Over the years I have found my career in the gaming industry
a strange mix. On the one hand I’ve
without a doubt devoted myself to my career having started back in 1997 as a lowly
phone rep at Activision and clawing my way to design in 2000. From then to today I’ve worked on many AAA
titles and have the respect of many of my peers. But on the other hand I’ve found a kind of
emptiness in that I’ve only worked on what feels like other people’s
ideas. Certainly I’ve had creative input
to the content of Wolfenstein, Quake, Farcry, titles but none of them are what
I would call “my game.” They weren’t my concept.
Do I have my own idea?
Wow! Certainly! I’ve been
documenting my design ideas since the early days and have many fresh takes and completely
new concepts. Back in 2000 I and a small
group of people from what was Gray Matter studios pitched one of my ideas to
Activision. They loved the idea but we
were really “green” and they wanted us to get a few more titles under our belt
before they would be willing to fund us as an indie company. So we all drifted into our separate careers
in Ubisoft, Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and others.
With the accessibility
of game engines like Unity, Unreal, and
others why haven’t I jumped in and started doing my own thing? Well that is a question that haunts me daily. First of all it’s often hard to work on games
all day and then come home and work on games all night. I know it’s a very
popular assumption that working on games isn’t work but it really is. Like the saying goes, “All work and no play
makes Jack a dull boy.” Also it’s one
thing to work in a particular role and something very different to assume all
roles. The stack of work gets rather high
when you realize you have to do it all yourself. I can certainly handle the game design and
level design. I have an art degree so I
could fill the role of art and modeling.
I have done scripting so I could handle some light code. But I am certainly NOT a programmer. Numbers and I have not been friends in the
past and I’m not thrilled with the idea that I need to learn serious
programming. My experience has been that
if what you want to do is not something you’re engine can do then you’re on the
right track. You’re not going to break new
ground doing what everyone else is doing.
But to bend the rules you need to program a way to do it. So in that lies the turmoil. The obvious solution is to get a programming
partner but I am soooooo reluctant to involve someone else.
Another hurtle is that as a designer most studios don’t
allow us to have side projects. You are
in breach of your agreement if you are either designing for someone else or
yourself while working for a studio.
Luckily Ubisoft has an option.
You can pitch your idea to them and if they are not interested they will
sign a “Right of First Refusal” agreement that allows you to freely work on
it. Of course there is a chance they
would be interested which for me would be tragic. You could say I have trust issues and that
would be pretty true. Like letting your
child out into the world, really you can only hope for the best and I’m just
not ready to do that yet.
So I should be able to sit back, proud of my career accomplishments thus far and
the big AAA titles I’ve worked on. But I
really envy the little indies that aren’t following the money making trends and
are chasing their dreams. I might get
there eventually fingers crossed.
Hi, I’m Chad Bordwell. I've been working in the game industry since 1997 and I specifically started my design career in 2000. As a designer I've shipped over 10 AAA titles, such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Quake4, and most recently Farcry 5.
