Australian Gamer 10 Questions :: 10 Game Industry Questions

australiangamer.com | gamersevents.com | vurp.com

10 Game Industry Questions - David Hewitt

AUSTRALIAN GAME INDUSTRY Q and A - 10 Questions with David Hewitt - Creative Director at Tantalus, Melbourne

Discuss in official forum

View Screenshots

view profile

10 Game Industry Questions - David Hewitt

News from Yug - September 6th @ 10:16am

Fullname: David Andrew Hewitt

Nickname: It must be really horrible, because they won’t call me it to my face.

Gender: Male

Age: 32

Current Company: Tantalus

Current Project: : I’ve got six active projects at the moment… but the only one I’m allowed to talk about just yet is The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon for the DS, I’m afraid.

Gaming Systems Owned: Amiga, Megadrive, SNES, Gameboy (Brick, Pocket, Color, Advance and SP), PS1, Saturn, N64, Neo-Geo Pocket Color, Dreamcast, PS2 (Original and Slim), Gamecube, Xbox, DS (Original and Lite), PSP, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3. I also play games on my PC, mobile phone and iPod from time to time.

1. What is your job role where you work and can you explain what it entails?

I’m the Creative Director at Tantalus. My main responsibilities involve managing and mentoring our design team, overseeing the design of every project in development at Tantalus, steering the creative direction of the company at an executive level, running our internal IP generation process and pitching for new projects.

In real terms, my role involves a lot of arguing with people in meetings, peering over the shoulders of more talented people, messing up our producers’ meticulously planned schedules, and asking people to go back and do something again that they thought was finished already. I generally make a nuisance of myself, in other words, hoping to make our games that little bit more enjoyable for the player.

2. What games have you been directly involved with previously?

In my first industry job, at Ratbag Games:

Leadfoot (PC)

Dirt Track Racing Australia (PC)

Dirt Track Racing: Sprint Cars (PC)

Dirt Track Racing 2 (PC)

World of Outlaws Sprintcars 2002 (PS2)

And in my time at Tantalus so far:

Monster Truck Madness (GBA)

The Polar Express (GBA)

Trick Star (GBA)

MX vs. ATV Unleashed: On The Edge (PSP)

SpongeBob SquarePants: The Yellow Avenger (PSP and DS)

Top Gear Downforce (DS)

Pony Friends (DS)

Pony Friends: Mini Breeds (DS)

MX vs. ATV Untamed (PSP and DS)

Cars: Mater-national (DS and GBA)

We’re about to ship The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon for the DS, and have another five games actively in development, two of which are based on internally generated original IP.

3. How did you get your start in the gaming industry?

My career in game development started at Ratbag Games in Adelaide, through a combination of blind luck and good timing. I started there primarily as a writer, and worked from home on a part-time basis for a little while before moving into the office and going full-time. In the studio, I was given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn about game development alongside an enormously talented team, who were remarkably tolerant of my non-technical background and non-stop barrage of stupid questions.

It was an exciting, stimulating, terrifying time. The company grew from maybe a dozen or so to about seventy while I was there, and for some reason they let me head up the design of the whole racing division of the company, including the first PS2 title developed in Australia, which seemed like a pretty big deal at the time. I couldn’t believe my luck.

I felt sure I was going to be “found out” at any moment, and dragged from the building, but fortunately I somehow managed to learn the ropes before anyone noticed.

I gradually made the transition from being the guy who sat at that crappy old computer that the artists had the scanner plugged into, and can’t cut code or create art assets so remind me why he’s here, again… to the guy who somehow got to say how our games were supposed to work.

Knowledge and experience gradually crept in over time, replacing bluffing and guesswork, and by the time I made the move to Tantalus, I felt like I’d managed to get a reasonable handle on the game design process. Of course, I was completely wrong, and even now I still need to learn something new almost every day, but it seems that’s par for the course in this business, and all part of the fun.

4. What has been the most positive experience of working in the games industry so far?

This is the toughest question of the lot! The games industry has been unbelievably good to me, really, and has provided a wealth of experiences and opportunities.

It’s going to sound a bit corny, but the honest answer is that the best aspect of working in games is simply the people you spend your time with every day. It’s nice to see something you’ve worked on being talked about and enjoyed, I like getting a sneak peak at new technology, it’s great to have access to people whose work you admire at conferences and so on, but the most profound and positive effects on my life have come from the team I work with.

I come into the office every morning, and work alongside brilliant, creative, stimulating people. They come from a wide range of backgrounds and locations, and I don’t even know how you’d ever keep company like this socially, if you weren’t thrown together by a desire to create something as difficult, complex and multidisciplinary as a modern videogame. I learn from and am challenged by the people I work with almost constantly, and am regularly amazed by what they’re capable of.

5. What has been the most negative experience of working in the games industry so far?

The single most negative experience I’ve had in the games industry occurred while I was still working at Ratbag Games, when, due to project cancellations, a large number of the staff had to be laid off. We all know that the games industry can be unpredictable, but there’s nothing that can really prepare you for that meeting in which you’re told that months of hard work might have been for nothing, or for the empty desks and eerie quiet of the next work day, when many of your friends are no longer there, and are having to move themselves and their families interstate or overseas at short notice. I can’t imagine what it must have been like, years later, when the company was acquired and then shut down by Midway.

Fortunately, Tantalus has been run in such a way that layoffs have never been necessary in my time here, and we’ve managed to keep our teams together even when the road has been a little bumpy. Here’s hoping we can continue the trend!

6. What advice can you give to other people looking to get into a position such as yours?

The difficult bit seems to be getting your foot in the door, so my first bit of advice would be to find a way to do that. QA can be a great place to start – the majority of the design team I work with have a QA background. The key seems to be persistence and timing, really – if you have a love of games, and plug away at your own on-paper game designs, level designs, flash games, or whatever, it counts enormously in your favour.

As for working your way up into a senior creative position, once you’re inside the walls, there are a couple of key things. Firstly, I’d recommend forging relationships with the artists and programmers you’re working with. They can make you look really smart… or really stupid. Realise that there’s very little you can do on your own, and learn how to communicate with those around you, helping them to buy into building what you’ve designed. If you can get a team on your side, that’s most of the battle. The other thing is to analyze games, not just play them. The better you are at breaking games down into their constituent parts, and understanding why certain things work or don’t work, the better you’ll be at making design decisions. As far as things you can do, as an aspiring designer, on your own – this is the top of the list.

7. How do you see Australia as a market when compared to the rest of the world?

As a market, Australia is almost irrelevant, frankly. Everything we work on is for a global audience, which really means that it’s for North America, the UK, Europe, and sometimes Japan. Usually in that order.

Unless you’re developing something intended very specifically for an Australian audience, the market is too small to be a major consideration. Unfortunately, the absence of an 18+ category for games in Australia means that some developers do have to start thinking about Australia as a distinct market, but not in a good way. That, however, is a whole other discussion.

8. Got any good stories you want to share?

Sure! How about the one about the CTO of one of Australia’s largest game development studios publically performing an act of simulated fellatio on a bronze elephant? Actually, I’d better not – he’d kill me if I did.

9. What are your favourite games and why?

Now this is another tough question. I’m pleased you’ve asked about my favourite games, though, rather than what I think are the “best” games, so I don’t necessarily have to include all the obvious, canonical choices.

So, purely subjectively, here are a few of my all-time favourites:

Outrun 2 – This is close to a perfect game, for me, though it seems to be underappreciated and misunderstood. It’s the game I mention most often in design meetings – it’s an utterly focussed and razor-sharp game, with only one objective: to make the player feel awesome. Everything in the game is built with the intention of giving the player the best possible experience, but not in the usual focus-tested manner – it’s eccentric, and carries with it the swagger of its creator, as it literally takes the player on a ride through a perfect day.

Virtua Fighter 5 – I just can’t stop playing this thing. I’ve been playing Virtua Fighter for years, and have learned a lot about the game, but the more I play it, the more I realise I still have to figure out. It’s got little of the fluff many recent fighting games have become bogged down with, and still has the deepest, most balanced and nuanced system of any fighting game, while still also maintaining the most fluid and satisfying feel. When I win, I know I’ve earned it, and when I lose, I can only ever blame myself. This is my desert island game, the game I’ll never stop playing (in some version or other), and the game I’ll never be good enough at.

Vandal Hearts – This might seem like a bit of an odd choice, but I have a huge, irrational soft spot for this game. It put me onto tactical RPGs, for one thing, a genre I’ve invested an embarrassing amount of time into over the years. But more than just a stand-in for a favourite genre, this game has something special about it. The stage designs are inspired and memorable, and each requires a unique approach – something missing from most modern (and otherwise objectively better) games in the genre. The characters are all somewhat flexible, but each retains a distinct, unique and memorable identity. There’s also no grinding or repetition – the game has forward momentum designed into it, and you’ve got to win by being clever, not by putting time in on the treadmill. I can still hum most of the music, and I love the visual presentation – from the way each character bops up and down in place, to the way a fountain of cartoon blood erupts from a defeated enemy. Plus, hawk-knights rule, obviously.

10. If you could meet any gaming character in real life, who would it be and why?

I’ll choose the King of all Cosmos. He seems like he understands what it really means to have a big night out on the town, and is never stuck for something to say.

Discuss in official forum

View Screenshots