I got my start in the games industry a bit later than most of my fellow designers. When I was in high school, there were a lot of career paths I was trying to decide upon. Working on video games was one of them, but at the time I hadn't quite decided which path was right for me. Rather than focus on a single thing at school, I diversified to see what interested me the most. Turns out I wasn't all that passionate about programming, so I tried 3D modeling and failed miserably at that class. That's when I started to think that maybe game development wasn't going to be something I was good at.
For a while I pursued my passion for technology and went into the Information Technology (IT) field. I went from building computers in my spare time, to doing contract work repairing peoples computers in their homes and offices, to building custom gaming desktops and laptops for an online startup. Not long after, I was supporting companies with their data servers and phone systems. It was fun for a time, but I didn't love it so I tried something new.
I ended up using my technical writing education along with my technical support background to move into consumer electronics. I started in the repairs department for a company that made media streaming set-top boxes, but demonstrated strong leadership and organizational skills and was promoted into product development. With lots of hard work and long hours, I eventually moved into project management and was out doing trade shows, negotiating business contracts, and overseeing production schedules. That too had its high points, but I still felt like something was lacking.
In 2013 I found myself looking for the next great adventure. After my last job, I realized that whatever it was, I was going to end up spending a good chunk of my life working on it. With that realization in mind, I sat down and tried to think of what I could be so passionate about, that I wouldn't get tired of it after a few years. I started thinking about that dream of making video games I had a decade prior and tried to figure out how I could make that a reality.
I started by making lists. A list of every game development studio in my area or areas I was willing to relocate to. Then a list of all their open positions and their requirements. I started to cross off roles for things I knew were beyond my current skill set or ability to learn quickly -- no character modeling for me. Once I had my lists and I had to figure out how I could get my foot in the door. I knew QA was an option but a slow one. I had production experience so that was a possibility, but I knew it would have to be a stepping stone to where I really wanted to get.
Design was definitely what I was looking for. Being able to turn ideas into gameplay was exactly what I wanted to do. The only problem was that I had no design experience and no clue how to use game development tools. But I could fix that, I just needed to get in somehow.
That somehow ended up being IT. Crystal Dynamics hired me to help move their office from one building to another. With my experience, they had me design and implement their new conference rooms. They liked me enough to keep me around for a bit longer, but eventually my contract expired so I started putting out applications again. At the same time my boss and IT director knew I wanted to go into the development side of things so he got me an interview for a QA position. I don’t know if it’s common at all studios, but Crystal Dynamics loves to hire from within and help people grow their career. They wanted me in QA so I took the job hoping it would be the next fruitful step in my career.
I started QA work on Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, an isometric action game and sequel to Guardian of Light. There were a lot of long hours as it was the final few months before ship. It was complicated by the fact that it was a multiplayer title with up to four players playing co-op on a single console or online. I remember a lot of late night playthroughs with my teammates, testing builds as new fixes went in, and prepping for submission. I had to get good at testing multiplayer by myself too. I found a way to get through four player co-op by myself, and did that several times prior to ship.
Once we wrapped up on Temple of Osiris, I was asked to join the Rise of the Tomb Raider team and continue doing QA. My self-sufficient work style and love for Microsoft Office products -- spreadsheets mostly -- earned me the role of creating test plans for the team and eventually overseeing the DLC testing.
While I was in IT and QA I I took every opportunity I could to learn more about game development. I decided to pursue a degree program online in my spare time, first in computer science, then in game design. When GDC came around, I either attended panels with the company pass or sat in on brown bag meetings where our designers would discuss the talks they went and saw. I got hands on with the development engine at work and started learning my way around it. At first it was just to do more thorough debugging and track down bugs for the designers. Then it became making test levels for the QA team to use. The DLC team had enough to do that I was even fixing bugs I found myself instead of just logging them and passing them off. I did well enough that they even let me help script systems and do some level design for the final DLC pack, Cold Darkness.
After the final DLC pack shipped and we finished up the PS4 release, my initiative paid off and I was offered a role as an Assistant Designer on the Avengers project. I started off making test levels to measure and implement player traversal mechanics. Run speed, jump height, flight controls, that sort of thing. As I became more familiar with the tools, I started to work on the combat and discovered my true passion. Fast forward a couple years later and I have learned a lot since then. The dedication I've shown has paid off too, and I'm now a full fledged Designer. I owe a lot of thanks to the folks who have either mentored me or given me an opportunity to prove myself at Crystal Dynamics. I also got an Associates degree from Full Sail Online while I was at it.
If you're interested in getting into game design yourself, I have a few tips to offer.
Consider a formal education and degree, but it's not mandatory. As a designer, you can pick up a lot of the design principles you need from books. In fact, most of my classes were just read these chapters, discuss, and take a quiz. Yes, there are design exercises they'll ask you to do. Yes, you'll get to discuss design philosophy with someone who's well-versed either in industry or educational experience. But at the end of the day you could save yourself the exorbitant price tag that a degree program costs by exercising other avenues. In fact, I would urge you avoid the student debt if you’re good at self study.
Learn the tools. Unity and Unreal are both free to download and use with a majority of the tool-set available for use. If you want to publish your game there's some monetary costs involved, but if you're just making personal projects to learn or for a portfolio, you're biggest cost will be time. Unreal is probably the closest to what you'll use in a AAA studio; even if they use their own proprietary engine it'll often be similar enough that it will serve as a good foundation. Unity is currently the preferred engine among a lot of indie devs or on smaller projects and is an excellent learning tool. Since it was free before Unreal, there's a lot more third party tutorials and learning tools out there on the web. YouTube tutorials and other online video courses are an excellent stub-in for class room lectures. Trust me, I know.
Make a personal project. While you're learning, try and make something. If you just want to prototype a cool traversal system, or show off your level design skills, a personal project is a great way to do so. And the more polish it has, the more eye catching it is when putting together a portfolio. As someone that's interviewed people for designer roles, having a video reel or playable demo for work they've done goes a long way to proving you know your craft and gives a good avenue for interview questions.