10 Game Industry Questions - Jon Cartwright

10 Questions from Yug - Friday, 20 February 2009 @ 10:35am

Fullname: Jon Cartwright Gender: Male Age: 37 Current Company: THQ Studio Australia Current Project: Unannounced

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

I’m Director of Production here at THQ Studio Australia. I’m responsible for all the projects we have in development here in terms of scheduling, delivery, budgets and staff forecasting. I also work with external licensors, manufacturers, middleware providers and so on.

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

Well I’ve been getting games published for 22 years so far; I started as a precocious teenage programmer so there’s a lot of old stuff out there that I worked on and I’d hate to see some of it now. Back in the UK I worked for a company called Big Red Software, and we did a bunch of Spectrum and Amstrad games mostly for Codemasters. This was back when they were doing £1.99 games and selling lots of them. So I wrote one of the Dizzy games, did some stuff on the Game Gear/Master system and was involved in the Game Genie stuff. I was also one of a bunch of programmers who had a hand in the PC version of Micro Machines. We ended up doing PC games for Domark, and then along with them and Simis (now Kuju) we got bought by Eidos. After that I went to work at Blitz Games, the guys who originally came up with Dizzy and was there for 6 or 7 years. So I worked on a bunch of titles there, but most directly Titan AE, Taz: Wanted, Fairly OddParents and Reservoir Dogs.

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

I loved computer games and wanted to write them. So I taught myself to program when the UK home computer boom was at its height and started making my own games. My dad had bought a Dragon 32 as the “family computer” which was actually good to program, but wasn’t as well served with games as the ZX Spectrum or the Commodore 64. So a lot of my first efforts were simply trying to rip off games that were on these other computers. Back then there were no game trailers available so you had to pretty much rely on what you read in a magazine and the screenshots they ran. Quite often the games that I wanted to write versions of I’d never actually seen run, I’d just been sucked in by the visuals in the screenshots. Anyhow, aged 15 I started getting small stuff published on this deeply unhip Dragon 32 and made some money out of it.

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

Well obviously there’s the satisfaction of seeing your game on the shelf, that’s a given. Seeing people play your game is something you can’t describe – it’s exciting and nerve wracking all at the same time. We did a competition with Mania magazine at the end of the year and had a bunch of kids come in to tour the studio, see “Avatar: Into the Inferno”, how it was made, all that stuff. I know it sounds saccharine but it really was a humbling day to see just how excited these kids were to be in the place I work every day, and to see what a massive effect what we do has on them. It’s very easy to be cynical about games, kids’ games in particular, but honestly the reaction we got from these kids was magic.

I’ve met and worked with some fantastic people, some incredibly clever and talented people that have made me go “wow” and done what we thought wasn’t possible. Everywhere I’ve worked the best thing has been the people; sure a nice salary and a nice office is all well and good but that’s all worthless if you don’t like the people you work with.

I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve done a bit of travelling in the line of my work, and that’s given me exposure to a whole bunch of different people and different places. When I was working for an independent developer it was always fascinating to go and pitch to publishers, to get to know their business development and marketing people. Over the years they’ve moved on but I’ve stayed in touch with a lot so got quite a good network. Going out to other developers and seeing how they work has been fascinating, and to be fair no-one’s got a secret formula.

Whilst I was at Blitz “Taz: Wanted” was nominated for a BAFTA, so I got to go down to a fancy hotel in London for the awards ceremony. We lost out to Disney, but it was quite something to be considered in the first place.

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

In my mid 20’s I was running Big Red Software as an Eidos studio and leading a management buy-out because the studio was going to be closed. I was honest with the staff about what was going on, and to their credit all but one of them stayed with me even though we could have closed at any time. I went out to see every other games publisher I could to sell the game we were working on to raise the capital to buy-out the studio and keep everyone employed. We had a contract on the table with a large publisher, but unfortunately they pulled out at the last minute and the studio closed. I was gutted, but I don’t regret a minute of the experience. I ended up taking the majority of the staff 100 yards up the road to Blitz Games where a lot of them still work.

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

Ideally work on a bunch of games in one discipline or other; I came from a programming background and I like to think it still helps me, even if it has been years since I coded anything in anger. Actually seeing through projects from conception to publishing in any position will help give a broader view of what’s involved. Then a junior production role would be a good thing; a few years of that before moving up to be a PM or a Producer. And then after some years doing that perhaps you’re ready to take over the world. ;)

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

In terms of development we have to import a lot of people to support the amount of titles we want to make here. And I think that applies to every developer in Australia. There’s a real shortage of the quality people we want, so it’s difficult to staff projects. There’s been some extremely healthy competition between studios for employees that want to work here in Australia.

The recent Pandemic news is very sad. Obviously, devastating for the individuals, but bad for our industry as a whole too. It’s imperative that we have a vibrant and healthy industry, with lots of competition amongst developers, and a good number of developers. If there was only one or two developers in Australia people wouldn’t think it was a viable industry, so people wouldn’t look to get into games locally, and folks from overseas would see it as too risky a move. I remember when Fox Studios closed their animation facility in Phoenix AZ after Titan AE was done; there were all these animators looking for work (primarily Irish imports that Don Bluth had brought with him). As far as I know there weren’t any other major animation studios there, so what do those people do?

8. Got any good stories you want to share?

I met Henry Winkler (The Fonz) in the elevator of the MGM building about 11 years ago. I was over there with Blitz pitching for a Bond game I think. He’s shorter than you imagine, and now he’s a director he has grey hair. Secretly I wanted the elevator to break down so he could use his elbow to get it working again – like he does with the jukebox in the opening credits of Happy Days.

9. What are your favourite games and why?

Well my favourites are probably what I’m playing at any given time, so that changes a lot. But here are some of the more obscure games that I liked and why. Gets predictably nerdy and obscure I’m afraid.

• Burning Rangers (Sega Saturn) – Well I don’t actually have this anymore but I wish I did. I always hoped Sega would do a new version of this on the Dreamcast but sadly they never did. It had a look of Battle of The Planets, but you were futuristic fire fighters essentially, rescuing people. Playing Disaster: Day of Crisis on Wii recently really reminded me of this.
• Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (Nintendo GameCube) – This was a very under-rated crazy adventure from Team Sonic. There are elements of this that you can see in Super Monkey Ball and even Mario Galaxy. This is back in the hey-day of Sega GameCube IP. The theme music was my ringtone for a while, probably shouldn’t have admitted that though eh?
• Klonoa (Gameboy Advance) – I loved the game on PS2, it was so under-rated. Are you seeing a theme here with obscure Japanese platformers? The GBA version looks and plays lovely too; I still have that.
• NiGHTS (Sega Saturn) – This totally blew me away when I got it. I bought it with the odd looking Saturn analog controller, which came out before the PS2 Dual Analog. The premise and imagery were both sublime. I was really excited about the Wii version, but then it somehow didn’t live up to my expectations. Maybe it never was as good as I remember it.
• Trackmania (PC) – Ok, so in general I don’t play games on my PC but this is the exception. It’s awesome fun both as a racer and as a puzzle game. There’s something in there that makes you want to get gold on each track, if you make one mistake you quit and start it again. Really is a game for perfectionists.
• Flood (Atari ST) – My favourite Bullfrog game. The game mechanic of the water flooding the levels was really clever and completely different from anything else at the time. I have very fond memories of playing this. As a gag from time to time when you tried to use your gun the character would inexplicably pull out a rubber chicken. Hilarious!
• Kirby Canvas Curse (Nintendo DS) – Honestly one of the best DS games I’ve played; such fantastic use of the stylus. Really nice mix of platform and puzzle game - it’s a bit tricky to get hold of these days though. You have to wonder if this was the inspiration for the mechanics in Lost Winds.
• The Secret of Monkey Island (PC) – This is really old, but it’s still one of the funniest games I’ve ever played. I used to buy all the Lucas point and click adventures; they were such fun. Kinda sad that no-one does them anymore.
• Rakuga Kids (Nintendo 64) – The assistant in the game store tried to persuade me not to buy this because he thought it was rubbish! But it’s an awesomely silly fighting game from Konami; essentially a toned down version of Marvel vs Capcom but with ridiculous characters and special moves. How many games feature a pizza delivery scooter as an attack move? And a character called Bear-Tank?
• Chu Chu Rocket (Sega Dreamcast) – I got this free by taking my Dreamcast on-line to the Dreamarena service. It’s a fantastic puzzle game in single player and a frantic multi-player affair. I always wanted to pick up the GBA version but I just never found it.

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

Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney. I’d like him to negotiate contracts for me; it’d be highly inappropriate and hopefully hilarious.