This month's Get to Know a Dev is all about Game Designer Ed "Aristo" Hardin!
There are many paths into the world of game design, but not many begin in Birmingham, Alabama. While I'm old enough to have learned to type on an actual typewriter, electronic gaming has been a part of my life literally as long as I can remember. We played Pac-Man and Pitfall on the Atari, Astrosmash and Snafu on the Intellivision, River Raid and Zork on the Commodore 64, Choplifter on the Apple II, and the Bard's Tale and King's Quest on our PC (the one with the huge 10MB hard drive). I continued to play through high school - NES to SNES, 8088 to 80486.
In college in the mid-nineties, I picked Geography as a major by taking all the 101-level classes I could and choosing the one that was the most interesting. I was amazed to find that it wasn't gigantic lists of countries, states, and capitals, but actually the science of how the world fits together and how that informs civilizations. While I learned (literally) about world-building, I also discovered the nascent online world - using TIN for Usenet access, and playing MUDs. I'll never forget the day it clicked that the internet was incredible. I'd spent a very late night wandering a virtual world with three other people, when one of them said "I've got to go, my kids will be home from school soon." It turned out we were all on different continents (North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia), and yet we were sharing the same experience in real time. I went on to work on that MUD, learning the difference between a player's perspective and a designer's perspective by making some very bad quests that only I could figure out.
Soon after I graduated college, my brother-in-law told me about this game called EverQuest that was in beta at the time. We'd tried out Ultima Online together, and it hadn't really held our attention, but something about this new world fascinated both of us. We had pages of printouts of play guides, classes, races, and stats, and we'd spend afternoons trying to figure out how to build the best character. We applied for beta, and finally both got in phase 4. I played the game like it was my job, so much that I had to pay for a second line for the house so that other people could get phone calls. I'd play until my eyes burned, then camp out and get lost in chat asking and answering questions as we collectively tried to understand how the game world worked and how to survive in it. Soon after launch, I joined the Guide program and spent 10-15 hours a week getting people unstuck, finding corpses, and telling people when their server GM would be available to grant their surname.
A few years later, I decided that my IT job wasn't really fulfilling. I'd been exploring Luclin, really missed the fun of working on my MUD, and it seemed that I could probably find some way to get a job on one of those new MMOs that were starting up. I quit my job, went back to school to learn how to program for real, and while I was there all of those new MMOs were either canceled or launched and failed. I still graduated, and in a fit of optimistic insanity or insane optimism, moved out to San Diego with no contacts or job prospects, hoping that being in the city would at least get my resume read. It didn't, at first. I worked in IT again for a little while to pay bills, but finally I took a pay cut to work at SOE QA for a PS3 downloadable title. After only three months, the game shipped, and I came in the next day to find the team of 12 was down to me and one other guy... and we both got moved to EverQuest QA to start work on The Buried Sea.
Sometime during the development of Secrets of Faydwer, I got the opportunity to become a design apprentice on EverQuest. I would work a full day of QA and then work overtime fixing bugs, implementing basic content, and trying to learn my way around the game. I got projects like "Figure out a way to get screenshots of every weapon type in the game," or "figure out why there are sometimes 12 mobs stacked on top of each other in this Gates of Discord mission," or even just "this weapon can be worn on your head. Fix that." Later on, I wound up doing most of the work for Defiant armor (including the overpowered-ness on the first day) and the first four Hardcore Heritage zone upgrades (Blackburrow, Guk, Unrest, and Cazic Thule).
I was finally hired on as a full-time designer (content and patch wrangler) during the development of Seeds of Discord. I was really, really worried about my first raid (the Brothers Zek) being too easy, because I'd tested raids like Battle Room, M.E.G., and the Meldrath fight. I spent nearly a month making it and testing it, and it turned out to be the hardest raid in the expansion. Oops. After that I took over half of the items job from Merloc for Underfoot (Ngreth had the other half. He did whatever it is you don't like), meaning I did a lot less content design (quests, missions, etc). I took over spells from Raramor before House of Thule, and now I'm doing the same for Veil of Alaris. It's hard to believe it's been almost 13 years since I started playing this game, and six years since I first walked into the building. Back in late 1998, holding that first Beta CD in my hand, I felt like I was about to experience something incredible. I had no idea.
So now that you know a bit more about him, let's get started with the questions! Please post your questions for Game Designer Ed "Aristo" Hardin to the appropriate thread on the forums. Submissions will be open until 11:59 p.m. Pacific on Septmember 25, 2011, at which point we will select the best questions and have Game Designer Ed "Aristo" Hardin answer them! The results will be posted on the forum and website.
Let the questioning begin!
You sure got a purty shield Aristo