Interview at China Game Companies, Part 4

All my previous interviews were with either French companies, or one that is co-founded by a French. The fourth one is part of the French Connection too.



Ubisoft does not need much introduction, if you are reading this, I would assume that you are either a gamer, or have some knowledge of the game industry, (or particularly concerned of me, thank you thank you in that case!) therefore Ubisoft shouldn't be a stranger to you. Now pardon me as I am still going to do some name and figure dropping anyway.

Ubisoft is founded some 19 years ago by the Guillemot brothers. They are Tom Clancy's ally in the quest to save the world from terrorists hungry for world domination(cough...EA...cough), also producers of nuclear warheads and biological weapons (hmmm...Burnout 3 was certainly a bomb, a good one). Their battle is hard fought, but in Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon, there is hope afterall for all mankind! (Now get me that Chaos Theory!)

Terror shall never prevail cliches aside, they also developed and published the charming Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, as well as the edgy Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Rayman, Settlers and Myst complete the diverse and well known repertoire of Ubisoft.

Getting That Interview
If there is one thing we all fear in this digital age of job application, it got to be uncertainty. Uncertainty of who's at the receiving end of the job application you just sent out. It could be
A. a mail filter finely tuned to junk emails that does not adhere to its strict format for subject.
B. a clerk that is instructed to look for keywords using the control-F feature.
C. that HR manager that does not have a clue on technology, and your impressive portfolio, neatly written stuffed with power words and bombastic tech lingo may look alien to him.

By now you would know that I am a bit of a paranoid, but who isn't?

Weighing up the paranoia scale is TIC! Ubisoft is a huge company, China is a humongous country and you never know how many thousand others you are battling with for the position.

I tried to skip ahead the competition by establishing personal contact with someone inside the company. Igda Shanghai was pretty quiet back then(it still is now), and I tried to stir up some activity with some posts(to no avail), and when I saw this post my eyes lighted up. I did some emailing, the author was pretty friendly and responsive too. To cut a long story short and fast forward to the present, I got that interview I was longing for.

Day One - Some Yada-yada
Unfortunately, on the day that I was supposed to have a casual lunch interview with Erick, he fell sick. I was sick in another way too, with my face skin all peeling off because of the Genting-esque cold weather. Anyway, he still scheduled me to meet the HR manager and the lead level designer before heading off for a rest.

My low points of the day? I fared badly when the HR manager asked me "what do you think are your strengths?" I used to program myself to answer it this way:"My strength is I am devoid of any weakness, my weakness is that I have too many strengths." This lame joke may not trigger the humour senses in the HR maanger, and obviously would portray me as an arrogant person, so I swallowed it, and I failed to give a satsifying answer. (the usual "I'm very determined" just doesn't cut it)

Another one - the lead level designer asked me what are my top 3 games of all time. I mentioned Katamari Damacy, Warcraft 3 and Winning Eleven. Katamari Damacy because thats all I have been playing and my brains couldn't stop rolling from then on, Winning Eleven because it is in fact the game I wasted the most time on, and Warcraft 3 simply because it inspired me to be competitive in gaming(Counter-Strike did the trick too, but too much of CS made me sick of it). I regretted my hastily thought out answers. Winning Eleven doesn't really fare much in the creativity department, it's all about realism, and the post that I was applying for is Junior Game Designer! Warcraft 3 I loved, but I was loving it in the knowledge that Starcraft could kick its @55 anytime(shamefully, I didn't play much Starcraft). And Katamari? I am worrying that it may be a crush, not true love. I still have not figured out my top 3 games to this day, but Grim Fandango got to hold a place up there.

Another candid moment. The Level Designer heard me saying I used to play in Battle.net frequently, and he asked what level was I. In my bluriness I blurted out "below 10, i think"(my memory was deserting me) In truth it is 14-15-ish, still a n00b, but I could see from his face that below 10 = mega n00b. I could almost read his mind: "A sucky gamer trying to be a game designer? Bah!"

Day Two - Pen and Paper
After a few days, I finally had a chance to meet up with Erick in a casual lunch interview. He is a great guy - humble and friendly. Being an avid pen and paper RPG creator(he has a massive portfolio of publications, check it out), he casually mentioned that Dungeon & Dragons is for 12-13 year olds. Me being the frog in the well on pen and paper RPGs, it was surprising to hear, as it seemed like Malaysians only know of D&D as the ultimate ruleset for pen and paper RPGs.

Erick also told me that there were quite limited places for the junior game designer post that I was applying for, and there were 3 times the applicants, including some internal staff that are applying to transfer to the post, which Ubisoft must give priority to. To be fair, a test was conducted. As "junior game designer" is a new position in Ubisoft and there weren't any ready made tests yet, I was given the level designer test.

Again, it would be a crime to reveal what's in the test, but suffice to say, it contained quite a number of questions on gameplay that you could only answer if you played the various games mentioned. My poor gaming vocabulary was severely exposed, and for the first time I paid for not playing enough games! I just hoped that the questions does not carry much weight in evaluating the applicant, as it is more appropriate to judge someone applying for a game tester role using those questions. In the remainder of the test, my performance is mixed. On one hand I was asked to write a review of one of Ubisoft's games. This didn't pose much of a problem to me, as I am an ardent reader of Gamespot and Gamespy, and cooked up a review of MOHAA long time ago(the site I written for seem to be dead). On the other hand, I was asked to design a level of one of Ubisoft's game, on paper! That was something entirely new to me. Yes, I did design mazes for friends to play in primary school, but designing a level that needs to be logical to the environment, realistic yet with functional constraints in mind, and also fun at the same time? That is a whole different story. The question overwhelmed me, and after two hours, I was barely halfway through.

In all, I took almost 4 hours to take the test. I'm wasn't sure if I performed well enough to convince Ubisoft to go out of the way to hire me(I needed an instant answer - a firm yes or no from them), or my performance gave them a perfect reason to keep me off. To be honest, I wasn't sure whether the switch from programmer to designer was a great idea too. I just thought it would be great to learn game development from another perspective, and broaden my knowledge at the same time.