Mitch Bate

Microsoft Golf

Current role:
Investigating game play and fun factor of released/unreleased Xbox titles...

Academic Info

College: Washington State University
Degree: Life Sciences: Genetics & Molecular Biology with minor in English

Were there any particular projects or areas of study that you pursued?
Environmental Toxicology: Mammalogy & running the life science computer lab during my final year.

Did you do any internships?
No.

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?
My first job in the games industry was with Microsoft as a tester and SME (subject matter expert) on their Golf product(s) - When I graduated from WSU I secured my acceptance to graduate school and waived it for 1 year, so that I could take some time off from school (I was sick of eating Top Ramen and being excited about my $60 a week paychecks). Almost immediately after I arrived home from school a friend of mine that was currently working at MS gave me a call. He mentioned that his group (Sports & Racing) was hiring and that I may be qualified.

During my interview it became apparent that I would be a perfect fit - I loved sports video games and played them all of my life, I have always been great with computers, I played and loved all major sports most of my life, during my final year in college I was a student coach on the golf team, and my science background (among other things) armed me with the ability to be thorough in technique.

Initially, my responsibilities were to evaluate the balance between reality and fantasy and to identify ways to improve this balance - the age old sports game dilemma: make the game feel real without being too much like the real thing - hard to play or not fun. I had a blast doing it and soon realized that I might want to pursue a career in the games industry!

What jobs have you held in the games industry thus far? Briefly describe the career path you took to get where you are today.
Shortly after my first job as a SME at MS, I moved in to a test position. I worked as a tester on MS sports games for about 1 year before I found myself being interested in a more technical aspect of the industry and migrated to a position testing setup. I found that working with setup was a fun and exciting challenge and eventually became involved as a setup developer. During this time I was the only person working on the setups for MS sports games and I obtained a large amount of experience managing setup work for multiple projects.

After performing some extra work on an internal web based tool I pursued and secured my first position as a program manager at MS - which I've been enjoying ever since…

Advice

What fields of study, specific courses, or life experiences would you recommend to students interested in your field?
I never actually studied courses in school that taught me how to test, develop, or manage a product cycle in the games industry. What I did do was prove to be successful in school and have the ability to learn new things quickly (if I was interested). Everyone has heard the statement that "if you like what you do, than you'll succeed". As much as my parents would cringe if they heard me say this, I have loved playing games my entire life and it's fairly fitting that I've decided to pursue a career in the games industry. I was always a fanatic about playing video games, so succeeding in an industry that created the very thing that I loved has been natural. I have faced a ton of challenges and continue to do so, but they have all been exciting to overcome because of my love for what I do. Life experiences that would help? In my case I understood real life sports and sports video games. In general, if you want to succeed in creating good games, than you need to understand what makes a game fun - at first this sounds abstract, but the more you work on identifying fun factor, the better you get at realizing the components that work to make for a successful gaming experience.

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 I had known that I was going to be in the gaming industry ahead of time, then it would have been valuable for me to have had a preliminary understanding of the fundamentals of game design.

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 never a shortage of good game ideas! Players are beginning to get used to quality graphics, which is making the need for solid gameplay even greater. One of the biggest challenges in games has been to create something that is easy to get into and hard to master - a great game design includes this aspect, let's see more cool ideas with solid execution!

Do you have any other advice or recommendations to share with students who are interested in doing what you do?
I never new that I wanted to be in the gaming industry until I was a part of it and the passion came out. If you are lucky enough to know that you want to be a part of it ahead of time, than really investigate the details of the area that you want to succeed in. If you want to be in test, than take courses to help you understand what it's all about, etc… My passion fueled my motivation to be successful, so I've done whatever it has taken to learn what I need to know. If I new that I was going to be here before I got here, than I would have started working towards it a lot sooner with college classes, courses, and internships.