All Episodes

March 28, 2022 110 mins

On episode 29 we sit down with Jason Jurecka, a Lead Software Engineer at Visual Concepts, who just released WWE 2k22 laying the smack down on the competition. He’s a fellow Full Sail Alumni who I had the pleasure to work with at R* San Diego on Red Dead Redemption 1 and GTA V, and who has worked with damn near all the heavy hitters in the game from Blizzard, to EA on Battlefield, to where it all started at Big Huge Games on Catan & Rise of Legends.

Chapters:

  1. (00:00) Who is Jason Jurecka?
  2. (13:12) UGC Tools for Wrestling Games
  3. (23:07) A Day as an Engineer
  4. (35:36) Coming Up in a Small Texas Town
  5. (46:23) Finding the Right School for Comp Sci
  6. (56:58) Unpacking Burnout
  7. (01:04:42) Tools & Pipeline Engineering at Rockstar
  8. (01:12:44) Final Project at Full Sail
  9. (01:21:02) Schools of Engineering
  10. (01:31:15) Final Round
  11. (01:45:57) John's Final Thoughts & Teaser

 

Episode Resources:

Support Humanitarian Relief for Ukraine (epicgames.com)

Jason Jurecka’s' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-jurecka-9362182/

Visual Concepts’ Careers: https://vcentertainment.com/careers/

Connect with the host: http://elkingpin.com 

Show: https://outofplayarea.com 

Learn more about Full Sail University https://www.fullsail.edu/

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
John (00:00):
What's good devs after Inscryption cleaned up
at the game developers choiceawards and the homey Osama
subjected us all to his never-endingpuns that, you know he's
been writing for way too long.
And even with will Smith smacking thetaste out of Chris Rock's mouth for
mentioning his wife and getting a muchwell-deserved Oscar for king Richard.
While those are great distractions.

(00:21):
Let's not forget that there isa war going on in Ukraine that
is still leaving shockwaves.
I'm proud to say that the home teamEpic has been donating proceeds from
Fortnite since March the 20th runningthrough this week to April 3rd
to humanitarian reliefaid for people affected.
As of last Friday, we raised70 million us dollars.

(00:43):
Let's keep it going.
Additionally at the requestof my guest on this episode.
I'll mention that Jason comes onto theshow to share his own views and solely his
use, which do not represent that of hiscurrent employer or any former employer.
Now hit my music.
On episode 29 of the gamedeveloper's podcast Out of Play Area.

(01:07):
We sit down with lead software engineerat Visual Concepts working out of LA
who just released WWE 2K22 layingthe smack down on the competition.
He's a fellow Full Sail alumniwhom I had the pleasure to work
with at Rockstar San Diego on RedDead Redemption 1 and GTAV.
And he's worked with damn near all theheavy hitters in the game from Blizzard

(01:28):
to EA working on Battlefield to where.
It all started at big hugegames working on Catan and
Rise of Nation Rise of Legends.
On this one, we'll talk about.
What day in the life, what itmeans to be a lead working on user
generated content tools with WWE2K22, we talk about what led him
into programming from starting bytinkering with computer hardware.

(01:51):
And we dive deep into burnoutand unpacking that, and then
talk about everything that goesinto pipeline engineering, build
resource management and all of that.
Hailing from Weimer, Texas, please.
Welcome
Jason Jurecka
Let's fall the fuck out.

Catherine (02:10):
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

John (02:34):
You're actually the first pure engineer that comes on the show.
I think I've had a few people that wereengineers and then made the transition
to design or production or other things.
But you stay true to your roots.
I always find a surprising I'm like,yo, why would you leave engineering?
That's like the most money, mostcontrol, all the good stuff.

Jason J (02:52):
Yeah.
I mean, I have a kind of just love theproblem solving that is presents itself.
the day to day is essentially you'resolving problems and that is something
that's always been interesting to me.
I have, you know, had a, an inkling oflike, oh, if I make my own game, I'll be
the designer and all this kind of stuff.
And like, thinking about like howsystems interact with each other.

(03:13):
And then I start to kind of constructit and I'm like, man, I'll really
want to write the code for this.
So it turns into like building theprogramming layer as opposed to
being super deep into the design.

John (03:24):
I'm always interested to see how people find their passions
because I always look at it likeI can't do what you do and then
you can do what a lot of us can.
But you ended up gravitatingmore towards the code.
So I liked that aspect ofwhat we do in game dev.
Like everybody has a superpower.

Jason J (03:39):
there are things that I've been amazed by just having
conversations with designers.
Like I have crazy ideas, justlike every designer does.
And then when I start to discussit with the designer, they come at
it with many different perspectivesand many different options.
And I'm like, man, I didn'teven think about that.
several times I've talked withdesigners that have done interviews
and they'll, discuss about whathappened in their interview.

(04:01):
And they'll be given like a task,like, Hey, come up with a boss fight

John (04:05):
yeah,

Jason J (04:06):
they'll like, go like, okay, well, what is the theme of the game?
What is all the like, stuff thatneeds to happen in the boss fight?
Like how many beats doesit take to beat this boss?
Like usually you'll have morethan one form of the boss.
You'll have kind of the initialone and then you'll cascade into,
oh, this is the more urgent one.
Or as the health progresses downwards,it's like, okay, now he does different

(04:28):
moves or, you know, just seeing kindof someone's eyes light up and their
brain just electrify when they startthinking about all the possibilities
they could do there is really cool.
I mean, I, I definitely do nothave that spark that happens when I
think about those types of things.
I think that more of it as a, okay,I have a boss, so that means I need
to have a boss that has a lot of HP,uh, or I have a guy that has a lot of.

(04:53):
You know, varied attacks, but how theykind of interweave into each other is
more that designer mindset that it wouldtake me longer to come up with than
some of the other people I've talked to.

John (05:05):
have you ever done a design interview out of curiosity?

Jason J (05:08):
I have not

John (05:09):
How are engineering interviews?
I'm always daunted by white board coding.
You know what I'm saying?

Jason J (05:16):
it depends on where you go.
you know, in general engineeringinterviews can be asking you a bunch
of, uh, asset Terek kind of questionsthat usually you don't necessarily
deal with on a day to day basis.
I've definitely had those questionswhere they ask you very specific,
like, uh, syntax things about thelanguage that you're programming in.

(05:37):
And if you get it wrong,it's a strike against you.
one that commonly comes up and iskind of on all the, like, prepare
yourself for these interviews.
Things is, invert a binary treeand for a lot of people in their
day to day, they don't do that.
and some of the, motivation of aprogrammer interview, Gotten farther
into programming is to kind of see howthey solve a problem, as opposed to them

(06:00):
being able to regurgitate an answer.
but a lot of interviews really havestagnated on kind of those very specific
type of questions that are more formulaic.
And they aren't actually like,Hey, I'm figuring out a problem.
some of the best interviews I've everhad have been things like, Hey, we're
going to solve this problem together.
And either it's like theinterviewee and the interviewer

(06:21):
are solving the same problem.
or if there's multiple candidates,you're teaming up with those multiple
candidates and coming up with an answer

John (06:29):
Well, that makes so much more sense to me because that's actually
what the day-to-day job is versus acompletely hypothetical situation,
which, Hey, you're going to have Google,you're going to have your compiler.
You're going to have IntelliSense andall that stuff to like, study or look
up what you need to get the job done.

Jason J (06:46):
And sometimes, maybe as your confidence grows in your ability, it's
okay to tell someone like, I don't know,
but I would look it up.
Like, that's somethingthat I learned later on,

John (06:56):
that's a viable answer.
tHAT IT is an actual viable answer

Jason J (07:00):
Cause I'll just be, I won't try and be fake it.
Like, I'm going to be very honest withthe interviewer and say like, I haven't
done that or I haven't heard of that.
Or, I have dealt with that many yearsago, but I have lost kind of the, the
math, uh, algorithm that I need to use.
And so I would have to look it up

John (07:17):
it's funny.
That confidence thing, for sure.
When I was first starting out, Ithought that I had to have all the
answers and I have to figure it out.
And if I couldn't figure it out, right.
I was just kind of steppingthrough it and stumbling harshly.
And then yeah, as you get moreexperienced, you can talk to, oh,
I've actually never done that.
This is how I mightapproach it but you end up

(07:38):
asking more questions, right.
Like to help clarify or doalternative versions of it for sure.

Jason J (07:43):
sometimes I have definitely failed interviews by kind of saying
over and over again, like, you know,sorry, I haven't dealt with that.
Or I don't know that, like I hadone interview with a company that
they were more in the non-gamesector and they wanted, me to
basically build a, a dice role,
kind of thing.

John (08:00):
Okay.
Let's do it.

Jason J (08:02):
And I haven't done that.
So they were like, Hey, so what do you do?
I was like, okay, well, you know, Iwas like, we'll get a random number.
And like, you know, I was basicallystepping through it as though I was
just new at doing these dice rolls.
When you know, someonewho's a gameplay in.
Would have had a lot more exposureto like, okay, I'm doing random
numbers and things like that.
So they would have more knowledge onbeing able to like quickly come up with,

(08:25):
alright, we have to do random numberand then put these probabilities on it.
And these kinds of modifications to it.
And I didn't have it at my fingertips.
So I was like, well, I'd have tolook it up or I'd have to, you
know, Hey, I haven't done that.
My day-to-day hasn't focused on that.
I didn't get offered the job,but at the same time, it's
like, I was honest with them.
And, you know, that's something thatas I've gotten older, I've definitely

(08:47):
tried to just be honest with them becauseI don't want to hide and say like,
Hey, I know how to do all this stuff.
And then I show up the first dayand they're like, Hey, do this.
And I'm like, uh, I've never done this.
So just being honest is somethingthat will get you farther
than what then you think.

John (09:02):
for sure.
I can't imagine luckily gettinga job and then you're not at
all suited for the day to day.

Jason J (09:08):
it is something that I've seen other engineers try and do.
Like, uh, like you were saying,when you first got in and you were
interviewing, uh, and if you weredoing technical interviews, you're
like, I have to have the answers.
I have to have all the answers.
And a lot of the Information abouthow to get a job as an engineer
is about having all the answers.
Like you have to know everythingto the most minute machine level,

(09:31):
just to even get the interview.
When what you're going tobe doing is editing HTML.
my interview at rockstar was likethat, like I was interviewing and
they were asking me all kinds ofquestions about maitre CS and, data
structures and all kinds of stuff.
And I was answering them and then itcomes out my, my job, my first day, it
was like, oh, you're going to edit HTML.

(09:53):
And I was building out like internalwebpages to display, like build results
or fix bugs in that HTML, when the jobdescription didn't say anything about
HTML and, you know, I was like, okay,well let's just solve the problem.
And you know, it kind of worked out.
I mean, they were surprised that I wasfixing things, but at the same time,
I was like, you know, you hired me tosolve problems and that's what I'm doing,

John (10:17):
It's funny for Roxanne was definitely grateful to not have been
too far removed from my collegiate, likelinear algebra and sohcahtoa and finding
hipot nooses and thought products.
And,

Jason J (10:28):
cross product.

John (10:29):
cross product.
Yes.

Jason J (10:30):
And that's, that's another thing that usually gets thrown out
as default boiler plate questions.
Like those types of.
Right.
The formula to do a dot product or writethe form enough to do a cross product.
And those are things that you can look up
And as an engineer, knowing how touse it is what you're looking for,

John (10:49):
yes, exactly.
I've been able to survive interviewsnarrowly in mentioning, Hey, I
don't remember the exact formula.
I can't write it for,
you, but I know that I would usethe dot product to get me a valuable
that lets me know what side of thething I'm on or the degrees that
I need to turn towards something.
You know what I'm saying?
Okay, cool.
So given that, how would you use it tofigure out that you got to point the

(11:12):
camera over here at this thing that'sshooting at you or something like that?

Jason J (11:16):
Yeah.

John (11:16):
Ah, so happy to be well, well, well removed from those days,

Jason J (11:21):
That's one of those things where a little bit of knowledge can help.
in my career I've been in roles where I'vehad to interact with content creators,
and that's something that usually is arough spot for engineers is they aren't
able to translate their highly technicalspeak into something that a content

(11:42):
creator is gonna understand very well.
I've straddled that linemy entire career and.
Really liked it.
Like, I really do like sittingdown and talking with a character
artists and looking at the texturesthat they're drawing and like how
they have it set up from a artisticstandpoint, as opposed to just the
nuts and bolts of like how a textureis compressed or something like that.

(12:04):
The same with designers, like sittingdown and like saying like, okay, well,
this is how the system is going to work.
And like, how are you going to use it?
And what would you like to do?
And, you know, I haven't had thosekinds of problems as far as I know.

John (12:15):
that common vocabulary is so helpful, right?
Whenever we can speak with you aboutsome of the ways that we would approach
what we're trying to do and vice versa.
When you come sit with us, see howwe're going to try to do something.
I'm sure it informs how you buildsomething out or how you architect it.

Jason J (12:34):
yeah.
And there is sometimesa miscommunication there

John (12:37):
That will always happen.

Jason J (12:38):
you know, there's what you say and what the person
hears and then what they intend.
And I've definitely been in that trianglewhere you're trying to like, make sense
of what they're asking for, and thenyou try and interpret it and present
them with, Hey, is this what you want?
And then there'll be like,no, I didn't want that at all.
And
you know, so there is a give andtake there when, when dealing with.

John (13:01):
Miscommunications will happen.
They will happen a lot, no matter howhard we try and type to each other
and write emails and many layers ofapprovals, they're going to happen
J so I have no clue where theheck you are at currently.
What you've been up to all this time.
Where are you at now?
What are you doing?
What's your role?

Jason J (13:21):
uh, so right now I am at, visual concepts, LA
the LA studio in Angora Hills.
I am a lead software engineer,uh, working on all of the creation
tools, for the, WWE franchise,

John (13:34):
Ooh.

Jason J (13:35):
the two K WWE.
I'm building out a group toactually provide a tool set to
content creators out in the world.
it's a in game, but also kind of a toolsthing, which is really in my wheelhouse.
And I've done all the tool sidefrom the backend side to, you know,
presenting tools and editors to usersand shipping those types of things.

(13:56):
So this is really kind ofa interesting, opportunity.
I think of it a lot, likebuilding out RPG tools.
Like if you think of a Skyrim, you cancustomize your character a little bit.
And things like that.
the tool set that we'reproviding has a lot of options
that are much more surprising.
Intricate than what, I have dealtwith when dealing with kind of like

(14:16):
RPG makers and things like that.

John (14:18):
Is it because there's just so many different parameters and things to tune
and tweak and look at and select from

Jason J (14:24):
yeah.
and there's also multipleways to interact with this.
So not only is it something where youcan create your own character, you can
create arenas to host matches, you cancreate your own, championship belts.
You can create like your own, shows,but it's effectively like, so if you saw
Like Monday night raw or something likethat, you can create your own version

(14:45):
of that, where you set up the fightersand you set up the, the arena that it's
going to be in and all of that stuff.
So there's not onlyjust character creation.
There's like this universe ofthings that you're able to create.
I have played a lot of sports,sports games, and I've only really
played the, my player kind of modes

John (15:03):
Yeah.
Which
RPGs, right.

Jason J (15:05):
yeah, they're RPGs.
And I've found that those modes aremuch more narrow in scope than the, two
K WWE version is like, and I've playedlike the, MLB the show mode, and you
can create your character and you cankind of customize a face and whatever.
You don't really get to createlike their outfit and you don't
get to create the ballparks thatyou're in and things like that.

(15:26):
I think, MLB 2021, this year'sversion does have a ballpark
creator that you can use.
and you can create a franchise typething where you create a fantasy
baseball team and then you can putit in a league, but there's a lot of
rules that define that scope game.
Like you have to play baseball.
The field has to be a certain size,uh, and your player has to have a

(15:49):
certain kind of normalcy about them.
Like they have a face, youcan't change their uniform.
Like the uniform is, is kind of,is kind of static for that team.
but in the WWE world, like all thatstuff is kind of customizable and you
can kind of create a character that wearsall kinds of crazy outfits and kind of
create arenas that, you know, given thetemplates that we have, you can create

(16:12):
a Rina's that have different displayson it and videos and all kinds of stuff.
So it's quite a expansive tool set.

John (16:19):
it's been a while since I played a wrestler and I was such a big fan
back in the Nintendo 64 days, andeven some of the Def jam fighters.
but Yeah.
it totally reminds meabout this crazy world of.
I think I'd spent the longesttime creating a wrestler, right?
Cause you pick each and every oneof their moves, you assign stats and
then your own you're building thephysical, but then even the costume

(16:40):
is a whole other thing, right.
It's essentially a whole other avatarwhen you can wear full body suits.
And, then yeah, you're designingstadiums, your entrance music,
your video, your dances.
That's crazy.
Your taunts.
That's wonderful.

Jason J (16:55):
And, all that stuff is in game, which typically is stuff
that, you know, you and I've dealtwith more as an external game thing.
Like the content creators in studioare actually doing an internal editor
and whatever, but this is all in game.
And now you have thepublic also contributing.
So there's like a large communitythat is, contributing, created content

(17:16):
that they're making on their own.
And like putting up on a, on effectivelya download store, the store doesn't
actually require any money or anything.
You can just download it, but it'slike a shared space where people
can share their characters and theirI've seen like kind of crazy ones.
Like people will build like,presidents or they'll build like
Muppet characters or superheroes.

(17:37):
And they'll kind of post themup there and people can download
them and use them in their game.

John (17:40):
That's the best man.
Self-expression usergenerated content, right?
Just gives your game.
a whole other tale.
You really don't have tobuild battle passes and season
passes and updated content.
When you give users these tools tokind of build the content for you.
So it's super smart.

Jason J (17:56):
Yeah, I've definitely watched a few streamers.
as I was heading into this product, I waslike, oh, well, what does that entail?
And I watched a couple of people thatthey have full on YouTube channels,
where they, for one, they stream like thestory mode as they progress through it.
But then they create their own story.
they use the tools in the game to make,a progression for their character.
And then they, as part of thekind of voiceover for their,

(18:19):
YouTube stream, they'll tellthe story, like what's going on.
And what's the motivation here?
Like what are the stakes?
And it's really cool to see them do that.
And I'm like, man, that's a pretty coolthing to have available for players.
And there's surprisingly got largernumbers of these content creators
that do this stuff with every game,they'll make, new versions of the game
and they'll tell their own stories.

(18:39):
And coming in and being able to kind oflead the effort to drive the future of
those things is an exciting opportunity.

John (18:47):
Yeah, it brings two questions to mind.
One, it's always surprisingto me how, as a corporation.
That I'm sure build similartypes of things, right?
Like create a player and NBAtwo K is different from creative
player in WWE two K whatever.
And you would think that youguys would talk and share tech
and like build each other up.
But usually what happens isthe tech is super different.

(19:10):
It's super proprietary.
Only works for the typeof game you're building.

Jason J (19:14):
Yeah.
I mean, there needs to be an effort toallow for those types of things to happen.
if you're going to do that, most ofthe time throughout my entire career,
you've gotten these, in these scenarioswhere the engine that's being used is so
unique for whatever game is being made.
That, that flexibility isn't there.
I've worked in the past withengines like frostbite and, with,

(19:36):
the rockstar game engine and with,uh, lumberyard or CRI engine,

John (19:40):
You're welcome.
And

Jason J (19:41):
Yup.

John (19:42):
oh shit.

Jason J (19:43):
And all of those engines are built not as
generically as you would like.
have a very kind of wheelhouseplace where they are,

John (19:50):
Like first person

Jason J (19:51):
yeah, it's a first person shooter and they do it really well.
or, you know, you'll see thingslike, Some ability to do some
open world, but it's not to thelevel of rockstar, which rockstars
engine was, it was builton OpenWorld, everything.
And so games that are more levelbased, such as a, max Payne three

John (20:10):
Yeah.

Jason J (20:10):
are actually just streaming in everything as though it was
a rockstar, open-world game.
They just don't fade up the screenuntil everything is triggered as loaded.
Whereas a, in GTA, you'll drop in andthe immediate area around you is loaded.
But then as you walk around theworld, like more of the world
is loaded and things like that.

John (20:29):
That's the biggest thing with open world games and I
guess what separates them, right?
It's like, how good is your loading?
How do you, what do we call it?
Fragment your data or chunk of fight.
And a lot of these engines cameat it from the other side, right.
They kind of came from these linearcorridor based or level based experiences.
And then for them to retrofit everything.
Okay.
Now we're going to basicallyour open world is just a bunch

(20:50):
of levels that load together.

Jason J (20:53):
Or a gigantic level.

John (20:55):
Or a gigantic level.
Yep.
Like a persistent level with manylevels in there where they get like,
very clever with how they placetheir sight lines and buildings.
Right.
So you can't see beyondthis mountain or something.
So you could just unload that level.

Jason J (21:11):
Yeah.
And a lot of that cameout of the groundwork.
That was the doom games and the quakegames, like all of that was built
around kind of these corridors andwhatever to hide the loading because
as the famous quote goes, we arelimited by the technology of our time.
nowadays we have a lot more powerfultechnology and so we can be a
little bit more open and it's okay.

(21:33):
Now problem is with alltechnology, a content creator
is going to fill that hole.
Like if you give them a little bitmore time, they're going to say,
oh, well I can put more stuff in.

John (21:41):
or you tell us, oh, don't worry.
You don't have to clean up your mess.
Right.
It's
all Right.
else will do

Jason J (21:46):
So efficiency sometimes falters in that, in those, uh, those cases.

John (21:51):
You ever seen that shit where this, like you're shipping the
game and there's a bunch of randomstuff near the origin of the world.
Just eating up memory.

Jason J (21:58):
Oh yeah.
I have debugged that a lot.
So red dead.
That was one of my things I was, I wouldgo there and I would find all these things
and then find out where they came from.
Then talk to the environmentartists and be like, Hey,
there's a bunch of stuff here.
whoa, what does it need it for?
And sometimes it's useful to do that.
So for example, if you're tryingto spawn in something for a random

(22:20):
event, you can preload all ofthe things that you want to draw.
for an example, like red dead, you wantto draw a wagon, that's broken, you want
to draw a fire, fire pit, and you wantto draw like some horses or whatever
that are, you know, falling over.
you can preload all that stuff andthen kind of have it at the origin.
So if it does draw like it's underneaththe world, no one can see it, And then

(22:41):
when you want to display it, you can justpop it over there and you don't get kind
of this, problem of like, Hey, it's tryingto draw in the same place that it's trying
to spawn and all that kind of stuff.
now is that the best option?
Probably not.
You shouldn't be drawingit if it's not ready yet.
But you know, sometimes there area lot of ways to get at something
which makes it difficult to say like,okay, I'm going to lock down this

(23:02):
one way for you to open this door.
It's like, no, there's like 15ways to get beyond that door.

John (23:07):
as an engineer, as a lead engineer, what's the typical day
today, like, How would you cut up thepie of time spent with designers time
spent managing time, spent codingtime spent with producers or artists?
Yeah.
What's your typical day?
Like?

Jason J (23:21):
So it all depends on the size of your team and kind of the urgency
at which things need to get fixed.
the engineering lead alwayswants to kind of be coding cause
they're a coder first usually.
typically you'll kind of doa lot more adminy stuff that
helps free up your reports.
So then they can do work.
so you'll be the bug triage as bugs comein and you was say, okay, well, let me

(23:42):
look at this and make sure that it isa bug, for us or for some other team.
you also do things where you'relooking at a larger spectrum of
problem as opposed to a narrow focus.
for an example, if something is havingtrouble loading in a game you might be
looking at well, are there other placeswhere this is not loading as well?
Or is it unique to this scenariowhere we're trying to use it?

(24:03):
or you're looking for kind of nuancethings that aren't as functional as
that you wish they were like, Hey,you know, you're supposed to be
able to move this slider and thensomething changes on the character.
Well, if I move that slider.
Does it move very, very slowly.
Does it move very, very quickly?
And you're trying to kind of teaseout some of these things that are

(24:23):
like, well, it is functional, butit's not as friendly as it could be.
and that day to day can be unique perkind of company you're at and kind of what
your mission statement is for your team.
for some companies, the lead engineeris essentially just the person that
doles out the bugs, they get thisinflux and they're like saying, okay,

(24:45):
well, you're gonna work on this.
You're gonna work on that.
And then depending on the seniority,uh, structure of their team, they
might also be kind of a mentor, uh, tothe, uh, younger group of developers.
Uh, if it's a super senior team,then they may be kind of just like a
coordinator where they're just kind oflike, oh, well, you're going to work on
this and kind of chunk it over the walland be like, all right, he's got it.

(25:06):
and then there's other companieswhere that lead is now kind of more
abstracted from the day-to-day coat.
there are some leads that don't getto code much at all, because they're
going to meetings, they're talkingwith design or art, coordinating
all of the desired, options.
And then kind of like saying, okay,this is the priority list for us.
This is what we need tofinish first and second.

(25:28):
and then there's a planningelement as well, cause.
If you're in a studio that doesagile, there's two weeks sprints.
And you're like, okay, after this,we're going to get this stuff done.
And then you're like coordinatingwith each contributor to say
like, Hey, what did you get done?
The stuff that you didn't get done,can we move it to the next sprint?
Or do we need to move that into abacklog and say like, Hey, you know,

(25:48):
this actually was downgraded in priority.

John (25:50):
It's funny.
you mentioned agile.
I've never been on a game team that doesnot do agile or claim that they do agile.

Jason J (25:58):
it is a bit of a buzzwordy type thing.
and then some of that depends onwhat your production leadership is.
I know that production reallyhas, at least for the studios
that I've progressed through.
They've become more and more,friendly to the agile mindset.
But I don't know if you knowthis, but you and I kind of went
through the game industry as agilewas discovered and implemented.

John (26:19):
that's true.

Jason J (26:20):
when I first started there, wasn't kind of this agile thing.
It was
like, Hey,

John (26:25):
like, this thing has to be done before this thing
could be done before that

Jason J (26:29):
yeah.
And there, there definitely waslike, Hey, we have milestones.
And those milestones had like, theseare the things that we need to get done,
but there wasn't that like, okay, thisregimented like, okay, these are the
things that we're specifically focusingon and kind of the stand-ups and all
that kind of stuff that wasn't as.
when I first started at all and as youknow, at rockstar, we never did that.

(26:50):
I never did any of that.
It was like, okay, you have your buglist and you work through your bug list.
My role here at rockstar, I definitelyhad a lot of people that were, day-to-day
kind of coming up to me asking for help.
And so I ended up, you know, not reallyusing the bug list as much because
there would be the walkup things.
And so I had two lists, I had thewalkup list and then I had the bug list.

(27:14):
eventually I got to a cadencewhere I would kind of do what
you do at a, uh, butcher shop.
I would give people numbers

John (27:20):
take a ticket.

Jason J (27:21):
yeah, take a ticket kind of thing.
And some of that isalso you're triaging it.
Like you say, like, Hey, youknow, what's your problem.
And how urgent is it?
Like, Hey, I can not work or whatever.
And then I would kind of say like,okay, well, this is my list of things.
And you're going to fit in right here.
And I would give them a number andsay like, okay, this is where you are.
Uh, and I had, at some point, uh, some ofthe content creators would come up to me

(27:43):
and say like, Hey, What number would I be?
And then, you know, I was, Iwould give him a number like, Hey,
you know, I got six things aheadof you or something like that.
And they say, okay.
And if it wasn't like, Hey, I cannot work.
Then they would either come back.
Or they would say like, Hey, you knowwhat, I'll write it in an email or I'll
make a bug for it or whatever it is.
And that helped mitigatea lot of the juggling.

(28:06):
but at the same time, like there iskind of those things that immediately
jumped to the top of the list where that,you know, supersede all of that stuff.
And then someone comes over andlike, Hey, I was the number one item.
And you know, where's my fix.
And you're like, well, thisthing over here is on fire.
So, uh, you know, you have to wait

John (28:20):
Rockstar was an amazing place, especially when we came in, because
for me, I had probably one year ofexperience under my belt before I got
to rockstar, I had shipped one gameand so getting to rockstar, seeing
the power of the tools, I really feltlike I had a lot of autonomy, there
was never, ever any shortage of work.
Right.
You said, right.
Bug lists, just keep coming.

(28:41):
But we were essentially up, it was up toyou how you wanted to tackle that load.
Right.
And to them, it was, Hey, as long asthings are getting done, they're happy.
They will be very in your face,the second something wasn't
done that they needed done.
Right.
And it, it might not even be your fault.
It might've just came right then andthere like five minutes before you didn't

(29:03):
see your email and they're in your face.
Like, yo, where's this,I need it yesterday.
Right.
after going through that experience,I became super good at balancing like
a hundred different things at once.
Right.
And spinning multiple plates.

Jason J (29:16):
I definitely understand where you're coming from on that.
there were a lot of times wherethere was the negotiation.
I have definitely had people comeup and say, Hey, where's my thing.
And I'm like, well, I'mworking on this right now.
And they're like, whyare you working on that?
Well, because X
either, they'll say, oh, okay.
Or whatever.
there had been times that were kindof surprised things, as well as
like, Hey, this is coming tonight.
So we got to have it.
And you know, there is a element of,dependence that, you know, you kind of

(29:40):
continually going through and checkingoff the list triggers and people will
say, oh, well, obviously he's goingto fix it now because he's here.
And while a short term gameis not a longterm benefit.
that's, that's something that I'msure both of us experienced, with
some of the kind of deluge of issues.
I've experienced it at other studiosas well, where it's just like,

(30:00):
they just keep giving you stuffand you know, it's like, oh, well,
yeah, I can stay or I can do this.
And it just hasn't ended.
The best when you allowthat to happen for too long

John (30:11):
And now that you're a lead, curious how you're applying your experience
to the way your team operates, right?
Like how many reports do you have?
How do you manage that?

Jason J (30:20):
right now I'm actively building a team.
So I
have a very small number ofreports, but I will be adding more.
And when you add those people, youare supporting them in a way to
where, when you ask them to go dosomething that is a little out of
the ordinary, it's not a problem.

John (30:41):
Okay.

Jason J (30:42):
So there, there is a mindset that comes in there for leaders.
you want to be able to ask someoneto join you in the foxhole, but you
can't ask them to do it every day.
if you do that every day, then they'rejust going to get run down with
like, well, you know, everything isjust blowing up all over the place.
There's no real kind of consistency here.
There isn't really a plan and itcan be very frustrating for people.

(31:03):
the thing that leaders should do, and I'mtrying to do is make it to where, when I
asked for something out of the ordinary,it isn't the ordinary, I'm asking you
to do something, stay late for this, or,Hey, can you really focus on this problem?
Because.
It's something that is going toget us the benefit, that we need,
but it's not an everyday thing.

(31:23):
I am balancing that request for yourtime over the time to fix something.

John (31:30):
that sounds ideal.
I'm curious where you learned that

Jason J (31:33):
this is a personal learning thing actually.
cause most of the companies I've everworked at, they just keep giving you
more and as I got older and you know,you add a family and children, like
there are moments that actually strikeyou and you're like, Hey, you know what?
I really need to focus anddo something different here.
a anonymous anecdote was I was workingat a company and we were working a

(31:56):
lot of hours and one of the producer,people was hanging out with me and
he was working a lot hours too.
one morning I came in and we werekind of just doing the morning banter
thing and he relayed this storythat I was like, oh, well that, that
actually like struck me as a person.

John (32:14):
Is this Ricky or Kockler?

Jason J (32:16):
I said, anonymous.

John (32:18):
I just want to know who it is so I can give them their flowers.

Jason J (32:21):
Uh, it was concolor.

John (32:22):
Shout out to Dave.
I got to get him on the

Jason J (32:25):
Yeah, you do.
He would be a very interestingperson to, to deal with.
he's one of the better, one of the bestexecutive producers I've ever worked with.
And I would love to work with him again.

John (32:36):
Did you guys overlap at blizzard?

Jason J (32:39):
he never worked at blizzard.
He worked at Activision,he was on the call of duty

John (32:43):
Oh, okay.
I bet I
knew it was under that umbrella.

Jason J (32:46):
he did show up a couple times at the studio so as Battlenet
we were hosting call of duty.
And so he showed up a couple of times.
So I had lunch withhim, like once or twice.
Yeah.
But what he said was, he wenthome and we go home really late
at night, like two, 3:00 AM easy.
And he had gone home and he found hisson splayed out on the countertop,

(33:07):
just passed out and he woke his sonup and he said, Hey, you know, why
didn't you go to bed, blah, blah, blah.
You know?
And he was like, I was waiting for you.
I didn't have a child at thatpoint, but I was like, man, I
don't want to do that to my kid.
Like, I don't want to have them likestaying up super late, kind of having
these, break your heart moments wherethey're like, I just wanted to see

(33:28):
you, but you've been gone so much.
that was one moment where I wasjust, was like struck by that.
And I was like, okay, I need to beaware of what I'm being asked to do.
And I need to be more aware of thelimits that I would like to impose.
as a lead now, I definitelywould be more cognizant of that.
a lot of leads will kind oftake the perspective of, Hey,

(33:51):
if I can do it, you can do it.
And that isn't true for everyone.
Elon Musk is very famous for kindof sleeping in his office and like
always working and all that kindof stuff, but he has the ability to
do it and not necessarily have itaffect his general outlook on life.
and, and that's somethingthat not everyone can do.

John (34:13):
I'm with you, bro.
I'm a believer in lead by example,but that has evolved today, it's
not about showing your team thatthis is how work needs to be done.
Follow my example.
much more that two way communicationfor me to understand how do I get
the best work out of you and thenenable that and set up mechanisms

(34:35):
that make that a possibility dayin day out versus, do what I do.

Jason J (34:40):
Yeah.
And, you know, there are a lotof different personalities that
we've dealt with in our careers.
There are those people that just,they can't turn it off and they're
just constantly working and, you know,that's what they love and they're
not happy unless they're doing that.
And then there's those thatlike, come in, I punched my time
clock and at five o'clock or sixo'clock I walk out and I'm done.

John (35:00):
but it's a tight shift of solid work.
You know what I'm saying?

Jason J (35:03):
Yeah.
And now there have been studies thatkind of give you perspective on like,
you know, when the work day starts todegrade into like you're actually causing
more problems than you, are fixing.
there are multiple studies that showedthat that was a number around 10 hours.
Like if you work more than 10 hourson average, statistically speaking,

(35:24):
you are causing more problems.
Intrude the product then if yousay, okay, I'm gonna cut it off at
this time and come back at it freshafter sleeping and having a moment.

John (35:34):
Facts.
yeah.
10 hours straight, for sure.
I want to go back there's a lotthat I don't know about you,
Jay, where is home for you?
Where did you come in?
How did you even get into games?

Jason J (35:46):
I am from a very, very small town in, Texas.
the town is called Weimer.
If you've heard of it.
one of the 50 peoplein the world that has,

John (35:54):
How big is it?

Jason J (35:55):
the town is, was struggling to be at 2000 people.
When I lived there, it dippeddown to about 1800 now.
we have two full on stoplights thatblink, you know, yellow, green, red,
and then we have one Blinky lightthat blinks yellow or red, depending
on the direction you're coming from.
we are on interstate 10, which has beena lifeline for the town, because we have

(36:17):
truckers that stop and things like that.
Uh, it's halfway between Houstonand San Antonio on interstate 10,

John (36:22):
So
people generally migrate to those cities.

Jason J (36:25):
Oh, yeah.
Houston has kind of grown out a long way.
San Antonio has more grown towards Austin.
Uh, the corridor, which you'reexperiencing Austin, you know what is.

John (36:35):
Yup.
Yup.

Jason J (36:35):
that's kind of where we are right in the middle of nowhere.
And, to be honest, there's not alot of access to some of the things
that you would get in a city.
my parents were always encouraging meto learn things and my, grandparents
were always telling me to learn things.
but I didn't actually startprogramming until I went to college.
It was late eighties, early nineties.
I started to show interestin things like computers.

(36:58):
Um, my dad and my mom were bothkind of encouraging technology.
Like they saw the value in it.
And so there was like, okay, well we'regoing to go get a family computer.
And of course I was like,well, what games can I get?
we had a, a 3 86 the games onit were games that you had to
kind of convert into dos modes.
So you couldn't run windows 3.1, youhad to run dos and then you had to flip

(37:21):
some of the drivers on the audio device.
So then it would play throughthe sound blaster audio card.

John (37:28):
Creative sound blaster.

Jason J (37:30):
Oh yeah.
that's something that my mom would.
And I didn't really care about it.
Cause I was like, give me the games.
Like that level of kind of fiddling withthe machine, I was not as interested in.

John (37:40):
that's pretty awesome.
That both of your parents, yourmother and your father were tech
savvy back in those days when likecomputers were not everywhere.
my mom and dad shot, I was there.
It, you know what I'm saying?

Jason J (37:51):
yeah.

John (37:51):
know how to operate those things.

Jason J (37:52):
Yeah.
I mean, a little bit more backstoryon that is my, dad actually has a
degree in electrical engineering

John (37:57):
Oh, there you go.

Jason J (37:58):
my mom has a degree in chemistry.
and she became a school teacher, for allmy sciences, I had her so shout out to
miss J so he always tinkered with stuff.
Like at one point he was holding downfive jobs when I was a kid, like really
young, like I wasn't able to walk oranything, but one of the jobs was like
he was working at a television repairshop and he was fixing televisions

(38:20):
and fixing, anything that had like, aprocessor board in it, that type of stuff.
we had that stuff around the house,like just, you know, old processor,
boards, vacuums and stuff like that.
So it wasn't something that washidden from me in terms of like,
dealing with kind of technology, butit was something to where it was.
I wanted to do the thing with it, asopposed to like, mess with the internals.

(38:41):
Like I wanted to play games or Iwanted to watch a show if it was a
VHS player or something like that.
And I didn't really careabout how it worked.
I just wanted it to work.

John (38:49):
So I can start to see games on the 3 86.
It was already kinda set up for you,so you didn't have to figure out the
instructions or how to set it all up.
You said that you didn't get intoprogramming, a tape, got to college.

Jason J (39:02):
Through high school, I started to get more interested in
the, more it hardware side of things.
And our school got a grantfrom the government, uh, to
build out a computer lab.
So it was like, well, would you like this?
build the computers.
And I was like, okay.
And I would set them upand get them working.
And I started to feel that inklingof like liking the internals

(39:22):
of how stuff worked together.
And I would like make Frankensteinmachines, like I would like open
it up, add extra Ram, add morehard drives, you know, just random
stuff just to see what it would do.
now I know there's a lot moreinto just like, instead of just
plug and play, there's like morethings to do, but at the time it
was like, okay, well what can I do?
And get it to work.
And like shell shove more Ram in shoving,other floppy drive in and shove, like

(39:43):
more hard drive space and just to seewhat it would do, It was something that
actually became very easy for me to do.
I could visualize it in my head,how the pieces fit together and it
was easy for me to understand it.
so when I was thinking of like,what am I doing in college?
It was like, oh, well, I like this, youknow, it's simple for me to understand,
like, why don't I do computers?

(40:04):
I had never been reallytaught a programming language.
so I, senior year of high schoolin Texas, they have a thing it's
an academic competition series.
So
Effectively it's like a sportscompetition, but for, academics.
And they instituted a programmingone, like my senior year.
And, you know, because I had been messingwith all the computers or whatever,

(40:26):
you know, people were like, oh, well,you should do the programming thing.
and me and my best friend,we're like, yeah, sure.
We'll do it.
And so they're like, okay, well thelanguage for this is C plus plus.
So here's a book, go learn it.
so me and my friend were messingaround with stuff, but we
didn't know what we were doing.
Like, we didn't reallyread the book very closely.
We were just fooling aroundwith computers and making them

(40:48):
like, count for hours on it.
They like, you know, incrementing in aninteger or something over and over again.

John (40:54):
if you were anything like me in high school, the only real
books I read were comic books, man.
So you can give me a book that says,Hey, here's the meaning of life.
And I'm just like, I'mgoing to skim through it.
Try to see if I can get anything I need.
And then just it aside.

Jason J (41:07):
I will admit, I did not like school at all.
that is kind of thedichotomy of my existence.
I love learning.
I love being taught new things.
And when I ask someone about themselvesor their history, I am genuinely
interested in learning about you,your experience and your history.

John (41:23):
That's true.
I'll

Jason J (41:25):
But I hated school so much.
I did well enough.
Like I wasn't like a, you know, adropout kind of guy, but wasn't the
star student, It just never reallyinterested me as much as, you know,
my school teacher mother would like,

John (41:39):
what happened with the competition?

Jason J (41:40):
so we sat in the room and I was doing C plus plus, and like, it
felt easy to understand, like I couldunderstand what was going on, like syntax
of language, how you construct things.
It became kind of the same kindof feeling as putting together
those Frankenstein computers.
He was like, oh, I take alittle bit of this here and
put a little bit of that there.
And I could understand it.

(42:01):
now I didn't realize that untillike right before I took the test.
So I didn't do well on the test, butafter I was done, I was like, yeah,
you know, this is kind of interesting.
and maybe I'd like to learn more about it.
I then was like looking at kind ofuniversities and what do they have?
And things like that.
And at the time there weren't awhole lot of programs that were just
like, Hey, you know, you're doingcomputer programming the whole time.

John (42:22):
Well, computer science is a popular curriculum at
most engineering heavy schools.

Jason J (42:28):
it is, but it's also very difficult to get into and this actually
was a Texas a and M university.

John (42:34):
oh yeah.

Jason J (42:35):
I tried to get in and engineering at Texas a and M
university is very highly lauded.
So it was very difficult to getinto the computer science program.
what I got into was the computerengineering program, which is
much more of the hardware kindof interactions of things.

John (42:50):
It was the same thing for me at my state school in New York.
I want computer engineering becauseI don't know those were the buzz
words I would hear all the time.
and so I'm sure that worked in myfavor because it was a lot less
popular compared to comp sigh.

Jason J (43:03):
I started there and my whole like problem with school kicked
in again, and I wasn't able to getto the things I was interested in
fast enough,

John (43:12):
Yeah.
They're going to give you all kindsof low level foundational stuff.

Jason J (43:15):
it wasn't even like I was doing computer stuff.
It was like, okay, you'redoing all your Englishes.
You're doing all your kind of maths

John (43:22):
Yeah.
Discrete math.

Jason J (43:23):
you're doing your, other things that aren't kind of working
on these computer things that you'relike, Hey, that's what my degree is.
So why am I not working on that?

John (43:30):
And they don't look anything like games,

Jason J (43:32):
Yeah, they don't at all.
And I took a C plus plus classmy first semester, or maybe
it was my second semester.
I did well in there.
one of the things that reallykind of triggered me as like, Hey,
maybe I should do programming.
instead of computer engineering was,our class is teacher was stuck in India
due to some sort of visa problem.

(43:52):
And so for the first, like half of thesemester, we were getting taught by TAs.

John (43:58):
which I'm sure we're not good teachers.

Jason J (44:00):
they were not, but they were, you know, moving at a, pace
to where I knew what was going on.
Like all of the homework they gaveyou, like, I could do like real
fast, like I was able to do it.
And it just made sense.
it was interesting, cause the teachercame back after a while or they got
their visa thing figured out andhe just came in and just started
teaching the curriculum as though wewere caught up to where he would be.

John (44:23):
Ooh,

Jason J (44:24):
he came in and the first thing he started doing was pointers.
And we had not beenexposed to pointers yet.

John (44:29):
God,

Jason J (44:30):
and he was just like rattling off stuff and like, Hey, what'd you do this?
And you do that.
And eventually one guy inthe classic raised his hand.
It's like, what are you talking about?
And
yeah, and me sitting in the class.
I was following him, like Iunderstood what he was doing and I
don't know why it triggered in mybrain because I had just been doing
random, like programming on my own.

(44:51):
And I knew that he was going a lotfaster than the TA's, but I was like,
oh, well, this kinda makes sense.
I understand what you're kind of doing,but everyone else was kind of lost

John (44:58):
a lot of people struggle with pointers and memory
and D referencing, right?
Like, Hey, is this a copy of that thing?
Or am I looking at the actual value ofthe thing and why is it not changing?

Jason J (45:08):
yeah.
That is something that's definitelypart of the programming test too.
You know, it's like, you go withlike, well, what is a pointer and
what do you, how do you use it?
And, you know, those types of things

John (45:17):
those syntax tests.
kind of jerks, right?
Like they throwing things at you thata compiler would catch right away
that you wouldn't even have to thinktwice about, how they're all taught.
Right?
Like they try to makesure that, you know, this

Jason J (45:30):
that's one of the things that I think is maybe a little, too heavily
weighted nowadays, because we havetools that tell you Hey, don't do this.
Or, you know, this, thisis not going to compile.
but that was kind of the programmingtests that I had were those kinds
of oriented things where you would,fix up something on paper and then.
make sure that you havethe syntax right on paper.

(45:51):
but anyway, given that I would didfairly well in that class, I got, I
think, a B or something in that class.
So, that was something that was like,man, I did really well in there, even
though it was like this mad rush tothe end, and it really kind of drew my
interest and I was like, oh, well maybeI should have done computer science.
then I was like, okay,well, what if I transfer?
So I went and talked to the, youknow, the advisor and whatever.

(46:11):
And they were like, well, you can'ttransfer to that degree because
your other classes aren't highenough and GPA or whatever it is.
So you can't actually move over therebecause they require a certain level.
I ended up leaving Texas a andM like I finished my first year.
And then after that, I was like,yeah, I'm not interested in this.
I'm done.
I remember the moment my dad sittingout with me on the porch drinking a Dr.

(46:33):
Pepper and he goes, sowhat are you going to do?
And I had spent some time and I waslike looking at other programs and
it's like, oh, what is this schoolthat doesn't offer a four year degree?
They offer a two year associate, butit's very focused on doing the work.
Like it's more a tradeschool type of setup.
and that school was, uh, Texas statetechnical college, uh, which had a

(46:56):
business oriented programming class aswell as a, computer hardware program.
And, you know, the, the ego getshurt when you don't really get to
do the thing that you wanted to do.

John (47:06):
Absolutely.

Jason J (47:07):
So I was like, well, I can do everything.
And so I went in and signed upfor both degrees and tried to
do both degrees at the same.
that was difficult.
but I also wanted to get outof there as fast as possible.
So every semester, including thesummer semester, I loaded up my docket
with every hour that I could get.

John (47:26):
So you double majored.

Jason J (47:28):
I did double major, and at one point, I got a job
as a pizza delivery driver.
And at the same time I was takingfive different programming languages,
because they taught Vinny differentones as part of this program.
And that was not fun.
I had tests where I actuallywould get the right answer,
but I would switch the language
and syntax.

John (47:48):
a coding language is still another language, right?
you're training your brain tothink in this world or syntax.
And it's going to get confused if you'relearning the things all at the same time.

Jason J (47:57):
it was tough.
my teacher was a really good teacher.
shout out to Rodney cortico.
he was a really good teacher.
He really was excited about doingprogramming and it helped inspire me to
do it even more he was also cognizantenough to recognize the strain that I
had put myself under, saw that I wascoming to class kind of extra tired.

(48:18):
Uh, I was doing all the work, somy, my academics weren't suffering,
but I was tired and I wasn't asenergetic and things like that.
And then one time I delivered pizza to himand he answered the door and he was like,
oh, this is why you having showing up theclass kind of tired and things like that.
Cause you're, you're doing this jobas well on top of, you know, doing

(48:38):
the crazy workload that you're doing.
And you know, that, that was a momentthat was very poignant in that it
showed that someone cared and Iwasn't just a number for the school.
Like they were like, Hey, your wellbeingis, something that we care about.
And so it kind of stuck with me and Ibecame friendly with him, as well as
another teacher named Susie walk-ins, whoshout out to her as well, who, actually

(49:00):
got me to switch into the gaming world.
I was about done with my degree, my twodegrees at Texas state technical college.
And she, had worked at acompany that did GBA games.

John (49:14):
Vance.

Jason J (49:15):
I was like, you made games.
How did you do that?
How did you get into that?
And it was like, I barraged her witha bunch of questions and, you know,
gave me the, you know, well, youknow, this is what I kind of fell
into this, or this is what I did.
And so I ended up finding out thatthere were colleges that actually
specialized in teaching games.
and at the time there were two, there wasfull sale and there was, up in Seattle,

(49:39):
full sell being in Orlando, Florida area.
so I was like, oh, well,that's really cool.
I want to do games.
all of my projects in schoolwere essentially game oriented.
Like I did a whole like, Englishproject where I was like pitching
a merged kind of game that waslike, two games that I really liked
playing and merged them into one.
And I was like, pitching it aspart of a presentation that I

(50:00):
had to do in that English class.
It was like, uh, I don't know, it'spublic speaking type thing or something.
I don't
know.

John (50:04):
was the game?

Jason J (50:05):
it was a game called, uh, championship manager, which is now moved
to football manager as a name and FIFA.

John (50:13):
Oh, so it's like manager mode, like the team

Jason J (50:16):
It is, but it's much, much deeper.
Like those of you out in the audiencethat have played championship
manager or football manager knowthat it is quite an elaborate game.
and FIFA had a manager mode but the.
For this game is way, way beyond FIFA.
Like they have leagues inthere from all over the world.

(50:37):
They have multiple lower tiers andall of the, all of the leagues and you
simulate, like all of the games yousimulate, you can set up tactics in
the game and you you're essentially amanager, but you can buy and sell players.
And there's a lot of likemedia interaction and there's
a lot of stuff in that game.
I still play that game.
I still play the newerversions of that game.

(50:58):
It's, one of those things whereit's kind of a turn-based game.
So it makes it to where it's a littleeasier for you to click it and then walk
away and do something else and come back.
it's a game that just draws me in becauseI building my own story in my mind.

John (51:10):
So Susie Watkins is the reason you found out about full sail.

Jason J (51:14):
Yes.
and, during my final project andI had been inspired by her, I was
like, you know what, I'm gonnahave a degree in computer science.
Let me just try and get to a game company.
And at the time, there was the age ofempire studio, that was in, Dallas area.
that studio no longer is there.
I don't believe, but they didage of empires and age of empires

(51:35):
was a game that I played a lot.
And so it was like, oh, well,I'd love to work with them.
Uh it's ensemble studios, I think.

John (51:41):
Ensemble.
There we go.

Jason J (51:42):
Yeah.

John (51:43):
I was racking my brain.
I was like,

Jason J (51:45):
Yeah.

John (51:45):
the hell is it?

Jason J (51:46):
I was like, oh, well, I can obviously get a job over there.
I'm a computer scientist person.
I can program a computer.
and so I emailed them and was like,Hey, or I'm about to graduate.
And I'd like to know, like whatopportunities you all y'all have
available, you know, what kind ofthings can I do, what kind of things
are you looking for in a candidate?
And they basically sent me back,Hey, we're looking for, do you

(52:09):
have 3d experience with, direct X?
And I was like, well, no, youknow, I've done business software.
Like there's no directX and business software.
I was a little disheartened bythat because I was a quality,
obviously I can, I can figure it out.
I mean, problem solving and whatever,but that seemed to be at the time, a
lot of the gold standard was, do youhave experience with direct X, every

(52:31):
position, gameplay, audio, whateverit was like, do you have experience
with direct X, uh, or open GL?
that led me to try and do it myself.
I was like, oh, I'll buy a book and I'lltry and figure out direct X on my own.
And as I was doing it, I was like,you know, this is all in my free time.
I'm working a job as well as doing this.

(52:51):
I really would like tohave a more focused.
Kind of time for this.
And so because of Susie, I had kind oflooked around as well at those schools and
looked at Japan and looked at full sail.
And oddly enough, the thing thatled me towards full sail was the
shorter length that you had to do.

(53:12):
So full sail was offering a twoyear degree, that you could do.
And I think 15 months is what they call
it.

John (53:18):
the associate's 15.
The, bachelor's like 21.

Jason J (53:22):
well, so they didn't even have bachelor back
then.

John (53:24):
you were,

Jason J (53:25):
Oh yeah.
Um, wailed, and then, I looked atdigit pan and it was a four year school

John (53:30):
an expensive

Jason J (53:31):
and expensive.
And I was like, man, this didn'twork out for me before, when I
went to Texas a and M like, I don'tknow if I want to do it again.
Plus I'm now moving to theNortheast, uh, where, you know, a
much farther away from my family.
And so if it fails, like it'sgoing to be really tough.

John (53:47):
yeah.
like Orlando, the flightis like an hour and change.

Jason J (53:51):
Well, I drove

John (53:52):
Well, it's drivable,

Jason J (53:53):
It is driving.

John (53:54):
Texas is, Seattle's a
tough drive.

Jason J (53:57):
that's a big, of a drive.
There's a mountain range in the way or
something, my girlfriend at the timewent with me to go visit the school.
We flew out and visited theschool and we wandered around.
And as you know, full sail, they have alot of pomp and circumstance that they do.
there, there weren't as manybuildings as when you were there

John (54:13):
Did you just have the one side?

Jason J (54:14):
it was one main building.
And then they had just taken over part ofthat, strip mall where the Wendy's was,

John (54:21):
Yes.

Jason J (54:22):
just taken over just part of that.

John (54:24):
my God.
That Wendy's bro.

Jason J (54:26):
oh yeah, we hit up that Wendy's all the time,

John (54:29):
nuggets.

Jason J (54:30):
yeah, the school, I did the tour and they were showing me around and
at the time, there was this mystique oflike, Hey, you know, one of the creators
of D and D is one of the teachers here.
And so, yeah, Dave Arnesonwas a teacher there and they
were like really hyping it up.
And I have to admit, I wasn't reallythat dandy cause I didn't have

(54:51):
a group of friends to play with.

John (54:52):
me neither meaning they would, they would tell him about this guy.
And I was just like, Yeah.
I mean, show me the games,

Jason J (54:59):
there was people that were like, I have to go to this school because of him

John (55:02):
Yeah.
It's a great recruiting tool.

Jason J (55:04):
they were definitely hyping that up and they had a lot of the very nice
looking classrooms and things like that.
And they, you know, gave you a laptop to
work
on and all this
stuff.

John (55:13):
cutting edge and modern, that
was
the biggest
difference I noticed when I went to visit
it.

Jason J (55:16):
you know, after we were done, my girlfriend at the time
looked at me and said, if youdon't come here, you're crazy.

John (55:21):
Wow.
She told you that.

Jason J (55:23):
yeah, I mean, I was on the fence because it was a thing where,
you know, I never really thought Iwould leave taxes to go somewhere,
like to get a job or whatever.
I would figure that I would go toAustin or Houston or San Antonio.
You know, that's normally kindof the extent of the, the bubble
of life in, in my area is usuallyyou kind of go to those cities.
and so I was like, oh, well,you know, do you think?

(55:46):
And she's like, well,you have to come here.

John (55:48):
What was it that gave that impression?

Jason J (55:50):
there were two things.
One was that, I had been talking to herbefore about like, I want to make games,
but then as we were there in the school,they were hitting all the right notes,
saying like we're focused on making games.
we want people to make games andthis class, we teach you programming.
And this class, we teach youhow to do the graphic stuff.
And this class, we teach you abouthow to set up a story and, we help you

(56:14):
with your resumes and all this kindof stuff that was like checking all
the boxes of like, man, that's goingto get me that job at ensemble easily,

John (56:20):
Yeah, dude,

Jason J (56:22):
you know

John (56:22):
they told you you needed to know?
full sail is going to teach you.

Jason J (56:25):
Right.
And so it was like, okay, well make sense.

John (56:29):
how many degrees on the belt.

Jason J (56:31):
I had only one because I stopped two credits short of getting
my second I burned myself out and thatwas the first time I burned myself out.

John (56:40):
A thought you thought you would've learned.

Jason J (56:43):
yeah, I would've, I thought so, you know, it's, it's one of those things
where I look back and I go, well, youknow, maybe I should have stayed and done
it, but I think the decisions that I'vedone in my life had led me to where I am.
And so I can't argue with the outcome.

John (56:57):
absolutely, bro.
I want to unpack burning out.
How do you know you've burnt out?
And then what results from that?

Jason J (57:05):
So for me, it was a lack of motivation,

John (57:08):
You just drained?

Jason J (57:10):
basically I would co in school do my programming
classes, then go home and program.

John (57:17):
Oh yeah.

Jason J (57:19):
it'll then go, go to work and, you know, all that kind of
stuff, but I would do it all thetime and I just couldn't stop.
Like, it was just, I was interestedin it and whatever I was doing, I
was like either fiddling with thething that they had in class or
trying to make up my own things.
Like I started like looking at thegames that I liked and trying to
replicate systems in there to saylike, Hey, you know, uh, tic-tac-toe

(57:42):
for example, like I want to maketic-tac-toe or I want to make solitaire.
And so I'd kind of try and do thosetypes of things as I was learning.
And then, you know, it just became athing where I was doing it all the time.
And eventually it just was too heavy,doing the homework for five different
programming languages, doing the labwork for five different programming

(58:04):
languages, doing the home stuffthat I was doing, plus working and
then doing any kind of gaming at all
And trying to hold down a relationshipwith a girlfriend at the time,

John (58:13):
something had to give

Jason J (58:15):
had to give and I lost kind of my motivation to do that extra stuff.
Like I would do my classwork,cause that was kind of my job.
Like my job was to do school but all ofthe extra stuff, the things that I was the
most passionate about and the things thatwere like, I want to do this for a job.
I just didn't want to do it in.

John (58:32):
that's it, man.
As you talking about thisthing, it's hitting home.
I empathize with you 100%, right?
Like the thing that excitesyou and motivates you, it's a
complete 180, like, fuck this.
It

Jason J (58:43):
Yeah.

John (58:43):
the same effect and well, cause you overdid it.

Jason J (58:45):
Yeah.
that's something that I didn'tlearn the lesson from the first
time, but I definitely learnedthis lesson from the second time.

John (58:54):
There.
There are those of us who are much morethick scold, and it takes a few times
for the message and lesson to hit home.
And that message would be more thanhappy to keep punching you in the
face until it finally sinks in.
What happened on the second time?

Jason J (59:07):
Well,
the second time I was employed to do a job

John (59:10):
Oh, that is very different.

Jason J (59:12):
I had no motivation to do that job.
And so now this isaffecting your livelihood.
I never got to a point where myperformance was degrading to the
point where kind of management steppedin and was like, Hey, what's wrong.
my own motivation was just not there.
Like I wasn't as passionate and I wasn'tas interested in doing all of the things
that I had done leading into that,

John (59:34):
will you hourly

Jason J (59:35):
they're in a second time.
Yeah.
Salary plus,
Overtime.
So.

John (59:39):
Damn Jay you're opening up some wounds, right?

Jason J (59:42):
Yeah, it can hurt.
but the thing is, is you needto be honest about that hurt.
that's something that I'venever really been good at.
I've always been very private.
I've always been very guarded.
I've always kind of had that,for lack of a better analogy.
Like the kid that gets pickedon at the high school, in the
movie, like I was always the guythat got shoved into a locker.
Did I ever get shoved in a locker?

(01:00:02):
No, but you feel like that, likeyou feel like you're not part of
the crowd, you're not cool enough.
You're not part of this kind ofculture that is like revered, like
the party culture or whatever.
So, being honest about, Hey, Idon't feel okay or I, don't have
this motivation anymore is scary.

(01:00:23):
And so admitting it to otherother people is really hard.
there's a lot of times where you dealwith things on your own that you don't
really show with other people and itmakes it to where sometimes people
that aren't necessarily as engagedwith you don't see that in you.
And it becomes a, point where you getmore isolated because they're like, oh,
I want to hang out with that person.
They're just a, they're aDebbie downer all the time.

(01:00:44):
But in reality, like you'rereally struggling with stuff and
you're just not talking about.

John (01:00:50):
yeah, man, I grew up, you know, I had my basic needs taken care of,
but definitely felt poor financially.
And so being in a situation whereit's like, here's more money to do
more work to me, it was like, oh mygosh, I have no business complaining.
Like I need this money here they aregiving me more of it for my time.

Jason J (01:01:12):
yeah, it's a bit of a drug.
never without, like, you're, like,you're saying like I never did
without, but when you're lookingat your history, you're like, you
know what, we weren't that well off.
And my parents admitted to me morerecently that we weren't that well off,
but I never really felt it as a kid.
Cause

John (01:01:30):
Never felt that.

Jason J (01:01:31):
either you don't know any better or the person that got whatever
thing that you would like to have.
You rationalized it as like,oh, well I can get that later.
Or you know, my parentswould save and get stuff.
So
there was like, oh, wellI'll save up and get that.

John (01:01:44):
Yeah.
I had, my Nintendo had
my game
systems.

Jason J (01:01:47):
have a Nintendo.
I didn't have a lot of thegame systems, but a friend
of mine
did

John (01:01:51):
got a sweet PC

Jason J (01:01:53):
well, sweet kind of it had a turbo button.
So you knew it went
fast.

John (01:01:58):
overclock as sucker

Jason J (01:02:00):
but it was a thing where, you know, I never knew
the actual perspective of we werekind of in that financial realm.

John (01:02:07):
and that's a great place to be, right.
Like that

Jason J (01:02:10):
Yeah.

John (01:02:10):
of just like, Hey, this is my normal and life is good.

Jason J (01:02:14):
Yeah.
And there wasn't any kind of like,we're not going to eat if, or, you know,
we're not gonna, we don't have power if,
or we don't have clean water.
If
so.
Yeah.
And I was, I was very lucky to have that,but there definitely was a, Hey, everyone
else had a lot more things than me.
And, you know, I, I learnedthat a little later.

(01:02:36):
get that perspective a little later.

John (01:02:38):
I was watching something with Minecraft dude notch,

Jason J (01:02:42):
Yeah.
Notch.

John (01:02:42):
he's on the other extreme, right?
Like, here's enough moneyso that you never have to
worry about money ever again.
And he ended up in asituation where he felt alone,
right?
Like the money, put them in a space thatnot a lot of people could relate to.
He's still his same self, youknow, looking to make the same
connection you used to make onlineand share his thoughts with people.
And, but.

(01:03:02):
They essentially canceledhim and dismissed him.
Like, Hey man, you have noplace to feel sad or complain.
You're a billionaire.
How dare you?
And that's crazy right.
You know, he's stilltrying to make connections.
Same way he did by building Minecraft.
But, Hey man, that's, uh, anotherconversation that I can sum up by
saying, always know your why, whyis it that you do what you do?
And.
First, you know, On theother end of that spectrum.

(01:03:25):
but still to be like themoney no longer motivated.
You neither did the work,It was just over done.

Jason J (01:03:33):
Yeah.
And at the time when I was doingthat, I had a girlfriend, a
different girlfriend than the onethat told me to go to full sail.
But, I wanted to spend time with her.
I wanted to see her and like mypriorities shifted a little bit.
Cause it wasn't just, oh, I'm goinghome to my kind of communal apartment
with, you know, my roommates.
It's like, no, I wantto spend time with her.
So that made you start addressinglike, how long am I at work?

(01:03:57):
Like how late am I staying?
And you started missingout on things on occasion.
Like, she would call me and be like,Hey, me and a few of the friends from
the, her work are going to have dinner.
Would you like to come?
And I'm like, I can't or,Hey, we're going to go to St.
Patty's day party.
Can you come?
And I'm like, I can't.
And you know, it started to kind ofbe like, well, what am I doing here?

(01:04:18):
Like, why am I here by myself,wishing to be with someone else?
And so it, it changed perspective.
and I was heading into a space whereI did end up burning out again.
like, it was difficult to get up and getin to work, but there was that motivation
there of like, Hey, you know, you have todeliver because that affects your money.
That affects your abilityprovide for yourself,

(01:04:40):
like food on the table and rent.

John (01:04:42):
you also had a pretty key role on the team

Jason J (01:04:47):
So my role at rockstar was one of two tools, engineers that were
supporting the local team of 300 andthe remote kind of extra worldly team of
600 plus because we had north helping usand we had, uh, new England helping us.
And we had, I think,

(01:05:08):
uh, Toronto and I think QA or someonein, uh, New York was helping us as well.
And so we had all these studios thatneeded to work with our systems and,
you know, they've, they've now shifted,but at the time, uh, San Diego studio
had its own version of the rockstar gameengine, its own version of the, uh, tools

(01:05:31):
to build content and to produce content.
So of that stuff was kind ofbe supporting, being supported
by myself and another engineer.

John (01:05:39):
Yeah.
I think the role modern day isreferred to as like a build engineer.
really?

Jason J (01:05:43):
maybe, that was part of my role.
at other companies, I havedefinitely been taken aback by the
specializations and breakdowns of therole that I actually did at rockstar.

John (01:05:54):
Which had like five different

Jason J (01:05:55):
Yeah.
So there was like the build engineer,there's the tools programmer, there's
the, pipeline engineer, which isdealing with kind of the content.
And then there's also a resourceengineer which deals with kind of
translating the created content intothe stuff that gets shipped on disc.
all of those were part of my job.

(01:06:17):
And so when you go to other companiesthat are a little bit more split
up and there's like, oh, well thisguy just deals with the bills or
this guy just deals with the tools.
why did both of those jobs, like, you
know, yeah, yeah.
that is also kind of a luxuryitem that some studios don't have,
like if the smaller studios youstart wearing those multiple hats.
so it, wasn't a thingthat I was not used to.

John (01:06:38):
what was some of the ways that you were able to kind of motivate yourself?
What were some of those interactions with?
Maybe some other coworkersthat kind of like reinvigorated
you, riding kept you going.

Jason J (01:06:49):
as many Marines will say, it's the person next to you being in.
Foxhole with you thatmotivates you to move forward.
I was lucky enough, but also kind of hadthe problem of, there were people around
me that were in the same kind of boat.
there were several engineers that Iworked with that were kind of there
all the time and they, were familiar.
They were, friendly to me, at the office.

(01:07:11):
And, you know, there wasone engineer that we had.
It was like a, a joke where, okay,tonight you're going to stay.
And he would go home earlyand then tomorrow he'll say,
and then I'll go home early.
And, you know, we had little kind ofcomradery banter around that those
are the people that made me kind of beable to going and had the motivation.
Cause I didn't want to let them know

John (01:07:31):
That's what I was going to say.
on that team, on that product, abig part was that band of brothers
feeling right for better, for worse,there was a lot of us in the trenches.
You could say definitely dependingon each other, but also not wanting
to let each other down, you know,and trying to all work towards
making the best product you can make.

Jason J (01:07:49):
a lot of companies are trying to integrate.
They're trying to create that scenario.
And there is a fine line therefor leadership to walk because
you want to create that comradery.
Cause you get great communicationor great collaboration out of like,
Hey, we're have a shared goal.
We're all working towards things andI trust you to work hard and you trust
me to work hard, but there's also likejust throwing more and more work at

(01:08:12):
you and not letting you take a breath.
some companies don't do it very well.
Some companies do it a lot better.
I don't think there is a companythat does it perfect yet, but
there is a onus on leadership tounderstand that and to progress
towards making it as good as possible.
And that's knowing the trade-offs likeknowing, like when I asked you to come

(01:08:34):
do this thing to stay late, like you willdo it, but it's not because I'm telling
you to is because you want to supportthe work that I'm doing because I'm
supporting the work that you're doing.

John (01:08:44):
I love it.
J we come back around full circleto the lessons learned that you
bring into your leadership styletoday many, many years later, right.
Trying to create an environment that'sconducive to that mythical work-life
balance and games thing, and, leavingthe industry better than when we got in.

Jason J (01:09:02):
so my wife is a, uh, cardiac ICU nurse and they take a Hippocratic oath.
And essentially what that boils downto is a simple phrase, do no harm.
And so as an engineer,I take that as well.
Like do no harm, like when I dosomething, make a change to something,
it doesn't bring down the product.
It makes it to where itis functional and running.

(01:09:24):
And while it may not be thefinal thing that you want,
like there may be bugs in it.
It does not cause catastrophic failure.

John (01:09:31):
Okay.
So

Jason J (01:09:32):
uh,

John (01:09:32):
your self-imposed.
Oh.
As an
engineer.

Jason J (01:09:35):
I mean, I've definitely read other books where kind of people
have alluded to kind of like havingthat professionalism around you.
And that's something that is interestinga as a debate in the programming
space, especially in games, becauseTerminology is more around, well,
I'm a hacker or I'm a programmer
or whatever,

John (01:09:53):
it's move fast.
Right?
Move

Jason J (01:09:55):
yeah.
Or, I'm an engineer, butgeneral, we should be striving
to be professionals at our job.
And that for many other jobs entails,you know, some of those certifications
and things, but there's also kindof a mindset that comes with it.
you know, when you're, when you'reprofessional at your job and you're doing
your job, when you say something is goingto get done, you work to make it get done.

(01:10:17):
If it doesn't get done, yousay, Hey, it didn't get done.
But here's why, when you are tryingto communicate with someone about
what they're looking for, you'rerespectful of what they're asking for.
You're taking in kind ofwhat their expectations are.
And then you're honest withthem about kind of results.
Like there's, there's a lot of memewhere the things where it's like

(01:10:38):
the, the production side is saying,oh yeah, yeah, we got this done.
And the engineer's sittingthere going, like, it's going to
take me four years to do this.
And you know, so there is aprofessionalism that needs to come in.
when you do that and as an engineer, I'vetried to strive for that professionalism
and not all engineers do that.
it's more a personal thing.
but it is something that allows me tobuild trust across different disciplines

(01:11:02):
much faster, because I am able to say,I deliver this and it actually gets
done, or I say, Hey, it didn't work out.
Here's why, let me work withyou to make it to where you
can get some of what you want.
Or I can tell you, this is the timeframewhen this thing can be available.

John (01:11:19):
That's the best thing in a teammate, right?
Just constant communication, helpingus figure out the expectations
what's going to be delivered andspecifically a value an engineer, right?
Someone whose work kindof enables a portion.
If not the entire gameto come to fruition,

Jason J (01:11:37):
yeah.
And that is something that's a littlestrange as well is, a lot of the engineers
that work on projects, don't, aren't kindof touted as the flashy, like bane plates.
Like you'll have a lot of designersthat either get kind of the
flashiness or certain programmersthat do a specific thing.
if you say John Carmack in the gamingworld for programming, like you
really know, oh, that guy, like he

(01:11:59):
is a name.

John (01:12:00):
map a face.

Jason J (01:12:01):
Yeah.
And you know who he is, youknow, kind of his contribution,
but that isn't always the case.
And there are a lot of engineers thatare very talented, that can contribute
to, you know, every product every day.

John (01:12:13):
Yeah.

Jason J (01:12:14):
And so something like a slack, for example, has engineers
that cut that contribute to it.
And those engineers aren't.
Front and center like,oh, they're super awesome.
It's like, no, the product is there.
And internally they may be gettingkind of kudos, but they don't kind
of, you would say, run the redcarpet and get, star lifestyle.

John (01:12:34):
if I haven't told you, Jay, I value as an engineer and as a teammate
for the word we went through on rockstargate and red dead one out the door
. What's one of your fondest memories of full sail.

Jason J (01:12:47):
I think final project,

John (01:12:49):
Oh yeah.
What'd
you have three months.

Jason J (01:12:51):
Yeah.
So my team.
were a little bit youngand naive, I wanna say.

John (01:12:55):
Hey, we we're all
You probably bit off,more than you could chew.

Jason J (01:12:59):
oh yeah.
So we decided to make an RTS

John (01:13:03):
Okay.
Let's do a bull.

Jason J (01:13:04):
and we decided to do it in direct X, which at the time was not
part of the curriculum open GL was
X was not.

John (01:13:12):
Oh shit.
Okay.
Yeah, because when Iwent through, I got both,
but if you're telling me youdidn't even have it as a class,

Jason J (01:13:19):
yeah, we didn't have it as a class.
It was only open GL.

John (01:13:21):
why was it the input?
Was it the rendering?

Jason J (01:13:24):
it just wasn't there.
Like they didn't have it

John (01:13:26):
No.
No.
what,
I'm saying?
Why did you want to make it in
DX

Jason J (01:13:29):
because of that email that I had gotten back from
ensemble
that was like,
we want direct X experience.

John (01:13:36):
leave this school without learning

Jason J (01:13:37):
And when we looked at other jobs out there on the web, they
always said direct X experience.
So we're like, okay, wellwe're going to get this.
Like the whole team saw that.
And the whole team was like,yeah, we're going to get direct X
experience.
Now.
I don't know if I convinced them.
They just saw that.
That was what the jobs were
posting.

John (01:13:55):
Even for the jobs they wanted, they

Jason J (01:13:56):
Yeah.
There, there, like, it was weird.
Like the team came together and weimmediately were kind of a team.
Like there wasn't anyone that was likearguing over like, oh, should we do this?
Or should we do that?
It was just like, Nope, we're together.
And we're workingtogether and we're a team.
And
that was
it.

John (01:14:11):
the team?

Jason J (01:14:12):
No, not for final project.
we had our roles already.
It was like, you know,you're going to do the
AI and you're going to do that.
I did the animation system and someother miscellaneous rendering things.
And I dealt with all things,the content creators.
So I was like steppinginto that world right away.

John (01:14:33):
Yeah.

Jason J (01:14:34):
But we did an RTS.
And one thing that I reallylike is the presentation day.
So you come out and you present yourproduct and you talk about what you
did and you kind of have a scriptthat you follow that kind of thing.
And what was very cool about ours was,the teachers had seen what we were doing.
Like we were making RTS and theyknew that that was more complex than

(01:14:54):
what we should have, but they sawall the progress we were making.
Like in this game we hadformations for the characters.
We had multiple formations.
We had a, dynamically created terrainthat would draw a river in the terrain.
So it would like use a algorithmto draw a river across the terrain.
It would then populatethat river with, bridges.

(01:15:17):
So you could get acrossI and create choked.
and we had audio and we had a fullmenu system and we had a full campaign.
Like we had a campaignwhere you were taking over a
little sections of the world.

John (01:15:28):
What was your motivation?
Was it like StarCraft?

Jason J (01:15:31):
no, actually it was all the historical RTSs.
So things like, age of empires.
Uh,

John (01:15:37):
Yeah.
You, you really trying to go to ensemble?

Jason J (01:15:39):
yeah, it felt like it, so we were doing this and the,
TA staff was seeing us do it.
And they were like really kind of hypingus up around the, around full sail.
Like they were like mad, likeother classes were being told
about the, what we were doing.
And so on presentation day, uh, one ofthe team members, his dad came and said
like, Hey, I wanted to help you guys, youknow, kind of be a team, blah, blah, blah.

(01:16:03):
And he had made us shirts thathad the logo of the game on it.
And it was like, we had coloredshirts with the logo of the game,
on it, like button down shirts.
And it was like, man, we'reactually making a studio here.
It felt like so cool.
Uh, and then presentationcame and that room was packed.
Like every other class had adjournedearly to come to our presentation.

(01:16:26):
I think that even had a tour groupthat they brought in, it was like
packed and S something like that.
Well, so the room wasn't that big.
It was.
There were seating for maybe 70, 80,cause it wasn't a auditorium set up.
it was just a large room andthey had everyone standing.
They had people sittingin front of the first row.
It was definitely a fire hazard.

John (01:16:47):
What was the name of your team?
Was the name of the project.

Jason J (01:16:50):
Uh, so our, our team was called TSB games.
And the project that wedid was called leash.

John (01:16:57):
Okay.

Jason J (01:16:59):
And I don't know if it ever made any sort of notoriety beyond
this, this particular day, but wepresented our thing and we had what
I felt was a great presentation.
Like we had a couple of thingsthat didn't work out exactly,
but it was a really cool project.
And then we said, Hey, you know,thank you everybody or whatever.

(01:17:19):
And then everyone clapped and itfeels like, oh man, this is amazing.
Uh, and then kind of a largesection of the room left and then
they did the other presentations.
So it really, So we started out the gateand it was like, we were the headliner
and then everybody kind oftrickled out after that.

(01:17:42):
And it
was like,

John (01:17:43):
You

Jason J (01:17:43):
like

John (01:17:43):
had to close.

Jason J (01:17:44):
we did well.
Uh, so that was definitelythe coolest moment

John (01:17:49):
Yeah.
Geez, man.
I didn't have that.
I did.
I closed my final presentation.
And as you tell your story,I'm coming to find out you
actually want to be the opener.
I guess the

Jason J (01:18:00):
Well, the opener that opens well, like I, we showed well, and
that definitely helped kind of theexperience I think they were, are
showing the tour group that may haveshown up was also kind of like, Hey,
they're trying to come to the school.
So they're trying to showyou what final project is.
Uh, you know, having other classeslike, say like, no, we're going

(01:18:21):
to go see what these guys haddone was really kind of cool.

John (01:18:25):
So you dropped the mic, you graduate out of full sail, and set
sail literally into the game industry.
How the hell did you break in?

Jason J (01:18:33):
you know, I would like to think that, you know, oh, well I had
these contexts already at ensembleand I was just like, call them up.
And
they're not, here's a job.

John (01:18:40):
Yeah.
did, you, did you hit them up as

Jason J (01:18:42):
I did, I did apply, but they never got back to me.
but one of the things I did,I did this exercise that.
Coming out of school or when you arekind of in the middle of the school
you can do, which is I took all thegames that I really loved playing.
luckily at that point, my game libraryhad gotten bigger, but I started,
collecting all of those games, flippingthem over, looking at the studios that

(01:19:02):
they came from, eliminating studiosfrom places that I didn't want to go or
didn't think I could go because I hadseveral like European-based studios.
And I was like, oh, wellI can't go to Europe.
so I flipped over the boxes, looked atthose studios, then went to their websites
and started kind of perusing the website,back then the recruiting mechanism

(01:19:23):
wasn't as prevalent as it is now.
now, everyone has a career section.
Everyone has like a, resume, dump,email address or something like that.

John (01:19:31):
Meaning when you go to a company website, like if you were to go to
ea.com back in the day, they wouldprobably just tell them about the
games and how to buy them there.
Wasn't like a come work for us.

Jason J (01:19:40):
yeah, there wasn't as pronounced come work for us.
Uh, so one of the companies advertisedon their site and internship program.
And so I got in through theinternship program that is
something that more studios havenow, even when you're in this.
I've definitely have been a mentorfor an intern at one of my jobs where

(01:20:01):
they were a sophomore in college.
Like they hadn't even graduated yet.
And it was interesting cause theyhad done multiple internships before.
So they had things on their resume.
Like they had done JBL, which isthe jet propulsion laboratory from
NASA and they had done an internshipat Google and I was like, man,
your resume is better than mine.
Like I was like, dang.
And they hadn't even graduated yet.

(01:20:22):
so internships are a great wayto kind of get your feet wet.
Uh, some internships do focus on variouspieces of game making, whether it's tools
or graphics or, servers or gameplay.
So you can also get a feel forlike what you like doing without
having to kind of do that.
Well, I got this joband now I'm stuck here.

(01:20:43):
Some universities help you I went toa, what was at the time considered kind
of a community college level school.
And they now have like, Hey, youknow, we have an internship kind
of person that's helping nail downinternship opportunities for people.
So if you have that available,look for it try and seek those out.

John (01:21:02):
What are all the schools of engineering or what are the ones that
you've typically gravitated towards?

Jason J (01:21:08):
when you first hear about making games, it's like, oh, well
the engineer does everything.
but there are a lot of different aspects.
So, depending on the game that you'redoing, there's rendering, which deals
with drawing stuff on the screen,there's the gameplay group, which deals
with kind of making things happen onscreen to whatever game you're making.
but then you'll have things likenetworking, which deals with the

(01:21:30):
multiplayer aspect of things.
you have servers that deal with,if you are making a multiplayer
game, it's like, Hey, how do youmanage the game rules and all that?
have a physics for dealing withphysical like interactions,

John (01:21:43):
destruction
vehicles.

Jason J (01:21:45):
vehicles, stuff like that you'll have focuses on, tools programming,
which is, you know, dealing with kindof the, either the art tools, which
focus on things like Maya or Houdini orMotionBuilder or 3d S max, or those types
of tool sets that then you're kind ofmaking plugins or making scripts to help

(01:22:05):
the artists do whatever they're doing.

John (01:22:07):
Yeah.
You were essentially the heroof the developers, but players
will never know what you

Jason J (01:22:12):
yeah.
And those are usually backgroundkind of things like your you're
standing up the team, but nobodyknows that you're standing there.
then there's other kind ofprogramming avenues that are
dealing with, even more fine grainstuff, such as particle systems or
a specific aspect of graphics.
So
Like.
there's, UI pieces, you dealwith, things such as, Hey,
we're doing water in our game.

(01:22:33):
And so you deal specifically with wateror you deal with character animation,

John (01:22:38):
audio programmers are always a rare breed.

Jason J (01:22:40):
or you do audio, which is odd because I really love music
and I never really gotinto audio programming.
I don't know why.

John (01:22:48):
That's in such high demand everywhere.

Jason J (01:22:50):
Yeah.

John (01:22:50):
AI programming.

Jason J (01:22:51):
AI programmers are out there, like, there's a large kind of
collection of specializations nowadaysthat in the past really weren't as
advertised as those specializations.
It was more like.
we need an engineer with allthis stuff, and then they
specialize based on our need.
we need a graphics guy, so we'll putthem on graphics, but we need a AI guy.
So we'll put them on AI.

(01:23:13):
Uh, nowadays there's definitelyjobs that are specifically for
like, Hey, we need a graphics guythat does this specific thing.
Or we need an AI guy thatdoes this specific thing.
And you'll see it in job descriptions thatsay like, Hey, we need someone that deals
with animation for humanoid interactions,which would be like, a grappling game,
like a wrestling game or a fighting game,a UFC game, and there's a lot of human

(01:23:35):
interaction at that, animation, is heavilyused in those, those types of games.
So you'll have a veryspecific role of doing that.
My first job was a gamecompany called big huge games.
It was a small studio, but we did ship.
a RTS.
that was called rise ofnations rise of legends.

John (01:23:54):
I love that as the nations.

Jason J (01:23:56):
Yeah.
Rise of nations was one of the onesI first got my name on, I got my name
on a next pack for rise of nations,but I didn't really work on it.
I was working on rise oflegends at that point.
after that we shipped, a Xboxlive game that was Katon,
which was a
port.

John (01:24:09):
You worked on kits

Jason J (01:24:10):
I did work on Katon.
and for both games, I wasessentially kind of a generalist.
I did graphic stuff.
I did, physics stuff.
I did gameplay stuff.
I did art support becausewe were a smaller studio.
one of the things that I did for Katonwas actually the skinning system.
like, when you change from the,like I said, it was the maple
scan to the 3d skin, like handlingthat was like my skinning stuff.

(01:24:33):
was one of the aspects that I focused on.

John (01:24:35):
I got to buy you a Shiner for those two alone man.

Jason J (01:24:37):
yeah.

John (01:24:38):
all the years we spent a rockstar playing basketball,
going out to lunch, having drinks.
And I did not know that I maybe I did

Jason J (01:24:44):
I actually had Nicholas.
Geek out on me on the dev floor.
When I mentioned that,
he he, was like, wait, youworked at big, huge games.
Did you work on this game?
I was like, yeah, I did that game.
I was at, he was like, ohmy God, that's so cool.
And I was

John (01:24:57):
dude.

Jason J (01:24:58):
this is pretty cool.

John (01:24:59):
Did you listen to Nick's episode?
It's
good.

Jason J (01:25:02):
I did, listen to this episode.

John (01:25:03):
Shout out to Nick

Jason J (01:25:04):
Yeah.

John (01:25:04):
episode.
six,

Jason J (01:25:06):
so after that I joined rockstar San Diego there, I ended
up shipping red, dead redemption.
I then shipped a max Paynethree and helped ship.
LA new R yeah, I was there very briefly.
I don't even think I hadany bugs assigned to me.
I was just like over theshoulder, like helping a guy.

John (01:25:22):
Sure

Jason J (01:25:22):
I helped ship that.
then I was the, first engineerassigned to what became red dead two.

John (01:25:28):
damn.
You had to stand it up.

Jason J (01:25:30):
yeah, I stood it up and was supporting the design team at that
point, as they were building outthe world, I was also shifted over
and working on GTA five for a year.
I ended up leaving there andjoining EA Redwood shores.
and the, uh, studio thatis now defunct visceral.
I was disappointed to see themclose that, but, you know,
it's, it's one of those things.
so while I was at visceral, I helpedship battlefield four, and then I was

(01:25:54):
doing a lot of the setup for, battlefieldhardline a good chunk of set up on that.

John (01:25:59):
what would you say?
Our Frostbites strength?

Jason J (01:26:02):
it has a lot of things built already.
it has like a, a buildinfrastructure that is generic
enough to not be super specialized.
it is fairly generic enoughto be able to do stuff.
there are the low level libraries.
I mean, we're generic enoughand flexible enough to where
kind of, you could use those.
But once you got into more of thespecialization stuff, like, for example,

(01:26:24):
in battlefield, you had the gunsmiththing where you could track a gun,
uh, or you could craft a character.
Like a lot of that stuff wasvery specialized for battlefield.
And so when you did something likethat, wasn't battlefield or slightly
different than battlefield, youhad to do a lot more modification.
What you would have liked, butthat is a problem with very mature,

(01:26:45):
very focused engines in general.

John (01:26:47):
where'd you go after EA?

Jason J (01:26:48):
so after EA I ended up starting my own company for a little while.
where I joined someone thatI'd worked with at rockstar,
my partner was wolfing, Ang ho.

John (01:26:57):
Yeah, that guy wrote the rendering book.

Jason J (01:27:00):
He wrote many rendering books, but he had a company and he
and I had been kept keeping in touch.
And we started a company where thefocus was going to be around the
tools, infrastructure, backend, likeperson is supporting the dev team,
but not out front kind of roles
I was thinking that, oh, well, thisobviously is going to resonate with
a lot of people because every studioI'd been at had the same problems with

(01:27:23):
productivity and kind of iteration time.
So as like, oh, well obviously wecan come in and use our expertise
and fix a lot of this stuff.
we ended up getting, several contracts.
This is where I got to workon the lumberyard engine.
We did the particle editor, therewrite and the re-skin and we
added GPU particles to cry engine.
So that's what our kind of contract was.

John (01:27:42):
that's another shine.
I gotta buy you.
to, we're going to work up to a six.

Jason J (01:27:45):
Oh, we're working on it.
after that, there were some, issues thatled me to need to go somewhere else.
And so I ended up getting a job atblizzard where I worked at, the Battlenet
side of blizzard for a little bitworking on the desktop application.
and then they started an internal,engine team and they were looking for
people and I immediately threw my hatin and was lucky enough to be the first

(01:28:10):
actual engineer hired for the team.
Like they had two guys that werestarting the team and I pestered them
enough to where they were like, okay,well, we gotta bring this guy on.
and I ended up doing a short stint therewhere I proved that I could do stuff.
And so they hired me be on that team forthe last three and a half, four years
that I worked on that

John (01:28:30):
This is their internal Blizz tech kind of thing.

Jason J (01:28:33):
they started a brand new engine, basically to kind of unify a
lot of the game team infrastructure asblizzard has a lot of game teams in it.
Uh, if you look at their website,they're saying it's like,
oh, there's the Diablo team.
There's the Hearthstone team and all that.
And they all use different tech stacks.
And so from a corporate perspective,there was an idea of like, okay, well
we want to unify as much as possiblecreate modules that can be shared.

(01:28:55):
but ultimately it would be greatif we kind of had our own tech that
was like shared across the studios.
And so that was kind of the motivationfor making the game engine team.

John (01:29:05):
dude Cortech is sweet.
I mean, it has its downsides, but it.

Jason J (01:29:09):
I really liked the opportunity to kind of go in and try out things that
I've been complaining about for so manyyears, and then trying to get a chance to
like, not have those things be a problem.
it was a great experience.
after that I ended up joining, visualconcepts where I still am, this great
wild ride and opportunity that I have now.

John (01:29:29):
Damn what a journey, bro.
There's so much, I didn't know.
J
This is why I love this show.
I love the opportunitythat it gives me, right?
for whatever reason, when I was workingwith a lot of you, I wouldn't take the
time to connect as much as I should have.
I didn't leverage the time wespent together as I should have.
And it took a damn pandemic toremind me, to reach out and connect

(01:29:51):
to all these cool people that Iknow and have interacted with.
And thank you for taking the time.

Jason J (01:29:56):
Thank you for having the platform.
That's one of the things that I,as an engineer and I, as my own
personality needed to, realize,and the pandemic effected a lot of
things and it helps either clarifythe picture, or really accentuate the
things that are important in life.
one of the things that I had not beenvery good at was kind of keeping in

(01:30:20):
touch with the people that I workedwith, the people that I respected,
the people that helped mold my career.
And so having this type ofplatform allows me to do that.
Plus I get to hear your greatlaugh as much as I can, because
I don't know what it is since.
I've made you laughanytime it's infectious.
It's one of those thingsthat I just like to hear.

John (01:30:39):
appreciate that brother.
It's got nothing on John street pan man.
He's legendary.

Jason J (01:30:43):
his, his is wonderful.
And I got him definitely to almost splita gut a couple of times, but, on here.
he had quite a career as well.

John (01:30:53):
Yeah, dude.
I think I'm going to have towait till he retires or leaves.
You know, the rockstardevs are like on gag order.

Jason J (01:30:59):
he definitely is jovial person

John (01:31:02):
Oh yeah.

Jason J (01:31:03):
get a great conversation out of it, but maybe when you retire.

John (01:31:06):
Yeah.
when he, they use I'll beout there waiting, like,
as soon as I hear he's changingor retiring, I'm going to John.
It's time.
Fall out of play.
man.
All right, buddy.
going to hit the lightning round.
Short questions, short answers.
ready for this?

Jason J (01:31:22):
I hope so.
I will try and restrain myself

John (01:31:24):
What's the last game you finished?

Jason J (01:31:26):
hundred percent or just get to the end of the story.

John (01:31:29):
That's a good question.
I should start asking platinumtrophy finish, but finish the game.
Got the credits.

Jason J (01:31:36):
So the last one I finished was actually a Assassin's creed Valhalla,
where I got to the end of the story.
The last game that I, a hundredpercent was Spider-Man, the
PS4 version, not miles Morales.
I haven't been able tofinish miles Morales yet.

John (01:31:48):
That's a good one.
And that was probably one of my platinum.
I don't have that manyplatinums, but five minutes.
Definitely.
One of them.
deserted island game.

Jason J (01:31:58):
it depends on if it's a desert island where I never can escape.
it would definitely be the game thatactually kind of started all this
that I keep, remembering wheneverI reminisce about games, is Indiana
Jones and a fate of Atlantis,

John (01:32:09):
What console was that on

Jason J (01:32:11):
that's a
PC
game.
It

John (01:32:12):
That's what I'm saying.
It's not
like pitfall style.

Jason J (01:32:14):
if you remember the, the days of, Lucas arts

John (01:32:17):
Yeah.
Oh, so it looks like King's layer kind

Jason J (01:32:20):
Uh, kind of, yeah, it has a similar kind of, it's a story-driven game.
It's a Sierra game.
it was the first game where thestory would branch that I could play.
Like you can, that was thefirst one that I played.
And it really struck mebecause I played it multiple
times

John (01:32:36):
replayability.

Jason J (01:32:37):
and it was like each time I was like, oh, well, what if I did this?
And you know, there, there were threeways that you could play the game.
And I played all three waysand I was interested at what
combinations you could make.
And oddly enough, I got to meet both ofthe designers of that game and thank them.
So that was kind of a coolmoment being able to do.
Talk to them and say, Hey,thank you for this game.
And one guy was actually gettingat a conference and he was talking

(01:32:58):
about another game that he had made.
And I said, Hey, thank you for this game.
And he was like, wow,

John (01:33:03):
Yeah.

Jason J (01:33:04):
I haven't heard that game in so long.
It was like, kind of like arefreshing moment of like, wow.
You, you know, my earlywork kind of thing.

John (01:33:11):
I can't tell you how great of a feeling that is to be thanked
for your work on the thing.
that you slave for toget out into the public.
So anybody listening outthere, it always feels good.
Take the time out.
Thank you, dev.
They work

Jason J (01:33:25):
you know, I've had people come up and thank me for
various things, uh, at times.
And it's wonderful tohear it from the players.
Like the developers insidecan thank you as well.
but having a player come up andtell you, Hey, this title changed
my life or helped me engage withthe world in a different way.
And thank you for that.
you know, sometimes when I tellthem like, Hey, I didn't actually

(01:33:46):
work on the gameplay stuff.
They're like, I don't care.
You helped to get out the door.
that's what matters to me that'shappened multiple times.
And it's really cool when that happens.

John (01:33:56):
What is the last book you read?

Jason J (01:33:58):
The last book I read, it's a programming book actually.

John (01:34:01):
Hey, I like those.

Jason J (01:34:03):
There there's a series of books called the clean coder series
there's a progression of books.
There's clean coder, clean architecture,And I read the clean architecture book
most recently, and that one was helpful.
I've gotten deeper into kind of the nerdykind of non Ganey side of programming
C plus plus, and things like that.
So I'm reading a lot of books that arenot directly about games, but are about

(01:34:27):
C plus plus that we use to make games.

John (01:34:30):
Hey man, you're Well, past your 10,000 hours in mastery, man.
So there's only so much more to go.

Jason J (01:34:35):
I'm always learning.
So, you know, and thingsare always changing.
So there's always a new challenge.

John (01:34:40):
What is the thing that you enjoy the most about engineering on games?

Jason J (01:34:44):
so there's two things.
one that is solving the problem.
Like I like solving the problemsand kind of feeling like, I feel
as though a cleanliness washes overyou when you solve this problem that
you've been tracking for so long.
and then there's the interaction withthe content creators, the spark that
you see when they actually click abutton and it does something for them

John (01:35:04):
yes.

Jason J (01:35:05):
like their eyes light up and they just have this surge of creativity.
I love seeing that.

John (01:35:11):
Yes.
I get a little bit of that taste as a techdesigner, but yeah, I can imagine, man.
That's fantastic.
What, if anything, do you missabout being in the office?

Jason J (01:35:20):
I guess the things that you kind of started this podcast about you
know, I took for granted cause out of theinteractions that I had there and, while
I, wasn't kind of having my personal lifekind of cross over into the interactions
that I had, there was a, a place whereyou could go have interactions with folks
about programming, about whatever, andit wasn't necessarily business oriented.

(01:35:44):
And the, I guess the term wouldbe kind of the, the cooler talk.
Like you go to the water cooler andyou're talking about some sort of
programming thing, or someone's talkingabout the game that they played or
the experience they had and you don'treally get that as much at home.
some of that is leadership as well.
So some leadership, choices are aroundkind of having these kind of open forum,

(01:36:06):
like zoom calls, where you get in andit's like, we're all just kind of in
the zoom call, hanging out together.
And conversation can eitherkind of spring up from that.
Or there's a moment where you can kind ofsee the other person and be like, okay,
we're kind of in the office a little bit.

John (01:36:19):
that was a key pandemic survival mechanism that a lot of
teams were trying to implement.
Right.
At least like virtualhappy hours or whatever.
Curious.
Is there anything you're doing onyour team to give an outlet for that?

Jason J (01:36:30):
one of the things that we're doing now is more kind of just having
a place for people to kind of talkAnd it's, it's a weird thing because
we don't have that mandatory, like,Hey, here's a room that you go into
to kind of have those conversations.
But I think there's a, encouragementto kind of engage and talk like, Hey,

(01:36:51):
you're running into this problem and kindof have those kind of BS time periods
where of just hanging out,like talking to each other.

John (01:36:57):
Are these like blocked out in the calendar at all or
something?

Jason J (01:37:00):
so I've had it where they are.
but it's happened where.
If there isn't something to talk about,the engineers start talking about
the bug that you're trying to solve.
And so there's like some kind of pressurethat you need to put on to say like, Hey,
you know, we're not talking about this

John (01:37:14):
Yes.

Jason J (01:37:15):
we're, kind of trying to hang out and then everyone
gets quiet all of a sudden.
And so then you got to like, okay, well,you know, you gotta throw out something.

John (01:37:21):
Yeah.
Some icebreakers are
always handy.
you weren't doing this,what would you be doing?
Right?
Let's say it was It could be this year.
It could be the fifties.
Forties.

Jason J (01:37:32):
I don't know, I mean, there is a thought experiment that I've done from
time to time when evaluating my career andthe trials and tribulations that I've gone
through is like, if you had infinite money
and everything is takencare of what would you do?
a lot of people say like, oh, Itravel the world, blah, blah, blah.
But eventually you've done all that.
What do you do then?

(01:37:53):
I keep going back to, I want toprogram, I want to make games.
And so if I wasn't doing this, I wouldprobably be doing some job to pay the.
And then doing programming or doinggames, making games, playing games,
doing kind of the things that yousee, all the Twitch people doing
now, like casting and all that stuff.

(01:38:14):
even though I'm not a huge personalitythat some of the casters are, I would
probably do the YouTube stuff for a game,like I'm playing a game and we're talking
about playing the game and all that.
Cause I like that world.

John (01:38:25):
I like it.
I would've never had anticipated that.
And now I'm kind of smiling, hearing thatwhat's something most people don't know
or would be surprised to know about UJ.

Jason J (01:38:36):
I think something that we touched on earlier in the conversation,
which is when I ask a question aboutyou about your past, I am generally
interested in learning about you.
So I grew up in a very small town

John (01:38:46):
I think that's something to do with it.

Jason J (01:38:48):
there's a super superficiality that kind of the city folk have as
it were, as I stereotype yourself
who
asking all the questions, where,people will ask things and
they just really don't care.
They're just doing itto try and be polite.
And, I am curious becauseeveryone's perspective kind of

(01:39:09):
builds who they are and someone'sperspective is something that.
Only they have.
And if they share it with you, issomething that is extremely valuable.

John (01:39:19):
You're absolutely right.
There's not enough peoplethat know how to listen.
There's people that ask questionsand are essentially just
waiting for their turn to talk.
I wonder if that is an element of beingfrom Weimer, Texas, a town of less than
2000 people or what, but it's definitelya beautiful thing about who you are.

Jason J (01:39:38):
yeah.
It can lead to trouble in meetingssometimes because you are waiting for
your turn, but then the conversation moveson and they don't like the leadership
or whoever's running the meeting doesn'tnecessarily have the same mindset.
So they're not trying to givepeople that forum or to get
those different perspectives.
They're just like, okay,we solved this problem.
Then they move on.

(01:39:58):
I have seen that happen in meetings.
So it is a thing too.

John (01:40:02):
I know that time is always a thing and a factor of meetings, right?
Like more people in a room, moremoney being burned, but especially
in the pandemic where it's a zoomroom and, you know, you have the
little Hollywood squares of people.
I like to encourage leadershipand managers and producers.
Call on people and make surethat everybody's voice is heard.
Right.
Otherwise, why the hellare they in the meeting?

(01:40:23):
You know what I'm saying?
You could just send them the recording.
So if they showed up to the meeting,give them Invite them in to talk.

Jason J (01:40:30):
Yeah.
And some of it is just as simpleas just asking for their input,
for team members that are of groups thatare less representative in engineering,
just giving them that forum and platformand saying like, Hey, what do you think
can lead to all kinds of good things?
So there is a moment that as a leader ora person running the meeting, you kind

(01:40:51):
of have to be cognizant of, but it'sstill a thing that I wish was kind of
more ingrained in people and is ingrainedin me and I've gotten burned by it.
And at times, because I'll havethat mindset and then just the
meeting won't have that mindset.

John (01:41:03):
You've worked on RTSs shooters, wrestlers.
You've been an entrepreneur.
Is there anything left for the type ofgame you'd love to work on given the
chance the franchise or IP you'd love towork with a group of people or a team?

Jason J (01:41:22):
there are kind of a handful of people and it's like, Hey, you
know, if I were to start a studio andthey were willing to come join me,
I'd love to work with these folks.
I'd kinda like to work on an RPG,

John (01:41:32):
like
a J RPG or like a BioWare
RPG.

Jason J (01:41:34):
more like a BioWare RPG.

John (01:41:36):
I was going to lean into that, like that.
Choose your own adventure.
Create your own narrative

Jason J (01:41:40):
yeah.
Specifically I would really love todo a nice deal Republic type title.

John (01:41:45):
Oh shit,
dude.

Jason J (01:41:47):
of my favorite games of all time, and it would be great to
kind of make something in there,

John (01:41:52):
If that game didn't have the star wars theme on it,
would it still be as good?

Jason J (01:41:56):
the star wars theme made it, the thing that I would buy,
that, game came out while I was stillin school and it came out on Xbox.
And I was waiting for the PC poor.
And one of the team members that I hadat full sail said, this game is too good.
I'm going to give you myXbox so you can play it.
And so it was like, okay,I have to play this game.
And, if it was a differenttheme, I don't know if I would

(01:42:19):
have been drawn to it as much,
I might've given it.
it's due, just later on, not right away.

John (01:42:24):
that game is widely renowned and special and beautiful and That'd
be cool to have you back at EAworking on those types of games, but
future who knows what will happen.
where can people connect with you?
Reach out to you, see your work?
Is your team hiring

Jason J (01:42:41):
my team is hiring, we have a posting on the, visual
concepts website, uh, for LA.
go check it out.
I have a LinkedIn, I havebeen fairly curating it.
Like there's been people thattry to connect all the times like
recruiters and things like that.
And I've been a little bit morehesitant to just accept everybody,
uh, because there is a little bitof guardedness to your kind of core.

(01:43:03):
Group of people that you want tokind of keep in contact with and
kind of just opening the floodgates can treat weird scenarios
where you have a guy on your list.
You're like, how did I get that guy on my

John (01:43:12):
I I'm the same way I have my LinkedIn.
Blocked.
Like if you don't know myemail, you can't hook up with
me until two that send a note.
If you're going to tryto link up with Jason,

Jason J (01:43:23):
Yeah.

John (01:43:23):
why you're connecting, how you heard about him.

Jason J (01:43:26):
those of you that may be out there that are in school and getting in
through college and things like that.
Like I have reached out to variousprograms like that in the past to
give advice and talk to people.
I've been a, an advisory member ona, on a college program, as well as
kind of come and given presentationsat universities or high schools to

(01:43:49):
be like, Hey, this is what I do.
This is how I got into this.
So that is something that, don't bescared to reach out if you are someone
that, isn't already in the game industry.
And you're curious about how to get in.

John (01:44:00):
There you go.
There's your invitation.
Okay, Jay, you know, what's coming.
Who do you nominate to fallout of play area behind you.

Jason J (01:44:08):
So I have two people for you
and they have, theyhave, both agreed to do
this.

John (01:44:12):
shit.

Jason J (01:44:13):
Yeah.
So now you're in
trouble.

John (01:44:14):
got the pre-approval that's that's what's up?

Jason J (01:44:16):
Yeah.
I don't want to throw names outand they're going to look at
me and go, why did you do that

John (01:44:19):
that's happened.

Jason J (01:44:20):
both people came from my very first job, big, huge games.
So it's a deep cut.
They both have kind of done differentaspects of game development than me.
one is, has their owncompany and they're doing UX.
his name is Jason Sklar.
and then the other person was a producerwhen I was at big huge games and has kind
of risen to the rank of COO at a company.

(01:44:43):
her name is Erin Krell.

John (01:44:45):
man.
I don't interact with enough.
COO's out there.

Jason J (01:44:48):
their interactions set me up on the road that I'm on and whether I
gave them enough credit or not, theykind of helped me into where I'm going.

John (01:44:57):
Hey, well, now's your chance.
Hopefully they listen to this andthey know it's a ingrained forever
in the audio banks of the internet.
Jay, this has been fantastic, bro.
Are there any closing words forthe people listening out there?

Jason J (01:45:10):
so one thing that my grandfather told me a long time ago that has stuck
with me and I use in every interview I'veever gotten to is you never stop learning.
Your education is something thatno one can take away from you.
Someone can come and take your car.
They can take any sort ofmaterial item that you have.
But if you learn something,no one can take that.

John (01:45:29):
Boom, I love that.
you weren't the most passionate student,but you've definitely never stopped
learning, signing up for degrees upondegrees and journeying to schools
and diving into different technologyand whatever you needed to, and
even given the chance to not do it.
still inquiring and learningabout people around you.

(01:45:49):
That's what's up.
Thank you.
Jay.
Till next time, friend.
Peace.
Our first full-time engineerepisode is in the books episode 29.
And WWE two K 22 is out.
I'm going to be looking to pickup a copy to support the homie.
It appears to be getting pretty niceat claim and being well received

(01:46:11):
as a great leap above what twoK 20 did like three years ago.
And it's benefited from beingan extra year in the oven.
Jason's given me a run for my money.
I thought I had touched the most enginesin the game, but he's got me beat.
His tail has a resounding messageof how his interests along with
his teachers and friends eventuallyend even as parents, right?

(01:46:31):
They eventually got him steeredonto his professional calling
in programming and engineering.
So much soul to the point where, whenI asked him, you know, what would you
be doing if you weren't doing this?
He's still like, yo.
I would be doing it.
I can't see my life withoutit, even if it is a hobby.
Even if I was doing somethingelse to make money, I was still
be doing this on the side.
He's in so much backendengineering and gameplay.

(01:46:53):
He's got such a wide.
Wide breadth of experience and.
Still reading his craft and stillputting hours into mastery squared.
That I'm curious when hemight make another plunge and
strike out again to build.
Maybe his own studio.
That'd be super interesting.
And.
I wouldn't be surprised if it happens.
We got deep onto some burnout.

(01:47:13):
I think that's always an issue.
That's going to face anybody.
Who's been doing this for long enoughand It'll be fantastic to get to a 0.1
day in the future where we can lookback on this thing as a legacy of how
we used to things, but for now, youknow, it's still a very real thing.
And.
It's a story that is worthcontinuing to tell onward and

(01:47:33):
forward to remind people that.
It's a very real thing and we canalways do better about handling it.
It's safeguarding it andspotting the warning signs,
especially as we work from home.
Right.
This is kind of a new frontier.
That will sneak up on us and itis a business and while delaying
a game because of the difficultiesof building a thing from home,
Is an option, how long can you do a thing?

(01:47:54):
It's worth the continuedconversation for sure.
On episode 30, you know, I try tobring a deer homie out for every
10th episode and 30 is no exception.
So we need to sit down withdesign director over at poly arc,
another fellow full sail alumni.
And, uh, not long till the end who shiftedthe multiplayer on red dead redemption.

(01:48:17):
Got to break in by working onmidnight club and got to take his
talents on to mobile, tiny racer.
And now up here in Seattle.
Putting in that work atpoly arch on mosque one.
And mosque too is coming out in acouple of weeks on Monday, April 11th.
make sure to follow us so that youdon't miss out on that episode.

(01:48:38):
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
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.

(01:49:01):
Out of play area, the game developers,podcasts releases, new episodes every
other Monday on all the major players,including Spotify, apple, and Google.
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.

(01:49:21):
Mega ran.
Bring them home.
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