My Inspirations
Conduct some research and complete some profiles of current practitioners within the media industry that inspire you or may influence your career paths in the future?
Who working in the media industry inspires you?
- Gabe Newell: Who dropped out of Harvard to join Microsoft, leaving to form his game company Valve.
Gabe Newell is one of the founders of valve, Newell and another employee, Mike Harrington, left Microsoft to found the video game company Valve on August 24, 1996. Newell and Harrington funded development of the first Valve game, the first-person shooter Half-Life , which was a critical and commercial success. Harrington left in 2000.
Newell led the development of Valve's digital distribution service, Steam, which was launched in 2003 and controlled most of the market for downloaded PC games by 2011.
In late 1995, Doom was estimated to be installed on more computers worldwide than Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 95. At Microsoft, Newell led development on a port of Doom for Windows 95, which is credited for helping make Windows a viable game platform.
He is also the owner of the marine research organization Inkfish.
How did they get where they are today?
Newell was born in Colorado and grew up in Davis, California. He attended Harvard University in the early 1980s but dropped out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first versions of the Windows operating system.
Newell spent 13 years at Microsoft as the producer of the first three releases of the Windows operating systems. Newell later said he learned more during his first three months at Microsoft than he ever did at Harvard, which was one of the primary reasons why he dropped out.
What reasons do you have for wanting to potentially go into the same media employment areas?
I look up to Gabe as someone who made a name for himself out of something he was passionate about.
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Who working in the media industry inspires you?
- Todd Howard: Started off playing games in the 80s' from the company he would go on to produce for after being rejected multiple times.
What role do they play in the industry? Which media company/companies have they worked for?
Bethesda Softworks eventually recruited Howard in 1994 as a producer. His first game development credit for Bethesda was as the producer and designer of The Terminator: Future Shock, followed by work as a designer on Skynet and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, both released in 1996. He was project leader for the first time on The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, released in 1998.
In 2000, Howard was appointed project leader and designer for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and the expansions that followed. The game was released in 2002 and was a critical and commercial success, winning several Game of the Year awards. He then led the creation of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as its executive producer. After this, he served as game director and executive producer of Fallout 3, released in 2008.
Howard returned to The Elder Scrolls series to lead the development as the creative director of its fifth installment, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which was released in November 2011. He subsequently directed Fallout 4, released in November 2015, and produced Fallout 76, a multiplayer installment in the series that attracted criticism upon its release in November 2018.
How did they get where they are today?
Todd Andrew Howard was born in 1970 in Lower Macungie Township, Pennsylvania. His elder brother, Jeff Howard, later became the director of creative affairs for Disney.
He developed an interest in computers, particularly video games, at a very young age. Howard says the 1980s role-playing video games Wizardry and Ultima III: Exodus were inspirations for his future games.
Howard attended Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1989. He then attended the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he majored in business while taking computer classes for credit. He graduated from William and Mary in 1993. Howard later stated that a business major appeared as the easiest path through college.
During the holiday break of his senior year in college, Howard obtained a copy of Wayne Gretzky Hockey by Bethesda Softworks in Rockville, Maryland. He visited the offices of Bethesda Softworks, which he passed by daily on his commute to and from school. He asked for a job at the company but was rejected and told that he needed to finish school as a prerequisite. After graduating, he returned to Bethesda, seeking a job but was rejected again due to a lack of job opportunities then at the company. Howard then started working for a smaller game company in Yorktown, Virginia, which enabled him to visit several conventions like the Consumer Electronics Show, where he continued approaching Bethesda to request being hired.
What reasons do you have for wanting to potentially go into the same media employment areas?
Todd has went on to produce and create some of my favourite games, he inspires me in many ways, particularly in the theming/story, gameplay etc.
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Who working in the media industry inspires you?
- Tim Sweeney: Tim is the founder and CEO of Epic Games, and the creator of the Unreal Engine, one of the most-used game development platforms.
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Tim Sweeny is the founder and creator of Epic Games and Unreal engine - two of the most used programs and launchers.
Sweeney had the idea of creating games that could be sold, programming them at night or over weekends outside college work. This first required him to create a text editor based on the Pascal language to be able to program the game, which led to the idea of making a game out of the text editor itself. This became the basis of ZZT. He let college friends and those around his neighborhood provide feedback, and was aware it was something he could sell to other computer users. ZZT sold well enough, a few copies each day that came to about US$100 per day, that Sweeney decided to make developing games his career. Recognizing he needed a better name for a video game company, he renamed Potomac Computer Systems to Epic MegaGames.
Following ZZT, Sweeney started working on his next title, Jill of the Jungle, but found that he lacked the skills to complete this alone. He formed a team of four people to complete the game by mid-1992. For continued development, Sweeney sought out a business partner for Epic MegaGames, eventually coming to Mark Rein, who had just been let go from id Software. Rein helped with growing and managing the company; due to the company's growth, Sweeney did not end up getting his degree, short by one credit. Sweeney would later start work on the Unreal Engine, developed for the 1998 first-person shooter Unreal and licensed by multiple other video games. With the success of Unreal, the company relocated to North Carolina in 1999, and changed its name to Epic Games.
How did they get where they are today?
Sweeney was raised in Potomac, Maryland. At a young age, he became interested in tinkering with mechanical and electrical devices, and stated he had taken apart a lawnmower as early as five or six, and later built his own go-kart. Though the family got an Atari 2600, Sweeney was not as interested in the games for that, outside of Adventure, and later said he had not played many video games in his life and very few to completion.
At the age of 11, Sweeney visited his older brother's new startup in California, where he had access to early IBM Personal Computers. Sweeney spent the week there, learning BASIC and establishing his interest in programming; while he had had a Commodore 64 before, Sweeney was much more taken by how easy the IBM PC was to use. When his family got an Apple II, Sweeney began in earnest learning how to program on that, trying to make Adventure 2 in the spirit of the Atari 2600 game. Sweeney estimated that between the ages of 11 and 15, he spent over 10,000 hours teaching himself how to program using information on online bulletin boards, and completed several games, though never shared these with others.
He made a good deal of money by offering to mow lawns of wealthy residents in the area for half the price of professional services.
What reasons do you have for wanting to potentially go into the same media employment areas?
Sweeney has created my go-to engine, this inspires me to create games and look at the other creations used on this software.
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