From Designer to Programmer with Scott Lagrasta | Game Dev Unchained Episode 251

[Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of gamedev unchained the number one podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof i am your host brandon pham and with me a special guest and old friend scott lagrasta how you doing dude uh i'm doing all right all things considered how you doing i'm good man it's been a while but before we get to that uh this is the part of the podcast that uh i allow our guests which is yourself uh to talk about yourself a little intro about where you're from where you at where you're heading uh to our listeners and viewers out there yeah sure so uh like brandon said i'm scott um i yeah i started in the games industry about 17 years ago um i started in qa at a place called sammy studios that would later become high moon

i did qa there for about a year uh moved on to some design work did uh audio scripting level design tech design for several years um went on to uh let's see after that uh i went on to 2k did level design on a bioshock 2 some dlc uh you know the standard like some other things i never saw the light of day um and uh yeah and then it was about that point where i um i was feeling kind of dissatisfied with uh where my career path had taken me so i switched to programming um i i've been sort of a self-taught hacker for you know ever since high school um but uh after spending so much time in design um i realized that wasn't what i really wanted to do so um yeah so i basically did a did a career reboot and started over as a programmer um

so then from uh i went i went like indie indie for a while but really that was just me quitting my job um and uh well forcibly quitting as they say uh the studio shut down um so uh then after that uh i yeah i kind of bounced around a little bit um i did the sort of san francisco like mmo free-to-play startup for a little while um i went to try on and then from there i went to a place called road rocket games that got uh partially acquired or something like that by um by kabam and then yeah and from there i went to telltale uh where i did some build engineering uh which was a wild ride uh literally between like different platforms and all that they shipped something every day um and then after that uh yeah and then i uh went a little crazy and moved across the world to sweden to

go work at uh at massive entertainment where i uh i'm a gameplay programmer right now damn dude uh what a journey just to kind of kind of give you guys some feedback uh history here you know i i of course met scott at 2k uh work on bioshock and i'll let kind of get your face in the tv there but uh yeah i mean one of the biggest meat of the topic i want to discuss with you about is you know we're constantly as developers um the ones that are staying relevant the one that are not comfortable are the ones that are usually the dangerous people in our industry that i feel are already always secured in their job because they're always looking ahead and it actually is kind of weird predicament because a lot of seniors when they get comfortable it's because family or you know they spent a good amount of years being through the ringer basically where they're like all right i

need to embrace other parts of my life to find it fulfilling you went the total opposite where you became a programmer right which is like the hardest job in the industry i feel and for artists it becomes like a it's like looking across if i'm a vampire like it's just a department that i routinely avoid designers are a little bit you guys hang out with them more obviously but artists are on the far corner away from programs usually so there's a a couple of things that you mentioned that i wanted to kind of dive into like were you part of that whole telltale debaco where it completely shut down as well or you left control which debacle um the final one the final nail in the coffin uh i was no i i left um by that point um it was uh i left oh gosh i want to say three or four months before um before that before that happened okay so you were there with the remnants yeah yeah i know um they yeah um the

writing was really on the wall um you know they um i forget the exact i don't remember all the drama because i i try and like you know i try and step back from that as much as i can um and just focus on you know the work what's important you know being good to the people around me and helping them out and getting the game done and doing a good job and all that but um yeah they brought in i remember when they brought in a guy uh somebody was like a former zynga big wig yeah and like me and like everyone else when we and build when we when we heard about that we kind of looked at each other and we're like oh okay so so we better start looking at it i had already been looking actually um because uh it was it was it was a rough job like i said uh i was in build engineering and so um the they literally between like you know they shipped on like every platform there was like every phone a bunch of old like android fire phones or sorry amazon fire phones that aren't around anymore like they wanted to to stay really relevant

to all those smaller devices which is cool and a lot of people appreciated that but it made it really hard for people to build you know when you have 15 different platforms and you're shipping you know an episode every couple of weeks plus patches um there literally was an average of something going on every day to say nothing of like just the regular fires that happened in the normal course of game development so that was stressful i've been looking um i i've been shopping around like amazon and unity and um um you know nothing nothing really stuck um but uh yeah i sort of had this conversation with with my wife who's like very adventurous and you know this was in uh 2016 and uh i think we all know what happened in 2016. um that made people want to leave the country um so uh yeah my wife was basically like like oh my gosh can we just like go to europe or something and you know i was like yeah we we can like i you know at that point i've been in the industry for you know 12 or 13 years like i knew people all

over and so um i kind of put out some feelers um to see who was uh who was available and who was looking and um uh yeah i ended up at massive of course but um i got interviews at uh you know some places in like london a couple other um you know sort of european locales um and like you mentioned like people being able to be able to find sort of like oh they find their niche and they kind of get into it and stick with it um i don't really have that option um because i've got such a weird trajectory like i need to find a studio that needs me like i can't like i'm not i'm not a great programmer i mean i'm totally confident and anybody you know if you're looking at this in the future wondering if you should hire me you absolutely should um but like um is is i i haven't i've been in the industry for a long time but i haven't spent all that time in engineering i've spent all that time developing games but i've not spent all that time programming games so when i roll up to a studio for an interview they're like okay we're gonna hit you with a standard programmer stuff and then i you know i do pretty all right on that

um but uh but if they start hitting me really hard with like you know really complex rendering questions or things like that um or like really deep down system level stuff and i start to falter and i'm very honest about that up front where it's like hey look do you need somebody who is you know who can who can speak to designers who can speak to artists who has done you know i've done all that i have done art but i've done like you know design i've done a little bit of writing i've done a bit of everything and so i know i know how to to speak to these people i know how they want to be treated and i know like you know if you give me a feature then i can i can handle it a little better than somebody who doesn't have that design experience because i can sort of switch over to my design brain and say okay if i was working on this what would i want from the programmer and i can kind of close those loops a bit faster and some studios see the value in that and and some don't and some have a need for somebody like me and and some don't so um i can't just you know i've my connections have gotten me interviews at a lot of like really cool places um like you know like epic and bungie and all like you know the hot places that people

want to go but um you know but if they're if they're very like you know um if they don't have a particular need for somebody like me then they're like oh wow i mean you're really cool like we'd like to find a place for you we don't really have anything yet and i just have to like you know accept that and move on like that is that's just how my career has gone like i don't have a cs degree i you know largely self-taught um so i just gotta look for a place that needs to just the right kind of weirdo basically oh yeah i mean as long as i know you've definitely been a certain type of weirdo like design the design group is a it's a niche well with with the with you know with confidence right yeah so design like has their you guys have your group right and then the artist after niche and you now being the crossover it definitely helps um to kind of speak to each other because usually for the artists that we're used to having a technical artist to kind of be that in between to two programmers designers don't

really you guys talk directly to them a lot and i've always assumed you guys had a alright conversation but i guess it is like two separate minds where it's like one is very creative and one's very like by the numbers right yeah and it does vary from like studio to studio like i have been like you know when we were working on bio2 like i feel like we had a really good relationship with the other programmers there like they were all great people a lot of them really helped me and in my transition to engineering and like yeah i i was in contact with them and consider them friends and then i have worked at other studios where like they're like on my do not hire list like if i see that person's resume come across like you know somebody's desk or whatever i'm like maybe you should not hire that person there yeah super rude like you know maybe they're really talented and maybe they're technically competent but like i i'm a tool for this man i don't have the patience for like people who are like who like are rude or brow beat others or demean others just because they think it makes them better like i'd

not like disney with that totally yeah i mean i think everybody who's been through this uh have basically a list that they uh that they keep up with um but i i also kind of am drawn to what you said before like you know you kind of being sequentially in the area a lot like a lot of those companies for a good period just shut down once uh you know one after another and yeah just trying to be a developer in that area for a while just felt very disheartening and um can really burn someone out unless you focus on you know getting the work done and moving on uh everything else become a distraction and it's a lot that i tried to convey to listeners a lot to you know i went through that period you know just office politics and all that stuff and yeah it definitely wears you down and by the end of it it serves no purpose you know uh for for yourself so a couple of things that you kind of pointed out

like i didn't know that you had a tech art background before going designs i just assumed that you've always been a designer so so was the design was more about you wanting that the creative control over the game that you put out and then going back figuring out you know what happened there where you thought design wasn't fulfilling enough yeah well it's it's interesting well i mean it's it's unique at least like my career path like the first you know sort of sort of ten years or so where i did design work that was really largely influenced by a single conversation early in my career and it's really wild to think about that now um where it was just a series of sort of two chance meetings where um i had you know i i just started in qa um and i was like all right i'm you know this is again this is like 2004 or whatever when you know that was uh you know a pretty viable path into the industry still um but i was like all right i'm in i i've got my foot in the door i'm gonna move up now how do i do that and i was i was of two minds i was like okay well

i like the design seems really interesting like that seems where like the fun is where you really define what the game is about but i love like you know the engineering puzzles and like those really unique challenges um you know like it's i like to say it's like detective work but you might not realize that you're also the person who committed the crime um and so i was sitting there like you know trying to figure out what i was going to do and um and somebody came up to me and it turned out it was i forget his exact position but he was some like big wig in the programming you know department there and i was like oh hey cool like i'd really like to know you know what's what's my path to being a programmer here and he said oh well you know where's your degree from and i was like i i don't have a cs degree and he just shook his head and was like if you don't have a cs degree you're not going to be a programmer and i was like oh okay uh all right well that sucks and so i was kind of bummed out about that and then you know a couple days later um uh one of the lead designers came around and we had a conversation and it was

totally the opposite where he was just like he's like yeah like you know we'll like let me know what you're interested in we'll get you on the design track you know we love moving people up it'll be great like you know just you know put your time in in qa and uh and learn the ropes and uh and yeah we'll see if we can find some work for you and he absolutely did like you know like i said 10 11 months later he was my boss um so just those two like like you know you sort of see the like you look you like look down the the you know the road that diverges in the yellow wood and you see one way that you go and then the other way you could have gone and so when i hit the point um uh after shipping bio2 um we were i think a lot of people were really um uh sort of in this like fugue state like we didn't quite know what was coming next um and we didn't know if he wanted to be there and we gelled really well as a team the design team like that they were some of the most brilliant designers i've worked with were you know were part of the bioshock 2 design team you

just need to look at like what they went on to do to see how true that is but um but nothing interesting was coming along and so all the really like you know the these like really sharp people that um we had gelled together as a team started just dropping off and leaving and so we hired replacements and you know they they were like they were good people too like they were you know they were competent and they were nice and i had nothing bad to say about them but they just were not motivated by the same uh feature sets that like they hired for when they were hiring for bio2 like when they were hiring fire 2 they wanted very systems driven people who were really like you know sort of interested in pushing what um what you could do with sort of narrative and gains and that sort of thing and then when we were hiring up for the subsequent project xcom um or i should say the bureau i guess when you're hiring up for that like we knew the game's gonna be different and so we hired a different set of people and they weren't people who are interested in systemic gameplay um and you know

and so i feel like when we hit that point like i felt a little a little aimless and um i had been throwing myself into my indie work a lot because i i realized you know that the the game that i've been working on sort of like to teach myself unity and and uh sort of make a little side project was really really what was keeping me going um and when i thought about the problems i enjoyed solving the most on it it was the programming problems um it was like you know just like the weird vector math and these were transformations and like oh can i make the shader do this like those sorts of things were what i was really gravitating towards the design was kind of suffering as a result and like as proud as i am of having shipped that game like it's not a super well designed game and i'll admit that um but i you know i love it um [Music] and so uh yeah like i said i thought about the the problems that i enjoyed solving and i thought that i would have the conversation again with somebody else and be like okay like sure i don't have a cs degree but like it's just knowledge right like you

can get that like so i went and talked to uh one of the one of the programmers there at a 2k at the time and basically recounted sort of this this story about like oh yeah this guy told me to never you know be a progress i didn't have a cs degree and he just kind of like shrugged and shook his head and he was like just learn the stuff like nobody cares where you got your degree from the important thing is the knowledge says yeah that no actually it was uh it was olaf olaf yeah yeah i love you all just do it and uh so yeah and so sort of spurred on by that like him and him and uh mark fletcher like they definitely really uh really helped me along by you know giving me book recommendations and showing me what i needed to know because there was so much stuff i didn't know i needed to know and you know all these these huge gaps that i that um i had because i didn't have that formal education like i had a very practical self-taught like i'm going to learn this because i need to know for the thing i'm working on

um which you know gets things done but it doesn't give you a strong foundation for uh you know being part of a team uh that people can you know somebody who can make code that people can read uh and it's like you know stable and reliable and developable easily and all that stuff um so yeah once i once i filled in those gaps um i was i was able to to make the jump there's several layers of that first of all uh we're gonna find that first programmer that like threw you off the scent uh from your true calling uh i mean he's he's either like super wise or like it doesn't matter what i say if you really want to pursue it which you know you need to be if you want to be a programmer you're going to disregard what i say right or he was just being a-hole for job security say it's like no i don't want to spend the time with this i like to think it was this like long game reverse psychology like he's stroking his beard like maybe 10 years yeah my experience with programmer is it's more like the latter they're like just super you know

forced honesty yeah it's like no you can't do it get out get away um a second part of that like um yeah i mean a lot of what development game development is and what i like about this industry it's still very uh knowledge base uh rather than degrees and it's still true for every discipline even programmers uh i think besides maybe mobile industry where they have like straight-up stations analyzing data every day uh who needs to be that these ivy league schools uh other parts of the industry don't need that and it's all about can you do the work i do agree with you you know there are some great uh i mean you got that indirectly right by being surrounded by established programmers you know that that is one thing that's at school it does provide like like-minded people before getting in the industry you kind of looked up because you were

already a professional industry and designed and you just had access um but i i i do you kind of brought back memories yeah there was a weird period uh after bioshock 2 and on the artist side felt the same thing man a lot of my circles were disappearing or moving on and i felt like i was being left behind a bit and this this new crew super green didn't understand the history that we went through and so i got a little jaded as well um and knew that you know uh i had to leave uh because because of that reason because it's it's just weird right when when your old friends are gone and now you're gonna make new friends and i don't wanna make new friends right uh and i also agree that first crew with the og crew was like everyone was legit right you know top dollar it was it was uh tandem to how the industry uh well not the industry the company

itself was set up for success right and then we were like a premier studio and then it kind of faltered after bioshock a bit and everyone felt that which is fine but it's one of those periods that you know being older and wiser hopefully i would have just told myself to just focus on the work and like you said if you're on status you should leave and it's something that ray actually told me early in my career it's like if you don't like something just leave just go somewhere else um don't hold on to false hope of changing the industry for the better or changing the the company for the better right that was that was definitely a younger attitude that i've learned in the hard way is like yeah you can't pay attention to any of that stuff because we're there to make gains we don't have any control even at a lead level you have very little control what's impressive is that you were able

to reset i mean i would love to kind of hear your your thinking process you know you were mentioning how it led up to that you were kind of discovering and you had help from your colleagues in the programming department to kind of lead you to shortcut your education a bit to to books and and knowledge that actually are useful you don't have to go through the crap um like how difficult was it uh was it a necessary step for you go to go and need to practice all this stuff to kind of okay because i i always imagine for for developers when they're working at a studio um especially if they want a promotion or uh which is supposed to be a lot easier than actual like a whole discipline jump right from design a program like within a studio that's very hard i i would imagine and i've seen uh for people to talk to an old employer like hey i'm actually want to be a programmer now it's like well we didn't hire you for that just go back to work

yeah that's exactly what happened okay all right yeah i mean i mean they there's definitely the saying like you sort of you have to move out to move up right like your current employer they may not they may not promote you like if you are really super hungry for that promotion and you're not getting results from within you've gotta you've gotta go somewhere else like and it's unfortunate because it you know like you said like it's it's tough to like make new friends and like your co-workers the game industry is so like so small and so tight and you spend you know it's a you sort of go through this sort of creative process together um like you become friends like whether you like it or not um and so um yeah like when we when i was at 2k like i tried approaching um yeah i tried talking to i forget exactly what it was like i tried talking to like you know sort of upper-level people and being like look i like i know i'm a designer but i got more to offer like like what's what's my path for that like and they were just a hundred percent no stay in your lane um and i think i mean 2k was a you know civil art is

was the it was a large company like the studio was big and they basically didn't have time for my little flights of fancy which to be fair like if they had moved me to programming like yeah that would have been basically losing a well i thought i was a senior level designer but i was just a mid-level designer they would have been losing a designer and and gaining like a junior programmer which you know is not really a great trade when you're looking at sort of the dollars and cents of it um so yeah like i absolutely had to have to move out to make that change there is there is no way that's happening within i mean to be fair when we were working on the the last dlc for the bureau um i i did again like mark fletcher was was there like to to help me um he actually let me do some do some code stuff and i think i might have even submitted some stuff to the to some code at the depot before they shut it all down but um [Music] uh yeah what really what really made the difference was um again i was able to find a place that just happened to be looking for somebody

like me like so i had been indie for like six months or so or something like that um and uh it basically came down that i like okay like i need to get serious about this and get another job again because my game was not going to be done uh in that amount of time so uh i started reaching out to friends and and contacts and seeing like okay like what's available and um and then uh i don't remember martin um he uh um he was working at trion at the time and he was like hey uh we got a small team here um we need either a designer or a programmer and i was like check so um so i went there and interviewed uh and the interview went well enough um and they were basically willing to hire me sort of on a provisional like you know this is a hybrid role kind of thing like we will be giving you design tests and we will be giving you programming tasks and i was like yeah that's great i'm just you know again i'm just trying to get my foot back in the door now um and so yeah so like for the first

couple weeks i was there they were giving me like you know mostly design tasks and then excuse me mostly design tasks and then uh a couple programming tasks here and there but then they you know they saw that i could actually do the programming stuff and that i was you know willing to learn and ask the hard questions and get the stuff done um and i was finishing everything they were throwing at me because the design stuff was all like pretty pretty easy stuff and the code stuff was you know not too complicated either so i was churning through stuff and they were like okay great like so dial up the code tasks and so i started getting more and more programming tasks and fewer design tasks until eventually i was doing totally programming work um you know my title was always programmer but um but it wasn't until i'd been there for like you know a month or two that i was actually doing like 100 programming work hey guys let's take a break and have a word from our sponsor this episode is sponsored by app figures app figure is all about giving givemakers the tools they need to get more downloads and revenue you may already know them for analytics and app story optimization now app figures can help you track

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on o n forward slash gain dev unchained to try app figures for free if you like it then use our special code gdu3030 to get 30 percent off for the next three months you're welcome yeah i've always admire and like the fact uh uh people learning on the job because i think it is the best education you're getting paid to learn and you're being surrounded by practical you know top talent uh on the cusp of technology and what's being there because usually in what what goes through a classroom later is usually outdated by the time students learn it right so it's great that you were able to kind of get back in the foot i mean that that story alone is very rare like the the the because most people were like i'll just get a design job just to get my foot back in the door but you saw it as an opportunity to kind of like you know a lot of it has to do with luck a lot of it has to do with timing but a lot of it has to do with your

patience to kind of stick to your guns a bit um because a lot of that i feel senior developers tend to not play around with that you were talking about how 2k kind of pigeon and hold a lot of people not just that but like most publishers when you get to a senior level you're very specialized and even if you remain as a designer you could become like a very particular designer on a very particular game for the next five ten years your life and then you kind of find yourself outdated as soon as you venture outwards unless you know another job is looking to do the exact same thing which i see is a very pending problem for a lot of developers who who aren't not fortunate enough to stay at a company five plus years right 2k was funny because you were there for a long time which is a longer life span for a developer like over eight years or something right 10 years uh yeah i mean i i was really fortunate that my first my the first two studios i worked at i

was at each of them for five years um but then after that it was it was it was like one year one year three months yeah a year and ten or a year and two months like that like it was just like yeah i mean you definitely like it's like you're saying like the bay area like you get put through the ring or even like california in general um california this probably it probably happens elsewhere too but like it is i can't speak to what happens elsewhere but um yeah in california it's it's the ringer like because there are so many studios like you're you're just treated as disposable um yep and so they're like well we'll we'll find somebody else so he'll find it we don't need to feel guilty about firing you because you'll find another job there's a billion studios out here you just gotta pick one uh i know that uh that layoff talk i've been laid off once and wow yeah yeah but it was enough to change my life forever that one time is that why you started doing this this one started uh actually when i was at sledgehammer working in cod and it was near the end and

uh i've talked to the about this many times on the podcast but i'll tell you it was probably the same feeling that you were feeling when you were about switching careers right um it was when we shipped the game and i sat there and i didn't feel anything you know the the allure of triple a and shipping and game have always been there since bioshock too it's like look at that looking in the store i can check in the game stop i can look at amazon and see it there yeah but for some reason that feeling completely changed and that was the biggest game of the year i mean it was i caught right and i didn't feel anything um and i i really sat down to kind of question where my career path was going because you know it was going to a trajectory i was a senior over there and it's like i know i'm going to eventually become lead or become art director if i keep going this path but i had to kind of pump the brakes there to kind of figure out why did i feel nothing for a project

that i spent three years it wasn't anything with a studio or anything overall the experience was great there was no delay like you i always recommend anybody to go through activision well maybe that's not true because sledgehammer was a special case there were three studios working on cods right treyarch and infinity ward and we had a peek inside of what those other two studios and how they work complete uh right they were always barely making into green line meetings you know it it was as if just imagining what a two-year sprint game looks like that has to be out in two years right it's like exactly that with like hundreds of people work on it it's gonna be a but for sledgehammer uh that team in particular was on point man green light meaning we were like on time ahead of schedule i didn't have to crunch that much or really at all um so it was nothing about the office or the project it was fun

but i think i was just done by that point with what triple a was and maybe at some point i will sit down and then really figure that out but i knew that i needed to see like other parts of the industry which is what the exploring was and you know what you were talking about like a lot of one years a couple months two years in mobile and indy at double a studios right it's like all right a lot of what i was seeking was creative control uh because what i was saying before is like you know when you become more senior and you move to league you get very specialized i wanted to do other stuff to making a game right i want to understand how design works i wanted to discover other parts that makes me feel a little bit more whole as a game developer not just a environment guy right so i was looking at that through double a and all this stuff but um again this is just a little a little catch-up because we haven't seen each other for years right yeah um but now i'm i'm completely working

for myself i run my own studio um and a lot of that was because it it started with that layoffs like that layoff made me like freak out about uh having a single source of income which is the primary job after that layoff i basically start teaching on the side for like five years straight like at the bay area uh schools all the art institute basically over there the expression college up in the bay area i did a couple art institute down here in la so i was teaching uh like three days a week aside from working full-time but that that that it's a weird like uh what what is that what is that called when you go through that journey uh uh i keep thinking dante's a friend but that's not it but you go through like any kind of thing yeah like you go through a trial and a like yeah your darkest hour and yeah yeah like

what it starts with the layoff like i i feel like most game developers don't become game developers after their first layoff yeah to get a full like grasp of the industry it's super it really sucks to to be laid off but like every layoff has pushed me to something better like exactly by necessity because like it's like it's so easy to get well that's not easy to get comfortable with like if you do have a job if you're fortunate enough to get one where the turnover rate isn't super high it's really easy to get comfortable and just like just you know just sit down and do your job day in and day out and not really think about what motivated you to get there in the first place and just be like yep today i push button i'll push button again tomorrow it'll be fine um but then you get fired and it's just this shake-up that you have no choice over and that you're like okay well i need to i need to reevaluate what what i want out of it um you know just just like you did and i feel like i i definitely had that similar like am i really going to do this change moment um when uh when i when i decided to stop going indian i went into engineering

like as i was talking to tryon i had another studio that wanted me to be like a technical director of design for some for some project and i was like oh man like tech director that's that's that's control like you know like it's like you're saying like that's what i want i really want to have sort of an impact on things and and have my my sort of my my sort of your brain like imprinting on the on the games that are out there but the more i thought about it the more i realized that like the kind of stuff i want to make is not going to sell like it's just weird stuff i want to sell to my friends or not even sell it i just want to like experience and get people to you know experience a little glimpse into my weird brain and so i realized that i was i didn't think i was ever going to be satisfied as a designer because you know if you're working at a company you need to make money and my idea is i didn't think we're going to make money so i was like well then i might as well give up all creative control and do more programming and then if i get a creative urge i can you know i can just do it on my own like i'll have especially with the you know the programming skills i've had more of a chance to cultivate now

i can work on my own stuff you know more faster and easier than i could before so it really really does scratch both the itches but if i hadn't really sat down and had that reckoning um yeah who knows who knows what i'd be doing right now yeah i think a lot of us when we go through this leaving a footprint is very important um and i felt that with every project like the big project i i caught comes out every year even if i die right has no impact and if you ever want to feel like uh small just work at a triple a company it's it really is like that yeah at least for me when i went to you know work on smaller projects even as simple as putting out a podcast it just felt like ah this is my contribution to the world this will live on it has my name all over it it sounds narcissistic but really it's like if you live every day not contributing anything what's the point you just wanted the the the workload right um

but i would love to kind of hear your your question so like you i spent all my career in california it sounds like you spent a bulk of it there this move uh being married um now everything's cool now you can move back if you ever consider it's 20 20. everything's cool now except for the epidemic but like uh talk about that man like i've always i've always marveled at the idea of like our job is really cool where we can technically pick up and leave and and work at a really uh respectable company and doing what we do uh maybe apart from a little language barrier but everything should be good i've always kind of was attracted to that but never did it right so you actually did it you're over in sweden at an awesome company um can you kind of kind of talk us through the months leading up to that and finally make this were there any reservation but at all about yeah changing

yeah absolutely um uh i mean because so much of it is is unknown and even you know like it's the whole thing about known unknowns and unknown unknowns or known unknowns i forget but like like there's so many things we didn't even know what we didn't know and you sort of just have to take a lot of it on faith um that it's gonna be all right um which is you know which is wild and um i think the only there i think there are two two big things that really made me like you know decide that it was that it was the thing that that was right for my family which was um one which is kind of a silly thing but uh i'm working at massive now and i actually had worked at massive back in 2008 uh high moon sent me out there to help out with world and conflict back when they were both owned by activision um and so uh no i'm sorry it wasn't activation it was um i think it was they

were still in by vendi at the time i believe um anyway sibling studios um and so i had been out there and uh some of the people that i had met in my first time there 10 years ago i like are still working here right now which is pretty amazing and so like seeing that sort of stability was very encouraging um and you know i'm i'm actually not a very like adventurous person like traveling is not my jam um but uh i had spent three months here like i said back in 2008 um so i had some familiarity with it and i was like okay like i i was there for three months i feel like i could you know do that for a little while um but uh i think like the the biggest thing was um was my wife like like i said she's really adventurous and is up for anything uh and so when when i you know when we sat down and i was like no seriously i can get us to europe do you want to go there and she was like yes um because we uh we've been living in the bay area

like i was still living up in the bay area uh um after after 2k and after telltale and all that um and uh we were trying we were really having a go at like making a life there um i have a son he's he's six now um he was three at the time um and so we were like we were really trying to to you know to put down greets there we really wanted to buy a house and and just like live out the rest of our lives there because like like i was talking about there's plenty of game studios there like all i you know i was able to assure my wife that i was i was always going to find a job i've been working you know in the industry for you know 13 years at that point or whatever um so i knew i could find something in the area it might be a really rough commute like my you know down to silicon valley was like you know two hours or three hours each way uh at one point um but uh but we just we just couldn't we couldn't afford a house like we would go in there with

like just everything we could do just to scrape together enough to get you know to find a house that had you know uh just a couple of rooms and um and you know wasn't next to you know an active tire fire or anything like that um and we just couldn't like people would come in which is briefcases full of money for all cash offers that were less than our offers and just getting the houses and so we just got so frustrated with that and we just we just felt like that um that the bay area didn't want us there anymore it was just there was every time we tried to try to put down more roots um it just it just kept pushing it back up um and i mean part of the reason i got into programming in addition to all the you know creative control uh those another trick control rather but the um uh uh but the sort of more satisfying aspect of it was that it was gonna be a pay bump like i knew it was a new pay increase and i thought that would make a difference and it did but not enough um i mean like people have this this image of like like i go down like when i go to like la or whatever

or like you know or san diego or whatever and i go oh yeah i'm a programmer i work up in san francisco people are like oh how many teslas do you have oh dude i work in games like i don't make i don't make facebook dollars i don't like you know twitter dollars or whatever like i make games for dollars and um even yeah my wife had a full-time job that paid fine um we just couldn't make it there and so um yeah we were just we were fed up with it and we were like let's go have an adventure and that's basically how it happened yeah man that's uh what's funny is that a lot of the things that you're talking about was a true for me too because i i think i went up there i gave the bay area two chances right so 2k was the first chance i i'm originally from southern california so san francisco that was my first real job and really living away from my comfort right and i liked it at first i mean marin county is a little different

than san francisco uh and then the second time was in uh sledgehammer which is the foster city the other side right um uh yeah the bay area has never been the place for me to kind of set because of the reasons you just said like the prices were getting crazy now it's now everyone's leaving so if there ever was a time to go back um but that kind of brings me to the point of the pandemic right the pandemic if anything has alerted me about if i've made the right decisions up to this point or telling me i need to make some changes i think everybody's kind of going through that uh i mentioned a few times already you know relationship people with the people you're with like do you want to be with that person and then uh your house you know is your house pimped out enough where you're okay with staying home all the time uh and then of course or what we're talking about career related like i've been uh blessed enough to kind of make these decisions knowing not knowing about the epidemic but

knowing that it was gonna culminate to a time and place where i'm gonna have to face my my decisions uh whether i'm gonna be happy with it or not you being overseas in sweden like sweden alone i heard you guys been dealing with this all right right how how's that no no no no not at all pretty bad see i always get you guys mixed up over there so what's the deal no i i i did that too before i moved over here like i remember when i was flying over here in 2008 i was like on the plane going is swedish a language or am i thinking of something else yeah it turns out it is a language um but uh um yeah i know the pandemic is like we we're not doing great the only reason that we uh are doing well at all in my opinion as as someone who's not an epidemiologist or anything like that um is that we have a really population density um right like up until up until like three or four weeks ago like i didn't see

masks like uh you know wow i would i would cruise by like you know we actually part of the reason we bought a car uh this past summer was because of the time that because it was heating up and we were like i've been taking public transit to work and i was like i don't want to get on a bus like that's crazy and so now like i'll be you know driving my son to send to school and i'll look over and see a bus that's just packed full of people and like no masks and i'm just like what are you doing um but uh by and large it works i mean it is is going okay um because uh a lot of companies are taking it seriously like um a lot of companies have like complete like 100 work from home orders that sort of thing um and so uh i think like yeah between that and the population density like that's really what matters um because you know i live the city i live in is like the 12th most populated city in in sweden and it's something it's like some ridiculously small number of people it's like yeah it's

it's tiny um but uh and if you get like like so so sweden a little geography lesson sweden is slightly larger than california so if you're familiar with california imagine that like there was like san diego and then san francisco and then literally everything above that was like the population density above that is like half a person a kilometer basically it is really really really sparse up there um like stockholm is like the most dense of course um being the capital but um but like yeah they like so malmo where um uh where massive is and stockholm are about as far apart as san diego and uh san francisco are oh wow yeah so uh yeah so it's but it is like so so spread out that that um that you just have a lower risk of contacting somebody who who uh who has it compared to you know basically almost anywhere in the states so is it mostly the attitude not not all the people taking it seriously

up to a few weeks ago like what i'm still yeah it's alarming to hear that nobody really it's been going on for eight months until the last three weeks yeah i mean the thing is that like um like sort of like in america swedish people have like they really enjoy their civil liberties um like there are there are a lot of they're really strongly protected here like there's this there's this awesome thing i'm gonna any swedes watching this you're gonna laugh my pronunciation but it's uh it's like almonds which is like every person's right and that means that you can just go anywhere like there are some places that are like restricted for like safety reasons but like you don't have the thing in america where you have like an idea of like private property that somebody can't come into like if i have if i have a house and i have a yard somebody can legally cross through my yard and it's okay like you can go into the forest and pick mushrooms that's totally legal like that's allowed because they believe that the country belongs to everybody and they really like they really put into action like there are laws that you can't you can't harvest something

somebody else has planted like but if you find it growing wild in the i mean even on somebody's property you can take it as long as it's not grown intentionally by them um so there is a lot of things like that where the government can issue recommendations but it doesn't have as much it can't as far as i understand it they can't do a lot of like no you are you cannot leave your home and you must wear a mask like i don't know if if they if the government has the authority to to enforce that or not um they are trying to last i heard they're trying to sort of you know like change that so that they can put more safety protocols in um but um yeah but people are people are independent just just like they are in the states like they i think it's the same thing you get everywhere where people are like well that happens to other people um which is which is unfortunate um so yeah yeah it's um i mean i'm no expert but that's that's

boots on the ground that's how it's it's similar to what i'm hearing i live in um i guess a city in southern california and uh yeah for my neighborhood especially i'm seeing a lot of the the general public's kind of idea of what wearing a master no mask that was a huge thing um and the circle how i equated it has been getting smaller like it used to be friends of friends i heard of getting kovid now it's like friends and then now it's like basically our neighbor like this past thanksgiving alone there were a case where uh you know of course family were gathering um and ignoring that and one of the grandpa died from from the gathering like my son's um friend's grandpa and that was the closest i've heard uh within my circle and then uh just recently we just heard about like uh my my my son's friend's father just got it and he's he's kind of

going through it pretty bad so it's like it's real you know thanksgiving was a big jumping off point for for us over here um everybody hung out like everyone i knew like hung out we didn't but everyone i knew hung out and um it was so it's surprising to hear too like i just assume everybody else is doing better besides china u.s and india uh i was just going by the charts um but that that that is like an episode on its own just getting used to the culture i mean was there a big transitional thing going like yeah how much of the language you have to learn to kind of be able to function there well so working at home yeah i mean luckily uh the the office is a uh like you know it's it's author an international company and so it's like english is the official like language that they conduct all business in at work so that's super convenient but it also means i don't have to really practice my swedish as much um but um i mean swedish people are like they like they know english they

are it is like learning english is compulsory they started and i think like third or fourth grade they're all smarter than so pretty much anybody you run into who's under 40 is going to like is going to be able to speak english whether they want to or feel comfortable doing it as another story um but uh when you if you live in a larger city then um you can absolutely get by with english because there's you know there's a lot more immigrants like especially here in the south um and uh but as you get further and further out like when we take like you know we'll take the car and go on road trips out you know out a couple kilometers into the into the farmland here like yeah you run it into situations where they like where they just are flat out like i don't speak english and you're like okay like i'm gonna do my best now sorry about what i'm about to do to your language um but they're also generally generally pretty gracious about uh about being being patient um uh the as for the culture specifically um they generally of course generally um are

more reserved um and uh they don't um there's not like not like a lot of like smiling in the streets like again like like we're both you and i are both from from socal so like we know the like we have the vibe like we know the like oh yeah like you'll like smile if you don't know you'll you'll chat with the person who's ringing up your groceries at the grocery store like it's just yeah you just it's what you do you just chill um whereas here it's it's very uh it's very different in that um like you don't smile at people on the street like you sort of don't really acknowledge other people's presence um damn i think the the way that the way that it sort of makes sense to me is that like in in america you like you will smile you'll smile at somebody and you'll be like you'll see a stranger like hey man how's it going but then like when it comes to like their health like healthcare and safety and things like that you're like i don't really care that much about you but like in sweden they don't really care as much about you as a person but they will like but of course like yeah i i'm happy my taxes pay for

your medical coverage like i of course that people deserve that so it's it's very different that they they are um they they do have a more um uh more firm view of their responsibility in society to others to to make sure that um that uh that you know people aren't generally falling through the cracks um uh but um yeah it's not a not generally not an affable kind of a kind of country um you know there are exceptions of course people are unique everywhere um and and like working in games is very very different like my colleagues are all like super friendly and nice and they're yeah you guys are the outcasts of the society yeah and they're younger too like that helps um yeah but like um i think half the studio is like from sweden and the other half is from somewhere else like like the rest of the world combined so uh yeah so i do meet a fair number of swedes um but i also you know i have opportunities

to meet people that i you know from countries i've never encountered people from before even even working in like the bay area was really uh like a geographically diverse um so yeah it's uh it's interesting but there definitely is a lot of stuff you don't know like things about like like i was thinking about this the other day like what if i got into a car accident like i don't know what to do like do i like i haven't i know i have insurance i'm not like i have a driver's license but like do i like do i give them my number do i do i have a car like how do we do all this and so i'm like i was driving home thinking i should figure this out before i crash into something so the hardest part is those little things like that that you don't realize that you need to learn about living in a country and it's the kind of things where like there are some things where like i'll ask like some people who are native students swedes who have lived their all their life and i'm like hey how do i go set up a dentist appointment and they're like oh i don't know my parents always did that for me and like it's just like okay well i need to figure this out i'm the parent i'm supposed to be responsible

so there's a lot of like yeah the uh the first honestly the first like i guess i've been here a little over three years now the first uh the first two years was just like scrambling to get my like our feet under us it was uh just the culture shock was it was it was real yeah i i can imagine well the the funny thing is like um comparing the two countries and the epidemic of anything uh kind of showcase how americans don't care about it like we are really left on our own devices here but what's funny is that the the i as the individual countries are the one that are like ranking really high in terms of you know uh uh coveted uh symptoms and and deaths right and then the the the we countries like china and other all these other countries are actually doing a better job battling it yeah um it's funny to kind of hear sweden kind of thinks like the eye but has

the the healthcare thing down and a little bit more progressive about the wii too which i think is the best compromise there especially um the culture shock is something i think a lot of developers and a lot of people in general fear when they are working at a different country uh the one you know stereotype i always hear about europeans it could be just italy or france where it could be just italy where they don't take work that seriously right somebody can even call it as lazy i mean is that true over there as in general or is the work-life balance is kind of similar no the work-life balance is fantastic um like yeah i've i've never had anybody like be like oh my grasping or light you know or whatever um uh like i remember um i was the first time i had to take my kid to a doctor's appointment here um i you know i was like i i i switched to american mode and like i go

i go to my boss i'm like hey look man i'm really sorry like next week i'll need to take like a couple hours off to go take my kid to a doctor is that okay and he's like and he looked at me like i had just like asked him for a blood transfusion or something and i was like he was like yeah go go do it it's fine like it's your kid you got to take care of your kid right and i was like oh yeah that's not unusual yeah that that little thing yeah that little thing is really odd yeah we would have to get like permissions and time slips and doctors note to prove that we were there yeah it's it's like the government will actually pay a portion of your like lost wages if you if you are staying home because you need to take care of a sick kid um wow like of course like your job is protected like you know you can't you can't be fired because you get to you you you're sick too often or whatever um it's it's like the um the safety nets are there and it's it's really incredible to um to see like if i like i do sometimes think about coming coming back to the states there's a couple

things that are stopping me but the biggest one is probably like the socialized medicine like honestly like once you get a hit of that like oh man like you can't do without like when we first moved here um uh my kid fell off the bed onto a um onto a hardwood floor and like we were worried he'd like bust his upon or something and so we like first off we had the conversation we're like what is a hospital called in swedish how do we go there it's ten o'clock at night what do we do uh we were able to text a friend that helped us out and we uh you know we got a taxi and took our son to the hospital and we get in there and uh and you know they they we go to the intake thing and and they're like okay well um like do you have a do you have a person number which is basically like sort of the swedish equivalent of a social security number and we're like no we've been here for like three weeks and they're like okay well this is gonna cost a lot of money and we're like whatever like it's my son like help him out and so like you know they go to take him and and they're like they uh you know she says okay like you know we can do a payment plan for this if you need to you know it's it's not a problem and i

was like okay like all right you know i'm i i'm braced for how many you know how many thousands of dollars is this gonna be for you know an emergency room trip for a child at 10 pm at night and um she brings up we get the bill like a couple weeks later and it's for like something like three thousand swedish crowns which is about three hundred dollars and i like i laughed like kills the uninsured rate yes 300 bucks dude i am that hospital was like amazing right my kid didn't want to leave christine always out there for him they gave him a present because it was so close to christmas when he when it happened like i like yeah it was dude i see your story i'll raise you another story about that because that was actually my first preview that similar experience preview of how shitty we have it in the states like there is a cloud over a lot of people's eyes and the funny thing is the united states um we're not forced to learn a second language uh we're very incubated to our circles not a lot of people travel really outside the country

once we're here my first trip to japan uh my wife's japanese so we were over there with our family the last day before we were uh there we were leaving that day actually we were at like this like kid amusement park my kid he still blames me but he let go right i was swinging him he was five and he let go at the height and he just fell and then he used his arm to brace and there was like a pop right i was like oh um so it turned out to be a fracture but we went to the hospital of course we're like visiting right had no idea ready to pay for whatever luckily the guy the doctor there uh got his degree in uci irvine so he's american spokesplus english and japanese he was able to help us it was a nice house hospital too it was you know we were there for like several hours to get going and had no appointment they saw us in a timely manner and we

were just bracing for it same deal they gave us a bill of 250. i was like we're not even from here and we yeah like dude i've been i've been to one one trip to er i've always hated doctors because i feel like they're just google searching while i'm in the waiting room like there's i just see no practical like i i respect pharmacists more because they actually i feel like they're giving an exchange of goods with some something here right based on not just theory well anyways i've always had a bad experience like my throat i forgot what got inflamed right inside my throat i couldn't swallow it it felt like a pus it was like a pus inside my throat i was like wow this is getting worse i tried to self-medicate it wasn't getting better finally went to the er and i i and it was full i forget what it was like before a holiday or something it was completely full and i just sent my family home they waited for a couple hours i sent my family home i was there for like nine hours in the emergency waiting room because my

arm wasn't blown off right i was less less important eventually i fell asleep and it just the pus just popped itself and it was self and by the time they called me in i was sitting there like hey i think it just healed i can swallow now i can eat now and i'm sitting there on their slab right with the butcher paper getting a diagnosis and all right we're going to give you some iv so because you lost some nutrition was all right it was like 5-10 minutes finally came home the bills came later and this is how american bill's coming it was like two thousand dollar for emergency visit it was like this were diagnosed it's like you guys didn't even do anything it was just like out-of-pocket pay i was like i hate hospitals but it's very true like it's those type of things like the healthcare where you realize how you know like you're like been a sheep your whole life right your country you're used to a certain culture and i equate a lot to like being the

game industry that's why i wanted to jump around to kind of see like what is the truth you know i'm used to aaa i'm used to this trajectory but what are other industry are they doing things better in the mobile industry it's kind of like what you're saying so every citizen that gets it you get treated better and you don't have to like they're not penny pinching you on when you need to leave and stuff like that the mobile industry and like tech industry has a lot of these benefits where it's like open-ended flexible hours freaking time off uh until you know you want to come back basically like netflix style right so i went i work at a mobile company it was same deal it's very surprising to kind of see wow you get free lunch and dinner every day and they treat you and the time is not stressful and stuff and i didn't know that it existed right yeah i was so and i was like i thought triple a was cream of the crop where you know every employees we have money rolling awesome total opposite man it was just an old system and there are some triple a that treats employees like that but most don't have that kind of luxury that tech

industry has and i think a lot of people i'm kind of in that situation i have never been i never worked at other countries but my glimpses of travel very small you know i have very little traveling experience kind of showed me how life is kind of more important than the job uh because it is a very working mentality in this country yeah i think trying to close things up like the pandemic if anything is kind of giving people a glimpse of what's important outside of work so like what i saw after the layoff and me walking around in in different parts of the industry people are learning that really fast now uh the past six months i'm sure you have friends in the bay area that have been moving out of it and uh are kind of betting on remote work being the thing going forward

which is i'm super happy in in a little way i'm like you know jd about it like i went through this crazy path to learn this and you guys got this like free get out of jail card to kind of work from home and everything but i'm happy obviously for everyone because i think it is a lesson that most developers and everybody needs to learn to see is like there's so much more out there that we haven't been given the opportunities for yeah and i'm glad that you're over there and seeing that dude yeah socialized medicine is huge um it sounds like you if you come back to north america you'll be a canadian because it sounds a lot like what their deal is yeah um i i in in in your path and you know i'll make it less about me you know i'm sure you remember v the animator right like we we went to college together i don't know if you know that about us uh so we've been friends since college and i actually got hooked him up the job

at 2k i've always looked at his life trajectory as like oh that's what i would have looked like if i didn't have kids and a wife and i was free to roam to whatever jobs i want because he traveled everywhere he was in new zealand at one point he was in europe like just going for the best jobs right yeah uh he did that for 10 years and i was always super jealous of that because that adventurous part of me if i've always looked at that and admired that of flexibility uh being huge so so i'm a little jealous that you're over there enjoying that part you've been there for three years um i think you're just so much better of a of a person just because of that growth that not a lot of people get a glimpse of but um it changes your view like when you see how other countries like really see you and like yeah it makes you sort of understand the importance of sort of the like america's role like yeah it's weird because people sort of simultaneously like they

they love the sort of products and culture that we create but like yeah they're they're a little a little weirded out by us i i totally understand man like i have to catch myself sometimes when you know my kids pestering me and i'm looking at them with annoyance right but you know because of the epidemic i'm looking at them and i was like you know this is what life is about you know you're supposed to be hanging out like not staring at a screen most hours a day you're supposed to be spending time with family and people around you as much as you can right if anything people are missing people now um yeah it's weird man i i mean it sounds like you guys are figuring things out over there as well and and settling and um i'm looking forward to to kind of hear more about you and everything uh this is actually you know we went through an hour already i want to thank you for the time this is actually the part where i want to hand over the mic to you to kind of give a shout out to help people out there you know you talk about programming i feel like every artist not just

designer needs to lean more towards technical now for job security i feel like a lot of those artists are are a lot more valuable nowadays so being the the ultimate technical guy now at the programming level uh i would love to kind of hear your thoughts about you know how helpful it could be for everybody to kind of learn a little yeah i mean i'm i'm a firm believer that everyone should know a little about everything um uh like as even as a programmer like i i don't have much of an interest in specializing like i enjoy sort of the generalization because i love i love solving the problems that come up and just you know being like oh what do i get to learn about now um you know like yeah you have i uh oh i read about this data structure that i could use to solve this problem okay great i'll use that and like sort of bumble my way through it and figure it out but um i mean tech is a part of our lives and the more we know how to control it the less it can control us um and i feel like people [Music] if you don't know enough about how

technology works then um you like it becomes this sort of magical black box um and you sort of lose this this sort of uh criticality almost where like you it becomes this infallible thing that she's like oh it's just this thing that does stuff and it's like no no like every piece in there every piece in your computer like every piece in your phone like has an important role and somebody made that and somebody wrote the code forward and somebody wrote the firmware for it and like you know somebody designed the graphics for it like all these things sort of like they come together in these really fascinating ways um and uh you mentioned plugging something so i'm gonna plug my youtube series that i started a little while ago um it's called hello world uh i would mention a url but i only have like 50 subscribers so i don't get url yet um but if you if you go to my twitter account then you can you can get a link to it um but it's a series that is basically all about like what makes uh like basically explains computers and things like that for the miracle they are so there's like the idea is that there's an episode like like three

episodes so far but each one is uh is about like going from sort of conceptually going from like bare metal to like how you interface with this so it's like what is a program okay let's start off by doing here's here's what binary is here's a file header here's how that translates into instructions like all that kind of stuff and it sounds really deep and heady but if you just want to get like a surface little glimpse of of how these things work to appreciate it um that's that's kind of what i'm what i'm going for like programmers are probably not going to learn anything from it um but anybody who has an interest in appreciating technology and how things work um will uh i think we'll will enjoy it um because yeah like you said i think we all do need to learn about the technology we're using um because it just benefits us um in in ways like just knowing how to how to do things more efficiently or more effectively like even if you know how to use a given program like mess around with that program and sort of find the find where the edges and the batteries of that program are because you will

learn how to do things better and faster and quicker um uh if you kind of like poke at those edges and just give yourself time to to mess around without a real without a real goal awesome man i definitely gonna point people towards your your channel and um any way to kind of make programming more approachable i'm in full support of like even with my 10 year old i'm i'm trying to uh i'm starting to get him to unity and stuff and of course he's drawn to the character art and all that because he's playing fortnite and he's like customizing his character he's like no don't learn that you gotta learn programming because that's where the money's at and that's where the future is going and i i keep putting out warning signals for artists out there that they need to start seriously considering at the very least being a technical artist uh because the tools are getting easier and better uh the make art button is coming and it's the people especially if you're in the western

countries like united states you have to be a leg up from oversea competition like china and stuff people that we used to outsource to are are actually caught up in terms of art production and everything so awesome man well thank you again it was nice uh chatting with you uh all the links and descriptions will be in this episode and everything but uh how do you say bye in sweden uh it's it's an easy one okay hate though hello man that's tricky dude [Laughter] all right man have a good one all right you too man see you [Music] you