Australian Gamer Feature :: 10 Game Industry Questions

australiangamer.com | gamersevents.com | vurp.com

10 Game Industry Questions - Michael Dobele

AUSTRALIAN GAME INDUSTRY Q and A - 10 Questions with Michael Dobele - Level Builder/Scripter at Halfbrick

View Screenshots

view profile

Fullname: Michael Dobele

Nickname: Mik

Gender: Male

Age: 28

Current Company: Halfbrick

Current Project: Unannounced Title

Gaming Systems Owned: GBA / GBA Colour / NES / Mega Drive / SNES / Playstation / Saturn / Xbox / Playstation 2 / PSP / Nintendo DS / Nintendo DS Light.

I’ve been lucky these past couple of years to have a flatmate who bought the Xbox 360 and Wii so got to save my pennies on that purchase and leech his Muhaaaa ha ha ha... God I hope I can transfer my Gamer Score when he moves out ><

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

I’ve been pretty fortunate enough to completely change job roles in my short 3 years in the games industry and am currently in a role that I absolutely love, this role is as a Level Builder/Scripter.

Originally I was hired at Halfbrick as an Associate Producer for Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island. Once that had been completed my next planned project I was to produce was cancelled literally before we even started it. I had studied programming originally at University so was able to bounce over to another project that was being developed for the PSP called Heatseeker and work as the Lead Mission Builder with a small team where we built and scripted all of the in game missions and events. I really enjoyed this kind of work as it was very creative and I got to get my hands dirty so when another Brisbane Developer, Krome Studios asked Halfbrick to assist them on Spyro: Eternal Night developing the Gameplay in the levels I jumped at the chance. Myself and two other mission builders worked alongside the Krome staff for four months developing levels for the PS2 and Wii versions. I really poured a lot into the levels I was responsible for and it was immensely rewarding afterwards reading the forum posts from the kids discussing their favourite sections!

Lately I have been designing game challenges for an announced internal title back at Halfbrick, basically this is where I take an in game entity and try to design as many individual challenges and situations as I can for it. Once I have done this the lead designer, the guy responsible for keeping the games vision on track is able to go through and select only the best challenges created. Once we have finished with this step we are then able to begin to pick and choose between this library of gameplay we have created and start to mold the final levels around this.

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

Spyro: Eternal Night (PS2/Wii)
Heatseeker (PSP)
Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island (GBA)
Trainz: Railroad Simulator 2006 (PC)
Fury (PC)
My Virtual Home (PC)

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

I completed a games degree at QANTM back in 2004 and during my final year my friends and I developed a “MarioKart-esque” racing game with crazy characters on scooters called “Scooterama” and entered it into the Australian Game Developers Conference’s independent games competition where we took out first prize.

Winning that award instantly put us in touch with the majority of Queensland based studios and it wasn’t long before nearly all of the team had been employed in the various studios.

I managed to enter the industry via the QA door and worked with Auran testing their products namely Trainz 2006, My Virtual Home and Fury… which was actually called Guardians Online back then.

After working for Auran for most of the year an old University Lecturer of mine phoned telling me that he was now working over at Halfbrick and they were looking for an Associate Producer and would I be interested in applying. I went for it, got the job and have been happy here for the last two years and am hoping I’ll be here for many more years to come.

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

Just working in the industry alongside these talented people everyday is my positive experience.

I still can’t believe I get to make games for a living. Doing something that you are passionate about is just a wonderful feeling and I’m always a little surprised when I get a pay-check at the end of each fortnight.

I’ve been in the games industry for just over three years but it feels like only yesterday I was in Uni so it goes to show you that time really does fly when you’re having fun.

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

I don’t have any really good horror stories, I’ve gone through some pretty nasty crunch periods in the past but I’m extremely pleased that the company I currently work for actively tries to dispel this through managing their projects much more effectively and by always going by the rule that the staff comes first above all else, even the game.

From talking to friends it seems that most studios are also on the same page, realising that their developers are their best assets and that they need to treat them well if they want to keep them and turn out a quality product, so I’m pleased the old ways of long painful crunches are slowly being fixed.

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

If you’re able to afford it I would highly recommend doing one of the games courses being offered by QANTM or AIE. The courses they are offering are improving each year and they have both been improving their relationship with the industry to make sure they are teaching you what you need to know and give you a good starting foundation.

Of course the best thing about attending a specific games course isn’t the university itself but the bonus of surrounding yourself with other dedicated, passionate students who want to make games just as badly as you do. You will learn so much from each other and keep yourself motivated far better in this environment then struggling to teach yourself alone at home. Plus don’t forget that once you are finished your course that your best source of industry contacts will come from those fellow students. Every friend and contact I now have throughout the industry has either been an ex-uni friend or was met through one.

Secondly remember the rule “Demos Open Doors”. Whilst undertaking your university course team up with a few other guys and gals and aim to have a playable demo ready for when you finish the course.

Look at competitions that you can enter this demo into such as the Game Connects, Best Unsigned Game (Indie) award.
http://www.gameconnectap.com/independentgames.html

Every Australian Games Company has representatives going to these events so winning one of the awards is a fantastic way to get your name remembered and push your resume to the top of the pile. And who knows, If your game idea is good enough a Publisher could buy it and turn it into a commercial product, just like what happened with the students who originally made Portal or De Blob.

Think about what you want to make as early as possible! A great tip is to tailor your normal school assignments around your game demo so that you can figure out all the hiccups and skills you will need as early as possible, then when it comes time to sit down and make the full product you will already have prototyped the individual components and have a flying head start.

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

We have a lot of independent studios making up our industry in Australia who so far have primarily survived doing fee for service licence work for US based publishers. As we are still a relatively new industry here not many companies have acquired that monetary grounding that enables them to take a risk and develop their own Intellectual Property. As you have seen recently and sadly with Auran one failure can shut down a studio quite easily.

Thankfully with the boom of the casual games market and the huge success currently of XBLA and soon to be WiiWare, developers are now able to develop smaller games that will be received by the mass market whilst reducing the cost and development times significantly.

These growing markets are a fantastic testing bed for developers to try their own IP and I’m looking forwards to seeing some local developers hit it big over the next year or two and make a name for themselves as respected as some of the big boys overseas.

8. Got any good stories you want to share?

When I was doing Quality Assurance for Auran and working on Trainz the majority of the content going into the boxed game such as the recreated routes and trains was actually being made by the external community spread all over the globe. One week towards the end of the project we discovered that one of the German content creator groups had hidden male pornographic images into the game. The QA team then had to work to the early hours of the morning manually viewing every single image in the game to ensure it was all clean. Staying up till 2 am looking for male appendages isn’t fun... Unless your Matt :p

9. What are your favourite games and why?

Snake Rattle ‘N’ Roll (NES)
An early RARE title there is something about controlling a disembodied snakes head, eating these weird little nibbly pibblies to grow a tail so I can be heavy enough to trip a set of scales and open the door to the next level that appealed to me. And cmon….. Fighting a foot on a square moon made out of cheese just hasn’t been topped as an end boss since! Plus the game was so freaking hard! I miss those good old days before Halo made everyone stupid at games
Goldeneye (N64)
Granted if I try and play it now I’ll vomit within a minute due to the single digit frame rates but my friends and I played this game so much in High School it was a significant contributing factor to my low grades that year.
WoW (PC)
I’ve lost a girlfriend and gained a girlfriend through this game, fallen asleep at the keyboard due to spending 16 hours straight raiding and gone through the entire gamut of emotions meeting new friends, having childish arguments over loot with real life friends, joining guilds, quitting guilds and causing guilds to split. I’ve walked away from it and returned several times and whilst now, due to the imminent birth of my first child I am finally hanging up my WoW boots for good it sure has entertained me over the past 2 years.

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

Pac-Man. Those pellets have got to be damn tasty to keep him risking life after life in the pursuit to gobble them all up.

Vaelastrasz The Corrupt. (WoW instance Boss) Once the most feared dragon boss for my guild, took us months to kill him and even after defeating him he would kick our ass every now and again just to let us know who was in charge.

Now that everyone has buggered off to the Expansion I bet he’s lonely… I’d take him out for a beer and chat about the good old days.

If you have any questions for Mik he will be available to answer them in the forums here

View Screenshots