Get To Know thatgamecompany’s Michael Peddicord
Posted by Aaron on April 25th, 2011
This week, we bring you another interview, this time of Michael Peddicord:
What do you do on a day-to-day basis for thatgamecompany?
Michael Peddicord: I’m a tools engineer here at thatgamecompany. I’ve been here about a year. Basically, I’ve been working pretty closely to tools, the artists, and the designers, trying to create a workflow that is quick and effective, so they can get their stuff done!
Simone Di Gravio/@AltairJp3: How did you get into the game industry? Inspirations etc.
This is my first actual full time job at a game company, but [my history in game development] started around high school. I learned that a friend was making games for mobile phones, and I was like, “That’s amazing! Tell me how you do that!” He gave me some references and I started learning C++ and started making games. In college, I entered contests, specifically the “Experimental Gameplay” contests. I was able to win myself a summer internship at EA Tiburon in Florida. That led to another summer internship with Robin Hunicke at EALA working on Boom Blox 2. Then I took a summer off and then I started working here.
Yeah, absolutely. It definitely helped working with her, she got a good feel of my personality and she thought I was a good fit for the company.
Samantha Vick: What is your favorite part of game development?
Michael: I think my favorite part is to be able to explore new ways of doing things, new ideas, and being able to communicate those ideas to a player. Game development is a really neat way of giving your ideas to other people. I do a lot of thinking in my own head, and it’s nice to have a medium to convey those thoughts to other people.
Get To Know thatgamecompany’s Bryan Singh
Posted by Aaron on April 4th, 2011
Bryan Singh: I’m a technical game designer here at thatgamecompany and what that means is I do a lot of mechanics design and implementation, level design and implementation, and programming and engineering. I’m part of that bridge between the engineering and design disciplines.
Bryan: I’ve worked here for almost two years now. I started here June of 2009, at the beginning of Journey.
Bryan: I’ve actually asked myself this a lot of times. I like doing a lot of stuff and I don’t know if I do consider myself restricted to games. Growing up, games have always been around and they’ve had an impact on me, so that’s what I’ve grabbed onto.
I think thatgamecompany chose games because we’re one of the first generations to have grown up with digital games and we are seeing how much they can affect people. We want to help make games that affect people in the right way.
Bryan: Everyone has the same hours. Our core hours are about 10:30-7. We start a little bit late – that’s kind of the norm for the games industry. As far as pushing nonstop until it’s done, we try very consciously not to do that. We really strongly believe that if something’s not done on time, killing yourself to try to get it done just won’t produce quality work.
