You're based in Australia, has that shaped how you work?
Yeah, since the start of my career. Melbourne's a bit of a hub for game development in Australia, but I actually started in 1999 working remotely for Epic Games, so I had to adapt to working with people overseas from the very first years of my career. I've worked with people in Germany, Canada, the US, the UK, and it shaped how I see development. It never needed to happen in one place.
How did you end up making games in the first place?
From around age 8 or 9, I was writing my own rules for board games. Once we got the family PC, I moved on to messing with Doom and Duke Nukem 3D levels. The real light-bulb moment was playing an aliens-themed Doom mod and realizing someone had swapped out the graphics and sound. I started experimenting myself, my first project was a stickman version of Doom where I replaced all the art. That led me into level design, which I focused on from age 15 to 20, and eventually got me work with Epic doing level design for a community mod. Getting paid for that at 19 was when it clicked that this could be a real job.
If you weren't making games, what would you be doing instead?
The romantic answer is painting. My grandmother was a landscape painter, and I grew up around her work. I still go through stints of painting, modeling, or building dioramas when I need a break from digital work. But honestly, I'd be making games regardless of whether I got paid. I always have.
You're often described as a solo developer, what's the hardest part people don't expect?
Motivation. Getting started is always the hardest part for me. Collaborating with people over the last few years has actually helped with that, because there's accountability. And there's a myth around "solo dev", my game The Last Stand: Aftermath, made with my longtime collaborator Steve Woolcock, had a credits list close to 100 people by the end once you count composers, audio directors, marketing and publishing teams on both sides. It bugs me a little when people say a game was "made by one person", because there's almost always more support behind it than people realize.
What skill did you have to learn purely because there was nobody else to do it?
Programming was the big one. I learned by making the very first Last Stand. Beyond that: animation, 3D modeling, sound design. As a solo dev you end up being a generalist rather than an expert in any one thing. I joke that my approach to sound design is "layer stuff until it works." It's not elegant, but it gets the job done. You have to learn as you go. Honestly, a love of learning has been one of the most important traits for staying in this industry.
And that's it for part one. In part two, Con tells us how a chance meeting at a GDC party in San Francisco turned into one of the most important creative partnerships behind Warfare 1776, and what it's actually like co-developing a game with someone you've known for twenty years but never worked with until now. Make sure you're following and wishlisting Warfare 1776 on Steam so you don't miss it.