John Feil

Star Wars® Jedi Starfighter™

Star Wars® Force Commander™

Current project:
Jedi Starfighter. I am responsible for designing and creating missions that take place in the game.

Academic Info

College: University of Nevada, Reno
Degree: Bachelor of Science

Were there any particular projects or areas of study that you pursued?
Music and writing.

Did you do any internships?
Nope.

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?
I started out as a QA tester. A former high school friend of mine was engaged to an artist at LucasArts. He gave me the information I needed to get my resume in, and gave me a good reference. Between that, my experience writing and proofreading paper-and-pencil RPG material, and a good interview, I got the job.

Being a tester was difficult. I took a 50% pay cut from what I was doing before to take the job, but working with games is what I really wanted to do. The hours of a tester are pretty intense, much longer than the 8-5 schedule I was used to, but the atmosphere was very fraternal, and I made a lot of great friends there. I had done tech QA work before, so I was prepared for the sheer "un-fun" of testing a buggy software product over and over again.

What jobs have you held in the games industry thus far? Briefly describe the career path you took to get where you are today.
I started in QA, and, while I was there, managed to work into a position where I got to write the manual for Force Commander. A level design position opened up, and I successfully interviewed for it. Currently, I'm a level designer, though I sometimes am called to do manual work when I'm between projects.

Advice

What fields of study, specific courses, or life experiences would you recommend to students interested in your field?
Level Design, and game design in particular, call upon a variety of disciplines and fields of expertise. Name an area of study, and I can relate it to an aspect of design. Writing is important, a knowledge of basic programming, science, logic, art theory, design, music, geography, geology, philosophy, architecture. All knowledge is relevant, because what we are doing is building worlds.

Is there anything you wish someone had told you before you got into the games industry? Is there anything you would have done differently?
I'm pretty happy with the expectations and pathways that I've taken. However, I researched the industry a ton before I got into it to be sure I could excel at whatever tasks I was assigned.

As games increase in complexity, what are the various kinds of jobs that you foresee development companies needing in the next five years?
The game industry is in the process of fragmenting general jobs into ever more specific ones. In the beginning, there was only a programmer. Now there are AI, Graphics, Tool, and Interface programmers. Where there was once an artist, there are now Texture, 3D Object, Concept, Animation and Tech artists. My thought is that people who are experts in specific areas will find employment a little easier than the general ones.

Do you have any other advice or recommendations to share with students who are interested in doing what you do?
There are a couple paths to becoming a level designer. The path I took was "from the bottom", where I grabbed an unskilled job and proved myself enough to get where I am. This takes a good amount of time. Another path is to prove yourself outside the company by creating levels using mod-making software for popular games like Quake. Using this path, you should create several levels to demo your talent to the industry. Another way is to graduate with a degree in architectural design and have proven skill at using 3D modeling software. In any case, it requires a lot of determination and focus to get where you want to go.