Hey, everyone.
A few more developers were kind enough to respond to these questions, so I’ve combined their responses into a single post. Enjoy!
Howie Yoo [Senior Software Engineer]
What does a typical work day look for you? What responsibilities or roles do you take on? Do you get to play games on the job?
I am a software engineer on the engine team and do systems and console related work. This consists of coding and debugging in C++ to make the game work correctly and efficiently on the wide range of hardware and platforms we support. I also spend a lot of time figuring out why it works on my machine and not yours.
How do you think your work impacts the environment (positive, negative)? What is being done at Blizzard, or your job/company specifically, to help preserve the environment?
I live 50 miles from the office so my commute has a negative impact on the environment. Blizzard offers a subsidized van pool as well as incentives for those who car pool.
What was your academic background? What did you do before working at your company? How did you get your job at your company?
I was once a high school student from Ontario as well and lived all around the GTA before going to the University of Waterloo for Computer Science back in the late 90s. As part of Waterloo’s co-operative education program, I got a work term at EA and have been in the industry since then. While attending BlizzCon 2014, the year of the Overwatch announce, I applied for a position and was accepted about three years ago.
Keith Miron [Lead Software Engineer]
What does a typical work day look for you?
Get into work, look over our team’s bugs for the day, review emails from last night, figure out what tasks I need to accomplish that day, attend meetings, do some actual programming, partake in playtests, watch Overwatch League whenever possible.
What responsibilities or roles do you take on?
As a lead for gameplay, most of my responsibilities revolve around working with our awesome engineering team who work on new features for Overwatch. These range from things like adding skin selection to hero select, cool abilities for our latest heroes, or supporting Overwatch League!
Do you get to play games on the job?
I would say that most of our time is actually occupied with making the game. That being said we do get to play Overwatch during our internal ‘playtests’ to try out new heroes, maps, features. This is an important part of development, since we are heavily iteration driven and it can take quite a few playtests to really figure out what needs to be added/removed/changed.
How do you think your work impacts the environment (positive, negative)?
It’s hard to gauge, but I would say most of my impact to the environment is negative in that I have about a 20-minute commute to work (by car). I’m looking to switch over to biking instead, which thankfully Blizzard offers incentives for doing!
What is being done at Blizzard, or your job/company specifically, to help preserve the environment?
For the stuff that I know of, we have on-site electric vehicle chargers, recycling bins everywhere, and rideshare programs to promote carpooling/biking to work.
What was your academic background?
B.S in Computer Science, and a bunch of programming during my early years and throughout high school.
What did you do before working at your company?
Went to school for Computer Science, worked a bunch of odd jobs and did a stint at a different video game company or 5 and a half years, before coming to Blizzard around 2011.
How did you get your job at your company?
I had a former co-worker who was already at Blizzard, and he was able to get me a referral to apply.
Andrew Wang [Senior Software Engineer]
What does a typical work day look for you? What responsibilities or roles do you take on? Do you get to play games on the job?
A typical day as a gameplay programmer usually starts with morning synch-up meetings, catching up on any outstanding email/messages etc. At this point I either continue coding what I left off yesterday or start talking to other engineers and designers about what we should be focusing on next. This might be as simple as checking up on my designers and making sure they have the technology they need to finish their own tasks, or fielding requests from them or other engineers. For example, a designer might say, “I need a way for Doomfist to gain shields whenever he performs a special ability, and these bonus shields need to decay to 0 over time.” I would then sit down with that designer, make sure we talk through all the use cases, talk about how urgent/complex making the change would be, and then give him an estimate as to when I could deliver that code, based on its complexity and urgency and what other work I have to do.
This is actually one of the most fun parts of my job because I love helping making the building blocks that make our game come to life. Other things I may work on during the day is giving advice to other engineers about how best to solve certain problems they are working on, or asking them for their feedback about something I am working on.
Do you get to play games on the job?
Obviously I get to play Overwatch in order to test it, though in that sense we are usually playing it to test something new, whether it’s a new hero, new map, or tweaks to abilities. Every time Blizzard releases a game, we usually take the next day to just sit down and play that game, so that’s fun. Most games though, I play on my own time, both for fun and to see what good ideas other people are coming up with (or in less fun cases, what isn’t working). It’s pretty common for people to say ‘oh you make games, so you must play games all day’. A good way to think about it is that we make games all day in the same way a baker eats cake all day. Eating cake might be part of it (to see if it’s any good), but there’s a lot more to it.
How do you think your work impacts the environment (positive, negative)? What is being done at Blizzard, or your job/company specifically, to help preserve the environment?
I’m not sure there’s much that I directly affect that then has an impact one way or the other on the environment. We’ve definitely begun focusing on selling our games digitally rather than physical, boxed copies, so that means less physical waste as people continue to move away from buying physical copies. I think that’s got to be a solid plus for the environment, as we go more digital. I do have to confess that I still buy most of my media physically, since I’m a collector/packrat, so if you can avoid it, don’t be like me!
What was your academic background? What did you do before working at your company? How did you get your job at your company?
I have a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California. I took an ‘introduction to video game programming’ class (kind of by mistake, actually), that really turned me on to making games. I took an internship with a game company that one of the course instructors worked at, and that’s how I ‘broke in’ to the industry. I’ve worked at three other game companies before I came to Blizzard something like 8 years ago. I got the job by applying! We actually have the most reasonable interview process out of any company I’ve interviewed at, in my opinion.
Stephen Penson [Senior Gameplay Engineer]
What does a typical work day look for you? What responsibilities or roles do you take on? Do you get to play games on the job?
I work on the gameplay engineering team. I’m mostly responsible for the Overwatch animation system but also do various gameplay and hero related work.
Depending on the stage of the project, I may be working on a single feature (over days or even weeks) or I may be addressing various bugs or improvements (multiple per day). Currently it’s mostly work on new content, workflow improvements and bug fixing. Whatever stage of the project, there’s plenty of collaboration with Game Designers, Producers, Content Creators, QA (and sometimes Customer Service) as well as other engineers from the team or across the company.
How do you think your work impacts the environment (positive, negative)? What is being done at Blizzard, or your job/company specifically, to help preserve the environment?
I am personally quite concerned about the environment and try and keep my own carbon footprint in check. I cycle to work every day, try and keep appliances off, recycle etc. Blizzard help support this with a ‘rideshare’ program. We can re-cycle etc. Obviously a large number of PC’s switched on 24/7 would be a negative.
What was your academic background? What did you do before working at your company? How did you get your job at your company?
I have a BSc (HONS) Engineering Physics degree from a U.K. university. I‘d been programming games as a hobby throughout my school and college education but didn’t study for a software engineering career.
My first job in the games industry was after a career change (after 3yrs working as an electronics engineer in Aerospace/Defense). After a year out traveling (and working on my own project/demo) I applied via a recruiting agency to several local games companies. I was fortunate enough to be able to accept an offer with a very friendly group of people at Bizarre Creations. Back then team sizes were still small (I was programmer 30 or something?) so it was usual to be plunged into the deep end, taking ownership of several systems and areas of the game. Over time (and on multiple games) I began to specialize in player character/camera control and animation which I still enjoy working on to this day.