Inside Dunn

Terry Dunn

From the BethBlog:

Inside the Vault presents Terry Dunn, quality assurance tester.

What’s your job at Bethesda?
I am a quality assurance tester, which basically means I get to play games for a living. While it may sound like a glorified position to some, it actually requires persistence, conviction, and thoroughness. It’s my job to track down issues in our games, find a way to reproduce it if possible, and then write a report up for it and submit it to the developers for review. When fixes come in, I double check it to make sure the problem has been resolved.

Inside Brigner

Daryl Brigner

From the Bethblog:

Inside the Vault presents one of our level designers, Daryl Brigner.

What’s your job at Bethesda?
I’m a Level Designer. I design the layout for specific areas/dungeons. This usually consists of where enemies are, where and what the loot is, and what the basic flow of the dungeon is.[...]

Any other hobbies and interests? What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
Playing games, watching movies, and, believe it or not, making levels for other games. I’ve recently made a small map pack for Portal called Ren_Test3 It’s been featured on our site here along with my previous map. I have a lot of fun making those Portal maps because it’s less about the aesthetics and more about the puzzle design.

I’ve also done a few mapping tutorials for Half-Life 2, and will probably do some more of them in the future. They are four beginner tutorials and can be found if you just Google “Renstrike Mapping Tutorial”.

Inside Bernstein

Sam Bernstein

From the Bethblog:

Today’s Inside the Vault is about Sam Bernstein, QA tester.

What’s your job at Bethesda?
I’m a tester in the Quality Assurance department, currently working on Fallout 3. I try to break stuff.  Basically, I have the dream job of a 12-year-old, and it makes my inner 12-year-old very, very happy.[...]

What is the best part about working as a tester? The worst part?
Hmm, tough question. I guess the worst part about being a tester is having to replay the same things over and over and over again. It’s not that it stops being fun, it’s that there aren’t any more big surprises. Just a quick word to those who think VATS will get boring after a while, it’s been a little over six months and I still love it.

Inside The Vault: Ricky “socrates200x” Gonzalez

On today’s Inside the Vault at the Bethblog we have one of the most quoted devs in this blog, UI programmer Ricardo Gonzalez:

What’s your job at Bethesda?
I’m almost positive that what they pay me for here is “interface programming”. That is, I create, maintain, and polish that thin, delicate membrane that resides between the game world and the real one. There’s a glut of information and goings-on in our games that I’m told is very important and it’s my job to see that it gets presented to the player in some semblance of order. I also get bonus points if it looks pretty and if it doesn’t crash the game. To date, I think I have 3 bonus points.
What other games have you worked on?
This would be the first professional game I’ve worked on. As a kid, I invented a whole bunch of the single-player variety to keep myself, how did my parents put it?  “Occupied far, far away from the house”.  Old favorites like “Run There and Back Again” or “Spin in a Circle Really Fast”. I also had a lot of fun burying things in the sand and trying to find them again. I only lost that one once, and afterwards my mom made me promise to stay out of her medicine cabinet.[...]

What games are you looking forward to?
Fallout 3 for one. It’s one thing to constantly debug and playtest it; I really want to take it home and have my way with it for a hundred hours or so. Also Mass Effect for PC, although that’s more because I’d need to upgrade my rig to be able to run it comfortably and I want to have a reason to spend cash money upgrading my rig.

And this is his opinion on what is the best thing about the classic Fallout RPGs:

That I could dynamite the entrance to the Shady Sands Radscorpion cave instead having to kill anything. That I could hack my way into the depths of the Glow without firing a shot. That I could join the Skulz gang, double-cross them in the middle of a gun fight, and still get credit for it. In essence, Fallout is one of the best games I’ve played in allowing you to play the character you want, as you want, and still have a meaningful game experience.

In too many other RPGs, I just can’t play the lazy, self-centered intellectual that I so enjoy playing. Because I have to save my village. Or avenge my village. Or gather happy, glowing stones for my village. You don’t want to? Tough. Take this sword. Or twin daggers. Or talking hauberk. Or whatever. Fallout gives you the exact same opportunity to be the hero, go slay the bad guys, finish that main quest line, but then lets you say, “Screw this. I’m going to go get laid and play chess with my super-computer friend.”

Inside Bloomfield

Brian Bloomfield

From the Bethblog:

Today’s Inside the Vault features Brian Bloomfield from our QA dept.

What’s your job at Bethesda?
Quality Assurance Project Lead

What other games have you worked on?
I’ve worked on Oblivion, Fallout 3, Star Trek: Tactical Assault, Start Trek: Legacy, Star Trek: Conquest, Pirates of the Carribean: Legend of Jack Sparrow, AMF Pinbusters Wii, AMF Pinbusters DS, and Ducati DS.

What is the best part about working as a testers? The worst part?
I work with some of the most talented people I’ve ever met. It is also an awesome sight to see your name in a game played by millions.  The worst part, I think, is the misconception that I get paid to “play video games”. I have a friend, who happens to be a firefighter in Frederick County, and he thinks my job is a step above Mime, and a step below Magician.

Inside The Vargas

Rafael Vargas

New Inside the Vault with Rafael Vargas:

What’s your job at Bethesda?
I get to do what I love the most, which is building and designing environments. In my previous work experience, as well as much of my free time, I am devoted to creating spaces and architecture. So I guess that makes me by now a World Artist.

What other games have you worked on?
I worked on Battlespire, Redguard and The 10th Planet as an animator for the cutscene movies. As part of the development team, I’ve worked on Bloodmoon, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 — pushing, pulling, cutting, inserting, and all of the good things you can do to geometries to make it look good and work correctly.

What is the best part about working as a artist? The worst part?
The best part for me is the creative freedom. In Bloodmoon, I pretty much had an open canvas to do what I wanted; I was told to do a Nord city on an icy landscape. I created it from early concept work all the way to the final product. It was quite a challenge, since at the time I had recently moved from the sister division of ZeniMax to Bethesda. The creative freedom continued in the development of Oblivion and much into Fallout 3.

Spotted on the BethBlog.

Inside The Greco Vault

From the BethBlog:

On Inside the Vault today, our subject is Tony Greco, one of our world artists. During development, Tony’s test cells are among the best to visit. He makes lots of cool unique items and you can find them all in his test areas — you know, the amazing stuff that you get as rewards for quests or after fighting a tough boss or [Fallout 3 stuffs we can't talk about], imagine all that awesome loot in one place. Hmmm….

What’s your job at Bethesda?

I’m a World Artist that mostly specializes in clutter meshes. It’s my job to make the game-spaces not look empty and to give you a reason to check out what’s on the kitchen table. It’s my job to make those sweet rolls look extra tasty. Mmm…sweet rolls.

Inside The Vault: James Cory Edwards

New Inside the Vault at the Bethblog, this time with Cory Edwards:

Inside the Vault welcomes Cory Edwards, world artist, to answer a few questions about his work and his life. He has done some amazing work for Fallout 3. Cory is also our resident 3D Max guru.

What’s your job at Bethesda?
I’m a world artist working on texturing and modeling for our environments. My primary focus is on making kits for the level designers to use and abuse. I’ve spent the last two years making a large number of the dungeons kits used in Fallout 3 and the kit pieces for Megaton.

Angela Browder on Inside the Vault

From the Bethblog:

Today’s Inside the Vault is about Angela Browder, associate producer. Angela is actually a lawyer who would rather work here — though her only legal experience was working with Robber Barons and Railroad Tycoons, which actually sounds pretty cool to me. Though, I bet if you asked most lawyers, they’d rather be working on videogames.

What’s your job at Bethesda?
I am an associate producer in charge of the character artists and animators. I also look out for our sound guy and concept artist when needed. On a daily basis that means I assign tasks and bugs, work on long term scheduling, and keep tabs on making sure that people are on track with dates. I consider it a big part of my job to do what I can to make things easier for people to get their jobs done — whether this be acting as a liaison between departments, wrangling decisions from those who need to make decisions or just acting as an ear during times of frustration.

And what did she liked the most about playing Fallout?

The combat messages are one of my favorite parts as they always make me laugh. I mean, I am sure the bruise will look nice and maybe the scars will make good party talk.

Inside the Vault: Liz Beetem

From the BethBlog:

Liz Beetem is our subject today on Inside the Vault. She joined us last year as an art intern and performed so well that we’ve offered her a full time position as a character artist. When you are trying out all the interesting outfits available in Fallout 3, think of Liz.

What’s your job at Bethesda?
Character Artist, recently upgraded from Character Art Intern. When I was interviewed for the internship, they asked why I hated skinning and rigging so much as I had jokingly mentioned this on my website. They must have been secretly laughing at me because that is mostly what my job ended up being. That is, until some new meat comes in to take that over. Just think, gentle internet reader, it could be you! I also work a lot with the gore and even though some of the processes for implementing the gore are incredibly tedious, I like having a job where I can say ‘viable dismemberment line.’ When I am lucky, I get to do texture edits and make fun stuff like robot gibs and radscorpion venom glands. Awww yeah.[...]

My best droogie became my boyfriend and got out of school slightly before me and got hired at Bethesda as a character artist thanks to his awesome skills at modeling monsters with bizarre pelvises. I followed him up to Maryland and submitted my portfolio to Bethesda, which got me completely ignored. So I was unemployed a bit and continued working on 3D stuff at home. I also wanted to throttle my boyfriend because he was very good about his NDA. We were both Fallout fans, and he wouldn’t tell me anything except obvious lies about how you could recruit an idiot man-child and ride him around like Master-Blaster, and maybe also you could get a talking radscorpion buddy named Citizen Snips.

I liked the reference to Marko Djurdjevic, he’s one of the best.

Edit: And here we have her impressions on playing Fallout:

I am particularly fond of Fallout’s feeling of imminent demise. Near the end of Fallout 1 I had a modified plasma rifle that took less AP and with my heroic agility, small frame, and action boy perks I could turn like five people a round into puddles of goo. I felt like a total badass, but with a bit of bad luck and a supermutant with a flamethrower I’d be watching my health drop into negative numbers long after I’d collapsed into a pile of ash. It really sold the idea of a hopelessly desperate existence to me. I also have fond memories of trying to become a porn star in New Reno in the second game. First the other girls made fun of how cliche my leather armor was. Then when they gave me a tryout they said I didn’t have enough stamina, despite my heroic strength. Initially my dreams were crushed, but one buffout later, and I was a superstar!

Boston, Austin and Less Hair

After opening the Inside the Vault series, there’s now a second Inside the Vault with Emil Pagliarulo:

Lately, you’ve been a bit more active on our forums, relatively speaking. How do you filter through the signal to noise?
Right now, everyone is hungry for information. Whether it’s an Oblivion fan, or a fan of the old Fallout games, or just someone who’s new to the forums and wants to know what Fallout 3 is all about — everyone has a million questions, and wants a lot of detail.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of detail I’m at liberty to give right now. So what I generally look for are discussions about issues we have addressed publicly in some capacity. I like to make sure that information – the information we’ve already released – is getting disseminated accurately. Because, you know, with all the previews and forum posts, and can be like a big game of “telephone” — information gets modified in its retelling, until you occasionally (and unfortunately) arrive at a bit of complete misinformation.

That’s the kind of stuff I look for, and like to clear up. But I also like to generally check out all the cool conversations taking place, all the debates people are having. So even when I don’t respond, I’m always lurking. Always waaatttccchhiinngggg….

Like an evil genius!

Inside Simonet

New Inside the Vault at the BethBlog:

Bonjour! Today’s Inside the Vault is with Jean-Sylvere Simonet, our resident French programmer.[...]

What’s your job at Bethesda?
I am one of the AI Programmers and I am responsible for Pathfinding, that is, figuring out how NPCs navigate around the world. Considering how organic our environments are and the huge variance in scales of our NPCs, pathfinding has turned out to be quite a challenge. Add to that huge explosions that move/destroy everything around, and you get the idea of how complicated it becomes. As a consequence, my work involves a lot of 2d/3d math, writing search algorithms and dealing with multithreaded optimizations.

You can find his very old works here.

Inside the Vault:Jenny “From The Block” Noland

From the BethBlog:

Today’s Inside the Vault is about Jennifer Noland, QA tester. Jennifer started out as an intern, worked her way to become one of the original five core testers on Oblivion, and she’s been an important part of our QA department ever since.

What’s your job at Bethesda?
I am a tester in the Quality Assurance department, currently working on Fallout 3.

What other games have you worked on?
Bethesda was my first job in the gaming industry. I started here back in 2003 and began work on the second The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind expansion pack, Bloodmoon. I have also worked on Pirates of the Caribbean, IHRA Drag Racing 2004, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The Shivering Isles expansion, and various downloadable content for Oblivion, including Knights of the Nine.

What is the best part about working as a tester? The worst part?
You know, I’m not sure there is just one thing I like the best about working as a tester, but I guess one of the top things I like is that I find it really interesting to get the chance to see how games get put together, slowly building up and changing into the final product. I like to think about how the game looked when I first began testing it and comparing it to the end product. I get excited about things that are going to be in the games, and then getting the chance to see them for the first time.