Great game.
Yeah. Great game. I finished it. And in the credits I saw the programmer’s name was Mark Voorsanger. I was like, Mark Voorsanger? Voorsanger? That’s a really uncommon name. I’ve got a teammate whose name is Conrad Voorsanger. So I asked him, do you have a brother named Mark who makes games? Sure enough, he did. And this was the summer of my sophomore year and I was looking for a summer job. So I drove up to Nevada from Palo Alto, and they gave me a job and took a chance on me. I was studying computer science. I was a total video game nut. And they were working on the sequel to ToeJam & Earl, and needed somebody to do some level design. So I was super fortunate that they were willing to give me my first gig. And, from there, I met some people at Crystal Dynamics and everything went from there.
Now, when they hired you for level design, did you even know what that meant at that time?
I barely did. I was under some false preconception when I was in high school, that all games are made in Japan. And that wasn’t really going be a great option for me. [Laughter] And as I got into computer science I realized, hey, actually, maybe I could make games for a living. Yeah. When I got there, and they showed me how games were built, it was sort of a revelation. I just sort of took to it.
You were at Crystal Dynamics at that point?
No, that was stillToeJam & Earl. Actually they were just a two-man company back in the day when….
When you could do that.
Yeah, could make a game. But they had offices right next door to Toys for Bob–who were the guys who made Star Control–and they were working with Crystal Dynamics on The Horde for the 3DO at the time. And I believe they also ported Star Control 2 to the 3DO in that same period of time. So I was having lunch with those guys all the time because we were right next door. My summer job was up after we shipped ToeJam & Earl 2, and they were like, oh, you should talk to the guys at Crystal, and see if there’s a job for you there.
Crystal Dynamics is literally right across the street from my school. So it was a perfect fit. I got a job there and actually worked full-time all through my senior year. And then just kept working there after that. And it was about four years of working at Crystal before I came down to Naughty Dog. And I have been here every since.
When you were at Crystal and I guess at Naughty, what were the challenges of programming for the hardware at the time. This would be what? SNES era, 3DO?
It was 3DO, yeah. So when I was at Crystal, the 3DO had just come out. Making games in 3D was just a brand new thing. All games had been 2D before that. So, yeah, it was a real struggle to figure out how to apply the principles of 2D game design to 3D. I got to work with some really talented people at Crystal Dynamics over the years, and we, through trial and error, discovered how to build games in 3D, and it was also a great opportunity to start getting into making games on a CD format. It was a little sneak peek into what Playstation was going to launch on the mainstream. Getting to actually use CD quality music and completely hear speech from actors and using real voice talent and stuff, as opposed to everything being synthesized like in the SNES days. So it was a great training ground.