How to: Interview with a Game Designer

World Map for my Sunday D&D Group

Preface:

A close friend of mine is about to shape his life into the mold of one who seeks employment at a video game company. He wants to become a game designer or artist, but has very little first-hand knowledge on the topic. As I don't know much either I interviewed an anonymous friend who works at a large game design/publishing company as a programmer to find out what sort of things are needed these days to be a game designer!

Interview by Careless

What does one need to learn to get started in a game design/development position?

Hmm, well that depends on what you want to do. There are lots of roles in game development: programming (within that, AI, gameplay, systems, optimization, UI, physics, online [the trickiest and best-paying]), 2d art, 3d art, concept art, texture art, 3d modeling, 3d lighting, 2d animation, 3d animation, rigging, facial animation, sound engineering, sound production, music production, audio engineering (in the programming sense), interface design (that's what I do), gameplay design, general design, project management, press relations and marketing, quality assurance, and many others.

If you're talking about being a straight up auter game designer then in my experience what you chiefly need, unfortunately, is a lot of luck. Design is what everybody wants to do, so there are a lot of applicants. The trend at My company (intentionally not named) has been to look more to graduates of the game-design master's programs from specific colleges I can't list here... These guys (As opposed to some of the two year colleges) know their stuff!

So, if you want to be a designer you can get a degree in Game Design and you will have a better chance at getting a job than if you didn't have the degree, sure. But anyone's chances at getting a (paying, anyway) job as a Game Designer are pretty slim because there are so many applicants and it's often not really about how smart or clever or creative you are, it's more about leading a team around one vision, which is both much easier and much harder than writing code.

I got into the industry by getting a degree in Comp Sci and becoming an Actionscript developer. I spent a year making very little money, doing Flash web sites, and sending out internet applications. Luckily, it turns out, most video game UI is built in Flash, usually running on top of Scaleform. So knowing how to build stuff got me in the door.

By the way, about Arts Colleges--there are several folks working at my company who are graduates from arts colleges. They all work as artists (A VERY hard gig to get unless you're utterly amazing) or interface designers. If you know how to make a badass Flash website, then you are qualified to do UI on a 3D game, or make 2D games in Flash. I guess I'm recommending that you learn Flash! No matter what Apple thinks about it, it's here to stay in game development for at least the next console generation and with the web trending away from it, less people are going to be competing for it.

What should someone include in a portfolio (concept art, project experience, demo reels, etc)?

As much as possible, honestly. When we hire, we're looking for experience. The more stuff you have in your reel, the greater the perception is of you being experienced, and therefore ready to work and contribute from day one.

Use images or other multimedia wherever possible, instead of a bulleted list of projects. Feature screenshots or concept art! You want to dazzle. Even if the image represents a collaboration you definitely want to pique interest first and foremost.

That being said, if I'm looking at a reel of three awesome things, and another of ten mediocre things, I'll pick the first one. So be proud of whatever you're showing. "Whatever is in your portfolio is going to be someone's assumption of the level of quality you'll be able to deliver the second you sit down at your desk." The specific type of stuff in your portfolio, of course, will depend on the position you want. Whatever it is find some way to be visual and exciting.

Should one attempt to make their own games for their portfolio?

If you follow a game design track in school you'll come out the end with several school projects under your belt. Show these, but don't be deterred from applying without games in your reel.

If you decide to become a programmer, you'll be hireable in games even if you've never worked on a single game.  Just find a way to present your past work visually and dynamically. If you want to be a designer, then you absolutely will need to show games you've either built, or worked on.

Is there a way to shadow someone to see what it's like within the field of game development?

My company has historically offered unpaid internships but they're difficult to get and I'm not sure if we still do them. I'd be happy to answer any other questions you might have about what it's like, but generally it's just about what you'd imagine. Lots of hard work, lots of meetings. Lots of sitting in a cubicle. Lots of frustrations, lots of heartbreak. But if you love games, it's worth it.

Pixel Soldier by Adam Cartwright

Is animation good to learn as well?

Only if you want to be a full-time animator. Roles on big projects are very specialized. If you're more of a jack-of-all-trades, you'd be better off working at a small company where role-switching happens a lot because there aren't as many people. The drawback to this, of course, is that small teams just can't keep up with the EAs and Activisions with their hundreds of artists, so they don't generally bother with 3D art. Instead (smartly) they do 2D facebook/mobile games.

I'd definitely recommend you ignore 3D art of any kind unless you want to market yourself as an expert in that field, because there really isn't much demand for someone who only dabbles--it takes a loooong time and teams of artists to do that stuff. Being a 3D artist doesn't mean you can't eventually make the jump to design either, by the way. I find that once you're in the organization, if you work hard and meet the right people, you can transition to new roles.

My last question: Is it advisable to learn programming? If so what languages?

My personal recommendation--keeping in mind I'm biased--is to start with actionscript. You can acquire a copy of flash, or use Flex, the open-source actionscript compiler. Tons of great online tutorials are available available. You can build a game or any kind of application you want from scratch and you will be hireable as an interface designer. Google "scaleform games" for an idea of how many games' menus were built using Flash. Scaleform is specifically a sort of in-game Flash player. That's not even the whole story: Companies I've worked with use proprietary software that does the same thing as Scaleform and this seems to be a common practice.

If you want to be a software engineer--and make big bucks and have bulletproof job security--then C++ is the way to go. Get Visual Studio and a couple of books and get started. Even at an intermediate level, if you have a head for logic (NOTE: You don't need to be a math or science whiz. Programming is just LOGIC!), you will be hireable in games. Even better, you'll be hireable in about 40 other industries, all of which will pay you enough to start your own small game company if the mood ever strikes you.

But even if you are destined to become a Game Designer who never codes as part of his job the answer is still absolutely 'YES, you must learn at least a little programming.'

If you love music but can't sing or play any instruments, can you write a song? If you love movies but don't know lenses or lighting or cinematography, can you direct a film? If you're the best race car driver in the world but don't know any mechanical engineering or physics, can you design a car?

A computer game is a piece of software. Therefore a computer game designer is a SOFTWARE designer. If you don't know how software works you can't design it. You can come up with ideas, but so can everyone on the Internet.

I'm not saying you have to be an expert coder, but you do need to know the basics--variables, loops, conditionals. You will be working with engineers who will tell you your idea is impossible, every day. People resist ideas that aren't their own. This is human nature. If they can steamroll you by giving you a bunch of technical jargon and you can't understand it, they will always win the argument. This is something I see happen all the time. Whenever I want to innovate and I need engineers to build something for me, the fact that I know conceptually how it can work and can speak their language goes a long way in seeing that the thing actually gets done.

Don't be scared of programming! It's really not that hard. Like I said, it's just logic. You do not need to be a genius to program. The computer does all the work for you. Programming is just how you tell the computer what you want it to do. Best of luck to your friend and anyone else who reads this!

Tabletop: The Evolution of Warhammer Fantasy, 6th to 8th Edition

My Trusty Undead Knights

Note: I attempted to do some research for this and make things scientific but couldn't find as many sources as I'd hoped that were not from a forum... As a result this is more a memoir than the scientific evaluation I'd initially tried to write.

For those of you not familiar with Warhammer here are the basics:

Warhammer fantasy is a tabletop game where you control armies (elves, dwarves, knights, goblins, etc) and battle them against other people. It's a strategy game as opposed to a role playing game where good strategy is more important than a lucky dice roll, largely because of the sheer volume of dice rolled in a given game. Warhammer is a game of 2+ players (generally 2) that takes about 1.5 hours to 4 hours per game, depending on how experienced your are with the rules. It uses a tape-measure, dice, and either a 4x4, 4x6, or 4x8 table/space to play on. Additionally, before you play the game you need to pick an army to play and 'build' an army list/roster using each faction's unique book (which needs to be acquired IN ADDITION TO the main rule book). After you've picked a faction, custom built an army on paper, and assembled the models (or cut out appropriately sized squares of paper, or just used legos if you're new to the game) required to represent the custom army you just built and your enemy has done the same you put terrain on the board (it can be masterfully crafted 25mm scale forests, castles, swamps, and towers or just represented by books, tape, or whatever else you have lying around) and duke it out using a detailed rule set that some equate to business a law textbook.

Warhammer Model by Day, DnD Villain by Night

I found the game on accident around the end of 5th Edition (1999ish) while looking for spiffy DnD models, bought what I was subsequently told by my cousin was "enough undead to field an army", and (a few months later, in 6th edition) bought the undead army book so I could play the game I already had the pieces to play. I fielded an elite force of ~20 skeletal knights, led by a series of super-powerful vampire knights nicknamed "Blood Dragons" (Named for their ability kill dragons), supported by a few dire wolves and a banshee (more for comedic value than true effectiveness because in those days few things could attack an ethereal creature). 

My Vampire Lord, Complete with a Shoulder Mounted Ferret Familiar and Zombie Dragon

While it was a lot of fun but back in 6th Edition the game was admittedly broken in a few ways... While I'd heard people refer to the game's 5th edition as "Hero-Hammer" it seemed to me that they hadn't fixed many of the rules that made Heroes (who are supposed to make up less than 25% of your army's total point value [you use Points to "purchase" things for your army list from your army's respective book]) unstoppable super-powers capable of single-handedly destroying the entire enemy army over the course of the game's 6 turns. This was especially true with my army's vampire lord, a guy that the army book outright called "The Greatest Swordsman in the Warhammer world" that I decked out with the best magical equipment 'points' can buy, riding atop a flying collective of cadavers called a 'Winged Nightmare'! He was only ever defeated in combat four times during my entire experience of playing Warhammer 6th edition and earned a kill count of 953 (I kept count)... Keep in mind that he died to cannon fire or archers or magic like anyone else, but he would charge a unit of 30+ elite spearmen, win a round of combat (routing them), chase them into the next unit, defeat that unit, then "overrun" into a 3rd unit and rout entire armies that way using rules called "Panic!", "Fear", and "Terror" with brutal efficiency  The same Death Star-like properties could be said of my horsemen, though they were slower, significantly less mobile (because they couldn't fly), and were more susceptible to incoming ranged attacks.

My Undead Army Grows!

In short, over the course of 6th edition I eventually swapped out the knights and dire wolves for units of Wights on foot and skeletal spearmen so I could absorb ranged attacks better and still cause roughly the same amount of damage when I reached the enemy. I mention my army specifics because it's pretty characteristic of how 6th edition was. The majority of the armies didn't have books until the edition was almost over and the armies that had books were both fairly balanced and extremely flavorful. There were some things that were broken (like my Vampire Lord) but the game made up for it by having lots of customization options... like the named heroes you could taken into battle, which the rules specifically called for both parties to agree on using before the game was played (so you knew what you were getting yourself into). It also made almost any type of army you could think up viable, so long as you applied the right strategies. There normally seemed to be a basic composition that people would use with a given army, but each army added their unique flavor to the equation.

Fun at a Tournament

Very early on the game I was introduced to tournament play, and while I describe cheating within the context of tournaments it's because that's where I played most of my games, not because they were riddled with cheaters or unfriendly people. Well run Warhammer tournaments are a lot of fun and allowed you to face off against armies/strategies you'd not normally encounter, which I found very enjoyable.
That being said there were many who cheat while playing the game. From a tournament perspective, in 6th Edition people mostly cheated by mis-measuring the distance you moved (using a measuring tape but sneaking in half an inch here or there), by not sharing their barely legible handwritten army list and taking things in their list which were not allowed within their army book or by the main rules, by mis-remembering or outright fabricating army specific rules as new army books came out, by rolling dice before declaring what the dice roll was for and "changing their mind" about what they were rolling for, or by speed-dice rolling (where you quickly roll dice and snatch them up before the opponent can see them, claiming that they were the number you needed). Cheating was kind of common from my limited Floridian perspective and the number of ways in which someone could cheat (specifically on accident) were largely the cause. I personally made a LOT of mistakes when I started to play the game that I'd consider 'cheating on accident' because I was overwhelmed by the complicated rules set and the manner in which the rule book was structured/written. A lot of very friendly people took the time to explain the rules to me over the years and I really appreciated their patience with me.

Fun Times

6th Edition was a weird era where they were still solidifying the number of armies they wanted to include in the game and you'd sometimes find yourself facing a Warhammer Ancient Battles Army (which I was told was legal), a 'Chaos Dwarf' army, a mercenary army, or a number of other armies without books like Wood Elves, the forces of Chaos, or the Tomb Kings. Almost every army with a book had an advantage over the armies listed in the giant compendium called "Ravaging Hoards" (basically an ultra-simple "here's something to use until we come out with your book" book) and they all felt like they were uniquely different forces within the same rule set. They maybe have gone overboard with keeping each new army balanced and unlike with future editions of the game the newest army book to come out was not always given the means to crush its enemies... like with the Dark Elf army (pretty much mutually agreed by everyone I knew at the time as utter trash). I remember trying to play Dark Elves for a few months only to give up after losing every game I played (12 games), despite trying a diverse array of strategies against different players. The book just lacked any clear benefits or creative edge in 6th edition that other armies were given.

A 40K "Demon Lord" Taking a Form Mortals Fear Most

All of the "balanced and equal" (except Dark Elves) stuff changed around the time 7th Edition of the game arrived and the rules were dramatically restructured. The Magic phase was given more power, the Movement phase of the game was significantly changed to allow for "clipping" and other somewhat confusing but entirely needed technical maneuvers, the Shooting phase (for war machines) was simplified, and the Close Combat phase was toned down a little bit to where the vanilla game itself felt completely balanced. Though technically complex enough Erratas, Addendums, QA's, and Expanded Rulesets the rules of the game seemed to cover every possible scenario, whereas the 8th edition would just say my least favorite phrase: "Roll a Dice and on a 4+ that person's perception of the rule is correct." It was awesome from the perspective of the player who wanted no grey areas or for the well versed rules-miesters who wanted to call out would-be cheaters (which were rampant) out on their BS. So why do I say that the "balanced and equal" was thrown out while simultaneously praising the core rule book for being balanced?

The Poorly Painted Beginnings of my Chaos Army

Each army book was designed to target a specific set of rules that it intended to break/bend. Dwarves were a neigh-unroutable army who didn't care about psychology, High Elves were a high-speed army that could be built to dominate any one of the three big phases (Magic, Shooting, Combat), Beastmen were fast, tough, and broke conventional movement, Skaven could easily break the shooting phase or the sheer number of models you can field, etc. From the perspective of my Undead army it was awesome because instead of fighting a generic army-type that I could crush with my Vampire Lord if I played my cards right I'd always find myself fighting completely different armies that would require a unique strategy to defeat. I couldn't just plan for the typical 25% shootie, 50% close combat, 25% support (variable) army that dominated the tournaments of 6th edition (regardless of the faction). I had to expect to fight an ultra-elite force of under 50 Brittonian Knights, a standard Dark Elf (which were now viable) shooting army, an ambushing Beastman army, and perhaps a 300+ model Goblin or Skaven hoard army. The rules were extremely diverse and the game's back story was deep enough where I expanded the number of armies I played to include a Dark Elf close-combat assassin army (a very uncommon sight) led by a super-assassin who can hide in the enemy ranks, an underwhelming Skaven army led by "Pinky" & "The Brain", and a well-rounded Chaos Army that I made using hundreds of spare parts from models I'd collected over the years. I can't stress enough that the basic rule-set was solid and the army books allowed for maximal army list creativity.

I played in a lot of tournaments in this edition, even some Grand Tournaments, ranking anywhere from second place (my personal best) to last place. I don't know how but I also seemed to get 'best sportsman' and 'best army composition' a lot, especially when I played with my ever-defeated Skaven army. It's worth noting that I once got to face off against Gav Thorpe (the guy who wrote most of the army books), and had so much fun in the process that I can't even remember who won. We chatted about rules and back-story that were not yet defined while small plastic soldiers murdered each other... Speaking of which, people attempted to cheat with this edition a lot more than the last one (or maybe was just exposed to them more) because there were many perceived grey areas where the main rules directly contradicted the army books, FAQ's, Erratas, etc. The majority of cheaters still did that speed-rolling thing, or would fudge their movement phase, which made the whole 'Clipping' rule a lot more dangerous.

Random GW Model I used for DnD

People invented a lot of Clipping house rules without realizing it and were rarely happy to be corrected on the topic by being handed a well-earmarked page or two of the appropriate book or addendum for clarification. Beyond the horrid misuse of the Clipping rule to the favor of just about every tournament player (to the point where I'd actually talk to them about it before the game even began so we could agree on how we wanted to play the rule, thus avoiding arguments) and shady dice rolling practices, the rules generally didn't allow for a whole lot of accidental rule-flubbing. A new tool called Army Builder was used by almost every tournament that calculated the points, mapped army lists, and it pinged rules-conflicts within the army lists that made cheating on the pre-game side almost impossible. What's more, it became the norm for players to pass their typed and printed copies of their army lists to their opponent before the game even started for rules clarification, making for solid transparency and QA before the game started. People still cheated but it couldn't be mistaken for an honest mistake anymore on the pre-game side. For instance, one guy hacked the program and lowered the point cost of the magic items. It was not very believable that the program just happened to glitch in his favor...

My Skaven

The most common "cheat" I encountered was where people would "remember" the rules from a previous edition (e.g. Clipping, various special rules, psychology, etc) and proxy them in, which is entirely forgivable and easily clarified by showing them the current rules. I just can't stress how well the rules were mapped out in this edition by the end and though it lacked the fluidity of 8th (and i'm told 5th) it wasn't a practice to cheat and "roll a dice" to decide who's right. At almost every tournament it seemed like the same 2 or 3 guys who clearly knew the rules would intentionally tweak and omit rules to their advantage and there was a lot of comfort in being able to call them out on it. Thankfully I rarely seemed to ever face them.

A Work in Progress: My Chaos Lord on a "Demonic Steed"

Regarding army composition, most people (like myself) played really awesomely themed armies. There were exceptions and I made it a personal goal to tweak my army lists to cripple people who tried to break the game. For instance, a ridiculous highlight in my gaming career was a single lucky roll at the start of the game where an enemy Vampire Lord leading a huge "Death Star" army (one giant unit supported by everything else) failed to cast a spell at my Chaos army so I used an item that hurt one of my guys but turned the failed spell into a "Miscast" (where the spell goes horribly wrong and bad things happen). He rolled a "3" on the miscast chart (a bad thing but not too bad) but I was able to use yet another magic item to modify his roll of a "3" into a "2" (instant death to the caster, cannot be saved or stopped in any way) causing his entire army to crumble to dust. The guy sneered at me, packed up his army, and left the tournament (mid-tournament) without so much as a glance in my direction (beyond the sneer). He was one of those 'clearly only there to win' types (we were competing for the semi-finals) who had been a jerk to all his opponents (my buddies), and told the people running the event that he had to leave early because he was missing his daughter's birthday... Which leads me to the question as to why he was playing table-top games on his daughter's birthday in the first place... Anyway, bad sportsmanship aside it was an awesome moment (crushing the spirit of a total power-gamer and jerk with my goofy gimmick army) and I've had some neigh-equally horrible things happen to me over the years that I've found just as enjoyable.

I think the second best experience playing the game was fighting my undead against a total newbie undead player for last place at the end of a tournament. We were playing a basic variation of the same army (very uncommon) only my Vampire-Lord was on a B.A. Dragon while his Vampire-Lord was on a horse; he had a semi-hoard army while I only had my lucky elite Wights. I cut down his general in single combat on the first or second turn, meaning his army slowly began to crumble to dust asked if we could continue playing because he might turn it around. The guy was a good sport about it and a turn later he somehow managed to get lucky and kill my general as well (causing my army to crumble to dust). By the 5th turn of the game there was nothing left on the board... A rarity and technically the perfect draw. I've also had my Vampire Lord murdered by some EXTREMELY lucky peasant archers in close combat, which I found about as hilarious as all of the above. Another fun moment was when I beat a dark elf player once he gave me a nifty Shade (spy/assassin) model with the promise that "he will learn your tactics and report them to me." Over the years I made a lot of friends in the tabletop gaming community under various nicknames, probably for my ability to enjoy just about every game I was a part of.

My Skaven "Hoard" Army was Perfect for 8th Edition

Years into the glorious 7th edition a new edition was announced and the game completely shifted focus. I was a bit peeved at the huge rules changes after finally perfecting my understanding of the game but was open-minded about it where many of my friends just quit. In short, the game had dramatically changed. Army books no longer contained pages of army-specific magic items (instead relying heavily on a list of communal items found in the main rule book), terrain was now a huge part of gameplay (which was a good idea, but they took it to an extreme by giving certain pieces of terrain the ability attack your army or make nearby units neigh unstoppable), heroes and units of small model count (like cavalry or monsters) were all but crippled (because rank and file will likely not flee unless you have more rank bonus [AKA You need to outnumber them to truly win]), and the Magic Phase was dramatically changed (now able to "Instantly Kill" something each turn if done right) (Dispel dice generation changed, giving every army a naturally good defense against magic). While they did away with any form of Guess Range (a key component of the older versions of the game) and made the rules significantly easier to learn, I felt that the game was less diverse. You could no longer field an army of 35 knights and hope to win, or play effectively in any way except with a "hoard" mentality. The Special Characters who were fun and balanced in 7th edition were now banned at tournaments (leading me to wonder why they included them at all) and the impotency of lone heroes, monsters, cavalry & the loss of army-specific magic item lists also inhibited creativity. Though I will happily admit that it's a nicer ruleset than any edition I've played I still don't like it because it specifically crippled all of my strategies.

Immediately the Undead army I'd played for almost a decade was useless. My general could no longer engage the enemy alone and survive (because you can't use Combat Modifiers to affect a Break Check unless you have more Ranks than your enemy or have Flanked them with a unit that has a Rank bonus. Fear & Terror were both also greatly reduced in effectiveness), and my super-elite unit of Wights was now susceptible to the instant magic-death every army has, and the new rules for combat whereby "the attacking order is dictated by Initiative, as opposed to who has charged," meaning that they generally strike last and generally die (for good) before attacking back. Because I specifically intended to avoid a Hoard Army I was forced to retire my now ineffective undead, which I regretfully sold for $80 to pay for Pixel Glass.

Picture Unrelated: My Warhammer 40k Army "Work In Progress"

But that was okay because I still had my Dark Elf army and my Chaos army, both of which I'd spent countless hours painting and assembling (I'd foolishly traded my Skaven shortly before the new edition was announced, and the friend i'd given it to sold them). As it turns out my Dark Elf army was also rent ineffective because it relied entirely upon the enemy's ability to NOT strike back (Elves are notoriously squishy and die easily when hit), which the new rules specifically changed. In the old rules if you killed all the models in base contact no one could attack back as the next wave of troops took time to filter in to replace the dead models, but now that everyone got to attack regardless of where they were at the start of the fight my army of half-naked berserker elf-assassins covered in war paint was also completely useless as even the smallest goblin with a pointy stick could pierce their nonexistent armor.

"The Zoo"

Last was my trusty reliable madhouse army of Chaos people simply called "The Zoo" due to it's insane non-conformity to physics or visual theme beyond... pure chaos... (see what I did there?) The new rules, which work really well for a single magic user entirely cripple the effectiveness of a Super-Magic heavy army, which pretty much described my twisted warband. Fortunately for me, swapping out four magic using heroes for close combat heroes wasn't that hard of a transition but it greatly shifted my strategy from "sit back and throw fireballs at the enemy" to "slowly walk across the board while getting shot at by things that hurt." To make matters worse they combined the multiple defensive saves of "Ward Save" and "Regeneration Save" from two distinct rolls that would save your soldier's lives to a single roll... Further reducing survival odds as my forces slowly trudged across the board. Lastly the aforementioned removal of special characters (which I thought were just plain fun) further reduced my ability to creatively get across the board without buying a completely new army (complete with lots of cavalry to tie up the shooting units while my main force trudged towards combat). On a comical note the rules also completely crippled my friend & regular rival's army (a knight/magic-reliant Brettonian army which had the same problems as my Undead), leaving us both kind of up the creek and unable to effectively face off against one another... Games were now kind of like watching two small children fight with sock-em-boppers when you could be watching boxing... or gladiators...

"More Fun Than A Pillow Fight"

The few 8th edition tournaments I was involved had minimal cheating (speed-dice rolls were about it) largely because before someone rolls you can ask them what they need to roll and verify it by measuring everything yourself. All the mystery to the game is kind of gone, replaced with random elements like quicksand or shrines of 7'' AoE 5+ Ward Save & Stubborn. While the reduction in cheating (from the few games I've played) is a serious plus to the game, I also felt that I never had a chance to win most of the battles I took part in before the first die was rolled because of how the rules force you to play the game (aka, Cavalry being neigh useless). What can 70 men do against 300+ when the primary strengths of the 70 (the ability to "not die easily", the ability to shoot fiery magic-death in mass quantity, the ability to have characters that can take on entire units on their own) are pretty much gone? As much as I seem to like bashing 8th edition I'll admit it's a better game it's just not one i'm personally interested in investing my very limited time to play. As a result The Zoo collects dust on my shelf, biding its time and waiting for the next edition...

Music/Creative: A Recording Journey (2003-2010)

A Recording Journey

The Making of Neo Sybiance, Brick,

& Random Encounter (Self Titled)

A boy and His Electric Accordion

When I started playing the accordion 10 years ago I had no idea what multi-track recording was, what 'editing' entailed, or that effects weren't always something that proceeded a cause. I generally played and practiced by myself on a 43 pound electric accordion, recording in 60 second increments using the MS Record feature found on my laptop via usb PS2 headset. There was no mixing, no editing, no tweaking, just hardcore "play it perfect and don't forget to save as a Wav file when you're done." There was no way to cue in, there was no way to record in parts (to my knowledge). Things were just pretty Rough. So, when Random Encounter formed two years later, I still had no idea about Multi-track recording and made a demo EP with the guys in an afternoon we called "Neo Symbiance." To accomplish the task we used a single vocal microphone, the MS record feature (looping back-to-back 60 second fuses to allow for more lengthy tracks). As if to match some sort of theme I used MS Paint to draw the EP's cover. The idea for the EP was to give venues an idea of how awesome we were... But due to our limited recording knowledge it generally had the opposite effect, despite how good we might have sounded.

Random Encounter, October 2005

Fast forward 4 years...

The new band of the same name (and completely different membership) had long stopped giving out Pogo-sticks, pie-crusts, and Ramen Noodles at our concerts. Adam "One" (actually Adam the 8th in his family bloodline) had joined us and explained what a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) was and that almost all modern music is recorded one instrument at a time using a DAW... This was pretty revolutionary to me and answered the question I'd often wondered where bands like They Might Be Giants had found people to do their backup vocals that sounded so much like the lead singer (John or John respectively in the case of TMBG). In short, it was also explained that you could "cut in" or "cut out" of a recording, meaning if I played a part of the song correctly, I could record the rest of the song without having to start from the beginning. I didn't really understand much about how to DO any of those things, or what a BPM (beats per minute) was, but the idea that it's possible to make those things happen helped me find Accoustica Mixcraft (my DAW of choice because of its simplicity) and got us started on recording BRICK, what was to be Random Encounter's first album! 

Artistic Rendition of the band by Destiny Burch, 2007 

Random Encounter, September 2007

Brick was going to be 33 VG cover tracks, everything the band knew at the time (and a dozen things we didn't know), recorded using a $70 vocal microphone, edited together by me (no mixing or mastering) with the cover art being a photo of a brick wall with our logo spray painted on it. So Adam borrowed an extra microphone (one for the set, one for the kick drum) and we spent a full day laying down the album... Sadly, despite the tracks being played flawlessly, the recording quality of the tracks was laughable and we were ultimately unable to finish the album because the entire band (except Adam) quit or was forced to resign from the band in the coming weeks. Adam, being a stickler for quality, also realized that there was nothing we could do to make the drum tracks sound good... That we knew of... We later converted one of the tracks into an entry on the VGM4A's "Welcome To World 2" album, somehow professionally/painstakingly recreated a track for the upcoming Careless Juja Professor Layton Album, and re-recorded half of Brick for Self Titled. The other songs (like Metal Slug - Windy Day, FF Tactics - Sweegy Woods, or Perfect Dark - Credits Theme) will likely never see the light of day because the recording quality is not even remotely decent without more money/time to edit them than I can afford. Period.

Random Encounter, April 2008, Standing in Front of a Brick Wall

It wasn't until July 2009 that the new, new band of the same name (in which I was the bass player of as opposed to the accordionist most of the time which made us rather generic due to the birth of several more talented VG cover bands) finally agreed collectively to undertake the recording of a studio album, and booked some time at a real studio in Sarasota, FL (my hometown)! I hadn't really learned anything about recording since Brick and (at Adam's request) still hadn't mentioned Brick to anyone since it was recorded. Adam and I booked an entire weekend, two 8-hour days, to record drum tracks for a whopping 22 songs! As we drove through the shady industrial neighborhood, past a mysterious barbed wire fence covered in toys I remember feeling completely excited. Heck, I wasn't even going to do anything that weekend but I felt ready to lay down tracks for the entire album that day and couldn't stop talking (a sign of nervous excitement for me similar to how some people shake with excitement) to Adam, who is admittedly not one for extended non-purposeful conversations.

Random Encounter, July 2009

As we walked into the studio space three times the size of my apartment, the sound engineer greeted us and gave us a brief tour. Adam set up his drums while a session of the DAW "Cubase" loaded and the engineer set up 6 or 12 different microphones around the drum set. All I did the entire weekend was pay him the cash, sit back, watch, and take in everything that happened. I picked up on much of how the basic recording process worked, asked a few questions of the engineer here and there, and observed him do something called "edit" the tracks, which I'd never personally attempted, and "punch-ins" where you start recording a track from the section you screwed up in the previous recording. The engineer repeatedly complemented Adam on being a metronome perfect drummer (which I didn't really understand) and because of this precision Adam seamlessly recorded the entire album in 12 hours... That's about 2 songs an hour(!) and with the extra time I asked Adam to record a few "special" tracks I had in mind... Some inspiration for originals I'd intended to write, as well as a rendition of Katamari on The Rocks, and a Sonic medley I'd later use. The engineer was thoroughly impressed with Adam and that was probably the last time I'd see the guy smile.

Recording Self Titled

The following weekend the guitarists arrived to record their parts. Each one of them stuck around for single 8 hour day and recorded almost everything in their respective session. Ultimately, when it was discovered that one of the tracks was recorded by one of the guitarists in the wrong key (which we only realized the day after) we were forced to immediately scrap track 22: 'God Knows' and lost some of the work done to other tracks. Why the guitarists wouldn't just come back to re-record their tracks I didn't know at the time, but both flat out refused and suddenly expressed a strong disinterest in making the album. They wouldn't even discuss it with me and because we didn't have any upcoming shows, we didn't meet in person to talk about it. Still, 21 tracks seemed plenty enough, having personally put in ~$500 into the game (at the band's request), I figured that if I could just finish the album we'd have something to sell at shows and recoup the money.

Adam offered to help in lending a creative/critical ear, and created the album's artwork... I have no talent in creating visual art, and at the time had no understanding of effective cover composition, and though I had a few visual ideas at the time (basically to make this the "Brick" album) we ultimately settled on mixing pictures from our photo shoot with a cover he'd design. The end result was visually kind of like an amateur knock-off System of a Down album, largely because the printing company ran the print about 40% darker than we'd intended (partly our fault), making our text illegible.

Back to the recording part... So I spent the next month or two recording bass and accordion in 2 or 4 hour sessions (partly because I took my time but partly because I lacked the money for studio time), picking up more recording tips and tricks with each session. However, towards the end I discovered that even with my parts the album seemed dramatically incomplete. I sent the tracks to Adam he agreed. There didn't seem to be any immediate fix because the two guitarists already informed us of their complete disinterest in working on the album any more with the dismissive phase "you've got this," as if that suddenly made everything better... Which it didn't in case you were wondering.

My home for 6 months

So I looked at the audio engineer and started editing with him. The guy was a champ for sticking through the project with me. We added, we subtracted, we doubled, we went through almost every trick that he knew. I personally recorded guitar parts using a guitar someone randomly left in the studio one weekend using a giant Marshall amp (I think it was tuned but didn't know how to tune at the time, nor did the engineer) which actually wound up in the finished product in a couple of places. I also added glockenspiel, more accordion, more accordion after that, keyboard parts (in memory of the Helios, the band's founding member whom I still sorely missed), and a half dozen other small things that aren't worth mentioning that didn't work (like hammer dulcimer, banjo, and cheesy sampling). By the end of the project the engineer didn't like me a whole lot because of the sheer amount of extra work we had to do that could have been easily fixed if either guitarist would have shown up for an extra day.

A picture of Dinosaur Land, the place I wished I was at... when I was editing

It was now a full 6 months later in December by the time the album was done being recorded. We spent an extra month mixing and mastering and re-editing certain parts... Adam and I (pretty much the only people still talking about the CD I'd gone completely broke completing) finalized the album art and started to discuss the ESRB style "rating" of the album (and the "rating" of the band as a whole). We'd originally recorded some fun little explicit introduction tracks to each song, outlining in the harshest language possible how the listener's life was hollow and meaningless before they listened to our CD. It was hilarious, abusive, off the wall, but ultimately Adam and I agreed that we'd prefer to one day share this music with our families and friends under the age of 17. We were playing Video Game music after all, and with songs like Happy Joy from Ren and Stimpy so there was no sense in preventing younger people from enjoying the fruits of our labor. We also toned down the artwork on the album from "people being murdered by video game controllers and wires" to "guy non-aggressively plugged into the music kind of like in The Matrix." Random Encounter was suddenly an 'All Ages' band, which it had pretty much always been.

The Finished Album Art by Adam

By the end of the 7 month recording/mixing/mastering session I felt confident in my ability to record and edit music. I didn't know at the time how little I actually knew, but I understood the basics well enough and actually became a better sound editor than the engineer I was working with (two months prior to project completion he just flat out gave up and left me alone to edit for entire sessions). Completely snowblind from over-exposure to the music for half a year, I felt like i'd created a masterpiece, or fire on that island with Tom Hanks and Wilson. This album represented the last five years of my life and I was insanely proud of it. At the band's mutual decision I set off to license and order 1000 prints of the CD we dubbed "Random Encounter" (and later re-dubbed Self Titled by the next incarnation of the band). Sadly, because of my inability to license some of the tracks legally we cut 6 of the tracks: Big Blue, The Main Zelda Theme, Zelda: Labyrinth, Lost Woods, The Song of Storms, and What's Up People (the Deathnote theme), reducing it from 21 tracks to 15. I felt pretty upset about cutting those tracks but really wanted to do everything by the book.

When I left the studio I suddenly had facial hair and a broken nose

The physical copies of the album arrived in my hands at Megacon, March 19th 2010, literally an hour into the convention. By some form of miracle a UPS driver got out of his truck, ran through the OCCC, ninja'd past security, found my booth, and delivered the package. I gave the guy a very friendly tip and did everything in my power to share Random Encounter with the world that weekend... Sadly the world wasn't interested in a bunch of Final Fantasy 1 or 6 covers at the time. We sold nine the entire weekend and about a week later, a month after I put the licensing and print costs on my personal credit card, the entire membership of the band informed me of their decisions to quit the band, Adam included (so he could work on his personal music project). What I couldn't see at the time was how much I'd learned in the process of creating an album, and how in 6 months I'd spent significantly less than going to a sound engineering college for similar training/experience.

Below is a picture from Megacon 2010, representing my graduation from the school of hard knocks and the completion of my first album. It was a pretty victorious day and as much as I'll complain about the album spawning clones of itself, I couldn't be more proud of my accomplishment!

Social: Raspberries (The portrayal of Russians in films and video games)

Advertisement for Red Alert 3

The following is a slightly edited transcription of a discussion I had with my friend Sergey from Moscow, used with permission.
Careless: Okay, so huge question. I love Command and Conquer and have played the series since the original... However, more than Command and Conquer, my favorite games in the series have been Red Alert 1 & 2, the ones in which Russia outright declares war on America and starts World War 3. Being Russian what are your views on these games, which are clearly over the top but make Russia out to be... Well, rather goofy at times. I should also preface this with the fact that I pretty much only play as Russia because they're awesome in the game as well.
Sergey: Russians don't feel any hurt by such views of our nation. Russians LIKE the views like the ones found in Red Alert or Swarzenegger's Red Heat. Even more, sometimes Russians deliberately spread such stereotypes and points of view! There is a special word that describes all such things, a cultural code or genre of art...We call it... *drumming* the KLYUKVA (клюква, Russian for cranberries). Enthusiasts compile list of Klukva and like to search it in any foreign books/movies/games about Russia. Short-list (by memory): Lenin, vodka, balalaika (musical instrument), red color, the wrong use of Russian Language in Hollywood films, when people "wЯitе" like this...

There are many web communities, that enjoy Klukva. 

Here are some fun examples:

Fantastic Four The name of the ship is "Head of Toe"... Better call it "ToeTanic"
Independence Day 

The Map is horribly wrong showing cities where there are none. Also, Петроrрад was the name of St. Peterburg in before it was called Leningrad and the third city on the map is entirely unreadable

The Simpsons 

It translates to "Speak English or get out!"

(And of course...) Red Alert 

on the spine of the books: БРЭТ ЖОПА. The first world is meaningless and the second means: butt (or ass).

Of course, Red Alert is an outstanding game! I remember when I first played it. I must have been 8 or 9...It was entirely awesome. I think one of my friends said it best though, "It's impossible to not to love a game, when the units go to the battle with words "For mother Russia!""