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Flow, Feedback, and Fun: The Pillars of Great Level Design with Jack Burrows
343 Plays2 months ago
Episode Description: In this episode, we sit down with Jack Burrows, a talented level designer at NetEase Games, who has worked on some of the most iconic titles in the gaming industry, including Call of Duty and Marvel Rivals. Jack shares his journey from a QA Specialist to a lead level designer, offering insights into the complexities of creating immersive game environments. He also discusses the importance of feedback in the creative process and how he navigates the challenges of designing for a diverse range of characters in Marvel Rivals.
Key Takeaways:
- The Journey from QA to Level Designer: Jack discusses his early career challenges and how his determination and passion for game design led him from QA roles to becoming a level designer at Treyarch and eventually at NetEase Games.
- Flow and Immersion in Level Design: The importance of creating levels that maintain a seamless flow, keeping players fully immersed in the game. Jack explains the process of planning and playtesting to ensure that each element contributes to the overall gameplay experience.
- Designing for Diverse Characters: Jack shares the unique challenges of designing levels for Marvel Rivals, where he must accommodate a wide range of characters with different movement abilities, ensuring that each level offers something engaging for all players.
- The Role of Feedback in Game Development: The significance of constructive criticism in the creative process. Jack emphasizes the need for open and honest feedback to foster growth and improvement in game design.
- Advice for Aspiring Game Designers: Jack offers practical advice for those looking to break into the gaming industry, highlighting the importance of persistence, networking, and continuously honing one’s craft.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Player Engage' with Jack Burroughs
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody, we have a great episode of Player Engage for you just ahead of us to let you know what you're about to hear. You're about to listen to Jack Burroughs from NetEase. He's a level designer and we're going to talk about flow in level design. What does that even mean? How does it work? He's going to tell stories about how persistence pays off, how diverse gameplay can help make decisions and how you're going to build out your maps and how constructive criticism helps you grow and how we need a better avenue to start sharing that content online.
00:00:28
Speaker
It's great stuff. It's gonna be a really good episode and I hope you enjoy it.
Jack's Career Journey and Passion for Game Design
00:00:39
Speaker
Hey everybody. Welcome to the player engage podcast. Greg here today. We are talking with Jack Burroughs. He is a level designer at net ease and has also worked for companies such as Treyarch and Activision Blizzard. And we are going to talk about all things level design. Cause I have so many questions and not answers. And Jack is going to be here. Hopefully nice enough to answer them for me, Jack. Thank you so much for being here today. I'm very excited to talk about level design, everything in general, ah anything you want to say about yourself.
00:01:08
Speaker
Hey Greg, yeah thanks for having me, man. I love talking about this stuff any day of the week. Yeah, I graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. I had a lifelong passion, wanted to make games since I was six years old, didn't want to do anything else, so I just followed that B line as far as it got me. I did not pursue the computer science route, really just loved design, loved what it feels like to be a player.
00:01:28
Speaker
And I just feel like I found my niche after quite an exciting career getting to where I am now, finally and in a comfortable, fun, exciting team working on Marvel Rivals for level design. So yeah, man, it's just been a great route. I've learned a ton. and I love to share it. so Yeah, and I'm excited to hear about level design, especially with Marvel Rivals, because there's videos everywhere of all people playing the beta. But before we even get there, right you said you realized at six years old you wanted to be in in design. like Are you sitting in school doodling? like Are you an artist by trade? Or or how did you kind of come to that realization that this is for me? Yeah, absolutely. So I played Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon when I was six at a neighbor's house. And it was like just this moment of glory.
00:02:13
Speaker
And you know, every birthday present and Christmas gift is like this begging ritual, like please can I have the new shiny thing or some other friend gets a GameCube, someone else got a PS2. So there was just this like stirring fecundity of friends getting all this new exciting stuff and I wanted in on all of it as much as I could get. So yeah, I would be in the back of class half paying attention to anything being taught.
00:02:33
Speaker
you know, regardless of what it was, any subject, because this was just my favorite subject, it was like the queen of the sciences for me. I was just marveling every day at like, why am I, this is so fun. All I want to do is like spend time in these cool worlds, running around with these crazy weapons and tools and stuff and it was like every game, introduce something fresh, you know, so you'd go from playing Jak and Daxter,
00:02:56
Speaker
to Sly Cooper, to Ratchet and Clank, to Smash Bros, to Pikmin. It was just this giant oscillating thrill ride of like new experiences, new stories, new music, new game mechanics. So I would just doodle like very roughly, mostly I did writing, I would just write scenarios and scenes and dialogue and try and create like very, very amateur drama and stuff. Because I just liked what it felt like to you know, go on this thrill ride in these games. It's kind of like watching a movie, like you're along for this crazy roller coaster. And I was fascinated by how the game mechanics hook a player and involve the player differently than cartoons do, or like a movie, right? Like where you're just passive.
00:03:35
Speaker
So that was what was most fascinating to me, is just trying to understand, like, why is shooting guns in this game more fun than that one? Or, you know, oh, the genius of operating your own little army of ants and Pikmin versus, you know, a fighting game where you're learning moves in Smash Bros. Like, all those kinds of things just were these fun threads to sort of analyze and poll and tug and see what I could learn new. Warcraft 3, Reign of Chaos, that was another big one. It's like, you just, I had all these introductions and these like rocks that would come and splash the pond.
00:04:03
Speaker
And it would just create like ripple effects for months of you know very involved obsession and interest from me. So it's just been a fun ride sort of studying all that stuff. There's so much to unpack there. It's like I don't know the logical next question to ask because it's like a bunch of crap being thrown against the
Challenges and Shifts in Academic Focus
00:04:21
Speaker
wall, right? Like a lot of people I talk to don't even know they want to be in gaming. It doesn't hit them till later in their life. I am like you kind of realized that early on, but I don't have any of those skills that you have. So you're locked out there. Did you know right out of the gate that engineering wasn't going to be your thing? yeah I mean, you you obviously have that creative bone in your body, right? You were writing stories, you're doing art, you're doing all this stuff. like
00:04:43
Speaker
Did you even try engineering of any sorts or not your jam? Well, I knew math was abysmal. I mean, hell, reading was hard enough. Like I had to do all the extra kind of, I was one of those guys, right? I had to go to the reading lab and stuff. And so like just normal academia was tough. Like math never, never clicked, still hasn't clicked. And I think when I watch my close friends now who just write code like poetry, like it just, their minds are chewing on logic and reasoning in a different way.
00:05:12
Speaker
And it's like they're categorizing this encyclopedic knowledge of, you know, ah this goes there, that follows this. And it's just like, you're just speaking into a different tongue. And I tried, I tried class, I got like a D in my programming class in college. and But whenever it came to design, we we know we'd make board games or a card game or something. I'm in it, I'm on fire, I'm interested.
00:05:34
Speaker
So in high school, I took three years of graphic design. So that was like probably the most art-focused thing that I did in school, leading up to college, at least, where I liked you know cool UI. I liked making posters. my What helped me get into SCAD, actually, is I had this game world that I was making ah for myself that I've always been adding to and really enjoy.
00:05:57
Speaker
Just as a personal project and in high school I made this collection of posters that you would see in the game right so like if you walk around blade runner or if you were to walk around skyrim and you see like the wanted posters for thieves or something I did that for a world that I have made up myself and scad loved it I got a five on the AP graphic design test which is the best you can get but like that was my avenue so yeah I tried it but it it just never hooked so it but it's always been more of like the the showmanship of it that I like the flair the pizzazz or the why right like the basic premise of the world that a player walks into rather than the very intimate nitty-gritty like bone structure or architecture of the tech behind the show I guess that's never I've never been able to grasp that cohesively or coherently
00:06:45
Speaker
You also mentioned you know the different types of games you were playing when you were younger. You just mentioned Smash Brothers, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot. And they're all different types of games. And you try to find what is making each one of these addicting, for lack of better words. ah yeah And and no for my listeners, I try and give a ah list of questions we could talk about. But we didn't I didn't send you this. But a lot of people I talk to come up with pillars. like When I design something, I want to stick to these pillars. like Did you learn anything about what makes these games fun, even though they don't share a common thread, right? Smash Brothers is never going to be like Spyro in a way. Right. But like, Oh, what, what made them addicting? Yeah.
The Concept of Flow in Game Design
00:07:23
Speaker
I think there's a sense of play that is inherent in every human being to begin with. Right. Like there's a joy of that. And I think certain games leverage that better than others. And a lot of that has to do with sort of a flow state and not that it's some like guru mental
00:07:42
Speaker
term or whatever but like a genuine you know if you know the rules of the game you know the boundaries of the game then there's a moment where all of the pieces all the moving parts are clicked and in motion right like a game of soccer for example everyone knows you don't touch it with your hands under certain circumstances right like every so everyone's like agreed for this set amount of time to participate with these same constraints and goals and you just get into the flow you're just playing the game and a lot of games that I grew up with maintained that flow magnificently. right like I think a lot of the problems people have with games that have come out and maybe in the last decade or so and now, it's like there are interruptions. the i I don't know if I have, I may be just coming up with this this moment, but like it feels like sometimes you're playing a game and then you slam your shin on a coffee table and everything stops. And like the immersion breaks, like the mechanic breaks down, something's not fun, the controls fail, the UI freezes up, right or like
00:08:42
Speaker
something becomes illegible. And so in those older games, there was a note a notation of like, there's just this flow of like, I'm running around a playground. you know I'm sliding, jumping, double jump. You roll through this. You swing across that. I switch weapons to that. Each one of those games had a flow state that was just so well maintained from the second you pressed like the main menu start button till you decided to like save the game and walk away. they just It's like this flowing, beautifully trickling water that It's like it just was an uninterrupted and I think that's part of the showmanship, right? It's like the show must go on or like somebody, you know, does something on stage because they recover. So even in games that had like a bug or something, you know, back then it was a novelty, right? You, you would go, you try an early days of the internet, you want to find the cheat codes or the, the weird exploits and stuff. Now we just expect every game to come out with that stuff because they're so complicated. So yeah, I think that was like, like the note that was fascinating to me.
00:09:38
Speaker
It's funny that you say that because I joke around by telling people like years ago, I had a game shark and a game genie and you would cheat to kind of put these codes in and now you just have to pay for that. Everyone's coming up with DLC. It's like the things that used to be broken in the game are now being sold as add-ons to the games. and And I always wonder to myself, like, is classic gaming ever going to come back? And it really hasn't gone away, but like yeah it's overshadowed by.
00:10:02
Speaker
by mobile games, right? For better or for worse, the mobile concept of free-to-play is taken over. And Marvel Rivals is going to be one that that kind of does it, and not a negative to it. But is there ever going to be the old days of like picking up a Spyro the Dragon and just playing that platform? And I know it's still around, but I feel like it just gets overshadowed because gamer as a whole is now a bigger category than gamers back then, when it was just like, hey, I had to have a Sega Genesis or had to have a Super Nintendo to be a gamer. I don't know. It's just my ramblings there.
00:10:32
Speaker
No, I love it. I agree with it. Um, I want to try and sprinkle some fun questions throughout the podcast, something I usually just, just usually say for one moment, but can you give me your top two or three levels of any game that stand out when you're kind of thinking best created levels? Stormveil castle and Elden ring is a masterpiece. It's, it's like.
00:10:55
Speaker
In terms of it being like a dungeon or an isolated thing, you can spend, I swear, eight hours just running around that one castle, especially if you like for the first time when you don't know what you're doing.
00:11:07
Speaker
It's just this, not a labyrinth because that's too simple, it's this mosaic, this beautiful tapestry of these different challenges and routes and curiosities and like places you can't even get to till later or you shouldn't even be there till later and they block that with a tough enemy. It's like all these subtle throttles and presses of the gas and the brake that gives play and rewards players for exploring like crazy powerful rewards if you find out it's like all these little veins the spreading branches of discovery that one especially is brilliant um other good levels design let me think
00:11:47
Speaker
Oh man, that's fascinating. I know I have answers. I'm just, my brain is chewing through so many that I love. Oh, Bleak Falls Barrow in Skyrim. The very first dungeon where you get the golden claw is one of the greatest. That's probably one, if not the best dungeon in the whole game. And it's simple because it's early on, but there's a real genius to like the little breadcrumbing throughout that. Like before you get to the giant spider, if you pay attention, there's a ah paralysis poison standing on a table before you get to that entrance.
00:12:14
Speaker
So, or there's like that book that has the thief, it's like the, you know, I think it just says thief or something and it gives you a skill upgrade. Or there's soul gems that you'll find. Like it's just peppering all these little interesting mechanics that represent the bulk of the rest of the game um in really cool ways. Or like there's the traps that you'll see a draugr run through and then they get killed. It's just ah an absolute mastercraft of like game design. It's compelling. It's well put together. It flows great.
00:12:41
Speaker
It's interesting, like every new corridor has something new. So those are probably two of my favorite examples. I love it. I appreciate that.
Role and Collaboration in Level Design
00:12:48
Speaker
And this kind of could go into the next question, a good way to go there is, can you kind of for a high level, maybe talk to us, what is the role of a level designer and how do you work with these other teams? For example, when you talk about kind of Stormvale Castle or Bleak Falls, right? Like, are you working with other people that are designing this as well to talk about, Hey, here's my vision. How do we make this happen?
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah it's it depends on the scope of the development that you're part of. So mostly in AAA, which is the bulk of my experience, you you are a cog in a machine, but not in an ugly, demeaning way, if it's a well-oiled machine, at least. um There's a fun process where, and I wrote this all out on on LinkedIn, it's like, I will receive a concept from production. And then that goes to concept art, and they might give me a mood board or something. And then I'll get i'll talk to my design leadership, and they'll be like, yeah, we want you You know, a lot of our portfolio for the game has this sort of feel. We'd like, you know, they might even give me one word like frenetic or claustrophobic or, you know, breathable. And I'll take those sort of faculties into a a drawing board, right? And I throw that against the wall. And I'm like, okay, it has to be at this part of the world at this time in history with this sort of genre and, you know, these one or two words that are trying to capture the feeling. And so I then design a playground.
00:14:06
Speaker
um and And as far as my understanding is at this point with level design, I think it always follows game design. Always. Game design always comes before level design. Because ah as a level designer, if I'm making a playground, I need to know what the ah verbs are that the player can do. Can they run? Can they jump? Can they sprint? Can they slide? Can they mantle? Can they break through a door? Can they peek through a door? Right? Do they have guns? Do they have melee weapons? Can they peek around a corner with a third-person camera?
00:14:35
Speaker
All those sorts of verbs and things define the geometry that the level designer is responsible for creating. So it has to, one, facilitate the things the player can do with the character. Two, it has to be immersive, so it has to be tangible, contextualized in the world that the game takes place in.
00:14:55
Speaker
um Three, it has to be believable most often, right? Like you can make abstract spaces, but they can't hit a level of like dream state ridiculousness. Because oftentimes, if you're not paying attention to the design, or if you're designing without intention, then you'll create those coffee table moments where the players will break their flow. So flow is king in, I think, any level design.
00:15:18
Speaker
What does it feel like to move through the space? So, for example, like Bleak Falls Barrow, it's a very linear experience, but there's a lot of those dungeon moments that are sectioned out where the player doesn't just go you know from a door to a door to a door, but like you you know how do you get the player to turn their head? How do they look at the puzzle? How do they find the enchanted battle axe on the table? Can you guide them? Can you direct them?
00:15:40
Speaker
Level designers are responsible for all that. You're facilitating what it's like for the player to be guided through the space, to enjoy the space, to make sense of the space. um Yeah, that's yeah like an architect, right? And an interior designer to a degree.
00:15:53
Speaker
Every time I talk to someone that makes games, it makes it so much more complex and amazing on how these things come together. And the point that you made earlier is like you're a cog in a machine, which again, not not in a negative thing. It's just that there's so many moving pieces that have to move. It's like synchronized swimming. Everything has to be going together. And it's just fascinating to hear this. And I'm curious, right?
00:16:13
Speaker
You've worked at Treyarch here now with NetEase. You're building Marvel Rivals. A lot of what you're talking about, I feel, and I know I'm not right, is a lot of story-driven games. When you're designing a first-person shooter or a team shooter type of game, are the same concepts at use in use? ah you know I wish to God I could speak more about single-player games. And I have a serious desire, a serious desire to work on those games, because my loves are those games.
00:16:41
Speaker
You know, Dead Space, Bioshock, Metroid Prime, Skyrim. Like, that's my bread and butter, Halo. I love those games. And all those single-player experiences got me into it. I have not had the full-blown AAA professional level design job making those kinds of games yet. I'm hungry for it though, believe me. um I'm itching. But as far as I can understand, and my boss is that, it even has as mentioned to me,
00:17:03
Speaker
before like it's very difficult in a different way there's a lot of waiting for a lot of those mechanics right because in a multiplayer game every player has access to the same kit so you're designing an arena for all of those players and those tool sets to operate in sort of a more cohesive way where there's less surprise there has to be more predictability right players have to be able to repeat that same space experience, whereas in a single player game, a lot of it's you running through it once, right? You don't really have to go back to Bleak Falls Barrow in Skyrim after you do it. There's no reason to go back. If you paid enough attention, you were thorough. There's not a lot you can really miss except for like a few trinkets and things. um So it's a one through run. A multiplayer map
00:17:46
Speaker
millions of people will play that, say, map millions of times. That's a totally different approach and consideration for the geometry, for fairness, right? Like in a single player game, you might be able to throw throw a player for a loop a few times. But in a multiplayer game, you want to limit those sort of friction points um because there's already going to be the friction of a million boot prints running through that space. So there's radically different approaches, I think.
00:18:13
Speaker
but But there's still an essence to it right like flow still matters ah legibility still matters believability immersion you know expression of the mechanics facilitating that gameplay all that's the same but there is a strong difference. So I'm gonna talk back to this but my second question is what game are you playing now.
Gaming Habits and Analytical Perspective
00:18:32
Speaker
I play all kinds of stuff. I am woefully addicted to teamfight tactics on out of League of Legends. I think I love systems. I love interesting, deep systems. And TFT be damned. It's almost like a slot machine. It's so fun. It has enough of the randomness element, enough sense of competition.
00:18:51
Speaker
enough strategizing. It's genius. It's a brilliant game. I can't get enough of it. But i play a lot I replay a lot of stuff. And I often won't beat stuff from beginning to end, but I just like to reference things or refresh myself. So I'm doodling with Baldur's Gate 2. I didn't beat it. I got to go back to my save file. I love Helldivers 2. I love Borderlands 1, specifically the first one. I always i dabble at playing Dead Space 1 constantly because it's my favorite game of all time.
00:19:20
Speaker
Um, I picked up Diablo four again, cause it's fun to sort of build craft and theory craft with that. So ah what I've noticed about myself, it's a lot less about yearning for these big adventures and the storytelling, partially because I don't think that many of them these days have done that exceedingly well or captivatingly. It's not really in the market, right? A lot of the like market isn't favoring those kinds of games. So we don't get them to the same depth or.
00:19:45
Speaker
expression or quality that we may have at one point. So I find myself more interested in like, what systems, what mechanics are, are working together in compelling ways? What's new? What's captivating like that? So that kind of are like vampire survivors, right? Like we've watched a whole genre being born before our eyes. That's a really fun type of game. So it's fun to go on Steam and see if I can't find clones of that that spin it in a different way or execute the same concept differently. So it's a nice shotgun. it's You know, it's a nice broad spread of different stuff I'll play right now.
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah, so you know you mentioned it on on our pre-calls that you know you got to respect good games and play good games. And I love it how you're finding, A, the games that you love and you're playing them again, but like moments and games to re-experience them. Because you probably can see them differently. like Once you know how the sausage is made, it's like, all right, I'm going to start looking at this from a different lens and maybe take some notes. I know this is a weird question, but do you ever sit down with like a notebook or something and like take notes? I'm like, hey, I really love this. He's going to show me the notebook now for people.
00:20:40
Speaker
I have, oh man, for the Dead Space remake, Doug, let me tell you, it just, page after page after page after page, yeah. Like I wrote, you sit down and if you're passionate enough, if you care about the IP, you'll just, oh, this is crap. This is garbage. This is dumb. This is really good. the Oh, genius. Brilliant. Oh, that's good. You know, it's like,
00:20:59
Speaker
It just sometimes depends, or um my buddy Tyvek Stallworth, he's a a combat designer with Sucker Punch, he and I, he's my best friend, he and I will sit down and we'll, with a new game, or I'll invite him over, like when Starfield came out, he came over, he was supposed to come over and we were gonna go get lunch. We didn't need a thing, we were there for six hours. And, you know, we just, we were both up at the screen pointing out, oh, look at this UI connects to that, and it it makes sense with this, but this is friction point. I don't know where my UI is, right? Where's this taking me?
00:21:28
Speaker
Look at this gameplay, this is disappointing, but this is great. That's the kind of like energetic way that I'll i'll sit down playing anything. I love it. I am envious. that That sounds like such a fun experience. And I often hear about people in movies don't like movies anymore because they're they're working it. But when you can play the game, you can start pointing this out. I feel like that's such a fun, fun time. And you can say you're working because you're playing games. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I want to go back to what you said a little earlier. It's kind of designing a multiplayer map. It's interesting. i I haven't put much thought into this. But you know, like you said, you you play Skyrim, you go through oblique falls, and like you're not coming back unless you want to pick up Trinkets. wear
00:22:03
Speaker
with, with rivals and and same with cod, right? You're playing the same map over and over again. So traversal is interesting because with everything we've seen about rivals, you have everyone moving differently. You have Spider-Man flying through the map. You have, you have tanks. I don't know why I can't think of tanks in the game right now, um, in the game, right? Like how do you as a level designer go to a map that's a blank slate thinking, all right, how do I design this map for people that can traverse in all these different ways?
00:22:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's tricky. A lot of it, I think in these kinds of games has to do with the game mode itself. So what's the objective, right? Like I, at least that's how I think about it. I focus on what is the player attempting to achieve? What are they trying to do? And as a whole, the team, the team collectively, they have to get the objective, right? Whether that's capturing a point and holding the point.
00:22:55
Speaker
Well, even then there's two and encounters, right? And every hero, every type of hero, like tanks, DPS, and healers, they're all coming to that first objective in a different way, right? Maybe the tanks want to just get there first and start setting up barriers or walls or defenses.
00:23:11
Speaker
The DPS wants to take position so that they can keep the other team off the point. The healers have to position themselves to support both of those other players that are doing that. That's just to approach the objective. Once they've captured the thing, that's a whole other game. How do we hold it, right? So maybe their positions change. Maybe the angles that will change. They'll try and create choke points. In Marvel Rivals, there's a lot of cool destructible environments, right? can we Can we recreate the the bottleneck? That's a really cool fun mechanic that we've got that I'm really excited about fleshing out and playing with more.
00:23:45
Speaker
But those are the kinds of things that you have to think about, right? it's It's less about, how do I make Hulk perform really well here? Or this is a great Spider-Man avenue. It's more like, how can the hypermobile characters succeed succeed here? How can the slower tanks succeed here? Does it feel good to walk up as a healer? There's more broad strokes because they're the characters, the cast of characters, are have such specific defined uniqueness to them that you have to sort of, in my mind, go back a step and look at more of the broad, what do all the tanks do? What are they trying to do? What are they trying to achieve?
00:24:19
Speaker
And that's easier to influence the geometry, right? Rather than saying, oh, Iron Man should be able to fly through this. um No, like flying characters, right high mobile characters that can access that. Does it give them an interesting vantage point? Those are some of the like the more broad strokes that you work with. And then all of like the fine tuning, like, oh, you know cut this corner, or polish that flow, narrow this hallway, shorten this path. All that kind of stuff comes from iteration, which is only achievable through plate testing.
00:24:46
Speaker
we have to play test the bejesus out of everything because it's it like unless you see where the friction is happening in the machine right it's like you start playing and then friction starts happening everywhere uh this is a choke point this is too tight the ceiling's too high this is too low right you don't know that until you play and until you play with a bunch of people and you ask them you have to talk to them so it's a very active um It's a very engaged process, it's very flowy, it's very you know ebb and flow because my co-worker Cliff, one of the best level designers I've ever seen, ever worked with, he emphasizes a lot like it's easy to throw out the baby with the bathwater, right? It's easy to get rid of the good things, the things that we do like, the things that are successful
00:25:29
Speaker
because we get negative feedback or we get harsh critique. And it's easy to overwrite things that are fundamentally successful, that this element, this geometry, this area is doing well. This stuff isn't doing well. Some of it's spotted throughout both, right? Like there's good stuff here, there's bad stuff there. Polishing, iterating, that comes with play testing.
00:25:46
Speaker
I like that. you know it's ah It's something that I think people need to hear is that just because you get constructive criticism doesn't mean everything needs to go. It means let's take a look at what you've created and see where we can improve upon rather than throwing everything out and starting again. But I want to keep on that topic because you talked about feedback from not only internally, right? You you play with your friends as well. but like your game is going to get comparisons to games like Overwatch to other team shooters, right? Like, do you get, you just had your second, I think open beta, right? Or something like that. Like, do you get feedback from others in the industry? Like, yo, I love your game, but have you considered this or is it like tough to get that information from people?
00:26:26
Speaker
I think it can kind of come, I don't even know how to articulate this. It almost feels like it has no rhyme or reason. So we might post I literally made a post on LinkedIn, if you are playing in the beta, please tell me your feedback. And I got maybe two, three comments. One person actually messaged me directly with act tangible feedback.
00:26:46
Speaker
actual pinpointed bullet point one person out of like 2500 people the ah allegedly that see my stuff and i'm like like what is the hesitation and i think there's like a strange resistance to wanting to be honest or to engage i don't know what it is but we get it a ton from discord we get it from the masses from the players and things but professionally It's rare. In fact, it's like, it seems either almost non existent, or there's no avenue, there's no channel for it. I don't know what it is. I think people are nervous about saying things and hurting people's feelings. Because they might work with them someday, right? Everybody always talks about how small the industry is. And it is small. True. It's totally true. It's absolutely true. The amount of people that you work with at one point that will then shotgun out to a million other places, it's like the impressions you make matter, they last. But it's, it's disappointing to me.
00:27:38
Speaker
It's deeply frustrating that people can't distinguish between a professional analysis of a game and their own personal opinion or feelings about the individual. right it's like where I want you next to me at the workbench, not across from me. right like you're not It's not a trial. It's a piece of work that we get to look at and analyze on the table, on the bench, in the shed, in the garage, on the operating in the operating room.
00:28:05
Speaker
Explain to me how you got to this. Well, that's fascinating. What about that? Do you think this would be better if that right? Like, that just doesn't happen. I don't see it happen. Unless it's happening behind individual closed doors where someone might say, Hey, man, saw your game. Great stuff. I love it. I try and make the effort with my friends that I know make things a beta comes out. Hey, give me a key. Let me, let me get in there. And I give them a rundown and give them bullet points. And they, and some of my close friends, like I have some of my buddies worked on Concord.
00:28:30
Speaker
and I played it. I gave it my time of day because I respect them. I respect the work that they're trying to do. and i think their I think their time and effort is worth an honest evaluation from a peer, from a colleague. right I think it's disrespectful for us not to be honest with each other because if I see the bus coming and I don't warn you while you're standing in the street, I'm a shitty friend.
Importance of Professional Feedback in Game Development
00:28:51
Speaker
right Not to say that it's always a negative thing, or it's like, hey, you're about to throw out those roses, or you're not pruning these daisies. like I want you to take care of the thing that I think you're doing is awesome. And sometimes that means pruning. right that Sometimes that means trimming. It means cleaning. It means picking the bugs off the thing. And I think that's a disservice to each other when that doesn't get facilitated, when that gets you know, hushed, hushed or people are just sensitive about it. It's just, that's just the truth. It's, and it, and only, we only detriment from it. You, there's no benefit. There's no benefit from niceties and calmness because it's not real. No one's being authentic. No one's, you know, not that you have to beat each other with the over the head, but there's just a reality of, if you're my colleague, I want to respect you and your work by being real, by being authentic. And I want that. I want that feedback from my work.
00:29:39
Speaker
How are you going to get better otherwise? but yeah you don't You're just an echo chamber otherwise. So that's what I think. Yeah. You know, we with help shift, we deal a lot with the customer support side of things. And we see ah a lot of the customer support leaders are very protective of what they do. We're just like, no, share your strategies. Like it's not a competition versus you versus them who's providing best customer support. At the end of the day, when you provide the best customer support, you're providing the best product to the customer, right? It's not, it's constructive criticism again, right? Like.
00:30:06
Speaker
Hopefully you're not going to be offended. And I think that's the world we live in, unfortunately, today, where everyone's going to take everything too personally, where it's like the only way to get better is told where you mess up. ah you know If you are an employee to your boss, you should go to your boss and say, hey, give me where I can improve, what I could do better. like Don't just tell me the niceties, because that's not going to help me grow as a person. And I find it fascinating that in the industry, especially with such a high profile IP, that where everyone wants to play it right now, like you're not getting that feedback. That's nuts that out of, what, 2,500 people, you've only heard from a couple.
00:30:34
Speaker
like but Well, that's just me, right? I'm only one. I'm only one signal tower. That's my experience. I'm sure we have channels and official things and other stuff like that. But this is my individual experience when I'm like, tell me. And then no one tells me. Jack, if you're going to go to a bar, what's the drink you're ordering?
00:30:50
Speaker
Oh, a white Russian. why me a Yeah, I watched um the big Lebowski one time and I'm like, that's it. That's the drink I want forever. And as I got it, and I was like, Oh, yeah, this is delicious. I actually host a lot of parties throughout the year at home with my family. And I make a cloudy Russian, where I just take like, whip, cool like, whipped cream out of the can and just, you know, like, but it it looks gross. It's not great. It's nowhere near as smooth as a bartender would but i I love that drink.
00:31:14
Speaker
Awesome. Love it. um I want to talk a little bit about how you got to where you are because you went to SCAD, you were in level design, and now you're working for maybe one of the most anticipated games of 2025.
Career Path from QA to Level Designer
00:31:25
Speaker
How do you end up at a company like Treyarch? How do you head down that path? I tried for months when I graduated in 2017 to get a design job, and I had um awards for games we'd made in college. I had game jams. I had a paid internship.
00:31:41
Speaker
And none of it translated. I almost got a few jobs, but it just it didn't click. So i I didn't give up, but I was like, well, I'm just going to take what I can get. And so there was this quality assurance test position for Activision specifically in El Segundo, California. And it was working on Call of Duty World War II made by Sledgehammer.
00:32:01
Speaker
And so I got it. and you know I'm in. I made it. And it was a grind. It was such a grind. and From my very first day, 12 hours a day, six days a week for six months straight through launch, it was gnarly. It took me an hour through the worst traffic on the planet in downtown l LA to get there in the morning and an hour to come home at the same time of day. Not the same time of day, but you know it was awful. It was hor horribly hard. and And it was so detached.
00:32:31
Speaker
from actually working on the game itself. I was like filtering bugs that another QA team were making to make sure that it made sense when it actually got to the developers. And we were writing our own bugs too and doing a lot of different kinds of testing and stuff, but it was gnarly. But I knew, I was like, okay, well, this isn't it yet, but I'm on my way. And so, and I would talk to people, right? You have to be active. I would tell my boss, I don't want to be here forever. How do I get there?
00:32:54
Speaker
And people will tell you, people want to help you. The manager of that place was awesome. My buddy Kevin, who's now like the head of QA for Infinity Ward, he was a total mentor, a total guide, because he had worked with the QA at Treyarch quite a bit. So, you know, you prove yourself, all right? I got the job, I got the rough end, I got the bottom of the totem pole, I'm in. I'm going to do this as best as I can. When I got the QA job at Treyarch and i I was leaving the Activision Studio, you know, the manager of that office, he was like, hey, do us proud, right? Show show respect that when you get there,
00:33:24
Speaker
We trained you well. Um, and they did, but I got there and immediately like I'd never had to write crash bugs or I didn't know how like Treyarch just had a whole nother system. And, um, so you just make connections, right? Like I had recommendations from the activism guys like, Hey, this guy's a good test or whatever. And I got in and then I maybe had a month before we started black ops for the, like the death March QA. So that was again, six days a week, 12 hours a day, 10 to 10 baby for God until launch. I started in February of 2018 and was there through until April of 2019. And a lot of that was crunch. A lot of that was that same exact schedule for a long time. But they had an internship program that I knew individuals that had gotten in that way. In fact, there was a girl named Kendall, who was I went to school with, she was in my game design classes, and she was a level designer Treyarch. And I think she went through the internship program.
00:34:18
Speaker
And so i'm I'm QA walking into Treyarch every day, right? and And it's just one step closer. You got to keep the fire. I'm walking in. um'm Now I'm making $12.50 an hour, right? Or now I'm making $15 an hour. like You just take the little victories, but you have to keep the same motivation. So I would talk to the recruiter who was down the hall from the QA lab. Or I would talk. I would message.
00:34:38
Speaker
on inter-company channels, the level designers, hey, I saw you, you got in this way. How do I do what you do? Could I take you to lunch? So I would pay for the lunch. I'd take them out. We'd sit outside. I'd ask them questions. What did you do? How did you get there? How do you do it now? How can I stand out? Those sorts of things. And so you just, one, you build relationships. Well, first you do your job that you're there to do well. You do it well and you do it hard and fast as best you can. You make good connections.
00:35:03
Speaker
You let the get the people let the people there get to know you. right Be real. You connect with them. You just see them every day. Be friendly. And then you've got to take motivation, or you've got to seize your ambition. So I knew that I could learn the radiant toolset, which is the engine that Cod uses, if I bought Black Ops 3 with my own money and I download the Steam mod tools. And then I was watching tutorials on YouTube on my brakes as a QA tester. The QA boss comes and sees me doing this. He says, why do you have this open?
00:35:33
Speaker
And I said, because I don't want to be here forever. I want to be a level designer downstairs. He's like, okay. Two weeks later, he comes back and he says, the level design team needs specific QA work. You're going to do it. So now I built relationship with those level designers that ended up hiring me for the internship. I was one of 17 people for the Treyarch internship out of 1600 applicants.
00:35:55
Speaker
and they took They were supposed to take college graduates ah right or people that were still in college as an internship. I was two years out of college and I was in the trenches, but I knew people and I made an effort to know them, not to use them, but to know them and to be known by them, right to make connections, make relationships, and make my my desires known and to back it up.
00:36:14
Speaker
I had a resume, I had work that I showed that I could do it. It was just a lot of God's providence, a lot of effort, a lot of patience, my God, which I didn't really have. Right. It's easy to say you had patience looking back on it, but in the time, no, I just had fire that never went out. You know, I was just hungry and starving for it. And it, you know, it played out and I made the application and finally got in, you know, and it was, it was a dream. It still is the dream. It's the same dream now as it was the day I got the internship.
00:36:41
Speaker
we We talk a lot about the idea of networking, even if it's just internally, because sometimes your companies are so big, you don't know what these other teams do and you don't understand why they're actually here. And I love the fact that A, you are grinding, you're putting networking, but you're also curious, like, what's this person doing? How do I get into this? And I think, you know, when when you start networking with people and you realize people just love to talk about what they do and how they're doing, they just talk, talk, talk. And it's great. It's like, you just listen, you become a sponge and absorb all that information. It's just like, all right.
00:37:08
Speaker
I, and then when it's time, like they'll look at you and be like, Hey, Jack, I know you're interested in it. So it's awesome. And it just shows you that it really makes a difference when you get to know these people. Yeah, absolutely. You have to let them get to know you so that they can help you. Right. That like each person knew what I wanted and you know, I wasn't yeah a miserably unlikable person. So it was easy for them to be like, Hey, let me help you out. Let me, let me point you where you gotta go.
00:37:31
Speaker
When, when you are a level designer, what what's, and most of these answers don't have direct answers, but like, ger what's the next logical step? Where do you want to go from there?
Dreams and Impact in the Gaming Industry
00:37:41
Speaker
Well, to be honest, level design is a means to an end for me. I, I just had this prep talk with myself this morning because sometimes you just need to do that. fresh cooker here I have a dream. I have a dream of walking out on a trade show and presented to the world a game, a game that has been born or either of my mind and made by the product of brilliant, focused, motivated teammates. I want to create a world. I want to say something to this industry about the industry, not not like some manifesto. It's like as an artist, you look at the great works.
00:38:16
Speaker
And each of those works is an exclamation. It says, here I am. Here's my here's what I'm going to say about this medium. Play Bioshock. Play Gears of War. Play Halo. Play Dead Space. right Play Mass Effect. They're statements. They're beautiful statements about the medium. Here's what this art form can do. Here's the worlds it can paint. I want to do that. I've been doing i've been enjoying these statements my whole life. I have something to say as an artist. I have something to create as an artist.
00:38:44
Speaker
That is my dream. I have a world that I'm chewing on, that I'm brewing, that I'm building, and I love it. I'm so excited about it. I hope for it. my professional career is aiming always the purpose is to teach me, to help me grow. How do I do that? how do i do that right What does it take? What does it cost to get it at the scope or the quality that I would want? I don't care how long it takes. I don't care if I'm 83 walking onto that stage. I have a vision. I'm hungry for it. Every day I walk into work, how can I grow towards that vision? How can I learn what level designers do?
00:39:17
Speaker
How can I work with the programming team? How can I work with production? How can I smooth out my rough edges, right? Working with people. How do I smooth out when I get frustrated with something? I want to grow every day towards that goal. I have the vision. I can taste it. I can see it in my mind's eye.
00:39:32
Speaker
for the game and for the dream itself. And it's not for my glory, right? But it's for the glory of this of this art form, which I think is so powerful. I think it's so great. I want to use it to plant seeds of hope in people's hearts and and just through an awesome package, through a face melting blockbuster smash hit. We play enough amazing games. We have to be learning. We have to be gleaning from these masterpieces enough for as a creator to say something ourselves. I want to do that. We've played enough. I've seen enough. I've tasted enough. I'm hungry. I want to say something too. So everything, especially with level design, that's the end goal for me, right? I once asked a guy, and I'll never forget this, who graduated SCAD and he got an internship at Naughty Dog. And I said, Paul, are you destined for greatness? And he said, me? No. He said, I'm destined to
00:40:26
Speaker
make a living. And I thought that was the stupidest, saddest answer I'd ever heard in my life. I was like, that yes slow come on, man. We make worlds in this industry. like We make things that that change people's lives, that they get to walk into. I want more than that.
00:40:42
Speaker
I don't just want to get a paycheck. I want to participate in birthing worlds. i want to make so I want to leverage what this art form can do. And so I want to be a great level designer. I want to be a great designer. I want to be a great narrative designer. I want to be you know a great lead. I want to agree be a great creative director. That's my goal. My next like major career milestone, how do I be a creative director? What does it take to do that? So I surround myself and I ask questions. I i poke fad and and my boss, Paul Ella, every day. Hey, how do you get a game funded?
00:41:11
Speaker
You know, what's the best method? What publisher does this or that best? All those sorts of things I'm always asking. So that's my trajectory. If another level designer might just want to be a lead, right? Maybe they don't even want to manage people. They just want to be an expert level designer. Everyone's goals are different, but that's my dream. I don't know how I continue this and interview after that. That was just such a perfect way to to just, I love it. I mean, I agree with you, right? like we need more of these world builders. We need to be immersed in games. And Elden Ring was a great example of that. And all the last of us that do that. like Amazing. but But there's so much room for improvement. And I feel like the industry is going one way with gaming when we're we're missing those moments. And it's just like,
00:41:51
Speaker
Unfortunately, those those games don't make as much money as some of these other games do. But like, you need that amazing game, something that just kind of blows your socks off. It's just like, oh, my God. yeah um If you were graduating today and you were went to school for something gaming related, would you take a different path or would you do it all over again? Oh, hell no. I wouldn't change a minute of my life. Not a second.
00:42:13
Speaker
Heck no. i would I would walk into those offices. I'd sit in that traffic. i'd I'd eat the pizza that they'd leave for us on a Friday night. You better believe it, Doug. I would do every second of that again. I would do the same route. I mean, i i but to a degree, I wasn't good enough to walk in the door. right I hired interns at Treyarch who were good enough out of the gate. like One was a SCAT alumni. Another was a Pasadena Art College ah grad. And those guys, are they were crisp.
00:42:41
Speaker
They were focused, they were motivated, they were skilled, they had it. I didn't have it coming out the gate. Or maybe I did, right but maybe I didn't know how to sell it well enough. I don't know. Some people have it enough out the gate. um So yeah, I wouldn't have changed a thing. I think if if you feel like you're not making progress, sweep the floors where the thing is happening that you want to be part of. Whatever. Be there. Be involved. Participate at whatever level you have to. right And then if you're not getting progress, you have to self-analyze. You have to say, I'm bad at this, or this is crap, but I'm great at this.
00:43:16
Speaker
And I'm going to lean on that." And then you just, with patience and prayer, baby, you mic your way, one step at a time. And you know, ah to to your last point there, sometimes it's good to have a good manager that can help point you in that right direction, right? You may not know your next logical step, but someone might be able to help point you. And when you're managing interns, you might be able to see like, hey, you do have it. You're going to end up here and I know you can end up there. Or there just might be people who are lost and that's okay because it's a big world out there and no one yeah really knows what else is out there. That's right.
00:43:44
Speaker
Jack, you you ended this on such a high note and such a perfect note. And I feel like it's ah a great place to kind of wrap up the interview for now, because I will bother you again in the future after Rivals comes out or the next playtest to keep bothering you and ja wait if you give you a feedback on the levels here. ob This was awesome. I really appreciate, A, your drive, ah your motivation. And I will be first in line at whatever game store still exists when your game comes out.
00:44:07
Speaker
um I believe in you and and the way the passion you have from there. I love the concept of sharing best practices throughout the industry. You already have a network there. um Even going back to the game design, kind of how game design comes first and level, like things I never thought about. Can you jump? You can jump. You can create platforms. Who would have thought that? That's right. So much I've learned here and I appreciate it. um Before we do end today, is there anything you'd like to just share with our audience or anything? You know, I i think speaking to the people who who are you entering the industry right because enough there's enough turmoil and folks who who chew and talk about this stuff who are struggling with all the losses and jobs and things and the rubber banding effect of the industry. But I think for people getting into it, I don't want anyone to think they're not destined for greatness. right and And that's defined either relatively or by their own metrics, but I i love igniting that flame.
00:45:01
Speaker
because I think it's easy and I watched it happen in my peers in college and especially when we got out of it. There's there's a temptation to lose that spark, to lose the flame that gets you into the thing in the first place like like making games, making video games like name a better job, like name a more exciting,
Advice for Aspiring Game Designers
00:45:20
Speaker
interesting job. It can be hellish. It can be grueling. It can be hard. It can be dis debilitating. could be not It could be gnarly. But would you rather do that or something else? there's ah There's a level of monotony that so many professions in the world have. There's a tedium. You're always doing the same thing to the same little end. But we get to make something
00:45:40
Speaker
that can literally spin someone's life on a dime. right There's enough stories you can find of people who played the right thing for them, and it changes their life, or their or it breeds life into them, or it pulls them out of a dark place. like There's so much power that this medium has, and it's so human at its deepest levels, and we can leverage that. right it's not just It doesn't have to just be a cash grab. It doesn't have to be something that stuffs the pockets of shareholders. like It can say things.
00:46:08
Speaker
And when you see people like the guy who made Stardew Valley alone, that's a one-man job, and he made one of the greatest games ever made. You can do that, dammit! Like, we can do that stuff! it's We can totally do it. It's just a matter of accepting the life that it allots us.
00:46:24
Speaker
And that can be OK. If that's not the life you want to live, then do something that will pay for the life you want. But if you if you want passion, if you want purpose, if you want direction, and this is something that you enjoy, then do it. right Cut the corners where you need to. Let life shave itself off where it has to. But if you get to wake up every day and participate in building something like we get to do, come on, man. That's a damn beautiful thing.
00:46:49
Speaker
That's an awesome thing. like Leverage that. Lean into it. Take the student debt. Whatever. I'm still paying mine off for the next 13 years, and I wouldn't change a minute of it. Give me the $12 an hour. I'll get in there, and I'll find those bugs. Whatever it takes, dog. Whatever it takes to be a creator and participate with folks, that's what I'm talking about. It's such a special industry. It's such a special gig. I don't want anyone to lose that kind of fire, especially when they're starting out.
00:47:12
Speaker
amazing passion and we need more leaders like you in the industry to put gaming first and understand the true power of the medium, whether it be someone who's depressed and pulling him out of depression or something that someone's lonely or needs something to do. There's so much power here and you just expressed it beautifully. so ah Thank you. And thank you for your time today and just joining us again. I look forward to annoying you again in the future to pull you on again. But I really appreciate your time. We'll have URLs to anything Jack has mentioned. We'll have it to NetEase. We'll have it to Marvel Rivals. We'll have it to his LinkedIn profile if he's cool with it. But Jack, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and your passion today. I appreciate it. And I hope you have a great rest of the day. And good luck with the rest of the production as well with Marvel. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. It's been my pleasure.