In the beginning...
I have been in the game industry "officialy" since September
1999, but I have been doing programming since I was a kid. I started
with BASIC, worked my way to TurboPascal, and even tried some Vic20
assembly. My first game I made was in BASIC were each side of the screen
had a ship a player controlled and you would move up and down shooting
at the other player. I remember the computer science teacher getting
sore at me because I didn't actaully pay attention to him and was working
on this game. So how did I get into the industry? Well I majored in
Computer Science at Central Michigan University (Hello Dr. Stuart Rubin!)
and minored in art. Along the way, I got sidetracked with multimedia
applications, and I was during the rise of Shockwave and Macromedia.
My senior year at CMU, I worked on a Computer Science 101 book with
Dr. Rubin where I created a multimedia game using Director to help teach
the lessons in each chapter. I graduated CMU in May 1997 and moved back
to Detroit.
O/E Learning
My first job was actually in multimedia working for a company called
O/E Learning. The company was owned by the Vlasic family (yes the pickles).
I was doing good at O/E Learning but the itch to make games never went
away and I started working several projects, one was Doom Survivors
and the other was Montana Madness. Doom Survivors was similar in feel
to Legend of Zelda using Id Software's doom assets for art. The game
was no where near complete game but I think it did demonstrate that
I was extremely passionate about game development. Montana Madness started
out as sortof a joke because my ex-wife's mother took a trip to Montana
and returned with tales of shooting prairie dogs because they were a
nuisence and broke the legs a cattle when they would fall into the hold
the prairie dogs made. I personally found it cruel and made a game out
of it to make a statement of sorts. It was a simple whack-a-mole type
game except the animals like dogs and cats would pop out of the holes
and you cannot shoot them. Of course shooting any of them resulted in
bloody missing chunks.
Acclaim Entertainment & Football
Using those two demos I broke in at Acclaim Austin (formerly Iguana
Entertainment) to work on NFL Quarterback Club 2000 for the Dreamcast.
I actually came on at the tail end of the project so I didnt contribute
much to that game. My first task on that project was player indicators
(both off screen and on screen).This really was the unseeming start
to my role as graphics programmer on future titles. After QBC 2000,
Acclaim decided to skip 2001, and work two years on QBC02 so we could
catch up to Madden. I started actively taking on more engine/graphics
tasks and I ended up helping the All-Star Baseball team with some engine
work. We tried to share more tech with them but we could never get synced
up.
Working on a sports teams at Acclaim was a very interesting experience
especially QBC. Many of the programmers on QBC didn't want to work on
sports game and the rest of the company didn't really want to support
us. I remember we hired a guy from the UK to come work at Acclaim Austin.
The QBC programming team was in desperate need for help and the guy
told management that he'd rather go back to the UK than work on QBC.
With only a 4 months left before we shipped, management decided they
"needed" the Quarterback Club Challenge. It is a real life
charity event in which all the quarterbacks in the club attend before
the Pro-Bowl. Sorta itching for a challenge I jumped at the chance working
with one artist (a little UI work from another) I jumped in head first.
Many people on the team weren't happy about it and felt like we should
be working on the game instead of on the Challenge Game. My design document
was a video tape of the last Quarterback Challenge and I decided to
make it look exactly like the tape I watched. I must have watched that
tape 100 times, but in the end it looked great. Even the reviewers who
said the game was a decent football game loved the Challenge event.
I was very proud to be part of that.
So after NFL QBC 2002 shipped, we began working on 2003. I felt pretty
optimistic about 2003 and thought we had figured out how to make it
good. Unfortunently, QBC 2003 would never make the shelves. Accalim
became less interested in investing in a football game and Madden securing
an exclusive simulation NFL license sealed the deal. It is funny turn
of events because back in, I think, 1995, Acclaim did the same thing
to Madden, but it was only a year exclusive deal. So Madden could not
use the official teams that year. Acclaim was also suffering from its
first round of self inflicted financial troubles. I feel like I should
tell that story too, but I will leave that out for now. So Acclaim wasnt
paying the bills for motion capture and stats from Stats Inc. and production
stopped.
Boom-shaka-laca
After QBC was officially cancelled, Acclaim dug into its bag of IP's
and pulled out NBA Jam. All of us were very excited to work on a sports
game with such a legacy. We also knew people were expecting alot. NBA
Street, now on the market set the bar for arcade style basketball, yet
we felt we could deliver that craziness that Jam was know for.
To be Continued...
