It’s Our Favorite Holiday - National Video Game Day

It’s no secret that we love video games. We not only make them, we also play them in our free time. So when National Video Game Day comes around we celebrate by playing games and also reflecting on our experiences in game development. Here’s a look at some of our first experiences in the field.

Robin (3D Artist):
“One of my earliest really memorable experiences in game development was when I was working on a game that let players build their own contraptions. I had made a fairly simple object for the game, just an ordinary cylindrical gas canister. Later on, after we released the game, I was watching let's plays of the game on YouTube and a player had taken that simple gas canister and used it as wheels on their car! It was so awesome seeing players be really creative and use stuff in ways we never thought of.”

Linnéa (Game Developer):
“The first real game that I contributed to was made during my time in university. No one in my group had ever used a game engine or written game code before, so that  was a new experience for all of us. We decided to work with the coolest future tech at the time - VR. The game became very playful in the end and we learned new things every time we sat down for the project.

Later we got to exhibit the game at the Stockholm Museum of Technology, and from what I know, it’s still there three years later! I’ve been to that exhibit multiple times and there is always a queue of kids waiting to try it. I often stay there a long time enjoying the game and watching other people play it.”

Conor (UX Designer):
"The first game I made was during my master's degree. I was looking at how biometrics could be used to increase a player's experience and sense of agency in video games. So I made a VR horror game set in an abandoned asylum where the AI would use your heartbeat as a determining factor for whether they would chase you or not. The actual challenge was to keep calm, but the fact that the players could see their heart rate and knew the outcome led to a great experience. I had to design the game, level design, audio design, and also make sure it was researched and tested with players to make sure all UX issues were addressed - all of the aspects of a proper development cycle - in six months!"

Annie (3D Artist):
"My first ever game developing experience ties into why I ended up in this industry. I had been working for the same retail company for eight years and I felt really lost as to what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was quickly approaching the 30-year-old mark, so I decided to go back to school. I applied for a lot of mainstream courses, a lot in the management sector, but was not eligible for any of them since I dropped out of high school to start working. For fun, I applied to a bachelor course in game development, because why not? I totally forgot about it until I got a letter saying I was accepted. A couple of weeks later I was opening up Maya for the first time and had to make a Tower Defense game. Some students had already dropped out so it was just me, a designer and one programmer trying to duck tape something together and it was frickin awesome!"

Clint (3D Artist):
"When I was in Hollywood working in film and VFX, I realized some of the same art and scripting knowledge could be used to make my own games. So after work, I started making tiny mobile games, like Flappy Bird style games, to teach myself the process. After about two years of doing this in my spare time, I found out about an indie game summer camp called Stugan. I applied and was selected to be in the first year that it took place. It was a group of indie developers spending two months in a Swedish cabin in the woods making our own games. It was one of the best experiences I've ever been a part of, it was life-changing. I was able to finish and release my game, _PRISM. And afterwards, I actually moved to Stockholm to join Resolution Games!"

Tom (Senior Creative Director):
“In college, my roommate had a teacher-friend that taught kids with learning disabilities. He was doing some simple interactive experiences for them on the Apple ][+. I was a devout Apple ][ coder, so I fixed up a ‘Rocket to Mars' experience he had. Then I made a funny educational game for the kids called Changemaker that had a guy and his piggy bank, and the guy's arm would reach waaayyy up the screen to get the right quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies to make the goal amount, like 42 cents. It taught me a lot about how to make games with the player's wants and needs in mind, instead of my own.”

Do you enjoy making games?  Take a look at our current openings here.