Dev to Dev S01 E05 - Nick Heindl

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Dev to Dev, the podcast where we talk to everyday video game developers about why they do what they do every day. I'm here with another exciting guest to dig into their history and who they are as developers, as a developer. And today I'm here with. [00:00:19] Speaker B: Hello, my name is Nick Heindle, most recently an accessibility designer over at Zenimax Online Studios. Prior to that I was a technical designer and prior to that I was a gameplay engineer and I've worked on all sorts of games, primarily AAA first person shooters, but the most recent title that I was on was a little bit different. So, yeah, excited to, excited to chat today. [00:00:45] Speaker A: Yeah, excited to get into that history, Nick, and learn a bit more about who you are, what you do and how you got what you got. I like to kind of kick this off with a question that sort of takes us way back. What was, what was the thing that drew you to video games first? What was the first thing you can remember, like really making video games stand out to you? [00:01:07] Speaker B: Oh, that, that's a really good question. I don't know. I'm that age where games have sort of always been available, always been present. Um, and the first. I don't remember. I definitely don't remember the first game that I played, but I remember the first game that I beat was Power Rangers. The movie. The game. [00:01:32] Speaker A: Wow. [00:01:33] Speaker B: On Sega Genesis. Yeah. I rented it from a, from a local, you know, video store where you could rent games. And I rented it a bunch actually, and then eventually was able to kind of beat it. Um, now I do have to clarify. There's two versions of this game and the one that I've now learned is like much more popular and people know was a fighting game, but the one that I played and the one that I beat was actually like a 2D, like beat em Up Brawler. Yep. And so it's kind of funny because I've been looking for it ever since. Just casually, every time I go to a store I'm trying to find it. And I've never, I've never found it, but I have found the fighting game a lot. So. [00:02:16] Speaker A: Yes. [00:02:16] Speaker B: But that was the first game that I ever remember beating. I remember playing games, all sorts of games at home, at school. I actually taught myself how to, how to do multiplication and division using from the game Number Muncher. If folks remember that our school had an, an Apple II that was just kind of sitting in the corner and I was kind of a rowdy kid, so the teacher would be like, yeah, just Go over there and stop making noise. You'll be quiet on the computer. And I was like obsessed with number munchers and yeah, I've been playing games and been hooked ever since. [00:02:55] Speaker A: Interesting. So you were kind of drawn to an Apple ii. You know, maybe something less gamey but you know, I mean it sounds like maybe it was kind of. I didn't play number much of it. Maybe kind of on the edutainment side. [00:03:07] Speaker B: Totally. It's super primitive. It's like. Yeah, you have a Frogger esque looking creature and it just has some numbers and it'll give you a basic equation and you can go up or down to choose the right slot. [00:03:21] Speaker A: Right? [00:03:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And that was at school and then at home. I had throughout various parts of my life different consoles and I was usually one or two generations behind. Like we, we didn't really have too much growing up but we were like I, we always had some kind of console that was usually behind. So it was really interesting being like almost having a gaming vocabulary that's maybe a little bit older than my age brings across. I'm not, I'm not that young. I'm not that old and 32. But you know when I say like the first game that I beat was Power Rangers on the Genesis when you know the PlayStation was already out, like yeah, the N64 was already out. [00:04:09] Speaker A: Right, yeah. [00:04:11] Speaker B: So playing all sorts of games. Yeah, yeah. [00:04:14] Speaker A: So so sort of playing you like you say sort of playing games that were slightly sort of less, less current but therefore giving you kind of a broader understanding of games. That's interesting. And so you mentioned you, that was in school. Where did you grow, where did you grow up? [00:04:30] Speaker B: Yeah, so I grew up in a town in Wisconsin in the United States. So I don't think anybody will know the city name, but it's kind of in between the cities of Green Bay and Milwaukee. It's a city called Menasha. It's kind of an old paper mill. It's, it's like a conglomerate of cities. Actually it's not just one city. They call it the Fox Cities because it was one of the earliest places in the country actually that was colonized with the French fur trade. And each city, if I'm getting my history correct, each city back in the day was like a different ethnic enclave. So you had like the Polish city, the German city, the French city, the Dutch city, but as one big area they all kind of kind of blend together. And so I grew up there and yeah, I'm now I'm based In Madison, Wisconsin. So. [00:05:29] Speaker A: Right. [00:05:30] Speaker B: I never left this state for too long. I have left a few times, but never for too long. And yeah, it's really interesting, Wisconsin as a state for folks that don't know or folks that are abroad. Like, Wisconsin is not super well known for much besides cheese and beer and sports, but actually when you start to look at the history of gaming in Wisconsin, it's like pretty big. And this is something I had no idea until later in my life. And you start to see folks that have somewhat similar paths of like, nobody knew there was a history or legacy here and. [00:06:07] Speaker A: Yep. [00:06:08] Speaker B: But they're so passionate and so interested in it that you start to. Everybody kind of finds their tribe, so. [00:06:14] Speaker A: Sure. [00:06:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:16] Speaker A: Interesting. So. So you kind of grew up. Grew up there and, and did you. Do you have brothers and sisters that. That were playing video games as well. [00:06:24] Speaker B: Or was it just you kind of. Yeah, I have a half brother who we lived on and off together. And he. He's a little bit older than me. He's gonna hate that. I can't remember how many years older than me is, but I think eight or nine, so. So definitely a decent age gap. And I remember at various times he would be playing. At one point he saved up enough money with a. A paper route delivering papers to buy a PlayStation. And he was really into JRPGs in particular. And I remember him playing the Legend of. Of Dragoon as well as a bunch of other games. But I. I always remember that game and so I was definitely kind of exposed to it. You know, we didn't play much together, but I was around that and it definitely sort of shaped my interest in JRPGs in particular. I like all kinds of games, but yeah, I have an appreciation for the genre as well, so. [00:07:28] Speaker A: Nice. Okay. And. And did you. Do you have any friends, you know, that were gamers? Were you. You part of kind of a gaming tribe or it was just you, or how did that work? [00:07:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely had friends. So I moved around a lot like I said, as a kid. Thankfully I stayed within the same city, but we were always moving house, so the different neighborhood kids would change frequently. And I changed schools a few times. And through that I would always find the. The other kids that were playing games and really interested in playing games. And. Yeah, through that, I remember there was a family that, um, we moved to a newer house in a neighborhood that I. That I was not familiar with in my. In my city. And I saw these kids playing outside. They're around my age. I think I might have been maybe around 11 or 12, they're outside playing and we started chatting and they're like, oh, we have a Nintendo 64. You want to play? Do you want to play? I'm like, oh yeah, that sounds great. Like, you know, what do you guys have? And it was funny because at that time I didn't have an N64, but I was exposed to it from previous friends. And those previous friends had the more standard games like Mario Party and Pokemon Stadium and all that stuff. And I was like, yeah, sure, do you have your Mario Party? Do you have Pokemon Stadium? And they're like, no. And they showed me the games that they had and at the time I was just like, what is this? They had Harvest Moon 64, introduced me to that, which is still one of my all time favorite games. Like my mind, that was a definitely a canon event for me to see. Like, oh, you can have something that isn't necessarily thought of as fun, like farming. And it's like super compelling and really interesting. And there was another kid that was across the street who had Conker's Bad Fur Day, which arguably maybe we shouldn't have had back then, but yep, loved that game. Still love that game. Maybe you can see, maybe not. I have a great Mighty Poo Plushie over here. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so like, but those were, you know, kind of a little bit offbeat path N64 titles that like, I never would have found or discovered without meeting those folks. And they both had. Both of those games in particular actually had a kind of a profound impact on how I thought about games. And looking back on it, definitely how I develop games, but at the time I had no idea. But looking back, it is like, oh, a lot of the things that I look for and I understand as being compelling, fun or thinking about different systems kind of come from that. I remember there's one, one little anecdote about Conqueror that I was really into it and I made this notebook full of like statistics. So for folks that don't know, Conqueror was. Most people remember it as a single player collectathon for the N64 made by Rare. The folks that made Banjo Kazooie, I think Conker was made after banjo 1 and 2Y and the switch though is that it was extremely crass, mature humor. And one thing though, that, that I really got into that you don't always hear talked about is they had a really interesting multiplayer mode. And so, you know, of course Rare, like also made wonderful multiplayer games for the N64 and their multiplayer mode For Conker, there were so many different modes and variants and characters and, and all this stuff. And I1 just loved playing it. But also in this notebook, I ended up writing down a bunch of like, stats and it was basically making like, achievements and like designing like a meta progression system. And I had no idea what I was doing. I was just like loving it. I was just excited and like, oh, what if you. What if you could add this? What if you could add that? And you know, that's something that I didn't think about for at least a decade that eventually when I started making games professionally, I look back, I was like, oh, that's one of those moments where it's like, it all kind of makes sense. It all kind of fits. Like, yeah, well, that's. [00:12:04] Speaker A: I mean, that's exactly the kind of stuff I want to get into as we go through because that's very much what, you know, I'm kind of searching for in these conversations is moments where, you know, you as a gamer and you as a developer overlap. So I love that that's. Know that's in our future. Just, just going back to. You mentioned Harvest Moon as moon as well as something that really spoke to you. What was it about it that spoke to you? [00:12:25] Speaker B: I think it was. There's. There's a few things. I still love the look of that game. Like, I still don't think that even today. You know, I think you could, you could release that today and it would do very well. Granted. I know that now the genre is sort of revived and thriving. Really. It is kind of funny if you, if you're familiar with Stardew and you go back and play Harvest Moon because a lot of, A lot of gamers have never played Harvest Moon. Like, it's this. It is so much the same game. There's so much inspiration taken from Harvest Moon. And yeah, so I think visually was the first thing that kind of stood out. It's these little Chibi characters. But they don't look too. They don't look like kawaii, like JRPGs, we're looking at the time. They don't look overly, like realistic, which games were starting to push towards. So I liked that. And I think the roguelike nature of it, where you have a day, you have a set amount of energy, you can't do everything and the game knows that and that's okay. You kind of do what you can grab some stuff and do some farming, do some socializing, and that's your day. And I think the sort of like the mundane nature of everything that you were doing. Like, but I. I loved it. And I. And I remember being like, why is this fun to me? Like, why am I interested in this? You know, it's not something that I was doing in real life. And that is always something that stuck with me of, like, being able to find the beauty and the joy in things that aren't necessarily always thought of as being. Having beauty or being joyful. And. Yeah, I think you kind of see that with a lot of the. The cozy game resurgence or renaissance right now. [00:14:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, got it. Okay, interesting. Okay, so. So you're playing. You're playing all kinds of different games. Maybe some slightly older games at the time. You go to school. You go to. I've got your kind of history. You kind of went to college and. And you. You studied computer science at university. Yeah, at college. [00:14:49] Speaker B: Yep. I did computer science and linguistics. [00:14:51] Speaker A: So was there a point around that time where you aspired to make video games or. Or were you interest programming? How did those styles alone. [00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good question. So I'll say. Up until before I started university, I didn't really think that I could be a game developer. Like, I just didn't think it was possible. It wasn't like, oh, I'm too bad for this, or I'm not good enough. It was just. No, that's just not. That's not a thing that exists. And I do remember talking in. I think it was middle school, talking with, you know, we had some kind of assignment or something of, what do you want to do? And I think they were teaching us how to use a lookup system for the library. And so they were like, find something here, the profession you want to do. Read something about it. And I tried looking up video games, and, like, you know, there wasn't much to begin with. But I also remember, I don't know, it must have been the teacher, because I don't think a librarian would ever say this, but they were basically. That's not a job that, like, look for something else. That's not. That's not something people do. And it wasn't like a negative thing. It was just, you know, So I guess, like, from that, I was just going, all right, yeah, I guess. I guess you're right, because I don't know anybody that does this. I don't even know how you would go about doing this outside of little programs that I would use here and there. I did a lot of Flash in middle school, and I found ways to kind of be making Games, but never thought of myself as oh, I'm making games. Or never thought that it was like a thing that I could look up or research or really get better at. So by the time I started university, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I was like, well, I have all these interests. And so my first semester I took a computer science course. I took an astronomy course. I took a. Actually originally signed up for Arabic because I've always liked languages, but that ended up getting switched to a linguistic, like a general linguistics course, which I've also never heard of before. But I was like, sounds neat. And yeah, I was like, whoa, I love computer science. I love programming. I also love linguistics. So I was fortunate that I could do both. And but before that I didn't really know much about programming. I didn't know what you could really do with it. I didn't understand that that was really how you made games. And I will caveat this with I was always on a computer whenever I could be. We didn't always have a computer at home, but whenever I was, I was always obsessed with it. Always messing around with settings and learning and getting the family computer a bunch of viruses. But through that I was like, oh, I'm like pretty like technical. And I would set up like LAN parties and set up servers for, for different games. And in high school we had a. I know this is going back a little bit before university, but in high school we had a computer programming course that, that popped up and I was like, I don't know what that is, but okay. And it was, and the description was, you'll make a website. I was like, oh, that's cool. Because at the time like MySpace was big and I actually had my own website on geocities for a clan that I ran in a browser based game that probably nobody knows called Dark Throne. Loved Dark Throne. And so I was like, yeah, website's on. Cool. And so signed up for that class, you know, learned a little bit about HTML and all these things I was copying pasting from around the Internet. I kind of learned, oh, I guess there's some structure to it, but didn't learn much. And then there was a follow up to that where you could kind of do the same thing the following either semester or year. However, I don't remember exactly how it's set up, but the project was going to be you make a game. And it ended up being a 2D platformer, kind of like Mario and it used the XNA game framework. And what was interesting is the teacher who was wonderful and I'm super grateful for, for having had that process. He came from like a photography and a CAD background. So I also actually took a CAD class that I, I really liked that. And, but he didn't know how to program. He just knew like, we should probably have a class on how to do this. And I think he, I should ask him. I think he was interested in kind of learning how to, how to program himself. But because of that, he was super, super upfront with everybody, like, hey, I don't know what I'm doing. We're going to follow some of these tutorials, we're all going to kind of learn together. And so it was, it was only a few kids because it was the kids that kind of excelled at the website stuff and really just wanted to keep being on the computer. And yeah, we all hacked together, made some wild Mario games by really not understanding what we were doing, but just throwing stuff together. And yeah, I fast forward to then I get to university and all the knowledge that I had from high school. I was excited. I was like, okay, I got a little bit of a head start. Every single thing that I knew was covered in the first lecture. That was it. And so, you know, it's funny, like, yeah, I had exposure, interest and definitely that, that tinkering mindset. Yeah. But no, I didn't really know anything. And for the programmers out there, like that original game that we made in high school, like, we didn't know what functions were. We didn't know that like functions were a thing or methods were a thing. So we had, our code was just littered with go to statements and you know, it's like painful to go back and think about that. But what's interesting is it actually kind of taught me a lot about an intrinsic need to organize your code. And of course Gotos have many problems, but yeah, I mean functionally it can work if you set it up like that. But yeah, that was the big example of like in the first lecture we learned if statements and while loops and also second lecture we learned functions. And I was like, what is that? And yeah, but yeah, I ended up loving computer science as a discipline. I really liked the. I still really like the kind of conceptual nature of it, kind of adding like logic and mathematical concepts to all these things and information theory. Yeah, I just really liked all of it. And I got really involved with the. There was a community that was kind of going around really big at the time, around some of the big universities running hackathons and still at this time I didn't know that we had that game development was an option. Right. I'm just like, I'm just here, we're doing programming. I went to a really nice university that was sort of a natural pipeline for a lot of the big tech companies like Facebook and Google and all that. So I was just kind of us what everybody's doing. And I like the problem solving. [00:22:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:07] Speaker B: So I would go to all these hackathons and work on all these random, fun, creative projects. And over the, over the years of doing that, I kind of, I saw patterns of the stuff that I'm doing is really creative and a little bit out there compared to a lot of these other things that people are making. And that's what I like doing. And I like making that kind of stuff. And that led to doing some game prototypes and basic games at some of these hackathons and finding the other people. I assumed everybody studying computer science was going to want to make a game. And I was like, I was shocked that most people were like, you're nuts. Why would you do that? Why don't you want to work at Facebook or whatever at the time? And so I did find the weirdos that wanted to make games and we got together and messed around. But I was still like, that won't be a career. I just like doing that. This is just, I'm just hanging out with my friends. I. Eventually I got a, an internship at Amazon over the summer. Not this is before Amazon Games existed. Amazon Games actually, I think spun up while I was an intern there because I heard rumblings and I, I tracked down somebody that was working there and it was, it was very early, but I was able to talk to him. But anyways, my, my position there was doing like machine learning, which, like, looking back at it, if I would have continued down that path, my life would have been very different. But you know, to be honest with you, it just wasn't a good fit. I really didn't like, I liked a lot of the people I liked. The work was interesting enough, but I really wanted to make games and there was too much about the culture that was not as creative, not as like, compelling to me. And so I'm really grateful for that experience because that kind of threw me into the deep end on the big tech side, being like, oh, I don't want to do that. That's not what I want to do. And so, and around that time I learned like, oh, making games actually can be viable. And, oh, there actually is a game studio in Madison and All these things, all these pieces were kind of connecting. And I was able to get an internship at a local studio in Madison. Raven Software, for folks that don't know. And Raven Software has been around forever. They've been around. I think they started 91, maybe 92. [00:24:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:45] Speaker B: And it's funny, like, I went to school there 10 minutes away, and I had no idea that there was a. That they were there. One day they showed up at a career fair for computer science and I was just like, what? Like, there's a game studio here. [00:25:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:03] Speaker B: And, yeah, there's a lot of little things in between there. But ultimately I got an internship at Raven. Really loved it. Went back after graduating and yeah, haven't looked back ever since. I love, I love making games. [00:25:18] Speaker A: Right. That's super interesting. So. So like you said, the actual reality of making video games took a while to dawn on you, but you were kind of drawn to the technical side, the program inside, the engineering side. And it sounds like those. There was some correlation there. Right. You made like little mini, you know, gaming opportunity things when you got the chance, but it was more the engineering and the problem solving and the technology that kind of drew you, I guess. Almost feels like dating right back to when you were the kid in the corner on the Apple ii. Right. You were kind of drawn to the technology, you were drawn to that side of it, but very much from an engineering perspective and not from a gaming perspective. It almost sounds like those were sort of two sides of you. Right. You had your game aside and then you had your tech engineering side and it took a while for those two to really overlap. [00:26:05] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely, because I, I just, I didn't even realize that it was possible. And so my, my degree, I took five years to do my degree because I was able to get the double major with. There's not a lot of overlap between the computer science and linguistic coursework in the university, so I needed extra time to finish all the courses. But I would say around year three in university was when I, it kind of all clicked and I got it and it's like, oh, I can actually do that. And yeah, it was, it was a really wild revelation to have. And then of course you're like, well, there's no way that I'm good enough for that and that I can do that. And like, yeah, I definitely feel incredibly fortunate, incredibly lucky that everything happened the way it did, that there happened to be a game studio in the city that I was going to school in, that they happened to show up at a career fair. And that they were really kind to me when I talked with them. And like we kept in touch afterwards even before I worked there and. And like I'm really grateful for those folks. Yeah. And yeah, like that's where it all kind of shifted. And it was funny because I remember having that revelation in, in university and we had a. There's career counselors and all that stuff that you could go talk to. And I never really talked with them much because I was kind of in my. There's a computer lab at the university that I was at that we would. It's sort of an undergrad run lab. It's. If you honestly, if you think of the IT crowd is. That was pretty much our lab and shouts to the upl. Love the UPL gang. I. I'm sure they'll watch this, but I remember like going to the career counselor and saying, yeah, I want to, I want to make games. Like, hell yeah. I really didn't like my time at Amazon. I really want to move forward. What should I be doing here? And the counselor was like shocked and was kind of negative and was like, why would you be doing that? And you know, they were coming from the perspective of they've only heard the horror stories of working in games. Yeah, you know, I, I don't think it was too far after EA Spouse. [00:28:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:26] Speaker B: Which I wasn't like super familiar with at the time, but I knew that the game industry was competitive and rough because I had always followed the industry, not just games, as much as I could back in the day, but not from the perspective of, oh, I can be one of those people. [00:28:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:47] Speaker B: That negativity, honestly, it was great for me because it helped. That pushed me to be like, no, I'm doing that. You're not going to tell me I can't do that. And I was able to find a faculty member who was encouraging about the industry. He came from the film VFX technology industry. Perry. His name is Perry. And he was super supportive with all of the endeavors that we had when it came to. I don't want to do database research to increase efficiency or throughput of networked systems. Like that is cool and interesting for sure. But when I learned, oh, I can do really hard problems, but also in the context of doing something creative and interesting and compelling and can tell a story like, yeah, I want to go that path. So, yeah, actually, okay, I just remembered, sorry, quick fun fact about the computer lab that I was part of the uplift the UPL lore. And I believe this is true because I Think somebody asked John Romero or. I was there when somebody asked John Romero and I. And I think Romero's response was that sounds right. I'm not 100 sure, but that sounds right. The first networked game of. I think, I don't remember if it was Wolf or Doom was played in our lab. [00:30:11] Speaker A: Right. [00:30:12] Speaker B: Because ID originally was in Madison for like, for a short period of time it was based in Madison. I don't know if they started in Madison or started in Texas, moved to Madison and went back to Texas. But yeah, they were here for a while. And that's actually where the connection between Raven Software and ID Software. [00:30:32] Speaker A: Yep. [00:30:32] Speaker B: Is so strong. We were all in the same city. So. Yeah. It's kind of this fun lore fact that like. Oh wow. Like, and I didn't learn that until I was like close to graduating. Like, wait, what? Like just again, more lore, more legacy of. Yes. Game development in the area and in the state. Yeah. The other, the other fun fact about the state too that I have to say is Dungeons and Dragons was started here and I had, I didn't know that until I was like 25. Like, and you just learn like, oh my God, there's so much history. There's so much really great talent here that. [00:31:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And interesting that you kind of grew up in that area not knowing that. [00:31:14] Speaker B: But then I would say, and I would say most people have no idea. [00:31:17] Speaker A: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:31:19] Speaker B: Even, you know, there's a lot of gamers background from. And in Madison as well. And even within Madison a lot of folks don't know that at this point we have multiple AAA studios in, in the city and they have, they have no idea. I went to an Internet cafe, a brand new Internet cafe downtown and was, you know, the bartender asked me like, what do you do for a living? I'm like, oh, I make games. And somebody who like works and I think they're a part owner of this Internet cafe that's made for gamers was like, really? And you know, so it's like it's, it's, it's like that. It's like nobody knows about it. It's all really like low key and. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:01] Speaker B: Yeah. It's fascinating. [00:32:03] Speaker A: Yeah. It's amazing to think that, yeah. It's going on so close and people just have no idea. Yeah. So you do some hacking and then you intern at Raven and then end up moving into Raven full time as a software engineer. So what was that experience like? Kind of going from outside the. Obviously you had a taste as an intern, but finally Sort of properly shifting into the industry and really getting started. How was that? How was it, you know, creatively? How was it socially, you know? How was that experience? [00:32:34] Speaker B: It was awesome. It was super cool. I mean, especially starting full time at Raven. Like, well, I'll say when I. When I made the commitment to, okay, I know I can make games and I want to make games and I'm going to push for that. When I was in university, I was also like, well, I'm going to have to move. I'm going to have to move somewhere. And I knew, okay, there's Raven. That's pretty much it. And I have. I did learn after. There was a few other options, but not many. And this was before remote work and games was generally acceptable. So I was just. I kind of resigned my fate to, yeah, I'm going to move somewhere. And I was cool with that. I was never expecting to stay in Madison. And yeah, so I ended up working full time at Raven and I was kind of like, yeah, I'll probably be here, you know, for a little bit. But then after whatever my next gig will be, I'll have to move, you know, didn't end up having to do that. So it's been interesting as I've been here the whole time. But yeah, it was cool because I didn't have to move. Like, I was still in the same place. My partner was taking a. I don't remember if she was during. If she was in her gap year or if she started her master's program that year, but either right away or a year into my job. So she started doing a master's program at the university as well. So it was like, okay, cool, we're here for a bit. And yeah, the transition between intern and full time, it didn't feel like there was a transition. It was so natural. It was like, you know, the team that I was on, the multiplayer gameplay team, they were so fantastic. Really nice, really smart people and really humble and friendly people. And when I was an intern, like I was making, I felt like just one of them. I wasn't like the intern in the corner doing their things. I was like, no, I'm here doing whatever needs to be done just like everybody else and contributing things and still like getting pieces of ownership that that at least could be finished within a few months. Right. That was the biggest, the big barrier. I. I do remember when the summer finished. I think it was Black Ops 3. The Raven was working on the last gen ports for Black Ops 3 and they were on fire. It was. It Was very tough. And so they asked like, can you stay here to help? I was on a game called Call of Duty Online, which is a Chinese only Call of Duty game, which is a hidden gem. It's so cool. I love it. It's very weird, very creative. But they asked me like, can you stay to work on Kato so we can move some other folks over to help get Black Ops out the door? And I was like, I'm sorry, I need to finish my degree, but I'll be back. Right. So I came back and yeah, I was put on the same team, the multiplayer gameplay team. It really, it was just so natural and everybody was so welcoming. And yeah, I didn't have to onboard actually. I think I wrote the onboarding stuff as an intern. So like I was like, it's all my stuff anyways. Yep. Yeah. And just was able, because I was there full time now, I was able to take ownership and do feature work for things that just kind of last naturally that take longer to do. So that was really great. Yeah. And I did all sorts of stuff. It was a super fun project to work on for sure. [00:36:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Sounds like a very diverse one. And in that sort of multiplayer area as well, which sounds like the, you know, types of games that you like to play, you were kind of drawn to multiplayer. [00:36:22] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, it's funny, I like, I definitely like all kinds of games. There's. There's very few genres or games that I am not fond of and there's definitely none that I dislike at this stage of my life. I do tend to prefer single player games. Um, but that's not to say that I don't like multiplayer. And when I was growing up, I definitely had a, a phase where I was really into Call of Duty, Halo, I had a counter strike 1.6 phase at Internet cafes and stuff like that. And so I knew that space, even though at the time I wasn't playing Call of Duty or Battlefield or anything like that. Like, I knew that space pretty well. And the project that we were on, Call of Duty Online, it was a live service, free to play game, Call of Duty game in China. It was originally forked from Modern Warfare 2, which at that time was already old. And that was to sort of meet the much lower min spec PC of the Chinese market. And I think a lot of the PCs there were actually also in Internet cafes in China. So we were sort of targeting those. And because it was live service and Activision didn't really do live service then like this was it, like. And so it Was really interesting to kind of be part of that and learn about live service because the industry was just starting to kind of under. Like, it was just starting to be a term. Yeah. And we were pushing stuff so fast and sometimes it was just throw it at the wall, see if it sticks. Sometimes the team didn't necessarily have faith in an idea, but it was like, well, why not? Let's just try it, maybe, maybe they'll like it. And I think that was also a really strong education in game development by going through really fast dev cycles of features and game modes within live service, but also doing so in a market that was inaccessible to us otherwise. So for context, if you wanted to play Call of Duty online outside of mainland China, you had to. I have one friend that actually was wild enough to do it. Shout outs to them, they're fantastic. But I believe they had to spoof a Taiwanese passport and get a bunch of different VPNs to hook up to just to be able to log in to the game. And so you couldn't really play it outside of work. And what was neat, though, was that really taught me, like, oh, people play games differently. And, you know, like I mentioned in college I studied linguistics and I've always been interested in different languages, different cultures. And so this really spoke to me of like, whoa, how do people. What's different about playing games in China than playing games in the US and you start to dig and learn, you're like, oh, there's a lot actually. You know, there's of course a ton of similarities. But no, it's like where they play games, how they play games is just kind of different and design sensibilities and what they find interesting can be different. And that really opened my eyes up as a dev too, to kind of have a wider lens of. When you're making stuff. Like, are you just doing it for your lens, for your perspective of the world? Are you being more inclusive of the rest of the world? How they view things, what they find fun might be different from what we find fun. There was an example of a mode that we shipped that was. It was a melee only. It was a third person melee mode with like swords and stuff. And like, this is Call of Duty, right? Like, yeah, this is Modern Warfare 2. So that's odd for. For folks that grew up playing Modern Warfare 2 in the States or in the UK, right. Like, but that was like one of our most played modes in China. So, you know, that was one of the one. An example where we were like, this isn't gonna this is weird. Like, what are we doing? And we tried our best to make it fun, but we were like, this is just so fundamentally not cod, like, what's going on? And, yeah, I mean, they loved it. And that was just one of many examples of things that you learn of, like, oh, yeah, like, people react differently to things, and there's different trends and there's different styles. One thing that we had in our. In our store was the ability to rent items. So you couldn't always buy, like, a new gun that comes out. You couldn't buy it, if I'm recalling correctly, like, outright, but you could rent it for a week, and then your access afterwards would go away. And, like, when I saw that, I was just like, what? Like, you know, because this is before battle passes. Yeah, this is right before battle passes. [00:41:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:29] Speaker B: And that whole concept just felt so wild to me. But then you, like, you know, you dove a little bit more into the Chinese market, and you looked at other games like Nijan and Crossfire, and you're like, oh, they're all doing this. And it was. It was really interesting to, as somebody who played games their whole life and has loved games and always try to absorb as much as I could about games and game culture to kind of learn, oh, yeah, that's just a small piece of the pie. Like, there is so much more out there, and people are doing wild and wonderful things everywhere. [00:42:06] Speaker A: So, yeah, that's really interesting. And I don't know if this is a stretch, but it almost feels like it correlates back to your. The JRPG connection that you had earlier when you were younger. Maybe, you know, like, because JRPGs can be, you know, feel very culturally different. And, you know, Japanese games have a very. Especially JRPGs have a very specific style. Obviously, they're in a foreign, you know, foreign language. Right. So it almost feels like. Is that. Is that a stretch? It always feels like there's kind of a correlation there between that and linguistics. And then, you know, what you. You had on Cotton line, stuff like that. [00:42:38] Speaker B: I think you're onto something, right? I think that. So another one of my favorite games is katamari. Damashi. Love katamari. My handle online usually has some form of katamari in it. And it's funny because so many people clearly have never played katamari, and they always mispronounce my name. But games like that, like, I've always liked games that are a little odd, a little weird, and, of course, coming, you know, being a native English speaker living in America, living In the Midwest, you know, a lot of these things felt especially odd or peculiar compared to what we were used to. [00:43:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:16] Speaker B: And I definitely, like, gravitated towards all that stuff, so. And I think with Call of Duty Online, I definitely did appreciate the cultural and linguistic element of, oh, this is totally different. But also I just, I think even more so, I really appreciated how odd it felt compared to what we were used to, especially with a game like you have Modern Warfare 2, which is a classic. It's very defined. Yep. And this in so many respects was nothing like Modern Warfare 2. And in the wildest way possible. And occasionally we would get some validation with streamers or YouTubers that could get access to it somehow and, and play it. But it wasn't many COD streamers and I won't name names because COD streamers or COD streamers. But, you know, they're not always the nicest people to watch. They're not always the most friendly people to watch, but we had so few opportunities to see English speakers play our game that like, we. Every time that, you know, one of these streamers would. Would make a video for Kado, we had to jump in and watch it. And it was, they were always, they always talked so positively about it. Even though the game, like, visually was probably a decade or more behind mainline Call of Duty in the west, like, they were always so impressed and so excited and so like, jazzed by all the weird creative things that we got to do with the game and. Yeah, but I do think that there's a little bit of a connection of. I've always kind of gravitated towards the weird, the what's new and interesting and fresh. [00:45:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I guess you kind of. You shifted through pubg, you know, after Raven and moved, you know, I'm not sure was that you were still programming there and then, and then when you, you came over to Zos, then you kind of shifted into a bit more of the technical design. [00:45:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:45:26] Speaker A: And. And then ultimately the accessibility side, which you kind of mentioned at the start, like, that feels in many ways like the culmination of that journey, you know, at that time. Right. That, that unification of different viewpoint language, different, you know, different ways people approach what they're playing. It feels like that all came together in that role maybe. [00:45:49] Speaker B: I definitely think so too. Yeah. Yeah. The, the transition from. When I moved from, from Raven to pubg. Yeah, I stayed as a. An engineer, but when I moved from PUBG to Zos, I actually initially applied to continue to be a gameplay engineer because ZOS was Opening up a studio presence in Madison. I knew a bunch of people that were there and I was like, you know, that sounds really cool, right? But when I applied, one of the folks in Madison actually like poked me and was like, oh, hey, you should, you should look at this position instead. Technical design. They had worked with me before and they were like, this is like, you'd be great at this. And I was like, I've never really heard of tech design before. Of course I can kind of grok what it means. But I had such a strong identity as a, as a programmer, as an engineer, that at first I was kind of like slightly offended. I'm like, what? Like, you know, am I not good enough to be an engineer? But I read into it and did the interviews, and especially after the interviews, I was like, oh no, this is so great. This is like all of the best things that I love about gameplay engineering is that gameplay engineering is often at the center of a lot of the creation process. You have to interface with design, art, animation, audio, vfx, engine programmers, network programmers, tools programmers. And that's the part that I loved was sort of being able to communicate and coordinate with all these folks as well as actually bring stuff in. And at zos, they were starting this new team up for tech design that was very similar to that. So I was like, yeah, let's do it. So I jumped in and yeah, I loved it. And I, of course, in the years since doing that, or as I was doing that, learned more and more, looked up more of what is tech design across the industry. It's funny because it is a little bit different everywhere, frankly. Just like, just like every role, just like gameplay engineering, especially like tech art, you know, it's whatever the studio needs is sort of what the role dictates and but overall, like, I love being in that Nexus and helping bring things to life while coordinating with all the relevant parties. And so yeah, from tech Design, eventually moved into accessibility full time. But that's an interesting story because on paper it's like, oh, I just moved from, you know, from one position to another. But really what was happening is that whole time, that whole like eight years or whatever that I'm talking about, from starting at Raven, moving to pubg, moving to Sauce, I was doing accessibility stuff and actively interested in it and trying to push it as much as I could to varying degrees of success at all the places. And I learned a lot about not only what is good game accessibility and you know, by watching talks and making sure that I was staying current with industry trends and where things were going, but also, like, how do I talk to my co workers about this stuff? Where at the time, game accessibility was very much not a phrase that was heard ever or very often at least. Right. So you had a lot of these really talented game developers, especially at Raven, just by the nature of it being such an institution. You had these folks that had decades of experience that just have never heard of it. They've never been exposed to that as a phrase. And, you know, figuring out as a, as a developer, how do you approach folks that might not know what you're talking about? In fact, they almost guaranteed have no idea what you're talking about. And they're also under the wire to finish whatever they're working on. And how do you sort of reconcile that? And I think that was something that I learned throughout that whole process of being able to really understand the debt perspective of when folks don't know what you're talking about and they're under the gun to get stuff out and get stuff done, it's really hard to ask or push for anything really. And with accessibility, especially at the time, there was a lot of baggage with misinformation or misunderstanding of what accessibility is or was or what the goals were. Just in the greater industry, the Dark Souls question always came up. And you know, that being like, well, Dark Souls is, is hard. It's supposed to be hard. You're not supposed to make it easy. And it's like, well, accessibility isn't about making it easy, so stuff like that. And yeah, so I was always trying to sort of push it. And I'll say I got the bug initially because I at one point had no idea what it was either. And I went to gdc. I think it was after my internship at Raven while I was still in college, but after my internship before full time, and I stumbled upon the Game Accessibility Summit at gdc, I was just wandering. I. I didn't have, you know, I didn't know many people there and I didn't have a set schedule for, for some of the days. And so I just kind of was like, that sounds kind of neat. I have no idea what that is. And I, like, instantly was like, hooked and was like, this is like, this is a whole new world. Like, yeah, this is really fascinating. And this opens up so many different, like, design issues in games and design considerations. And, you know, there's a huge segment of players that a lot of game developers aren't even thinking about. And, you know, I also at one point was in that that same group where I'm like, yeah, how would a blind person ever play Call of Duty? Like, you know, yeah. And then you start to learn like, oh, okay, here's how, here's the barriers that they're going through and here's how we could make it easier for them to actually enjoy the experience. And like you start to kind of break it up by that. And that was my big like light bulb moment, was seeing that. And everybody there was also super nice and welcoming and I was just a little student, you know, like, oh, this seems neat. And everybody was so cool. And since then I've had the bug and every time anything game accessibility would sort of come up, whether it was a GDC talk or an industry paper on or eventually when the Game Accessibility conference started every year I would watch all those and try to sort of push it as much as I could at wherever I was. And I do remember when I was interviewing at Cinemax Online for the technical designer position, I straight up said to the game director, like, just to let you know, I also really am passionate about game accessibility. I will be doing that. Like, you know, of course I'm going to do my role as a tech designer and I also love that work. I really deeply love that kind of work. But in my free time, like I will be doing this. If that's not something that you as a, as a game director or as a studio want or care about, okay, that's fine. But like I'm, I'm putting it out there on the table and at the time I really didn't know where that, where that was landing. Right. And I found out after the fact that everybody was like, no, that's awesome. Like it was fortunate that we were with, we had some, some great leaders that understood the benefit of it. But yeah, I was able to kind of continue that push and eventually was able to get a full time role doing it, which was a whole other story. And yeah, I know I'm kind of rambling. It's kind of. [00:54:08] Speaker A: No, no, it's great. [00:54:09] Speaker B: It's. [00:54:09] Speaker A: I love that journey is, you know, you found a, that you carved a niche for yourself that to your point, is often misunderstood and often not spoken enough of. I'm curious if there was a draw to the accessibility stuff that related to you as a person. Right. You know, do you, I mean, it sort of correlates with, you know, being interested in different languages and you know, sort of correlates with some of the stuff you've spoken about. But was there something about the accessibility that really spoke to you as a person, as a human. [00:54:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, of course, there's that aspect of sort of the. The cultural aspect of, hey, there's this, like, group of people that are often ignored or neglected by society that are playing the games that you're playing with you, and maybe we should consider them when we're actually making the games and just not ignore them. So there's part of that where it was like, oh, wow. Like, so it's similar to, you know, where those. That. That core interest of wanting to learn more about the world, wanting to include more folks into what you're doing. I will say, too, like, growing up, I was, like. My personal experience with disability was I was around it a lot in school. I was in the. I actually don't even remember what the proper term was, but I was in, like, the. I was in a special ed program in elementary school, but it was for, like, bad kids or kids with, like, behavior problems, because I was always acting up and I was always talkative. Turns out if you just gave me a math workbook, I would be fine. Or if you, you know, you shoo me away to the computer in the corner, I'm good. I just need to be doing something right. But from that, you know, growing up, I had a lot of experience working with. Not working with. Sorry, but being around different types of disability, not just what we would normally. What a lot of people would normally think of as physical disability. I, ironically enough, was not around folks with physical disability too much, but with a lot of, like, mental disability. And so it was just kind of always there and something that I had a lot of empathy for going through that, you know, without getting too deep in it, like, going through that process. There's a lot of trauma. There's a lot of. A lot of tough times within the school system. And I don't know if folks are curious, you can Google the school to prison pipeline. Like, it's a very real thing, and it's a portion of the school system in the US that can be very easily overlooked or hidden within plain sight. And I was able to sort of get out of that program thanks to a lot of wonderful people advocating for me on my behalf. But a lot of other folks aren't that aren't as lucky. And I think that sort of helped at that core. You know, I've always been somebody that rooted for the underdog and that rooted for folks that were maybe marginalized in some way. And I think a lot of it comes from that, where I was that person for my early childhood especially. Like, I. Yeah, I know that I've had a lot of luck and a lot of privilege being who I am and being in the position I am. I'm a reasonably intelligent white dude from the U.S. like, there's a lot of benefits and. And privilege that comes with that, but especially growing up, it was like a totally different experience of feeling very othered, feeling very marginalized within the school system. [00:57:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:57:54] Speaker B: Oddly enough, I was always very social sociable, and the students never had issues with me. Like, I always had friends. But it was sort of like learning about institutional systems that can really hold people back and. Yeah. Anyways, I think that that at its core really helped contribute to bringing a lot of empathy for. Hey, I might not know a lot about certain, like, physical disabilities. Especially, like, I might not have a lot of friends or family that have gone through it, but everybody knows somebody that has had a disability. It's so. It's so common. It's so prevalent. Yeah. And yeah, they want to play games just as much as you do. Right. So. [00:58:40] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, it's. I think you can really trace that line, you know, in this conversation from, you know, that experience through, you know, the type of games you. You sort of were drawn to early on through, you know, fortuitous GDC game developer conference kind of moment where. Where those. There was sort of a confluence of those things and then caught online and, you know, and ultimately fight advocating for that role in an interview, like, because you were that passionate about it. I think that's amazing to sort of see that. That manifest. You've sort of willed it into, you know, into. Into being and got some great. I mean, you know, the work you did at Doss on. On the accessibility side was. Was so exciting. And, you know, it gives you such good experience moving forward. [00:59:24] Speaker B: Thank you. Yeah, thank you. [00:59:25] Speaker A: As we kind of wind this down, just a couple of other things I'm curious about. [00:59:29] Speaker B: Yeah. How. [00:59:29] Speaker A: How does your family relate to. To what you do? [00:59:36] Speaker B: They don't. And it's not in a bad way. They're not like, oh, he's off doing whatever. Um, now my mom doesn't play games. Um, she unders. She knows what a game is. Um, I think she knew Call of Duty. And I, you know, working at ZeniMax Online, I was not on the Elder Scrolls Online. I was on an unannounced project. But when I moved over to Zos, I could at least say it's kind of like Skyrim. Right. Like, you know, like, it's. You can think of Skyrim. And then she knows she knew Skyrim. Right. So doesn't know much, but she knew a little bit. And she's supportive. [01:00:14] Speaker A: Right. [01:00:15] Speaker B: And my dad, they're separated. My dad actually is kind of a casual gamer himself and. But he doesn't understand the development process of it, so there's not a lot of like, relation there. And yeah, my brother is actually probably the closest who he ended up going into. Like, it worked. And you know, he's comes from that really like technical tinkering growing up and so he understands it the most. But no, everybody is supportive, but I don't think anybody really fully understands it, which is okay. That's fine with me. [01:00:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, makes sense. And then, and then having made games, has it changed the way you play games? [01:01:05] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it totally. I mean, I'm sure you. I'm sure I would be shocked if you actually talked with the dev that said, no, it hasn't like that something smells wrong there. Yeah, yeah, it definitely has. I think it has benefits and it has downsides. I think the downsides are really easy to focus on. Maybe that's just how I think. But yeah, you know, sometimes when I'm playing games, it's really easy to notice, especially coming from the AAA space. Noticing all these little, little, little tiny either bugs or items that could be polished or pop in is always something. It's something I never even. It took me a while to learn that I even did this. But sometimes I'll play games in front of my partner who is not in the industry at. But we'll be playing a game together and I'll just be like popping like under my breath. I'll just be like popping like, you know, or, or whatever. And at one point I think we were playing Stray, which is a fantastic game, wonderful experience. And yeah, there's like some pop in at the very beginning and I was like popping like. And I'm like muttering to myself like, how did they do that at the beginning? Yeah, it's the first level. Come on, guys. And at one point like my partner was like, do you even have fun doing this? Like, like, like, are you at work right now or are you, are you enjoying it? And I'm like, no, no, I totally enjoying it. And it, it is sort of a. It's just the automatic thought now that you're, that you're, you're trained to look for, for certain things, I think that can be a little bit of a downside because it can be hard. It can take you out of when you want to just be immersed into a game. I think the, the positives are making games is really fascinating and there's a lot of really interesting techniques and problems. And, you know, ultimately our art form is a creative one first that happens to have a lot of a strong relationship with technology and problems like, like technical problem solving, but it's not a technological problem first. And I think a lot of folks outside of the industry might make that. That misconception where, you know, if they understand, oh, yeah, making games is really hard. It's like, that's. That's it. I'm like, no, it's. The creative part is the core of it. And, you know, I think for me, what I love about playing games when I do play it in that dev mindset, is thinking about how do they do this? But. But in a way that's, that's more like engaging and interesting and you're like, wow, I really want to know. And like, you know, pushing the limits of the simulation maybe in ways that a typical player wouldn't necessarily do, but you're trying to do it to see, like, did they do this? Did they do that? Like, how did they get this certain effect? Sometimes it's, it's less technical too, and it's more like, wow, how did this game do such an awesome narrative? How did they wrangle a team of this size to be able to get such a cohesive thing? Like, yeah, and to me, that's. That's also fascinating. Like, the story behind the art is oftentimes just as interesting as the art itself, whether it's movies or music or games. So, yeah, definitely changes how I play games. I do think overall it's positive. But, yeah. Yeah, there can be the kind of like. Like it's too buggy for me or getting too caught up in the. [01:04:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:04:47] Speaker B: The mindset and not being able to fully, like, let yourself get absorbed by the world that you're jumping in. [01:04:54] Speaker A: Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of a general improved appreciation for the craft is. Is overall a positive. [01:05:01] Speaker B: Absolutely. [01:05:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:05:03] Speaker B: That's something that I also really love about playing older games because especially, like, games that are sort of regarded, that are still really highly regarded. You take a game like, like Half Life, for example, the original Half Life, at this point it's old enough to. To drink in the us it's old enough to vote pretty much anywhere. And you go back to it and you're like, wow, it's still doing some really fantastic and amazing things. And the storytelling that they have, it's still special. It's still really compelling and interesting. And to go back to a, a game that compared to the lifetime of the industry is maybe half, half of the whole industry ago at this point. Like, and to be like, damn, like this is really interesting and compelling from a storytelling perspective and I don't think that's ever going to go away. Like, just like you'll have a movie like, like Lawrence of Arabia that, that's not going to go away, that can still exist in, in the modern day next to all the wonderful movies that are coming out now. So yeah, it's cool to see the industry maturing. It's cool to see the industry change in those ways and to see what people are gravitating towards. It's always really exciting. [01:06:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, like you say, all games, especially when they're doing more with less sometimes and you know, sometimes they're solving problems that at that time were not solved but to now are. Yeah, it's always really interesting. Great. I mean, fantastic story and journey, Nick. I've really enjoyed kind of understanding, you know, where your passions in and out of gaming have kind of led you through your career and you know, fortuitously come together sometimes or you know, drawn you towards them in interesting ways. And it's been great to get an understanding of who you are and as a human, as a gamer and as a developer. So I really appreciate your time. [01:07:02] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. This is wonderful. If you ever need a follow up or anything like that, I'm always available. [01:07:08] Speaker A: I do feel like there's some pieces we barely scratched the surface of. So yeah, maybe around two at some point we'll be on the cards. But yeah, thank you for taking the time. [01:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. [01:07:18] Speaker A: Cheers.