Dark Age of Camelot dev profile: Howard Marans
Every week, MMORPG sits down with developers from various game companies and this week, they got Howard Marans – EA Mythic‘s Associate Producer for Dark Age of Camelot – to talk about what he does and how he went from being a lifeguard to a hotshot producer for EA.
Marans graduated with a degree in BS Computer Science at Adelphi University in NYC, so what he’s doing now isn’t really that far off, and he says that his first gaming experience was with an Atari 2600 and a Commodore 64, but he really got into gaming when he got his Apple 2c, where he first played his all-time favorite (till now) game, Sierra‘s The Black Cauldron.
The first game he ever worked on when he got into the gaming industry was Dark Age of Camelot‘s first expansion – Shrouded Isles, and has been working on every Camelot expansion to date. His job is basically to integrate the art and content for Camelot, and after the world builders and artists pass on their work to him, it’s his job to integrate this work into the game clients. He also has one of the final says in patches and other stuff.
As with most people who work in the industry, his career move was ridiculed by family and friends, saying that playing Everquest will get him nowhere. But because he really liked what he was doing, no position was too small, so he moved up from being in Tech Support to Content Developer then to World Builder, the division where he currently works. Marans remains optimistic about the MMO industry saying that it will only get better as more and more technologies are being introduced into the industry.
So if you’re planning to make a career in the same field, Marans encourages that you take whatever position’s available, no matter how small, because you will surely work your way up if you’re passionate enough about what you do. Awww, this is so self-help-ish that it induces snickers from you guys but just look at Marans; you gotta give him snaps for being able to move from being a lifeguard to Associate Producer at EA, right?
Via MMORPG
Every week, MMORPG sits down with developers from various game companies and this week, they got Howard Marans – EA Mythic‘s Associate Producer for Dark Age of Camelot – to talk about what he does and how he went from being a lifeguard to a hotshot producer for EA.
Marans graduated with a degree in BS Computer Science at Adelphi University in NYC, so what he’s doing now isn’t really that far off, and he says that his first gaming experience was with an Atari 2600 and a Commodore 64, but he really got into gaming when he got his Apple 2c, where he first played his all-time favorite (till now) game, Sierra‘s The Black Cauldron.
The first game he ever worked on when he got into the gaming industry was Dark Age of Camelot‘s first expansion – Shrouded Isles, and has been working on every Camelot expansion to date. His job is basically to integrate the art and content for Camelot, and after the world builders and artists pass on their work to him, it’s his job to integrate this work into the game clients. He also has one of the final says in patches and other stuff.
As with most people who work in the industry, his career move was ridiculed by family and friends, saying that playing Everquest will get him nowhere. But because he really liked what he was doing, no position was too small, so he moved up from being in Tech Support to Content Developer then to World Builder, the division where he currently works. Marans remains optimistic about the MMO industry saying that it will only get better as more and more technologies are being introduced into the industry.
So if you’re planning to make a career in the same field, Marans encourages that you take whatever position’s available, no matter how small, because you will surely work your way up if you’re passionate enough about what you do. Awww, this is so self-help-ish that it induces snickers from you guys but just look at Marans; you gotta give him snaps for being able to move from being a lifeguard to Associate Producer at EA, right?
Via MMORPG