I often think back on those times when debates about crunch come up. To be clear, I don’t refer to the hours I worked as a point of accomplishment. I’m also not referencing those times as a matter of personal pride or to deflect some of the horrible crunch periods other developers have had or continue to experience. I simply call attention to it because I remember being tired, but I also remember being passionate about the project. I was proud of my work, and I desperately wanted to craft something good. Also, I was a young married man without kids. Those were sacrifices I chose to make as opposed to being in an environment into which I found myself unwillingly thrust. I wouldn’t make those same choices as an older man. Those were brutal days. But Presto was a strong family and we fought our way through that project together.

Fast forward several years and I was hired by (THQ) Volition, Inc. in Champaign, IL as a Senior Environment Artist. My wife’s family was from the Midwest and I was now a slightly older man, now with a kid, and the move made sense. At this time, Volition saw the possibility in the exploding “open world” game market and Volition was in pre-production on their first entry in this genre. The internal name was “Bling Bling” and would eventually come to be known as Saints Row. I was the first dedicated environment artist brought onto the project. Those were interesting times. Nobody really understood what was required to make an open-world game. Through sheer brute force, we figured it out. We didn’t have a world editor, so everything was hand-crafted in 3DS MAX. Over the course of the project, I found myself taking on more of a technical leadership role than a visual one. This wasn’t so much by choice as it was necessity. Since we didn’t have a world editor, technical elements like navmesh and streaming volumes had to be hand-crafted instead of automatically generated. In addition, we also had to hand-rig the props and structures with individual LOD settings, hand-place occluder volumes and hand-place the vehicle and pedestrian pathing nodes.

The studio also grew tremendously during this time period. As such, I spent more time mentoring new hires, troubleshooting technical problems, and working with dedicated tech artists to refine our production pipeline (as much as we could then). In the end, we shipped a successful title, but not without a tremendous amount of pain endured by the development team – long hours of mandated crunch and poor tools combined to take their toll on the world-building staff.

I was a Lead Environment Artist on Saints Row 2. The tools were a little better, but we made the decision to reuse-and-revise as much of the previous game’s setting as possible. We were roughly halfway through production when the studio approached me about applying for the position of Studio Artist Manager. While I was hesitant to step away from creative development, the opportunity to have broader impact on the art culture of the studio was an intriguing opportunity.

For approximately four years, I invested my time in developing artist career paths, encouraging feedback, publishing quarterly art newsletters (to encourage art visibility, engagement, and collaboration), in addition to staffing the studio with high-caliber applicants to help build the next generation of games for the studio. It was during this time that I became more actively involved in GDC, moderating roundtables on Art Leadership and Art Culture. During my final year with Volition, I took on the responsibilities of Studio Art Director. This was during the development of Saints Row the Third and Red Faction Armageddon. While I had little direct involvement in the projects themselves, it was incredibly fulfilling to observe both projects’ development and offer guidance when and where I could.

However, I had also grown to miss being immersed in the creative churn of development. My perspective and responsibilities had grown immeasurably during my tenure as a studio manager and director, but I was worried that I had grown too disconnected from the development process itself. It was at this time that Blizzard Entertainment approached me about joining their secret “Next-Gen MMO.” Blizzard was simply too great of an opportunity to pass up, and I eagerly joined the team, despite having no idea what they were working on until I arrived on site.