Day Three
Now that Ray, Randy's shadow for a week, has had a couple days to check out Gearbox from the inside, we asked him to write us another blog update and tell us how the experience was different from his expectations and fill us in on what he has been up to, as well as give us a little personal background.
Ray is one semester shy of his Bachelor's degree in Arts and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas, which is near the Gearbox offices in Richardson. This degree is a hybrid degree that combines traditional art training (such as drawing and painting or photography) with current technologies like Photoshop, Maya, and other prominent technologies. Obviously, he has aspirations of getting a job in the game industry someday - his discipline of choice is art. Some of Ray's favorite games include Metal Gear Solid 2, Halo CE, Full Spectrum Warrior, and Star Wars: Jedi Academy.
Ray has been keeping up with Randy's busy schedule all week, attending team meetings, checking out the technology we work with, and dealing with the day-to-day business of managing a company. I'll let you hear from him what it's like!
Ray's Blog: Mid-Week Report
It is possible to conclude a lot of things about Gearbox from the last couple of days. So I had to think as I contemplated my next blog post, what should I focus on. I talked yesterday in my forum posts about the other part of game development, the less glamorous part, the hard work. Making games is fun. But for the people at Gearbox, it is also their job. And like any job, there is a need to produce something that matches the expectation.
Randy covers much ground when he speaks about the whys of what he does. He has a philosophy built on years of experience, some of them I am sure he would rather forget. But all of those experiences have combined to construct his business philosophy. It is impossible for me to explain that philosophy after spending only two days with him, but anyone can see the examples and results of that philosophy when you see what the company is doing. It is obvious that Randy and his partners did not throw this enterprise together on a whim without planning and foresight. It was laid on a foundation of trust and emphasis on relationships - not only with each other, but with their eventual fans and supporters. It is also obvious, and this is equally important, that they know how to adapt to change. Someone once said that if you do it once, it's luck, twice it's talent. I want to add to that by saying if you do it thrice, it is what you have at Gearbox.
My access has allowed me to witness talent times three in every person I have met, without exception. But talent will only carry you so far. A company can get all the talent it wants, as long as it has money to pay for it. The winning additive to talent at Gearbox is dedication and commitment. Dedication and commitment are seeds that are implanted in every person who comes here. Randy knows that the best way to keep his people happy is to listen to what they say. There are differences of opinion, but that is inevitable in any endeavor. I believe that it's what you do with those differences that separate the winning companies from the ones that used to be.
Mid-week Wrap-up
I got a chance to have a couple words with Ray when he and Randy were in-between meetings and asked a couple questions of him.
When asked what surprised him about the company, he responded the he was surprised how intensely the people here love games. It takes a lot of passion to be in the games industry and be successful, and he was pleased to see how much the employees loved games. He was also surprised at what making an AAA title these days takes - the coordination of large teams of level designers, artists, programmers, producers and more. Cooperation and communication are really key in operating in this industry; they are great skills to have. Ray commented that he had expected some of the devs to be "snooty and aloof", but that that wasn't his experience at all. I could've told him that!
He also seemed interested in the fact that Gearbox highly values communication internally and externally, commenting on how much the fans and their responses are taken into account and how Gearbox thinks of the player and works to make the game enjoyable. He's gotten to sit in on a lot of important design and project meetings. He was also present for one of our tetris matches with Randy at game-time, a part of most days where Gearbox employees take an hour to spend time playing games with each other.
Well, we'll have Ray write us another report very soon - I know his unique experience will be interesting to anyone who has ever wondered what it's like at the head of a game company! Keep checking in, and don't forget his Q&A thread on our forums!
