Ubisoft & Coffee Gripe

So this is kind of a dumb thing but it bugs me. I've been around the industry for awhile & worked at several companies.Usually the studio wants to encourage you to be at your job, happy, and working.  So they offer little perks.  Raven for instance had free coffee and free soda 24/7.  Gray Matter was really over the top. They had a full stocked fridge and would go get anything you wanted upon request.  Hell they even bought me a pillow and blanket so I could sleep on the floor of my office.  But the standard at all companies I've been at is free coffee.

Ubisoft however doesn't really give you free anything.  Sometimes they have fruit. But snacks, coffee, soda, are all through vending machines.  And pretty high priced vending machines.  A candy bar would cost you $1.50, chips $1.25, and a can of soda $1.  So screw that, we'd go out for coffee.  Going out gives you a chance to step away from the monitors and take a breather.  Since Ubisoft has around 800 employees several coffee shops sprung up within walking distance. So you also were supporting the local economy which is the whole point of Ontario giving them tax breaks, to help boost business overall.

Now I see Ubisoft Toronto added an "in house" coffee shop.  Not a free coffee shop, hell no.  A full fledged pay for coffee and pastries coffee shop, with a freakin' menus on the wall and everything.  What the actual fuck??

It totally reminds me of the old mining companies that would setup a town around the mine.  Then charge their workers for food, rent, supplies, medical care, which was basically taking back the money they pay them.  I believe these practices were deemed illegal?  lol

Then there are all those local coffee shops.  They will be going out of business shortly.  That's gonna be a huge hit on their livelihood. So much for supporting the local economy.

But seriously not cool.  Just have plain standard FREE coffee machines in-house, then let people go to the local businesses for the special coffees and pastries. Their employees work long and hard, literally making Ubisoft millions of dollars. Buy them a fucking cup of coffee.

Your Experience Has Little Value

I've been searching for a new position these last few months. I've seen an interesting trend that I didn't expect, and I find it pretty disheartening.


If you've been working at a big AAA game developer more than likely you've been using their proprietary engine.  In my case I was working with Dunia which is a far deviated version of the CryTech engine.  I've worked with this engine for almost 9 years.  My role was to build and script game play areas and missions.  I did not consider however that while I was working with Dunia the industry was changing.

Unreal 4 & Unity made game development so much more accessible for small startups which is was great!  Big AAA publishers are really more of a money machine who's goal is to churn out cash rather than taking risks with innovative ideas.  Giving these little studios access to make something new not only helped them, but it helped the industry as a whole. The competition forces AAA out of their comfort zones and drives the whole industry forward.  So when the time came for me to move on I jumped out into the job market with 20+ years of game development experience expecting that I'd be in demand, but that was the wrong assumption.

Working for 8+ years with a proprietary engine translates to zero experience for most companies that use UE4 or Unity.  They're not interested in dealing with anyone that would need to get up to speed with their production.  They want someone that has been living with their engine daily for years. Sure, I've used UE4 and I can create a map and script it but this is not a major part of my portfolio. I've been building in Dunia and id Tech engines shipping titles like Farcry 5 but this is of no value to them.  I had one developer straight up tell me, "My years of experience means nothing because it was with proprietary engines.  I have no useful knowledge for UE4 / Unity devs."   He went on to say, "You need to be using UE4 every day for 2 to 3 years min."

Let me be frank about this shortsightedness.  Most game engines are similar.  They all basically do the same thing.  For a person to move from one to another does require some time to get up to speed. An experienced designer generally knows what they are looking for, they just need to learn where to find it in an unfamiliar engine environment.  This would take two weeks, maybe three.  After that you then have a designer that has shipped top selling AAA titles since before you even started in the business.  Isn't that worth it?  Are two weeks going to be such a setback?  I shared this feedback with a friend and studio Creative Director he replied, "What a load of bullshit. That excludes so much of the industry workforce."

This attitude isn't just in regards to engine experience, its with platforms as well.  People that have worked on PC or console titles are at a huge disadvantage if they're looking to change to mobile or VR development.  Mobile studios aren't interested in console devs and vice versa.  Even within familiar platforms if you've only worked on single play VS multiplayer or if you've never worked on a free-to-play game you're immediately less desirable.  So what are these developers looking for?  I think I've found the answer.

Right now the majority of studios don't seem to be looking for creative, experienced people to help improve their titles.  They want someone who can quickly fill a seat and close some JIRA tasks.  No thinking required or even desired.

Google Stadia Experience

I received a package in the mail yesterday. Kind of forgot I had pre-ordered the Google Stadia back in June. Since we are a developer I thought I should have one. I have to say I was VERY skeptical. I had ordered a Steam Link in the past and expected the same laggy performance. 

So I hooked up the Chromecast, installed the phone apps. Our router is in the center of the home on the first floor and the TV I was using was in our basement entertainment area, so wireless. I launched Destiny 2 and it instantly started playing of course with no installing. I experienced zero lag or rubberbanding, and the graphics looked great! It was actually pretty amazing.

Ultimately I wished the subscription service was more like Netflix where you have unlimited access to a game library but that's really a dream service I'm not sure will ever exist.  I've heard with Stadia the subscription won't be required to play games which makes it more like an Xbox Live or Playstation Plus service which makes sense.

Overall I must say I was impressed with the performance.  I'm looking forward to their title choices expanding and I'm optimistic for what's to come from this.

Dev Stream of Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Usually after release I don't play the game again, they just sit in the shrink wrap.  But I'm currently on a three week vacation and thought it might be fun to play some of the titles I've worked on starting with the first, Return to Castle Wolfenstein.  So yesterday I did a two hour Twitch stream of the game over on my channel. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/226000013

Twitch doesn't keep videos around forever so you can also check it out over on YouTube. https://youtu.be/jjtjYir9dmI

In the video I talk about what working at Gray Matter was like back in 2000 and the industry in general.  Please join me if you can and sub to my channels.  Thanks

How Times Have Changed

I'm getting ready to stream some Return to Castle Wolfenstein on Twitch Monday Feb. 5th.  So I installed it to ensure it still runs and it ran perfectly.

When you quit out you are shown the credits screen and I found it amazing.  Today on a project like Call of Duty or Farcry it takes hundreds and hundreds of people and multiple studios to create a game.  But back on Return to Castle Wolfenstein we made the entire single play game with just 18 people.  Sure they had Nerve Studio make the multiplayer but today they would never dream of letting such a small number of people tackle a major AAA title.

Has My Career Been a Success??

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.

DOOM Documentary

Just came across this really good documentary about the creation of the latest DOOM.  It show the development struggles id Software had with making a new version of a legendary game.  Certainly similar struggles we had while making Wolfenstein and Quake 4 when I worked at Raven Software. Story was not id's strong suit and I'm glad they finally found a way around it that fits them.

Measuring My Art Chops

I've been tinkering around with a project at home.  It's a little overwhelming to sit down in front the computer and just create a game that isn't there in any form.  Where do you start?  What can you do yourself and what do you need help with?  These are the questions you don't have answers for until you dive in.

I have an art degree so I thought I might be able to handle the art myself but as a game designer it's been a long time since I created much art.  So I thought I should see what I can do in Photoshop.  My goal for the project's look is to have a style that was fun and sort of cartoonish, something like Warcraft.  To start I decided to do something simple and just create a board or a texture for a beam of wood.  No particular scale or metrics, just see if I could get the look I was going for.

This was sort of whimsical and fun like I wanted and was going the right direction but it needed more details like dings and chips.

So from start to finish I'd say it took about 3 hours and looked pretty close to what I had in mind.  At least I accomplished my goal of measuring my current art ability.  At the start I felt a little rusty but after turning on some music and digging in it started flowing pretty naturally.  I think it turned out alright.

Where My Interest in Games Came From

I often credit my intro to the video games to a Wolfenstein 3D demo but in reality if I think back I was interested in games way before that.  I lived out in the Iowa countryside so I rarely had access to video game arcades.  So I was super lucky in 1982 when my grandmother gave me a mini Donkey Kong console for Christmas.  I played this thing to death and was grounded on several occasions for playing it under the blankets when I should have been sleeping.  It was super simple but it was all I had.  This game had to

get me through a number of years because it wasn’t until I was in high school that I was able to hit the arcade with any kind of regularity and Wolfenstein 3D was 10 years away.  When I did get to the arcade I would go for Duck Hunt, Tempest, and Rampage but my favorite was always Joust.  I don’t know what it was about those flapping ostrich riders but I couldn’t get enough.

After graduation I had a roommate and he had a Sega Master System and I was hooked.  Space Harrier, Ghost House, Psycho Fox, Fantasy Zone.  My game play became pretty regular and annoying to the people around me including my roommate who wanted his console time back.  But like everyone fresh out of school I had no money and when my girlfriend and I moved out and got married we didn’t have money for games and again my inner gamer went into hibernation waiting for the right conditions to emerge.

These conditions happened years later when my wife mistakenly agreed that we should get a Sega

Genesis system.  BAM!! Again emerged the gamer sleepily playing until dawn, beating each expensive and carefully selected title to completion.  Golden Axe, Ghouls & Ghosts, Altered Beast, Sonic the Hedgehog, Ecco the Dolphin, the list goes on and on.  I never crossed that line into Nintendo gaming.  I think from being a car enthusiast I was stupidly brand loyal and Sega was my brand, the underdog.  I kept my Genesis until I moved to California to attempt a career in animation.  Which is where we bought a Windows 486 PC and my wife came home with a Wolfenstein 3D demo disk that some guy at her job said, “Chad might like this.”  That guy later got a job at Activision and helped me get hired as a game tester in their QA department.

One day my wife came home and found me yet again playing Wolfenstein 3D rather than working on my animation portfolio which lead her to say, “Chad we moved to California so you could become an animator, but instead of working on animation all you do is play games.  Maybe you should work in games instead.”  I whole hardily agreed and the gaming industry is where I have been ever since.

Holding Onto Home

In my industry there tends to be a high chance of layoffs and studio closures. Very unexpectedly you can find yourself looking outside your State, Province, and even country for your next job. This makes it difficult to commit to big lifetime purchases like houses and hard to put down local roots in an area. It also makes it hard to keep relationships with people that can’t or don’t want to move. So you can feel like a "temp person" everywhere you go. In the past I have also lost my home, friends, and relationships due to studio layoff as have most in the game industry. This experience was much more difficult than I expected. Close friends become long distance friends, the house you raised your children in now needs a quick sale because you need to leave. Your kids are pulled from their schools and friends and you really have little choice.

It would seem however that working in a tech driven industry your physical location shouldn’t be such an issue. Video conferences are commonplace, instant message services and email keep everyone constantly connected, work can be securely sent online. Is there really a need for a physical workplace anymore? When working in LA on Return to Castle Wolfenstein our AI programmer lived in Australia , and that was back in 2001. Certainly business and security has evolved since then.

I would love to see more companies like Hinterlands which have a headquarters but allow people to live wherever they want in the world without being forced to a physical location. Being forced into or just wanting to make a career change shouldn’t cost you your house and relationships. Game developers want to have normal lives like everyone else. We also want a place to confidently call home.

- Chad