Autodesk GameDev

This week we talk with Wojciech Piejko, Lead Game Designer, Dominika Stala, also a Game Designer, and Sebastian Spluzka, Environment Artist from Bloober Team. The team chats with us about their new Cyberpunk Horror game, >observer_, including the game design process, their thoughts on the cyberpunk genre, and the basic workflow between design teams and art teams.

This week, we chat with Behavior’s Damien Devaux, the principal character artist on Dead by Daylight. He speaks about his involvement on the project, including the new Leatherface DLC, as well as some of the techniques he uses on a day-to-day basis. Enjoy!

Matthew chats with Chris Scubli of RealtimeUK about his day to day as a cinematics finishing artist. Chris was heavily involved in the creation of cinematics for both World of Tanks War Stories and the sci-fi multiplayer game, Dreadnought. Chris has a lot of great insights into the entire process from start to finish, including working with clients to ensure the cinematic meets their needs.

This week, Matthew talks with Abhishek Singh, an inventor and creator with many talents. Abhishek provides details on how he created the AR game Super Mario Bros. with Unity and the Microsoft Hololens, along with Autodesk’s Fusion 360.

This week, we speak with the cofounder of RealityArts Studio, Ismail, about his breathtaking arcade shooter, Voidrunner. Ismail talks to us from Istanbul, Turkey about the cultural stylings of his game, how his background in VFX and mat painting for films helped him, and how early community feedback changed the core gameplay for the better.

We spend some time with Steve Bowler of CloudGate Studio talking about his VR title, Island 359. Steve tells us how they were able to create large free roam levels in VR, using contractors and asset stores to stay on budget, and some of the differences between developing for Oculus and HTC Vive headsets.

This week we sit down with Ben Throop of Frame Interactive about his PSVR launch title, Headmaster. Ben talks about his transition from AAA to indie, how he came up with the game’s concept, and what it was like creating a launch title when VR was still very young.

We chat with the Warhorse Studios team about their new realistic first-person RPG, Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Toby Stolz and Kuba Holik explain what steps were involved in creating the realistic setting, and the challenges of developing for multiple platforms.

This week, we speak with Hugh Hancock of Strange Company about his VR RPG Left-Hand Path. Hugh began his career making game films and was the originator of the term 'Machinima'. He talks to us about the history of Machinima and VR and how he created the 12 hour room-scale RPG as a 1-man shop.

In this episode, Matthew talks with Paul Tozour and Sasha Nodia of Mothership Entertainment about their game Aven Colony, a colonization and city management game set in the future of human space exploration. Paul and Sasha talk about the game’s development and the challenges they faced creating it.

We sat down with Mathieu Chaillous, one of the artists on the game Event[0] from the Paris, France based team, Ocelot Society. Mathieu shares details on the development of the game, including the 3ds Max to Unity workflow, physically based shaders, and more

This week, we talk with Isobel Shasha and Campbell Fletcher, creators of Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor. Isobel is one of the co-founders of Sundae Month, an independent game & art collective. The team talks to us about the game's development, how Sundae Month got started, and the need for diversity in the games industry.

Phil Duncan and Oli De-Vine join us on the podcast to discuss their popular local multiplayer co-op game, Overcooked. Phil & Oli describe their hit game as 'chaotic cooperative cooking', with emphasis on the cooperative part. The two-man team discuss the lack of local multiplayer games today, their desire to tap into that market, and how they pulled it off.

This week, Matthew chats with Logan Olson, the creator of SoundStage, a virtual experience where the user can create electronic music using drum machines, synthesizers, and more. Logan tells us about the challenges he faced putting SoundStage together, his views on audio in VR, the future of VR, as well as giving us some insights into user interactions in Virtual spaces.

This week, we chat with Eric Anderson, Art Director for Obduction by Cyan. Eric offers some great historical details on Cyan and the project, as well as his own experiences as both an artist and technical director. We also get some good tips from Eric on VR as well as for aspiring game developers.

Joel Ogden & Amy Stewart of Construct Studio join us this week to talk about their hit episodic VR game, The Price of Freedom. They tell us how the studio got started, the bridge between VR in film and VR games, the importance of narrative in their projects, and how they dealt with some common VR challenges such as room & object scale.

Rocket 5 Studios joins the Autodesk GameDev Podcast this week to talk with Matthew about their experiences in AAA and indie development. Tim and Cathy are joined by their nephew Kevin, who works as their lead designer. They share their insights into the challenges of running an indie studio and share a funny story of the night their game Phantom PI won Critic’s Choice Best in Show at Casual Connect.

In this episode, we talk to Alex Fiset, CEO and Co-Founder of indie studio, Parabole. Alex got his start at Beenox, working his way through several positions of increasing responsibility before choosing to found his own studio with his partners. We talk about what Alex learned from Beenox that he’s applied to the team at Parabole, managing community expectations in Early Access on Steam, and telling an engaging story on their upcoming game, Kona.

In this episode, we talk to Osama Dorias. Osama is an accomplished game developer, credited in over 20 published titles. His career has spanned AAA, online, mobile, and in-flight entertainment games in airplanes. He currently works at Minority Media, is the coordinator of video game programs at Dawson College, runs the Montreal Indie Game Festival, and builds indie games in his spare time. Naturally, we discuss how to maintain a healthy work/life balance.

In this episode, we talk to Louis Lavoie, Level Artist at Ubisoft Montreal. He's worked on the first Assassin’s Creed, and the most recent one, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. He discusses the difference in building game environments then and now, as well as the research that goes into building the rich environments that the Assassin’s Creed franchise is known for.

We chat with Lead Animator of INSIDE, Andreas Normand Grøntved. Andreas explains how his experience in animation for film helped him as a game animator, the differences between 2D and 3D animation, and gives us great tips on animating with Autodesk Maya.

Ryan Metcalf, Technical Animator at Gearbox, discusses development for their game, Battleborn.

In this episode, we talk to Thomas Pasieka, long-time indie developer and freelance artist. Thomas talks about the importance of developing keen senses as an artist by exploring many different creative mediums. We also discuss his thoughts on using VR to help expose art to new audiences, and his new project, The Raven VR.

Greybox's Tony Medrano discusses what it's like learning the different culture and workflow from studio to studio and the development of the studio's latest game, Dreadnought.

In this episode, we talk with Daniel Candil of Blues and Bullets about his background in traditional art, his experience as an environment artist, and what it takes to be an Art Director.

In this episode we talk to Mark Cooke, Founder and CEO of Shiny Shoe, a game studio that balances building its own games with bringing the games of other studios to new platforms. Shiny Shoe has worked on great titles like Banner Saga, Day of the Tentacle, and Telltale’s Game of Thrones. Mark talks about what it takes to build and run a studio that thrives on finding the next big challenge in game making.

In this episode, we chat with Forest Soderlind and David Hunt, Character Rigger and Rigging Tech Art Lead at Bungie. They talk about Destiny, their modular rigging system, and the importance of future-proofing in-house tools. If you're playing Destiny Rise of Iron, you'll definitely want to tune in as they talk about creating the Wrath of the Machine Raid’s Death Zamboni.

In this episode, we talk with Producer and Game Designer of 7 Days to Die, Rick Huenink, about the journey he and his team made on the road to success. Rick provides insight into the importance of crowd funding, Early Access for start-ups, and his thoughts on VR.

In this episode, we talk to Brien Goodrich, Cinematic Director at 343 Industries about his work on Halo Wars , coaching for mocap and how a game is ever-evolving while in development.

In this episode we talk to Patrick Benjamin, Art Director from Temple Gates Games. Patrick talks about his transition from AAA to working at an indie studio and making VR games. We cover some of the things that he and his team have learned in the early days or making VR, improving the VR social experience with better player avatars, and how to propose to your wife through games.

Dia Hadley, Lead visual animator at Gearbox, discusses what it was like diving into development of Battleborne and how you sometimes have to break the rules of animation to create something unique.

In this episode we talk to Adam Orth, founder of Three One Zero studios, and creative director on Adr1ft. We talk to him about his beginnings in the music industry, his extensive career in AAA games, his unique departure from Microsoft, the founding of Three One Zero, and communicating an emotional story through VR with Adr1ft.

In this episode, we talk to Jean-Normand Bucci, director of LABS at Eidos-Montreal. He discusses how his team created numerous tools to speed up the day-to-day tasks throughout the production of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, including procedural environment-building tools and hair-cutting tools.

In this episode we talk to Theresa Duringer, who was first exposed to games at a young age by her mother, who was also a game developer. Theresa studied psychology at Berkeley before getting a foot in the door in the QA department at EA and working her way up from there. She has now helped found two indie studios, and Temple Gates Games has just released Ascension VR, a virtual reality version of the popular card game, Ascension, which is a studio favourite. We talk to Theresa about why text in VR is hard, being a game jam junkie, and Zoombinis.

“All of us essentially had to learn how to become comic book artists to make the game look the way that it did” says Jimmy Barnett, Content Art Lead at Gearbox. He discusses his work on Battleborn and the process behind building several distinct and stylized environments for one game as well as texturing and painting a wide array of characters and assets.

In this episode we talk to Blair Renaud, long-time game maker and sci-fi enthusiast. Blair got his start with 3D Studio at age 10, and started working with Rockstar back when Grand Theft Auto was still a top-down game. Fast-forward to today, where Blair is working on the cutting edge of VR games and experiences independently, at Iris VR, as well as working with Quantum Capture to produce high end digital content using photogrammetry. We talk to Blair about his latest game, Technolust, his favourite kit-bashing workflows for making new sci-fi content, and the difficulties of working as a fully-suited mascot.

Jacques Choi, Lead Character Artist at Eidos-Montreal, talks to us about the importance of reference materials for modelers and time-saving techniques being used in big studio pipelines. He also shares his experience teaching his craft as well as passing on his habits as a 3d artist to the next wave of artists.

In this episode we talk to Brent Elmer from Pump Action Games. Brent talks about how he got into the games industry from his unique background working in mechanical design, working with NASA, and later on the HoloLens at Microsoft. We talk about what it takes to start your own indie studio and how to prioritize your focus when working independently. We also get really deep and discuss games as an art versus a business.

Paul Thuriot, 3d artist at Valve, talks to us about his career in 3d, on-the-job training, and the ever-evolving development of VR games.

In this episode, we speak with Gwen Frey from indie team The Molasses Flood. Their recent game is The Flame in the Flood, a rogue-lite journey through the backwaters of a forgotten, post-societal America. Gwen talks about the transition from working on AAA titles like Bioshock Infinite to going indie, the challenges in starting a studio, the importance of a post-mortem, and how player feedback helped their team build a better game. We also discuss deep-rooted community concerns about whether the player’s companion dog, Aesop, could be killed. Don’t worry, he’s safe!

In this episode, we're talking to Juan Carlos Larrea, Lead Vignette Animator at 343 Industries. He discusses what it was like animating the Kraken in Halo 5: Guardians, the hardships of simulating destruction in a game, and the challenges of taking cinematography into consideration in-game.

In our latest GameDev episode, we talk to Benjamin Charbit of Darewise Entertainment about the upcoming sandbox MMO survival game, ROKH. Benjamin went from the world of finance to becoming a content director for a AAA studio and finally starting his own indie production company. Learn about Benjamin’s journey in the games industry and what motivated him to leave his AAA job to go indie.

This episode, we talk to Henry LaBounta, Chief Visual Officer at Zynga about the wacky world of free-to-play games. He discusses his long and winding path from VFX to the games industry, how the development of free-to-play games is so different from the rest of the industry, the challenges in coordinating teams according to the skills needed for each game and his involvement in the games community.

In this episode we talk to Patrick Gillette, lead gameplay animator at 343 Industries with a long history working on the Halo series. Most recently he's been working on new weaponry for Halo 5: Guardians. Patrick talks about how they approach the creation of new combat animations for the game while taking into account a million-and-one different factors: how to keep gameplay balanced, how to evaluate animations aesthetics versus the needs of gameplay, taking into account the opinions of pro gamers to account for e-sports, and the importance of not bringing a plasma pistol to a sniper fight.

In this episode, we talk to Steve Stopps and Nic Williams from Team Lumo. Based out of Leamington Spa in the UK, Team Lumo just released a big update to their quirky mobile game, Lumo's Cat. We talk about the great history behind Team Lumo, and how they got their start working on skunkworks-style projects at Blitz Games. Having released several hit games that have been featured on the iTunes App Store, Steve and Nic share their experiences with agile development, creating an environment of trust, getting feedback from the player community, and how they create their artistic style. Oh, and cats. They like cats.

In this episode, we talk to Rhianna Pratchett and learn how she began and grew her career in games. She got her start as a journalist before landing her first gig as story editor working on Beyond Divinity. Her career has spanned from SpongeBob and Overlord to Heavenly Sword, Prince of Persia, and Thief. Most recently she’s worked on the rebooted Tomb Raider franchise. Listen to learn how the daughter of Terry Pratchett practices her craft to create captivating game narratives.

In this episode, we talk to Adalbert Kinsey, lead character technical director at Insomniac Games. Since he joined the studio in 2005 he’s worked on Sunset Overdrive, Resistance, Ratchet & Clank, and Fuse. Adalbert shares with us how his team has rebuilt Ratchet & Clank, bringing the game into current-gen gaming visuals with a modernized style. And, yes, he talks about Snagglebeast.