Say Hello to Mark Lautenbach

Senior 3D Artist

What do you do at Undead Labs?

I am a Senior 3D Artist, which is a rather general term. Specifically, I am in charge of creating and maintaining anything you would consider a ‘building’ (houses, gas stations, office buildings, etc.) in State of Decay 2. That includes creating the 3D digital model, creating/applying its textures, making sure all the technical bits like doors and windows work, and getting it ready for the environment artists to place into the map.

What made you get into the game industry?

As early as I can remember, I was always drawing, filling every scrap of paper I could get my hands on with doodles. But when it came time to think about a career, “Professional Doodler” wasn’t a paying gig as far as I knew.

So off I went to art school, hoping that I could turn doodling skills into a job. It did just that. My first job was creating cartoon character designs, like Bugs Bunny, Winnie the Pooh, and Garfield, for t-shirts you might find in Target or Walmart. It was a great first job and got me up to speed for the real world.

At this time, the video game industry was still very young and I hadn’t really considered it as an option (I had no idea how many game studios had sprung up on the Seattle area). That was until an entry level position opened up at a local studio called Humongous Entertainment, which made cartoon style video games, such as Freddi Fish, Putt Putt, and Pajama Sam. So it was more an opportunity to make cartoons with “video games” as a medium, rather then a desire to get into the industry. During the 8 years I spent with Humongous, the video game industry basically grew up around me. As new technologies like 3D animation and modeling emerged, they just became part of my skill set. And before I knew it, I was “in the games industry”.

So, to answer the question, Art is all I’ve ever wanted to do and the video games industry was an ideal option to make art for a living. It has taken me in directions I would never have dreamed of as a young doodler and I am very grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given.

How did you end up at Undead Labs?

Well, during my time at Humongous Entertainment, I had the good fortune to work with a fellow artist, Brant Fitzgerald. As time went on, we kept in touch and I had always hoped we would work with each other again. After many years of trying to get me over to Undead Labs, a job opened up that fit my skill set. Turns out, quite a few members of the art staff were former “Humongoids,” so it was a perfect fit.

What is your favorite part about working at Undead Labs?

The people I get to work with. I really do look forward to coming to work everyday, despite the commute. Sure, I get to make cool stuff, but working with genuinely good people makes all the difference. And that works its way into everything we do and hopefully it shows in the experiences we create.

Any interesting facts about you (outside of work) you’d like to share?

When I was a kid, my family moved up to Seattle area for the fresh NW air, as my lungs and LA air quality were not compatible. Two months later, Mt St. Helens exploded, filling the air with volcanic ash. Coincidence? I don’t think so. But despite it trying to kill me, I really love living in the Pacific Northwest.

I love playing guitar despite being very ungifted at playing guitar. I’m really awful.

For practical reasons, my Star Wars collection has a semi-strict “chewbacca only” policy.

 From everyone at Undead Labs, thank you for your hard work Mark!

Do you have a question for Mark? He would be happy to answer it. Just comment on the Facebook, Twitter or Instagram post this link was on, or join our Discord network (https://discord.gg/AZVkR3v) and send your questions to Undead Megan. Mark will be answering these questions on our live stream, Tuesday, April 9th, from 2-3PM PST.

Twitch, Mixer, and YouTube.

 

 

Say Hello to Dacey Willoughby

Senior Producer

What do you do at Undead Labs?

I’m a Senior Producer at the company, and so far that has meant doing a lot of things! A big part of my job is working with cross functional teams during development, but I’ve also done a lot of work with the art team as a whole, overseen and managed outsourcing efforts, prepped for and participated in trade shows, and interacted with our Marketing and PR teams here and there.

What made you get into the game industry?

I’ve always been an admirer of arts and entertainment, and I love the interactivity and unique experiences you can get from games. After going to school for fine arts and computer animation, I knew I wanted to be involved in either film or video games, and I was lucky enough to start and keep a career in games!

How did you end up at Undead Labs?

I was looking for a new role that would challenge me and help me grow as a Producer. I knew several people at the Lab, so I was familiar with a lot of the crew and culture, and was also interested in the project the team was working on (State of Decay 2). I was able to get an interview, and happily joined the team when I was offered the position!

What is your favorite part about working at Undead Labs?

I have two – the people that I work with, and the variety of things that my position allows me to do.

Any interesting facts about you (outside of work) you’d like to share?

Some people seem to be fascinated by the fact that I am an actual person from Wyoming. Also, I took a year off from making games to own and operate a small business, which was a huge learning experience!

 From everyone at Undead Labs, thank you for your hard work Dacey!

 

Do you have a question for Dacey? She would be happy to answer it. Just comment on the Facebook, Twitter or Instagram post this link was on, or join our Discord network (https://discord.gg/AZVkR3v) and send your questions to Undead Megan. Dacey will be answering these questions on our live stream, Tuesday, February 26th, from 2-3PM PST.

Twitch, Mixer, and YouTube.

 

 

You Asked, Abby Answered!

Read original post on Abby

Social Media Q&A

Thanks so much! To be honest, I actually didn’t. I didn’t grow up loving horror movies like a lot of us here at Undead did, but I definitely have grown to appreciate the genre a bit more since working here. I grew up more of a B-movie monster fan – basically every creature feature from Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Hey, I completely understand. Night in this game scares me too. We don’t currently have plans for that, but if it’s something you feel strongly about head on over to our Discord and check out the wish list channel! 

Thanks! That’s not really something I can speak to, unfortunately – I’m not sure if we have that on our radar. If it’s something you’re really wanting, please head over to our Discord where we have a wish list channel! 

I’m actually not a huge horror fan! Shocking, I know! I do have a ton more respect for the genre now that I’ve been working on zombie-related games for a fair amount of time now. I personally didn’t put anything into State of Decay as an inspiration that didn’t revolve around lovingly crafted test plans. 😉

I was always more of a psychic-type player than electric personally, but I also only played gen 1.

Thanks! And this is a great question. Since I’m the manager of the department, I don’t actually test the game as much as the rest of the department does, but I will say that I really enjoy testing the inner workings of a game using tools. Some of my favorite things were finding out memory usage; i.e. how much “stuff” our game holds, or how certain parts of code interact with the lighting system. That kinda stuff absolutely fascinates me. 🙂

Honestly, if you had told me that I would have laughed you off the face of the planet. Even college-aged me had no idea that it was something I could aspire to. Because of that, I’m extremely grateful for being in this position – I’m happy to have turned my childhood passion into something that pays the bills!

😱 I have a doppelganger!

Fun fact: I actually didn’t get my face scanned when we did the photogrammetry stuff back in the day, so my face does not actually exist in game!

Say Hello to Andy Collins

Designer/Writer

What do you do at Undead Labs?

First and foremost, I’m a designer, which means that I contribute to the planning and crafting of the game experiences that players have.

My particular focus is on writing, which includes everything from leading a team of freelance writers in creating the voiceover dialogue spoken by our many characters, to helping the mission designers craft mission arcs and polish non-spoken mission text, to assisting Brian Giaime with names and descriptions for the various weapons, items, and facilities in the game. (I also pitch in with marketing text, UI text, and anything else that has words in it.)

What made you get into the game industry?

I discovered Dungeons & Dragons when my uncle Ralph gave me the basic boxed set (the old blue-book rules, of course) for my 10th birthday. (It was my mom’s idea.) From the first time we set foot in the Caves of Chaos, I was hooked. By high school, I started realizing that there were actual human beings who had the jobs of writing the adventures I enjoyed so much. That was when I knew what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

Dragons to zombies, how did that happen?

It’s a pretty bizarre combination of events, but it speaks to a core truth of this industry.

I left Wizards of the Coast in the spring of 2010. That same week, a friend introduced me to this guy who was starting up a game studio in Seattle. That guy was Jeff Strain, who generously spent an hour of his time telling a total stranger about his plans for Undead Labs and the game that would eventually become State of Decay. From that conversation I learned two good things and one not-so-good thing. On the plus side, Jeff was a smart, passionate developer with big dreams, and his game idea sounded incredibly exciting. Sadly, I realized that I didn’t really have the skill set they needed for the project at that time. “Ah well,” I thought, “at least I’ll enjoy playing the game when it comes out.”

A couple months later, I was hired by Richard Foge to work on an unannounced MMORPG project for ArenaNet. Foge was another smart, passionate veteran of game development, and even though that project didn’t last long, I departed ArenaNet with no hard feelings toward Foge (who’d left ArenaNet to go work for Undead Labs) or my other co-workers.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2013. I had just finished up a multi-year stint as the lead writer for an action RPG, and I was looking for a new gig. At this point, I was already a diehard fan of the recently-released State of Decay, which I’d been anticipating ever since that conversation with Jeff. On the street outside of PAX, I ran into Foge (who was now Design Director at Undead Labs, reporting directly to Jeff Strain). I asked if he needed any writing help. As I recall, he smiled and said something like, “Y’know, we just might.”

About a month later, Foge hired me as a contractor to help Undead Labs with some world-building for the game that would become Moonrise… and then Geoffrey Card, who was sitting next to me in the studio, asked for help finishing up some dialogue for the second State of Decay expansion… and now all of a sudden five years have passed and I’m still here, and still writing for Jeff and Foge and the rest of the UL team.

The moral of that story: Making a good impression on someone in your industry is always worthwhile. You never know when it might pay off.

You’ve been here quite a while now, what is your favorite part about working at Undead Labs?

One of the studio’s core tenets is, “We’re all adults here.” To me, that means Undead Labs sets a high bar of professionalism and responsibility for all developers… and I welcome that.

There’s not a lot of hand-holding around here: we’re all expected to get our jobs done on time and to spec, while simultaneously treating everyone around us as similarly talented and self-motivated professionals. No matter who gets assigned to support whatever feature I’m working on right now, I can always trust they have the skills and dedication required for the job. That’s an amazing comfort to have when tackling challenging design problems!

At the same time, we all share the responsibility of watching out for the well-being of the game (and of the studio as a whole). It’s not “somebody else’s job” to make sure that our game is good. It’s everybody’s job, and we’re always working to improve our ability to empower every developer with the authority to participate in that discussion. That’s inspiring to me.

Any interesting facts about you (outside of work) you’d like to share?

I’ve been running one or more D&D campaigns for my friends almost continuously since 1982.

I don’t mean that I’ve been running the SAME campaign the whole time, but I can say that there’s been a more-or-less regularly scheduled D&D game at my house (or dorm, or apartment) for over 35 years.

What’s more, some of the players in the group have been with us for almost the entire run. The median number of years spent in the group is more than 20, and anybody who’s been here less than 10 years is still a “new guy.”

 From everyone at Undead Labs, thank you for your hard work Andy!

Have questions for Andy? He’d be happy to answer them, just comment on the Facebook, Twitter or Instagram post this link was on, or join our Discord network (https://discord.gg/AZVkR3v) and send your questions to Undead Megan.

Visit, https://youtu.be/26Hx3Xbc-TE, to hear Andy’s Q&A from fans.

 

Say Hello to Abby Wilson

QA Manager

What does QA stand for and who do you manage?

Quality assurance, I’m in charge of the people who playtest our game.

Seems pretty straight forward.

What made you get into the game industry?

Honestly, I hadn’t thought it was an option until relatively recently. As a child, I played video games obsessively and even dreamed of visiting Nintendo’s headquarters, but it wasn’t until I started working in retail during college that I’d considered that my hobby could potentially become a career. At PAX Prime/West one year, I received a flyer in that free bag you used to get that proclaimed I could play games before they got released. It was a sign for me – I applied and was accepted. Just like that! It was a serendipitous accident, and one that I’m very grateful for.

We are grateful as well!

How did you end up at Undead Labs?

For a while, I was a contract tester at Microsoft Studios. There, I worked on a whole smattering of games on different Microsoft-related consoles: PC, Xbox 360/One, Surface tablets, and the Windows phone. One of the first games I worked on there was the original State of Decay – after working on the Steam release, I was contacted by Undead’s then-director of QA. He wanted to tell me that they’d liked my work, and wanted to ask me what I wanted out of a career in games. A career in games? No way! I began at Undead in January of 2014 on the Lifeline DLC for the original State of Decay, was the QA Lead on our mobile project Moonrise, and now am the manager of the department.

What is your favorite part about working at Undead Labs?

I really enjoy the amount of trust that we’re given here; I love that I can just do whatever I feel is necessary to get the job done. I also really love the people who work with me here; we are all really in the same boat!

It’s easy to trust team members like you. 

Any interesting facts about you (outside of work) you’d like to share?

My favorite television show is Mystery Science Theater 3000, I own my own baritone sax, and during college I helped to run an art gallery on campus (The VU Gallery, at Western Washington University). I also have a fraternal twin sister, and everyone in my family is a teacher except me, including my spouse.

Wow! You are a very captivating individual! 

 From everyone at Undead Labs, thank you for your hard work Abby!

Have questions for Abby? She’d be happy to answer them, just comment on the Facebook, Twitter or Instagram post this link was on and we will make sure to collect her answers and send them back to you. Or join our Discord network (https://discord.gg/AZVkR3v) and send your questions to Undead Megan.