The Closer
AUTHOR: Jeff
You find a wide range of personalities on the typical game development team. There are the grizzled veterans who’ve seen it all, know how to solve just about any problem, and view bold ideas with a healthy dose of skepticism. There are the youthful idealists, often fresh out of school and giddy to be working in their first game gig, who challenge traditional boundaries with strange ideas. Most of those ideas are completely infeasible, of course, peppered with the occasional brilliant idea that builds empires.
A healthy team has a good mix of these personalities, but the rarest and most valuable people on the team are often those who can balance these extremes and just figure out how to get awesome things done on time. These are the “closers” — the quiet ninjas of game development, and without them, you don’t ship games.
James McMillan is a closer.
Rewind to 2005. I was still at ArenaNet and we had just released the original Guild Wars. We had committed to releasing expansions to the core game on a regular basis, so we needed an art team that was capable of cranking out large amounts of high-caliber content at a fast pace. Realizing we needed some heavy hitters to help out, I started interviewing local artists, placing particular emphasis on good game design sensibility and technical problem-solving ability. Two of my most trusted go-to guys, Doug Williams and Brant Fitzgerald — both now card-carrying Team Zed members — encouraged me to talk to this guy they knew named James McMillan.
James turned out to be a quiet, unassuming guy. He clearly loved games, and he absolutely dominated the art and level design tests we threw at him, but he didn’t leave a trail of ionized plasma behind him, breath fire, or shoot prismatic spray from his fingertips. I liked him immediately.
As I worked with James over the next few years, I grew to respect him immensely as an artist, and perhaps even more so as a person. He’s the guy who quietly brings in donuts for the whole team every Friday, never taking credit until somebody finds out they aren’t provided by the company and starts asking around. He’s the guy who’s at work on the weekends in the months before ship because It Has To Get Done, without feeling compelled to come in and crow about it on Monday morning. He’s the guy who builds and beautifies large sections of the game world, and then is happiest when the praise goes to the entire team. He’s the quiet builder, the ninja-assassin of politics and drama. The doer.
He’s a closer. He’s our closer.
Welcome to Team Zed, James!
Jeff
P.S. Don’t forget to check out James’s welcome to his fellow survivors!
Sounds like another awesome addition to the Undead Labs team!
Jeff, how many ex-ArenaNet employees do you have on your staff? I count at least seven.
14, including me. However, not all of them were at ArenaNet immediately prior to coming to the Lab.
He sounds like a really amazing person, and like hes the perfect addition to making this game everything we hope it can be!!! Can’t wait till the next post. When can we expect see trailers?
Judging by the environments in Guild Wars Factions and Nightfall, we’ll get to see some really cool vistas in this game. Thanks for bringing very talented people to the project we all put our hopes on.
Ntw, when will we see someone from the writing staff ?
It’s hard to contain my excitement for class 3.. and i can’t even fathom on a daily basis the sheer awesomeness that will be class 4.
I don’t even know what to say anymore on these comments. I will say, that I can probably speak for everyone when I say, thank you for introducing all the employees, and keeping in actual contact with us. You know you already have our money in the bank, and we are beating down your doors waiting in your lobby..
@Josh, our lobby is of course reinforced with anti zombie mob traps in place….
The donut thing reminds me a lot of Dexter. From that show, Dexter. Anyways…
Reading even these little staff-introductions excites me about class3 and 4, simply because it shows the activity you’re all doing and how your team has expanded. It makes you seem less like a corporate game company, and more like a bunch of dudes who want to make the most hardcore game in existence.
Okay. You guys really got to me. Its not everyday a dev team feels like family. You guys have a warm beating heart feeling. oposed to other dev teams. You guys keep it real and actually talk with your fans and future fans. +200 Interwebz to your staff! You guys sound like family.