Growing into Games – ooglykraken

My Time in Game Development

I remember a casual afternoon at my parents’ house when some of the family had come over to visit. They’ve got enough yard space for the kids to play and my mom enjoys entertaining family and friends. Some family were talking with one of my older cousins and someone had asked “What do you want to do for job?” or something like that. I was in middle school at the time so he was probably in high school . His response was “to make video games” and as he went on about his answer, a lightbulb that I didn’t even know existed popped into existence and lit up at the same time. My cousin is still talking but I’m only half-listening as a line of thought crawls through my brain. I didn’t know you could do that or rather I’d never thought about it. I was aware of game developer’s, Blizzard was a favorite then, but had never considered it from the level of the individual. So right then and there I’d decided I’d do the same. Starting in high school and on through College that was the plan. This was how I got into software development and eventually picked Computer Science as my college major. My sophomore year I heard about a local group called Hoosier Games. I joined them and was shown how little I knew about anything. Somehow I was able to find an Internship for the summer at a local Software and game devolopment studio called Plow Digital / Plow Games located in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. It was there I was given a crash course in Unity3D and spent the next few months cranking out digital game guides (I worked on the Street Figther IV guide), mobile games, custom interactive experiences, and probably more.

The experience at Plow was really big for me. I worked with a lot of cool, creative people who were unanimously both cordial and driven. They moved into a new office space shortly after I left and I haven’t kept up with them but they still seem to be doing pretty well. My experience there put me back at Hoosier Games but this time leading a small team of seven people to make Katabasis. This was everybody’s first game, and my first time leading a team. While it was never a perfect process I still remember the time fondly and wish the best for the team. We had myself and another who voluteered to code, an artist, and two musicians, while everybody helped with design. Most of the team persisted for a year but after two it became a solo act. Early on it took a while for the identity of the gameplay to come through but our artist had a very distinct style that worked great for the game. Our composers also put together some really interesting tracks. In fact just yesterday I was looking into custom vinyl presses of the game’s soundtrack as this year is it’s fifth anniversary.

The following summer I was able to get a job interning on Marvel’s Video Game Production team. I mainly helped the senior Producers with whatever project, so I bounced around to different games and ended up doing lots of QA and testing when possible. Not everything that came to our desk was a game build sometimes it’s concept art or in-game art, design documents, pitches, and more. Being an organizational nut I organized the spare office space and cleaned up the shared digital documentation. The latter was an extended effort to catalogue Marvel character’s first appearances and confirm other similar historical questions. While there I worked on a variety of projects like the yet-to-be released Spiderman for PS4 and some others. It was a great team but I never belonged, way too friendly and social. The position itself is also too people focused for me, but it did give me some managerial insight.

I would go on to continue on some other solo projects but had largely disconnected from Hoosier Games in my waning time as a college student. This was mostly due to some fortune in acquiring a position under one of the professors doing freelance game development. This position lasted about a year until it transitioned into Water Works, an educational game being developed through the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs. This was a web-based game and thus a bit of a departure from my usual work. Not only that I was picking up what was left as someone else’s passion project. This was where the majority of my game development time went until I left college.

After moving out to California’s Bay Area to be closer to a couple of different studios I started interviewing around, trying to connect on LinkedIn, and doing contract work. I met some really nice people in the area who gave me some great advice but I eventually gave up and started pursuing my Plan B, Software Engineer. A silver lining I suppose.

Disillusionment; or A Monkey’s Paw

Perhaps most kids who grew up enjoying games like I did also dreamed they would one day own as many games as they wanted. The proverbial “Kid in the Candy Shop” being able to walk away with everything. Well I certainly did and everytime I felt I had to sell off older games for newer ones that idea was given more fuel. Learning about emulation was a revelation and provided an accessible gateway but it’s alway felt off, not properly scratching that itch. Don’t get me wrong I think emulation is and will be a cornerstone of game preservation, but the disconnect from the physical process makes it feel hollow to me. I missed sliding a cart in, clicking an on switch and gripping a distinctive controller in my hands. Even just picking out what to play, the little game in your head to decide. There’s a ritual to it that adds to the experience, but for me even the feel of the controller is important. Playing Sega Genesis games requires the Genesis controller with it’s big, clicky buttons that make arcady games oh-so satisfying. Or even as simple as Super Mario Bros. on NES with buttons locations helping inform the gameplay. Nowadays it’s easy to get 3rd-party controllers for PC to imitate older controller designs which is also great. With just a decent PC you could emulate almost everything but more recent generation consoles while using faithful controllers. For me, clicking through an emulator menu just can’t replace grabbing something off of a shelf and physically turning on a system.

With my first full-time job I had finally achieved I decided to try and satisfy that childhood dream of owning any game I wanted. It all started when I had my recurring urge to play my favorite GBA games. Instead of emulating like I had since high school I bought a GBA SP and a few games. Then it dawned on me I could do more. I moved onto the N64, then a PS2, and more. I started keeping track of what I wanted in a spreadsheet as the possibilities opened up. Then the spreadsheet kept track of everything I had as the collection grew. After some more research you realize there’s better ways to get faithful HDMI signals with upscalers like the Framemeister. You can also use different types of cables for better signals. Signal switches can make using multiple consoles easier. If you have friends who’ll play you’ll want multiple controllers for the different consoles. But what about cleaning, maintaining and moving your collection. Discs and cartridges each require different cleaning solutions. Disc based consoles have internal or external memory units while cartridge games often have in-cart memory that requires replacing batteries on the board. Older consoles die, newer consoles fail. Discs will face rot. You want to move? How do you package and safely move all of it? Where does all of this go in your home after? You’ll need shelves, boxes, labels, or something. It’s expensive. It’s never ending. What was once a glorious childhood dream is now a burden that makes you question your adulthood.

Collecting quickly became a game unto itself. Finding recommendations to look out for, finding random picks wherever I may roam, the “it’s my birthday, so it’s ok if I buy a Model 1 Genesis in box”. Completing my list and adding new items to the shelf became more gratifying sometimes than some games. Same with upgrades to my media center. I’d update some things to improve accessibilty, flow, or usability but never access or use them. So not only do I have a bunch of fragile, non-liquid assets taking up a large amount of physical space, I felt guilty for not playing what I had, continuing to buy more, and not playing them.

Over time I’ve come to terms with my relationship with my collection. Even if I don’t engage with it as much as I think I should that doesn’t mean I won’t or can’t. In fact the point is that I do have them for whenever I may want to play them, not to play them all right now. Sometimes you have to be in the right mood for a particular experience or take a chance to experience a new one. In the end the boundaries and expectations are yours to control, you just have to be honest with yourself and wise enough to know when you’ve gone too far. It’s your collection, you decide. For me, just because I don’t play Super Nintendo every day doesn’t mean I should sell off my copy of Tetris Attack.

Growing Into Games – Part Three

The year I finished high school I went on to college at Indiana University. By chance I ran into half a dozen friends/acquaintances at one of the Welcome Week events held by the university. I started out in the dorms and one of my friends whom I hadn’t seen in a few years stayed in the same dorm just in a different part of the building. My first semester roommate was a fraternity pledge, so we didn’t see each other much and eventually he moved out to be replaced someone who’d recently come from China for University. He would ask me questions about life in America, Americanisms, etc… for hours every night. Not that I minded, the building to this day is still without any form of AC so most nights were too hot to find sleep.

I had brought my Xbox 360 with me to university and aside from my laptop would be my primary source of games throughout my time in university. My freshman year was 2011 and that September I walked to the nearest Best Buy to get a copy of the newly released Dark Souls. The trip took a little more than an hour, but it was worth it. With combat not too dissimilar to Monster Hunter, an open world gated by skill, knowledge, and locked doors it quickly became one of my favorite games. It felt like the 3D Castlevania Konami had been trying to create since Symphony of the Night re-wrote the series. Just as I had tackled MH with a friend, I kept up with a friend from my hometown of Indy to share notes on DS. Being so early in its release there wasn’t much information online yet either, so it took months until we started to see the game’s bigger picture. There was another pretty important day in 2011, a Pocky Day during a year ending in ’11. Truly a momentous occasion to be remembered forever. The small number of people who bothered to play Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim might remember it also came out on 11-11-2011. All joking aside I had played ESIII as a youth and then ESIV as a high schooler, so I was pretty excited for another sequel. Skyrim would be the only game I’ve attended a midnight opening for, though I was a good kid and waited ’til after class the next day to indulge. Truly a landmark year for gaming, dragons, and dragons in games.

Eventually I’d room with a good friend my sophomore year. He wasn’t much of a gamer but pretty quickly he chugged through Mass Effect two and then even beating the third before I could. Later Street Fighter X Tekken came out and we sunk hours into it. Despite the hate it gets, SFxT did have some fun concepts. Personally, we enjoyed running through the campaign with tag-in co-op and other co-op modes. Then later that year I got myself Borderlands 2 for my birthday. Funnily enough he and have birthdays a week apart so I’m sure we spent the week staying as high as possible and playing as much as possible. Borderlands 2 is in my mind one of the last great couch co-op games released for consoles, since then the industry has moved more to online exclusive co-op.

Starting my junior year of college, I’d be living in an apartment for the first time, and I’d have to find a job to pay for it. My friend had also left for family reasons, so I’d have to find new people to share expenses with. For the job I got work as an undergraduate Teacher’s Assistant for what was essentially CompSci-101. Given the large number of students I was one of a dozen or so UA (Undergrad Assts.) while there were several graduate TA’s to help the Professor. The job involved grading homework and tests, holding office hours, and running labs on Fridays. I enjoyed it, and though I was “teaching” people only a couple years younger than me it was a good experience. The pay was just enough for me to sub-lease a room off-campus. Living off of my labor was as difficult as it was liberating. I had regular income but expenses as well. At some point during this year I was invited to an old friend’s baby shower party in another city. He and I wrestled together in high school and I hadn’t talked to him much since. There we ended getting caught up trying to play through Dark Souls II, which had just released. Given my limited budget I had told myself to wait on purchasing it, but the taste of it lingered after I went back to my home in Bloomington. It must’ve been shortly after that the semester ended. With about a week left on the lease and no classes or work, I bought DSII. This time though I went digital and downloaded it. So, for the following week I stayed holed up alone in my apartment grinding through Dark Souls II. I remember it being rather glorious.

That year and apartment would be significant in another way since I would go on to date and then marry one of my roommates. We lived with each other for about two years until she graduated and moved west to California. That same year my friend had returned from helping his family in California, so he and I went on to share an apartment. Nearly all the furniture there was secondhand/free, our kitchen had little more than ramen and potatoes usually and we both just kept our mattresses on the floor. For us though it was a paradise. No annoying roommates, we could smoke as much as we wanted, music was always playing, there was decent affordable BBQ within walking distance, and people were always stopping by to chill. It was one long relaxed party with breaks for classes and work.

Later I had stopped caring much about my degree as much and focused more on making games both through my day job and as a hobby. After I worked as a teacher’s assistant for two years I was able to work for a professor developing various games. At the same time I had been attending a local campus game dev group and had worked on several projects through them. This became my focus, even taking a break from school to focus on game development more. Finally, I’d move out to California to try and break into the game industry while finishing my degree remotely. I was able to finish my degree but after a few months of sporadic contract employment and no long-term possibilities I gave up. As a backup plan, instead of trying to program games I could just become a mainstream software engineer. Despite having planned for game making as a career since I was a young boy, my ultimate choice was an intentional Plan B. I didn’t get to spend my career making games but that’s ok.

Growing Into Games – Part Two

At the end of part one I had left with the idea that the Gameboy Advance was the ultimate system for me as a young child, and while that’s true it’s also an era nearing its end. Once I had started middle school, I went to a different school than basically all the people I grew up with, so for my entire first year of middle school I didn’t really have many friends. Even on the school’s wrestling team I was the only 6^th grader. The transition however left me very busy between school and wrestling. What little time I did have to myself I spent playing games as I had before, though by this time I had become more involved in playing PC games such as Warcraft III. In fact, I’d venture a guess that, even almost two decades later WC3, is still one of my most played games. It comes with a built-in tool that allow users to create their own content and so the WC3 servers were always bustling with new types of games or variations of older ones, making it endlessly playable. This was back when DOTA was new, and the terms ‘pwn’ or ‘own’ were just making it into online vernacular. I was getting older, my tastes were maturing, and my environments were changing.

Around this time my father, due to a fortunate turn at work could afford to buy a gaming console. Originally, he went to get a PS2 as he knew I wanted one but was talked into the just-released original Xbox by the Wal-Mart sales associate. While initially disappointed, as all I knew about the Xbox was some game called Halo a cousin really liked, I gave it a fair shot. The Xbox was my first “mature” gaming console . While older 16-bit games could be mature in nature like say Mortal Kombat it was less often they were thematically mature like Halo or Knights of the Old Republic. I went from playing Banjo-Kazooie on Saturday mornings to grinding through KotOR and Jet Set Radio Future. From family tournaments of Goldeneye to those of Halo. The original Xbox was a new frontier with a much vaster breadth and depth of content. My brother being much older was also aware of this other new thing called Xbox Live, an internet service that could allow people play games with each other remotely. We were able to convince our dad to run an ethernet cable from our modem box to the family room where the TV and Xbox were and after the purchase of some Xbox Live 6-month subscription cards my brother and I were ready to take Halo online. It was at this time when I came up with the name Ooglykraken, combining my love of mythology and an off-hand quote from DragonBall Z’s then running Majin Buu saga.

As I write this what I find most interesting in this reflection is how much I grew up alongside many of the technologies and ideas that are ubiquitous today. When they were new, I was still young enough to soak it up like a sponge no questions asked. Those who are younger would grow up with many of these things after they’d become commonplace. While those who are older will recognize they too went through formative experiences alongside tech growth that others then grew up with, unaware of it’ s own journey into ubiquity.

Moving into 7^th grade was strange as everything in my life changed. That year I made friends with many people I call friend today, including one who would later be my college roommate of several years and then my best-man at my wedding. It’s during these times that a lot of people become more socially independent, making their own identities. So just as it was a time of abundant social development it also facilitated the kind of “school-yard” sharing. Word of mouth was still quite powerful for school kids despite the growing abundance of information online. It was through my new friends I found games like Devil May Cry, bands like Slipknot, and a broader exposure to anime. My brother had become independent around this time, so he moved out to his own apartment. This was the first time I’d had my own bedroom since I was a little kid and the freedom that came with it probably helped spur the growth of my atypical tastes, atypical relative to my family.

By the time I was in high school I had steady work landscaping and my age provided more personal freedom, so I was able to independently explore my own interests. Things such as being able to have my own TV, something rightfully prevented by my parents knowing I’d hole up in my room like a goblin emerging only to nab bits of food and then scurry back to my cave of a room. The light of a TV being the only signs something is living there. As far as gaming related changes, I traded in my GBA SP for a PSP. I was aware of the PSP but initially wrote it off. Then a friend of my brother’s gave me the whole spiel about modding, homebrew, and custom software. This was a whole new frontier. Emulation? Homebrew? Modding? All these unknown concepts revealed and demystified. First this meant I started learning how to emulate on the family PC, but also this convinced me of the PSP’s worth. I’ve never enjoyed selling games and consoles to get new ones but one website which made it more palatable was Estarland, an online storefront for games of all eras. After an appraisal of my collection from them I had just enough to get started with a PSP. I mailed in my old collection and anxiously awaited to be credited. Fast forward and I had a PSP and just like the GBA before it, it was immediately integral to my free time. Not only could the PSP play games, but it could store music, play movies, and more. Then it was quite novel but only a precursor of things to come. Now I did eventually try to mod my PSP but not ‘til later as at that time it was a risky procedure with the chance to brick the device or at the very least destroy the battery. So, I had to wait until I could afford a spare battery. My first try didn’t work, and I couldn’t keep on buying hardware for repeated attempts. Despite this, the little device made a lasting impact. There was a period of a few weeks after one of my friends got a PSP and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite that we put several hundred hours into the game. I don’t have that original PSP or anything else, but I remember my final hour total on the game to be somewhere around 600. What a waste of time, right? Maybe, but thinking back it’s all fond memories. In the end MH would be quite pivotal in refining my tastes and understanding of games.

Finally late in high school I was able to save up enough to buy an Xbox 360 which was just a solid evolution on the original Xbox. Thinking back, it’s funny thinking about how socially integral video games had started to become by that time with the popularity of games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. High school became this time where if I wasn’t in wrestling practice or at school, I was at one or another friend’s house playing Borderlands, League of Legends, or fighting games like Street Fighter 4 and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. This was the explosion of multiplayer console games especially those of the online variety. My friends and I still tended to play in-person, however.

This period for me is one of my most nostalgic, being this combination of freedom and a lack of responsibility outside of school and wrestling. It wasn’t uncommon for me to spend almost my entire weekend at one friend or another’s. The whole time a heady slurry of weed, video games, Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, movies, and music. All my friends were within two miles walking so I could head over whenever I wanted to. In seven years, I went from innocent youth to a young person yearning for independence. I recognize to some degree my desire to play games as freely as I wanted (my parents had restrictions on time spent) helped foment a desire to live on my own. This is also what drove me to spend so much time at friends’ houses where such impositions didn’t exist for me. This is just one way my relationship with gaming affected the way I interacted with family, friends, and my responsibilities. The implication isn’t that games helped raise me either but rather they’ve had indelible impacts of varying magnitude on me. This exercise is meant to tease those impacts out and examine them, with special consideration for nostalgia and other long-term effects.

Growing Into Games – Part One

Thanks to my family I never had a choice. Not like my parents were into games, but my brother and cousins were. For me this meant Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis games are amongst my oldest memories. Eventually my older brother got an N64 as a gift from the parents, back when it was state-of-the-art. I remember going to the store with them, my parents seeing the price tag and my brother negotiating its acquisition. It might not have been that day we got it but eventually it made it’s may into our house. Now we already had a Sega Genesis and I’d played every game we had though I still couldn’t read yet, but the 64 was something else. Between Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Smash Bros, the Mario Parties, and most of all Goldeneye we were all enthralled. My cousins would come over and we’d play multiplayer for hours. Being the youngest I could never compete with them but it was all about the fun. Then came the crown jewls of my childhood: Banjo-Kazooie and then it’s sequel, Banjo-Tooie.

Bottom line the N64 was the most foundational of my gaming consoles and set the bar from what I’d expect from gaming. From multiplayer party games to enjoyable single player romps, with a personality I think is lacking in most modern games. It was another means to connect with other kids as well. Sharing on monday morning what we spent all weekend playing. In fact, some of my early favorites I was only able to find through friends such as Banjo-Tooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Ocarina of Time, and Perfect Dark. Some may hate on the N64 today, but it still has a distinctive art style and well-made games despite its age. All in all, the idea is that old does not mean bad…. or good. There’s quality in every generation it just represents the different interests, aesthetics, and desires of the time. Maybe some other qualities too, please let me know.

The next step of my journey was when I started taking more autonomy over what I wanted. This began with my Gameboy Color. I’ve wracked my brain to determine where this magical little green device came from. However I can’t remember if I bought it or it was a gift but I do know it was second-hand.

This led me down the portable gaming rabbit hole, something my parents’ fondness for road trips would facilitate. Now if it sounds like I’m blaming my family that my wife now must deal with the childish question of “but what about my games?” (Imagine a whiny child voice) that’s not the case. As a person I’ve noticed I have a mild obsession with collecting and organizing but especially for things that are miniature. For example, as of this writing my GBA collection is my largest game stock with the second being the PS2. Once I became old enough to read labels I started experimenting buying new games for the N64 and GameBoy, starting my habit of making trips to the game store. Revelations like Pokemon Gold and Heroes of Might and Magic 2 began cracking open my awareness of what games could be.

My next glorious golden shining light from the heavens, something that had been teased before my eyes by others: the GameBoy Advance. I finally got one when I was old enough to do odd landscaping jobs for neighbors to fund my purchasing of toys and games. For the first time I would begin buying games brand new. Reading GameInformer artices eagerly anticipating their arrival then begging a parent to drive me to get a copy.

This was the device that drove me to emulation and eventually to start collecting. Its abundance of high quality software of many genres meant it was always charged, always ready go, and always had something good ready to play. Competing with friends over the wireless dongles in Pokemon was like a precursor of modern multiplayer. Remakes of classic SNES games made some masterpieces portable, like Link to the Past. Even some great series received offerings on the GBA, like Final Fantasy Tactics or Metroid Fusion. I believe most young people who had this kind of Nintendo Power at their fingertips would have a hard time resisting it.

Thus a young one was struck with an inexorable curse, never to recover, forever doomed.