Interview: Christina Coffin (2011-03-10) by H. Brun

This is an unaltered copy of an interview of Christina Coffin, for use as a primary source on Sega Retro. Please do not edit the contents below. Language: English Original source: blogs.battlefield.ea.com (archived)

BY: H Brun POSTED: Mar 10, 2011, 07:52PM 

When Christina Coffin was 9 she got her first computer, a VIC 20, and started typing her first game. She has never stopped typing since, and today she is Senior Engineer at DICE focusing on Battlefield 3.

 Christina recently gave a talk at GDC and received the "Women in Gaming" Engineering Award from IGDA. This is her story how she entered the industry, why more women should come to it, and how you too (man or woman) can get a job in it.

 Looking at a typical game developer studio, they will have somewhere around 10 percent female coworkers. Why do you think that number is so low?

-- I think part of it is lack of awareness of what the job is. Especially in terms of engineering people might think that it’s very dry and that there’s not a lot of creative outlet going. I actually find it’s quite the opposite. Social skills and being able to relate and empathize with people is useful even for an engineer.

 -- There is an assumption that a lot of engineers are stereotypically introverted, but there are extroverts among them. If a woman thinks that engineering isn't a good career choice because they'll be surrounded by a bunch of introverted guys that aren't going to be very interesting to work with -- that's a misconception.

 So what is your work as a software engineer at DICE really like?

-- My role has several components. First of all, I work within the Frostbite engine rendering team and Battlefield 3 game team, focusing on programming various features and optimizations for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

-- I focus on low level programming and performance improvements for all platforms, to make sure the rendering engine runs smoothly and allows our artists to deliver the visual quality you have seen in the gameplay footage we have shown so far. Aside from writing code, I also talk to game designers, artists, sound designers, or the producer to help get a dialogue going with multiple people and understand the technical issues that arise during development and help formulate solutions to them. I try to be part of the glue to get everybody communicating and avoid assumptions on how things are progressing between disciplines.

How does communicating help you in your role?

-- It’s really rewarding to have a dialogue with the designer or the producer and talk about what they want out of their game. Figuring out what the core is and leveraging what the technical limitations are, figuring out what the priority is and how we can enable their game design vision and keep it in scope.

-- Programming is not just you sitting down and writing code. At least in my role you have to understand the high level view and how everything is assembling. That’s how you avoid risk. That’s how you know you’re not gonna crash and burn two months from now because you didn’t think ahead.

-- Programming is not like I have this task and I can be oblivious to the world around me. There are some people who like to work that way, and there are those types of roles if you want. But for me, as I’ve worked over the years and seen projects hit snags, you start to get this gut feeling of where there might be a problem. You need someone from programming that has a technical high level view of everything, just like you need someone in art, sound, design and production that has a view of how everything is coming together and making sure that nothing 'falls through the cracks'.

How do you think the number of women in the games industry can increase?

-- It’s hard to say. Part of it is you have to go all the way back to early school and childhood and honestly look at the culture of different countries and schools. What sort of access to computers do they have? What sort of encouragement are given to them at an early age, saying this is something you can do and be successful at?

-- I think with the renaissance of indie developers that there are a lot more women getting into game development. Some women are running their own game companies (Kellee Santiago of That Game Company), some are working in social gaming, there are husband/wife indie teams, and also more games projects at universities that have men and women working together, so it is happening, but it’s not something we’ll see overnight.

Do you reach out to other women in the industry?

-- Yes,  I get emails from women, as well as men that want to know how to work in the industry. I give them encouragement and do my best to understand their specific goals and give them guidance. Everyone has a certain aspect of game development that they are more passionate about, so the answer I give is rarely the same.

-- I gave a talk at GDC recently. I always like going to conferences to connect with old colleagues and meet new people in person that I met through email/twitter. Another nice thing is that by going to GDC, I am reminded that there are a significant number of women in game dev out there. Seeing other female developers at places like GDC is a nice reminder that you’re not alone, we’re just sort of sprinkled across different countries and companies.

How do you think more female game devs can get visibility?

-- I think it’s really important that companies encourage their female devs to stay in this field and to speak at conferences or attend and connect with other women, so they know that they do belong in this industry. These women should use social media to just say that “I am here.” By them being visible, they will encourage other women to come into the industry. Everybody in this world has a voice. It’s whether you choose to make that voice heard or not.

How do you think an increase in female game developers can affect the workplace and the final products?

-- It's difficult to point at any specific thing and say 'a female developer did that.' It's more subtle than that. I certainly think stories, especially with female characters, are given a bit more care in their design and given more depth if there is a female developer on the team keeping the portrayal of women in game content more grounded and respectful.

-- Jesse Shell gave a talk at the IGDA awards luncheon, and he apparently has a lot of women that work for him in his company. He’s found that if you just take one female and add to a game team with a bunch of guys that they’ll sort of not go completely over the top. Like in terms of over scoping, things get generally more grounded. It’s like the behavior of the collective becomes different.

-- He also said game dev is generally like a Valhalla or something where it’s a bunch of guys all going "Rraaaahr!" and beating each other up into being very over the top. And then you introduce a female to that team and things are tempered in an interesting way. Not tempered like "Oh, we can’t have any more fun." It’s just a different sort of dialogue or behavior that emerges.

-- The year before, Peter Molyneux gave a talk. He said something to the effect that having women on the team sort of softens the rough edges on the work that is done. So there is a lot of different takes on this, but I think all agree on it as a positive. Especially because there’s a huge portion of the gaming demographic that is female. So in order to better represent the people that we’re actually trying to sell these games to, there should be women on the game dev teams as well.

What was your reaction when you were nominated for the IGDA Women in Gaming award?

-- I don’t really know how to answer it other than to say I’m flattered. I mean I think it’s really cool when I go to conferences and people come up to me and say they love the games I’ve worked on. Getting that personally from somebody is really rewarding to me, and so is getting an award from an organization.

Do you remember how you got hooked on programming?

-- I got into games when I was 9 years old. This was in 1981 or 1982. I got a little VIC 20 and was just typing in the programs. I did it originally because I didn’t want to run out of games! I mean, games were really expensive back then. I was like "If I can learn how to type these games, I don’t have to worry about begging my mom or do like a million chores just to get the money to buy a game!" :D

What is it that fascinates you about programming?

-- Back then it was the joy of just making the game and seeing past all the math, past all the tech parts and seeing that at its core, programming is creativity. It’s a creativity enabler.

How do you mean “enabler”?

-- Well, art is amazing in its traditional meaning, where you just pick up a piece of paper and a pencil. But with digital art and games, the root of that comes from a programmer. If a programmer never made a paint program or a game engine, then art in video games wouldn’t be what it is. That’s why I like programming versus art (and I did learn a bunch of traditional art). Once you learn to program, it’s like you’re creating worlds out of thin air. You are enabling what you can do in the creative space. I found that rewarding, so that’s what I stuck with.

So how did you actually get into the gaming industry?

-- I was like 22, and not in my favorite part of my life. I was going to college but sort of for the wrong reasons, but in my spare time I was still writing games. At that time I was doing Amiga coding, making games and little clever demo scene style things. And there was a free magazine in San Diego with a classified section in the back with wanted ads and people selling stuff -- and there was an actual ad in there saying "Wanted: game programmer" and I was like "No way! You can actually get a real job doing this?"

-- This was about 1994, and back then the industry was -- at least to me -- not highly visible. There was no go to place where you could learn about it, saying "this is how you get in and this is what you want to learn". I mean I knew people were making games somehow. And then there was this wanted ad.

-- I went in and interviewed that, and I obviously didn’t have any previous professional experience. But I did have my demos and all these games on the Amiga that I showed them, and I just… got the job! I was carrying on with sort of general excitement and enthusiasm, so I think they just knew that this was in my blood. This was something I was doing not because I wanted a paycheck, it was because I had been living and breathing it pretty much all my life.

What kind of work did you do there?

-- So I got that job at Sculptured Software, which was an independent developer doing a bunch of games for Acclaim. I was essentially a junior programmer. This was at the end of the Sega Genesis and SNES era, and this was where I got my first chance to work on the Sony PlayStation dev kit. I thought that was the coolest thing ever, because it meant going from 2D to 3D. I was like "Oh my god! There’s so much new stuff to learn!"

I know it’s been a few years since then, but how did you finally end up here at DICE?

-- Well, after several years in the industry I knew that I absolutely needed to be at a company where I really believed in the game I was working on. Because sometimes you work some really long hours, but that’s not hard to do if you’re passionate about the work, or more specifically the game you’re working on. I have to be amongst developers that are passionate about what they work on. I ended up at DICE because I saw that they were very technology focused and pushing the envelope, but they also made some amazing, very fun to play games -- I just had to be a part of that!

What’s your personal career goal?

-- I want to make sure I’m doing what I love. And I want to be able to look back on my life and say "Wow! I made all these cool games and a lot of people enjoyed them." That’s what would make me feel like I’ve done something useful with my life.

You’ve been doing this for quite some time now. Does it ever get tedious?

-- No. The worst mistake anybody could ever make going into game dev is to think they know everything. You never stop learning stuff, and that’s actually why I keep doing game dev. That’s why I keep finding it interesting after doing it almost 17 years. There’s always new things to learn, new problems to solve and new game hardware to learn.

How would you describe the relationship between designers and programmers?

-- In my experience it’s never been difficult. If I ever have to tell a game designer 'no' or 'there's no time' or 'I need more information', I will put a lot of effort into making him or her understand why. So like the designers here, like Alan Kertz, he comes over and says 'I want this sort of thing happen with the rendering and the gun when you go to scope' and then we have a rational and deep discussion about that. What is the value add for the game? What are the technical hurdles to implementing it? It’s not something that just shows up in my department on a game designer wish list. There’s a lot more deep conversation and understanding between us both. A designer that feels like a programmer is not holding back their creative vision is a happy designer :)

How would you recommend budding programmers and designers to get into the industry?

-- As long as you have a computer and some kind of program -- it doesn’t matter if it’s Flash or some kind of game maker program -- just start making games. Don’t wait until you finish college or wait for some pre-packaged knowledge to figure out how to make games. The people that I think really end up being hired are the ones who just find some way to do it.

What are the most common pitfalls for amateur game developers?

-- It’s kind of disheartening to see the people who want a job in games that don’t actually work towards something, or make the unfortunate mistake of choosing to do an MMO or some other grand project over four years with ten people they know informally through the Internet. All the odds are stacked against that.

-- The act of even doing the most simple game start to finish is a lot more work than people think. My recommendation is you work on something really small and you finish it, and then you do it again, and you do it again. What happens then is that you reinforce the aspect of finishing something that you start, which is one of the hardest things in game development.

-- What often happens with hobby game making is it becomes something where you have a little moleskine notebook sketching art or whatever, and then you just say "whatever" and turn the page and start something new. That sort of start and stall and jump to something else can become a pattern.

-- It’s totally okay to start with mimicking really simple games that have been done before, even like Pac-Man or Space Invaders. After you do a couple small projects, try something a little bigger.

-- Being able to show a game or two that you wrote on your own free time speaks volumes to people that do interviews. They will look at your small but actually finished games and say "Okay. This person is passionate about making games, they know how to do something from start to finish, they know how to apply what they've learned to make something." Having a degree isn't enough. You have to prove you love making games, and there's no better way to prove that than by making games before you actually get a game development job.

Looking ahead, how would you like Battlefield 3 to be received this Fall?

-- What I want is millions of people playing the game and saying that they get something from it that they can’t get in any other game -- because it looks awesome or plays awesome, or because we’ve created some kind of experience. That’s what is getting me excited and that’s what carries me through this whole project.

Christina Coffin started working as a professional game programmer in 1994. Since then she has worked on a number of AAA titles in multiple genres on all major platforms. Christina is currently a Platform Specialist Senior Engineer at DICE, focusing on Battlefield 3 and Rendering Tech in the Frostbite 2 Engine. She recently won the IGDA "Women in Gaming Award" in the Engineering Category. At GDC 2011 she gave the talk "SPU based deferred shading for Battlefield 3 on PS3". Her presentation can be downloaded from DICE Publications.

Follow Christina @christinacoffin

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