Plan for Dave Meddish
by Dave Meddish · 08/22/2001 (10:11 pm) · 2 comments
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
The words of Thoreau have long held a certain resonance with me. Although I haven't been spending the last six months in a cabin by the lake, I've had my own brand of solitude to consider the direction of my life.
I've probably talked too much about my experiences of the last year-I imagine I've done a very nice job of professional suicide publicly annotating my experiences on Tribes 2. Suffice it to say, game design became less of a fun job and more or less drudge work as the days went on. Working for almost a year on a death march, and your reward is a pink slip...that can pretty much make anyone a wee bit cranky.
After my layoff, I had a few contracting gigs I took to pay the bills, and I had a few opportunities for work elsewhere...but only as a Level Designer. While I enjoy my work on level design and most of my notoriety comes from the missions I did for the Tribes games, I didn't want to be pigeonholed as a Level Designer only. I wanted a shot to be at least close to a Lead Designer. I was hired at Dynamix as an honest-to-goodness designer, capable of a great many design tasks.
While working these side jobs, I also considered if I wanted to continue on in this eat-your-young industry. Game design is fun, don't get me wrong, but when you've got no time for a social life, no job security and are generally treated like garbage...the job loses much of its allure.
I like to compare the game industry as it exists today to Hollywood. Studios are spending incredible sums of money, banking on that one "big hit" to keep them going each year. Look at "Pearl Harbor": This movie cost something like $120 million, and it's on pace to make a tidy profit...but it didn't live up to the hype. It isn't going to rake in a half-billion dollars. For that reason, it's being judged a failure (and, well, the fact that it's a piece of crap didn't help). If a movie doesn't meet its projected weekend gross, you might as well pull the plug and slap in the next lame teen summer comedy.
A company like Dynamix may not have been making much money, but it was making money. But it wasn't making enough "Pearl Harbors," it was sticking to the low-budget stuff that wasn't as sexy but it got bought.
The movie business is changing. More and more independent filmmakers are finding outlets for their films that cost less than a million dollars to make. Films like "The Brothers McMullen," "Clerks," and of course "The Blair Witch Project": These movies made millions while they each cost under $50,000 to make.
The game industry is starting to follow that paradigm, and Garage Games is one of the rallying points. After I first posted here, Jeff Tunnell, the guy who first hired me at Dynamix some three-odd years ago, suggested I take a V12 project on. And I thought about it. I have money to spare, so I'm not hurting there right now (one advantage of having no social life due to work, heh), no outstanding debts...why not give it a try? So I looked for a project that might need a designer.
And I found one that piqued my interest. Earlier this month, I wrote Geoff Weaver, the project director for NTDF, asking if I could contribute to his project, ideally a sequel to Starsiege. His response was "Are you the real Dave Meddish? Really?" After I assured him that I was, and we talked, and eventually I ended up becoming the Lead Designer for the project.
Since I've been working with the NTDF team, I've felt a rekindling of the spirit that drew me into this career path...working with talented, fun people who have a passion for making a great game. If we make money, that'll be great. If we don't, we can at least say we've made a great game and had a good time doing it.
And since I can do this design job from pretty much anywhere, early this September, I will be leaving Eugene to return to my hometown, Bend, Oregon. I lived there most of my life and I'm looking forward to returning.
For once, I'm taking the tiger by the tail, and I'd urge everyone who's ever wondered "What if?" to try as well.
Or, as Thoreau once put it:
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
The words of Thoreau have long held a certain resonance with me. Although I haven't been spending the last six months in a cabin by the lake, I've had my own brand of solitude to consider the direction of my life.
I've probably talked too much about my experiences of the last year-I imagine I've done a very nice job of professional suicide publicly annotating my experiences on Tribes 2. Suffice it to say, game design became less of a fun job and more or less drudge work as the days went on. Working for almost a year on a death march, and your reward is a pink slip...that can pretty much make anyone a wee bit cranky.
After my layoff, I had a few contracting gigs I took to pay the bills, and I had a few opportunities for work elsewhere...but only as a Level Designer. While I enjoy my work on level design and most of my notoriety comes from the missions I did for the Tribes games, I didn't want to be pigeonholed as a Level Designer only. I wanted a shot to be at least close to a Lead Designer. I was hired at Dynamix as an honest-to-goodness designer, capable of a great many design tasks.
While working these side jobs, I also considered if I wanted to continue on in this eat-your-young industry. Game design is fun, don't get me wrong, but when you've got no time for a social life, no job security and are generally treated like garbage...the job loses much of its allure.
I like to compare the game industry as it exists today to Hollywood. Studios are spending incredible sums of money, banking on that one "big hit" to keep them going each year. Look at "Pearl Harbor": This movie cost something like $120 million, and it's on pace to make a tidy profit...but it didn't live up to the hype. It isn't going to rake in a half-billion dollars. For that reason, it's being judged a failure (and, well, the fact that it's a piece of crap didn't help). If a movie doesn't meet its projected weekend gross, you might as well pull the plug and slap in the next lame teen summer comedy.
A company like Dynamix may not have been making much money, but it was making money. But it wasn't making enough "Pearl Harbors," it was sticking to the low-budget stuff that wasn't as sexy but it got bought.
The movie business is changing. More and more independent filmmakers are finding outlets for their films that cost less than a million dollars to make. Films like "The Brothers McMullen," "Clerks," and of course "The Blair Witch Project": These movies made millions while they each cost under $50,000 to make.
The game industry is starting to follow that paradigm, and Garage Games is one of the rallying points. After I first posted here, Jeff Tunnell, the guy who first hired me at Dynamix some three-odd years ago, suggested I take a V12 project on. And I thought about it. I have money to spare, so I'm not hurting there right now (one advantage of having no social life due to work, heh), no outstanding debts...why not give it a try? So I looked for a project that might need a designer.
And I found one that piqued my interest. Earlier this month, I wrote Geoff Weaver, the project director for NTDF, asking if I could contribute to his project, ideally a sequel to Starsiege. His response was "Are you the real Dave Meddish? Really?" After I assured him that I was, and we talked, and eventually I ended up becoming the Lead Designer for the project.
Since I've been working with the NTDF team, I've felt a rekindling of the spirit that drew me into this career path...working with talented, fun people who have a passion for making a great game. If we make money, that'll be great. If we don't, we can at least say we've made a great game and had a good time doing it.
And since I can do this design job from pretty much anywhere, early this September, I will be leaving Eugene to return to my hometown, Bend, Oregon. I lived there most of my life and I'm looking forward to returning.
For once, I'm taking the tiger by the tail, and I'd urge everyone who's ever wondered "What if?" to try as well.
Or, as Thoreau once put it:
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
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#2
As an avid 'sieger, good luck.
08/23/2001 (8:26 am)
You say you are making what is essentially a Starsiege 2 project......I know that there are a couple of efforts in that direction from reading the SS forums, and you would certainly already have built in fanatics (and I mean FANATICS). I am just wondering though, I thought Sierra was not going to part with that liscense, and that 2 other guys share in the rights to the story (maybe including Rick O. ?). I am sure you realize this stuff way better than me, my point is though, how are you going to get around these issues? Are you really going to make "Herks" (lol) or are you planning to remove your project from any direct association with SS and the ES series, and focus on adapting the gameplay elements?As an avid 'sieger, good luck.
Torque 3D Owner Phil Carlisle
I echo your feelings of the industry. It really is getting to be very very bad for the people at the bottom (i.e. the ones who do the work), it never seems to effect the ones at the "top" of the food chain, mainly because they simply pass the hurt down the ladder.
I think the only rational way to go is to minimize costs and maximize gameplay. This of course means that we need to be efficient in the way we design and create games, sadly this still isnt a very high priority for most games companies. I see V12 as a step in the right direction for this kind of thing, not re-inventing the wheel means you can make a cart so much faster.
Of course people should look realistically at what they can create given a certain type of wheel. :))
Good luck with the projects and I'm glad you got a bit of the love back. Its not ALL drudge, its just that the games "industry" is hurting.
Phil.