Chris Degnan


Terminus

Current project:
Frogger: The Great Quest for Game Boy Advance. On a relatively small team of 8 people, I function as lead designer for all aspects of the game - core gameplay, AI/NPC interactions, levels, and story - and provide input on art style for levels and characters.

Academic Info

College: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Degree: BS in Electronic Media Arts and Communications

Were there any particular projects or areas of study that you pursued?
3D and 2D art and animation, programming, sound editing, non-linear video editing.

Did you do any internships?
Yes, with Vicarious Visions the semester before I was hired.

Career Info

Tell us about your first job in the industry. How did you get the job? What was it like? What were your responsibilities?
Vicarious Visions was my first job in the industry. I've been here for 2 ½ years. When I started, Vicarious Visions was still a start-up 3rd party developer and I came on as a game tester on their only PC/Mac/Linux project called Terminus. They advertised on campus and I submitted my resume and was hired. As a game tester I had to do the grunt work involved in play testing, bug tracking and script editing for a massive space sim/combat. At the time the company was pretty small and I was a complete novice but I had ambition, a fondness for video games, a tiny bit of intelligence and an nosey/meddling nature that drove me to question why. I was lucky to find a company with excellent business acumen and really lucky that they responded positively to my desire to aid in the design of the games they set me to work on.

What jobs have you held in the games industry thus far? Briefly describe the career path you took to get where you are today.
After starting as a game tester I transitioned to a 2D GUI artist for a PWC racing game. Then I was offered the chance to be lead design and project lead on a GBC title, SpongeBob Squarepants, the Legend of the Golden Spatula. After that I was the lead designer and project lead for Power Rangers Timeforce (GBA). Now I am on Frogger.

Advice

What fields of study, specific courses, or life experiences would you recommend to students interested in your field?
What I highly recommend working on if you want to be a game designer:

1. Be able to look at games analytically. What makes a good game good and more importantly what makes a bad game bad? What makes a player frustrated? What do players (in general) really like? How does a game encourage you to play more?
2. Develop communication skills in as many different media as possible AND learn them well! You must be able to take your winning ideas and sell them, pitch them, push them onto others. Often times, the people you are dealing with aren't on the "same page" that you are and it is crucial that you be able to get your ideas across to them accurately.
3. Understand other point of views. Learn as much as you can about all areas of game development - from art and programming to marketing and management. Learn the rhetoric, jargon and the semantics that each group uses.
4. Know your history and current events. It's important for you communication skills and your design skills to know what designs have come before you and what others are currently working on. Chances are, whatever you are doing someone has already tried it. How they succeeded and failed should influence your choices.
5. Basic writing and drawing skills are essential (this really belongs under Communication Skills but it is important enough to deserve its own number). Documentation is a HUGE part of being a game designer. The better your writing and drawing skills are the better you can document your designs and prototype aspects of you design through sketched out mockups.
6. Being organized doesn't hurt either.
   

Is there anything you wish someone had told you before you got into the games industry? Is there anything you would have done differently?
If people want to be a good game designer there are a few things they should be aware of. First is realizing that you are not making games for yourself when you are in the games industry. You are making games for some audience out there somewhere. The goal is to get that audience to like your game AND buy your game. If you wanna make games YOUR way do it on YOUR OWN TIME. Making games for an audience other than yourself sometimes means making decisions that aren't your favorite, but that will appeal to boys ages 8 to 13, for example. You are part of a commercial machine geared towards making money. And if you are of the mindset where you want a steady income for a while, find a company with a good business plan (ie, avoid the pyramid scheme of game development, acquiring new contracts to pay for existing ones). You are only as good as your last game. People look at your immediate history, whether it be your reel or a demo game or some other material. People (possible employers) like to SEE SOMETHING, and they like even better to PLAY SOMETHING. Sketch books, game design journals, fiction writing, flash or java games, director interactive pieces, anything that supports the fact that you are serious about games, and shows off your creativity is a huge plus. Oh yeah, be passionate about games, but don't come off as psychotic! (sorry, gotta set your own definitions on that one).

As games increase in complexity, what are the various kinds of jobs that you foresee development companies needing in the next five years?
There's the definite possibility that the industry will develop to a point where there are the same kinds of jobs (artists, designers, and programmers) just the areas of focus will be much more specialized and it will be harder for someone to be an all purpose designer, you will have to have experience as an AI designer or a 3D level designer. But the actual types of game developers hasn't changed much since the mid eighties (when it broke out from being a programmers only kind of pastime into a cooperative experience) and I don't think the overall team structure of manager, designer, programmer, and artist will ever really change.

Do you have any other advice or recommendations to share with students who are interested in doing what you do?
A lot of companies founded on aspirations of creating games with controversial life altering content or artistic statements often go under (Looking Glass Studios, makers of the revolutionary Thief 1 & 2 went out of business, and Deus Ex was critically acclaimed but had mediocre sales, whereas Pokemon a design devoid of much in the way of new or revolutionary had sales through the roof). I'm not saying don't try to instill your own brand of moral ethics or hidden messages in your games. On the contrary, I say go for it. Just remember that if you hope to get a message across you can never do it if no one is playing your game.