from working
at a tattoo parlor to answering letters at the American
Astronomical Society.
As for previous game industry jobs, I began my game industry
career at Acclaim Entertainment where I was in QA for awhile,
and then eventually I joined the Product Support Team where we
gave feedback on popular games, industry trends, and design
review on internal products.
After Acclaim, I freelanced for awhile, writing game reviews
for smaller (indy-cred) websites, like Frictionless Insight,
and magazines, until I got hired at GameSpot. I worked at
GameSpot for a couple years as a Mobile reviews editor and
eventually their Features Editor.
While working at GameSpot, I met Paul Barnett, who is
responsible in a lot of ways for luring me back to the dark
side of game development.
I've been with Mythic for just over a year and a half, and
have been very fortunate to have a couple different roles
here, which I feel has given me a well-rounded perspective
on production.
What other titles have you worked on in the past? In
what capacity?
I worked on over 30 games at Acclaim like Turok, Shadowman,
and many many many Mary Kate and Ashley games.
What was your “welcome to the game industry” moment
when it hit you that you were really making games for a
living?
Well, speaking of Mary Kate and Ashley, I once had to "guard
their backsides" from overzealous paparazzi attempting to
take pictures of their behinds while they were signing
autographs at an E3 booth. If that doesn't display the
glitz and glam of being in the game industry, I don't know
what does…
I've been in the game industry for 9 years now, and it still
finds ways to surprise me. I think, as most people, it was
realizing that this was a viable career option. They never
told me this in career counseling in high school! You can get
paid, in real money, and fed, and sent on trips, and hang out
with people you respect and admire (and they may even be famous),
just by working in the game industry.
Also I'm constantly amused that my mother brags about it now.
She announces that I work in the game industry to nearly
everybody she meets. "Oh, that reminds me of my daughter...
sheworksatElectronicArtsyouknow."
Do you collect Warhammer figures? What army do you play? What excites
you about the Warhammer property? What cool things in the Warhammer
universe do you hope to bring to life?
Well, I should start by confessing that when I started here, I used to
tease everyone who played Warhammer tabletop. Because I'm one of those
video game nerds, and I decided that it was okay to tease tabletop nerds
because as humans we tend to mock what we don't understand….
Then I got the opportunity to attend a couple Games Workshop Games Days
to demo our game… and that really blew my whole perspective out of the
water. There are these people, and they are really into their hobby, and
it looks like so much fun, and they have a good attitude and spirit, and
there's so much going on. I have to admit I got swept up in it all.
So I bought two Sisters of Battle armies, and I painted one for about
four hours, and I think I have two figures half painted. So while I greatly
appreciate the hobby, I don't think I can maintain it.
At one of the UI team meeting get-togethers, I asked one of our
super-Warhammer fans, Greg Wickham, to put together a demonstration with
another member of the team, and they did this amazing Greenskin vs.
Dwarf army demonstration of the tabletop game. I think it's important
that we are constantly reminded of the inspiration for this game, and I
think the whole team had a really good time. They were comparing different
aspects of what was going on in the battle to things they were working on
in our game and it was really cool to see that connection.
So of course, the answer is I hope to bring everything that is the spirit
of the tabletop game to life. Because I think it's all about the same things,
the community aspect, and getting together, and fighting against other people,
and dressing up your character the way you want, and making fart jokes.
What are your hopes/goals for the game?
I want to make a game that people truly enjoy. Everything else I'm trying to
do ultimately filters into that.
What your key influences when making the game? Anything besides
Warhammer?
I think all of our influences go way beyond things that can be directly
compared to our game like Warhammer tabletop or other MMOs. I've found a
lot of inspiration in Xbox Live Achievements and Pokemon. From a design
perspective, Nintendo is hard to match, but I'm also obsessed with the
glorious fun in games like Team Fortress 2 and Portal.
The active UI modding scene is incredible in so many ways, because these
people are truly generating "Web 2.0", user-fed, user-produced, user-rated,
user-maintained content, and we can all learn from what they're doing.
From a production standpoint, I'm literally obsessing over kaizen and Dr. W.
Edward Deming's 14 points regarding quality. And I recently attended a seminar
held by Edward Tufte just to talk about general presentation and human
interaction. So really, I will take anything and make it about our game
(and vice versa).
What are your favorite video/computer games of all time? What games
are you playing right now? What game should the reader be playing if he’s not?
There is one definitively best game of all time, and that is Double Dragon,
the arcade version. Close behind that (and I mean really right on top if it),
I would include Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, pre-retail Counter-Strike,
and Psychonauts.
Then there's the entire Tim Shafer catalog, the entire Sierra and Lucas Arts
classic adventure games catalog, the entire classic arcade games catalog
(within reason), and all those incredible nostalgia-filled games, like the
NES games, early PlayStation games, the Sim-games... and a little number called
Circuit Breakers.
I have a disastrously large number of unwrapped games right now, but the
most recent purchases are God of War: Chains of Olympus, Super Smash Bros.
Brawl, Army of Two, and Patapon.
I'm also raiding TK and SSC with my WoW guild now, and I go into panic mode
everytime they start talking about Warhammer in guild chat. If only they
knew how close they were to someone with access to beta keys... I'll never tell!
What music are you listening to right now?
I must confess I am listening to The Protomen at this very moment. But I
like other non-video game themed music like: Nine Inch Nails, The Decemberists,
Muse, Rilo Kiley, Atmosphere, Aesop Rock, Bikini Kill, NYHC, Leonard Cohen,
and this incredibly amazing live performer named Mike Relm who you must see
anytime he comes by in concert.
Is there a recent movie you’ve seen or book/comic you read that
you’d recommend to others?
I am finally finishing Umberto Eco's last book, The Mysterious Flame of Queen
Loana, and it's amazing.
Anything else you want to add?
I'd like to add that I feel really blessed to be working with such an amazing
group of people. The UI team is filled with some of the best, most interesting,
hard-working (totally insane) people I've ever met, and I owe everything to
them. Thank you guys, I love you! Now stop reading websites and get back to
work!
