Video game developer Trey Smith: Innovation is everything

Developer Trey Smith has been in the video game industry for 20 years. He worked at the companies "EA", "Activision", and currently works at "Blackbird Interactive", which is behind the popular game "Hardspace: Shipbreaker", as well as the games "Homeworld 3" and "Minecraft Legends".

Before considering a career in gaming, he moved to Los Angeles with the goal of being a stage actor. However, Smith found his way in the creation of video games, but before he ventured into this world, he hacked one of them. In Los Angeles he met a friend from school, Target Morton, who already had a job in the gaming industry at Activision. At a get-together, Smith played "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2" and performed overly risky stunts that evoke a feeling of indestructibility in the game, while Marton was so impressed with his skill at avoiding mistakes that he offered him a job in the quality assurance department at Activision. This department is dedicated to game development by finding bugs and fixing them before launching the game. Smith accepted the proposal.

"I never thought I could get this job, especially during the 'Nintendo era,'" he admits, referring to the years when Nintendo had no competition from the likes of Sony and Microsoft.

He worked at Activision for a year and a half and it was the foundation for his career.

"In many ways it was the wild west. It's funny that we were responsible for it. There was no production process or game development framework, we just had to do what was given and get everything done," recalls the developer.

Smith's passion led him to be asked by Activision to provide design input for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, or as he puts it, "bother production."

"At one point they said 'okay, if we give you a position in production, will you stop sending these e-mails?'

Twenty years after that offering and "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3," Smith's first game as a "tiny junior producer" is still the highest-rated game released on PS2 consoles. Smith says it was then that he established his belief that passion is key to making a good game.

As the years passed, Smith's childhood love of sports led him to try everything from the fourth installment of Pro Skater to surfing, wakeboarding and BMX. Smith eventually left Activision to join EA, where his proven talent for sports games led him to become the creative director for the revival of the arcade basketball game NBA Jam. Smith said it was originally planned as a new, "very childish" game for the Wii called "Bounce". Prompted, Smith asked if an "NBA Jam" license was available. She was available. Since then, "NBA Jam" has been restarted, but it was the team's communication with the legendary creator of the "Mortal Kombat" game, By Ed Bono, helped Smith make things fit.

Smith describes the Jam title as a "dream come true", citing it as his first real position of responsibility.

"It was my first creative director position where I was ultimately responsible for taking care of the team and making sure we were doing everything right. I was very happy to be able to work with the team people I have because I don't program and even I don't even draw. It takes a lot of people participating to make a game," he reveals.

Even as Smith settled into his new role as leader, the developer never strayed far from his theatrical roots.

"I love acting, but I love theater even more because it's a very beautiful collaborative art, and there are a lot of similarities between performing a play and making a play. You have people from different backgrounds with different skills, and you're trying to put together this motley crew so they're all working as one. . My theater education helped me understand that ego should be put aside," he explains.

"My job is to get the most out of every member of the team, and in order to do that, the team has to have a healthy atmosphere. You have to take care of people's health and happiness, and in return you get their participation and investment. You didn't come here to create games if you don't like them at all, and I think you can feel it when a project has the potential to become really good. When that happens, the magic begins," the director continues.

As we discuss Smith's career, he often returns to that sense of collective effort. Whether he's talking about his time at Activision, EA, or his own Blackbird Interactive, Smith highlights the names of the people who helped him in each of his accomplishments. When asked if this collaborative human trait is key to the development of quality games, he immediately agreed.

"The human factor is the main thing. For me, it's the whole process, starting from the team that creates the game to the audience that accepts it. People have to come first. If you anticipate that and chase after money, ego or fame, which I've seen happen happens a lot in my environment, you're not going to make it. It's all about the people. It's kind of not hard for me, but I've definitely been in some situations where I've thought, 'you probably shouldn't be doing it that way,'" Smith says.

Currently, the video game industry is facing a cultural re-examination, caused in part by the issues Smith touched on.

Activision Blizzard has battled lawsuits over its treatment of workers, and has tried unsuccessfully several times to prevent unionization at the company, often leaving workers feeling their time and health aren't valued as much as they should be. Many of these problems are widespread, as NME explored in detail last year, and often seem to come down to exploiting the passion that developers bring to their work.

While Smith says he's been lucky in his experience, he admits that the process of creating games requires paying a "soul toll," which refers to losing a piece of your soul with each game released due to the labor-intensive and intense nature of game development.

"It takes a lot of energy and time when you put your heart, soul, sweat, blood and tears into your work. I didn't go to weddings, graduations and funerals for games," admits Smith.

Although he knew what he was getting into, he says the industry is now "definitely" changing for the better.

"You have to respect people and their needs, you have to put them first or you lose your biggest asset. I put myself in that category. I will never work at a place that doesn't care about people again. I'm very grateful for that, and I'm grateful that the industry is changing. There was a time in my career when I kept a sleeping bag under my desk because it had to be. I'm happy to be part of the conversation about our industry," says Smith.

Now he works as a game director at the Canadian company "Blackbird Interactive", which is currently working with "Mojang" on one of its biggest projects to date - the real-time strategy game "Minecraft Legends".

The company prides itself on adhering to many industry norms. A four-day work week and optional work from home aim to eradicate the unhealthy work-life balance in the gaming industry, meaning Smith no longer needs a sleeping bag. A working week of four days means that he has an "extra" date with his wife and an "extra" walk with Molly.

News about layoffs of thousands of workers by companies like "Google", "Meta" and "Microsoft" are often in focus. "Blackbird" was not immune to it either. While the company was still recovering from the cancellation of one of the unannounced projects by a publisher, another publisher also cut ties. To survive, Blackbird had to cut costs.

"We had no choice but to lay off 20 people and it was awful. The fact that we unplanned two projects within the space of six or seven months is not something you can prepare for. Especially because everything was going very well, yes we were in trouble, it would have been different, but everything was great. Then all of a sudden the cooperation stops, and you can't really do much in a situation where you have a lot of costs related to the company and the responsibility to maintain it because of all the employees in it." explains the director.

As an independent company, Blackbird's canceled projects meant the firm was facing a cash flow problem. Layoffs were imminent, but Blackbird tried to cut costs elsewhere in hopes of saving jobs. Some of them were big, Smith and other executives took a temporary 15 percent pay cut, and Blackbird gave up the lease on its original studio, a space that had mostly sentimental value. Other cuts were minor, as we spoke, Smith admitted that he was supposed to be in San Francisco for the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) that evening, but even that was canceled.

Faced with losing his job, Smith knows these decisions are easy to make. The director looks back on the pain brought by layoffs, and under pressure, admits that he has already faced similar situations.

"This isn't the first layoff I've been through, and it probably won't be the last," he says.

While layoffs are terrible in any workplace, Smith says they're especially painful in the games industry, because for many developers, games are both a hobby and a job, often inextricably linked, and co-workers tend to form friendships that transcend work. Before joining Blackbird, he faced layoffs that happened "just to make up the numbers," and when he himself was fired, it was especially painful because it happened "out of the blue." .

"One day you're fine and the next day you suddenly feel like you've got a void. Immediately financial problems, mortgages, family, I felt like I was losing myself. A lot of what I learned about who I was and my sense of self , I learned because of making games. When that goes, you have to say to yourself, 'wait a minute, I'm above my job and I'm my priority.' But there was a moment when I thought that was the end, maybe my career was over and I would have to do something else," Smith is candid and says that, like many layoff victims, he ended up stronger and wiser than he was before, with a better understanding of the realities of the industry.

It makes sense, then, that Blackbird Interactive's 2022 game Hardspace: Shipbreaker took aim at the predatory nature of capitalism. With Smith as creative director, "Hardspace" is a futuristic satire of modern workplaces that asks players to dismantle discarded spaceships and sell their parts for money.

When we talk about his career and the gaming industry in general, he never shies away from solving problems, but approaches them with warmth, compassion and optimism, hesitating only when the topic is about letting go, a wound that's still fresh. One of the things he's most interested in, though, is Skunkworks, an initiative at Blackbird that encourages employees to pitch their game to Smith and the rest of the executive team for a chance to make their own game.

"I get very excited about Skunkworks because it allows anyone from any profession at Blackbird to pitch a game, and successful ideas are taken to the prototype stage. There, Smith and other Blackbird leaders lead and support the team in refining it. If the prototype fails, the idea goes back to its creator, if it succeeds, it moves on to the next stage. "Unofficially, 'Hardspace: Shipbreaker' was the first to go through that process," recalls Smith.

There are several reasons why "Skunkworks" is so exciting for Smith. He explains that although he and the CEO of Blackbird Rory Maguire have been lucky enough to promote new IPs during their careers, the "unfortunate" side of the process is that due to gaming industry contracts, employers take ownership of an idea as soon as it's spoken.

Smith says new hires come to Blackbird specifically because of "Skunkworks," and the next generation of developers gets a chance to pitch ideas he never could have come up with. In addition, Skunkworks offers developers the same opportunity he had at Activision and EA to stand out.

According to him, there is no secret to the success of "Skunkworks".

"It's a really great opportunity from so many different angles for the studio. We talk about it all the time, so there's no secret, anybody could have done it, but I'm really happy that we did it."

"Skunkworks" and working at "Blackbird" gives Smith a chance to be the person he wanted me to be throughout his career. He states that there were three or four moments in his life when he could have left the industry, but he was saved by a few senior colleagues who genuinely cared for him.

On that note, Smith says the games industry needs to double down on creativity, not only by hiring more diverse creators, but also by reevaluating the type of games it produces. It's an opinion he shares with the founder of Double Fine, Tim Schafer, and while it's easy to say that big minds match, the reality is that both leaders recognize the benefits of their work.

"We have to make different kinds of games, games have to keep evolving. Innovation is everything. We're not here to make clones of games. In order to create the kind of games we want to create in the future, we need to attract new people from different backgrounds and from different places to told different, interesting stories," concludes Smith.