For a site built by Halo 2 fanatics, it shouldn't surprise that one of our own actually got to work at Bungie. I've known of Mrs_Doublefire for years, but I never really talked to the guy, so I don't know him. But I have always wanted to talk to him about the gig. So...
I planned on using the release of the Mythic Map Pack for Halo 3 as an excuse to interview him. He built "Heretic," after all. For whatever reason, it didn't happen. Fortunately, he continued to work for Bungie, finishing up this summer with the completion of Halo: Reach.
He was happy to do the interview, despite my previous failure. So without further ado... 2o2p's own, Mrs_Doublefire.
(this interview took place a few days before the release of Halo: Reach)
Drost: Your 2o2p profile says "artist." What's your background? Are you a traditional artist in the print sense of the word?
Mrs_Doublefire: I've been drawing since I could hold a crayon. My coloring books from when I was real little had very little coloring in them. Mostly they had drawings in the margins of my favorite cartoons. I quickly stopped getting those and started receiving sketchpads and pencils instead. So yeah, I'm a traditional artist
Drost: You go to school for design?
Mrs_Doublefire: Well, I took art as an elective pretty much every time I could and then majored in architecture when I left for college. Arizona State -- go Sundevils. I dropped out of Architecture after two years and worked at an Industrial Design shop. There I was a prototype modelmaker and CNC machinist for a few years before returning to school. I finally got an AA in Multimedia with emphasis on Digital Animation and production from the University of Advancing Technology.
Drost: So what's your gaming background?
Mrs_Doublefire: Like most people my age, I was in grade school when consoles first started showing up. My first was an Intellivision and I was hooked. Unfortunately, my parents didn't buy me a lot of stuff like that so I didn't have a lot of the experiences with Nintendo like a lot of others. It wasn't until I was in college that I really started to get into gaming. I played the Dooms and Quakes but never online because of dial up at the time. It was around the time I was in school at UAT when a friend bought an XBOX and Halo and brought it to my house. That was pretty much all she wrote. Up until that time I wanted to do visual fx for TV and film. Now I wanted to make games. About a year or so later Halo PC came out and I started making custom maps with my newly acquired skills from school.
Drost: Is that how you came to the attention of Bungie?
Mrs_Doublefire: Yes. My maps were pretty well received and Shishka was also a Halo PC modder at the time. About two years after Halo 2 came out, Bungie started gathering the best of the best in the Halo PC community for a focus group to give feedback for new tools for the Halo 2 Vista port. It was through this group that they also started recruiting for contract artists on Halo 3.
Drost: What was it like getting recruited by Bungie?
Mrs_Doublefire: Unbelievable. I was so excited! It took me a little bit of convincing with my wife to let me do it. It wasn't a done deal though. Once I told them I was interested, I had to do an art test that they sent me. This is standard practice by most gaming companies for any future game artists out there. Once you pass that stage you go onto a phone interview and so on...
Drost: So obviously, you passed the test. What then? Did they fly you to Seattle?
Mrs_Doublefire: No, the arrangements were all done over phone and email. If it had been a full time thing then the answer would have been yes. Basically, they gave me a contact at a contracting agency that Microsoft uses. It was a bit of a tough road being that I rented an apartment in Bellevue, WA while my wife stayed home in AZ. I flew back to see my wife every two or three weeks on the weekends, on my own dime. My first day on the job was the first I'd ever put a face to a person.
Drost: Did they give you the nickel tour and then throw you in the fire? What was the first thing you worked on?
Mrs_Doublefire: Basically, but no fire. They have a boot camp they have you run to familiarize yourself with the process. The first things I made were the small and large industrial space crates that were being res-ed up from Halo 2.
Drost: So how did you go from crates to Heretic (which was awesome, btw)?
Mrs_Doublefire: Lol, You might want to point them to my blog on the site because it's a long list of items. Without going through all the stuff I made I'll just say they made me an offer to be a full time employee towards the end of my 11 month contract. After a long discussion with my family it was decided that I would come back home to AZ. After that, I was unemployed for a good 10 months. Bungie called me up out of the blue and asked if I would be interested in doing some more contract work. I said yes, but with the condition that I could do it from my home in AZ. They said sure lets try it. Originally, I was slated to just make Heretic for DLC over two months. I busted my ass on that to show them I could make the arrangement work with the hopes that they would throw more work my way.
Mrs_Doublefire: Interesting side point. If I hadn't done the contract, there would be no Heretic.
Drost: Damn.
Mrs_Doublefire: I ended up doing contract work like that up until July of this year.
Drost: So you talked them into Heretic?
Mrs_Doublefire: No. They approached me with the contract knowing that if I said no, they didn't have a backup plan for Heretic. Probably why they were so eager to try the remote thing.
Drost: Did you redo it from the ground up? What kind of assets did you start with?
Mrs_Doublefire: They had imported Midship from the Halo 2 mesh and setup the spawns and weapons just as they were from Halo 2 so they could test it out. It also had some Flood garbage in it because they were toying with how to differentiate sides better. I did end up rebuilding the entire map from scratch but what I did was build it on top of the original as a template so all the distances and heights remained the same.
Drost: I thought maybe you'd been motivated to remake it because of all of us MLG whiners on 2o2p.
Mrs_Doublefire: That was just the icing on the cake.
Drost: Okay, so after that you got to work on Reach. Same sort of arrangement? Work from AZ? Did you get to work on just MP maps, or was there more? Firefight? Campaign?
Mrs_Doublefire: Yeah, but you forgot that I also did ODST. All three Mythic DLC maps were a wrap by August the year previous to ODST's release. Put that in your pipe and smoke on that for a while. Not Bungie's fault how that all went down. Had to do with the publisher’s marketing, timelines, yada, yada, yada.
Drost: lol. Dude, I completely forgot about ODST. Totally blanked out on it. Okay, then, same question. What'd you get to do on ODST?
Mrs_Doublefire: No problem. Real quickly, I was responsible for finish work on Oni Alpha Site (exterior island part) and Last Exit at the end of the campaign. I also made the texture for all the pretty streets and highway in the game.
Drost: They kept telling us the ODST team was pretty small. How small was it? ... Okay, wait. So the DLC maps were finished by Aug. 08?
Mrs_Doublefire: The actual design team was small but the art team was at around 80 percent which is substantial. And yes, Aug. '08.
Drost: Wow, that's not cool at all.
Mrs_Doublefire: Yeah, nobody was happy about that.
Drost: Did you get to the point where you felt like you were part of Bungie, despite being on "contract?"
Mrs_Doublefire: Oh, yeah. There's a certain separation that they have to maintain for legal reasons but yeah, I was virtually an employee in the minds of many full timers.
Drost: After you wrapped up on ODST, you got to dig in on Reach, correct? What did you get to work on, and where can we see your handiwork?
Mrs_Doublefire: Yeah, so I started on a UNSC military outpost on the first level of the game. The exterior, not the interior. It's what's connected to the huge satellite dish everyone should be familiar with since the Beta. I also worked on the modeling of said dish. You can see it in the distance on the Generator Defense map from the Beta. After that I moved on to Covenant themes again. I haven't become Professor Plum for no reason. I'm responsible for the finish work on the MP map Zealot and the Firefight map Corvette. Corvette was also the geometry they used to make the "Deliver Hope" trailer. I also did a lot of the initial work on the Covenant themes for Reach so you'll see a lot of stuff like textures and some geometry reworked and reused throughout the game as well.
Drost: So what do you think of Zealot as a multi-player map? How does it play?
Mrs_Doublefire: Hehe. I honestly can't tell you. I've never played it against someone else. One of the drawbacks to doing remote work is, I can't get builds of the game quickly and there's no real way for me to network the devkit to the devkits in WA.
Drost: Dude, that's not fair. How much of Reach have you gotten to play?
Mrs_Doublefire: I've played through half of the campaign and multiple Firefight maps. I've run through all of the MP maps alone and dabbled with the new Forge controls
Drost: So do you think this is the best Halo game?
Mrs_Doublefire: Only time will tell. Halo: CE has that spot right now. The reason I say that is, I'm in a similar boat to most people out there. The last time I played through the campaign, there was still no music and design wasn't complete yet. I've also purposely not played the game on Heroic or above as a way to save the experience for myself, which is also the reason I never finished the campaign.
Drost: Do you think you'll get to work on Bungie's next IP?
Mrs_Doublefire: Most likely not. I think this was my last hurrah. Bungie's art department is huge now and they no longer need my assistance. If they were to ask me back it would just be because they liked me. However, I think too much time will have elapsed for me to make that a feasible venture. Plus, I already have a new full time gig.
Drost: What're you working on now?
Mrs_Doublefire: Nothing too glamorous. I am making and designing slot machine games for a casino gaming company. Doing all the graphics and animations. You know you love those bonus games!
Drost: Actually, that's kinda cool. At least you're involved with making games. Speaking of gaming, tell me about how you got involved with 2o2p.
Mrs_Doublefire: I joined up in May of 2005 with the Wheezing Geezers. I have a good friend, Mothergoat, who said he found this great site for gamers over 25 and suggested I check it out to get away from all the Timmies in Halo 2, though “Timmies” wasn't yet a moniker.
Drost: You're still hanging around 2o2p. What's been its value to you over the years?
Mrs_Doublefire: Honestly, it has a lot to do with how your forums are set up, maintained, and moderated. There are plenty of gaming sites out there but once I got to know a lot of the people here and hearing about their lives I didn't want to go anywhere else. It feels comfortable ... safe.
Drost: I've heard that before. Okay, so what haven't we discussed, from a Halo standpoint, you think people would want to know?
Mrs_Doublefire: How the very end of the game plays out? While I'm missing the good majority of the campaign experience, I do know that. I'm not going to tell you though. I will say it's EPIC!
