Dev to Dev S03 E06 - Derin Halil

speaker-1: What's that coming over the hill? Have I done that before? I can't remember. Anyway, yes, it is another episode of Dev to Dev, the podcast about everyday video game developers and why they do what they do every single day. This week, an interview with someone again I'd never met before, Darren Halil. Darren kindly responded to me reaching out to him blind when I realized we were both on a mentorship program called Limit Break. Here in the UK, it's been really fun. He's a fellow mentor. So I reached out to see if he'd be open to being on the show. He kindly agreed, and this was a really great conversation. Darren's got a fascinating journey, some great stories, some interesting deviations, wanting to be in games and maybe not ever making it. An interesting story about being on the way to an interview for a non-games job and getting an offer of a games job, but him still going through with the interview. That was a really interesting story. Yeah, some great insight. I love his perspective on physics, on the STEM course that he studied and how that applies to his day job. I thought that was really interesting. Just A great conversation, very much what this podcast's all about. We're both still serious headphone buddies, apparently, which was funny. But yeah, I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. This I love making the show and these kind of conversations are what it's all about. Okay, usual bits and bobs. The show is on socials as normal with clips and links. All of season one and two are on Patreon, which you can subscribe to to Meet Season is archived onto Patreon when the season ends, and the video versions of season three are also there. So Please subscribe. It's a dollar a month to catch all the audio and $3 to catch all the video. So if you're new to the show or want to catch up, that's the way to do it. I appreciate those that support. It really helps. Making podcasts is not free. I don't do it for the money. I do it because I love it. And I'm passionate about this corner of the industry and the process of building a career. And that's what this show is all about. But any help would be greatly appreciated. Look out for me on a couple of other podcasts. I'm recording an episode of the Retro Hour today that I'm really excited about. Love that podcast. Love Dan Joe and Ravi's work. Ravi stepped away. we hung out a little bit at Develop and they kind of asked if I'd be on the show and I'm excited to do help with their news section. I'm a big retro nerd, so it'd be fun to to talk some retro. That'll be out in a week or two. I'm also been on the corner of Sorian Game and the Level Design Lobby. Look out for those coming soon. And yeah, I continue to roll with season three, really enjoying the discussions I've had so far. Got another exciting one already in the can, ready to to release next week. So yeah, if you would like to be on the show, or you know anyone that would like to be on the show, please reach out to me, devsidev podcast at gmail.com or on LinkedIn. Already had a few people do that, led to some great conversations and some more in the future. So please do that if you're interested. Would love to hear your story and get to know you a little bit. But yeah, as usual, I've waffled, I've plugged the show, and I've Bibbled and babbled. Is that what I just made that up? I don't even know. Anyway, w without further ado, let's sit back and listen in to another episode of Dev to Dev with Darren Halil. Thank you, Darren. thank you for making the time. I'm excited to to get to know you. First time meeting. appreciate you you jumping on the pod and and you know being involved with this. I I'm excited to dig into your history and and get to know you a little bit more. I always kick the conversation off with my favorite first question. what first inspired you about video games?
speaker-0: I feel like that's one of those questions where everyone has everyone's got the same answer. Right.
speaker-1: You'd be surprised, yep.
speaker-0: 'cause I've I've always noticed this this sort of I always grew up playing games and like so on and so forth and it's that that's the same for everyone. But I think game dev in particular, I don't know, I think there was a a bit of a turning point, maybe sort of like mid mid PS three era when I think there were loads of games coming like that that point was just like the PS3 360 area, they were just chucking games out. There was so much. And they were at a price point which was like really competitive at the time. Loads of people have this sort of thirty five pound price tag for a game stuck in their head sometimes. But it was it was uncommonly cheap to get a hold of games, and trade in was massive, etcetera, etcetera. So we were just playing so many different games, my brother and I in particular, we we were just playing so many different games that I think That was when I was sort of having questions of well, why do I like this and not that, even though they're in the same genre? What makes one kinda work and one not work? And you can see where certain games were borrowing some things from others and paving their own path of how they want to do things. And that kind of just made me start thinking along those lines of what would I want to what would I want to do for a living? And I think I was about God, that sounds horrible to say things this out loud. But I was about like 14, 15 at the time. So I'm thinking to myself, what if I wanted to do this for a living? and I think that it's it's such a at that age in particular, when you're thinking like, Well what am I gonna do for my A levels, what do I want to do at university? I I was so torn between wanting to be academic and wanting to be creative because I've always felt really tugged between those two and games kind of does that. in in a very strange way. Like it's highly technical, but it's so creative at all times. even if you're doing something really technical, you normally have to be quite creative with it. like games almost feel like they are always fighting you when you're trying to make them. And that's that's kind of where a lot of that creativity comes in.
speaker-1: Huh, I love that. Yeah. So the games you were playing and and sort of starting to discern between, you know, what was good and what was bad led you in the direction of like, well, maybe I want to make these. That that that's kind of why I use the word inspired in that opening question. I think lots of these conversations are like, what was the first video game you played? or what was the first machine? I like the word inspired because you can take that really wherever you want. And it's interesting that your inspiration, you know, your thought went straight to when you were inspired to make games. And so how did that play out? So so just quickly, where where did you grow up?
speaker-0: So I grew up in North London.
speaker-1: Okay. And like you mentioned a brother that was also a gamer.
speaker-0: Yeah, I've got so I actually come from quite a large immediate family. I've got four older sisters and one younger brother. And I think that my my mum saw video games as a very cost eff effective way of keeping multiple kids engaged mentally at once. So my older sisters played games and they kind of tailed off as they got older from playing games. I I think the switch to three D was actually almost a g a a deal breaker for most of my sisters. I mixture of sort of like camera rotation speeds and three D space. A lot of them got motion sick from early three D games. But my brother and I just like grew up going straight through it. So I I cannot remember the first time I played the SNES because it was just always there sort of thing. and then yeah so my my mum would sort of buy games as a very cheap way of like not one relatively cheap way of keeping us occupied because the amount of time of entertainment you get in terms of bang for your buck is obscene and it's something I think is kind of unspoken about right when you put that into perspective. There's not much else that you can get hundreds or thousands of hours out of like a single purchase. As expensive as a game might get the amount of entertainment you get out of it is nuts. So from a a parents' perspective with lots of kids, that was a that was a thing that was a a big focus. and then with that, a lot of those older games kind of didn't necessarily have save points or they were just hard. so we sort of play them together, taking turns. early competitive games, so we played things like the original Mario Kart quite a lot the original What combat on the SNES, which to be honest, we might not have been odd enough to be playing, but it was a SNES version, so there was no blood in it. So maybe that was maybe that was a drawing line for my mum's purchase at the time. so yeah, it was it was just always always there. It was such a big thing for the two of us in particular. and then yeah, we just carried on throughout most of our teen years and to this day we'll still I mean it we're still both playing games, right? I went into it professionally. He doesn't. but it to an extent he probably is more in tune with the gamer perspective than I am now, which is I think kind of an interesting thing actually. As when you when you grow up talking about something with someone, it's not it's not necessarily that my like knowledge base is becoming a dev or something has changed and it sort of trumps him as someone that plays games. I've just got an entirely different perspective. And you sort of lose the perspective of being a player, which is kind of almost like innocent in the way that you sort of see from one side the curtain. And then when you go past and go to the other side of the curtain, sure, I can think about things from a player's perspective as a someone that plays games, but ultimately I have gone past that curtain, right? So it's always me empathizing without really seeing it from that like fresh perspective. Which I think has its there's there's some awesome things for that when you get to appreciate games from a from that new perspective. But then also you get to see sort of like the the light and glimmer in someone's eyes when they look at something that's from the player's perspective really cool. And then as a dev you look at it and you're like, I know how they did that. Yeah.
speaker-1: I have that with my kids sometimes where they'll get really excited about something and I sometimes catch myself going, Yeah, but like 'cause there's some, you know, behind the scenes thing or the company or the weight spill or whatever. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. But so it's it sounds like you kind of grew up very much in the gaming household then. You know, video games were a big part of your life, and sort of seeped into your desire to for career, you know, at a relatively early age.
speaker-0: Yeah, I did pretty early I I think. I it it really was just 'cause I I always did quite well academically. but like I said there was always a a sort of pull to be creative. 'cause I like I like making things and I like thinking about things that I make. So I always enjoyed building and crafting things with my hand, hands then that sort of was something that I was really worried about losing when I sort of went into adolescence. So I used to really like doing D T and product design. I did like product design and A level and things like that. And this was I think just something that kept me there, if that makes sense. but yeah well it it wa it was always it was always just a a very present thing. I sometimes feel like it's not necessarily that games was something that sort of shaped me but I just fell into games because of what it requires of me and what I like doing. So I feel like if there was a if there were other industry avenues that offered the same sort of things, I'd be drawn to them. But game the games industry almost seems like a weird niche for what I want to be doing. Almost irrespective of the games. As much as I like games, it's kind of the work that I'm doing feels quite unique and tailored and that's what I quite enjoy.
speaker-1: Interesting. That's a very interesting perspective. One I share, I think, that the the process of making them is almost its own draw in and over and above the fact that you just love playing video games as well.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: It is when did you when when did that crystallise for you? Was that you know 'cause you did study game design, yeah, at City and Guilds and did you do some kind of game design course stuff?
speaker-0: Yeah, so I I was w I I knew that I wanted to work in games and I think that I did originally have the the sort of perspective of like I like video games, I want to work in games, and that was the original draw, but the more I learned about games and the more I was thinking about making games, the more that became more exciting for me. so I I originally wanted to go and do a games design degree. which there were very few at the time when I was looking. Like games degrees are relatively new and when they were being done l like ten, fifteen years ago, they were very niche. Only a few universities were doing them. And at that time when I I sort of said this is what I wanna do, I did get a bit of like kickback from family that was like, mm, it wasn't necessarily the the worry about going into the games as the industry, but it the worry was doing a very, very niche degree. and I I went into university at twenty twelve, which was the big UK cost of university hike from three thousand pounds a year to nine thousand pounds a year. So the the notion of doing a very specialized degree at a very high cost was kind of like a big red flag for my family. So What they instead urged me to do was do a STEM subject 'cause they from their perspective they were also like, you can do a STEM degree. Don't squander the chance to do that if you've got the aptitude to do one. So like do a STEM degree, do a games course something separately. So while I'd say while I was at uni, I sort of started it before uni, then paused while I was at uni, then finished after I I finished uni. There wasn't much overlap because university took too much time. but I did my physics degree and then either side of my physics degree I did a games course with Train to Game, which was originally gonna be a Tiger course, but 'cause I extended the time while I was at uni and I kicked it down the can or kicked the can down the road, it sort of transitioned from being a Tiger accredited course and then it became a City and Guild course. And then I actually finished that course while I was in the industry. just because I ended up getting hired quite relatively quickly out of uni and I was working. So then it's hard to study and work at the same time. so I was I was working I think I was about six to eight months into working when the course organizers were like, We we will have to cancel your course if you do not finish this stuff. so like finished loads of the coursework and like sent it in and it sent me my diploma back. it was all really, I think, unconventional by today's standards of studying and getting a job.
speaker-1: Yeah, that sounds like a a a a a crazy great combination of you know you you chose f was a particular reason you chose physics? Was it just just something that you you were you were drawn to and passionate about or Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah, I just I really enjoyed it. and people look at me really weird when I say that. But no, it was just I I really I had a a teacher in secondary school who was just so much fun to be in her classes and I think the the sort of perspective and spin she put on physics as a subject just was really cool, really interesting, and again it really ties into the way of thinking that I I apply to the the design work that I do. It's also it's always thinking about systems and equilibrium, balance, making things work, connecting one thing to another. And that really methodic methodical way of working, when you're sort of like breaking algebra down and balancing equations, etcetera. I just really enjoyed that. and at A levels, I realized that I preferred physics over something really pure like maths because the application just helped me put what I was studying into perspective. so at university I had some subjects or some modules which were pure maths. I really struggled with them. Because it's just so abstract that I couldn't I couldn't get a gauge of what the numbers meant, which I then struggled with. And it really that sort of cemented like what I loved about physics. And then I apply to be honest, I apply in my day to day more of my physics degree to what I do for work than what I learnt in my games course. Because I will spend so much time building formulae, thinking about like flowcharts, processes, and that sort of stuff is Kind of niche. not completely niche. I mean ultimately everyone's working in spreadsheets and doing flowcharts and stuff. But I think the the sort of like hyper vigilant math that I apply to it is is almost niche in some aspects when I think a lot of designers now, especially people that coming out of uni, really do approach everything from the toolkits perspective. 'Cause so many degrees at the moment are really geared towards I I almost want to say like the people take a games design degree, but those degrees sometimes are really more of a we're gonna turn you into one person dev machine and you can just go away and make a video game, which is incredible. It's I could not do what some grads do and it's insane looking at the quality of their coursework and what they're able to build. but that doesn't translate to the sort of day to day of what designers end up doing. and that's kind of I think that's where yeah, that that's where my degree sort of like puts me in that weird niche of systems design. and it's it's kind of it's it's exactly where I want to be. and I don't I don't think I even realized that until I I think it was about four or five years into working and I had one manager that there was just so much work on the project we were doing at the time. And He he was new to the project and we had loads of people that were moving off and going onto another project and I I stuck around. So he was leaning on me for a lot of legacy knowledge and at the same time he was throwing some smaller tasks my way and then I'm doing those and a lot of them are like flowchart based, sort of exploring whether we're gonna hit bugs or inconsistencies with existing systems. He looked at me it's like You're a systems designer, what what have you been doing the last couple of years? And then I was doing the bits of like scenario creation and level design and he he kind of took me aside and was like, I I think you've been wasted a little bit and then he just threw me into doing systems design and I just enjoyed every minute of it and I've just stuck with that ever since. I've been quite fortunate enough to remain in that niche, I suppose. 'cause a lot of people like when when you're a designer you do. get moved around and become a bit of a Swiss army knife. I think that's a difficulty with the discipline as I'm sure you appreciate it's just it's so wide that there's some things you're good at and there's some things you're less good at and it's quite it's liberating when you want to break and do something else and you can move over and say, hey, can I do a bit of level design for a couple of months or something like that. But on the other's perspective the expectation that you can do everything at a really high level is tough. So I I'm quite I'm quite happy that I've managed to at least the last couple of years be cemented in to one sort of one sort of point on that that star chart of design skills.
speaker-1: Yeah, you found your the kind of perfect niche and it sounds like it it you know it tracks back to you know what you love and what you love to do. So, you know, in in those early days you had a couple of work experience opportunities, right? QA and then, you know, a game designer at a small studio. Talk to me about that. You know, how did those come about and what did it feel like to kind of get a chance to actually do the job, even if only for a short period of time? You know, what were your what were your sort of what was that experience like?
speaker-0: So the the QA time that I did was quite literally it was work experience, like just UK sort of work experience for a couple of weeks. And it it actually started with me wanting to try and do art artwork or do like having a position shadowing in an art studio 'cause at the time I was actually thinking about going into games art. interesting. Because I th I w I had that big pool between whether I wanted to be like creative and I I was doing art at GCSC, I was doing graphic design at GCSC and I was just sending emails out to anyone I could find an email for. and it was fortunate because my sister worked in recruitment at the time, not in the games industry, but she knew her way around LinkedIn. She knew how to find emails or find find who was working or whatever company and she She sort of just spent an evening and just gave me this big list of emails and she was just like, Go send emails, have that that which was quite quite cool. I I just look like black magic to me as a fifteen, sixteen year old that she was just sort of typing away and just generates a list of contacts. so I was contacting and sending out emails and I think I got through to I can't remember anyone's names, which is really unfortunate. But It was someone at Criterion and they agreed to have a phone call with me and I was on the phone sweating bullets cause I was so nervous to be talking to a game dev. especially 'cause the games industry was just this b black hole of of mystery and wonder where you just you have no idea how games are made. especially back then when it was less it was way less documented. YouTube had only been out a little while, like putting that into perspective, right? It's not like you just go on and start watching tutorials and how to make games. So it was it was just such a strange thing for me to be on the phone with someone that that makes games. and at the time I was quite literally playing Burnout Paradise. So I was like, I'm on the phone to someone at Criterion and I'm like, my god, this is really weird. And they were I think he was just asking me some sort of aptitude questions and I had sent a bunch of scans of artwork and I think I remember him saying something along the lines of, you've got a great aptitude for drawing, you should definitely keep up with it. Do you have any experience doing digital art, like Photoshop, etc.? And back then there was they didn't then really have free licenses for Photoshop unless you went on a a special website to get a pirate copy of like a the the like like a licence free version of the software you weren't learning to do 3D art etc so he sort of saw it as would be a bit of a waste if I because I'm in North London and they were in Guildford they thought it'd be a bit wild for me to travel all the way to Guildford to just follow someone around the office all day. So he was kind of like as much as you might learn while shadowing someone he just thought it'd be a bit of a waste But he then said that he would put me into touch with I do remember his name, it was Andy Robson at testology at the time, who would just a stone's throwaway in order shot. And he put me through to him who agreed to have me go in and do some testing for it wasn't the full two weeks of my work experience. It was just one week that I was managed to do and that was just a really cool experience. So I was like going into I went 'cause I was in North London at the time, so I'd traveled all the way into central London, which was about an hour or something. And then I'd get to the Waterloo station to get on a train line, which was then another hour to get to ordershot. So I was doing two hours there and two hours back. So like a four hour round trip to to have that work day just because I was like that's what I that's what I want to do. Right. And it was a it was an ever experience. of level of exposure that I otherwise wouldn't have had. So I did that for a week and I was testing on a game called such a long name actually saying that out Bluetoad Murder Files, The Mysteries of Little Riddle, which was really long game. so I did about a week of QA on there. I was with it was like the newest build or whatever they had at the time and The team was just like, Hey, this is how the bug reports work, and this is how you how you fill it out, this is so and so. And I think they were quite they were quite surprised that I managed to find because they was fully sort of like, if you find bugs, log them and then they would just diff to see if it had already been found, right? Which still happens. I get bugs and I'm like, this is a dupe, right? And you just close the duplicate. And they were like quite I think I'm a bit shocked that I found a couple of bugs that had that hadn't been logged yet and I was then super excited at the time that I'd done that. so yeah, I did that for a week, and then I spent the second week just sort of shadowing my sister around her recruitment office, because they they couldn't fit me in for the whole two weeks. But that was just that was so cool, just to have that chance to to do something when everyone else was like working in retail or they were in like that were in like a Maplin or a Woolworths at the time. And I think the the sort of direct industry experience that I managed to get there did really cement what I wanted to do. and just being in the environment with people that were so casual, really enjoying and loving what they did for a living, made me realise that that's that's exactly what I wanted to do. Especially 'cause the week after by Stark Contrast being in my sister's office Everyone's in suit and tie and I had to wear a suit and tie and not just like jeans and a t shirt. And everyone's like head down, on the phones, like pin drop in the office, unless the boss at the time made a joke, then everyone's like cracking up. I was like, This is really uncomfortable. I definitely don't want to do this for the rest of my life. So I knew like the typical corporate office job was absolutely not for me. so that was It was a nice bit of like reaffirming of where I went to go. and then after after university, my sort of like first role in making games wasn't in a games industry. it wasn't in like a game studio, it was in an advertisement studio that were working with some in house, like acquired technology. it was a very strange thing to explain. I think they effectively hired someone And the person they hired had worked on this for their masters and in hiring them they were like, Can we also buy the rights to this hardware that you've developed? And he said, Yeah, sure. and they were trying to gamify it. So I went into that interview, having just finished my physics degree, was very sort of close to finishing the games course, and I went to that interview and did did my interview with their one of their founders and he did like a a joint physics chemistry degree. So he was super excited to be talking to someone that had also done a straight like SEM degree. But also the the stuff that he needed doing, the way that the hardware worked was it was kind of it was a piece of biometric hardware that sort of red muscle signals to and put that into put that into a program. But it also did the reverse where it could send an electrical signal to your muscles. for like strange haptic feedback and they were effectively d trying to figure out like what the hell can we do with this and can we do anything with it and package it up or something. And a lot of that required some understanding of f like physics because it required you sort of working and playing with the waveforms that went into the program and doing some Fourier transformations and a bunch of other like jargony maths and physics stuff. So he thought I was a shoein' for it because he he was like, Well you you're kind of studying games design and we kinda need someone bit more from a technical perspective. But anyone that they were gonna hire purely from the technical perspective wasn't gonna do the game design part of it. So I just managed to fit this absurd h Venn diagram of people and they hired me for a couple of months to work on that. it was just like a fixed term contract thing to explore some stuff and they took it to a couple of tech events. I don't think anything happened with it, but they took it to a couple of tech events and they were very pleased with it. if I'm right, they'd basically gotten a government there was a government grant at the time for investing in games if they if they ticked a bunch of boxes or whatever it was. So they had gotten that grant and they were like, We have to spend this effectively. So that's effec that's just what my salary was, was just burning through that grant for a little bit. it was like two or three months. and then after that I I didn't have work for a while actually. I think it was it was quite a few months and I was very close to just giving up on working in games. Because it it's really disheartening to just apply and apply and apply and it doesn't really go anywhere. which any grad will tell you that that's that's the sort of experience. and I was having this over ten years ago and I can only imagine just how tough that is right now. so it's very close to sort of giving up on all of that. and then I got a response email for or an application that I put up Frontier. which I totally had forgotten about because sometimes you send the email, you get rejection straight away. And normally it's really 'cause you like you applied right at the end of the application. So they they're sort of like, we've taken our twenty people we're gonna interview and you've just missed that application bit. but I think I was for that right at the beginning of the application. So I just didn't hear back for ages. and then I heard back and did an interview and Yeah, that was that was my first role sort in in games. and I worked there for seven and a bit years. About seven and a half years I was at Frontier. so yeah, I I remember saying to a manager at one point, 'cause they were it was just like office chit chat and we had a grad I think it was grad VFX artist at the time, and he was asking everyone's like backgrounds and he turned to me and asked what my sort of background was and I gave him a very condensed version of what this conversation's been. So I gave him that and he looked at me and was like, Huh. he was very he was a very blunt young man, but he looked at me and was like, So why'd they hire you? 'Cause from his perspective, it's you didn't you didn't get a games degree or like on paper you weren't anywhere near as qualified as a bunch of other people would have been. And to be honest, that was a bit of imposter syndrome that I'd like I'd sat and held on to for a couple of years when I was working at Frontier and at the time, at least with the the office arrangement, and I was a senior when he asked me that. So I just I just like laughed it off. And at the time my head of design sat right behind me in in a little block and I just did a one eighty on the spin and I I turned I like, Lawrence, why did you hire me? And he got a real good chuckle out of it. but really it came down to that short two, three months of experience I had working on that odd hardware, they he said something along the lines of it was so weirdly different from anything else anyone had put through as an application that it immediately made them intrigued and wanting to interview me. because I think from their perspective they were like, if you can work on and work with new hardware from that perspective and try and try and actually make something of it. and I didn't just like put it on the C V it was like because it went to those it went to what's it called? It went to tech crunch at the time. because it was not necessarily shipped but people went and they interacted with it and played it. It became a playable prototype at least. They were like, well that's I think that was just impressive from their perspective. and at the time, 'cause I worked on Elite Dangerous for seven years, they had just been working on importing Elite to work with Oculus. And I think for a really long time Elite Dangerous was the demo game for Oculus, right? So they had a a fresh perspective of what it was like working with like uncharted territory in terms of hardware. So Again it was just right place, right time, weird overlap of niche. so it's just I think just blind luck if if I'm absolutely honest. because it's just so it's just so specific of how everything how those cards like landed and it all played out. so yeah, it's I always say to people, you you kind of just have to figure out you have to figure out where that luck is for yourself. Right. So that was like that was my route in. It's not something you can carbon copy, but the the the sort of setup of building yourself to be someone that stands out, I think, is kind of where that work is. And it'll be different for everyone, right?
speaker-1: Absolutely, but I I think the way you sort of describe it as being, you know, really excited for the opportunity and and and certainly that, you know, that Unit Nine issue, yeah project sounds super hard, right? We don't know what this is. What can we make out of it? It's not like you went into a structured here's the design, go execute, right? It's like, you know, that to you know, I I think it makes sense to me that someone would say, Well, if you can navigate that and be successful, then you know, a place where we've got a little bit more structure would make sense. How How did you handle you mentioned sort of that period between, you know, landing at Frontier and, you know, that that previous project. How did you keep yourself busy? You know, you said you almost lost the passion, but were you kind of doing stuff to kind of, you know, keep your s skills sharp or how were you navigating that?
speaker-0: So I was I was really torn between wanting to push forward and like find that new role and finish off the games course I was doing. And it's I didn't know whether finishing the course would help me with applying for the roles or whether I would then feel worse about getting rejections having then spent all the extra time of doing coursework. So I was I was just in a weird really weird limbo. But at the same time I also knew that I just finished a degree which was especially at the time, highly hireable. so I I wasn't putting all of my eggs in one basket and I was also doing interviews for other kinds of roles as well. one role that I went I actually interviewed for was with a they were a data optimization company where the or advertisement Basic w that was it, web optimization. So their whole thing was, hey, you come to us, we will make your website function better and do all of this and we'll A B test things and make it so that you you get more sales on your site and things like that. And they they had me do like a a a case study test sort of thing in my own time that I went and presented it to them. Looking back at it, I think they did that cheeky thing where they have people work on something and then they just steal the work. Because I I went through and I I can't believe the amount of time and effort I put into that. But I I built a a PowerPoint presentation with screenshots from their it was their live clients website, right? So I'm taking screenshots of their website and I'm making it so that when you're pressing the clicker to go through the slides It's lined up perfectly. The page is actually scrolling, so it looks like you're interacting with the web page. And I'm tracking like showing where you click and what a bunch of stuff that you do. And I remember there was a specific feature that because they were having a sale on at the time. I think the website I think it was Curries or it was Curries or PC World. I think I can't remember if it was before they merged or not. But it was on it was on that website. And I remember saying showing through There's a bunch of features I was pitching to them and one of them was a sort by savings and at the time I'd never seen anything do a sort by savings. But I knew as me as someone that grew up in a big family and I was inherently like really frugal, in my mind, I can look at two I think I did it on TVs, and I was like, I can look at two TVs that are both five hundred quid, but if one's five hundred quid and the other one's f like five hundred quid R RP and the other one's five hundred quid down from a thousand. That's the one I want to buy. So I did a sort by savings because they was they already had like a price filter. So I d I was like I show them like, hey you can do a price filter to filter for your budget. And then sort by savings to see which one's getting you the more bang for buck. And in in the interview, the person was he I saw him like Robert Gustien is just like why have we never done this? And I was like, this is definitely this is going really well. and at the At the ends of the interview they said they'd call me back and I'm super excited. I was like, at least I'll have I'll have work and if I want to I can keep applying elsewhere, et cetera, et cetera. They gave me a rejection email saying that they thought I was too creative for the role and that I would get bored and quit at the first chance I'd get. so oddly enough, I think they read me like a book. They knew they knew that I wasn't interested in what they were what they were doing from that perspective. But then six months later I did see that feature on the website. Which cracked me up. so yeah, I I was applying to other stuff. and I actually remember the the I was going for an interview in an advertisement company, which it was a it was a data role in advertisement, but in my mind I thought that's still somewhere where I can work with numbers, be a bit systems driven. balanced with being creative because ultimately it was it was purely advertisement, right? It wasn't like optimization, business to business sort of thing. I mean it was business to business, but they were an advertisement studio. And I was even thinking maybe I could segue or sideline onto one of the more creative roles. I was psyching myself up for that and I'm on my way to the interview and my phone clings and that's when I got accepted for my frontier role. and on the way to an interview. So I just thought to myself, I was like I'm already going to interview and I w and I I absolutely knew I was gonna take the games role, but in my in my heart of hearts I couldn't just cancel on any one like so I went through, I did the interview, they also had me do a presentation. I did that presentation and at the end of the interview, they just on the spot offered me the role and I was like and it was there were three people interviewing me and I was like I think it was the most it was probably the most uncomfortable I've ever felt in my life. so what I what I effectively said to them was they hadn't really said what 'cause it was I can't remember if it was actually an entrance role or it was an internship for a year that would then be a hireable afterwards as a paid internship. And I just was like, What's the salary for the 'cause I straight out of union round, I was like, What's the salary for the internship? And it was the exact same as the salary for Frontier. and I said Is there any wiggle room for it? And they were nope. So they they looked at me and they went, we can 'cause part of what part of that interview process, so you sort of talk about yourself and I mentioned what what like I was passionate about and I mentioned that I was doing that games course. So the the the woman that was like leading the interview, she looked at me and she went, she sort of nodged and she was like, Take that other role. Because I think she she could see like Yeah. When when someone wants to do that, yeah. I do sometimes look at that and think how different that would have been if I didn't get that interview on that day 'cause I don't know I I I'm such a people plea or at least at the time I feel like I've grown out of it a little bit, but I was such a people pleaser at the time. I don't think I'd have the heart to have like quit the job if they'd given it to me because I'd then got another offer elsewhere. So if I didn't get that email like Right when I got it, I've I might have been working in advertisement.
speaker-1: That's crazy. And and it it sort of go I mean, I love the you know, the industry, right, to try and, you know, broaden your out your horizons to not just be even though clearly games was your sort of well, I'm assuming games was your number one, you were still open to other opportunities and you know looking for to satisfy what you needed, right? The creativity and the you know, the numbers and things like that. but you get it, right? You get you get that job, you get that that role in the in the industry and you start as a you know graduate game designer move your way up to senior it sounds like you know like you said earlier right you did quite a bit of different design right from scripting level live ops balancing etc what was your I'm assuming at that point you weren't completely clear on what aspect of design you loved the most did you find going through that varied selection of game design you kind of graduated Was there anything you really didn't like or anything like, actually I think I quite like this or how did that go?
speaker-0: I think especially at that point the the the type of design I'd want to do was always the next one. It was like what have I not done yet? I wanna give that a go, I wanna give that a shot. And I always I always try to at least when I've I've mentored like junior designers or graduates, I've always tried to say, don't pigeonhole yourself. if you don't know what you want to do 'cause some people like they they do at university, they're like, I'm gonna be level designer, I wanna do level design. And when you know, you know. The and there's no there's no shifting that. If something just like scratches that part of your brain which is this is my happy place, n no one's gonna convince you otherwise. But so many people like, I don't know what I want to do. And I was definitely in that bracket at the time. because I was just I I was just sort of so excited for I won't do all of it, right? And Yeah, it was always it was always a case of like what's what's next. and 'cause it was a live game and there was just so many moving parts to that game in particular. and it's funny, like I've worked with people that have come on that project, people that were on it and they've come off. And all of them talk about like and they're like, It's just so much it's so much and it's such a big game and it's such an interwoven sort of like beast of systems and mechanics and and whatnot that there was just so much to s sink your teeth into. and like you mentioned, like you can you can roll off the different subcategories of design that I had a chance to do with on that like for a while. so grad I I think I was just I really enjoyed playing with levels and doing the level design stuff, building scenarios and just sort of being able to tell a a bit of a story. 'Cause Elite Elite was is a it's like a game with a story without a story, because the game's narrative just happens in the background, right? And you can take it or leave it. And the way the levels work is like you sort of drop into these little instances in space and at the time at least they you it was all environmental storytelling. you could maybe have some chatter where an MPC would like spit some text dialogue at you. And that was it really. There's no there's no interaction, no communications. And that was something that during my tenure on the project, we updated that. We introduced Lewis scripting. we built like scripted scenarios where you could choose a side in a conflict that you come across and they would they would send actual voice dialogue to you and th I think the cool part for me was being able to see the evolution of that project. I wasn't fortunate enough to work on it like from its inception or at its beginning. I joined right after its first big update had come out. So the game launched in like 2014. They released Horizons in at the end of 2015, and then I joined right in time for the season pass of that update. So Horizons came out and it was a season pass. So it was incrementally like every three months. New feature, new thing you're working on, release, new feature, new thing, release. And it was really atypical because games as service didn't really exist yet. live service games didn't really exist in that same way. Like you had you had massive like MMOs like like WoW and things like that. But there was years between patches sometimes where it's just a it's almost like an an massive extension to the game. Whereas this was injections of stuff every three or four months we were working on something new and that would be we're adding new levels to the game. It would be like we're adding these new mechanics and features and it's just playing around with all of that stuff. So it was weirdly addictive to sort of like getting excited for the next thing and at the time you're wrapping stuff up and you're working just on bugs. you're in the office and you're you're hearing about what the next thing is and how they're gonna start it, knowing that you're gonna be brought on at some point working on that stuff. And I think that was that's what I I really enjoyed was the sort of evolution of of design. which kind of isn't really a type of design, but it is because that whole beginning to end process is in itself like a bit of a design. And stuff stuff changes all the time. Like the way that you expect something to unfold and you have it planned in your head and then you start working on it. That isn't anywhere we expected it to be three months ago. But it's where we it's where we are now, for better or for better or worse sometimes. and you just sort of figure it out as it goes along. and a lot of that I think a lot of the time, especially as like a grad and a mid level, you you kind of feel like you're doing grunt work. Like the big decisions are being made and you're just sort of like making the content. You're doing you're doing the actual work. And that's what in my head at least I just was really hungry for because i I it was a very top heavy design team when I joined the project. By the time I left it was very bottom heavy. but that and there was just so many there was so much seniority that they didn't really need for us to sort of go around and explore paper design based stuff. but in a weird way that was really good because the games course that I did was very paper design focused. so much of it was like writing concepts, writing pictures and I think that was a almost a moment of frustration because all of the games design I had done up until that point was the one bit of game design I didn't actually have an opportunity to do on the project. So I'm thinking to myself, I've got an idea for that feature, I've got an idea for this and it was just it was just sort of like, Hey, d don't worry about that, worry about this. which I think I quite naively at the time resented because I'm thinking to myself, I w I really want to do that. But by contrast, I was then absorbing all of the stuff I didn't otherwise learn on the course that I did, which is more in line with what people would have actually been studying on a games degree. so that my time as a grad completely filled out all of those missing holes that I would have had if I did a a traditional games degree, which sort of yeah, it ra it rounded me out as a designer. And I think without that, even though the work that I do now it really is more of a paper design, right? I'm in spreadsheets and I'm writing documents, etcetera, the again it's it's all about perspective. Having not done those other parts of the design you don't really have that appreciation of, hey, when I'm writing this this system or I'm writing this pitch, who's actually gonna be working on this? What skill set does the team actually have? Can we feasibly build this or am I designing something for a team of twenty when we've got six designers that are gonna have to like bleed, sweat and cry to get this built? which obviously no no one wants, right? So yeah, it's it it's it's such an evolution of Yeah, perspective, I suppose.
speaker-1: Yeah, and and although that sort of live service process is quite grueling, right, in many ways it's quite it's it's kind of excellent for a young, you know, for a young designer to go through, right? You kind of go through a compressed version of the life cycle of making something, right? You it has to be concepted and executed and, you know, prototypes, built and executed on a tight window. And in many ways that is a good furnace to kind of, you know, f you know, to fire you as as a young designer, right? To kind of go through that process. Whereas some people might join a project and not ship anything for two, three years, four years sometimes, right?
speaker-0: And I think that's that that was kind of a bit of an oddity because I I worked on the game and but technically to this day I haven't worked on a game from the very beginning, like and then shipped it as a final title. Like I've never I've never shipped a one point right? It's always been a this, that, and this, that. and I at the time it was a it was a very strange thing, and I remember Managers sort of explained to me the the typical evolution in general, like rule of thumb was like, you're a grad and then you ship that first title and then you get your promotion to mid and then maybe you ship another one you go to senior. Not that it should be time served, but those that time sort of just lined up in terms of how much experience you'd pick up. But I I I felt like a bit of a prototype for well what happens when you're working on a game that is continually updated and I mean Elite came out in twenty fourteen and it's still getting updates, right? So twelve years on, yeah, you could have joined that when I joined and still been working on it and you've again you've never done that like beginning to end launch. and I because so much of the industry has moved towards games as service, that is gonna become more and more or already has become more and more of a a thing. So the the progression, that upwards trajec trajectory for devs has entirely changed from a landscape perspective.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And you know, obviously with the development times that we have now on some of these big games, it's also a challenge. So so you're Frontier for s you know, seven se over seven and a half years and then you move over to Wishu. What what led to that?
speaker-0: so I I left I left Elite as a project first because I just really I th I f I was like I think I think I'm done on on the project. There was so much more I wanted to do excuse me. And I I definitely I definitely missed that project and I could I could easily have just worked on that probably until I retired. But I the the the difficulty that I sort of found was I It's exactly what we were talking about. I I needed to work on something from the beginning. I wanted to work on the vision of a of a project and I made it very apparent to my my my boss at the time that's where I wanted to move. So I had opportunities to move earlier, but it was always a project that had been in development like for six months, a year. It hadn't launched, so it would have been pre-launch, but the the underlying vision of the game or the underlying systems had been decided and it would have been going on and balancing it, tweaking it, making it making it just right for launch. But I'd spent so much time already doing those things, right? And even though I'd especially towards the end of my time on Elite, I'd worked on brand new systems. It was always integrating it in with the rest of the game, which to be honest is probably harder than coming up through a system from scratch in some cases. But I I really had an absolute hunger to just work on something from scratch. even if it didn't get launched. I just wanted that that sort of okay we've got a bit of direction, but it's kind of a blank slate. And I started working on a fresh project at Frontier and at the at the time I then got a pop in an in an inbox sort of saying, Hey, would you consider a move? and I just sort of gave it a bit of a I I gave it a go and I pulled that thread and that's that's that was my move. And the I think the interesting part of it was I had like this sort of full circle of in imposter syndrome when I got that email come through because on the one hand, it's like do d I didn't have the background but so many of like my peers had, especially as as new grads were then coming in under me and you c you I look at their portfolio work and you see what they're doing and see what they're studying and I'm like I didn't do that. It's like, did I sort of cheat my way in here? And then you get over it and etc. And then it went around again when I and I think the question that came to my head was, Am I am I a a good designer or am I just a designer for Frontier? Can I only be a designer for frontier games? especially when a studio has a way of working and they have a way of seeing things and talking about things, they've got a a cadence to how meetings run and development works, even if it's cross project and you move from let's say you moved from the El Elite Dangerous to the one the Jurassic World games or to one of the planet games, the the studio is still very much the same. There are differences between projects, but the studio is the same. And I just felt that I needed to work somewhere else. just for me to to know that I could do it. and then you've moved to another studio and you're like, it's all the same but that that was that was kind of the push for me. I just wanted a bit of a fresh perspective and to see things a bit differently and that was kind of what it was for me. and then the working with Wooshu is Codev, which was an entirely new kettle of fish as well. So it was almost going from skipping the traditional beginning to end game development, going straight into live service And then going on to Codev, which I think is again moving towards a a total new way of working where a game isn't brought out by one studio. You look at the credit roles and it's almost like when you sit at the end of a a Marvel movie when you just got it's not it's not like ten minutes of credits, it's ten minutes and fifty, sixty companies that have worked on something. so that is that's an interesting perspective as well. and at least like it's like not just working with internal stakeholders, you've got your internal like managers and bosses and then you've got the external managers and bosses. working with time zones is such a wild thing. So the fact that we I'll log on in the morning and I'll see that the clients logged on, but they're actually it's like eight PM and they probably should have signed out, but they're still logged on and then they They might send a message and you kind of have this weird window first thing in the morning where you can drop them a line and they might respond. And then you've got six hours of no client contact and then they sign on and you've got about two or three hours of client contact before you've got to sign off. And that is so different to working internally on a project where you kind of take for granted how much access you have to your colleagues.
speaker-1: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And and the Codev thing is, you know, I I'm working Kodev at the moment as well and it is it's a really different, interesting, you know, challenge of, you know, versus all being on one team and all trying to pull in the you know, it it still has similar challenges, you know, that of just trying to make games is hard. But yeah, the codev thing's adds an interesting thing. And I love that perspective. I had the same, you know, with me where I was, you know, at Sony Cambridge for eleven years and then was I have no idea if I'm any good. I've only ever worked at one place, so I'm gonna go somewhere else and see if I'm you know, see if I can cut it. And yeah, sounds like we have the similar mentality. cool, I I mean I'm conscious of time, so a couple of other questions I I'd love to ask you, Darren. you kinda mentioned that you've you've almost fallen in love with the process of making games as much as you have playing them. Has that affected the way you play games?
speaker-0: yeah. I and this goes back to that sort of perspective shift that I mentioned, like just having a conversation with my brother or any friend that sort of plays games is I look at it from a dev's perspective and not a player's perspective anymore because you've had that peek behind the curtain. So there's some things where I'll I'll play I'll play a game and it's from a d like just as a design, it's fresh, it's new, or it's to just has a great f spin on something that you're used to and that's really cool and I absolutely love it. And then the there's I think that the difficulty there is when you're playing games which are not like run the mill, but they they're not they're not reinventing the wheel. So it's great presentation, it's it plays smooth, it's mechanically like solid and fun, but from my perspective as a designer, I'm like, th there's nothing in here which is making me go, wow. so yeah, it's it's changed the games that I play. It's changed what I like about games, for better or worse, I suppose. and that's it's kinda cool. I th I just think that the the downside of it is trying to then talk to those same people about about games and they're just not excited about the same things. Or I'm s I'm like, hey play this It's really good and then they'll go and play it and they sometimes it really lands and sometimes I no wha I don't know what you were why you like that. so I think back to some of the games in the last couple of years that for me have just been like absolutely awesome. Like like Bellatro was just bonkers good. I think I I think I'm responsible for getting at least ten or fifteen of my friends like borderline addicted to Bellatro. blueprints last year was just so I was just so intrigued by that game and then I think I got to a point where I'm like, okay cool, I I think I'm done, I turned it off. And then two months later I got a like a YouTube pop up and it was like showing the inverted rooms. I'm like, what is this? There was more there's more. so I it's just yeah, stuff like that where you just get to get blown away by other people's creativity as it's like really, really cool. it's not to say that you can't experience that as a a player, of course you can, but knowing that process, you get to appreciate one that someone had that idea anyway, but two, the fact that they managed to see it through and make it like playable, right? 'Cause we always we all have ideas and then we try and work it out and like mm we just can't we can't get it to work. It's like you said like sometimes it's just like an upward it's like skiing uphill. It's just it does it doesn't happen. And in other c cases it's like budget risks, it's too much of a it's too much of a a risk to work on something that's just a bit out there and a bonkers. and that's why the indie space is so fantastic. because they they take they take those risks that larger studios weren't. So yeah, I th I think that's where I am with playing games now.
speaker-1: Yeah, just a overall deeper appreciation for, you know, the execution of of things that, you know, other people might miss. Yeah. Same here. And and what about as a human, right? Has has making games changed who you are as a human?
speaker-0: yeah, I think I think it's kind of a bit of both actually. I think I've the way that I approach the way I approach some parts of like my life has have has become increasingly methodical because of the the way that I I think about stuff at work and it's it's hard to separate yourself from that. But The same as the the opposite's the same as well as like as you change as a person, the way that you approach life and work, etcetera, will change. 'Cause it's hard to ultimately I am I am me, right? So when I'm at work I'm the same like code switching and things like that side. the the me that I am at work and the me that I'm at home like is still the same person underneath. So anything will change how how that unfolds in how you grow as a person. And that's I think some of the the beauty behind working in something that's creative, right? You get to put yourself into your work. And if you grow as a person and you change as a person, you get to put that into your work as well. and anything you learn and pick up and build on at work is something you then carry through to your rest of your life. I interpersonal skills is a r a really good example of one, right? just being able to read a room, learning like when to speak, when not to when not to speak, and you like playing your cards at the right hand of sort of like how to if if you have like six ideas in your in your back pocket, which one do you put forward and when? Because you can't just dump everything on your manager's table at the same time because they're not gonna have the time to read it. that's all stuff that you pick up and you can you can sort of take away. I think there's there's so many transferable skills when working in games. I think that's for all disciplines really.
speaker-1: Yeah, I like that that it's a two way street, right? Like the you know, doing the job changes you, but then you change how you do the job. I I I definitely agree. and and I love, you know, going right back to that methodical, you know, the the the the aspect of physics and the aspect of the physics course that you love so much that seems like it's kind of found its way to really mould how you like to design and what you like to design. That's a great great through line that that that you know, is is just really interesting. Well cool, Darren. Thank you for your time. really enjoyed this conversation. Great journey. You know, great you know, great oppos you know, great just the way it's fly you the way it's traveled for you. And you know, you mentioned luck. I I've done a lot of these conversations now and and you know, I like myself, many of you f many of us feel like it was just luck, but I do think it's a big part of preparation opportunity and like you said, the way that you approached it and the how passionate you were about it, I think is what led to the luck landing at the right time and you know you you you continue to build a great career and you know and a great industry. So I appreciate you sharing your story.
speaker-0: Cool. Thank you for having me.
speaker-1: Thank you.