Tag: Software Engineer

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.

Growing Into Games – Part Three

Indiana University Sample Gates

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.