It used to be that when I told people what I did for a living I often got the response “So you play games all day?” That was always such an odd question to me. It’s like asking an architect if he stares at buildings all day. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, no, playing games doesn’t magically make them reproduce into more games (but how awesome would it be if it did?!). Making games is work. If you’re doing it right it’s fun work, but it’s still work.
Not only is our industry young, it’s constantly evolving in order to keep up with technology. There are no blueprints, no guarantees, no foolproof methods when it comes to making a game. Sounds risky, right? Well, it is. So, with all these unknowns, what is the recipe for success? For me, the answer is talent, experience, and passion. In a word: Undead Labs.
I initially came from the film and television industry, but after a few years of seeing how miserable everyone was, I decided it wasn’t where I wanted to end up. Here enters video games, or more specifically, SCEA. I started off in external production working on Twisted Metal: Black, including the online version which sole purpose was to promote the launch of the PS2 network adapter (hard to believe that used to be a separate hardware add-on). From there, thanks to the support of some internal designers, I landed a spot on the design team of Dark Odyssey, a Greek mythology game that was just starting pre-production (and would ship three years later as God of War).
Having had a film background, I found a niche as the camera designer for a game with a cinematic camera system. So, you may be thinking “wtf, you didn’t want to stay in design?” Well, my career change could be somewhat described as a post mortem of my time as a designer on God of War. We managed to make an amazing game with what would be considered a fairly lean team by today’s standards. However, it took a lot of superstar talent and a hell of a lot of crunching to make it happen. Shipping felt great, but I’ll be the first to admit it — I was burnt out.
I knew I didn’t want to go through a development crunch like that ever again, but I wanted to keep making great games. Were the two infinitely inseparable? I didn’t believe they were. So with my new in-the-trenches perspective, I dusted off my producer hat and started a new gig at Snowblind Studios just as they were finishing up Justice League Heroes.
It felt strange not to be implementing anymore. After all, I’d spent the last three years fiddling with proprietary tools and tuning gameplay. But after a few months, I found my groove and was relieved to realize that I’d made the right career choice. Production was extremely challenging, and fixing all the obvious problems wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. But I got to have my hands in every department, was able to connect with the entire team (not just the designers), and found a lot of satisfaction when I was able to clear bottlenecks for people.
One night, about a year ago, I was sitting in a quiet office late at work, when I ran across the website of a game company claiming they were going to make a zombie-survival MMO, and here’s the kicker, it was for *gasp* console.
The part of me that loves a good challenge was intrigued, but the manager side cringed at the inevitable bloated team size and organizational cluster f*ck associated with MMO development. While it’s true that in many ways it takes an army to build a AAA game to compete in today’s market, it’s also true that when you tell Artist A to go talk to Programmer B and they have no idea who you’re talking about… well, that’s a problem.
When I started at Snowblind I was employee number forty-something. Four years later the team had grown to over 100 people. As much as I loved the team, the history I had with them, and was a fan of the LOTR game we were making, I really missed the cozy, intimate team I’d been on during my early days at the company.
With that in mind, you can probably imagine my excitement when I discovered that the Undead Labs studio philosophy was maintaining a small, tight-knit, high caliber team — indefinitely. Having met Jeff in the past, I knew this wasn’t some fly-by-night indie studio spouting bold claims that would end up going the way of the dodo within the first 6 months. Something special was happening at Undead Labs; a once in a lifetime opportunity was presenting itself to me.
Lets face it: your friends are the family you choose. We’ve all dreamt about getting to work with our friends or starting a company with them. Often game devs spend more time together than they do with their actual families, sometimes hovering around 60-70 hours a week. Ask yourself who you’d want to spend that much time with. I did. And the answer was with this group of super-talented, zombie lovin’ game nerds.
Make no mistake. We have a huge job ahead of ourselves, and we’re doing something no one has done before. Not many game studios can say that, and I’m so excited to be working with a team who can actually pull it off. To paraphrase one of my favorite zombie heroes: There is no “i” in team, but there is an “i” in pie. And there’s an “i” in meat pie. Meat is the anagram of team…oh hell, zombies love meat pies!
Jess
[Also be sure to check out Jeff’s introductory post for more Jess awesomeness…]