AMA #6: Keegan O’Rourke, Artist/Generalist at Strange Loop Games

Rob (Younghand)

Is this one going to be over text or call?

Keegan

Hey there!

Livio

text

unless keegan wants to do call

Keegan

I could potentially do a call but am in a shared office so text might be better.

Livio

text it is then

let’s wait like 3 mins

Alright time to start! @Keegan how about you start with a short intro about yourself and your work

Keegan

Hey there– so I’m a game developer currently working for Strange Loop Games and on my own personal project as well. I studied Fine Art in college at The Evergreen State College in Olympia (BA, graduated 2010).

Livio

Olympia, Washington?

Keegan

I have always been interested in game development, and particularly level design and art from a pretty young age.

Yep!

I grew up in the Seattle area, and moved back here after college in Olympia.

And Seattle is where I currently work for Strange Loop Games.

Livio

How long have you been working in games?

Keegan

I have been working on my own in games since about 2013, on the side, and my first job in the industry is this one with SLG that started in 2015– so 2.4 years or so in the industry proper.

Ian P

What games have you worked on at Strange loop?

Keegan

At SLG I’ve almost entirely been focused on Eco, but I’ve also done much smaller amounts of work for a few other un-released projects

One of those was an educational game for the university of pheonix arizona that was canceled, another is a project we are still hoping to work on after Eco.

Livio

heh I think the University of Phoenix was caught in some kind of scandal… people accused them of being a scam. They might still be around though

Keegan

They went through a ton of management changes, and the new management cancelled the project, but actually is now reconsidering

Livio

think the problem was mainly in their recruiting/applications office

Keegan

because the game was almost done

Livio

wow

Keegan

so that project may actually be revived at some point. You know, like a pheonix.

Livio

lol

Keegan

I wasn’t highly involved in that project though or with Pheonix– just worked on the visuals of the proto-type in the early stage, really

LikeFrogs

What’s your primary role on Eco? Art, level design, etc?

Keegan

SLG is a small enough company that many of us have many roles– but I am definitely primarily on the Art side of development. I do modeling (many of the things in the game were modeled by me), texturing, and I do a lot of the implementation of art.

I am the one primarily in charge of creating ‘Builders’ which is what we use to create our ‘blocks’ in the game.

Livio

what tools do you mainly use there

Keegan

Maya, Unity, Photoshop

Ian P

Eco seems fairly different than the other games strange loop has produced (looking at the website main page). Do you know if the team or yourself seemed or felt unprepared for any part of Eco so far?

Keegan

I think Eco has had a long enough runway and early phase of the project that none of us have felt un-prepared

The studio lead had been imagining it for a long time. But Eco is certainly a game with a very large scope. Hearing about what it was going to be is what I signed up for when I joined SLG

It is more of a matter of ‘how much can we get done, and when?’ with a game this big.

I basically joined SLG right at the start of Eco getting out of the early proto-type phase.

So I didn’t experience working with SLG on Vessel or the other different projects SLG has done in the past.

Livio

you mentined that SLG was your first “real” job in games. What do you think helped you land that job

Keegan

Well, certainly a foundation of skills in relevant tools like Maya and Unity was important.

But I can trace being hired directly to participating in game jams.

I met the studio lead John at a game jam and worked with him in a jam that turned out well.

Livio

cool which jam was that?

wondering if I was there or if I missed it lol

Keegan

It was a ludum dare I want to say– sometime in 2013 or early 2014 perhaps.

Let me see….

Livio

probably 2014

Keegan

but defintiely being hired related to my passion and quick-working in the game jam, I imagine it contributed to the impression I made.

Ian P

As a 3D modeler do you have trouble with either environments or character modeling? I personally find environmental modeling somewhat tedious.

Livio

there have been times when I’ve worked with people in game jams and at the end they say something like “I did not expect you to be so good to work with, had a different impression of you when we started”

Keegan

Haha, I’m primarily interested in environments myself– I would not consider myself a character modeler at all though I have certainly dabbled.

I would probably avoid jobs where I had to do a ton of character modeling, though for small or my own projects I am not adverse to it at all.

Yeah, I think game jams are a pretty rare and wonderful chance to make connections– be they personal or professional– because they’re oriented around passion and enthusiasm for game development.

Personally as I continue in the games industry a route of specializing in props, hard-surface modeling, organic environment sculpting, and level design is where I would be most likely to focus.

Livio

Keegan don’t you also program?

even if it’s just a little bit

Keegan

Of course any of those could be someone’s entire specialization, but I most prefer to work in small companies where it is more likely that individuals have more roles.

I have taught myself some basics and gone through some parts of courses with C# and Unity, but I have so many other things that I do at SLG that I trailed off trying to make a ton of headway with that.

Livio

that’s a good problem to have

Keegan

I think it’s very very beneficial to at least be familiar with some programming basics and comfortable with using visual studio etc as an artist, especially if you want to work with an indie company.

Livio

I was about to ask if you thought being familiar with programming made you more attractive as someone to hire

(and for the record, I think using Unreal Engine’s Blueprints 100% counts as programming)

Keegan

I think that would heavily depend on who was doing the hiring, as it is also important that I simply flesh out my abilities on the art side of things and strengthen that as much as possible.

But as someone interested in making my own games too, of course it is a good thing to know more about programming so I have more creative options.

Ian P

Is there anything you do to find inspiration for personal work?

Keegan

It’s an area I will probably pursue more in the future if I end up with more independance.

My personal work is just about completely oriented around responding to the natural environment– so getting out and experiencing the world in person is what drives it. Hiking in the wilderness or back-country, but also looking at architecture in cities!

Ian P

Yeah, I don’t like environmental modeling, but cool or interesting architecture definitely makes it more interesting.

Keegan

But certainly also playing games that seem to do interesting things with their environments is also inspiring.

Similar to going and looking at art as a painter, I find playing games to be inspiring for two alternate reasons. Either it’s because I feel I could do so much better and get worked up to do so, or because the work is great and it affirms the potential of the medium.

Livio

How much time did you spend between school and your first game job? Did you have other jobs in between?

Keegan

Since I didn’t study game development at all in school this may be less relevant for someone doing that-

But I had a few jobs after studying art in college and before SLG

Livio

kinda related is: when did you first decide to work in games?

did you study fine art with that goal in mind or…?

also fine art doesn’t sound like it’d teach you all these digital tools like maya and photoshop. How’d you go about learning them?

Keegan

I came back around to games after deciding specifically not to study them, actually. I went to college for fine art, and that is what I did there– becoming a painter, which I still do as well as game development.

So I went to college specifically not to get into games, haha

Because I had thought about it a lot at the end of high school and decided I wanted to give ‘pure art’ a chance.

And I’m glad I did!

But 3 years or so after graduating college I felt the innevitable pull of game development, which had always been a thing that interested me because I’ve always been a gamer.

I was a nerd before I was an artist, to be sure.

So as a nerd/artist I kind of always had photoshop in the bank–

But I needed to learn how to 3D model properly if I was going to be making 3D environments, which was my primary interest.

So I taught myself Maya through online courses and tutorials, and got into Unreal and Unity as well

I struggled because there were many times when I wished I could just ask someone who knew everything about Maya a simple question, but eventually I was able to mount those hurdles one by one.

After a while I also discovered Zbrush, and that fully cemented my artistic interest in games.

Livio

which online courses did you find the most useful? Did you find any that were just bad

Keegan

Hmmm, definitely Gnomon is the highest quality I have found.

Dawn

Hi! What role do you take in the hiring process?

Keegan

If you have any particular field of 3D art you’re interested in pursuing, Gnomon is wonderful– but I got a lot of value and use out of tutorials from Digital Tutors and even http://Lynda.com as well, for when I was first learning new programs.

Hi there– at Strange Loop Games, you mean?

Livio

I think that’s what he meant. I know some companies make all their employees participate in hiring

Keegan

For hiring one of our current artists I actually went to the Digipen career fair and talked with prospectives

Basically I was totally in charge of hiring another artist for our team

Working in a company as tiny as SLG means sometimes you are handed tasks you’ve never done before, so it was quite interesting to be only 2 years into the industry and tasked with hiring someone else.

I doubt it would work that way at most companies– but basically I went through it by giving my favorite candidate an art test

I had already established with enough communication that it seemed the candidate had good interpersonal skills and would be someone the team could work well with– that’s obviously important– and the most important question after that was of course, can they do the work?

So for that one person I did almost the entire hiring process myself, of course communicating about it with the studio lead and art director.

and it was dependant on their approval in the end, too.

Keegan

For programmers, I am barely involved in the process at all, which suits me– other than figuring out if they seem like a good person to work with, I wouldn’t know where to start.

Ian P

Thank you for stopping by, but I have to head out. Everyone, be sure to ask some good questions.

Keegan

Cheers!

Livio

oh wow we have about 10 mins left

Keegan

If you guys want you can post something here and I can look back at it later in the day and answer, too.

Livio

The hiring stuff is a good point. I started learning about better hiring practices when following the conversation around diversity in the industry. Hiring is such a deep topic, and there’s a lot of research out there about what works and what doesn’t work. But as a result of being exposed to that stuff, it makes me feel more confident about potentially being put in a position to help hire someone. I feel like most people (companies included) just jump right in to hiring thinking “I’ll figure it out as I go along” and then they miss a lot of good opportunities and good hires

Microsoft actually made its employees go through some basic hiring training too

so I guess my point is: if you want to learn more about hiring, it could be really useful for you much sooner than you think

Keegan

Sure. I was pretty determined in my hiring to help address the gender imbalance at the company if I could. And succeeding at that part of it was easy, actually.

And yeah, it’s quite a deep topic!

That’s how it often goes at tiny indie companies: you find yourself thrown into a deep pool, haha.

Livio

yeah, and it seeps into everything. Like it makes you think about who you hang out with, who’s in your ‘network’ and stuff

most indie companies and startups are started by “friends” which is basically “the nearest person you could find” not necessarily the result of a rigoruous hiring process, yet paradoxically many of these groups pride themselves in only hiring “the best”

I think knowing about this also made me more confident in the job hunting game

Keegan

Indeed. I think game jams are quite valuable for that reason too– you can make new friends and connections outside your current circles.

Livio

any last questions before we run out of time

Dawn

You said you’re 2 years into the industry. Do you still feel new to the industry, or is that feeling fading?

Livio

do you feel like you’ve “made it”

Dawn

^

Keegan

I’m in kind of an interesting in-between place I’d say. I think this job has given me tons of confidence to find work in the games industry, but this job is also pretty unique– so I know if I wanted to work in a very specialized area at a larger company, I’d basically be making the portfolio I know I would want for that from scratch. But I would be much more confident about producing that portfolio, anyways.

I would say the feeling of being new to the industry is sort of fading, but I also have a lot of decisions to make about how I want to continue in it, or even if I do at all, still.

This year is gonna be one with lots of interesting transitions since Eco will be released.

I’ll only ever feel like I’ve ‘made it’ when I’m making a living off of my own work, haha.

But this job has been a great opportunity and has given me certain things that help make that more likely, even as it requires lots of my time.

And I may be working for SLG for a long time to come!

Brandon Anderson

What’s your least favorite part of the job?

Keegan

Hmmmmm

There are a lot of things that are tough in game development, but they’re kind of part and parcel with it

I don’t think I want to complain about particular issues I think SLG has– every company is going to have things that could use work.

So maybe I’ll say… not having any idea how much of what you know you can do to make the game you’re working on good is going to actually make it into the game?

Brandon Anderson

No worries, I understand. I’m actually your boss…undercover. Good answer

Keegan

haha

Brandon Anderson

I could see that being a problem in indie. I’m mostly interested in the indie side of game dev

Keegan

And maybe ‘having no idea’ is an extreme way to put it. Actually what’s hard is that you have a pretty good idea, and the answer is: ‘Definitely not all of it.’

Livio

Thanks a lot for doing this event with us keegan!

Keegan

Heheh. I need to run and grab some lunch but I’ll be happy to check in later and answer anything people would like to ask.

Brandon Anderson

Thanks, Keegan!

Keegan

Yeah, no problem!

Thanks for having me.