Chris Cole | Senior Technical Artist @ Amazon Game Studios | Ep 37 - Out of Play Area

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
John (00:01):
What's good dabs, John Diaz here.
Some a break is here.
I hope everyone is taking time.
Resetting getting back to center.
Taking your bullets outside safely.
Getting vitamin D getting into the water.
Whatever it is man, but gettingaway from these screens.
I got to be mindful for my downon the listeners and repeat this

(00:21):
message when it's our winterand be mindful of their summer.
Big shout out to the home team andepic for being the first studio
that I worked for that has builtin two week long company shutdowns.
When during the summerand one during the winter.
More and more.
I see people who don't take timeoff and this way it forces everyone
to disconnect at the same time andnot experience that full mall or

(00:43):
mountain of mails and slack messages.
When you get back to work.
That and, you know, the fact that we workon a live game that never ends as well
as the technology, that's always running.
You know, really helps.
And, uh, for me, it lined up perfectlyfor this major milestone in my life.
To those that follow me onTwitter or the show on Twitter.

(01:03):
You will know that.
I am a dad.
First time, my baby boy, he was born thispast Monday, July the 18th, where this
episode should have originally aired.
Uh, I decided to keep myboy's birthday special and the
latest episode by one week.
So here it is.
One week later than promised itwas a damn hard to make the time.

(01:26):
But nevertheless, here it is.
Sleep deprivation is a new thing for me.
you know, operating onlike two, three hours of.
Of sleep is, is definitely something.
Some I'm not even sure about.
And I even wonder how I canmaintain my physical regimen,
like re you know, working out.
Uh, I feel like I'm more injuryprone or sleep deprivation.

(01:47):
So any tips, let me know.
Additionally with anytips on being a father.
Let me know I got my stroller bassinetcar seat, onesies backpack carrier.
Any of the recommendations on must usediapers, formulas, anything like that?
Let me have him as a first time parent.
I welcome all the inside.
I can get.
And so with that, Let's get it.

(02:10):
On episode 37 of the game devs podcast.
I sit down with an oldmidway buddy, Chris Cole.
Who is a senior technical artists over atAmazon game studios, working on new world.
Prior to that, he's worked atSylvia's on puzzle, bobble, VR,
and world of Warcraft at blizzard.
And before that, he was at firstplayable, but I carry his visions and
of course shipped Blackside every 51back at the old midway Austin studios.

(02:36):
We explore how neurodivergence can be asuperpower, how he approaches managing
and leading the pros of pay transparency.
What a pipeline tech artistdoes and what it means to be a
disruptive thinker and how we canalways benefit from more of them.
This conversation was previouslyrecorded on may the 18th.
Please welcome by way of Texascoming to us from Vancouver,

(02:58):
Washington in the Pacific Northwest.
Chris.
Cool.
Let's fall the fuck out.

Catherine (03:08):
bienvenido Bienvenue Welcome to the out of play area podcast, a
show by video game devs for game devs,where the guests open up one-on-one
about their journey, their experiences,their views, and their ideas.
No ads, no bullshit.
Join us as we venture far outof the play area with your host
seasoned game designer, John Diaz

Chris C. (03:31):
I haven't found this outside of Washington.
I saw it in the fricking Fred Myersdown here and I was like, yeah,
that's a good, I just got a new joband I'm doing a podcast bourbon.

John (03:40):
that's what I like to hear, Chris.
That is what we are about here.
We are about drinking, somedrink, talking stories,
celebrating life and achievements.
And it is pretty cool because when wefirst spoke, you were doing your tech, art
thing over at SEVIS, their VR first shop.
are you still at Sevi?
So you gave your, your notice.

Chris C. (04:01):
that's a story.

John (04:05):
tell me friend tell

Chris C. (04:06):
so I was also interviewing at striking distance

John (04:09):
Which one's striking distance

Chris C. (04:10):
they're working on
Calypso protocol.

John (04:12):
is that, the old dead space people.

Chris C. (04:14):
Yeah, that's a dead space
people.

John (04:15):
Like nearby, right?
Like Oregon.

Chris C. (04:17):
No, I don't actually know it was gonna be remote.
So I kind of, at acertain point, I kind of
stopped

John (04:21):
all the same.

Chris C. (04:22):
I was like, as long as I got insurance and remote
work, in a cool project.
I'm good to go.
Cause

John (04:27):
And on unreal, maybe

Chris C. (04:29):
yeah, eclipse protocol was unreal.
so while I was at SEVIS, thatproject was not going well
at all.

John (04:35):
Yeah,

Chris C. (04:36):
And I I've been telling them like things they need to
do for like a year beforehand.
And I'm like, here's thepeople we need to hire.
If we're gonna make what you wannamake by the date, you're gonna make it.
And I'm like, Hey, at the salarieswe're paying, I'm not gonna be
able to hire people and keptnot being able to hire people.

John (04:52):
you had the head count.
You just weren't able to makelike competitive offers for the
talent

Chris C. (04:57):
yeah, it was things like, I'm like, Hey, we don't have a rigging system
and I need to hire a rigging developer.
And they're like, well,we can't afford one.
So what if we just hire a mid-level rigor?
I'm like, well, what's he gonna rig inand they sort of gave me a couple pay
bumps, I think, to sort of keep me around.
And then I asked if my employeeshad gotten a pay bump and none
my employees told me they had.

John (05:17):
These are your reports.

Chris C. (05:19):
yeah, I had six direct reports.
I think one of the people with the mostreports at the studio at that point

John (05:24):
Six huh?
Six is a manageable number, comparatively.

Chris C. (05:27):
More than that is problematic.
If you're gonna be doinga good job as a manager,

John (05:31):
For sure.
For sure.
I think that's the limit.

Chris C. (05:33):
that is the limit, you know, and as a, as a brand new manager

John (05:37):
oh God.
As a brand manager.
you figure, you know, if you're gonnado at best weekly, one-on-ones you
know where everybody gets their day.

Chris C. (05:44):
to biweekly, one on ones

John (05:46):
That's still, that's still good.
Nice

Chris C. (05:48):
it was hard to fit into the calendar.
And then I said, Hey, if youneed something, I'm trying
to leave room in my calendar.
So impromptu one-on-ones orconversations can happen as needed.
and then one-on-ones with the otherleads and art leads man, I was
having 30 hours of meetings a week.
Sometimes or rather to say, I would havemaybe three unscheduled hours a week.
I could do stuff maybe.

(06:09):
And I was still our primarypipeline tech artist as the lead to,

John (06:13):
So meaning that you had significant hands on
contributions, you were responsible

Chris C. (06:17):
significant IC work to do.
Yeah.
it was fucking gnarly.

John (06:21):
Se as small as I understand it.

Chris C. (06:23):
Yeah.
They're like, you know, around a hundredish people on the team that was on.

John (06:27):
All right.
That's fair size.
That's medium shop size.
You
could build the whole project.

Chris C. (06:31):
The studio was in that transition from like startup.
To wanting to become a bigger studio.
And I was like, Hey, yeah, Ican help and assist in that.
And,

John (06:38):
Yeah, man, they brought on a good person for that.
That's what brought you

Chris C. (06:42):
they hired me, but then they didn't wanna like, listen to me
or trust me, that's the tough part.
Right?
And there were a bunch of otherleads that felt the same way.
there was some, communication breakdownwith the director to sea level employees.
And so I'm sitting there dealingwith all this frustration and shit,
and I'm like, Hey, trying to talkabout comp and long term strategy.
And Hey, our production schedule,isn't gonna make any sense.
Like we're not gonna hit our goals.

(07:03):
We're not gonna hit our milestones.
Things were just not going well.
They're not communicating well, theyextended our timeline, but like, I was
our tools team lead and the tech artdiscipline lead and the rigging lead,
I was doing like three lead jobs whilealso writing code and managing per force.
So bunch other shit.
And nobody asked me a single questionabout like how much time do your
teams need to be able to like hitthe work they've committed to.

(07:25):
I

John (07:25):
you figure that you are the point of contact for
scheduling for your entire team?
Right?
So you expect some produceror some director to hit you

Chris C. (07:34):
was working with a producer and nobody asked my producer either.
I was like, okay.
So, my team is making thelevel design tool set.
The tool set level design andenvironment are, are going to use
to build out all of our levels.
And nobody asked me how longmy team needs to be able to
deliver that for our milestone.
They're like, ah, well, we'll justnot include that in a milestone.
We'll just not includethat in our vertical slice.

(07:55):
We won't test out our pipeline thatwe're gonna use to build all of
the levels during vertical slice

John (08:00):
does not make any sense.
Chris Cole, you and I have been makinggames for over almost damn near 20 years

Chris C. (08:06):
and they made that decision without talking to me the lead
of the team, building the tools.
And it was like this had been happening.
And I was like, it was a whole thing.
Like our tech director left.
And he was the one that was overseeingthe people building that tool set.
And I'm like, well, nobody elseis gonna take up this mantle.
So I'm like, all right,I'll take up the mantle.
And I'll form a cross discipline tools,team of tech, art, tech design, and you

(08:26):
know, tools, engineers, all right, whatare we delivering for vertical slice?
Where are we going?
What are people gonna depend on?
All right.
Let's figure out what we can deliver,what we can promise, figure out a
strategy and a plan for hitting ourinternal milestones and drive towards
That nobody had been doing that.
Got a backlog built, got our fuckingbug list, built, prioritized, got

(08:46):
people working on delivering andfixing high priority bugs to deliver
features for peop for a level designand art to finally start using.
And it was those kind of things werelike, they used it for two days and
they're like, yeah, we can't use this.
we don't have all of the Lego pieces.
It wasn't even that the tool didn't work.
It's that environment art hadn't builtthe pieces for it to put together.

John (09:06):
Yeah.

Chris C. (09:06):
Right.
They're like, oh,

John (09:07):
So it sounded like you were ahead of the curve there.
Like you had the tools
ready, but you didn't have
the

Chris C. (09:12):
I was rapidly trying to catch back up to the curve cuz
you know, tools people have todeliver before everybody else.
They had been planning on like the toolshitting an alpha state at the same time
that the levels are gonna hit alpha state.
And I'm like, you can't do that yourtools, need to be a milestone ahead

John (09:29):
yeah.
And the
best in the best scenarios.

Chris C. (09:33):
I'm like, well we can do this.
It's like, all right.
But it's like, we weren'tgetting any support.
And they're like, all right, well we'lljust, have them continue to work on it.
But without environment art supportand without level design support and
without bandwidth for those people touse it, test it or give feedback on it.
And we're talking about a gamewith a, at this point now has
one year left to hit ship date.
Right?

John (09:52):
So they should be in beta stage.

Chris C. (09:54):
they were planning a year and a half for full production.
Like for, pre-production vertical slice.
We're looking at like Six monthsof production and then six months
of combined alpha plus beta.
And then,
and then, and then fucking lady sentme a message from Amazon that was
like, Hey, here's these ridiculousfucking salaries for a rigor.

(10:14):
I'm like, I'm not a Rigg.
I manage Riggs.
well, there's like, you know,long ago, I'm not really a
rigor, but I've played one on TV.
you know, I've done it under certaincircumstances, you know, I've done a
little rigging, rigged characters, I've
rigged physics hierarchy, but like,that's not what you want me doing.

(10:36):
You know what I
mean?

John (10:36):
Yeah.
it's not the best.
You see your
superpowers.

Chris C. (10:39):
of time, like John, you can prob you can go place boxes.
done that before,

John (10:44):
Is that how low level rigging is
in the stack of TA

Chris C. (10:47):
no
to make a good analogy.

John (10:53):
design analogy, come

Chris C. (10:55):
Uh, and so I'm like, well, I'll have a conversation.
And then it went well.
And I interviewed with this at the SanDiego studio that started up with med lead

John (11:03):
Yeah,

Chris C. (11:04):
and then lead tech artist for new world was in that
interview, helping a tech artist fromthat team screen, cuz they didn't
have a lot of people down there.
And then he poached me for new world.

John (11:15):
So he interviewed you as a tech, art voice being like, okay, I
know the thing I'm I'm gonna drillhim on tech art for this team.
And then like, oh shit, we needhim on new world, up there in, uh,

Chris C. (11:25):
They're
in Irvine.

John (11:26):
Okay.
Okay.
Irvine.
Yeah.
That's like the main hub.
they're like the old, um,helix studio, I think.

Chris C. (11:32):
apparently there's a unreal projects starting up there
and like my preference was theSmedley team they're gonna be using.
They're using unreal.
I think they're using unreal five.
I'm like, oh man, I'm excited about that.
And I was like, wasn't superexcited about lumber yard, but you
know, but, told that, there's some coolstuff over there that they actually
invest in their people over there.
And my wife was like, thestability of Amazon is nice.

John (11:54):
So are you about to tell me you took a Amazon job

Chris C. (11:56):
yeah,

John (11:56):
accepted sign sealed and delivered, had

Chris C. (11:59):
it better be like, they got a laptop that's coming tomorrow.

John (12:04):
a schedule.
Okay.
Ahead of schedule.
How'd you like the interview process atAmazon compared to other game studios?
Right?
Cause Amazon's not really a gamestudio, at least how they interview

Chris C. (12:14):
They have this very like rigid format

John (12:16):
mm-hmm
scripted,
like
know
the leadership
principles.

Chris C. (12:19):
it's alright.
And you know, it was one of thosethings of like, I sat down and
was like trying to, I did I overprepared for it a little bit.

John (12:25):
That's not a bad thing.

Chris C. (12:27):
to end up doing a one hour portfolio review.
I'm like, man,
I'm a pipeline guy.
I did a nine to fiveinterview on my birthday.
That's how much I cared about the,the schedule over at Seus was I'd
already scheduled to take my birthdayoff and Amazon wanted do an interview.
So I was like, I'd strongly preferto do it on Monday, April 18th.
Cause I already have that day off tonot impact the schedule at Seus anymore.

John (12:47):
that was already tight.

Chris C. (12:48):
did that then the next week it was just like
work went to hell, even worse

John (12:53):
Mm-hmm

Chris C. (12:53):
like, and then striking, this has contacted me and I was like,
guys, you're gonna have to be fast.
I just had my final interviewwith Amazon and it went well.
So they got me in a, a callwith their tech card director on
Friday and he really liked me.
He is like, all right.
I'm like, dude, if you wanna move onthis, you're probably gonna have to get
a full panel interview Monday or Tuesday.
And they did, they got me one on Tuesday.
And so on Monday we got some more bad newsin the leadership meeting in the morning.

(13:14):
And I was just, they're like, yeah,we're not gonna use the tool for
a vertical slice, but we're stillgonna somehow keep working on it.
I was just sitting there likethis, like with the look on
my face of like, I'm gonna behanding in my resignation at noon.
So I'm not gonna make a bigstink about this right now.

John (13:28):
how does that feel, Chris?
Cause I know, for me, is likebittersweet there's a slight level
of like, I don't give a fuck, but I
have
been given a fuck butyou know, you're like
out the door.

Chris C. (13:36):
there's level of catharsis.
It was one of those things that like,I, I was gonna get the offer letter
and then like that Monday morningmeeting made me go I'm making the
right decision, I think to move on.

John (13:48):
that's gotta feel good.

Chris C. (13:49):
when I quit blizzard, I handed in my resignation after we had a big
all hands art meeting about like fairwages and salary fucking pay at blizzard.
And I, like, I dropped somespicy comments in there.

John (14:02):
You
good unfiltered.

Chris C. (14:04):
I let 'em know that I have an offer from a company and I'm doing a
final interview with the company tomorrow.
I'm gonna be moving on, let'sfigure out a proper exit strategy.
Right?
Cause I'm a lead.
I got six direct reports.
I got a lot of projects thatI'm working on that nobody else
knows how to do the stuff on.
We've got a new tech, artdirector starting next week.
So I should probably onboard him.
So I was thinking mentally like

John (14:24):
Mm-hmm that's fair.
Nice, man.
That's really, really responsible.

Chris C. (14:28):
I was like this week I'll I'll do a bunch of documentation.
I'll do two weeks onboardingfor the new tech card director.
And then you guys are gonnagimme two weeks paid time off

John (14:37):
yeah.

Chris C. (14:37):
and then I'll start my new job,

John (14:40):
do they do the whole like, infinite PTO

Chris C. (14:42):
yeah.
instead what happened was is they,they were saying nice things to my
face and the little chat cause Imessaged the small group of people.
I'm like, and the CPO just went to over toit and said shut off all of his accounts.

John (14:52):
that day, that moment.

Chris C. (14:54):
I was literally having a video conversation with our HR
director, with my VPN cut out.
And my video dropped from the call andI couldn't have rejoin the phone call,
the video call, cuz it said your Googleaccount password changed an hour ago.
And I was like, well that's interesting.
and they were like, yeah, yourhealth insurance ends tomorrow night.
I was like, huh, well that's nice.

John (15:16):
about taking it hard.
Is that normal?
Is that common?
Had you heard of other peoplegoing through that at the

Chris C. (15:21):
the only person I've talked to who got, let go that I know of it
was kind of a rapid thing for him.
And they were like, he was told like, youknow, you and SEVIS aren't compatible, but
I don't know what the onboarding processwas, but then they, you know, they're
like, all right, we'll give you two weekspay, but you gotta send your equipment
back for us to give you that pay.
And then you can't say anythingbad to anybody and like, okay.

(15:44):
Find some shit.
And then, but it was one.
And then they sent me a thing,like, then they realized how
much crap I was doing at work.
They're like, oh, Hey, can youlike, give us some detail about
the things you're working on?
I'm like, yeah, if youpay my contractor rate,

John (15:58):
Oh yeah.

Chris C. (15:59):
I'm like, I was gonna stay on.
I'm like, but now you gotta pay mycontractor rate and that's gonna
be based on my new Amazon salary.
And my contractor rate is doublewhat my, my hourly rate at whatever
my work is, cuz my free time rate.
It's.

John (16:11):
that's a pretty good rule of thumb as well.
For a lot of people that don't know.
Right?
Like I've made the mistake.
I've been like, oh yeah,what am I gonna charge for?
Like contractor hourly, basing itoff what my full-time salary is.
And that's, a big mistake.
Right?
Cause you gotta factor in,you gotta pay your benefits.
You gotta pay

Chris C. (16:27):
There's benefit.
There's benefits, all that other stuff.
And so what I do is like, Hey, if Iwas gonna be working on the weekend at
work, what would I be wanting to pay me?
I'd be

John (16:36):
Yeah.

Chris C. (16:37):
time.

John (16:38):
Yeah.

Chris C. (16:38):
So you get to pay my weekend rate.
now that's like two hoursomething a little over

John (16:44):
so what did they say?
What did they, what did they agree to?

Chris C. (16:47):
didn't respond.

John (16:49):
Fair.

Chris C. (16:50):
I was like,

John (16:51):
valuable it was to

Chris C. (16:52):
literally what I was trying to do was to off board
this exact content responsibly

John (16:57):
at your current salary.

Chris C. (16:59):
at my, what was going to be cheaper to use salary over
the next five weeks, you know?
And they didn't respond back.
So I was like, okay.

John (17:07):
that's a easy breakup.

Chris C. (17:08):
a couple of my direct reports are gonna be quitting

John (17:10):
Oh, because you're leaving.

Chris C. (17:12):
yeah, cuz they were there for me.
Basically.

John (17:15):
Did you bring him aboard

Chris C. (17:17):
I hired five tech artists in under a year in the current marketplace
at low salary wages.

John (17:23):
like a bunch from blizzard or ones that you had worked

Chris C. (17:25):
I brought one from blizzard.
Well he had left blizzard andthen I poached him and then I
brought in some other peopleand I did a shit ton of hiring.
And so many screening calls and I hadto like run around and convince people
that certain jobs were needed and stuff,

John (17:40):
I wanna ask man, cuz I always found tech artists to be an
extremely rare resource and alwayswell worth their weight and goal.
If they're good and experienced,they've been around a while but I,
don't roll in the same circles you roll.
I feel like they're hard to come by,
and here you are pickingup like five in a year.

Chris C. (17:56):
Dude, I'm literally hiring you.
and the thing is, is I creategood job descriptions that
I know tech artists want.
I didn't just make HR.
I need to hire some senior tech artists.
I'm like, no, no, I need a senioranimation technical artist.
That's going to be doing blueprint,animation graph you know, animation,
state machines, logic in game IK.

(18:17):
That's what they're doing.
And I got that guy.
Right.
And I'm like, I wanna do, I wanna hirea Houdini, procedural environment,
pipeline, technical artist.
Who's gonna be making Houdini andblueprint tools for environment artists
and mobile designers who in engine.
And that's
all he is gonna be doing.
And he's gonna be a fucking rockstar.
And I found that guy and itwas one of those things like
that guy was working in Brazil.

(18:38):
his dad was getting sick andlike his current company,
wasn't gonna let him work.
he's like, is it okayif I work from Brazil?
I'm like, yeah, he is like,is it okay if on Wednesdays.
I leave work at like three orfour Pacific time, cuz I'm gonna
have like evening church group.
I'm like, dude.
I know there's like three of those guysI'm gonna complain about Wednesday evening
as he leaves a little before core hours.
Like,

John (18:57):
so it sounds like the trick is you gotta be very specific and
know exactly what you want whenyou're putting that job description
together and, and sending it out there
and
here and

Chris C. (19:05):
crucially be able to pay because they're in high competition right now.

John (19:09):
yeah.
For TAs NTDs, for
sure.
, I was really excited when you hitme up that you wanted to come on,
you wanted to do the interview.
You wanted to come on the podcast andwhat specifically you wanted to offer.
And, and you came to me with atopic on disruptive thinking and
I'm curious to see wherethis is gonna go, right?
And on top of the fact that youwould think, however long games have

(19:31):
been in development, however manyconsole generations we've gone through
tools, keep evolving expertise, keeps
changing
keep
growing.

Chris C. (19:39):
Well,
it's like literally my job description,I'm a pipeline technical artist.
It's like, I am aprofessional boat rocker.
Right?
Like you're literally hiring me toimprove the way you're doing things.

John (19:52):
Uh huh.

Chris C. (19:53):
Right.
you want me to help make things better
and

John (19:56):
I would compare it to kind of hiring a master burglar to come test
out my security system or something.
Mm-hmm

Chris C. (20:04):
kind of like that.
It's kind of similar to like a white hathacker, but you have to have somebody
that's in the mindset of thinking outsidethe box, coloring outside the lines.
Right.
Because you know, you'regonna pay me a lot of money.
You don't wanna pay me a lot ofmoney to color inside the lines.
Right.
Other people to color inside the lines.
You, you hire me toredefine what the lines are.
You know what I mean?

John (20:24):
I like that.
I like that analogy a lot.
it helps too, because of your experienceand your exposure to a bunch of
different, creative suites, softwareapplications, programming languages,

Chris C. (20:35):
engines,
pipelines

John (20:37):
engines, Yeah.
Let's not tell engines that you canlike borrow a little bit from everywhere
and then also plug in the gaps thatyou've seen repeated over the years.

Chris C. (20:47):
my dad's a philosopher.
and he taught me to question everythingfrom a young age, which, at some
places he mildly regretted that

John (20:57):
can you imagine, like, to ask a kid, you know, I got, I
got a, I got a little one on theway I think that's what you want.
Right?
You want a curious inquisitive mind, butI can also see someone running low on
patients one day and be like, asking damn

Chris C. (21:12):
yeah, I remember being, there were a couple times, I think
we were out in the, we were inthe backyard, they were trying to
like, they had a car or a trailer.
They were trying to likelift it up to do a thing.
And I was like, you guys could do this alot easier if you just did this or that.
and they all got angry at mecuz I'm like 12 or whatever.
And they're like, there's noway this 12 year old's gonna
have a better idea than us.
Couple different, you know,30, 40 year olds or whatever.

(21:34):
they're like just shut up and go away.
And I'm like,

John (21:36):
that's kind of what SEVIS did,
huh?

Chris C. (21:38):
I'm like,
I'm
40 trying to
save your old 40 year old banks man.
Like , you
know?
And
uh,

John (21:46):
leverage

Chris C. (21:47):
so I've kinda always been like that a little bit where it's like,
there's an established way of doingthings and I'm like, well, here's a way
we could do things that's maybe better.
I kind of look at thingsfrom a different angle.

John (21:56):
yeah, I think those skills have served you.
Well, I think they, they couldapply to many different roles and
applications, but bringing them intotechnology, bringing them into the wild
west that is video game development.
I can see how that served
you.
Well,

Chris C. (22:10):
so I got into blacksmith and I'm a certified blacksmith.

John (22:12):
That
means like you're you're like weldingweapons and playing with metal and stuff.

Chris C. (22:16):
traditional hand forging,

John (22:18):
Look at that.
What do you call that?
Like a Cleaver
or like a, a broad sword.

Chris C. (22:23):
I call this a or

John (22:25):
that looks like some shit you got at blizzard.

Chris C. (22:27):
Well, so the thing is, is I was the only blacksmith at blizzard.
So when I hit my five years, I forgedmy own five year sword as well.

John (22:34):
Oh, yo.
Can I say that?
I love the fact that the handlekind of gives you this, this
kind of brass knuckle thing.
And then the tip on the other end hasdefinitely got like a twofold, like
wrench kind of thing, but also you can
kind of stab someone

Chris C. (22:49):
you recognize it?

John (22:50):
I don't.

Chris C. (22:51):
It's the horde symbol for the orgs and Warcraft and in the
handle, I've got tooled Loar, whichmeans victory or death in, or, and so
you can see the symbol there as well.
Sort of

John (23:01):
yeah.
That is fine.
Craftmanship friend.
I don't want to downplay the factthat an artist in real world.
And a 3d artist, right?
Like, I don't want to assumethat that's easy just cuz you
got mastered in one medium.
You, you automatically are goodat it in the other mediums.

Chris C. (23:16):
got a whole, I got a whole sort of 3d to real world, like business
strategy planned up for a side business.
I'll talk, talk about later.
But,
and actually when I was making thisflipping hammer right here, right?
So at the Guild, there's allof these, old timers, right?
There's these old blacksmiths,

John (23:30):
When you say the Guild.

Chris C. (23:31):
the blacksmith Guild I was in, in orange county down there.

John (23:34):
Okay.
Hmm.

Chris C. (23:35):
and so there's this old guy, he's a character, right?
he's one of those, well, thisis the way you do things.
And I did a bunch of research.
I watched a lot of YouTube videos.
One of the things I love to do is I liketo watch every video about somebody who
makes the thing and try and pull allthe parts and sort of make sense of it
for myself and then make my own gooddecisions without that information base.
Right?

(23:55):
you know, Ize videos.
I think I wanna do a hourglass shavedhammer eye, and some other stuff.
And I wanna have a roundingface and a flattening face.
And cause I made my, I still like maybethe only blacksmith who was there,
who made his own, I made two hammersnow, but, um, I've been at Smith in
a while, but I was sitting there andI was drawing it out on the anvil.
And the old guy was arguing with me.
He was like, oh, wellthat's not how you do it.

(24:16):
You gotta blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I was like, well, this seemslike this is gonna work really well.
And he was like, well, the person youneed you to talk to is Brent Bailey.
He's the man to talk to abouthammer smithing and you don't
know what you're talking about.
And so that guy ended up holdinga hammer smithing class at
this event called Waynes world.
And I went and that old guy went withme and he was sitting there and he drew
the exact fucking thing on the, on thechalkboard that I drew on the Amal.

(24:40):
He's like, you want an hourglass thing?
That way?
Wed was just like kinda, I looked over it.
The old guy was kind of likethat's right, motherfucker.
So, this is the way we've always done.
Things has, uh, never been a goodreason for me to do anything that way.

John (24:57):
word up, man, word up that is a too easily accessible cop
out for an explanation for whyyou're making a decision, right?
Like I I'm with you, especially in 2022,

Chris C. (25:16):
that was one of my things, as I was sitting there, like at blizzard,
I was like, man, you guys need to, uh,we need to do remote work cuz it works.
you know, I'm not gonna be able toafford to retire or send my kid to
school with the, the salaries we'repaying and the cost of living in the area

John (25:29):
That was Irvine, right?

Chris C. (25:31):
I was in Irvine.
Yeah, man.
Low income line was $90,000.

John (25:34):
Yeah.
Damn bro.
If you gave me 90,000 in Austin,Texas, when we started out,

Chris C. (25:39):
Dude,

John (25:39):
would've been living like a king

Chris C. (25:42):
both rolled around.
Like

John (25:50):
crib with a,

Chris C. (25:51):
I
know, I started at midwayat $12 an hour, man.

John (25:56):
you were a contract at
midway,

Chris C. (25:57):
I got hired as an intern at midway.

John (25:59):
fresh, out of the Guild hole.

Chris C. (26:01):
Actually, no.
So what happened was I, I got outtathe Gill hall and then I went to apple.
I worked at apple for two weeks.
So I went to apple.
I was in there two weeks paid trainingprogram for doing direct dispatch work.
I was actually working at, ifyou maybe, if you'll know this
name I was working for, I thinkit was volt, temporary employees,

John (26:20):
Oh, are they like a, a, what do you call those

Chris C. (26:22):
kinda like
manpower.

John (26:23):
temp

Chris C. (26:25):
Yeah.
It's like a temp agency.
So I was working throughvolt for apple student.
Apple did have the bestfucking breakfast bar anywhere.
I will say that they had, they hada pay by the pound breakfast thing.
Didn't matter what you got, you putit on the tray, you pay by the pound.
I go in there, I get like eggsof bacon piled, like this high
with sausages and orange juice.

(26:45):
And it'd be like, that'llbe like $2 and 26 cents

John (26:48):
That sounds so fucking Texas.
I love it.
A hard

Chris C. (26:51):
and I interviewed at midway, and I actually went up
to the Gil while I was at apple.
They were doing a, a job fair at Gil hall.
And I went up there and And so I, youknow, I saw the posting at midway.
I went over, I thought I was thereinterviewing for a full artist position.
I was like, I have my portfolio already.
I'll printed out with thepages with the, with the.

John (27:09):
Not a digital portfolio.

Chris C. (27:10):
I had my button up shirt with my tie, cuz I didn't know, you
didn't do that in the game industry.
You know what I mean?

John (27:16):
This is what like 2006, 2007.

Chris C. (27:19):
Yeah.
and uh, they're like, well, uh, you know,
this position's for, uh,an intern position, right.
You're like, I was like, okay.
And then they calledme up and they offered.
They're like, we're gonna offeryou the job it's for $11 an hour.

John (27:32):
Do you remember who you interviewed with?

Chris C. (27:33):
oh man, I think it would've been Sergio.

John (27:36):
Yeah.
Yo, I think he's got like his own little
CG bot outsourcing house.
Fucking

Chris C. (27:40):
got a funny story about that too, about him leaving.
they called me up and they're like,we're gonna offer you a position
for 11 bucks an hour as an intern.
I'm like, I'll tell, I said,Apple's paying me $11 an hour.
Now.
They're like, okay, we'll do 12.
So I was the highest paidintern at like 12 bucks an
hour.

John (27:53):
Yeah.
I think, I think you were makingwhat I was making too, man.
I was full time salary, but

Chris C. (27:57):
Did I argue some big, some big jobs for myself while I was there?

John (28:01):
doing a, doing a lot of nobody else was even thinking
about though, from, from the,

Chris C. (28:06):
my official job description was to search Google
images for reference work.
That's what I wasofficially hired for there.

John (28:12):
what is that even called?
Like that

Chris C. (28:14):
It.
Like making ref packs, right?
you're like, oh, we're gonnamake a fucking propane tank.
And then you go get a bunchof pictures of propane tank.
You do some material call outs, andthen they were gonna have me start.
I started making some proxy models.
They send the proxy model that wasscaled correctly with the ref pack
to outsourcing and they BR and theywould fully make it and send it back.

(28:34):
Problem was, is I was really, really fast.
And my proxy models werereally, really good.
So outsources were just texturing my proxymodels you remember Gary Bergeron me?
He

John (28:44):
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
Gary B

Chris C. (28:47):
like Chris, you gotta do a worse job on these proxy models.
I'm like, I don't knowhow to do a worse job.
Like I'm
already making these like threetimes faster than the other guys are.

John (28:56):
He, he wanted you to

Chris C. (28:57):
I was like, I'm not
not even UV them.
He, he didn't want me doing faster.
He just wanted me to do a worse job.
So they wouldn't just texturehim and send them back.
Right.
And so I ended up doing a bunchof package cleanup, and then I
started basically owning all of thedestructive environments for black site,

John (29:12):
Mm-hmm had, what was it called, man?
Like damnit man, themidway breakables right.
That was a big deal.

Chris C. (29:17):
the stuff they were doing on stranglehold.
We
had like, 0.5 of their tech.
well, yeah, like literally, likewe didn't have things like hinges.
Right for our physics setup,like, like I had no hinges.
I had no, a whole bunch ofconstraint types I didn't have.
And there was some

John (29:31):
Cause

Chris C. (29:31):
obligation types.
I didn't have,
they,

John (29:32):
remind me, on real three had some proprietary physics

Chris C. (29:37):
they brought it in right after we shipped black site.

John (29:40):
And
then midway, I was using havoc

Chris C. (29:43):
I did a side by side comparison of the apex.
I think it, that may have been the, Idon't know if that was the introduction
of the apex destruction tool set,which is now deprecated I actually
did a side by side comparison andevaluation of the midway breakable
tech versus whatever it was.
I don't know if it was apex, but it was,there was some in engine breakable system.

John (30:01):
mm-hmm

Chris C. (30:02):
but that got introduced after,
I was evaluating it for criminal.
Right.
and I was like teaching the senior, butI, I learned the breakable pipeline.
I learned how it worked.
I did the physics setup, put a structural,other stuff, worked with Brian.
ER, Brian irk was actuallydoing me attached.
I would make the full breakableand then I would hand it off to him
and he would add the effects to it.

(30:23):
and then I don't, if youremember, Chris led with

John (30:25):
Of course, man.
He was like, he was likeour best physics programmer.

Chris C. (30:28):
program and uh, I've always ended up working with
physics programing everywhere I go.

John (30:32):
Uh,

Chris C. (30:33):
like my bro.

John (30:34):
a good TA with a
good physics programmer and a goodeffects artist and watch the magic happen.

Chris C. (30:39):
And so I, we changed our physics engine halfway through Blackside.
I dunno if you remember that
I think we, we shiftedto physics from bullet

John (30:47):
oh my gosh.
Yo, as soon as you say bullet,that thing brings me back
some crazy nostalgia moments.

Chris C. (30:53):
I remember sitting down and jam
with him on that.
And so I was, I was teaching, Iwas teaching like seniors and other
people how to use the system and thenlike, it was kind of too complex.
So I was kinda the only guy,my, proudest moment on Blackside
though, was the fucking shootingout the tires in the vehicles,

John (31:08):
Yeah.
Yeah.

Chris C. (31:09):
Chicago, who had the full version of the breakable tech who
had the in-house people workingon, it could not make that work.

John (31:17):
Chicago's now another rooms.

Chris C. (31:18):
Yeah.

John (31:19):
sure.
Yeah.

Chris C. (31:20):
And so I made that work with half the tech and no support for them
just on my own with like ingenuity,doing some fucking black magic,
like swappable collision objects.
I got flattening tires, which theysaid, like, we literally had an email
with, they said it's not possible.
they were like, all right,well, we might be able to get a
programmer to work with you to make.
So I'm like, I think I can probably figureit out, gimme like a week or something.

(31:41):
And I, like, I got itworking and they were like,

John (31:45):
A week.
What do you remember what it entailed?

Chris C. (31:48):
No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It wasn't

John (31:49):
and error?

Chris C. (31:50):
that crazy.
What I ended up doing was I endedup making it so that when you'd
shoot it swapped to a fragment.
So I made a fragment that was analready shot sort of collapsed
tire with a modified collision.
And the whole vehicle actually sat on thetire' collisions and I made a collision
cage out of multiple primitives so thatwhen you shot the tire out, it swapped.

(32:11):
And so the vehicle andthe tire would drop down.
Right.
And then you'd be like pop, pop, and,

John (32:16):
okay.
So it would kind of have that like

Chris C. (32:18):
and
like,

John (32:19):
effect.

Chris C. (32:20):
well, and, and so what happened is, is, I mean, you just
kind of work pretty naturally andyou could hop in the back of it.
And then, you know, if you'd shot oneout and it just like worked and they
were like, all right, we're gonnacome with this crazy system where
like, it's gonna know which tire youshot out and it's gonna have like a
collision platform that's gonna swapin that will represent the shape.
I'm like, no, just and I made it work.
And then there was like onetime in like 10,000 or whatever

(32:43):
a tire would go a little apeshit and fly out in outer space.

John (32:45):
Oh yeah.
Those
physics

Chris C. (32:48):
it was one of those things.
Like I blew up those vehicles,hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of times

John (32:52):
bugs.
This is the
hard part of the job.

Chris C. (32:54):
it once and QA bugged it for me.
So I'm like, all right,That's an acceptable repro.

John (32:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'll give you that.
I guess, especially on a first,you know, a single player game.
I don't think that there wereany vehicles in the multiplayer.

Chris C. (33:08):
oh man.
I had that was one of thethings that sucked too.
So at the end of that project, I ended upworking some hundred hour, five day weeks

John (33:14):
Mm-hmm

Chris C. (33:15):
because they're like,
here's,

John (33:16):
us though.

Chris C. (33:18):
they
were like, here's the
serious, here's the 60 breakableenvironment objects we want to
get done over the next two weeks.
And I got 40 done over the next two weeks.
Midway Chicago was making like one a week
and I made 40 in two weeks.
I work 20 hours straight leave atmidnight drive home my Cooper, and

(33:38):
drive back at like four in the morning.
didn't have time to implement them all.

John (33:42):
Oh,
yo killer, man.
the good, the good thing about midwayAustin studio, They kept the power.
It was a big parking lot.
They had arcades fridge,everything was fully stocked.
How did you feel
shipping?
Blackside area 51.
Oh

Chris C. (33:55):
I was proud of it.
I was sad when we cut co-op

John (33:58):
my gosh.
Yo,

Chris C. (33:59):
I was
so sad.
I was sitting there with Matt green, likewe were a play tested co-op we're like,

John (34:03):
Yeah.
Hey

Chris C. (34:04):
we get some of these bugs figured out, this is gonna be so fun.

John (34:07):
Cause it was like halo three had shipped around that time.
Right.
And I think that we hadthem in our cross hairs.
And do you know that?
My level, top side,
second to last level
I got co-op workingcontinuously from end to end.

Chris C. (34:20):
was that level with back green man?
I was like, I was like,this is this shows.
And then we had to ship.
We had to cut six months off our,

John (34:27):
Yeah, dude, could you show six months?
months is I think three months,three months can make a break.
A project.

Chris C. (34:35):
a 70,

John (34:36):
Yeah,

Chris C. (34:37):
high eighties or 90,
if

John (34:39):
I agree.
man.
Like at least at least high eighties.

Chris C. (34:41):
that we released in the same release window as halo three

John (34:47):
Modern warfare.

Chris C. (34:48):
God warfare.
Was it, was it red,dead redemption as well?
The

John (34:51):
No, no, no, Red redemption was years later,
but, but cuz GTA four GTAfour was coming I think
soon, but it was definitely orange box.
It was rock band.
It was assassins creed, one

Chris C. (35:04):
Oh

John (35:04):
modern warfare

Chris C. (35:05):
Creek got a war halo.
There were two or threefirst person shooters too.

John (35:09):
ha three modern warfare and orange box.
Right?
Like

Chris C. (35:12):
And so,

John (35:13):
oh shock was not too far out of
in that window.
Yo,

Chris C. (35:16):
was it also, the first mass effect?
Was insane release schedule.
And then the only competition we weregonna have in our original ship date GTA.

John (35:28):
Yeah, it was basically like everybody on the heels of gears of war

Chris C. (35:33):
Yeah.

John (35:33):
unreal engine three, right?
Like it was basically everybodypumping it the next year.

Chris C. (35:38):
I bought the studio copy for years of award.
I was still a contract at thetime it came out and they hadn't
ordered one for the studio yet.
And they were talking about it.
I'm like, I'm gonna goget mine after work.
And they're like, we'llpay you to go get it.
Now, if you'll get one forus too, we'll reimburse you.
I'm like, you're gonna pay me togo drive down there and buy video
game in the middle of the day.
Hell yeah.

(35:58):
and that was right beforeI got my mini Cooper.
I was driving my dad's 86, Mr.
Two with tee tops.
And I drifted that ship all theway to, uh, the Arboretum to
the game, stop at the arboreum.
And

John (36:13):
arboreum dude.

Chris C. (36:13):
I picked up, I picked up two copies of gears of war
and I drifted all the way back.
Did like three donutsaround one of the stop.
One of the pole lights at theparking lot, cuz it was empty.
And then handed the handed the boxover to, I think it was Richie.

John (36:27):
Yeah.
Richard Romero.
Yeah.

Chris C. (36:28):
Yeah,

John (36:29):
yeah.
yeah.
Yo that that's a great gamefor anybody looking at it from
an art standpoint at the time.
Right.
For its time

Chris C. (36:35):
Oh, yeah.
Look at the way they werehandling it it was the how to
guide for making art in unreal.
three,

John (36:41):
What do they call it?
They call it a beautifuldestruction or something.

Chris C. (36:44):
it was one of those things was like, look at the
way they're hiding stuff.
The usage of detail, normal maps.
It was kind of like our, recipe for howwe were gonna make criminal basically.
we were part way through, we were gettingnear the end of black site I went and
talked to Pete Franco and I was like,dude, you guys hired me to be an intern.
And so, oh yeah.
So Sergio left and he was the personwho was managing the art interns.

(37:06):
So nobody was managing ortasking the art interns.
So I ended up, taskingthe other interns, myself.

John (37:12):
wow.
Is that just out of necessity?

Chris C. (37:15):
Yeah.
It was just, nobody was giving us work andwe were sitting around picking our noses
and I'm, I'm a guy I can't sit on my handsand I'm like, man, I don't wanna Google.
I wanna development.
This is exciting.
I wanna do some shit.
So I gave all the terrible work to them.

John (37:30):
All the good stuff.
This is why

Chris C. (37:32):
I took the work.
I thought was more interesting.
they probably wouldn't have wanted to
do it, but, um, I was fixingup the package fucking package,
uh, uh, reference chains,

John (37:41):
managers.
Oh man.

Chris C. (37:42):
unreal three had the, the package things where you load a package
and it would reference another packagethat would load that whole package.
And so that would re load the things.
And so you'd have this thing whereyou'd load one package and you
might load the whole fucking gamebecause of external references.
I went through and wasmanually fixing that.
And this was the first time I learnedabout like going to ask people for
help cuz I was sitting there andthere was some workflow I was doing.

(38:04):
I came into the workflow thatwas like the most optimal,
but it would crash unreallike 15 times a day.
It was faster.
And I,

John (38:12):
was so fragile in those

Chris C. (38:13):
and I remember, I remember in some like some like scrum meeting I was
talking about was like, Hey guys, like myunreal crashes, a bunch was like, well,
how many times did you crash in a day?
I'm like, I don't know.
So we're between 15 anda hundred times a day.
And uh, I think it wasSteve Broley was like, what?

(38:34):
this is noting for everybody.
That's like for that, hold on,

John (38:44):
Steve was

Chris C. (38:44):
Steve.

John (38:44):
man.
Steven, her Steve Broley

Chris C. (38:47):
We had a lot of Steve, Steve baker.

John (38:48):
Steve baker.
What does Steve baker do?
Oh, was he more rendering side

Chris C. (38:52):
he was, he was the guy who was like,
remember when every threw inall our characters on criminal,
turned blue on PS three

John (38:57):
Cause we ran some bullshit in the shader or

Chris C. (39:00):
bullshit and, and PS three.
And I remember working with himon that and hit with him and Aaron
ishk on the character customizationsystem for our MPCs on criminal.
we have these Atlas maps.
I was, it was funny.
I was just talking with him.
He, he commented on a post onLinkedIn, like today or yesterday.
And he said something and I waslike, man, it's been a long time.
He's like, it's, as I said, it's funny.

(39:20):
gonna be, I'm gonna be recording apodcast with another Austin night, like,
like tomorrow or tonight or whatever.

John (39:26):
speaking to Aaron, he works at now,

Chris C. (39:29):
Yeah.

John (39:29):
think he works with an old rockstar designer.

Chris C. (39:35):
I kind of reconnected with him recently.
I got him on Facebook.
We've been talking aboutLinkedIn a little bit.
man, he contacted me slightly too late.
He's like, man, we're trying to hire.
And I looked on their website,they were hiring a senior pipeline,
technical artist for unreal.
And I.
Man, it's too late.
I'm in that stage now where I'm gonnahave to respond to Amazon within a week.
And I got into the studio that I'mlike, I've already got in the mix.

(39:55):
I'm like, I literally am notgonna have time in the day to
even start a conversation thread.

John (40:00):
still think after all of your experience, 15 years later that you
still got a thing or two you could pickup from sch or, or maybe even show him.

Chris C. (40:10):
yes.
To both.

John (40:11):
Okay.
Hell yeah.

Chris C. (40:13):
I'm my own very particular flavor.
I'm, I'm sort of a bigpicture pipeline guy.
and I don't know, I, I'm assuming it'sthe same sort of in the technical design
field, but games have gotten so big andso complex that if you're gonna be really
good at what you're doing, you can't knoweverything within your sort of field.
Right.
and that was the thing at my lastjob was, you know, I'm like, Hey,
could I sit down and figure out someshader shit and make some shader?

(40:36):
Sure.
Could I sit down and figure out someNiagara effects shit and figure that out?
Sure.
I have enough knowledge in all ofthe areas to be able to hold a good
conversation and be sort of a, a goodchallenge network and a rubber ducky but
I'm like I had a rendering specialist andhe's making our material library right.
And so I'm providing support to him.
I'm providing that well, I'm beinghis lead and making sure he is tasked

(40:57):
correctly, making sure he is gottime on the schedule, making sure
he is got R and D time making surewe're ahead of the project's needs.
Right.
That's where my support was coming in.
And I'm like, oh, and I'll sit downand write some complex, weird ass
Python code to like, do some shitthat, you know, he doesn't wanna do.
He's gonna make the, thecool material library system.

John (41:16):
Would you say that that is a key aspect of being a lead is to be able to
at least understand what your reports do?
Courts do.
Mm-hmm yeah,

Chris C. (41:24):
yes.
there's always gonna be a breakdown,And actually, that's one of the
things that I look at when I'mlooking for a technical artist.
And I don't know if it's the same fortechnical design is I look for somebody
with a certain frame of mind and a certainattitude more than a certain skillset.
Right.
in my opinion, it's easy to teach somebodyhow to do a thing or to give somebody
the time to learn how to do a thing.

(41:45):
But it's hard to teach somebody how tothink, how to problem solve on their
feet, how to be engaged and be a goodemployee and be a good team member.
That's
much harder than being like,Hey, can you figure out how
to go make a layered material?
Cuz like any tech artist I hire, I'mgonna be like, dude, you got two weeks, go
figure out how to make layered materials.

(42:06):
They're gonna be able to come back witha something, is it gonna be perfect?
Depends on how good theyare at materials already.
Right.
But having somebody that's gonnareport back to you, talk to you,
brainstorm with you, document it,like do a awesome job, communicate to
all their stakeholders on the stuff.
Communicate back to you whenthere's an issue, plan with you,
jam on stuff with you, be able togo 50 rounds with you on stuff.

(42:30):
And one of the things, um, I don'tknow if you've read a book, there's
a book by a guy named Adam Grantcalled uh, think again, the value
of knowing what you don't know.
it's a good book.
I recommended it.
I was recommended it by, uh, theleadership coach over at Seus.
they hired an external lady.
Her name was Anne Dr.
Anne by she's.
Awesome.

John (42:45):
What was she hired on for?

Chris C. (42:47):
she was hired on just to do leadership training mostly.

John (42:49):
That's awesome, man.
You know, for all the leadershipproblems you alluded to.
That's awesome that they, pay forthat and they, they try to coach.

Chris C. (42:56):
yeah, she was an external contractor.
And so I got like a once a month with her.
She recommended a bunch of good books.
There's another one called it'sthe manager, which was really good.
She pointed me out another one,uh, speed of trust by, uh, the
cubby guy is that, I don't know ifit's Franklin cubby or Steve Cub.
and then there was, uh, thesurprising science of meetings,
which I didn't find surprising.

(43:17):
That was the first question sheasked me after I read it, she was
like, did you find it surprising?
Probably not.
Right.
She was like, no, it'sone of those things.
Like, it's interesting becausea lot of these things were
things I was already thinking,

John (43:26):
Yeah.

Chris C. (43:27):
it gave me vocabulary to have a real conversation about it.

John (43:29):
That's what a lot of it is.
Right.
A lot of learning and research isjust giving people a shared lexicon
to have conversations, right.
That that's the, even in games, youknow, when you're building teams
together that have never workedtogether and they've done similar things
just in different capacities, right.
A big part of that and bringing you guystogether and making you effective is
like, how the hell do we refer to that

(43:50):
in a
way
that we

Chris C. (43:51):
It's so interesting as well.
Cuz like, you know, you and I've beendoing this gig a while now when you came
into epic, I waged there was a bunchof people using throw around acronyms.
You're like, wait, wait, what is that?

John (44:01):
dude.
Hell

Chris C. (44:02):
that?
Like, you've worked on unreal andyou know, games in the past, you've
worked on, even though you worked inthe industry a long time, you've even
worked in this engine long timeand people are like, you're like,
wait, what the hell is that?
The,

John (44:14):
does that mean?
Yeah.
What does that code word mean?
What does that
acronym for?

Chris C. (44:18):
one of the things I look for for people is somebody who's not ashamed
to be like, what the hell does that mean?

John (44:23):
Yeah.
Be able to say, I don't know
but

Chris C. (44:25):
what that is.
What is that?
Please tell me.
And being able to do that in.
Um, so one of the things theytalk about in, um, Those books
are starting to meld together.
But, I think,

John (44:33):
Sure.
Yeah,

Chris C. (44:34):
think again, by Adam Grant, they talk about a learning culture there's
the, is the combination of, psychologicalsafety paired with accountability.
So it's you feel safe tosay, Hey, what is that?
Or this isn't great.
And you know, that's gonna be pairedwith somebody doing something about it.
Right.
And that's a learning that kind oflike sparks the learning culture.
And they talk about it, like examplesthat like NASA, where it was like,

(44:56):
people didn't wanna disrupt a launch.
Right.
Even if it was like, and it was like,oh, well we already did all this work.
And then like, there was a ladywho was like, Hey, we shouldn't do
launch today because of reasons.
And they shut it down and there waslike, oh, there's gonna be hell to pay.
But it was like, then they found outsome and then, but it was like, I wanna
say, like she had mentioned, I don't knowif it was, she had mentioned previously

(45:17):
that, that they should stop the launchand then something fucking exploded or
it was like, we should stop the launch.
And like, then the thing didn't explode.
Right.
And then, but, they made her like thehead of fucking doing the launches.
Right.

John (45:30):
That's a good one to bring home, right?
Like I always sit on the tails of.
Thank goodness that what we do doesn'timpact anyone's lives or put anyone's
life at risk, but at the same side,if you can stop a launch, anything
that we do, any decisions that wemake should all be reversible right.
At our level,
like people are superscared to double back.

(45:53):
They're like, oh no, no, we committed.
We made the decision.
This is the call.
We gotta see it through.
Even if it's the

Chris C. (45:59):
well, and that's the whole sort of premise of agile development and, and
the, the, the thing that gets me is whenyou get into a team, that's like, we're
doing agile development and you're like,Hey guys, what we're doing, isn't working.
And they don't stop and reevaluate.
And everybody's like, yeah,it's not working, but it's like,
but shit, we don't have time.
So we just gotta keep moving forward.
And you're like, well guys,we're doing agile development
where everybody acknowledges thatwhat we're doing, isn't working.

(46:21):
So let's stop and figureout why it's not working.
And then people don't wanna do that.
And you're like, well, you're not reallydoing agile development then are you like
And so there's this other concept ofa challenge network, which is sort of
like the opposite of an echo chamber.
And so one of the things I lookfor, and I talked about all of my
team members, as I said, Hey guys,you guys are my challenge network.
And challenge network islike the group of people.

(46:42):
You're like, when you have an ideaor whatever you wanna do, you wanna
bring it to a group of people whoare gonna criticize it the hardest,
right?
And those are the people who are going tounabashedly, criticize the idea or rather
completely and fairly evaluate the idea.
and make you aware of any problems withit, and it's called a challenge network.
And so I, a group of people,you, you go to to make sure

(47:05):
that your idea is a good one.
it's sort of the opposite ofshowing your mom, your artwork.
And she's like, it's beautiful, honey.

John (47:11):
You know, she's always gonna support you.
She's not gonna give it to you real.

Chris C. (47:15):
Right?
It's like, you wanna, you wannatake it to someone and be like,
it's hot, garbage, and here's why

John (47:20):
Yeah.
Well, well that that's the
key part, right?
Like the hot garbage part or theit's beautiful part one thing.
But the here's, why

Chris C. (47:28):
Yeah.
And

John (47:28):
key part that it's is the valuable.

Chris C. (47:30):
when you know that those people who you trust to say it's hot,
garbage say, yeah, that's a good idea.
you have more faith in theidea that you're gonna be
bringing to the table, right.
It's going to be a good one I had aguy, James Little John, he was a effects
artist at, at SEVIS and also really, and atech artist, you know, there's that whole
thing of like our VFX artist tech artist.

(47:52):
And, uh, I literally had a conversationuntil like midnight with him one night.
Like we started the conversation inthe last meeting of the day and at like
1130, me and my render tech artist, hor.
We're still in the fucking Google meet,the conversation went all over the
place, but he was never shy about beinglike, well, I'm not sure about that.

(48:12):
And we go 50 rounds on it andI'd come out of the space with a
better understanding of the topic.
Maybe I've changed my mind.
Maybe I'm more sure of my state.
He's very good at beingopen-minded about it too.
Right.
And so you have two open-mindedpeople who are like wanting to come
out of the situation with the bestidea, not I'm precious about my idea.

John (48:35):
Mm-hmm

Chris C. (48:35):
I want us to do the best thing.
Right.

John (48:39):
that sounds ideal.
And when you talk to me aboutthat, Chris, I think that leads to
a, the best team dynamic, right?
It's a learning culture wherepeople aren't scared to express
their opinions or say, I don'tknow, or be open about an idea.
And then B keep all your eyes on theprize, which is, Hey, let's come out

(49:00):
with the best idea that makes the mostsense after we've all talked about it.
And, and then the last partis to, Hey, let's go act on.
Oh,

Chris C. (49:08):
all of this sort of needs to happen in the space of
being customer and product focused.
Right.

John (49:14):
okay.

Chris C. (49:14):
Right.
And so like, because it, it, itcan, now it can be a lot of fun to
get caught in a conversation just.
Pure craft and that's fun, but it'snot always the most useful, right.
because there's this point ofdiminishing returns on quality that
your customer's not gonna notice.

(49:34):
Right.
And you're like, is what we're doing thebest use of our time for the customer and
for the product we rent into that one.
Wow.
A whole lot where, a term I lovecalled pixel fucking and, and you
get into pixel fucking and it'slike, you know, you're like, all

(49:54):
right, what is the exact hue on this?
Is the shadow on theunderside of this fish.
That's hanging from this rackon this Ork fishing hut over
here, like the perfect hue.
And you're like, okay, there's one person.
Who's gonna notice that.
And
that's your
lead
and nobody else.
Right.

(50:15):
But it's like in the time we could spendtalking about that, we could have built
two other unique or cuts, which are gonnahave much more value to the customer.
Right.
We can reduce the quality of this Orkfishing hu by 1%, but get two or three
other work hus in the same timeframe,which is gonna have a, much bigger impact

(50:35):
and value proposition to our customers.
And I'm really dialing in on the hueof the bounce light of the shadow
on that one fish on that, or cut.
Right.
And we're like, exaggerating a little bit.

John (50:49):
but it's like that it's like that when you take what we do, you know, we're
creative people and we each have, youhelp me understand this a bit more, right?
Like the spectrum between likeneurotypical, neural divergent you
know, I find, I tend to err on theside of like compulsiveness, right?
Where like things need to be inorder or consistent or uniform.

(51:13):
And if, To your point about pixelfucking, if my comment box or
my little script lines betweenthe, blueprints are not aligned.

Chris C. (51:20):
like I said, it's a balance with everything, right?
Like you don't wanna crush thatcreative spirit, what you hope is that
everybody's sort of trying to keepeverybody else in check a little bit
and acknowledging when we're goingpast the point of diminishing returns.
Like, Hey, are you in a core blueprintlibrary that everybody else is going
to use and reference and look at?

(51:40):
Well, man, those comment

John (51:41):
What

Chris C. (51:42):
and those perfect little line nodes, also, John, you should check
out a thing called electric nodes.
It automatically makes your lines

John (51:49):
is that?
A plugin

Chris C. (51:50):
it's, a plugin.
Try it out.

John (51:53):
style for blueprints.

Chris C. (51:54):
Try that
out.

John (51:56):
You heard it here first.
Y'all I

Chris C. (51:57):
We were using it in Sevi.
There was a couple ones we're using,there's also blueprint screenshot,
which will take us a full rescreenshot of your entire blueprint
note graph for sharing with people.

John (52:07):
found another website that lets you kind of like copy and paste the

Chris C. (52:09):
Yeah.
You could do the share.
I like that one.
I wanted us to look at using that one,

John (52:14):
Cause it's free.
It's like lives on GitHub.
I
think.

Chris C. (52:16):
only question there is, is like, are you uploading proprietary stuff?

John (52:20):
Yes.
That's the thing who can see

Chris C. (52:23):
now and you guys share most of your shit out now, I don't
know if you guys now you're workingoff, you're working on Fortnite.
Right.

John (52:29):
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're on like the creative side of things.

Chris C. (52:31):
Epic's at the top of my list of like, there's like a
couple companies that are on mylike list of places left to work.
And I'm like, I'm looking at Amazon forlike machine learning and some other

John (52:41):
I'm definitely gonna ask you more about dream places to work, but I wanna
get into, the thing we highlightedhere when we first spoke a bit ago,
like life as a neuro divergent personjourneying through the industry.
I gotta ask you aboutlife at blizzard, right?
Cuz it seems like the holygrail Nirvana for a lot of

Chris C. (53:00):
it's definitely one of those, like, don't meet your heroes things.
And it's funny, interviews agood example, cause like, I
forgot to take my damn today.
And so first hour of this conversationis just all over the place.
Right.

John (53:12):
It's good stuff.
It' I think a lot ofpeople listen to podcasts.
listen to it in increments,you know, they listen

Chris C. (53:18):
yeah,

John (53:19):
and come back.
So to those people, it'll be good tothe people that listen in one sitting,
I'll be curious to hear their feedback.

Chris C. (53:25):
all the crazy train here.

John (53:26):
A
lot of us game devs are on
the
spectrum.

Chris C. (53:28):
I'm definitely, I'm very, very ADHD

John (53:31):
What does that mean?
I
think
people throw that
thing out there.

Chris C. (53:34):
tend a deficit hyperactivity disorder.

John (53:37):
What does that mean?
Does that mean easilydistracted, easily lose focus.

Chris C. (53:41):
for me I think I'm in an interesting space where
I'm fairly certain, I'm also.
High functioning, autistic.

John (53:49):
Okay.
I,

Chris C. (53:49):
there's a lot of kids that were ADHD kids.
Like you can have both ADHD and autism.
And for a lot of kids who werediagnosed with ADHD, ADHD will mask
a lot of the symptoms of autism.
Right.
And so it's hard to see and,my, daughter was autistic,

John (54:11):
is it genetic?
Is
this
something you passed down?
Yeah.

Chris C. (54:14):
yeah, it can be genetic.
And so, it's actually rarer for, afemale to get autism than a male.

John (54:22):
More prevalent in men.
Huh?

Chris C. (54:24):
I had my son tested and he's not, but I was sitting there reading about
it, about the symptoms and the signifiersand what it meant and how it affected you.
And I was like, holy shit,almost all of this applies.
And I haven't been officiallytested, but it's one of those things
that like, I also, haven't beenofficially tested for PTSD, but I
have 99.9% of the symptoms of it.

(54:44):
so like I've got ADHD and I suffer fromanxiety and depression and PTSD, for
some of those who know me, my daughterpassed away from cancer in 2013.
literally like a monthafter I started at blizzard.
It was one of those things of like,act vision, actually let me go.
After I told them my kid had cancerto save themselves some bills,

(55:05):
right?

John (55:06):
This was, vicarious visions.

Chris C. (55:08):
That was back in 2011.

John (55:10):
and that was before act division blizzard merged.

Chris C. (55:13):
uh, no, it was after it was after.

John (55:16):
was after.
Yeah, no.

Chris C. (55:17):
and then I worked at a small company that was kind of awful in the
intermediate called first playable.
They treated me real bad.
and so, I went and interviewed atblizzard and she was in a declining
state at this point and you gottalike, you're in that state where you're
like, man, I just I gotta keep face.
I gotta make it through my interview.
And it's one of those things whereADHD actually could sort of like
help out because like you gethyper focused and it's one of those

(55:37):
things where like on the right day,
man,
I can get four other people'swork done right And then there's
days where I'm like, man, I didn'tget, I didn't get shit done today.
And I feel like a total assholebut when you get in the zone,
everything else disappears.
And the, your hyperfocus sets in andyou know, I've got a very high IQ.

(55:59):
I am somewhere on the genius spectrum.
but it's one of those things.
Did you ever read will of time.
there's this whole like, magicsystem and there's like the
male half and the female half.
And they describe the male halfas like the female half is like,
you surrender to it and it's calm.
It'll take you long for theride and it'll do what you want.
As long as you and male half islike avalanches of fire and ice

(56:20):
and you have to fucking controlit and you can barely manage it.
And it's a torrent of region.
Like, I feel like that's trying tocontrol my brain is sort of like
trying to manage the, the male halfof magic in the wheel of time series
for anybody who's read the series.
And it's funny, cuz I have another friendwho's ADHD and I he's read wheel of time.
And I was talking to him was like,yeah, it's kind of like that.

(56:43):
He's like, he thought he thought hethought it was a good analogy too.

John (56:45):
you've gotta kind of surrender to where, you are that, that particular day,
Right.
It's not something that youcan kind of like, hone in.
Yeah.

Chris C. (56:52):
that's like the, the other one.
And this one is just like spinningall of your energy, wrestling
your brain to stay on track.
And then occasionally falls into perfectalignment with what you're doing.
It's like, you're doing is interesting

John (57:06):
Mm-hmm

Chris C. (57:07):
you wanna do.
Everything else disappears
and you operate at like 10 X efficiency,

John (57:12):
you don't have any bodily needs to go use
the restroom.
You're not hungry.
Mm-hmm

Chris C. (57:18):
it like those times, like, you know, you look up it's one in
the morning and you're like, oh.
I didn't eat dinner, but I beat the, game.
I playing, you
know,

John (57:28):
So you think that's a superpower byproduct of ADHD
on the right day.
Yeah.

Chris C. (57:34):
on the right day.
Right.
And on the wrong day, it's, it'sa struggle to stay on track, you
know, and I, I've developed a lot ofmechanisms for sort of dealing with that,

John (57:42):
Well, I I'm curious if you would share of those, right?
Like any top two,

Chris C. (57:47):
think one of the most, the best strategies for an ADHD
person, and it's kind of weirdis be interested in everything
because the whole thing is, islike, and you know, to my wife's
chagrin, it's like, it's not thatI don't wanna take out the garbage.
Right.
It's just that it doesn't occur tome because it's, so disinteresting

John (58:10):
I totally hear
that.
That resonates with me tenfold.

Chris C. (58:13):
my brain just filters some things out.

John (58:16):
Mm-hmm

Chris C. (58:16):
so what I have to do is make myself invested in a lot of things.
And once I'm invested and interested ina lot of things, then I'm less likely
to like, let that slip off my radar.

John (58:28):
okay.

Chris C. (58:29):
so, that's sort of one strategy and that's the thing I'm
trying to, you know, working on withmy kid is getting him interested in.
Right.
Be interested and invested in everything.

John (58:39):
or curious,
is curious,
suitable,
alternative?

Chris C. (58:42):
Curious.
Right now there's certain things thatare just like, okay, doing your taxes.
That's not interesting gettinga big tax refund that you can
spend the money on something
fun.
Okay.
Right.
You gotta train your brain to frame thingsthat you don't wanna do as interesting or
understanding the positive outcome of it.
You gotta tread some of those neuralpathways to train yourself in seeing

(59:04):
the advantage, the outcome, theinterest in a situation that you
might not normally see as interesting.

John (59:10):
At work doing what you do, especially, you know, being a team
lead, having reports, being a IC,has that served you over the years?
Yeah,

Chris C. (59:20):
Well, so I kind of went into the leadership track because historically
tech, art has been, at least in the placesI've worked and the situations I've been
in, I sort of have felt that we didn'thave a strong voice in the development.
I didn't have strong leadership.
I didn't have a strong advocate for meon the leadership and the management

(59:40):
side, Especially being sort of aneuro divergent person, it's kind of
a melancholy feeling, but it's like,people appreciate what I can do,
but don't as much appreciate who I am,
they'll put up with me for what I can do.
It's kind of a feeling that's happenedat several different places I've been at.
Right.
And so I'm, that's one of the thingsI'm kind of on is I'm kind of on a

(01:00:02):
journey for a place that it has both,they realize that I can save them tens
to hundreds of millions of dollars, butalso are like, yeah, he's condo weird.
right.
And that's cool.
Not like, okay, I guess we'll
tolerate him for whathe can bring to us, but

(01:00:23):
we'll celebrate him for whohe is and what he does for us.
Right.
It

John (01:00:28):
Mm-hmm Hey, absolutely.
Yeah, Chris, I feel like game developerswere all weirdos and finding the
right studio or the right team andculture finding your particular taste.
Right.
And, you know, I think, Ithink midway had a really magic
pot.

Chris C. (01:00:44):
was man.
I was like, I mean, there was, Therewere things that were not great about
it, but man, it was sort of this magicconfluence of like, I think part of it
is just like that Austin vibe as well.
Right.
Also got that like, you know,
Hey,

John (01:00:57):
Austin weird.

Chris C. (01:00:58):
weird man.
And like we were in a weird placedoing weird stuff, having a good time.
And
you know, there was probably abunch of awful that we weren't
exposed to at the time, but
man,

John (01:01:08):
At our pay grade.

Chris C. (01:01:10):
felt, it felt great.
and there was some stuff that wasdefinitely going on behind the scenes
in some places, but you know, we hadthat magic sort of experience of like
hate, you know, we had a female studiohead and we had, and she was awesome.
I'm not one of those persons who willall have a conversation with anybody.
And I, I remember going upand being awkward and like

John (01:01:29):
is that Denise?

Chris C. (01:01:31):
Denise Yeah.
I remember talking to Deniseabout like my wife was
pregnant.

John (01:01:35):
Fulton, I think was

Chris C. (01:01:36):
Yeah.

John (01:01:36):
I dunno if that was her maiden name or what, but yeah, that

Chris C. (01:01:39):
Prenatal care or something.
Cuz I was like, she was just like,we were just like had a conversation
and I was like, yeah, you, my wife.
And I don't know if that impacted myability to get like a full-time position,
but it was one of those things where itwas like, I remember coming to, uh, Mike
Jones, the first good producer I ever had.
I've had two now I've had twogood producers, Mike Jones

(01:02:03):
and then a guy at Sergio.
So I was working realclosely with named Trevor.
he was awesome.

John (01:02:07):
what made Mike Jones and Trevor great

Chris C. (01:02:10):
Different different things.
The thing with MikeJones, I remember being
was like, I mean, even like, again, atthe time I was an intern and I moved
into an associate, but like when I saidthat I was gonna look for a new job
or whatever, I talked to Mike Jonesand Mike Jones went and sorted it out.
I told him, I said, Hey man, I got afull time offer from another company.
It's for just an environmentartist's position.

(01:02:32):
I like working here, but my, my wife ispregnant and I have I'm outta contract.
And I got no health insurance and man,they're gonna offer me health insurance.
And literally that'sgonna make the difference.
and fucking three days later RichieRomero came over to me with an envelope
for like, or maybe it was It was OGand Richie, uh, came over to me and
like, we're gonna offer you a full-timeposition as an associate technical artist.

(01:02:54):
And I was like, alright,

John (01:02:58):
Yeah.
Save the
day.

Chris C. (01:03:01):
I'm a big guy, you see this chair right here.

John (01:03:03):
I would say it's like a typical gamer chair.

Chris C. (01:03:06):
is a secret labs, Titan XL,
right?
The biggest fucking chair they make

John (01:03:13):
yeah.
Cuz like the shoulder riskgo above your shoulders
and the
headrest is
over
your.

Chris C. (01:03:16):
It's the only chair that's ever fit me.
I got a big ass torso.
I got some short little legs, soI'm good at driving sports cards.

John (01:03:23):
Clutching you mean on

Chris C. (01:03:25):
I remember like I was having back pains at midway cuz they got these
office chairs that come up to here onme and they had those big conference
room chairs and somebody left em outin the hallway for like two weeks.
And I was like almost stealing oneof those chairs for my desk and I
was like, oh my back pain went away.
And then like they sentout a fucking email.
It was like, Hey people,please return the chairs.

(01:03:48):
And I, I went and talked to Mike.
I was like, Mike,
I was having a lot of back pain and shit.
And this chair fixed my back pain.
I'm like, can I keep this chair?
He's like, I'll go handle it.
And I never heard about it again.
And he handled it and he'd comearound to my desk, you know,
once a day, every other day.
What are you working on, Chris?
What do you need what's problem with you?

(01:04:08):
And I'd be like, man, I gottwo or three people that are
coming at me with requests.
I can't do all of them.
Here's who's talking to me.
Here's the requests.
Here's what I'm working on right now.
Can you go figure out the prioritiesand come back to me and he would
go take care of it and come backand be like, Chris, work on this.

John (01:04:26):
Hell

Chris C. (01:04:27):
Thank you.
Right.
Didn't have to a, didn't haveto go do a bunch of shit.
It was just like Mike Joneswould go take care of it.
He'd go figure it out.
He'd go talk to all thepeople and he'd come back.
I was a, you know, I wasthe associate slash intern,
right?

John (01:04:41):
And Mike's such a good people
person.

Chris C. (01:04:44):
director and an art lead and another art lead and another
art lead who are like, Chris,you need to do these things.
And I was like, Mike, go figure it out.
yeah,

John (01:04:54):
You probably, you wanna say yes to all of them.
Right.
I
wonder if that

Chris C. (01:04:57):
like I said, I like, it's a strength, but it's also,
it's one of those, it's a doubleedged sword liking everything, John
you're like, man.
Yeah,
man.
I wanna work on fucking Niagaraparticle effects and physics setups.
And also I wanna write some back inPython, API code, and I also wanna write
a tool and then I also wanna do someleadership and it's one of those things

(01:05:18):
like I've become interested in everything,but then you're like, but you can't,
you don't have time for everything.
So it, it's kinda, it'sa double line store,
but you know, it's, you know, oneof those things where you have to
sit down and look at like, well, theproblem becomes when you don't have
enough people to tackle all it's easywhen I'm like, oh fucking all right.
I got my technical animator guide.
I got my material guy.
So I just, I don't have toworry about those areas.

(01:05:40):
But when you're like, man, there'slike three areas of work where I'm
the only person who can do the thing.
That's what starts to get tricky andespecially gets tricky when you're a
lead and you you're the most qualifiedprimary contributor in that area.
That's where stuff starts to getpretty stressful where you're like,
I need to hire people to do this.
Like I'm in meetings 30 hours a weekof meetings I also gotta do all this

(01:06:02):
stuff and you're like, man, I need toget some people hired for this stuff.
and, uh, learning to not commit to thingsthat you're not gonna have time to do.
Especially as a person who like one ofmy primary motivations in the industry
in my job space is I like to help people.
so and my my other, producer, Trevor,who was really good my first example.
I'm an intern.
I'm an associate.
Now I'm a lead,

John (01:06:22):
as SEVIS.
Mm-hmm.

Chris C. (01:06:23):
Again, he' one of those people who I feel like
is a challenge network for me.
He's telling me what's real.
He's not like codling me.
He's not telling me what I want to hear.
He's helping me make real hard decisions.
And as a lead, I feel like that'sone of my responsibilities is
to make real tough decisions andcommunicate that to my people.
Make sure my people aren't beingoverscheduled and we were sitting

(01:06:46):
down like, Hey, how do we wannaschedule and task this out?
How do we wanna run this team?
I said, historically tech, arthasn't been run well, tools teams
haven't been run well, . And so wesit down and we look at like, Hey,
how have you run things in the past?
And let's look at how we wanna run things.
And we iterate on process and he'schanging his process and I'm changing
my process and we're sitting down andworking on things and communicating

(01:07:08):
to each other and planning around therealities of the project and trying to
communicate those realities to otherteams and just looking at, the production
side of the process, cuz I've had to bemy own producer for so long, but that
doesn't mean I was doing a good job at it.
I was doing a better than a lot ofpeople job at it , but that doesn't

(01:07:29):
mean I was doing a good job at it.
Right.
It just means I was better thanwhoever the hell else was there.
But, uh, you know, really sittingdown and looking at at diving into the
process at getting things marked upand having real hard conversations.
man, that guy was producing like sixteams, one of six teams, he was producing.
And I was like, man,

John (01:07:48):
It's not like every discipline.

Chris C. (01:07:50):
imagine if he had just been my producer, holy crap, like
what could we have done together?
You know what I
mean?
Um,

John (01:07:55):
what was he kind of like the art producer or he was
cross disciplinary

Chris C. (01:07:59):
he was tech, art, and our DevOps producer and our for a lot of our teams.
And then also some ofour like feature teams

John (01:08:09):
place

Chris C. (01:08:10):
there was some times where he was in two or three
meetings at the same time.

John (01:08:13):
virtually.

Chris C. (01:08:14):
Cause I'd be like, just in case he's in another meeting.
And I'm like, I need him to take a noteor do a thing, or I need his, feedback
on something, I'd be like, Hey Trevor,

John (01:08:22):
That's crazy.
can't do that, man.
I've tried the two meeting thing, whenit's, uh, you know, like kind of a
all hands versus kind of like a standup thing, you know, you can kind of,

Chris C. (01:08:31):
I don't even try it.
That's one of those
things, like for me personally, like Ican't have a conversation and take notes.
Like I know that not myself.
I learned that back in college, Ican pay attention to what's going on.
And I would say, or taking notes, butyou can't take good notes if you're not
paying attention to what's going on.
So what happens if I try and takenotes, I get garbage notes and
I don't know what was happening.

John (01:08:51):
how do you get by like that then?
Do you gotta like record the meeting?

Chris C. (01:08:54):
it depend, well, I'm actually pretty good at just
retaining all the information.
If I pay attention,

John (01:08:59):
Oh, wow.

Chris C. (01:08:59):
usually for other people in college, I actually paid a
note taker to take notes for me.
They offered a service to me becauseI was ADHD and they say, Hey.
You go into your class, findsomebody to take notes for you.
At the end of the semester,they'll get a hundred bucks.
as a college student, like,Hey, who wants to take notes?
Who wants a hundred dollars atthe end of the course, and it's
for every course you're in.
And I remember being in my worldhistory class, the hottest girl in

(01:09:22):
the class also took the best notes.
Right.
totally had her take notes for me.
and, uh, I never really read 'em.
I only used them to help my friend,Sean, who was in the class with me study.
I just paid attention and I interactedand I participated and it was highly
lecture based and she took reallygood notes and I made the highest
grade in the class and she made thesecond highest grade in the class.

(01:09:45):
And she was like pissed

John (01:09:47):
Oh I I've seen that.
I've seen that like, oh, why?
Well, how
did I, yeah.
How did I lose?
Yeah, I've seen that.

Chris C. (01:09:54):
I almost never referenced notes, except to help
my friends study for the stuff.
But like, I'm pretty good at ifit's an engaging, I I soak it in.
If I'm involved, if I'm interacting,if it's a good, you know, uh, a
lecture or a discussion, it sinks in.
Right.
Um, and, uh, but like one of those things,like I've got a slight reading disability

(01:10:17):
where it's one of those things of, like,I'm not very good at reading document.
which is funny for a person who hasto write a whole lot of documentation.
Right?

John (01:10:25):
was about to say like, how much documentation do you write?

Chris C. (01:10:27):
a lot, not all of it's great.
I've been one of those things I'vebeen thinking about is like, well, it's
funny, cuz like I also have data andheuristics that blizzard about like
how many people read my documentation,who read it and how many times?
And like you sit there and be like,man, I wrote this, I spent like two days
on this documentation for this tool.

(01:10:48):
And I have like a, a button in thetool that links to the documentation
opens the confluence page for it.

John (01:10:54):
You can't make it any easier to access.
Yeah,

Chris C. (01:10:56):
like, and, and I send an email out with the documentation link And then I
walk the floor and, and I ask people aboutthe tool like, Hey, there's a new tool.
There's documentation.
If you have any questions.
And then I go look and like sixout of the 20 people of they're
using the tool even open the page

John (01:11:12):
that always kills me.
I, I feel for you, Chris,I'm right there with you.
you.
know, we spend a
bunch of time trying to scale knowledge.

Chris C. (01:11:18):
for those six people, but also when someone's like, Hey,
I don't know how to do the thing.
You're like, did youread the documentation?

John (01:11:25):
Did you RTFM

Chris C. (01:11:26):
I'm like, here's the link, but I'm like, but you know, I usually
go, I still go over there desk.
here's the thing.
I can't be too mad about peoplenot reading the documentation.
I have a rough time reading documentationand retaining that information.
so,
I can't be too mad about it.
So I'll
sit
down and work with them and talkwith them and show 'em how to do it.

John (01:11:41):
So is it
worth

Chris C. (01:11:43):
and it's an always evolving strategy, but my most effective
strategy has been, like, I sort ofdo what I would refer to as sort
of the bare minimum documentation.
And then I'll work with a primaryconsumer of whatever the thing is.
And then I encourage the whole teamto say, Hey, documentation is a living
document and everybody can edit itand update it and, and, you know,

(01:12:05):
comment on it, edit it, add pictures.
Like it's, it's the team's documentation.
If we make it documentation one guy's
job, then it's alwaysgonna be out of date.

John (01:12:17):
Takes
a

Chris C. (01:12:17):
to, I try to, I try to, develop a culture of documentation
more than like, Hey yeah, go edit it.
Please go do so.
Right.
Like,
you
know, Hey, I'd rather, I'drather 10 people go do it.
And then one person occasionally makesa mistake and then you go talk to them
about it, you know, than being like.
All right.
Oh man.
It's documentation week or whatever.

(01:12:39):
Right.
and so, my strategy is I'm gonnadocument, I think what sort of the bare
minimum is needs to be now that includespictures on bullet points and the options
and anything that's super important.
And then when somebody makes a requestto make the documentation better,
that's a catalyst moment for, alright,I need to go spend some time here.

John (01:13:00):
Gotcha.
Gotcha.

Chris C. (01:13:01):
like I said, it's an evolving strategy and see how it works.
You know?
Um, I had a guy, man, my renderingtech artist, as Sevi man, that
guy was a fucking, Ooh, he wasso good at documentation, man.
He would, he would get into
the,

John (01:13:15):
did.
You actually read them?

Chris C. (01:13:18):
I would say that I did more than skim his work,

John (01:13:22):
Okay.
That's high praise.
Yeah,

Chris C. (01:13:23):
but he wrote so much documentation that I
was like, I don't like, I, I put, Iput aside like 45 minutes to an hour.
Like I said, I have a hard time,like just reading documentation.
I
need to be, I need to be baking stuff.
I need to be referencingit while I'm doing a thing.
And so, uh, actually, that's why Ilike the documentation videos so much.

John (01:13:45):
you, you watch a few lumber yard tutorial videos I

Chris C. (01:13:48):
I had to go in the background while I was having a bourbon.
I was playing some games.
I had some lumber yard in the backgroundand you know, some of it'll trigger.
Right.

John (01:13:54):
does it actually like resonate like that.

Chris C. (01:13:56):
I don't know, a hundred percent, but I think it's one of
those things of like, it's kind oflike listening to fucking those daily
affirmation things while you sleep.
I mean, I don't do that, but it's one ofthose things of like, I have it going on.
And so like, what'll happen is, isI'm very associative in my memory.
The thing will make me think of athing will make me think of a thing.
And then that'll triggerlike 50 chains of memory

(01:14:16):
and is at some point while I'm work ata lumber yard, I'm gonna remember that
John di said, Hey, there's a bunch ofmenus that aren't on by default, that
you're gonna wanna fucking turn on.
And I dunno what thoses are, but Iknow that that is a thing, right.
And that was my takeaway from oneof those videos you were doing is,
Hey, here's these five or 10little menus or sub menus that

(01:14:37):
you, that aren't on by default.
And
I'm, I'm find that again
and watch it, whatever.
Right.
And so
how my brain works is, is I connect as I,as I, as I connect the high level things.
And then that leads me down arabbit hole of learning at a
given time when it's important,

(01:15:00):
I kind of learn what I need tolearn when I need to learn it.
And I dive deep.
And then I remember the high levelconcepts of the important things,
and then my brain flushes the rest.
And so that's why I

John (01:15:13):
Gotcha.

Chris C. (01:15:13):
back and referencing things I've already done, cuz I'm like,
man, I did some cool shit here.
I don't remember any of this.

John (01:15:20):
Yeah, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about blizzard, right?
Like
Go back to finding a place wherewe can fit in where we could be our
true self and bring our best self towork and be embraced for who we are
on top of what we can contribute.
I would've thought blizzard to kind of be

Chris C. (01:15:37):
when I graduated from Gil hall, when I graduated from school,
literally I told myself I'mgonna work at blizzard someday.
Hey, look, I got my fucking weldWarcraft shirt on right now.
And I said, someday, I'm notgood enough today, but someday
I'm gonna work at blizzard.
And I got over there and it's one ofthose things where I literally had this
conversation with my lead over there.

(01:15:58):
And I was like, man, I feel like I'ma weirdly shaped puzzle piece that
doesn't fit the puzzle over here.
Right.
And I said, and you guys can'teven describe to me what kind of a
shape of a puzzle piece you want.
So I can figure out how tochange myself to fit, right?
Like I'm this weird purple amorphous
blob

John (01:16:17):
Mm-hmm

Chris C. (01:16:18):
and I'm trying to figure
out to
fit

John (01:16:20):
to yourself.

Chris C. (01:16:21):
this puzzle spot.
Right.
And I don't know which corners to smoothout and which blobs to make corners.
you guys aren't elaborating that to me.
But you're also not embracingthe weird purple amorphous blob.
Right.

John (01:16:36):
that
because the blizzard tools are justkind of like so stuck in their ways and
they've been doing things a certain ways
for
so many years.

Chris C. (01:16:42):
there were in this transition space.
And I think there's a lot of companiesin this space where like, there's sort of
what game development was, which is kindof this wacky loony space for weird people
to get together, to make crazy shit.
People understood that people were weirdosand like that it was right to be a weirdo.
And then there's this sort ofjourney from there into this sort

(01:17:03):
of corporate work environment.
There's a transition from a to B and theydon't know where they sit on that line.
I think that's part of the problem isthere's a lot of these companies that they
don't know where they sit on the line.
Are we a fun game development placeor are we like a corporate law office?
Now there's somewhere in between likethe days of your, and there's a lot

(01:17:26):
of things that need to change and alot of things that need to improve.
And there's like, you know, weird oldmasculine, toxic environments that need
to die in a fire, but we also don'tneed to be the corporate law office.
Right.
But they don't know wherethey fit on that line.
And big companies are bad at nuance.
And I am a topic that requires nuance.

(01:17:48):
Right.
Yeah.

John (01:17:48):
I see your dog right there.
What type of dog is.

Chris C. (01:17:51):
well, he's some kind of shepherd mix.
He's adopted.
Look at this guy.
He's over

John (01:17:54):
Yeah, he's being a good boy.
He's like what I gotta doto get some chicken wings,
some bourbon, chicken wings,

Chris C. (01:18:01):
he's A good dog.
The lady I adopted him from, got him froma puppy mill and they said he was half
shepherd quarter Husky, quarter Wolf.
But I also like did some researchand like 95% of Wolf dogs in
America sold America by by puppymills are not Wolf dogs whatsoever.
So he was RA I, I asked her, I'm like,Hey, is he good with kids and other dogs?

(01:18:22):
And
she's like, she, he was raised with myfour kids and my older German shepherd.
And I was like, well, we'll give it a go.
He's actually my ESA dog.
He's I got my, um,
we got

John (01:18:32):
got paperwork.

Chris C. (01:18:33):
I got my little, uh,

John (01:18:35):
You can come into all the shops and restaurants.

Chris C. (01:18:37):
could be a above if I want to, but I tried to be nice about it, you know?
I got a doctor's note and allthis stuff, he helps me in my,

John (01:18:43):
National service of.

Chris C. (01:18:45):
and so, you know, part of it was the passing of my daughter
and part of it was the stress ofblizzard and some of the other stuff.

John (01:18:51):
was blizzard kind of the most stressful place you worked at just
cuz of the scale of the games they
worked on, the amount ofpeople that played those games.

Chris C. (01:18:57):
it's a different kinda stress,
but it was one of those things of like,I got hired and then like two months
later, my daughter passed and I was havingto 10 panic attacks a week at work man.
I was having to like hide behindmy monitors, you know what I mean?
And like, try not cry at work.

John (01:19:14):
were you not able
to take time
to like
grieve and more?

Chris C. (01:19:18):
I took some time I took like three days or whatever, but it was one
of those things of like, I didn't eventell them that my daughter was ill even
until after I started working there.
Cuz you know, you gointerview at a big company.
Act division had just laid me offa year and a half previous because
my daughter got sick with cancer.
And so I was sitting there goinglike I'm interviewing with blizzard

(01:19:38):
and I'm like, if I tell, youknow, I gotta hold my mask on.
And you know, there's a wholeconcept called masking for people
who are like autistic and ADHD.
you know, I guess I got, prettyfricking good at masking and
I did a bunch of research.
Some people were like, Hey, youknow, I've always loved dogs.
And I hadn't had a dog since I was four.
I'd always wanted a big shepherd.

(01:19:58):
I was sitting there.
I was having a tough time and Iread this post from this lady who
was grieving from the loss of akid and, she said, I needed a dog.
Like I needed a gunshot wound to thehead, she's like, I didn't have time or
space or energy or anything for a dog,but I got the dog and I got better.

(01:20:19):
And my landlord waslike, no, dog's allowed.
And I was like, Hey, youknow, I'm going through some
stuff and I really need a dog.
And there's this dog that's gotta thing.
Okay.
But no big dogs and.
Shit.
like, well, here's a picture.
I sent a picture of the dog with theladies' kid, like, being super good.
And I was like, look athim, but he's a rescue dog.
And he caved and I was like, all right.
Um,

John (01:20:39):
Yeah, man, dogs are lifesavers.
I, I like the Pacific Northwest.
They tend to embrace dogs everywhere.
They they're very lenient with them.
There's a lot of officespaces all over the west coast
that are super dog friendly.
You know, as long as yourcoworkers are cool with it,

Chris C. (01:20:52):
I went from five to 10 panic attacks a week to 20 year with the dog,

John (01:20:56):
just with the dog, the dog kind of makes you feel chill gives you
a place to be
grounded.

Chris C. (01:21:01):
not being able to sleep at night, night terrors, the whole nine yards
suddenly started sleeping well at night.

John (01:21:07):
Is it just the presence or being able to focus on
taking care of the dog or yes.

Chris C. (01:21:11):
it's just the presence.
not being alone, having someonethere, like also if I'm just
having a bad day at work.
when I do have that hard, tough momentat work, my dog comes up to me and
puts his head in my lap and pets a dog.
And literally just the act ofpetting a dog releases dopamine.
Right.

John (01:21:28):
Yes,
it does.
Yeah.

Chris C. (01:21:29):
sort of the presence of having him there walking home late at
night, walking to work early in themorning, you you're never really alone.
You got the dog with you.
And so, I looked at gettinghim fully trained as a, as
a licensed service animal.
But it was gonna be 10 to 12.
It was gonna be like six to $12,000.

John (01:21:45):
Yeah.
It's up there.
It's valuable though, man.
They, they learn fucking everything.

Chris C. (01:21:50):
it was one of those things.
I was like, man, I canalready sort of take him.
Most of the places I want to go,I can already take him to work.

John (01:21:55):
Yeah.
Amazon's super dog friendly.

Chris C. (01:21:58):
I wasn't gonna get, any help from work from insurance or a
monetary perspective or anything.
And I was like, well, hecan already come to work.
all the park Rangers, I justhave a conversation with him.
And they're like, okay, you're cool.
Right.
I got my card.
I got my doctor's note.
And I'm like, okay, he's an ESA dog.
He's not a full service dog.
He's an ESA dog.

(01:22:18):
I call restaurants ahead of time.
Like, do you have outdoor seating?
Like, I'm trying to bea butthole, you know?
and he's gotten to the point nowwhere I can leave him in the car.
He's really fucking upsetif I leave him in the car.
Cause he's never
away from me.
And now that I work from home remote,like he's never, never away from me.

John (01:22:32):
Yeah, he is spoiled.
They all are.

Chris C. (01:22:36):
he's chill as hell.
If leave him alone forlike minutes, he's like.

John (01:22:43):
It's a maternity it's too long.
so the dog was able to kind of helpyou through and, and, and be able
to focus at work on blizzard andcope with your daughter's loss.

Chris C. (01:22:53):
yeah.
it's even one of those things I waslooking at at SEVIS, go back to the
neuro divergent and the, disruptivethinkers, I think differently.
I do things differently.
And one of the things I've been sortof struggling with is like, I think
I'm the kind of a leader that a lot ofcompanies need, but I don't think I'm
a leader that a lot of companies want.

John (01:23:12):
They need you
they're not looking for you, right?
Like the job descriptionthat they're trying to
fill
doesn't encompass

Chris C. (01:23:18):
like.
I'm more transparent, I think, thana lot of companies want to have.

John (01:23:22):
mm-hmm

Chris C. (01:23:23):
Right.
And so like, I was verytransparent with my group of
direct reports at my last company.
And they all really appreciatedthat, cuz it's the thing I really
appreciate, you know, when there's notransparency in the leadership hierarchy.
That's I think that always makes menervous at a company when I don't know
what's going on or why things are goingon or, you know, they always try and
like, oh, we need to protect people fromseeing the, the, the muddy underside.

(01:23:46):
It's like, well, I've never wanted that.
I always wanna know.
I wanna know what's going on.
I wanna know, so I can help.
So I can be part of the solutionso I can have a realistic view
of how the project's going.
That kind of stuff.
You.
And I think it's gonna change.
I think there's an active sort ofchange on the horizon of management.

John (01:24:04):
There is.
There's a big wave coming, man, wherethe old guard is gonna get washed out
or

Chris C. (01:24:09):
this old sort of corporate structure of like, we
gotta keep everything hidden.

John (01:24:13):
yeah.

Chris C. (01:24:14):
one of the things I'd love to see is like salary transparency

John (01:24:17):
As a manager, I'm surprised that you didn't have like control
or at least visibility of whatyour reports were getting paid.

Chris C. (01:24:24):
I wasn't told any of that.
and that's one of my things like I view asone of my responsibilities as a manager is
making sure my employees are paid fairly.
I view that as sort ofpart of my job, right?

John (01:24:33):
mm-hmm yeah.
I mean, that's a keypart of retention, right?
Like whether
people admit it or not.

Chris C. (01:24:38):
I said, my, oh, I told everybody, I said, my
number one priority is a lead.
Is employee retention.
My number two priority is hiringbecause nothing I can do is gonna have
a bigger impact than keeping the peoplewe have or hiring the people we need.
Nothing I can do is gonna havea bigger impact than that.

John (01:24:57):
Amen.

Chris C. (01:24:58):
but in order to deal with if there's information, like, I don't
know what our salary pay bans are, are,

John (01:25:02):
You're like

Chris C. (01:25:03):
and

John (01:25:03):
fighting a fight with one hand behind your back.

Chris C. (01:25:05):
now some of my employees would tell me what they're paid.
And I said, Hey, I believein salary transparency.
So if you guys wanna know what I'mpaid, I will let you know problem.
right.
And couple, my guys were okayhaving that conversation.
Some of em weren't and that's okay.
I'm like, if you don't wanna tellme, I don't wanna know you wanna
end on what I'm paid, let you know.
don't have to tell me in recompense,

John (01:25:24):
mixed on that.
I would love a transparent world, butsometimes I, I don't think I want it, man.
Like, I would hate see somebodydoing less work than me
making more money than me, for
whatever reason.

Chris C. (01:25:36):
No thing
is, is the only person, it, hurts isthe company that's doing things badly.
Right?
so there's two things in that situation.
If there's someone that'shaving less impact than you,
that's making more money than you.
There's one of two things goingon here, you need to get paid more

John (01:25:52):
Mm-hmm

Chris C. (01:25:53):
or is that person being paid appropriately.
are they being paid toomuch or are you being paid?
Not enough now?
I would say nine times out of 10it's you're not being paid enough.
right.
One time out of 10, somebody'sgetting paid too much, but like,
that's pretty damn rare thatsomeone's getting paid too much.
Right.

(01:26:14):
And so the reality of it is, isit's in the company's best interest.
And that's why like, as a manager, I'ma for the employee manager, I'm a, I'm
a managing upwards kind of a manager.
I'm not one of those guys.
Who's like, oh, wellwe're gonna pay you more.
So you can stop talking about paying now.
Right?
I'm like, no, no, no.
I wanna make sure that my S are
being paid fairly.

(01:26:34):
Right.
it was the same thing at blizzard.
Like we were talking about.
I was like, well, I was being paid closer.
not close, but closer toan engineering salary.
Right.
I was being paid, but I'm like, thatdoesn't mean that I suddenly stopped being
caring about like what QA is being paid,what associate artists are being paid.
You know, that doesn't mean theydon't care about that suddenly.

(01:26:54):
But the thing is, is if you careabout what the lowest guy is paid,
you're gonna be caring about yourself.
Cause if you bring up their salaries,your salary's gonna rise with it, right.
With the rising tide lifts all boats.
So whatever the crap that is, uh,

John (01:27:09):
I can, I can dig it.
I can see

Chris C. (01:27:10):
right.
And so it's like, Hey, you know, I don'tsee how, if you don't, if you raised our
lowest paid employees by $40,000, whichis about what needed to happen at BLI.
Because you got people being paid $40,000,which is near poverty line in, in,
in an economy, in, in a local economythat says $90,000 is under $90,000.
Your poor, if
you pay the lowest employee $90,000,I don't see how that doesn't translate

(01:27:36):
to a raise for me In, in no world.
Does that mean like, all right nowthere's gonna be, suddenly only a $24,000
difference between a senior technicalartist and an associate QA person.
Like, how's that gonna work?

John (01:27:49):
Yeah.
Okay.
I could see why the employerwouldn't want pay transparency now.
Right?
Like it's gonna cost them a lot ofmoney to retain good talent, but can
see how it's a win for the employee,

Chris C. (01:28:02):
yeah.
And the
it's also a win for the employer becausethe thing is, is they can still make a
shit ton of money, pay me what I'm worth.
And they make even more money because youknow what because the pay doesn't come
into the equation of why I would leave.
I could not afford to stay at Blitzer.

John (01:28:18):
left.

Chris C. (01:28:18):
I left because I literally, I sat down, I looked at my finances.
I'm like, I got a kid who's gonnaneed to go to college in 10 years.
I haven't had a vehiclein nine or 10 years.
I didn't want anything crazy.
I'm like, I wanna have a house.
I wanna send my kid to school.
And I want a truck.
I'm not like I want fucking nine yachtson the fucking dock I want a house and

(01:28:39):
a vehicle and an education for my kid.
And I sat down and looked at himlike literally the math doesn't
work out and I went to them.
I said, Hey, the math doesn't work out.
Here's the minimum amount Ineed to make the math work out.
Here's what I would prefer to have.
And they didn't budge whatsoever.
And I said, I'm gonna, you know, I said,Hey, I'm not gonna be here in a year.
If things don't change, I needremote work or I need higher pay

(01:29:01):
or I need a less stressful job.
Preferably all three . And,and I got nothing and I
left
after a year.

John (01:29:09):
do you, think that they can change?
Do you think they are gonna change nowthat they're under the Microsoft umbrella?
Is there anything you wish you could have
done?

Chris C. (01:29:17):
I talked with him recently and I, it, it sounds
like there is change happening.
Right.
And, the thing is the pays that arehappening are somewhat close to,
like, I did the math of like sort ofhow much I was worth at the minimum.
And that was probably around $250,000.

John (01:29:30):
in that economy, in that cost of living,

Chris C. (01:29:33):
Well, and also just like value.
I brought the company, I did somerough calculations and I saved
blizzard somewhere between 25 and ahundred million while I was there.

John (01:29:41):
you gotta show me how you did that.
Math after we're done recording, I wannasee if I can make the same argument.
Oh,

Chris C. (01:29:46):
now I got lucky that I was there for like the entire
transition of the art pipeline andI put a lot of the pieces into place
for the art pipeline transition.
Definitely didn't do it alone, but I satdown and was like, Hey, on a given day,
here's how much money I saved the company.
I'm like, I wrote a script this daythat saved us $200,000 in like one day.
Right.
I'm just like, you know, if we wereto stop everything and have the artist

(01:30:07):
do this, instead, it would've costus this much time based on sort of an
average artist's salary, assuming fiveminutes per job, assuming that they
had zero human error in the process,

John (01:30:18):
wow.

Chris C. (01:30:18):
right?
Like, okay.
So that was, you know, conservativelya hundred thousand, but more
realistically it take 'em 15 minutesto do it and there'd be human error.
So probably more than 200,000, butlet's, split the difference and say
it's about $200,000 for a day at work.
Right.
this sort of gets intothis interesting thing.
As I was sitting there thinking about fairpay and compensation while I was elite,

(01:30:39):
and I realized there's no good way to do

John (01:30:41):
that's what I'm saying.

Chris C. (01:30:42):
And so, cause I sit down and look at, okay, now I'm in a
unique situation where I'm literallya pipeline optimization person.
Like I need to sit down and reallyfigure out what the best bang for the
buck of my time spent at the company.
So I can figure out what I'm saving.
How do you figure out thevalue add of a person?
So one of the things I did atblizzard was I helped transition

(01:31:02):
us into a, a, having a lot morephysics in the, in the wow pipeline.
Okay.
So before we had like a, a camerafacing billboard TASS on weapons, right?
How much extra value does anactual physics dangling tassel
add versus a billboard tassel?
How much value doesthat add to the product?
I mean, I don't know.

(01:31:23):
How do you calculate,how do you quantify it?
Right?
Is it better?
Yes.
How much money is it worth?
No clue, man.
I got no clue.
, I'm gonna go ahead and say, Ithink it's just straight up higher
quality, but how does that qualitytransition into a bottom line?
And then there's also like, oneof the things that I do is I
bring a high morale boost to a

(01:31:43):
team.
I bring a lot of energy.
I bring a lot of energyto the conversation.
I bring the energy of a,of a meeting up, right.
People can come in and be like,oh, and I'm like, Hey guys, blah.
And,

John (01:31:59):
Yeah.

Chris C. (01:32:00):
uh, of a better word, like I bring that energy level up.
How much is that worth of the company?
Right.
how much is higher qualitycontent worth of the company?
Those things are very hard to define.
You have people that are only value addpeople, how do you quantify their value?
Like, I can
quantify my value savings, but Ialso could not quantify my value add.

(01:32:21):
Right.
And so, Hey, I knew from value savingspropositions, I'm, I'm worth around
$250,000 at blizzard on the minimum.
Right.
And that's, I'm, I'm sort of basingthat off of, I'm, I'm outsourcing
some of that value proposition.
Google says that a valuableemployee brings in 10 times
more money than you pay them.
And so if you just look at, youknow, I was kind of doing some math

(01:32:42):
and looking at like the average wowemployee and how much sort of money
that they bring into the company.
I'm like, well,
average, wow.
Employee brings in around two to 10million a year for wow developer.
So, okay.
Let's say that they pay me 250,000to a million dollars a year.
I'm still a highly valuable employeeat a 10 X value proposition.

(01:33:03):
Right.
And I look at, okay, well there'ssome days I save the company hundreds
of thousands of dollars on a day.
So I'm bring, I'm not an average wow.
Employee right.
And so, okay.
Let's say that.
I make that I save the companythat per day sometimes.
Right.
So I feel it's pretty safe tosay I'm worth about 250,000.

(01:33:24):
Right.
and at that dollar amount.
I'm a steel for the company.
Right.
but I'm being paid less than half That

John (01:33:31):
It's a tough one, right?
Because a lot of the value in thebest cases, they can quantify it.
They can measure it on a spreadsheet.
They can be like, Hey,Chris' work saving us.
This, this is his valueadd or his value saved.
But then, like you said, there's a lotof intangibles and subjective things
for being like an energy guy, a teammorale booster, making the workplace
a better place to be at and that'srough to try to standardize that.

(01:33:52):
And, you know, I would argue thatevery single teammate of mine and yours
should be measured differently, right.
At the very minimum, having pay bands

Chris C. (01:34:01):
brings you .So that
brings you an interestingquestion of, okay.
Let's say I'm a senior tech artistand I'm saving the company of
dollars a year, and you have anothersenior tech artist who's saving the
company 10 times less than that.
We'll just make a, an example isif , is it fair to pay us the same?
Don't know.
I mean, so if you're paying us basedon our value add no, if you're paying

(01:34:22):
us based on our title, I guess.
Yes.
But.

John (01:34:25):
and experience.

Chris C. (01:34:26):
Right.
And then, so there's like this wholething of like, again, you can sort of
calculate some of my worth based on valuesavings, but how do you calculate value?
Add how do you calculatethat into my salary?
What I bring to the company.
And that was sort of, I was sittingthere trying to sort of was going through
sort of the logical steps of like, howwould I evaluate an employee's worth
versus how much they're making the money.

(01:34:47):
And it's one of those things,like, there's not a good answer.
There's a couple different ways to do it.
It's like if you could calculatesomebody's value, that would
be a fair way to do it.
And so you talk about salary transparency.
It's like, okay, let's say they'regonna pay me 250,000 a year and
they're gonna pay another seniortech artist, $125,000 a year.
That person now, there's kind oftwo kinds of salary transparency.

(01:35:08):
One is pace structure ofthe company and the other is
literally individual salary Right.
So necessarily have to know howmuch I made to know that a senior
tech artist is making this to that.

John (01:35:22):
Yeah.
Like, uh, I think Amazon hasthat to Amazon has their levels.
And based on what level you fallin and whether you're IC manager,

Chris C. (01:35:30):
Yeah.

John (01:35:31):
know, that square or box has its compensation range.

Chris C. (01:35:35):
I think you start with the salary band transparency for
every position in the companythat people can go, oh, well, I'm
not even being paid in my salary.
That's where it starts at the bare minimumor I'm at the bottom of my salary band,
where

John (01:35:51):
And then you could have conversations with your manager, right.
To be, Hey, what can I do to be

Chris C. (01:35:56):
exactly.

John (01:35:57):
better teammate, a
better contributor, a better employee.

Chris C. (01:36:00):
I always was like, what do I need to do to be
worth more money in the company.

John (01:36:03):
Mm-hmm

Chris C. (01:36:04):
Right.
And I have that conversation in midway.
It went pretty well.
It was like, all right, we'llgive you a mid-level promotion.
You gotta figure outfacial animation for it.
You gotta go figure out face effects,how it worked, how we're gonna
implement.

John (01:36:14):
face effects was just coming into the industry too at that time.

Chris C. (01:36:17):
I sat down and I worked with like some designers on
getting face effects, implemented,figuring out how it works.
I made animations for it, made thefucking blend, shaped trees and ship
for it and all that other stuff and gotimplemented into the dialogue system back
in, what was it, kismet back in the day.
And I got it all worked up and Iwent, I was getting ready to go
in and be like, Hey, I did it.

(01:36:37):
And they're like, all right.
And I also went in and I was like, Hey,I got, I got an offer from a company
in New York, Vic curious visions.
And I'm like, I wanna work here though.
What do I need to do to get a promotion?
And they're like, you gotta do this.
And that was with, John Summers,
I think.

John (01:36:52):
John Summers.

Chris C. (01:36:54):
And so I came back and I'm like, I did it.
And they're like, all right, we'regonna have our conversation next week.
We're gonna, we're gonna,we're gonna get your promotion.
That was the week, man.

John (01:37:04):
The criminal cancellation.

Chris C. (01:37:05):
that Monday was the Monday that they shut down the company or that they
go of everybody accept people on pallet.
Um, ironically, did you know?
I, I ended up,

John (01:37:14):
you come back to work?
Onin?

Chris C. (01:37:15):
so no, actually what happened was when we finished
black site, they're like everybodystarted moving over to criminal.

John (01:37:21):
Yeah.

Chris C. (01:37:21):
Well, again, no one was really managing me.

John (01:37:24):
Uhhuh.
So you

Chris C. (01:37:26):
man, this game looks like my JM, like that game.
Okay.
I was so green.
I was like, I guess you just pickwhat game you're gonna work on next.
So I just went over.
I, I was working with, uh, Tim Wallaceon P and I was just like, it was
me and him for the art pretty much.
And,
I learned so much just goof around.
Like, I'm gonna make a swamp level.

(01:37:47):
And I don't know I'm doing.
And I'm like, oh good.
I'm gonna do some Z brushing, make somestuff, work, some material blending stuff.
and
and
then eventually they realized it took'em like two or three months to realize
I was on the wrong game, tech, artstuff, and environmental tech work.

John (01:38:05):
Two, three months had gone.

Chris C. (01:38:07):
And I was just like, I was over there.
I'm making a final say game it was.

John (01:38:12):
before blizzard.
Yeah, this is before you time at blizzard.
Going back to where it all began andhere you are onto the next chapter
coming up in the Pacific Northwest.
Amazon is a pretty amazing place.
I know that, Amazon game studios had itsshare struggles when I was there, but
I think they're changing things around.

(01:38:33):
Hopefully they startlistening to the talent.
They hire curious to see howyour time will be none that
they actually ship new world.
Right.
I think that was the biggest thing.
Holding them back was actuallygetting a product out there.
Yeah.
I'm, I'm excited to hear youtaking your expertise and live
MMOs into new world and, and makingthat pipeline all that it can be.

(01:38:57):
and we definitely gotta talk aboutthat more in the future, my friend.

Chris C. (01:39:00):
mm-hmm

John (01:39:01):
a couple of closing questions for you.

Chris C. (01:39:03):
shoot.

John (01:39:04):
where can people connect a, you reach out, see your work

Chris C. (01:39:08):
I'm on LinkedIn.
I, uh, engage with peoplepretty well over there.
and on Instagram it's like dirty TechSmith
on Instagram and then.

John (01:39:16):
I'll link your Instagram and LinkedIn on.
On the show

Chris C. (01:39:19):
Yeah, I'm the dirty TechSmith, uh, on, on Instagram, that's mostly
like woodworking, blacksmith things,other working with my crafty stuff.
I'm sort of starting, um, I'm kind ofworking long term on like a, like a,
like a C and C woodworking business idea.
So that's gonna be where I'mgonna start sort of that, but
LinkedIn's probably the easiest,

John (01:39:40):
Yeah.
We'll share that.
That's a good way for people to get a

Chris C. (01:39:43):
you shoot me that if, if, if people shoot me that invite, then
just say like, Hey, uh, sometimes Igive people like, some advice or just
chat or whatever, just put a messagein the, in the, in the invite in the
ad is, you know, that's just a pro tip.
If you're gonna add somebodyyou don't know on LinkedIn,
do it on the PC.
Cuz you can add a little notewhen you go hit that ad button,
you can't do it on the mobile.
If you do it on mobile, you can't, youcan't add the message, but you can get

(01:40:07):
one like 250 word message or whatever.
And so

John (01:40:12):
pro
tip

Chris C. (01:40:13):
the people out there are linked doing LinkedIn.
you're gonna add somebody from theindustry or just somebody cool, just
put a little blurb in there and be like,Hey, I heard about you over here or Hey,
I really like your work or whatever.
Just my little that's my little pro tip
on
LinkedIn.

John (01:40:26):
That's that's a good one.
That's a good one that I thinka lot of people forget about.
And finally, my friend, I want toknow who do you nominate to fall
out of the play area behind you?

Chris C. (01:40:38):
Well, if I just go with the first thing that leaps
into my brain, Matt green,

John (01:40:43):
Matt green.
Woo.

Chris C. (01:40:46):
I just wanna hear from that guy.
He's like a, he becamea ghost after, uh he's

John (01:40:49):
Yeah, man,

Chris C. (01:40:51):
anything, man.
I'm

John (01:40:52):
think he last I heard he was either at Sony Santa Monica working
on some sweet God award systemsor at volition on some saints roll
systems or something like that.
I need to track him down.
Can you help me track him down

Chris C. (01:41:04):
I mean, rusty might be a good

John (01:41:06):
rusty?

Chris C. (01:41:07):
because I think both him and rusty were working at volition.
Right.

John (01:41:11):
Yeah.

Chris C. (01:41:12):
Have you already had rusty on here?

John (01:41:14):
Rusty's coming, man.
Me and him stay in touch and wedid a GDC panel together, man.
That was like a bucket list item.
I will definitely breed bringing him on
in the,

Chris C. (01:41:24):
GC Presentation's on my bucket list too.
Ma'am.

John (01:41:26):
yo you have a lot to talk about my friend.
I, I was, I was just about to endwith this because I usually start with
this and I forgot to ask you, right?
Like I can make up a jobdescription for a technical artist.
That's like super generic.
Right.
But I like to give.
The person doing the job, the opportunityto lay out for people who may not fully

(01:41:47):
comprehend or understand what you do asa pipeline technical artist, or what,
what are you coming in to do at, HGS

Chris C. (01:41:56):
I'm like sort of a, a unicorn within the, the world of tech art,
which is a unicorn, uh, ecosystem sortof, but I'm a pipeline tech artist.
I wouldn' say that tech artistsin general are problem solvers,
creative problem solvers.
And outside of that, they all havetheir own, they're people that empower
you to do things you weren't able to dobefore, or figure out things that no one

(01:42:16):
else can figure out in a lot of ways.
by myself, I grease the wheelsof game development, so to speak,
I'm a little bit tools engineer.
I'm a little bit automation engineer.
I'm a little bit tech artist.
I'm a little bit mad scientist.
my sort of unique, special power withinthe tech art world is looking at very
complicated interwoven systems and makingsense of it and figuring out ways to take

(01:42:39):
advantage of the overlapping madness.
so to speak.

John (01:42:42):
are there any resources that you, know about or frequent for this real.

Chris C. (01:42:48):
I mean, lots of forum stuff.
for me, it's always the, the, thethings that I'm solving are always
sort of bespoke issues that a team has.
Cause it's always like,
how is this team set up?
They've already gotta established stuff.
Are, are they making something new?
What are they trying to achieve?
What are the pillars of their game?
What are their term, medium term,long term problems of how do we

(01:43:12):
wanna address all of those, right.
Coming up with a strategy thatmaps across your short term, medium
term and long term objectives froma game and a studio perspective,
that's sort of where my brain goes,
saving lots of money, removing
tedium and morale, destroyingbullshit from people's everyday lives.

John (01:43:32):
who doesn't like that?

Chris C. (01:43:34):
people.
Talk to me about like, whatis a good tool, good tool.
Not only increases your efficiency,but it's also morale boost.
Right?
You get rid of the stuffpeople don't want to do.
You get rid of the tedious things.
People go, oh shit.
Like when you get, when you get thattask, that's like, Hey John, could you
go res save these 500 fucking things.

(01:43:55):
With this one, checkbox checked on it.
You're like, yeah, I can.
And I'm like, no, no, no, don't do that.
I'll write you a fuckingscript to do that.

John (01:44:02):
Yes.
Morale boost right there.
yeah.
Chris man, this has been a blast, man.
cheers.
Cheers buddy.
Do you have any last
words for the audience out there?

(01:44:24):
How was that very organic free flowing,loosely edited conversation for everyone.
When Chris approached me to do theinterview, he was motivated to bring
awareness to disruptive thinkersand we touched on it lightly.
What stuck out to me wasthe importance of salary and
benefits for the cost of living.
Of where you are based relative to yourexperience and the value you're adding.

(01:44:44):
I saw that that tends to be a majorreason of contention and dissatisfaction
and leaving an otherwise great jobon a great team on a great product.
And it was very interestingtakeaways of pay transparency.
I think there's pros and cons, but.
I'd like to see it implementedand see what happens there.
I know what the pay bands are formy role and level at epic games

(01:45:07):
and am happy before I fall, givenwhat I bring in my seniority.
With a positive outlook for room togrow comfortably without having to feel
like I've got to push to get promotedor die, to see a significant raise.
Do you know, your pay bands andthose of your direct reports.
Would you go to bat for your team?
If you found out that they weregetting underpaid compared to others

(01:45:30):
on the team doing similar work.
Secondly, while Chris is thesecond person to openly discuss
his neuro divergence after Murraymeasure wall back in episode 26.
We don't deep understandinghow it can really serve him
or require more effort of him.
I purposefully kept the chime travelediting to near zero and kept the

(01:45:50):
timeline of the conversation intact.
Curious, how was that to follow?
Do you have friends, relatives,or acquaintances that jump
around from topic to topic?
But are, or are not able to bring it back.
When I'm at work, I've gotten muchbetter about flowing with people to
get to the thing we're trying to solve.
But I'll admit in my youth earlier inmy career, I was much less patient.

(01:46:14):
And even in college and school, Andalways nudging to keep a teammate
moving forward along the track.
That made sense to me.
With disregard for them andthe way they optimally work.
I honestly believe that the more I talkto people on the show and coworkers and
colleagues in this industry and learn moreabout these classifications, the more I'm
seeing people's self diagnosed themselves.

(01:46:35):
And.
It helps to recognize their superpowers and how to bring it out to them.
And create that Optimal working space.
I wonder how it feels working from home.
Versus being in the hustle and bustle inthe office, I'll admit that I tend to get
more distracted at home with the demands.
Around me, especially now with a baby boy.
And thinking that I could be moreproductive in the office, but then

(01:46:56):
on second hand, I think that it wouldbalance out with my around the clock.
Availability and the commute time savings.
We didn't geek out aboutpipeline tech, art.
Like I would have hoped becauseI don't know many of them, but
that just means there's room foranother one of you to come on the
show and talk about your craft.
I honestly believe formyself in a different life.
I would have gone into tech art.

(01:47:18):
I think tech design isn't techartists, a cut from the same
cloth with distant cousins.
And.
You know, we just venture intodifferent areas of specialty by luck.
On episode 38.
Oh, the game does podcasts.
We'll sit down with Claude Jerome,a lead game play designer at
firewalk us subsidiary studiounderneath probably monster is
based out of Bellevue Washington.

(01:47:39):
you have to listen to that episode tounderstand their interesting dynamic.
He's done systems designedfor bungee on destiny and is a
fellow tech designer by nature.
Who's worked at project sparkat Microsoft game studios.
Worked for our carriers, visionson handheld and also a fellow
game devs with color expo speaker.

(01:48:00):
We'll discuss his journey in game devall the different hats and jobs that he's
worn, how he approaches leadership andhow the heck probably monsters operates.
make sure to follow us so that youdon't miss out on that episode.
Thank you for listening, Deb.
If you found this episode informative,I ask that you pay a link forward to
a developer to help grow our listener.
If you're a game developer with astory you think could help a fellow dev

(01:48:23):
out, please go to out of play area.comand click on the Calendly link at
the top to meet up, please make sureyou get approval from your manager
or studios, PR HR team beforehand.
Out of play area, the game developers,podcasts releases, new episodes every
other Monday on all the major players,including Spotify, apple, and Google.

(01:48:43):
Please make sure to follow us, to seewhat developer falls out of the play area.
Next time.
I'm your host John Diaz untilnext time devs stay strong.
Stay true.
Stay dangerous

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Chris Cole | Senior Technical Artist @ Amazon Game Studios | Ep 37

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Chris Cole | Senior Technical Artist @ Amazon Game Studios | Ep 37