Interview with Mick Larkins of Hi-Rez

 

 In game design one of our assignments was to interview a professional in the gaming industry.  I chose producer as I'm interested in eventually taking a leading role at whatever company I end up at.

Now, I play a LOT of Smite.  There's something about a third person camera that just makes the MOBA genre more playable to me and the mythological background that I love.    Imagine my elation when Mick Larkins, Executive Producer and Lead Programmer, at Hi-Rez replied to my random twitter private message that housed a request for an interview.  (Hi-Rez develops Smite, Paladins, Tribes: Ascend and Global Agenda.)  Mick happily answered the questions I posed to him, and here they are:

 

- What Major projects have you been involved with or are you proudest of?

Mick:  "I've been working at Hi-Rez Studios for 11.5 years and shipped Global Agenda, Tribes: Ascend, and SMITE.  I'm currently working on Paladins. "

- In short, what are your responsibilities?

M:  "Currently, I'm executive producer and lead gameplay programmer on Paladins.  I help guide the logistics of the project as a whole and direct the technical gameplay code."

 - How important are the relationships between coders and artists? 

M:  "Extremely.  Artists and programmers work in different styles, so being able to speak each other's language and bridge gaps leads to better communication.  Communication is critical for the creative process to be successful. "

 - What are a couple of the hardest challenges to overcome pre, during, and post production?

M:   "*In pre-production, finding the identity and "pillars" of a game is difficult.  Our production style involves principles of rapid-application-development and prototyping so that we can try hundreds of options, then see what works. 

*In production, the trickiest thing is changing gears to a more solidified pipeline, yet remaining agile enough to make fundamental changes if needed.  We make games as a service and so we pay special attention to analytics of our playerbase. 

*We don't really have a post-production.  Our games are living, service-oriented experiences, rather than ship-and-forget titles. "

- Why do you love your job? 

M:  "It is challenging work, yet when I see fan response it makes it all worth it.  Plus, Monday mornings are typically more interesting than Saturday mornings. "

- How stressful is the work environment during "crunch time?" 

M:  "Crunch time is a very loaded term in this industry, and I'm not quite sure everyone agrees on its definition.  Being a game developer, much like other creative disciplines, requires passion and sometimes long hours.  There is good stress and bad stress.  Creativity requires us to stay hungry and not become complacent, but it is not for everybody.  Bad stress and bad "crunch" comes from poor management. We do not require our developers to work weekends."

- How frequently do people cycle through jobs in your experience. Like how often are people contracted for a certain amount of time?

 M: " At Hi-Rez, we look for rock stars and try to keep them as long as we can. Our employee retention is very high.  Since I've seen this studio grow from 6 people to 275 people (and still growing), there is a tremendous amount of opportunity for folks to shift responsibilities throughout their career path."

 - What is the coolest thing about working for Hi-Rez? 

M:  "We make games from our passion, not because of a particular investment or publisher agreement.  Also, seeing the success of our creative process."

 - Since your games are focused primarily around combat, how did your team finally decide that your combat system was competitive, and more importantly, fun. (That one seems hard so feel free to cheeseball that one if you want lol.) 

M:  "I have always dreamed of games as a perfect platform for competitive viewing.  Our first game, Global Agenda, did not have a pro scene, however we did have the concept of alliances, and so the idea of player-organized teams were there. 

With our next game, Tribes, embraced the e-sport scene.  Also, Tribes among the first free-to-play games on Steam and one of the first games to integrate Twitch directly into the client. 

With SMITE, we decided to make a massive investment into our pro scene and it has really turned into something special.  We now take the competitive side into direct consideration when designing future games, like Paladins."

No matter how many skins I buy, or how close to 700 hours deep in Smite, when do I smash through the wall that makes me pro? 

M:  "Come to SWC this January and talk to some teams! :)"