Extended Experiences

Games used to be a self-contained experience; the moment you closed the program or shut off your console that was it, but not so any more. Some games have enormous systems in place that let players continue their experience outside the confines of the regular game. Now players can buy and sell virtual commodities, show off their avatar's gear, or chat with guild-mates.

Kate Welch is the Web Team Lead for Guild Wars 2 at ArenaNet. She and her team are responsible for things such as the Guild Wars 2 website, box art design, graphic marketing material, and yet-to-be-revealed web platforms which will interface with Guild Wars 2 directly. From a very young age Kate knew exactly what industry she wanted to call home. Through an indomitable will and perseverance, she's finally found that home at ArenaNet.


Why is the Web Team Lead, and the team you manage, important for the success of a game like Guild Wars 2?

We are in charge of all the web facing properties associated with Guild Wars 2. We're currently working on a brand new GuildWars2.com marketing site which is going to be really cool. We have a ton of neat features in the works especially for the web, kind of like how World of Warcraft has the Armory.

My team is part of a larger team called Extended Experience. We are in charge of doing all the stuff that relates to the game that isn't inside the game itself. We're designing the boxes and packaging for the standard version and collector’s edition of the game. When we start doing beta signups we're in charge of designing all the web and server infrastructure in order to get people into the beta. Our team has a lot on its plate!

Our team also has the only dedicated graphic designers so when the marketing team needs something like a t-shirt, sign, or ad designed we're that resource. We do a lot of stuff. Without us the game would not have a very pretty box, and people wouldn't be able to sign up for the beta. If the box is awesome when it comes out, you'll know why!


What is the greatest challenge you have had to overcome, either with a personal or professional project?

It seems like every day there's a new hurdle. It might be a huge headache but since we're all passionate about making this wonderful game we get through it and we're excited. We're excited how certain problems get under our skin because it means we care so much about it.

Being on a schedule where we have to be aggressive about releasing a gigantic game and making sure everybody is on that same page is a challenge. There are two very disparate attitudes here. One is we have to get this game out because people have been waiting for it for years. The other attitude is we can't release the game until it's perfect. MMOs can wither and die within the first month if they're not awesome. On a very high level the biggest hurdle we have to overcome is this tug-of-war between those two mindsets. We have the game in such a great spot now, and the former is finally winning out over the latter.


What work are you most proud of? Why?

I find pride in making sure the people working for me are working on things that make them excited, and nothing is in their way. On a personal level I'm most proud of being able to see my team be productive and crank things out.

On a product level I'm most proud of the new, currently unreleased, GuildWars2.com site. It's a monumental undertaking redesigning a site that big. We had to make sure it's scalable so that when we come up with cool new features that will be released post-launch it will all work together. That's been something we've been working on for the better part of a year. It's finally to the point where it's looking SO good. I was hired as a web designer and that's where my real passion lies, so it seems natural to be proud of and excited about the new site.


How do you see your profession evolving over the next few years?

When our Extended Experience team lead took over, he asked me to step up with him since I have a UX (user experience) background that he doesn't necessarily have a good glimpse into. There's upward momentum in this particular career path. What I'd really like to do, sometime within the next ten years, is to be in more of a creative director role in a studio. I really like having the creative say-so in things.

I'm getting a small taste of that now in projects where our genius creative director Daniel Dociu doesn't necessarily weigh in on every tiny thing we do. Getting to sign off on certain things and be in that role has been really cool. I like being trusted with that kind of vision. I think that's something I would really enjoy.

We always have people shifting to different departments based on their interest. It's a good place to evolve in that way. More than anything they hire talent here and then foster it. That's really rare for a game company. You always hear horror stories about big publishing giants who hire people into QA, put them through production hell, and then never give them other opportunities. At ArenaNet a lot of our game designers actually came from our own QA department. There's always room to move up or sideways here.


Are there any techniques or best practices you have learned or developed that have served you well?

People are much more inclined to be businesslike than you might think they would be. There have been times I've had a difficult situation at work where I'm dreading talking to someone when I know it's going to be a tough conversation. What I've learned is that everyone I work with is a consummate professional. Maybe it's just having never worked in the industry previous to ArenaNet because I wasn't expecting people to be able to handle things so well, but they do!

I like that people can divest their personal and business lives and be professional about things. The focus is on releasing the game and if things aren't working then we fix them and that's how it is. Nobody has hard feelings. My advice at work is to be straightforward and to the point with no nonsense and things will turn out really well.

In a passion driven industry it can be easy for people to fall into a creative trap. They latch onto some feature or piece of art they see as their baby and go down fighting to keep it the way they want it to be, but it may no longer be fun or work in the context of the game and they have to be willing to let it go.

I've definitely run into that. We good naturedly refer to that here as a "land grab." Someone has an idea they've had for a long time and now it's being questioned, but they just hold onto it for dear life even though it might not be a good idea anymore. Usually the guys who are guilty of that can be talked to and reasoned with, they come around.


Tell me about your background.

The main reason I'm in this industry is I've always been a gamer. I started playing games when I was six and that was my primary form of entertainment growing up. When it came time to decide on careers it was pretty clear that was something I was going to feel passionate about for a job.

I spent five years from the ages of twenty to twenty-five getting rejected from a lot of different places. My career path was in web and graphic design. All I wanted was to be able to combine those two passions. I wanted to do web design in a video game setting.

I applied at places like Harmonix, Microsoft Game Studios, Valve, and a couple other studios. I had great references and I never heard a thing. Nobody ever called me. It was this great field of rejection, a brick wall I kept running up against.

Finally I saw an opening at ArenaNet posted on Monster.com or something. I was really excited because Guild Wars 2 looked amazing. They were looking for a web designer. I had a friend of a friend of a friend who worked there and I worked the hell out of that connection. It ended up working out!

That was my extraordinarily lucky entrance into the game industry. I've been at ArenaNet now for a little over a year. The industry is so small and tight knit I hope that means I never have to leave it again because it's exactly where I want to be.


What are your inspirations?

I was fifteen and my dad had this software on his old Windows 3.1 computer. It was basically something that came with a camera and had really basic photo editing capability and I went nuts with it. I would spend hours with it every day and taught myself to use this low level photo editing software.

I got a copy of Photoshop 4 and taught myself to use it. Then I taught myself how to do web design by making templates for online diaries for my friends. That was how I got into that and sort of grew with it.

I went to UNC Chapel Hill for college for three months, but I was addicted to Everquest. That was a dark time. I dropped out and played a lot of Everquest, but I kept freelancing and teaching myself more about web design. My career both content-wise and industry-wise has been born completely out of passion. There's no formal education that went into any of this. Some of my employers know this; others may have been less than thrilled to discover it.

I think that's one of the beautiful things about the game industry. If you have the skills then your background doesn't matter. That's probably true across a lot of technical industries, but especially true in gaming. If you can do the work and do a great job at it then you can succeed. That's one of the things I try to inspire kids with, "Go to school, I wish I had finished it, it's great, but it's not essential." Don't worry about what you get a degree in, just follow what you want to do and things will often work out.


Knowing what you know now, what advice would you have given yourself when you were just starting out?

I definitely would have gone to school and continued my education. I would have majored in design or new media or whatever it is they call it now. Not because I care about not having a degree. I sometimes think to myself, "I am faking my way through this!" There are so many creative friends I've talked to who feel the exact same way; days where I feel like the biggest dummy and everyone is going to find out and it'll be embarrassing.

On those days I imagine those who went to college and graduated have that sense of, "I'm really glad I have this degree and can fall back on it in times of crisis." For those of us who didn't we're kind of just swinging in the wind a little bit. I wish I had my degree so I'd have that and if everybody finds out I'm a fraud I'd be able to take that degree and find some production Photoshopping job somewhere.

I think if not for the degree itself, just to have that solid educational background. Being able to have gone through art school and seen all the different types of art history and the ways graphic design has evolved. Having that as a background of formal knowledge rather than having just picked up bits and pieces of it off the Internet would have been really useful.

Well if it makes you feel any better I have a degree, my wife is an archaeologist with a Ph.D., and we've both had those feelings of insecurity at one time or another at different jobs. I think it's good to feel in over your head sometimes. It's times like that where you really step up your game to prove to yourself and your employer that you're not this fraud you're afraid you are.

That's really good to know. I thought it was just us creative types, but if archaeologists or technical artists can feel that way too then I guess we're all just being dumb!


What is your current title, and if you were to describe what you do with your own self-title, what would it be?

My official title is the Web Team Lead. I am ostensibly in charge of another designer and four developers who are all doing a variety of graphic and web related projects. I spend a lot of my time in meetings coordinating those efforts and doing a lot of managerial stuff. If I had to give myself a title it would be, "Meeting Expert."

I love my job, I like very much being a manager, and I still get to touch the creative side of things on a semi-daily basis. It's a lot of decision making, scheduling, and communicating with the team. I guess I didn't anticipate being in this role. I enjoy contributing more to the creative side of things so the meeting stuff isn't necessarily ideal, but being able to make my team's lives easier and shield them from the bureaucratic stuff I have to deal with is really satisfying to me.

That's definitely one of the aspects of working in production that gives me a strange sense of satisfaction, being that insulating force that lets your team focus their energy on what they do best rather than the overhead that comes with the work environment.

Exactly, it's nice to be the shield for my team so the only thing they need to worry about is doing their best work.


You touched on this a little bit in your background, but what motivated you to work in the game industry?

It was largely due to the fact I grew up playing so many video games. By the age of eighteen or nineteen I had really defined myself as a gamer, it was my primary hobby. I've had some crises because of that. If all I ever do is play, talk, and think about games it must make me a pretty one dimensional person.

I started to branch out and got interested in things like politics, documentaries, and read books about important, smart things. It always came back to the fact that I love gaming. I love to read papers and books on the subject. Naturally getting into games as a career was what I wanted to do.

I guess my first foray into the game industry was in retail at a GameStop for a year and a half. It was a real valuable lesson on the consumer side of the industry and to some extent the publishing side. I learned how you deal with people who are gamers and got a glimpse into the wider culture. It's not really where I wanted to take my career; I didn't want to be on the retail side of things forever. Becoming a developer was my dream goal.

Was it difficult being a lady gamer working at GameStop?

“Difficult” probably isn't the right word. Largely I was treated with a lot of respect. Once I started talking about the games with customers it became immediately clear I wasn't there to fill any sort of girl quota at GameStop. I knew what I was talking about.

There were a couple of guys who'd say things like, "You don't actually play games, do you?", or, "You don't look like a Star Wars fan." Things like that. I'm sure in their minds they meant that as some sort of twisted compliment. I was always like, "What does that even mean? How does a Star Wars fan look?" Why were they in such disbelief about it? It's a complicated and much larger matter to discuss.

Once that started happening my attitude just became, "Well you're stupid, because I AM a Star Wars fan." I was probably nineteen or twenty when I worked there and since that time I've come to realize it was in Indianapolis and I was part of a very small sphere of people these guys would run into in a town like that. There are a lot of really hot Star Wars and video game fans out there so it has nothing to do with what you look like. It's a weird tangent.

Back then, and even today, people make assumptions about video games and the kinds of people who play them, so when faced with someone who does not fit the stereotype an often knee-jerk reaction is to reject that person’s authenticity.

Totally! There are all kinds of attitudes about it too. If you point out you're a girl gamer people get all uppity about it, "Why do you have to call attention to it?" I don't think that's necessarily what we're doing.

When playing games guys never call out that they're dudes because they don't have to. Everyone just assumes that you're a guy. If you ever bother to correct anyone then to some that means you're calling out for attention.

It's as if you have to be either out for attention on the Internet or completely anonymous and OK with people assuming you’re a dude. That's an identity struggle I think a lot of women on the Internet go through.

About six years ago I joined the Penny Arcade forums. At this point I have something like 29,000 posts over the last six years. For the first year or so I never told anyone I was a girl. I didn't want this struggle to happen. I didn't want to be accused of, "Well you're only pointing out you're a girl because you want attention." So I just pretended I was a dude and if anyone ever called me one I never corrected them.

When it finally did come out that I wasn't a guy I had one friend on the forums who was really close who stopped talking to me. He's come back around since then, but that was really interesting to learn that guys struggle with this girl gamer thing too. Do I defend her? Do I continue to be friends with her? Am I just doing these things because she's a girl? It's very interesting being a lady gamer. There's a lot of struggles, people aren't used to it yet and are still working out how to feel about it.

I think we could devote an entire interview to discussing this topic, but we're almost out of time!

What are your favorite games, and why?

I tend to love indie games - something about fighting for the underdog really appeals to me. My favorite game of all time is TIE Fighter, the old LucasArts game. Anything Tim Schafer does is always on my favorites list. The Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect games are probably my favorite current-gen titles.

What are you playing right now?
I just bought a huge haul of LucasArts titles off a guy from the ScummVM forums, one of which was Grim Fandango, which I’ve never played before! I know, I know. I’ve also been playing the Diablo 3 beta and really loving it. And of course, I’m playing a lot of Guild Wars 2.


Thank you for your time Kate!

If you'd like to see more of Kate's work be sure to check out her site.