Questions

Answers

What is your Mission?

My goal is to be an architect in a collaborative environment to define the next phase of the ever changing field of interactive entertainment. Through this process, I aspire to create new means of leveraging available assets to address the increasing cost of development, address emerging entertainment trends and develop core technologies and advancements in the field of interactive art.

What books have you read lately?

Below are some of the most recent additions to my library. As a practice, I always summarize reference books I read in order to optimize my understanding and retention of them. These summaries are available to read by clicking on the links below.

     Rapid Development         The Effective Executive       Mavericks at Work         Getting Things Done

Why Video Games?

Video games have artistically reached a plateau that is nearly level with cinema. The rendering and computational power of next generation hardware allows a level of creative potential that will enable developers to provide experiences that increasingly approach cinematic quality with smaller teams and smaller studios.  

The video game industry continues to grow increasingly integral with popular culture. At the time of this writing (2007), the games industry enjoyed an 18% increase in revenue  from the previous year. The growing installation base of next generation consoles and growing online content suggest this growth trend shall likely continue for some time.

What do you believe is the future of the industry?

The challenge video game developers are now facing are the rising costs of developing games that meet the expectation of the core fan base. There is an exponential increase of development time required to develop larger games and next generation assets that begin to approach cinematic quality. The answer is to carefully plan the scope of games to fit your budget and streamline the development process to eliminate needless waste. The most successful projects I have been involved with introduced very few unproven core mechanics and cut risky elements from the schedule early in production.

With what emerging interactive technologies are you familiar?

New generation techniques (dynamically generated environmental cube maps, static and dynamic light maps, static and dynamic normal maps, specular maps, parallax maps, ambient occlusion maps, texture blending, surface tagging, volumetric fog.)

Old generation techniques (Mip-mapping, LOD (level of detail) instances, UV scrolling, multiple UV sets, HDR (high definition rendering), reflection maps, volumetric mapping.

What is your philosophy regarding development pipelines?

During my tenure at Heavy Iron, I introduced the technique of developing assets in passes. A Blockout pass ensured that the core character metrics were sound and that basic level layout resulted in rewarding gameplay. This allows for major changes to be made before it becomes to costly to fix them. The next pass involves simultaneous development of characters, world assets and gameplay logic. Environmental models are build using the grid system which modularizes components. This reduces the cost of developing large worlds and increases modeling accuracy in regards to conforming to metrics. The litmus test for this pass is final form and functionality for all assets called for in the Game Design Document. Once completed, the game enters it's Alpha stage during which all assets should be accounted for and functioning. During this phase, gameplay tweaking and polish takes priority - no new assets are permitted. Any assets that art or design can't complete are good candidates for being cut all-together. The final Beta stage is reserved exclusively for bug fixing and optimization. The very best projects I have worked on completed the Beta stage on schedule and passed QA the first time through. This should be the gold standard.

What is your philosophy regarding the management of human resources?

I am a great believer in leading from the front and rewarding workers that strive to improve their professional and personal development. This seems fairly logical, but not all company cultures grant their workers as much responsibility and room to grow as they should. Heavy Iron has used the Scrum system of management, the best feature of which is the transparency of the development progress. Yet Scrum alone is not sufficient in the games industry and I have found Rapid Development to be an indispensable tool to prevent the repetition of common, avoidable mistakes. I am using a modified Waterfall model of management on my current project. Here is a link to my Pipeline.

What intangibles best serve you in your work?

Ability to clearly communicate effectively across all departments, get along with others, ability to listen, patience, determination, ability to admit mistakes and find solutions, ability to see the big picture and think ahead. Leadership is often communicated through your actions - for that reason my personal mantra is to consider every single day as an audition by which you make yourself known to your peers.

Who inspires you?

In no particular order I am inspired by Hayao Miyazaki, Terry Gilliam, Frank Miller, Arthur Adams, Tim Burton, Will Wright, Alan Moore, Sid Meier, Alex Ross, Masamune Shirow.

What research have you done to improve work process and culture?