Reagan Heller is the vice president of art for Schell Games. Reagan manages and oversees the Art team as well as assists with general studio staffing.
To start things off, I like to begin well before your current leadership position. What is the weirdest job you’ve had?
One experience that sticks out is when I worked at a dollar movie theater. It wasn’t necessarily a weird ‘job’ more so than a weird ‘place.’ Odd things would happen. Instead of focusing on selling popcorn and tickets, I would be given a broom [by management] to chase people out of the theater who were trying to sleep in it. They also would try and sleep in the photo booth. Another time we found illicit drugs in the theater and had to dispose of them. Overall, it was a very weird and interesting place to work.
Wow. What type of lessons did you take away from having that experience?
I certainly learned how to deal with interesting situations. I mean, if you are chasing a person out from trying to sleep in the theater, you learn how to be tactful. I wasn’t going to chase the person out by hitting them with the broom. Instead, I would try sweeping around them and approach them like, “hey, the movie is over and it’s time to leave, you can’t sleep here.”
That’s quite the experience! So from there, how did you end up in the video game industry?
My path was a little unusual. I didn’t know that you could have a job as an artist or a graphic designer in the video game industry. I went to Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) for graphic design with the intention of going into the advertising industry. I knew I wanted to do something digital and use art to communicate and sell products and ideas to people. That sounded awesome to me, so I aspired to be an advertising designer.
But, I was also always into geeky stuff, so a lot of my friends weren’t in the design department, but in the computer science department in CMU. A number of them told me about this class called “Building Virtual Worlds” and that I could work with computer programmers, and make games, and things like that. Though I didn’t have much experience programming, my friends encouraged me to apply for the class (at this time candidates still had to apply to the class to Randy Pausch). Dr. Pausch looked through my sketchbook and said “this is some really cool stuff.” I was honest and told him that I didn’t know much about computer programming, but he said that if I was willing to work hard, he’d let me in. And man, I worked really freaking hard.
Very cool.
It was! I fell in love with it. The ability and opportunity to work with people of different disciplines and using the skills of color theory and design that I had learned came into play in a way I thought was really awesome. When I saw people play the experiences we were creating [in class] I just found that really fulfilling. After finishing my undergrad, I applied to the ETC school for my graduate degree.
You’re right, that is an interesting path.
Yes, my parents were like “what are you doing?” because no one knew if you could make a living making video games.
What is, in your opinion, unique about being on a leadership team for a video game studio, and specifically with Schell Games?
When networking and talking to other studio leaders at conferences like GDC, I have noticed that we strive to be very collaborative in a cross-discipline way. And we are very open and not hierarchical. People can go to talk to Jesse, or talk to Jake or any of the veeps. When studios increase in size, some of them lose that kind of touch. We try really hard to have real conversations, work with teams so they understand how we can best support the projects they are working on. It was easy for us to have those open conversations when we were smaller, but we’ve made it a point to still have an open communication channel. I’ve heard of studios not having open communication, so the project teams think they’re working on a project with goals “decreed from on High.” That feels really bad for those teams.
As VP of Art, you’re touching a lot of things in the studio. On top of that, there’s that management capacity too. How do you stay on top of your craft and discipline, while managing the art team?
I know I am by far, not the best artist in the studio, and I think that’s important to realize. I don’t think that your best artist should be your vp of art because you do spend a lot of time managing people, and helping people with their careers and you simply are not able to be on a critical path for certain projects anymore. I still stay involved in pitches, and stay relevant in order to communicate clearly. When I am trying to discuss something with an art director I want to make sure that I can still “talk the language” and know the same techniques and theories that they are using. But it is tough. A way to stay on top is to be involved with the teams and understanding the processes and pipelines and why they are going for a certain look. The joy [in this job] is from elevating the people around you and making sure they are doing the most high-quality work for the studio they possibly can.
When I walk around the studio, I’m always impressed by the art being created here.
All those people out there are amazing. I’m really proud of the art team we have here at Schell Games. We are completely on the top of our game, which is good. I’m inspired a lot by the people I work with on the art team.
Screenshot from Schell Games' original mobile VR game, Frostbound.
What do you think are the benefits of working at an indie studio?
That’s funny, because I never really think of us as an ‘indie’ studio, for some reason.
Really? Why?
When I hear ‘indie’ I think of small groups of developers solely working on their own, creating their own IP. I really like the position that we’re in, because it gives us a balance and a variety of work and it allows us to be stable and grow at a rate we like. When a studio goes 100% into its own IP, that is a really big risk. A lot of indie studios that have tried that, have folded in on themselves. We do a great job balancing between our own IP and interesting client work.
What do you mean by ‘interesting?’
We’re in the position to work with different new technologies, transformational challenges, and even educational challenges that are interesting to us. Our diversity and balance [between client and IP] work has kept us stable. It has kept us pushing toward the newest thing and we haven’t gotten caught in the rut that other studios have found themselves in. Also, we haven’t gone the route of making a ton of IP games that could gamble the studio’s livelihood.
True. Schell Games has worked with some good companies.
I do like that we get a chance to do client work with some great companies, trusting us to do some unique and new things.
Where do you see Schell Games in 5 years?
Oh man, if you asked me that 5 years ago I wouldn’t have known. I’m not entirely sure, but I do think that we’ll have some amount of growth. I am very interested to see where virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) go; there are some interesting things going on with mobile VR that I’m excited about. I think that as soon as you untether people, and make the headsets more mobile and lightweight, the more apt people will be to try it. I feel like AR has a lot potential, especially with children. With VR, it is very personal to you, unless there are others in a headset with you. For AR, you can bring people in the experience with you. I think for children and parents, that can be a powerful experience that encourages more parent-child interaction. I’m hoping that AR takes off once platforms like Google Tango are on more devices.
Also, I think theme parks are doing more interactive experiences, and I am hoping that we’ve created enough of a name for ourselves to work on more of that, because it’s a lot of fun to do. Those are some of my favorite projects to work on.
What is one thing about ‘leadership’ that you learned on the job?
You’re always learning, and that is a question I feel could have a number of answers. One of the major lessons for me was how valuable soft skills are, and how important it is that in difficult conversations, the other person in the conversation feels heard. It is really easy to be ‘bull-headed’ about it, but there can be an underlying problem in a team, a project, that is very important to that person. It is very important to be an active listener. Sometimes it’s also important to help them see from different perspectives, helping ‘pull themselves out’ of the situation.
Being able to give feedback, critically and constructively, in a positive way, is also an art. And for artists especially, allowing them the freedom to find their way to the goal we’ve set out is very important. If they have a process or a set of tools they want to use that can get us there, then by all means. I don’t think there is anyone completely ready to be a leader. Those who think they are, typically have the hardest time adapting to what it really takes.
Are you playing any really cool games right now, or do you have a favorite all-time game?
I have many terrible answers for this. I am well-known for the fact that I like terrible things- bad movies, etc.; I like seeing the raw-edges on things. For example: in a movie, you see a boom-mic slowly fall from the ceiling, things like that. (I do like good movies too, and I do appreciate them, I swear). But I tend to like things where I can see how they pieced things together. I also like things that are a little unusual, different, and break the mold a little bit. For video games, I’ve played some really good- really beautiful- games; but if I had to just pick, I really liked Godzilla NES when I was a kid. First because I liked Godzilla, and second because it put three genres together- it was a tabletop strategy game, a side-scrolling action game, and a fighting game because you were fighting other monsters. As a kid, I thought this was the greatest game ever. In reality, it is really clunky and not that great.
More recently-a few years ago- I played this game created by a game designer named Swery, and he makes very weird games that follow his passion. He developed this game called Deadly Premonition, which was this out-of-control…game. You could see all the seams, it was a mess. It was made for the Xbox One, but they didn’t have a grasp on the type of textures and polys the engine could push, and so you can see the bad texturing, models that had been awkwardly optimized, animations that were so bizarre, and the whole thing is just trying to cram a bunch of stuff into one perplexing experience. I don’t know why I liked it so much, maybe because it reminded me of Twin Peaks. But that’s a stand-out fun game experience I recently remember. In terms of good games I’ve played, I liked Dragon Age, Mario Galaxy, The Order: 1886- I like good games too, I mean, you can’t only play games that are complete disasters.
Given unlimited resources, unlimited time, no restrictions, what type of game or experience would you like to see Schell Games create?
I have always said that one day in my career, I would like to participate in creating a survival horror game. I’m not sure what it would look like, or how to be innovative with it since much of it has been done to death. But I still think it would be awesome.
What makes the leadership team at Schell Games ‘tick’?
We talk to each other. I think in the same way we encourage others to be cross-discipline, we make an example of that. It’s the same expectations I have for a team: we try to be very open with each other in the same way. We try to identify concerns in pipeline, processes and try to fix them together. We’re not siloed as some other departments may be. We’re not a ‘hand-off’ process; we try to be examples in collaboration.
What advice do you have for people trying to get into the video game industry?
Work in teams! Understand that it’s about collaboration, teamsmanship, and getting a team together on a vision. Also, be excellent- really study the game art in games that inspire you. Work outside of your school assignments to push those skills that will make you stand out as a potential game artist in your preferred discipline. There is a wealth of resources online- tutorials, free tools, game art forums, etc. Look at the portfolio of successful industry artists and set a high bar for yourself.