BioWare Blog: The Long Road to BioWare, Part Four

BioWare’s Dave Feltham wraps up his blog series with more discussion about his responsibilities as Mass Effect 2 senior designer.

As a Senior Designer, I am the Senior Level Designer in my group of Level Designers: I am the first line of defense and critique by being the first person who approves, disapproves, gives advice and direction on all levels our dog pile is responsible for. My day to day is the same work as the other Level Designers: I am responsible for 2 levels and, if need be, to jump in and help on any other level our dogpile is responsible for (this usually happens when someone is sick, over tasked or on vacation). And while the level designers in my dog pile report to me, and I am the person who gives their first stamp of approval, I report to Dusty Everman, the Level Design Lead for Mass Effect 2, who gives me my stamps and stars. It’s a great set-up: I get to learn new technical things about Unreal from the others in my group, and they get to learn more broad game design goals and tricks from me and my years doing this. The level approval process can advance without having to over task Dusty’s time, and while Dusty and I might not agree about everything (like any good couple, we compliment our personal preferences instead of duplicating them) he can rest assured that for each dogpile, he has someone keeping an eye on things.

It’s a complicated and in-depth process, made even more complicated by the fact that our industry is lacking in standards: new employees have to be re-trained with BioWare’s work flows. But when everything comes together. when the level art is finished, Cinematics have put in their cut scenes, cinematic design has all the conversations been acted and the combat is fully balanced and you watch someone else play the level (especially the Lead Designer) and they put the controller down (ie they didn’t throw it) and they give you a sly smile and say (Man. that was AWEsome.) That’s the shit, right there.