Below are the fourth and fifth chapters in the ongoing "Inside Crytek" Q&A series at MyCrysis. Both gentlemen are first asked a fixed set of questions that are same for everyone and then they give answers to the fan-submitted questions. First up is new Community Manager Lee Wymer and he is followed by Environmental Artist Peter Soderbaum who is currently working as an intern at Crytek.

Welcome back to the Inside Crytek Series. As you may know we have recently hired a Community Manager, today it is a pleasure to present him to you all! We ask the same questions and look forward to the community Q&A as always. 2009 has been a great success so far with the GDC in San Francisco and the launch of the SDK and Crysis Wars 1.4 patch.

This time in the hot seat we have Lee Wymer.

What do you do at Crytek?

I have just been hired as a Community Manager for Crytek.

Why did you want to work in the games industry and how did you get started? Do you have any tips for people wanting to get started in the industry?

An excellent question, I have always been interested in games from a young age, I would literally play any game I could get my hands on - Board games, Paper and Pencil RPG’s, all types of sport, puzzles, casual games and then computer games. To me, the games industry offers complete interactive entertainment, something which books, film and other forms of media cannot offer. When I decided that I wanted my career to be in games I started looking for academic courses around the Uk and found the BA Game Design course at the University of Bradford, I enrolled and began the chain of events leading up to Crytek.

As far as tips go I would definitely recommend learning as much about your chosen field as possible, whether it be game design, community management or as an artist. Academic schools offer a very good basis for you to begin your career in the industry, but experience counts for a lot – as do contacts – the more people you know in the industry the better. You can make these contacts by the use of official / unofficial forums and such by getting involved in the online player and development community. From here you can pick up a wealth of information from others, you can get involved in the development side of things with the help of Software Development Kits (SDK’s) and start creating levels, textures or even just design documents with the help of some industry standard software.

From there, if you are still interested you can begin to produce work and show others. A portfolio of work sent to an employer is sometimes the best way in, if you show a flair for level design or graphical art then you should be able to get your foot in the door and jump-start your career from there. Getting your foot in the door will be the hardest step to make, but once you are there and can show ambition and talent you won’t find it hard to move up the ladder – experience is everything.

Where have you worked before?

Previous to Crytek I worked for GOA Games Services Ltd. In Paris and then Dublin. I worked on the European versions of Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online.

Why Crytek?

Crytek are a development studio creating some of the most visually stunning and complex games in the market. Crytek have the ability and direction to become the biggest name in the Industry, in ten years time I hope to still be apart of that. Their status as a quality game developer made my choice to join the team a no-brainer. The whole team working on our projects have years and years of industry experience, however, before experience comes talent – It is the one thing that makes us who we are and it’s truly a privilege to call these guys my colleagues.

What are the best and worst parts of your job?

The worst part of my job will be the daily tasks of keeping the forums fresh with new features for the community, however this is also the best – Community management is the persistent design and implementation of ideas. The job gives you a chance to really show what you can do, this includes thinking inside the box and then jumping headfirst out of the box.

What are you working on at the minute?

Day to day, I help maintain and run the community forums by moderating them and posting new information that they may be interested in. I am also involved in the Community Monthly Update (CMU), I see myself more as a community information manager. I control and adapt information to build hype and excitement about the products we are developing.

What types of games do you like, and what's your favorite game of all time?

I personally like all sorts of games as long as they are well balanced, well designed and offer the player a way to ‘win’ via strategy. The more classical games like backgammon, chess, Tic-tac-toe are all pure in my view. My favourite games of all time are probably the ones I have had a good social interaction with. So, in no particular order: Quake, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy 7, Dark Age of Camelot, Metal Gear Solid, Sonic, Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario World, Street Fighter and Tetris. Without these games we couldn’t have seen the likes of Resident Evil 5, Crysis, Left 4 Dead, Counter Strike: Source and the Halo series.

What do you enjoy doing when you're not at work?

Well, I should really be going to the Gym more! Other than that I like to watch sport in the local pub, play sport, cook, play poker, photography, read and play a few video games now and then : ) (It would be rude not to!)

Fan Q&A

Ahrek - Several community managers for other games have been female. How do you think that would affect this community? I mean no disrespect towards you, just curious.

I don’t honestly think it would affect the community at all, as long as the person performing the role for the company was good at his/her job I wouldn’t mind it either.

Snypr18 - Are you up for answering some of the long well thought-out criticism posts around the forums, or will you continue to ignore them as others have done? Does Crytek force you to ignore them?

We won’t ever ‘ignore’ posts however some can be difficult to answer for varying reasons. We have things we can tell the community and some things we cannot, if you can point out the posts which you feel need our attention we will sit down and come up with an answer with as much detail as we can provide.

Aegis - Do you prefer pirates or ninjas? Do you prefer samurais with jetpacks or ninjas which are permanently on fire, but the flames don't harm them?

Ninja’s all the way! I actually have an absolute distaste for everything pirate. I don’t like boats (that much) or peg legged, slurring, parrot holding, “Aaaargh, me matey!” captains. I don’t know how Ninja’s on fire that doesn’t hurt them would work but I would have to put it down to some sort of Ninja like Mystical power, so, Flaming Ninja’s!

Lokgar - On a scale of 1-10, how hot is zoey (left 4 dead)?

Zoey is a 9, maybe a 10 due to the imminent zombie apocalypse!

Lokgar - On Blood Harvest in L4D, at stage 1's spawn area, there is only 3 sleeping bags, who did Zoey double up with? Francis? Louis? Or *gasp* Bill?

Who says the guys didn’t share?

Lokgar - Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle, or Tzeentch (Warhammer 40k)?

Nurgle all the way, pestilence ftw!

Lokgar - If you could live in any Sci-Fi or fantasy setting, which would it be?

Sci-Fi - Give me a “pew pew” laser gun and some space wench to save and I’ll be there!

Lokgar - If you could design a well polished MMO, what would it be like?

My dream MMO would be balanced and have a solid economy, a little grind, group questing, a good reward system and a great group PvP system.

VengenceBot - Are you Aware that your name is in my mod for Crysis Wars*! As one of the Enemy bots?

Sure, before I worked for Crytek I was a lonely Bot just living out one of my limitless lives being perpetually re-spawned to get gunned down and thrown around by these guys in tight leather suits. Thanks for creating me, I’m doing well now.

Weaver - What is your ideal vacation?

New Zealand and not for the Lord of the Rings tour.

korg23 - How much busier is your job going to get as you ramp up towards the next free trial period for Wars and how are you going to be differentiating this one from previous ones, ie: any new content/game modes on the way?

The job on a day to day basis is always busy, because of the communities we have between CryMOD and MyCrysis there is always posts to read and ideas to work on. Projects such as launching the trial period come along now and again and the work gets done, it’s a great feeling to have everything run smoothly.

korg23 - Is there any truth in the rumours that Flamers is actually Cry-Eddy's secret love child?

At this stage I cannot confirm or deny the claims that Flamers is Cry-Eddy’s love child, but Eddy travels alot so who knows. Smile

Neophyte - do you think the CryEngine 3 will have a large impact on the pc modders community, or only the console community's?

The CryEngine 3 will have a huge impact on both communities, but I cannot say more than that at this stage.

Cell-666 - I've been personally paying for servers since Crysis was released. All told this has cost me some 3000 Euro's. Now I love Wars, which was why I feel it's money well spent until patch 1.4 was released, up until then my two server were ranked both top ten, not any more! I love supplying my servers if players use them, but since the patch the player count across Wars has dropped by 35%. This is based on monitoring the gamespy stats. So after my big investment in Crysis and Wars how will Crytek respond to the drop in players?

Well, we have recently announced the Free Trial Week which is an incredible offer, this should bring in some extra players and boost the community – hopefully enough to make them buy the game. We are running promotions constantly throughout the year.

In Closing

A special thanks to Lee for answering these questions and more over, those people in the community who contributed questions towards this article. The next Inside Crytek article will be up soon and we'll be allowing you to ask even more questions to another member of the Crytek staff in a short while.

MyCrysis: Inside Crytek - Lee Wymer
MyCrysis: Inside Crytek - Lee Wymer - Community Answers!

Today sees another addition to our "Inside Crytek" series. This is a series of Q&A's with different members of the Crytek team, where they answer questions on all sorts of topics. These are not just ordinary interviews though. Once their intro has been posted you get the opportunity to ask them your questions!

This time around we are speaking with Peter Soderbaum.

What do you do at Crytek?

I'm an Intern Environmental Artist working on Crysis Wars.

Why did you want to work in the games industry and how did you get started? Do you have any tips for people wanting to get started in the industry?

As a kid I spent so much time playing games and drawing stuff that there was little else I could do ;) That and it seemed like a pretty cool job to have so I set my sight on doing it one day.

Later I went on to study Digital Art at university. After graduating I worked as a photographic library manager for a year. During this time I worked on my show reel, until I got offered a job in a small VFX Company in Germany to work on a film.

I went over and spent 6 months rotoscoping and tracking film plates, but towards the end was given the chance to learn Zbrush and used it to make several assets for some VFX shots. Ironically right after I’d finished learning Zbrush, and making the assets, the company was closed down due to various legal issues.

I was suddenly jobless in a foreign country, but as luck would have it there was a big vfx trade show happening the following week, in the neighboring town! So I gathered all my material together, had some long nights over the weekend, and ended up with some sort of a showreel which I took to the show. There I spoke with a Crytek representative and was offered a one year intern position as an environmental artist, which I accepted.

Where have you worked before?

A supermarket, a company called Catalyst Interactive, making 3D models for VR Military training, AusAID (as photo library manager) and at Cineplus Vision in Germany as a compositor. Now at Crytek :)

Why Crytek?

Their internship offer is incredible. They know how to look after their employees and I have the opportunity to work on some truly amazing games.

Do you have any tips for people wanting to get started in the industry?

I strongly believe that a foundation in 2D visual art, even if it’s basic, is very important. Being able to draw not only helps you in the planning process but also when it comes to visually communicating ideas to others. I think of drawing as a skill that can be learned like reading and writing, and just as important. Sadly it’s overlooked in schools and most give up early on because it’s not taught and/or it’s seen as “too hard”. Of course it’s possible to get by without drawing skills, just as it’s possible to get by without writing skills, but I think that even improving them a little goes a long way to making much better artwork and helping learn some of the fundamentals of visual art/communication. Things like: composition, flow, balance, contrast, weight, mood, tone, rhythm… and the list goes on. All great works of digital art are underpinned by the same principles that apply to traditional art, and there is a reason the old art masters learned to draw first. Now I’m no master at art or drawing, but by avoiding it and not learning I certainly decrease my chances of grasping those vital tools. Personally I found the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards to be very helpful.

As for “getting into the industry” specifics, I’m not sure, but I’ll give it a shot:

- Get out to lots of trade shows and meet the people hiring in person. They are much more likely to hire someone they’ve met.
- I was told always to bring/send prints of your best work with your CD/DVD. It takes many steps to open a CD/DVD - turn on a PC, insert it, play it, work out how to use it, get the right codec, etc etc... Or they can just pick up a photo and look at it right away. Not sure if this is true, or works, but I did it and it worked for me.
- Only include your best works in your reel.
- Of course, use the many amazing forums around to meet like minded people, learn and get your work exposed.
- Above all else, don’t give up!

What are the best and worst parts of your job?

Work is interesting and challenging. It’s a great feeling to be learning something new every day. Also being surrounded by talented artists is really inspirational and goes a long way to driving you to improve. The downside is you do have to do some monotonous things every now and then. LOD'ing and bug fixing can be a pain - but all things considered, you're learning to make games, which at the end of the day is pretty cool!

What are you working on at the minute?

I have just finished a big asset for Wars that will spice things up a bit. Should be out soon (as of writing.) *oooh the mystery* :P

What types of games do you like, and what's your favorite game of all time?

Some of my favorites are: God of War 1 and 2, the Fallout series, the Metroid series, the Half Life series, Monkey Island 2, FF7, Gears of War, Silent Hill 2, GTA series and Crysis.

What do you enjoy doing when you're not at work?

Drawing, learning Zbrush, watching movies, trying to find time to play games, hanging out with my girlfriend and friends, and eating good food.

Fan Q&A

If you could have any other job at Crytek, what one would you have?

Apart from running the show? Hehe, it’s difficult to say. Probably something to do with concept art.

How many hours a day do you get to actually play Wars?

About every second day we have a playtest to see how the stuff we’re working on is progressing. That’s about it, there is so much work to be done that there is little time left to play wars in our spare time sadly. The irony of working in the games industry is that I now have more games sitting on my desk than ever before, and no time to play them :)

As an environmental artist, what would you say your favourite environment to design is?

Probably making things that are ruined and broken down, like fallout post apocalyptic, or something overly ornate, like in Gears of War. But as long as you can put your own twist on something, anything can be fun.

What does “big asset” mean? Does this mean we get another patch?

Yep, that’s a pretty safe bet.

Do you only work on Wars or do you work on other projects as well?

I am also working on another “unannounced project”, all veiled in secrecy atm... very cloak and dagger.

Photoshop or Corel?

Photoshop :D

In Closing

A special thanks to Peter for answering these questions and more over, those people in the community who contributed questions towards this article. The next Inside Crytek article will be up soon and we'll be allowing you to ask even more questions to another member of the Crytek staff in a short while.

- MyCrysis Team

MyCrysis: Inside Crytek - Peter Soderbaum
MyCrysis: Inside Crytek - Peter Soderbaum - Community Answers!