HardOCP forums, all the cool kids are doing it!!!
As usual. . . all Hypothermia interviews have funny little stories behind them. . . and staying with that theme, this one too, has a "story".
I had originally planned this interview with a member of the Messiah team a few months back, but due to "CRUNCH TIME" and getting Messiah out the door, my interview was overlooked. Then comes the patch work etc. . . I had many things going on as well, again. . . . this interview sat on the back burner. After all the dust has settled, I re-bugged Stuart into an interview, and to fork over some "GOODS".
So without any further delay. . . .
1.) How'd you get
started in the Game Making Game and/or who was your inspiration. ( please
forgive this question. . . it’s mandatory with any interview ;^)
My
start is sort of the classic “working your way from the ground up” story.
I
got a degree at school in writing and business administration and after a string
of sales-type jobs that I sucked at, I answered an ad in the local paper for
game testers. I had always really
loved games and thought it might be a good way to earn a few extra bucks until I
found a “real” job.
Within a few months I was a QA supervisor, and a few months after that got a job in Virgin Interactive’s development studio as an assistant designer.
I left Virgin after about a year to pursue other opportunities and found myself at Shiny Entertainment working on their PSX title Wild 9 as an assistant designer.
One thing led to another as they say, and a little over two years later I’m the executive producer at the company working on Messiah, Sacrifice, and a yet unannounced project.
2.)
Being that I did a little homework, how is it that a person goes from QA Analyst
/ Supervisor / Game Designer for Virgin to a Level Designer / Producer at
Shiny?? How many dead bodies are left in the wake??
Very
impressive homework!
It’s
all about being in the right place at the right time in this case.
With Virgin, I didn’t really feel like I had much of a future with the
company. I felt that I worked hard
and did good work, but as with most large publishers, it was difficult to get
ahead.
With
Shiny being a smaller company, I have had much more room to grow.
Long hours and good work pay off here as our team members have more
visibility in the small developer atmosphere.
No
dead bodies unfortunately. While it
would make for a more interesting interview to be sure, I’ve been lucky to
arrive at my current position without any bloodshed.
Even through Messiah’s crunch period, I was fortunate to not have to break the
Deadline Maker™ out on many occasions!
3.)
People you admire in the industry. ( feel free to include John Carmack. . .
everyone else did!!! )
John
Carmack is just a given. No one
person has had a greater impact on furthering game technology in the past five
years than John. I have to give
hand it to John and the id Software crew for creating Quake as well which is my
favorite multi-player game of all time.
I’ve
also been really impressed with the work of people like Shigeru Miyamoto and
Hideo Kojima in the console game world for creating such great games as Mario 64
and Metal Gear Solid.
It’s
more difficult to pick people that I admire in the PC arena as there are so many
games that I have really enjoyed yet sometimes don’t have a personality taking
top billing. The Blizzard guys
really churn out some great games, the Valve team did an incredible job with
Half-Life which still has most developers trying to compete, and most recently I
have been thinking that Bioware is perhaps one of the most under appreciated
developers in our industry.
4.)
What's the most annoying thing to deal with as a Game Making Guru.
Well first off, I wouldn’t consider myself to be the Game Guru here. As a producer, one of my jobs is to make it as easy as possible for the teams here at Shiny to actually create the games. The programmers, designers, and artists here are the real Game Gurus and they deserve the credit. I’m just fortunate to be surrounded by such talented developers that make me look good.
That being said, there’s not too much I could think to bitch about with our
industry. Like any job, we can have
a bad day, but in the end, how fun is it to make your living creating
videogames!?
This gig beats the hell out of having a job in a bank or something where you have to arrive at 6:00am, wear a suit and tie everyday, and make 500 cold calls a day trying to sell securities or something.
5.)You
just finished a MASSIVE product / Game with Messiah, given the chance to
reflect…the overall feeling is what??
I joined the project halfway through it’s development cycle and even then, I felt exhausted when the title was finished. I can’t imagine the feeling of relief for the guys who worked on the title from the beginning. You pour so much of your blood, sweat, and tears into making a game that in a sense it feels like the weight of the world has been lifted from you shoulders when a game ships.
All said and done, I think we created a pretty cool game that I’m really proud of. It was a hell of a ride creating a brand new engine, new tools to support it, and use them to implement an ambitious game design.
6.)
Tips you can give Game Making-Jedi in training
Jedi
mind tricks can be extremely useful to a producer when mastered.
Nothing helps you get the answers you need more than when you use that
gentle wave of the hand, “that’s not the release date I’m looking
for…”
Note
that Jedi mind tricks don’t work on lead programmers and CEOs who seem to have
wills too strong to bend with simple parlor tricks.
For
those with little or no Jedi skills…
Don’t
be afraid of hard work! It amazes
me how many resumes a day I look at from people who want to be a programmer,
artist, or designer who have never worked in the game industry before yet hope
to get into the industry at the top. The game industry is a lot like the film industry in that it
is made up of a really small group of talented individuals.
Like the film industry, to get a really good dream job you have to pay
your dues.
If
you’re really serious about being the next John Carmack or Shigeru Miyamoto,
my advice would be to first apply to your favorite game developers as a QA
analyst, assistant game designer, or assistant producer.
If you’re good, my bet is that you’ll be able to start moving up
toward your dream job within a year.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to get a job programming or creating art assets straight away with no experience at a top developer, just unlikely.
For
someone trying to break into this field, I would suggest checking David
Perry’s web site (www.dperry.com),
which answers lots of questions people have when they first think about making
videogames.
7.)One
of the biggest ( and most retarded ) criticisms of Messiah was the level of
difficulty. . . . does anyone besides HASBRO set out to make a “simple”
game??
Well, in all fairness, I think that the early levels in Messiah actually could have been a bit more user friendly. I think that in the case of Messiah, we had some difficult early levels in our game that were pretty tough, especially when combined with the new game mechanic we were introducing. The combination of really tight AI and a different gameplay mechanic proved to be frustrating for some gamers.
It’s funny because we struggled to create a kick ass AI in Messiah and in the end we got bashed because the AI was too proficient! They have a point though…
No
one sets out to make a simple game, but the thing I always try to remember is
that there is a really fine line between ‘challenging’ and
‘frustrating.’
8.)
Drink of Choice
Jack Daniels.
9.)
Tunes of Choice
I have a really eclectic taste in music and it tends to change by the day. Most recently though, I’ve been listening to Cypress Hill and Paul Oakenfield.
Hey! I said it was eclectic.
10.)
Babe of Choice
My
wife of course!
11.)
What are you working on right now??? Anything super top secret??
Can I have some screenshots??
Right
now I’m helping a bit with Sacrifice but really spending most of my time
working on the pre-production of the Messiah team’s next project.
I wish I was at liberty to talk about it, but I think you’ll find that
the Messiah team goes underground for quite some time and just gets on with
making the game rather than talking about all the stuff we’re “going to”
do.
12.)
Everyone KNOWS who Shiny is. . . they make cool MoFo games like MDK 1 – 2 ,
Messiah, and the up coming Sacrifice, but many people don’t know who is who,
and or what teams are responsible for what. . . So who is who??
MDK
1 : MDK
was made by a talented group of guys that left Shiny after the project was
completed and have since gone on to form their own company working on a little
game called Giants. I had a chance
to play it at E3 and it should be a big hit this Christmas.
MDK
2: was created by the guys up at Bioware who are
also famous for their RPG Baldur’s Gate.
These guys are kicking some serious ass.
Messiah:
The Messiah
team is made up of a bunch of guys from the US and Europe who came together to
work on something fresh and original. Many
of the guys on this team had not shipped a game before Messiah but now have some
excellent experience going into their next title.
Pre-production on their next “under wraps” project is coming along
nicely.
Sacrifice:
Sacrifice
is being crafted by a solid group of guys who have shipped some big name titles
in the past. Some of the guys on
the Sacrifice team have worked on such games as Starcraft, Warcraft 2, and MDK.
They are currently in the bug fixing and polish phase of Sacrifice’s
development.
13.)
What POST Messiah life been like??
Absolutely killer. I’ve really enjoyed spending some time with my wife and soaking in simple pleasures like going to the movies and reading books which was impossible during our Messiah crunch.
While there are lots of good memories looking back at the time we spent developing Messiah, the last 6 or 7 months were absolutely brutal. We were working 10-14 hours a day on the average and worked nearly seven days a week for that last stretch to get the title wrapped up. Think about it for a minute… most Messiah team members worked nearly every day for a 180 day stretch in late 1999 and early 2000! Ouch! Some of the guys would literally live at the office for 5 to 6 day stretches, sleeping under their desks and showering in our facilities here at Shiny.
Crunch
periods can be fun in moderation but when they last as long as Messiah’s did,
it can be tough on the guys mentally and really stress people’s family lives
outside of work.
It
can be a really tough life during the dreaded crunch period, one which I don’t
think gamers who play our games really understand.
That
said, we still have the best jobs in the world!
and
the bonus question
Since
we have been friends for years, and have had many Jack Daniels binges ( heh, no
small coincidence my last name is Lynch and JD is made in LynchBurg. . . )
together, please tell my readers a little something they may not know. . . .
Before getting a degree in business and other boring stuff, I was going to school here in Southern California as a Fire Technology major.
High
risk and low pay eventually made me question my career as a firefighter.
It would’ve been fun!
A big fat "THANKS!!!" goes out to Stuart for doing this interview, and for coughing up the goods ;^) I really apppreciate it. . as does the lucky stiff that gets a copy of the game!! I'm gonna be bugging Stuart again in the near future when he can give me some more juicy details on upcoming projects. . good stuff for sure guys. . .
As with most of my recent interviews, I am giving away a few free copies of Messiah... One is even autographed by the whole Messiah team. . . now hows that??
Hit the link and get in the contest to win an awesome game. . . yours might even be the autographed one!!
E-mail me:
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