Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2013 - (Page 38)

exploring career options game designer interview by Melissa Hartman Kim swift Creative Director, Airtight Games kim Swift is probably best known for her work on the game Portal, which is based on a game she and four fellow students created as seniors at DigiPen Institute of Technology. Portal was an enormous hit, but Swift has already proved that she is no one-hit wonder: her subsequent credits include Half Life 2, Left 4 Dead, and Quantum Conundrum, and she is currently working on a game for the soon-to-be released Ouya console. When did you realize that you wanted to be a game designer? i always loved video games. i grew up playing them with my family. When i was a junior in high school and started thinking about what i was going to do for a living, i knew i really wanted to make video games. i was always pretty decent at art, so i decided to go to college for computer science. i wanted to get the technical knowledge i’d need to be a good game designer. in my senior year of high school, i took a couple of courses at a community college in C++, a programming language predominantly used in video games. But that knowledge was surpassed in about two weeks after i started college at digiPen. i did a computer science degree there with a specialization in computer graphics programming. You’ve had many different roles in the industry, from game design to art to programming. is that kind of interdisciplinary experience typical? it depends on the studio and the size of the team. there were only six of us working on Portal, for example, so we all played multiple roles in the making of that game. i designed the levels, doing things like lighting scenes and creating textures for different models and environments in the game. i get bored easily, and i like to do lots of different things and have my hands in lots of different pies. i’ve never worked on 38 imagine a team with more than 45 people. in a larger studio, working on a larger game like Assassin’s Creed or Uncharted, there would be hundreds of people working on the game. there might be a texture artist who only does textures for environments and different models in the game, and a lighting designer who only does the lighting of scenes. People tend to specialize more on larger teams. What does your work entail as creative director at Airtight games? airtight is an independent studio, which means that we’re not owned by a major publisher. this means that we have to find or create our own projects, and right now, we are in what’s called pitch mode: we develop ideas for games and then pitch them to different publishers. We put together a game design document called a pitch deck that describes the game—what it’s about, what the major features are, what it will look like, and so on. We present the pitch deck to publishers, and that’s how most of my days are spent right now. We’re also finishing up a couple of other games and some mobile titles, and we’re working on a game for the ouya, a new console that will be released in June. i’m doing some 2d animation on that game, and i’m also helping the team design some of the core systems of the game. When we’re in the real heat of development, my job is to look at the big picture and make sure that all the pieces are coming together properly, that everyone on the team has what they need to do their job. and for any game on which i’m a creative director, i also create elements of the game myself. Producing content for the game helps me feel connected to it. Your studio’s most recent release was Quantum Conundrum. Can you tell me about a challenge you encountered in developing that game? our team of 16 people developed that game over the course of about a year and a half, which is very fast. When we started, we were aiming for a game about half its size, but we ended up getting really passionate and making a lot more stuff than we originally anticipated. this was good because it gave consumers more to sink their teeth into, but it also meant more for us to may/Jun 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2013

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2013
Contents
Big Picture
In My Own Words
Code Me In
Getting Started With Computational Problem Solving
Coding for Gold
The Computer Science Connection
Magical & Practical
The Creative, Collaborative Universe of Minecraft
Going Mobile
Connecting Students and Cultures Through Technology
Selected Opportunities & Resources
Words With Friends
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2013