Take This Job and Love It! - Designer - Chris Stewart Feature on GamePro.com

Feature: Take This Job and Love It! - Designer - Chris Stewart

Feature by Dan Elektro | 09/06/2002 | 13:51:00 PM PST

Name: Chris Stewart
? Title: Designer - Barking Dog/Rockstar
Notable Past Projects:Homeworld: Cataclysm
Current Project: Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon
Schooling/Degree: Currently working towards a degree in History.

? General duties of your position/title: ? Proposal materials for publishers. Documentation of game content, background and reference materials, and mechanics.Basically, anything a team-mate might come looking for to answer any questions they might have about aspects of the game, from feature details to art direction. That?s the core stuff. Depending on the requirements of the game, you can also find yourself involved with voice recording, marketing, writing, or any number of things. Last but not least, you?re also a bit of a tester.

SalaryRange for your title (not necessarily what you specifically make): ? shrug
Gamasutrasays that the average is between 40 ? 60 thousand a year for the first five years. I?ll take their word for it. ?

How many people are in your department/team? If you are a manager, many people do you oversee? ? The team I work with has 23 people on it. As a designer I don't so much oversee as interact. Mike Gyori, our producer, oversees. It?s on his business card and everything.

? What was the most valuable bit of knowledge or experience you brought with youto the job? ? Years of arcane trivia and information bric-a-brac from a wide variety of subjects and the ability to find any trivia and bric-a-brac not stored in my head (usually drawn from the boxes and boxes of books, comics, movies scattered around my apartment and office). While I?m nowhere near as big a table top gamer as Martin Cirulis(lead designer on Treasure Planet), I did and still do play whenever possible and I highly recommend it. Nothing introduces you to the basics of game design better. ?

What was the first major lesson you learned once you started working in the industry? ? There are more details in the average game than most people usually think about, details that get taken for granted in the end product, but for the people making the game, they're all-consuming. They have to be thought out, properly implemented, checked, and double-checked before the game is done.

? My first job in games was as a tester and my first project was a hockey game. I spent two weeks doing nothing but going into the game, loading up every player, for every team in the NHL and checking their names and numbers as they appeared on their jerseys, both home and away. To make things even more involved, this was the first year the NHL was unveiling its alternate third jerseys for certain teams. I still involuntarily twitch when I?m watcha hockey game and a player turns their back to the camera.

? What academic focuses would you recommend for someone who wants to do your jobsomeday? ? I know game designers who started in programming, art, writing. I also know guys who took classes at places like DigiPen. The common thread between them is that they all have top-notch problem-solving skills. Being a designer means being a bit of a jack of all trades, which allows you to answer really unusual questions and solve bizarre problems the rest of the design team need a ruling on before they can proceed with their work. There are only a handful of jobs were you haveto be able to imagine how a fighting spacecraft operates or how elves should dance and then be able to explain it to another person. Game development is one of them. ?

I recommend getting your feet wet with whatever half of game development you're not familiar with. As a gross generalization, games are one half artand one half programming, with designers straddling both halves. People tend to have more of a head for one or the other. You don't have to master the half you're not as familiar with (you?re not necessarily going to have to program the game or do the art yourself), but you should at least have some understanding of it so you can talk with the artists and programmers in broad terms before they get to work on the details. ?

Also, get organized. You can?t keep every detail of the game in your head, so you?ll need to put together a document that will be useful to yourself, your team, even your publisher. Documentation is king. Not to mention that when development gets under way, there will be a lot going on and you don't want to lose track. And you can?t be a designer if you can?t work with a team, so if you have any lone wolf tendencies, you might want to join a club or something. Anything that makes you haveto work with a group.

? And do yourself a favor; learn to touch-type. You?ll thank yourself for it later, trust me. ?

Common misconceptions about your job? ? The biggest misconception about anybody working in games development is that we play games all day long. We do think about games all day, which is interesting, but not nearly as much fun as actually playing a game. I refer to you my hockey jersey anecdote ? someone had to make that list and input it into the game. That?s the average day at a game development office ? tinkering with the guts of the game you?re working on and then playing the game to see how the tinkering worked out. ?

That?s not to say that we don?t get to play other games, but when you?re in the middle of a project, there?s little time to play through a hot new game that?s just hit the shelves. I have a pile of games sitting next to me that I?ve started and then had to put away. ?

On the plus side, you have the perfect excuse to buy videogames guilt-free. Nobody can claim you?re wasting your money of frivolous gaming purchases ? ?cause it?s all ?research?. Even thatten bucks you plugged into that arcade machine that time ? ?research?. ?

Is college a necessity, a really good idea, or not required for your line ofwork? ? It's a good idea. Continuing education is always a plus. I think there?s a lot to learn at university that will be useful to a designer later. But I know many people who came from outside the industry and not all of them have a university education. ?

What tools and software do you use on a regular basis? ? Right now I?m using a couple of powerful in-house tools that allow us to make levels for Treasure Planet on our Ares engine. And Word / Excel - remember, documentation is king. On occasion, when I want to illustrate something specific to people, I break out the Photoshop.

? What's your advice for breaking into your line of work? ? Everybody I know that designs,came into the job from the sides. The started as programmers, artists, writers, testers, you name it. They got hired for something other than as designer, and once they got their foot in the door they learned everything they could, looked for chances to try new things, and when opportunity knocked and there was a chance to move into design, they were well prepared. I guess you could say that designers aren?t born, they?re made. But that would be tacky. ?

So, my advice is to pick an aspect of gaming that you enjoy, like 3D modeling or programming or testing or level design, and learn the heck out of it. Then use this to find a job in games. Once you're in the industry you can learn more about how it all works and once you know more about how it works, you?re better able to be a designer.

Artist	Designer	Game Tester	Producer	Programmer	Sound Designer
Chad Dezern Sal DiVita Lorne Lanning	Mark Turmell David Jaffe Brian Allgeier Michael Perry Chris Stewart	Colin Munson Christopher Nelson Eric Wackerfuss Sean C. Johnson	Ted Price John Schappert Fred Dieckmann Brian Fleming	Graeme J. Devine Brian Hastings Brian Smolik	Tommy Tallarico George Alistair Sanger Erik Kraber