User blog:Big Poppa Brad/Something Interesting I Found on Reddit

So recently, I was messing around on Reddit. (I found a lot of George Lucas facts) and I found that the lead designer of Clone Wars Adventures, Matt Higby did an AMA ("Ask me Anything") on Reddit around the launch of the game, just thought I'd post it here. Please note that this happened four years ago.


 * Question: "Was George [Lucas] involved at all?"


 * Answer: "Not in the execution of the game, but George is heavily involved in the Clone Wars tv show. We worked really closely with key folks at LucasFilm animation on the game, especially in getting previews of upcoming seasons of the show so we can plan future content. I did get to meet George at a charity event for the premier of season 3 of the show... He was quite nice."


 * Question: "how much do you typically have to communicate with programmers before doing anything? like how much of your designs are limited or changed by programming limitations, etc?"


 * Answer: Coders are involved in almost any new design we want to take on. So, if I decide I want us to make a shooter minigame, we'd design it, hand a rough design off to a programmer, discuss what technical issues there might be, then we collectively work on it. Thankfully for me most of our coders on this team are phenomenally talented gameplay guys, so they understand the difference between implementing a spec and making a good game and take the liberties they need in order to have a solid execution of the basic idea.  We work in an open floor plan so we have awesome communication. Very rarely does anything ever go too far down a path without knowing it if there will be problems. That keeps us extremely agile. Since we built CWA on existing tech (it's made using the Free Realms engine which 95% of the team worked on previously) we all had a good idea of what the engine was capable of doing and most of our designs were already informed by that knowledge so we ran into very few 'we can't do that' sort of situations."


 * Question:  "How has the launch of the game been received so far?"


 * Answer: "So far really well actually. SOE is an MMO company, so a lot of people were expecting that type of game, and CWA is definitely not an MMORPG. Once we get past that confusion people seem to be really digging what we're doing. Kids especially, which is ideal since thats who we are going for. "


 * Question: "Do you need music?" (The person who asked the question gave a link to his soundcloud in an attempt to get his music used.)


 * Answer: "Most of our music is coming directly from the TV show, but that is some awesome stuff. =)"


 * Question: "Were you involved with SWG? On the executive level, what is SOE doing to fix their image after the NGE debacle?"


 * Answer: "I was involved in SWG both in QA and as a design apprentice. One of the cool things that SOE does is allows CS and QA folks to basically act as dev interns to get development experience and help out projects that need some extra hands. So, I cut my teeth on SWG as a design apprentice setting up NPC uniforms, spawners, etc. Fun stuff! I'm not an executive so I can't speak for them, but I will say that our commitment to making great games hasn't ever wavered and that everyone working here is incredibly dedicated to our players and to creating impactful, exciting and memorable online experiences. I know that probably sounds like some PR line, but it's really not. We're obsessed with our customers. "


 * Question: "What is the single most unique / creative thing that you are happy you were able to put into Clone Wars Adventures?"


 * Answer: "LucasFilm has been really cool about letting us do whimsical fun things within their license, which has allowed us to do some cool stuff. I like our droid attachments like the pogo leg for astromech droids that make them bounce around instead of wheel around, and our Stunt Gungan game that lets you fling Jar Jar through a field of explosive obstacles. (Yes, we have Jar Jar...) "


 * Question: "SO how many employees did you have under you? What studio do you work for? and How'd you make it into gaming? I ask these because I've been trying to get into the Art departments but haven't had much luck."

That's pretty much all from it, you can see the full AMAhere.
 * Answer: "I have about a dozen direct reports, many of them are fairly senior and do more direct ownership of parts of the game. CWA is a collection of Clone Wars themed games, and most designers are solely responsible for the design and implementation of one or more games. We have some really jr. apprentice designers who mostly work on data implementation. I work for SOE in San Diego, I've been here almost 10 years now. I got my GED when I was about 16, I never did much in school because I was always more interested in reading nintendo power, playing with my lynx, etc., so I dropped out and ended up playing Quake2, Starcraft, final fantasy 7, etc for months on end. I was going to community college and playing EQ about 16 hours a day when a good friend of mine got an interview in San Diego for a QA position. He got the gig and I ended up moving out to San Diego with him from Florida hoping I could get a job there too. More or less showed up one day and knocked on the front door, got a job in QA testing EverQuest for 10 dollars an hour and have been working there ever since. Every time I tell that story people are always surprised, but it's such a normal story in the culture of SOE, tons of people came out following their dream of working on games after playing EQ and are still part of the company As for trying to get into art, it really depends on what your speciality is. We work with the Art Institute here in San Diego and actually have our art directors teach classes there. We bring on a lot of internships and hire from there, but we also hire a lot of folks through conventions such as GDC, sigraph, etc. Where do you live?"