Subreal – Timothy Aste

A little known fact, I was actually graphic designer before getting into games; I went to a four year art school for it and everything. Sadly, this college was the same one where a bulk of students are trained in Computer Animation and later recruited to Pixar, Activision, and EA. No matter how I tried, I always was more interested in that instead of typography, probably because I grew up on video games. Unfortunately, I decided working with clients wasn’t great with my personality, and graphic design just wasn’t my gig. I didn’t get excited about it back then like I did when I worked on “modding” games, especially since I’d have been a PC gamer my entire life.

In late 2003 I began working on a series of Level & Environment Demos in my spare time. I decided to find a quick and easy game engine that I could hack at if I needed to. I was exploring “indie” game development and of course, that lead me to GarageGames. I got involved in the community there and I posted a series of .plans about some art I was working on in my spare time for fun. I wasn’t really too knowledgeable since I was self training myself to work in 3D, but I had tons of fun playing with level editors trying to make cool stuff, and scripting was easy enough for the very basics.

Throw in a mission editor, and a copy of FRAPS, and I was having a great time. I was surprised when I got very positive reactions to some of this early work, including some from the folks at GarageGames itself. At the time these guys were total strangers to me (although I knew who Jeff was of course from growing up on his games):

“Awesome work! These are the best looking Torque screenshots I have ever seen.”
Jeff Tunnell, GG
“Awesome! Well, I guess I shouldn’t pay you too many more compliments Tim, I don’t want to sound like a fan boy.”
Josh Williams, GG Intern [at the time]

I was surprised to find GarageGames had just “grown” to be a 9 person shop, I had always thought it was much bigger. After posting a few more images, I was contacted by none other than the man himself, and that aspiring intern (at the time). I had grown up on some of the the old Dynamix titles, so I was pretty excited when we started talking about maybe coming out for an internship. I had just gone back to school again, this time for political science (screw art), and was pretty much flat broke from the tuition and the rent for my crappy studio apartment in Newark, NJ with the typical sink that emptied into a bucket (I guess plumbing was extra). So I quickly jumped at the chance, but realized I couldn’t afford to actually take the cross-country drive itself, let alone work for free for a few months. So I wrote this long rambling email about how sorry I was that I couldn’t come out for the internship after all because I couldn’t afford to pay rent once I got there, etc, to Jeff. I didn’t hear back for a day so, which made me think that maybe I pissed him off. As it turns out GarageGames CEO’s get a metric ton of email, that’s all. I heard back a day later, and it was pretty short and sweet. To summarize, it basically said:

“Don’t worry about it, we’ll figure something out for living, and we’ll give you a stipend of $700.00 a month”.

As I’d later find out, that was before taxes.

Done deal, I packed up the few things I had, piled them in my car and began the 3000 mile trip to Eugene, Oregon to start a new life as a serial indie game artist. I was actually extremely nervous because I didn’t know the first thing about game art, but these guys didn’t seem to care (or know). I arrived in Eugene, OR to be greeted by a slew of nights sleeping in my car and a variety of couches. After a week or two, I joined up with Matt Fairfax, a recent hire by BraveTree, and we rented an apartment in what would become the premiere place to live for new hires at GarageGames later on.

I went right to work on a slew of projects. I remember having to bring in my personal computer and monitor as there was an “equipment shortage” due to the recent growth. I was also pretty nervous to ask for new stuff to use, so I ended up using a bulk of software I had “acquired” through other means. While the software situation worked itself out, I actually ended up using my personal computer for just under a year at GarageGames. The real fun was lugging the huge case and 21″ CRT monitor back and forth on the weekends and up a few flights of stairs so I could play games at home. At least it was good exercise!

Alex Swanson was off for a long trip to Japan (I had yet to meet him), and Mark Frohnmayer and newly hired intern Pat Wilson were in the final stages of shipping Marble Blast Gold for this little experiment Microsoft was doing called “Live Arcade” for the original X-Box. The bulk of the art work was already done earlier by Brian Hahn, and Alex had completed all the levels a few weeks earlier before leaving on his trip.

Unfortunately, a few more assets were needed than were unexpected. One of these was a last minute introduction of an “easter egg” shape. This shape actually played the infamous Howard Dean scream when you collected it, but that version didn’t ship because MS Legal [-Fixed] failed to see the political humor. You’d think this shape would of been easy, but it was actually the second time in my life I had to make a 3D Shape that wasn’t created in a level editor. Needless to say, it was the fugliest looking egg, or roughly an egg-shaped object ever. It would later be reworked in Marble Blast Ultra thankfully by Justin Kovac, but that fugly egg worked for what it was.

Luckily, the next week was a bit easier as I assisted Julie Moore of Thin Air Design with the GarageGames rebranding process, a desperately needed thing. This was a bit more up my alley and training, so it was a much simpler task to handle.

After that, IGC 2004 was coming up fast and GG had this top secret engine being worked on, which would introduce some fancy new technology (at the time). My task, make the demos look pretty. I threw myself into it and came out with three demos instead of one, and it seemed to do the job. It was definitely interior heavy, as it was the tool I was most comfortable with, but I was able to get some more practice in pretty quickly on other stuff. These demos would last quite a while, until eventually disappearing in the great office power-surge of 2007. At IGC I got to give a few talks on the demos, a task I was seriously under qualified for but again, no one seemed to notice.

Shortly after IGC I pitched in some extra hours to help push the RTS Starter Kit out the door (which would later find us employee Stephen Zepp, who loved it so much that he just had to come work here). After the RTS Starter Kit, I ended up completing my first “shipping” product (the work on MBG was so small there is no way I could count it). Shipping a content pack provided a nice boost to my income, and allowed me to move from eating ramen to eating ramen AND rice.

The next big push was for GDC 2005. The original Torque demo had been around for quite sometime in various states, and Jay Moore really wanted something different to show alongside of it, something that felt like it could be a scene from a game. I teamed up with Robert Blanchet, and spent a month and a half creating the Warzone demo, which you might notice looks quite a bit like Terminator 2 (my inspirations are thinly veiled). It was a fun experience, but I was worried that I drove Robert insane (not the first, or the last time). Jay had this whole “brand the employee’s” concept at the time. This was a fairly new idea, but in 2008, we now see this everywhere. Naively, I agreed to it and many press releases went out with the title:

“GarageGames releases Tim Aste’s Warzone Demo”

Gah! I’m a quiet guy, I really hate the attention (despite what people think I’m sure), and I was definitely not feeling super confident in my artwork at the time, so I turned a few shades of red. It spawned the “Tim Aste Fan Club“, and a whole lot of awkward conversations for years to come. This was probably the last time I agreed to personal branding, but in reality it did a lot of good things for me and the outcome of the situation would last forever. When we actually got down to GDC, it was a whirlwind for me. The first time I’d ever been to the legendary Game Developers Conference. The days were filled with standing at the tiny 4′ x 5′ GG both talking to everyone from community members, to press, to developers for other companies who wanted to go indie, to people who had just no idea what they were doing in that place. In fact, right before opening one day, a peculiar older lady, who mysteriously got into the show floor before it opened, was walking around with a stroller. Upon closer investigation, I found out she had a rabbit in the stroller. She then proceeded to offer me $200.00 cash for my $5.00 USB Memory stick. Luckily, I said no and walked her to the security station as she was obviously lost. Weird place though. Developers can’t even break into this show floor, and this lady somehow found her way in. The nights at GDC were filled with socializing with friends and developers, drinking contests, and sleeping on the floors of hotel rooms. One day before booth duty was supposed to start, I remember coining the phrase with Pat Wilson

“Every step is a new world of pain.”

Overall, it was an amazing eye-opening experience to me. Comparing it with 2008’s GDC, I am shocked at how nonchalant I am about GDC now, and how boring it all seems to me now compared to then. I particularly remember the drive home was pretty insane too.

We were the last car to leave, and we had to pack up the van (yes we could fit the entire booth *barely* in a mini-van back then). The last guys out were Jay Moore, Benjamin Bradley, Matt Fairfax and myself. Matt and I had never been to a GDC before, and we were left with the task of dealing with the GES trade show union, and breaking down the booth and loading it up in the docks. Luckily, our ignorance turned out to be a huge boon for us getting out of there, as Matt parked the minivan in the middle of the loading dock, stopping any 18-wheelers from being able to pull up.

This was apparently so frustrating for the drivers that they harassed GES, and then we magically got bumped to being 3rd in line to leave. We packed up and rolled on over to have dinner with Jay, Benjamin, and a few others.

Woops. After an exhausting week, we left San Francisco for the 8 1/2 hour drive home at 11:30 at night, with only Matt and I being awake really. That was a very long night. I drove to the Oregon/California border, then switched and Matt hoofed out the Oregon leg. I think we got home at like 9am or something in the end. The worst part was once we got back to the office with the mini-van, we had to unload it, and I had to ride my back home since I couldn’t park my car for a week at the office by any means. Overall, It was an amazing experience though, and lots of good stories came out of it.

After GDC, I immediately got to work on a follow-up content pack series. I did this on company time in exchange for a smaller royalty rate, but it turned out very well. The knowledge I had gained from working for 9 months helped a ton, as well as all the feedback from the first content pack release. The actual construction time was a little under three weeks, working from 10pm to 8am (which earned me a vampire reputation). Once the content pack shipped, it was back to marketing and misc. A few little projects here or there, some documentation work, and then onto the new project, a “next-gen” title for an experimental platform on an unreleased console.

Next-gen really was, next-gen at the time, and we were going to try help pioneer digital distribution on a home console with Marble Blast Ultra. I began conceptualizing for this game around June of 2005 with Joe Maruschak. We had first designed a variety of concepts that made Marble Blast look like something out of the Matrix. I went on a week vacation to visit my family, and when I came back Joe had actually moved onto Rack’Em Up Roadtrip and Mark F. had taken the reigns with Alex Swanson. Alex had come up with a killer look, and we all went right to work creating MBU since time was pretty short.

This is when my accomplice for many crimes showed up, Adam deGrandis. MBU continued on at an astonishing pace and eventually swallowed half the company to meet the Xbox360’s crazy release schedule. Adam and I worked pretty closely on the power-ups, static shapes, the marbles, and a variety of level cleanup with Alex doing a majority of the heavy lifting on the new level designs and creating. I created a small test map for a game mode called Sumo, which would later by cut, but the map stuck around as “King of the Marble”. One of the weirdest things about MBU development was that most of the reviews went on about how “good” and “next-gen” the marbles looked. Funnily enough, all the marble skins were made by Adam, Justin Kovac, and myself in like less than two days of work time. The shader was written by Ben Garney last minute (with some optimization helps from Brian Ramage & Pat Wilson). It was pretty hacked together and last minute, which was funny because of all the attention. The Marble was the star of the show, it was always on screen, so it was definitely worth the last minute effort.

In the middle of MBU development IGC ‘05 came and we got to be the first place in the world where people could actually come and play Xbox 360s. Very cool! I again put together two presentations. One was on game lighting with John Kabus, in which I disappeared halfway through (still sorry John!). The other was on game texturing with Pascal Bos. Again, I was mostly talking out of my butt, but no one seemed to notice (or at least was too nice to call me on it!).

December came, and we finished Marble Blast just in time for Christmas. It was a pretty cool feeling, everyone had really come together to make it happen, and it was really the first title ever designed exclusively for the idea of an “arcade” platform. Steam had already been around, but XBLA was *much* different. No one had any idea if this would work, it could tank, or it could sell, there was no data to back it up, and you could tell everyone was a little bit nervous. Microsoft finally launched it in early January and the timing couldn’t of been better. The platform was out in time for Christmas, so everyone had already played through every box title at that point, including the XBLA title that came with it (Geometry Wars).

MBU released, and people just ate it up. It wasn’t for everyone, but overall we got a solid 8.5 review average, and we sold a crazy amount of units. More so, it was the first time that anyone really proved that digital distribution could work outside the PC for original titles. Needless to say, everyone was pumped.

So now comes a stupid moment, Adam and I talk and we say, shit, we should make a small little demo for GDC (coming up in March) that actually lets people play it. This would be much more effect for booth retention than just a random slide show! Then we laugh and say, just for kicks, let’s throw a jetpack on the guy because it’d be funny because of that whole Tribes thing. Everyone seems ok with this idea, as long as we keep it very small. Well, that backfired. Turns out a lot of people wanted a game like that, and one little blurb turned the whole thing into a media frenzy. Eric Elwell, Justin Kovac, Adam DeGrandis, Ben Garney, and myself (along with help from contractors Tom Bampton and Ray Gebhardt) scrambled to mockup “Legions”, a playable TGEA Demo with a idle “slide show” mode for GDC 2006. This just recently got cleaned up and released as the “Barricade” demo that just went out for TGEA actually by Matt Fairfax.

Unfortunately, media attention was high for just a demo which created a buttload of pressure and stress, but we got a ton of great publicity that you can’t buy, so while the Tribes community was a little yolked about us just putting a demo out (sorry), the overall gains for the company were fairly significant. We had a ton of fun on this trip as well, working the booth during the day and schmoozing at night. Despite being the second GDC in a row where I had to sleep on the floor, it was an exciting trip. Adam managed to piss off Tim Schafer somehow one night.

After GDC it was back to the grind, miscellaneous artwork, documentation work, bug fixes, the usual. It was right around this time I got more involved with helping Josh with 3rd party development. Josh was the 3rd party development manager but was going to help Mark (who was the CTO, but now was the newly appointed President) with more of the general company business in a transitional phase. This left a pretty big hole in the bizdev plan with only Jay, Josh and Mark to fill it. I somehow ended up picking up all the small pieces that fell through between the big stuff, content packs, interns, contractors, etc etc. I’d actually end up doing this longer than I anticipated, up until the IAC buyout. Despite some grumblings against me going, the first immediate perk was I got to follow along and assist Jay at the 2006 E3 (which ended up being the last one). That was a really cool experience, although just as the old pro’s warned, very very draining. It was a great chance to really learn from one the masters, and make some good connections.

After E3 I got to work assisting indie devs to put out content packs and tools on GarageGames. It was probably the most rewarding experience I had at GG, as I got to really help a bunch of people, from complete hobbyists to serious professionals. At one point in late 2006 we attempted to resurrect Legions as a TGEA demo, but it ended up being scrapped and the art recycled for the GameFest 2006 TGEA lighting demo. I even was able to participate in a conceptualizing of an XBLA version of ZAP that was never meant to be. It was a pretty fun concept, but there was just too much going on to really put a development team on it full-time.

I also ended up teaming up with (associate at the time) Todd Pickens and Jon Jorajuria to revamp the TGE walk through mission to the one it is today. We collaborated on the environments and audio and quickly pumped out some buildings, and it came out pretty nicely. The first version was a bit rushed to meet the release time line, but it was quickly cleaned up for performance by Andy Maloney which was pretty rocking.

The possible Legions “resurrection” actually ended up with us in discussion with TurboSquid for their “Infinity” project. At the time we both wanted to make a sort of “modular” shooter, but weren’t sure how to do it. We thought maybe there was a way we could do it together! I ended up talking with them for quite some time, but eventually we had to scrap the project from our side, we just couldn’t put it together and were too busy at the time. They’d eventually get it going in 2007 from their end (and branded it Infinity) and were able to use many community members as contractors, as well as a few GG guys like Stephen Zepp which was really great to hear.

Torque X was starting to suck up quite a bit of manpower, and I got a brief chance to put together a side scroller demo in a day or so. It was extremely fun, I became pretty excited to work on 2D stuff after that, but there weren’t a ton of chances with the current schedule for 2007.

After that it was just the same old, bugs, demo fixes, art tweaks, and mostly 3rd parties, developer relations, and tools & content packs. I got to do more and more bizdev, but still the overflow. Part of this was helping to get a Torque Wii port going, and handling some larger contracts. Eventually I realized I was doing 85% paperwork, and 15% art. It was great to be helping anyway I could, but it was a lifestyle that was kind of hard for me to keep up. I enjoy the tangible visual results of creating a piece of art and being able to see it afterward. It’s hard to write a End User License Agreement and get the same feeling. I was still very happy to be able to work with developers on content packs, and help GG anyway I could, but I learned that I wasn’t really cut out for paperwork and I chose correctly by not staying the course as a Political Science major in college. I had a brief week period right before GDC 2007 where I quickly put together the “Forge” demo for TSE, it was a great exercise in working quickly! It went over pretty well at the show too, although last minute optimizations were needed on the show floor to achieve a sustainable framerate.

Then the IAC deal finalized in Spring of 2007. I had a chance to get back to do some art, and in a surprise move was put in charge of heading up the Legions project for whatever the new platform was going to be (which would turn into InstantAction). Pretty crazy times. This would be the longest, and last thing I’d actually work on at GarageGames (over a year for my personal involvement, not including the original stint from Jan/Feb 2006).

Controversially, and in no short way due to my own failings, the game had a fairly rough start. It had all the resources it needed (relatively to the scale of GarageGames), and everyone was signed off on it. We just had to go out and make it. It turns out having this freedom and access to resources was the worst thing I needed at the time, as I was pretty much new to the “directing a large team” thing and ended up not being able to make final decisions because I found myself in the “this isn’t good enough, keep at it” mentality. I kept thinking that everything had to be “just right”, when there was no such thing as “just right”.

What’s worse was I trickled that down to everyone around me, and it led to having a lot of chefs and no cooks, so the game design was all over the place and I didn’t get a good grasp on the situation quick enough. So we spent a little too much time conceptualizing (relatively for our original time line), although there was some killer stuff done in there. Around the end of summer progress was stalling again and I made the decision to take a short break, pair back the team, and release a lot of the guys to focus on a more studio wide effort for several projects. Once things remained to normal, I was tasked with regrouping for a second try. Lessons learned!

So in the end of September, we took another crack at it, Todd Pickens, Matt Ostgard, Adam Larson, and Thomas Buscaglia. This time my thoughts were KISS (keep it simple stupid). If I burned out another pair of developers, I’d probably shoot myself. Turns out it was a good idea, we picked up the pieces from the Spring/Summer attempt and rocked out a prototype in record time, meeting and exceeding all the original milestone dates from earlier in the year. It was an extremely intense schedule, full of 13 hour days and 6-7 day weeks. After hitting the end of the year milestone for the game, we quickly followed up by pushing out a more polished Alpha for GDC 2008, opened the doors to the gaming press for the game, and start moving towards a finished up closed beta. So delivered the beta build for the private beta (pre-dedicated servers) above board, although everyone was starting to feel the long-hours and getting stressed (including myself). It was around this time I decided I was ready to take on new challenges, and I began to transition off the project as I knew I’d be moving on at the end of June. Adam Larson also moved on from GarageGames around the same time, as well as Todd Pickens. Now a new team, as well as Thomas and Matt, continue to rock Legions and will carry it on to the future. It’s funny tracing it all back to that single blog post, but it’s pretty neat to look at back at it all. At least the Tribes community can’t say we didn’t deliver a game.

So now I’m looking at new, Open Horizons. At final count I contributed to ~93 products at GarageGames, 20 Games, 5 engines, 3 books, 13 tools, 48 content packs, and 4 websites. Some roles were bigger, some roles were smaller. While at GarageGames I got to work on a variety of things such as game art, contracts, QA, EULAs, logos, marketing, publishing contracts, producing, directing, web development, graphic design, and more. It was the most varied and rewarding job I’ve had to date, and I’m excited to see what sorts of new adventures and opportunities are waiting to be found in the future. As a final thought, I was thinking it’d be fun to collect some of the old IOTDs from stuff I’ve worked on. This isn’t comprehensive, but it was fun to reminisce.