Dev to Dev S03 E04 - Jamie Smith

speaker-1: Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Dev2Dev, the podcast about everyday video game developers and why they do what they do every day. This week, an interview with someone I've never met before, Jamie Smith. This is really good opportunity to dig into Jamie's career. He's had a fascinating journey through what seems like a very influential game design course at Teaside University that's led to a lot of developers finding their way into the industry, including Jamie. Some really interesting time at Ubisoft and great reflections on being a principal versus being a lead and learning. some more formal ways of game design from his time at Ubisoft, getting some great opportunities to dabble in different design disciplines and then find his specialty. Very much a designer, after my own heart, with very similar passion for 3Cs and core mechanics. But Jamie's done a lot of ⁓ different stuff across his time and really enjoyed this conversation. Fascinating how much he reflects on the impact of being a game developer's had on his real life and how he views that now. Just a great discussion. Really, really appreciate Jamie's time. Appreciate his kind words about the podcast. and hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did recording it. As always Dev2Dev is available on all the social places, wait, all the social places or all the normal places? Both. You can check out all of season one and all of season two that are now archived on Patreon. Join for $3 a month to get access to all of those. Season three is the current live season. All the audio versions are free and the video versions are also on Patreon. You can check those out there. As always I post clips and links to the show throughout the week so please like and share those if you can. appreciate those of you that do. I've been enjoying season three, it's been nice to be back. I've got some really exciting conversations lined up over the next few weeks. I able to cover the week that I was away in California with those two great episodes with Jay and Lana. I appreciate everyone's feedback on those. So yes, please share it with someone you think might get some value out of it, especially if there's someone looking to find their way into the industry. I think one of my goals for this show is to kind of uncover some of those roles that people don't necessarily know about. get to hear much about and focus on that human side of what it's like to build a career in making video games. It's not always all fun and games, although it's quite a lot of fun and games, but you know, not always. It is still a job after all. So yeah, appreciate the input, the feedback. Please keep an eye out for me on the internet as I work on other bits and bobs. Yeah, all of those are, there's various things in the pipe. You know, both shows I've been on and shows I'm working on. I've mentioned them over the last few weeks. They're still in various stages of production. But yeah, as always, I will start waffling and let's sit back and listen in to another episode of Dev2Dev with Jamie Smith. Okay, cool. Well, yeah, thanks Jamie. Thanks for being on the podcast. We've never met before so yeah, I'm meeting you live as we do this I appreciate you offering to jump on you got a great history I'm excited to dig into not least some games that I love that you've worked on But ⁓ I always kick this off in my favorite first question. What first inspired you about video games?
speaker-0: Yeah, so ⁓ so I'm old enough to recognise the the Sega Master System as my first console, so I'm kind of an early nineties kind of kid, but ⁓ the way I can describe it is n not knowing that games were made by people. So when I used to play the Master System, I used to switch the console on and just magic appeared on the screen. And and it's only when you watch something probably like Jurassic Park I see the name Steven Spielberg at the front of it. ⁓ there's the guy who also did E. T. It's only at that point where it kind of clicks with games with or ⁓ or you know, the Sega logo, I've seen that before. That that's you know, the Japanese name, I've seen that in a few different places before. But but just the notion that you flick this button, you flip the RF switch, you know, depending on your kind of your age. ⁓ and then ⁓ as I say, I used to have tons and tons of games at a time where maybe, you know, peop people might consider that genres didn't exist, you know, it's just you switch it on and you play in Street to Ridge, you switch it on and you play in Alex Kidd in Miracle World and stuff. Yes, there's platformers, yes, there's fighting games, but it used to just be almost like a treasure trove of games. And the reason I mentioned the Master System is because this was at the time when the Mega Drive was out in the early nineties, but the Master System already had a huge backlog of kind of games and it was much cheaper at the time. So that's basically what my parents got me when I was four or five years old. And that's more specifically kind of what got me into games, is just more of a a hobby prior to a career.
speaker-1: Right, okay, so it was, like you say, was kind of that magic of being able to turn this box on and just play all these wondrous worlds and these wonderful experiences that kind of drew you in in the first place.
speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there's a whole mix of them, you know, that come to mind. Some have forgotten to time now, but ⁓ there's a really good one called Black Belt. So my my my dad in particular, he used to really be into seventies martial arts, you know, Bruce Lee and then transitioning into Rocky films and, you know, Karate Kid and stuff. So when you get black belts and you flick this button and then you're effectively playing as Daniel LaRusso, you know, you you're effectively playing as a pseudo kind of Bruce Lee You've got two buttons, you've got one analogue stick at the time, at least on the master system. As I say, I I just understood it as magic, you know. I didn't know there was code, I didn't know there's sprites and pixels, it's just it's just this picture that you can manipulate. ⁓ it was always interesting to me. And like I say, Light Guns kind of at the time, you know, wanted a really good game called Rescue Mission. Anyway, I ended up having this whole kind of treasure trove of stuff and y they weren't always growth. You know, there's different different levels of quality for the games and stuff, but I d I don't think that kinda crossed my mind at that age.
speaker-1: Yeah, I got you. And good times, like you say, good time to jump into the Mars system because there are a lot of games that were maybe on the Mega Drive, but you got to play them on the Mars system. And there was a big library of, know, Sega arcade games and stuff you could play. So and where did you grow up?
speaker-0: ⁓ yes, I'm from the northeast of the UK, so ⁓ you know, I'm working in the games industry at the moment, but the the the northeast and there's multiple hubs kind of around the UK, so people will be familiar with, you know, Guildford and Lemington Spa and more recently probably Brighton. ⁓ so in the northeast, like historically there's been ⁓ acclaim midway, Ubisoft Reflections are still around. So despite the fact that I'm in the northeast, so I I grew up in a town called Middlesbrough, ⁓ unbeknownst to me that there was games industry kind of on my doorstep at that time, you know, and i it's only later in life that I kind of discovered that. But yeah, it's it's more of a working class kind of area of the com ⁓ the country. Middlesbrough itself, as aside from being known for the football team, is known for kind of historically industry works and steel works. It's it's basically a shipbuilding ⁓ town historically.
speaker-1: Right, and did you grow up with any other gamers in the family, any brothers and sisters or any family members that were into games?
speaker-0: ⁓ j just just one sister. ⁓ not she's ⁓ she's a slightly younger sister, but ⁓ f family friends, I would say, and I've got some cousins as well. Even though I owned a master system, they they were like the big kids that had, you know, the PlayStation or they they had the SNES, you know. And and actually ⁓ just to touch on that point, the the advertising of Sega at the time is like you're the older, kinda cooler kids if you play the Sega. l I was the perfect target audience for that. 'Cause that's exactly what I had. I had family friends who were maybe, you know, they were twelve, thirteen, fourteen and I was five, six, seven. And, you know, my sister's one year younger so she she didn't play many games, but then I had kind of role models of family friends and stuff that used to, you know, play Mortal Kombat or wherever you weren't supposed to play at that time.
speaker-1: So video games were kind of aspirational as well, right? There was kind of that, ⁓ I want to be one of the big kids getting to play the big games kind of thing.
speaker-0: Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. And obviously d having the master system and that comes from an era where eight bit and sixteen bit games were different from each other, you know, completely different variations of things. But you know, w w w w what are these folks playing or, you know, as as they get onto the Playstation ⁓ now everybody's playing Tekken, you know, we we don't need this two D stuff anymore, everybody's playing three D. So it was almost more like an aspirational th they've got their next cool thing.
speaker-1: Right, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And then, did you, when did the idea of making video games occur to you? Was that early or was that late or did it, you what triggered it?
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe it's a coalescent of three three or four different things. So Games Master on the T V was a was a pretty prominent kind of T V show, Channel Four in the kind of the nineties. So I was a regular kind of viewer of what so that was pretty cool. Just just to see it on the big screen was was kinda cool enough for a kind of a hobby. As I say I found out later in life that game studios were within a stone's throw of kind of where I grew up. And a big part of w how I found out about that was because Games Master magazine used to always do ⁓ They were almost like snip out sections of the local studios or things around the country. And they would say, Hey, look at this guy who works for RAE. Here's how he got a job as a tester. Look at this guy from Rockstar. Look how he got into becoming an artist and so on. So it was almost taken these kind of snippins out. And then the third kind of vector of that was ⁓ the local university had a course called Creative Visualization. And many people that went through that course, it was a three D modeling course effectively, silicon graphics machines and so on. Many people from that course went on to work at Codemasters who basically ended up doing, you know, the touring car games, Colin McCray that that kind of stuff. So the combination of those three things is, you know, it's on the TV, it's in a games magazine, it's on my kind of doorstep and it's a university. It probably wasn't until I would say GTA three released. that I you know, it's maybe two thousand and one time that I was r considering this is an actual career opportunity that, you know, I could kind of follow at that point. And I said GTA three specifically, ⁓ because at that time if I had a dream game in my head of what you could make, it would be GTA three. You know, the b big open world game, you know, the the the promise of freedom It's I we I was really into gangster films at the time, so you know the the the Martin Scoss Eddy kind of influence of it. So again it's just a combination of those. And then I basically followed a college course and a university course, which effectively, you know, the longest story short is that led me to ⁓ the my first role in the industry.
speaker-1: Right, yeah. is that what sort of took you to the Cleveland College of Art and Design? that the Tea side? it that combination of those two colleges?
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, that's it. So my some ⁓ my claim to fame I'll always throw out there with Cleveland College of Art and Design. So Cleveland College of Art and Design is the same college that Ridley Scott went to. O obviously there is about fifty years difference between for between me and him, but so for a lot of people that don't know, it's ⁓ it's a northeastern college of art and design, exactly as it says on the tin, but it's for film, media, transport design and so on. So it's not just games, it it's a generalist kind of design college. And it also has a base in Hartleypool. And as I said earlier, the the industry in the area, lots of shipbuilding and ironworks, that's also the start of Blade Runner. So when you see the start of the film, that's basically the nightline that you see in the northeast of the UK and that comes from Idley Scott, pretty much, ⁓ from from the area. So I applied to that course and it was a generalist three D design course. So it was more like architecture and exhib exhibition design, furniture design, like very woodwork in in in a workshop kind of course, lots of metrics, you know, lots of kind of, you know, working with wood, working with your hands basically. But also three D modeling on a computer in three D S max. So then that was a natural way for me to get maybe one or two years ahead of university students that by the time I joined university, which was also on my doorstep, I was also fairly familiar with building, you know, props segments, you know, Booleans, all of the types of stuff that you would normally do with 3D tools. ⁓ and then the the university had again that creative visualization course that soon became game design. So that was effectively the game design course my doorstep. And it comes full circle because the people I mentioned earlier, the studios I mentioned earlier, some of those people had maybe kind of aged out of the industry and then wanted to feed back into the university. So those kind of companies acclaim reflections midway. you started to get lecturers at the university who basically come from those companies
speaker-1: Right. Fascinating. you you sort of started at A level, A level was kind of you were doing fine art and sculpture. Yeah. And you went into the kind of art and design that had the 3D design. And what triggered that? Was there a point where you thinking about, you know, sculpture or art rather than games or 3D design? Or was that just a course?
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was more to do with the course. So ⁓ because because it was a dedicated creative course, we didn't actually get taught what what you might consider STEM kind of subjects, so science, English, maths and so on. So so what we had at the course was ⁓ my my day-to-day bread and butter was the three D design, you know, more just cargo design skills. We would have a supplementary course which was you're missing out on the STEM kind of subjects. So you basically you've got to do some tests in science, ⁓ engineering, maths and so on. But also there's a secondary A level that you can do, which is sculpture, and that was more about looking at classic kind of artists and or contemporary artists that were doing interesting things. So we would look at things like Giacometti for sculpture. Rachel Whitereed who does a lot of stuff with negative space. ⁓ we would look at Calatrava, you know, basically famous architecture, and we we would almost make something that was in the style of those artists but at a much smaller scale. ⁓ so that was it but anyway it was it wasn't a choice, it was more part of the course. You do three D design but also you gotta supplement it with these other things as well.
speaker-1: Got it, but it sounds like a really interesting background in kind of spatial design, know, like you said, metrics and dimensions, physical spaces, right? It sounds like a really interesting feeder for, you know, more level design, you know, and that side of game design. That's really interesting.
speaker-0: Yeah, and and also as I said, because it was a generalist, I would say, three D design course, it was everything from the smaller scale to the biggest scale. So it might be y you're physically handcrafting a piece of jewellery, for example, that you know hand size, but also you're considering an exhibition space that could exist at E three. You know, s something much larger than life. So if if if if we're going to slightly different tangent, so one of my friends that was on that course he ended up doing product design, so he makes so he has his own furniture workshop and makes kind of industrial design objects. And then my other friend, she ended up doing interior design and kind of window stuff. So if you see ⁓ you know, UK shops like BHS, House of Fraser, all of the window kind of dressing, basically she did a bunch of that stuff. And that was from the same course.
speaker-1: on the same course, right, okay. So yeah, it gave you a good grounding for lots of different angles. But you obviously went the video game side and like you say, you kind of got a jumpstart T side and then went on to do, know, get that game design course. So did you say that game design course was kind of founded while you were there?
speaker-0: Yes. So so I think it was the early two thousands is when it kind of first manifested. And the way I'd kind of first come across it was they did a summer course in w maybe when I was in school. So maybe early two thousands, there was a summer course. You could go to the university for a couple of weeks and you would use three DS Max to basically model ⁓ aeroplanes, you know, almost like the simplest object. It's just a cylinder and kind of, you know, you taper the edges. But they also had the classic VR labs where it was almost like a giant hollowed out golf ball. And they were using those to showcase hey you can take these three D objects, put them in three D space and you can sit almost inside a cinema screen and kinda see them, hey, no, come to fruition. So so that was a way of them kind of like ⁓ showcasing the technology to proscriptive students for the future. And then by the time I joined, which will have been the mid 2000s, maybe 2005 ish, at ⁓ around that time. Then it was l 3ds Max, you know, Adobe Photoshop, you know, the creative suite, ⁓ Unreal was it UDK, one of the earlier versions of kind of Unreal, we were using that stuff. And then maybe one of the early versions of Game Maker in Unity. And that's basically the the you know the core suite of tools that we had available to us.
speaker-1: Okay, interesting. So give you a good kind of grounding in the tool side of making theory side. Okay. So you spend a few years at T side and then it looks like you went basically straight from college into a role, yeah, at Reflections.
speaker-0: Yeah, so it's the Yeah, that's it. So the the the story with that one is I was working at the university, ⁓ well, as a student at the university for three years, very hopeful of getting the job. But as I said, this was the mid two thousands. So two thousand and eight, big financial crash kind of happened in the world. And what we had before that at the university was ⁓ the courses were either three years long or they were four years long and what was called a sandwich course. So sandwich you would do two years a year in industry and then you would come back to finish your third year effectively. Because of the financial crash, those sandwich courses were basically off the table. So I did the three year course, which was fine, you know, d it completed the course. But you were coming into what was a very competitive market with not many rules and you know some projects were downsizing, some teams were changing. You know, if you remember around that time Red Dead Redemption came out and within a couple of weeks Bizarre Creations, BlackRock Studio, this was about two thousand and nine, s some UK studio started to fall. So it was in that kind of realm was when I got a job. And ⁓ I was pretty fortunate in how I got the job was there was an event that happened at the university and it was more like a Dragon's Den style event. So y so you as a designer would come up with an idea within a certain framework, you would present it to a bunch of industry peers, and they would choose the best one and then you'd get selected. So I did that. On the other side of the table were four very challenging kind of judges. ⁓ I I won't go through their feedback, but one of them that was quite generous with his time, about three or four months after I took part in their event and addressed some of the feedback that they passed to me, ⁓ he was very interested in the idea and kind of the changes I'd made to almost in a s in a second bite of the cherry kind of stage. He basically picked me up for an intern opportunity at Reflections. And I've basically been in games kind of ever since.
speaker-1: That's amazing. What a great opportunity. and, you know, sounds like you, you grabbed that opportunity with both hands by actually addressing that feedback and taking action. How did that feel? Like, what was that, that moment like when you, know, when that kind of happened?
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean i it was great at the time because I I felt like I put a lot into the course. You know, I was I was always available, you know, I was very diligent, I was always passing the milestones and kinda getting good grades and stuff. So I was it's on one side of it it was kind of like, you know, you've deserved this 'cause you've worked hard. But but also there's luck meets opportunity and you know, if if I if I hadn't put myself in that kind of place or like if he hadn't have turned up that particular day or If I if I had not addressed the feedback as to kind of what was delivered, 'cause as I say, I I I won't go through the feedback they mentioned, but on the other side of the table, one of the people was from IDOS. And I later found out that at that era of IDOS was one of the most co competitive and kind of hostile in terms of feedback. And then that was basically the person that was a bit like You know, it's a it it was a bit like a red rag to a ball in terms of the feedback. It's like, you know, you shouldn't do this because and I'm gonna tell you all of the reasons why this is a bad idea, you know, you should change it. So that was that. So anyway, as I say, it was it it it was kind of like serendipitous but but also it vindicated the efforts that I'd kinda put in as well. So I was I was very lucky but also I did work hard as well for it. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, you earned it, but nonetheless, it still had to all fall into place.
speaker-0: Exactly, yeah. The stars alliance, basically, yeah.
speaker-1: Absolutely. And sounds like a great baptism of fire, Like to actually put, you know, I'm sure you put a lot of work into that idea and, it wasn't just an off the cuff idea. And then you've got to stand in front of vets and get a grilling, no doubt. And then a weather that and then still come back from it. That's a pretty, you know, iron makes iron kind of thing. That's pretty cool.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I I I it it's almost like one of those, you know, I'm a big football fan and when they say people come into football and they have to clean the boots and kind of earn the stripes as like a YTS or like a you know, a a new person coming into the industry. I I I was glad I had that early as opposed to kinda later on.
speaker-1: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. That's It gives you a good level of perspective. And so so you get kind of a six month contract as a junior game designer on an awesome game. Drive of San Francisco. Love that game. ⁓ How does that feel? I obviously, Reflections are kind of a storage studio. You know, they've got a fantastic history and you're kind of walking in there trying to work on a big franchise. Like, how did you handle that? Like, how was that process? You know, I'm sure it's challenging. Like, how did it go?
speaker-0: Yeah, it w it was fantastic. So I again I'm in the northeast, but this was maybe f fifty miles from home as well. So this is probably one of the first times I you know I'd been at university at home, I'd been to college, you know, close to home and stuff. So it it wasn't just the role of industry, but it was also like this is your first time to kind of flo you know, f fly from the nest, you know. Some people might have gone elsewhere for university and stuff. But ⁓ yeah, I get there so it was a pretty big team. It was maybe over a hundred people at that time and the context was the project had been in development for several years at that point and it was in full production but with no sight of the end of the project, you know. I d and I mean I didn't necessarily know that at the time, but that's basically, you know, the kind of the context kind of coming into it. So first couple of days, ⁓ the the design team were just fantastic across the board. It's still one of the strongest, if not the strongest design team that I've ever worked in. You know, th they're all principals, directors and leads all over the country kind of right now. And we were all working in the same team together. So that was great. ⁓ I'd go for a coffee and I'd chat to some guy about the driver one mission in the garage. Or ⁓ yeah, I'm the coder that basically designed that, you know, thing at the time and you know, if you weren't good enough, you don't get to play the game. You know, it was that kind of context. So that's so that was pretty 'cause it's almost in some senses ⁓ you get to meet your heroes 'cause I used to tell them, you know, I I was playing that game with my uncle, you know fifteen years ago and they're like, you know, I can't believe it's somebody's now aged up enough that they're now into the industry. So it was pretty interesting. ⁓ but but yeah that they give me a lot of rope, I would say, to try out different things. So I was involved with car mechanics, like mission design. I was helping out on the multiplayer team. I did a bit of the temporary kind of QA work as well. I helped out with the achievements. So it was just like l I would say lots of piecemeal kind of bits of work. But but I was just kind of eating it up 'cause it was all new to me. And then later on in my career I've I've I've got quite heavy into spreadsheets with system design stuff. And then that was probably also the project that showcased to me like the difference between not having a spreadsheet and having a spreadsheet on your project in terms of game ballots and progression and so on. So yeah, in general it was pr pretty much almost ⁓ entirely good memories across the board. It was fantastic time.
speaker-1: Yeah, and it sounds like you got a really good broad understanding of design, right? It doesn't sound like they pigeonholed you in like, okay, you're just gonna do this on this project. It sounds like you got a good taste of everything. And sort of from that six months, was there anything that you were like, ⁓ that's what I wanna do? That's the part of design that I love or did you just love all of it? How did that shape you those first six months?
speaker-0: Yeah, it it's a good question. ⁓ I I did like a a bit of everything, but but more in terms of the awe of I'm now getting to live my dream in terms of working in games. But the things I kind of ⁓ I I gravitated towards what I call the three C's kind of moment to moment stuff, camera controls, characters I was involved with lots of the car kind of mechanics. So I wasn't the worsen the person who was designing the vehicle physics, but we had abilities on the car where you could boost, where you could ram, you could kind of teleport your car back and slam into other things. I was placing jumps around the world and doing some mission stuff. So any anything that was more moment to moment kind of design, I tended to gravitate towards that is you pick up the pad, you slam into a car and the pad rumbles or the screen shakes, like that that was just immediate to me, the the visceral kind of nature of the feel of things. And that's kinda led into what I was doing, you know, further on in my career, but that was probably the first taste that I had in that particular game. And then also it was the collaboration with other teams of ⁓ I was the one helping out with the environment team for basically placement of objects around the world, like how it feels to smash through a bunch of barrels or boxes and things. And then on the multiplayer side, how we could make the car feel satisfying and when when it's moving fast, for example, in and out of traffic. And how we could replicate that into multiplayer where the traffic patterns might be less dense or there might be more players and so on. So so at least you didn't have this disparity between single player and multiplayer. We were trying to like ⁓ cross the streams a little bit in terms of, you know, parity. But really cool.
speaker-1: off my own heart, straight into game feel and 3C's, definitely. I'm curious if going into that role, and gravitating into those areas that maybe you excelled at, do you feel like you were prepared for that? Do you feel like you'd learn things that helped you do that? Or was that just instinctual?
speaker-0: No, I th I think maybe when you learn to drive and people say you don't really learn to drive until you're out on the main roads kind of thing. W w whatever I thought I might have knew about game design, it's almost like h here here's what you don't know. You know, you y you don't know what you don't know kind of thing. If we go back to the example of spreadsheets, I'd always done design documents with maybe ⁓ a PowerPoint presentation to give an overview and big lengthy kind of word documents. And actually, no, you you just need four or five variables that are kind of highlighted maybe in a spreadsheet with maybe some cool formulas and ⁓ like you said, game feel, hands on the path kind of experience, you can kind of iterate that way really quickly. So maybe even just like the the the power of a spreadsheet kind of tool set or the power of being able to make a change, you know, test it, make a change, test it, the scientific method. I I would say that that was kind of a big eye opener. But then also sometimes A designer might come along and might say, ⁓ but did you think about this? And the meticulous kind of nature of things is I I'm a big fan of measure twice, cut once. So when they started to ask those kind of questions over time, you know, probably within a short time period, I was answering those questions before they asked them. So, you know, sometimes it was more like, you know, thinking one step ahead is like, you know, have we considered all the different angles that somebody might ⁓ factor in?
speaker-1: Interesting. Yeah. It sounds like you took to it like a duck to water. But also you're doing a contract and let you say you've moved, mean, know, 50 miles is still a distance, right? You've moved away. So how, I mean, that's scary, right? Because I guess you had no guarantee that that was going to turn into anything permanent.
speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. So it was a so the original opportunity was an internship for six months, exactly as you mentioned. And then it was after that, like, do we know if the projects getting extended or do do we know if there's enough work to for you know to go around with the team? And I think that was maybe just over a year, so maybe maybe thirteen or fourteen months of six month contract, then another three month contract, then another two month contract, you and so on and like w you is is it gonna get made permanent? You know, do I have a job after this kind of thing? And as I say, it like even if it didn't pan out, I would say, you know, I'd be grateful for the opportunity, but I would be back in square one in that post you know, d that that post two thousand and eight kind of era where there was layoffs, you know, there was other game designers probably on the market at that time and so on. But All all I could really do is ⁓ my best work kinda shown up day to day. You know, my my habits as a designer, my habits as a gamer had kinda changed between that time and kinda now and stuff. But ⁓ yeah, I was I was I would just I was I was diligent and fortunate and just trying to keep my head down and add value every day. That's basically all I could do.
speaker-1: Yeah, again, sounds very similar to your approach to the the course, right? The college course. was just do the best work you can show up and work hard and cross your fingers.
speaker-0: Yeah, exactly that. Yeah, you y you can't control what you can't control.
speaker-1: No, exactly. And so it does happen, right? You end up going full time and working your way through Game Designer. I'm very curious about the kind of acting lead Game Designer role that you had for a while. And it was only a short period of time, but how did you approach that? And how challenging was that to kind of take on an acting role, but still leave a mark and have an impact on the project?
speaker-0: Yeah, so so that was for the crew, so that was my second project. So this was a brand new IP at the time and I joined that one in ⁓ I would say a pre production kind of phase. And and i essence the essence of the brief was there's a giant open world that's based in it on a small scale version of the US. We've made the top right hand corner of the country, so you know, t you ⁓ Philadelphia, you know, just north of New York kind of area, there's something like that, like Detroit and things. So they did that. What we want you to do is populate the world full of content. So starting with that Detroit kind of area, it was lots of different content for race missions, you know, j jumps, drifts, all all of the different kind of gameplay things you might see in something like Forza Horizon now. You know, the crew was doing something similar kind of back then. And what we did is after a certain time, we'd I'd defined all of the workflows, how we're going to introduce this content to players. you could interact with it on the move, so you didn't necessarily need to push a button, you could just drive through content and it would automatically just trigger. And we'd almost set like a master document of, you know, best practices, guidance, how we set this stuff up, how we check it in, how we review it and so on. And then I was involved with hiring two level designers that basically would effectively pick up the button for me to populate the rest of America. So if I'd done the the you know the top right they they basically did the rest of it. So I maybe they did a quarter and they did the the remaining kind of eighty percent, you know, three quarters of it. And then that role that you mentioned was basically where that had come from. Is in a way I was kind of the de facto lead on the project, despite being the only designer at that time until we hired these two guys and there was no other kind of experienced person in the studio to kinda take that mantle. So I went from, you know, introducing content into the game to become in the person that was reviewing, defining the standards, going to talk to the stakeholders. They were based in Leon. So it is ⁓ the the studio that did the crew is the same d team that did test drive unlimited. So so they were effectively doing it for the second or third time. And I basically go over to Ivory Tower in Leon, communicate with them, here's the changes that we've made. We would take on a whole new feature, then I would define what that feature was going to be, then I would offload it to others and so on and so forth. It was just that big cycle.
speaker-1: That's fascinating. It sounds like a pivotal job, especially with a cross-studio project, which is much more common now than maybe, I think Ubisoft will probably at the forefront of having cross-studio, cross-time zone development. How did you navigate transitioning from that, like you say, de facto lead, the person who'd been there and defined so much of this? into away from that league because I presume another lead designer came in and kind of took on that role officially. Is that right?
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. So sh shortly afterwards that was more just like ⁓ they w they were looking to expand the team, more experience in the team, and as I said, they'd just finished off Driver maybe the year before and and they didn't necessarily have a second project or third project kind of up and running. And what what that eventually became was Watchdogs. And because Watchdogs was even higher profile in collaboration with ⁓ Montreal, most of the experienced people were on those projects or the other project. And then eventually they started to upskill and kind of, you know, scale up the the the cruise team kind of afterwards. But it was totally fine, you know, for me it was ⁓ I was working on content and then showcasing to others and kind of communicating with, you know, stakeholders. And then somebody else came in and I basically just handed the button to them and just said, you know, I've I've steadied the ship, you know, ⁓ up until this point, you know, I've I've kind of steered us in this direction so far. You know, n no problem. It w it wasn't any issue in terms of, you know, to g hand the reins to somebody else or something to that kind of effect. But I effectively just ⁓ went back to basically picking up what I'd done previously, ⁓ taking on a feature, kinda setting standards, you know, making suggestions. I was involved with still stakeholder chats and then for E three, because they had a big reveal of that, there was a whole bunch of special builds that we had to put together that I was also deeply involved in as well. So I was still in the in the thick of the projects j just not necessarily ⁓ with with ⁓ you know a lead title kind of anymore. Yeah, yeah.
speaker-1: I mean, that's very magnanimous of you. you know, I think at that age, you know, at that period in my career, I'm not sure I would have handled that as well as it sounded like you did, but it sounds like you got to continue doing a lot. wasn't like you sort of had to stop doing a chunk of that work. You were still doing very similar stuff, which I'm guessing, you know, was very satisfying and very much kind of in your wheelhouse.
speaker-0: Yeah, exa exactly. And and and another part of it to to me, whenever I describe it to people, you know, I start the call by saying, you know, I'm moving into a di direction role. I I just look at it as adding value every day to the project. And, you know, that's that's more important to me than, you know, how many letters that you might have on your Slack profile or something to that kind of effect. And it was the same at the time. Th the the role might have changed temporarily, but I was still adding or trying to add the same value every single day and you know, d y the the title is almost like a recognition maybe of what that contribution was.
speaker-1: That's super impressive, Jamie. think probably I've only really matured to that in the last 10 years. And I'm much older than you. yeah, that's impressive. And yeah, my silly tagline is all I want to do right now is help great people make great things. And I think that's very much from the same mentality, right? Like I'm just trying to help basically. Yeah. So I guess you, you you stay at Ubisoft for a while and it sounds like you have quite a lot of this cross...
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: studio collaboration, right? Sort of working with Leon, like you mentioned, working with Paris HQ. Interesting, that sort of line designer role where it was kind of, was that actually in, you were in Paris for that?
speaker-0: period time. Yeah, yes. I was in Paris for a short mark of time for there. So ⁓ the the the story slightly before that one is ⁓ internally at Ubisoft they used to do what they called RGD training, so rational game design training. And anybody that's been through the kind of the houses at Ubisoft knows it's like their internal kind of design philosophy. And it's it's a very pragmatic, I would say scientific method to designing games. I would say that they see it more as a science than an art, at least at that time. And and the reason I mention that is because when I was at their academy, I met a line designer there who was based in Paris kinda directly. So this this academy that we were at was also based in Paris. It was a chateau in remote Paris. They would fly people from all over the world, do this training for a week, and then you would go back to your studio and kind of share the knowledge as almost like an advocate, you know, for that for that thing. And the guy that I met by pure chance, number one, he went to Teesside University. He's from Paris. No yeah, and and he did a masters in creative visualization. He was a few years before me. And then he basically went and worked as a line designer at Par Paris HQ, which is basically where the editorial team is. And for people who aren't familiar, that's basically Ubisoft's internal publishing department. That's effectively where it is. And I got the chance to go join that team working on maybe half a dozen games at that time. So Ra Rainbow Six Siege, Trials Fusion, Far Cry Four, R Wildlands, Ghost Recon Wildlands, and Unity. Assassin's Creed Unity it only just came out at that particular time. But yeah, I was basically working in head office for the the best part of a couple of months, I think. Basically in and out of calls, cross studio collaboration, working until the night sometimes because you're working with Montreal in some instances, but yeah, that was fantastic. So it was different culture That was we that was really when I started to appreciate what a good steak tastes like at all. 'Cause it was in Paris.
speaker-1: Yes, definitely. What a great opportunity, like you say, to kind of get a broad exposure to other great projects in the Ubisoft band, under the Ubisoft umbrella, and to learn this more formal structure. What a fascinating period of time.
speaker-0: Yeah, and and and actually I'll I'll mention one thing. The best part about that was, ⁓ I was actually leaving Ubisoft, so this was towards the end of my time at Ubisoft, I got this opportunity. And the studio head called Pauline Jacquet, f fantastic, she's one of my best studio probably the greatest studio head I've ever had. So I I was leaving Ubisoft and I said to her I'd I'd really be interested in getting involved in some of these higher profile games, exactly like the ones I just mentioned. And she said, Don't worry, I'm gonna send you to Paris. You're gonna be living and working in Paris for the next couple of months. And I said to her, Yeah, yeah, but I'm I'm still leaving the company. I th I th I thought she was doing it as a way to try and convince me kind of otherwise to say she said, No, no, no, and this is why I mention it here. She said, The reason I did that is because I want you to leave Ubisoft with it in the best graces in your mind as to what the company kind of, you know, has provided for you. So I've heard some people when they leave Ubisoft maybe they complain about certain projects or something. But she was like, ⁓ I want you to leave with the the best the best experience that you'd had and I went to Paris and I was like ⁓ yeah, that was the best one of the best experiences I've ever had in games. It's so good.
speaker-1: Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, what a wonderful opportunity, especially under that context. That's incredible. I love that. And yeah, so I guess you leave Ubisoft and you join EA.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's it. Yeah. So it was a combination of two things at the time. ⁓ w one was a little bit given back to the university because I was working in a university role at the same time. And then the other part was again I'd been working remotely with lots of different teams. A game design opportunity came up basically for live service support on FIFA. So it was all game balance, it was the statistics for the players. It also fed into the ultimate T mode, which is effectively their free to play kind of style. ⁓ but yeah, honestly it was very stats heavy. It was basically just a giant spreadsheet. You know, that that was that was ⁓ effectively the role. But that was great. So I was doing that for three and a half years almost like as a moon moonlighting game design and then then the daytime education, you know, back at the university. Yeah, t flip flopping between those two.
speaker-1: Right, that's right, yeah, because you were a lecturer at Teesside at the same time,
speaker-0: Yeah, that's it, yeah, yeah. And again, that was back to the university. ⁓ and actually funnily enough, the story comes full circle. So when I joined the industry, we just had that financial crash. Two thousand and fifteen comes along, maybe six, seven years later, ⁓ th there was a need in the northeast for the next generation of talent. ⁓ and then they were looking at the y local universities for like who was providing the most talent or like could they be upskilled and so on. And I saw that as an opportunity to kill two birds of one stone because life circumstances I was also looking to purchase a house at the same time. So the combination of, you know, giving something back to the university, the training I'd had at Ubisoft, life circumstances and you know, I could still work in games with EA, th you know, that the the factor of those just coalesced.
speaker-1: Yeah, and it sounds like that's a pretty hard amount of work though. Yeah, sounds like you were lecturing during the day and then balancing at night. Is that kind of how it works out?
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. There's there's no other way to describe it other than it was like having a part time job and a full time job at the same time. Pretty pretty much, yeah, yeah. It w it wasn't exactly two full time jobs. So the only reason I mention it is because what EA used to do, maybe they still do it, is ⁓ FIFA or the EA Sports franchise has regular updates on a weekly basis. And the idea is is that the stats that we were changing is meant to reflect the authentic counterparts. So, you know, if Man City had a good result and this person was really good, you would see that in the game. So it was almost like steady work. Whereas if you're working on maybe a more of a traditional kind of game development project that's not live, it would be lots of work, not much work, lots of work, not much work. Whereas this was just steady across the board. So that's why I say it's like part time plus full time.
speaker-1: Gotcha, yeah, I guess you were sort of every week you had a kind of certain amount of balancing you had to do and then.
speaker-0: Exactly, yeah, yeah. Then you would have producers, so for me personally, I was also taking hold of my home town club. So obviously you could potenti potentially manipulate the stats in your kind of favour, but the but they've got fallbacks for a lot of this stuff as well is you know, you can only change things within certain constraints and then it goes through a producer and the producer kinda signs it off and stuff. But ⁓ yeah, it was it was it was a great experience.
speaker-1: Yeah, managing your hometown club, many of the Northeastern guys and also my club Tottenham. ⁓
speaker-0: Yes, yeah, yeah. I I might have made ⁓ Darren Anderson a bit worse if he was still playing. Yeah, yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, he was a bit OP. OK, yes. So you balance those two roles then. So you're balancing the kind of the game designer at night and the lecturer during the day. ⁓ And then you move over to behavior. ⁓ no, sorry, sumo. Sorry, you move over to sumo ⁓ and you have a good, you know, a good series of opportunities at sumo. So what took you to sumo and what were you aiming to achieve and how do you reflect on that time?
speaker-0: Yes, I I was finishing at the university, I said I was towards the end of my time there because ⁓ I'd been upskilled into doing education, I did a teaching qualification and so on. So the university'd actually give me a lot in terms of, you know, p push myself forward in terms of career and, you know, d ⁓ I would say transferable skills and stuff as well. And then ⁓ when I was at ⁓ Ubisoft, when I said earlier, one of the most talented design teams I'd been part of, I'd always kept in touch with those guys and I still keep in touch with those guys. And when I was at the university, one of my friends called Andy Willens, he basically got in touch with me to say, Hey, I'd like you to talk to you about the next crop of students because we're looking to upskill, you know, the team and scale up the studio and, you know, new projects. And he said, I'll come and chat to you. So he came and chatted to me and that was also a slight ruse because he was also coming to tell me that he was a lead designer and he was moving into a direction position which basically opened the door to a lead design position at that time. So when I first joined Sumo, it was to work on a Robin Hood game as a senior designer with a view to basically becoming the lead. And that's effectively what happened within the first, you know, six months or so of being there is joined a pre production game. ⁓ you kind of sneak into a castle in a medieval context, s ⁓ open a secret door, steal some treasure, and then you extract. So it's almost kind of like a it's it's a little bit like an extraction game where it's team versus team. And as I say it's in a Robin Hood kind of context. ⁓ when I joined the projects, the game loop was already there. I mean it's probably the f one of the first games I've ever worked on th where the the game as it shipped, I s I saw it on my first day, you know, and then the project, you know, like the the fo the fun was there on the first day. Yeah, yes, you had to kinda you know, you had to squint a little bit, but the the whole thing was there. So anyway, I joined in that context which was ⁓ to own the three Cs, the combats, you know, various other systems in the game, but basically I had a quite a r wide remit ⁓ for that project.
speaker-1: Right. OK, great. And yeah, that was hood, Outlaws and Legends. Yeah. then you so so then you move into a, you know, an official lead role. Did that start to bring on people management? Were you kind of managing? Do you have direct reports at that point?
speaker-0: Yeah, so maybe the d design team was maybe eight or nine people large at that time, you know, in terms of size and it was split into so we had I think one or two UX UI kind of people interface ⁓ kind of side. We had a bunch of level designers that basically were doing their own thing and kinda managed themselves. And then ⁓ more on the game design side there was me and at first one other person and later on that grew to I think four designers, so me plus three other people. So it's still a relatively small team. And I was kind of helping out with the level designer sometimes in terms of upskilling and mentoring and, you know, even just being a sounding board for s ⁓ for advice and things. But ⁓ yeah, that was at the point where basically much much like the crew, I was offloading you know, lots of content work, but I would say content within guardrails or content within goalposts. You I've I've defined the goalposts and then, you know, the designers are working within those kind of bounds at that point. ⁓ Yeah, and I I I I don't have too much more to say for that other than just it was a pretty small team and we were working in a tight knit kind of group together and as I say the the the lead role was more just ⁓ me I would say just offloading content to people, you know, g giving them a lot of free time and space but within p d you know, guidelines pretty much.
speaker-1: I'm curious if you felt a difference in your ability to lead sort of pre and post your teaching period, because I imagine that would have kind of upskilled you quite a lot in terms of people management and leadership skills.
speaker-0: Yeah, I think d definitely in terms of public speaking, because at the university it would be a literally a room of up to three hundred people. You know, it's it's almost it's almost like a cinema room and you're you're at the front, you know, you're almost like a rock star on stage, you know, this tiny little person at the front of the room. ⁓ so that was one part of it. Another part of it was ⁓ conveying complex subjects in a way that people could understand it. So there's this notion in ⁓ education, it's called a threshold concept. And it's the idea that your knowledge can't progress any further until you kind of unlock wherever that knowledge is. So I I I don't know anything about cars, but if you know about this one bolt on a car, you can open the engine and fix the engine. But if you don't know about that bolt, y you you'll never be able to fix your car. And and and that that's the first part of it. But then the second part of it is is conveying that threshold concept in a way to people that now they understand, you know, l they can take that kind of on board. And that might be the way that you present yourself. It might be the way that you put a presentation together, it might be the way that you use analogies to them to kind of, you know, get on board or it's you remember in this game it's like this particular feature, but we're gonna do this instead or something to that kind of effect. So I would s I would say I probably just had a wider toolbox of ways to convey what I already may have n known or not known. Whereas earlier on in my career I might not necessarily have had those tools in the toolbox. E even if even if I knew the answers, I probably couldn't necessarily provide it to them in the best way.
speaker-1: That's great. That's really good insight. You kind of, you just got better explaining things, I guess, just got better. Yeah, no, that's, I think that's really good insight. think it's to your point, it's easy to think, well, I understand this. So it's easy to convey it because it's, it's simple, but actually you don't realize how many steps you've taken for it to be simple to you that other people need to take to get to the same level. Yeah, it's interesting.
speaker-0: That's the summary. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
speaker-1: And so, you kind of, you work your way through, you know, campaign systems on up to principle, which I'm guessing was kind of a shift away from lead. Is that, usually principle is more hands-on and lead is more people management. Is that how it was at Sumo?
speaker-0: That's exactly it. Yeah, yeah. And and mo most, if not all, companies I've been at, that's kind of the differentiator is ⁓ are you are you judged on the quality of the work or are you judged on the quality of the team? Ultimately that's like the difference between the two. And ⁓ in in general, just a pr a preference of mine was I I just like being hands on and communicating to the team or in a product owner kind of role. So d d despite the fact that I've had line reports previously in a lead role, maybe within the discipline and you know, mentoring and upskilling, all of that stuff is great. The thing that I get up in the morning, you know, that that really keeps me, you know, engaged is to work with a cross discipline team, you know, t to push the industry forward. And and I think sometimes with a lead role that's slightly different, at least on my side, for you're helping somebody else progress, that's great. But I still prefer doing this other thing, you know, on the on the other side of it. In i it's just horses for courses, you know, depending on where you are in the team. And and because I got to sample both, like I definitely know which one's my preference. But as I say, because I'm moving into a design direction kind of role, that's more of a a large remit of the game and less so about the the discipline specific stuff.
speaker-1: Yeah, it makes sense. like you say, it feels like you sort of weaved in and out of that discipline focus, know, craft focus. And I guess you found your way back to more discipline focused. And I guess Sumo is a really interesting company as well at that time, because you you've got a big swath of projects there, right? Because Sumo have been great at supporting other things and helping build other games. you may be pulling on some of that cross project skills as well.
speaker-0: Yeah, and and the good thing about that was is that ⁓ I joined Sumo at at a good time in the sense that the Newcastle studio, which is where I was part of, that wasn't the mothership. So the mothership's ⁓ Sheffields, they had six or seven hundred people kind of at the time. They were working on multiple projects. So they had ⁓ Crackdown Three, they had Sackboy, they'd done the the Virtua Tennis historically, they'd done the Sega games historically, and then all of a sudden I think it was either during the Ten Cent takeover or around that time, Chinese room come into the fault, ⁓ red kites come into the fault, Lemington spins up a studio, ⁓ Lab forty two, and basically so on and ⁓ on all of a sudden it started to become a bit more like Ubisoft in terms of structure. But but exactly as you mentioned earlier Ubisoft have forgotten more than most people know about cross studio collaboration stuff. And and and that that's ⁓ that that's the only thing I found, not necessarily just with Sumo, but with other studios. As soon as you start to expand or not everybody is under the same roof, or you've got a team that haven't delivered on a certain thing before, it's almost like there's too many points of failure. Whereas at least at Ubisoft, yes, you're making SQLs in some instances. But these are extremely talented people who've done it five, six, seven times before. And you know, and I'd worked on the Call of Duty team and it was much the same. It was like d don't worry, we've done this ten times before, even if it looks like chaos and and and it just the plane lands every single time. You know, it may it might be control chaos, but like i i it it but it works. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, so guess you were kind of well-placed to be in that company at that time with that kind of range of projects.
speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. And it was just the the the the variety of the projects was of interest, you know, the bi because as I said the this the company in the studio was kinda growing in lots of, you know, these almost like hub and spoke kind of structure. You know, here's how we did things at Ubisoft. It's not to say that it will work here, but you know, here's some kind of insights with this stuff. And bear in mind, because you alluded to earlier, Ubisoft is cross time zone and cross language. Sumo was not. Sumo was all in the UK, you're all in the same kind of time zone. Typically speaking, ⁓ the structure at Ubisoft would be a lead studio and then one or more support studios. At Sumo that wasn't necessarily the case on different projects. So sometimes you had it's everybody in Sheffield, sometimes you had ten people here, ten people there, but which of those two sets of people is the lead of the studio and then, you know, you you get that kind of, you know, the messy middle of the grey area. Yeah, yeah, the friction and, you know, the un unspoken conversations and stuff. But as I say, I I I liked it because there was more variety in the projects and then also I'd got past experience of how we'd done things, I would say, in a more successful way. And then it's just like p you know bringing that to the table to see if, you know, if there's any nuggets that they want to pull from.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, I love that. And so, so yeah, so you were at CMO for about four and a bit years and then you jump over to people, people can fly. And again, more three Cs work, know, working closely, you know, on the project, and then you jump over to behavior, sort of continuing that principle, you know, lead role. So three Cs has been, you know, a common touch point in your career.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: What is it about 3Cs that really draws you?
speaker-0: ⁓ it it it's always come from I think ⁓ I would say Mortal Kombat is guilty of this. The the the the notion that you you punch somebody and it feels satisfying moment to moment. I and and that's what I feel with any game is I pick up the game, you know, a classic example a few years ago, ⁓ Horizon Forbidden West comes out, sequel, fantastic game, PS five, nice showcase to the environments. I basically spent literally forty five minutes in the first area of the game, spin the character round in a circle, jump up and down, running in and out of the water. Or did they think about the ⁓ they did think about this. What about that? ⁓ they did think about or they didn't they didn't think about this thing that we did on this other project and so on. You're basically just trying all these different, you know, character abilities, how it feels to traverse around the world. And it's that classic thing where Mario sixty four, ⁓ you go into the castle grounds Just just run around. It's the toy box, you know, there's no objectives. It's it just feels fun to run around in a circle. I worked on Call of Duty during my time at Sumo. We used to say it needs to feel good to miss because that's what people are going to be doing most of the time. You know, peop people always think it's about the headshots and the crazy kind of three sixty noscopes and stuff. It needs to feel good to shoot the brick in the wall. Like that's it. Just stand still. And And and that's the thing that I kinda look for in games and and not just, you know, shooters but d driving games, platformers, you know, ⁓ match three games for example. How does it feel to do the thing that you do all of the time? And it's a bit hard to describe, but it's I I just call it satisfaction or just immediate satisfaction or something to the effect. And as I say, I think it comes from Mortal Kombat is you punch the guy, excessive kind of head snap animation, you know, wrestling kind of style. And and blood goes in the direction of the hit and it just feels good. Yeah, across the board.
speaker-1: Yeah, I love that tracing that all the way back to Mortal Kombat. love that. Yeah. Yeah. Great answer. Definitely, definitely, you know, echo all of that. And you also mentioned that, you know, maybe you're sort of tasting games kind of shifted a little bit, you know, sort of as you've made games. Talk to me about that.
speaker-0: Agree. Yeah, so ⁓ I used to I used to think I wanted to work on the games that I like to play. And I and actually for a time I did, so I worked on the division, I was really into co op shooter games, you know, Left for Dead and so on. ⁓ hey, you know, this this loot based kind of New York game where you're with your friends perfect like as a designer, perfect opportunity, perfect skill set, you know, third person and so on. ⁓ and and at a certain point it started to become for me more about it's just adding value to the game day to day, less so about a particular genre, because even the games that we've been chatting about today, there is a trend of kind of three C's, but actually I've worked on some driving games, I've worked on some platformers, I've worked on some shooters. Before I worked on any of those genres, I hadn't worked on any of those genres. So just familiarity with the genre and kind of learning things. But if I think about myself at Ubisoft at the time I used to play whatever was the big triple A release of that week and it used to be every f every Friday we had a big screen, we had all the designers around it. Hey, this week we're gonna play Hitman Absolution, next week ⁓ Deus Ex Mankind, next week Mercenaries Two, whatever it may be, it every single week. Giant open world games, ⁓ twenty, thirty, forty hour investment, and I would complete them from start to finish and I would hit credits. I couldn't think of anything worse right now. So so now so now I'm the complete opposite, which is day to day I'm working on say a medieval combat game and yes I I look at the competitors and kind of review those kind of builds, but I am a secret golf fiend. So I I play l tons and tons of golf games. ⁓ again the immediate satisfaction of kinda hitting the ball and and I'm quite indie-pilled at the moment, so lots of card battlers, lots of dice based games. But ultimately the the the short answer to the question is it's just about being respectful of my time. You know, I had a lot more time ten, fifteen years ago and coming back to the immediate satisfaction, I I can throw a game away pretty quickly if it doesn't feel good or it doesn't respect my time and I can quite easily move on to the next game. And I I think another part of that is g game pass, you know, it's the it's the disposable kind of economy. You've got four hundred games and if that one's no good, I'll just move to the next one. You know, I d I don't even need to download it in some instances. So it's changed quite a bit, but as I say, I I haven't had the opportunity yet to work on a golf game but but but that's the type of game I play now. It's just that day to day I might be working on a a combat shooter or a you know medieval combat and so on.
speaker-1: Yeah, I think that you say, you know, for me, game feel is universal, right? Whether it's like you said, whether it's match three or a deep complex, you know, extraction shooter, right? Game feel is universal and is the pivotal part of what makes games interactive. So those rules are applicable, whatever genre you're working on. A lot of the experience you've gained is very applicable across this genre matters a lot less. I'm also curious as we sort of begin to wind this down. You mentioned that, know, taking that lecturer job and the EA job was so you could buy a house. It sounds like game development and this career that you've built has been sort of very influential in your real world life, right? you know, how has being a game developer changed you? How has it evolved you?
speaker-0: prob probably for the better in terms of my health and kind of happiness kind of across the board, you know, ⁓ I I I would say that just to put it differently. Earlier on in my career I'd heard this thing somewhere that said ⁓ Friends, family, hobbies and health. If you wanna be good, pick two of those. ⁓ if you wanna be great, pick one. and and and and now I'm the kind of the opposite to that. So I may maybe earlier in my career I might have put ⁓ maybe hobbies to do with gaming ahead of health and I maybe put maybe work colleagues ahead of family f for example. And then at a certain point maybe not friends kind of either. So then you know you you're chasing the next promotion or you're chasing the next project and so on. now I'm kinda the opposite where I'm more like health first and and and the rest is a bonus. And it comes back to what I said about the ⁓ you know the hobbies kind of thing is I was spending fifteen, twenty hours years ago, you know, I was playing games until three in the morning and then then going to work the next day and then doing, you know, ten, twelve hours in a studio, you know, classic kind of crunch culture. Now I'm, you know, up you know, barring this call is like ⁓ early early nights and, you know rest in kind of habits and so on. So I I'd probably just say from the human element it's just to recognize that to put myself first more so than Jira tasks and deadlines. Cause like it's still going to be there tomorrow. It's still going to be there in five minutes. You know, it's still going to be there next month. I've I've worked on deadlines and then the deadline changes and then you start to second guess is that deadline actually a real deadline or is it just a pseudo deadline that's going to keep moving and stuff. So Yeah, I w I th the summary is basically just to put yourself first in terms of health and happiness.
speaker-1: Yeah, I love that. And yeah, at the end of the day, we're just making video games, right? We're not saving lives. We're not changing. You know, we're not making big political decisions. are. We're just making video games and, you know, they're important and they matter. And, you know, we've both built careers doing it, but it, you know, it is still just video games.
speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And and then just when you mentioned about the house kind of side of it as well, I'm I'm a a bit of like an an avid learner, so I've learned a lot about, you know, property developments and you know th things like that, you know, like paying off my house and a bunch of other things. Like the the industry has kind of allowed me to do that, but then also at the same time, ev ever since getting a house I've been mindful of you know, I ⁓ I I d I I work to live, I don't live to work. So it you know, there's that kind of side of it as well. You know, at the university some people used to be more like maybe they didn't want to progress themselves too much because it was ⁓ you know, maybe a comfortable mortgage and it was a comfortable pension and so on. But in in a in industry that doesn't have the best sort job security kind of at the moment, I I wanted to scale myself up on, you know, d j just actually making sure that I have a roof over my head first and foremost.
speaker-1: That's smart. Yeah. You haven't put all your eggs in one basket. And I do think, you know, sort of going back to that point about, you know, not working to live, to work. Video games is fun. It can be really hard to not fall into just, this is fun. I just want to do it all the time. Right. So like you say, you've got to kind of check yourself sometimes and take a step back.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. Exactly, yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah.
speaker-1: Well, Jamie, thank you for your time. Awesome story. You fascinating, know, weaving your way through various roles, various companies. You've had some great opportunities and, you know, some great, you know, definitely definitely sounds like a career where, you know, effort and commitment has been met with opportunity. Very, very, very familiar to me, my career as well. So, you know, yeah, really enjoyed it. And thank you for thank you for chatting to me.
speaker-0: Yeah, likewise, yeah. Thanks for the opportunity and again keep up the great work. I'm a I'm an avid listener myself.
speaker-1: Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.