Alex is a Game Designer at Respawn and the only employee who can legally fly a plane. In this week’s interview he talks about designing Counter-Strike maps, driving a dune buggy to Las Vegas and how he ended up recreating a North Carolina strip club.

Abbie: “How is Alex Roycewicz doing?” was one of the very specific questions posed on the forums. So, Alex Roycewicz, how are you doing?

Alex: I’m doing really great. Life is good.

Abbie: Great! End of interview, then. So anyway, where did your interest in level design start?

Alex: So I started back in the Counter-Strike days. Even further back, actually. In 1998, when Half-Life came out, my brother and I started experimenting with the engine. This was in Seoul, South Korea. We had no connection to the internet. We had nobody to talk to about this. We just holed up in an attic and worked with each other and started making our own levels. After that, I started hanging out with a lot of friends playing games in internet cafes which led to them asking me to make custom levels so we could play them, based off our school or homes, stuff like that. I kept working and developed a good taste for level design and really liked what I was doing so I kept doing it in my spare time.

Abbie: Can you elaborate on the kind of levels you were making?

Alex: One of the first jobs I had in level design was a contract job from a pornography company, adult entertainment. So they sent me some mail one day asking if I wanted to work on a project with them and I said “Sure.”

Abbie: Did you know what the company was at that point?

Alex: No, I had no idea. I wasn’t even 18 at the time. I don’t know if I was legally allowed to work for them. So what ended up happening was they sent me a mail saying “We have this strip club we’re building and we want you to recreate it virtually to build some hype.” And they asked me what I needed and I said “Floor plan, layout and possibly a video walkthrough, tons of photos, that kind of thing.” So a couple weeks go by, I don’t hear back and I figure they’ve forgotten about me but I actually got a piece of mail, popped in the CD and there is a video of a guy going “Hello Alex, I’m going to take you on this tour through this new strip club we’re building.” So this guy proceeds to walk through showing me all the rooms, the kitchen, the downstairs, the little runways, the upstairs, the basement, sends me thousands of photos and I recreated the place. The level was CS_Cabaret. It was the exact same layout as that place, you can go to it, I forget where it is, maybe North Carolina.

Abbie: Have you thought about going?

Alex: Yeah, I actually really want to go, ‘cause I can go in and just walk the place.

Abbie: Blind-folded.

Alex: Yeah. So they accepted the level but I don’t think it ever got released because the person who was orchestrating this whole mess got fired. But I did get paid and they got a level that advertised their website. In 2004 I released it publicly.

 

Abbie: So how did you find a job in the industry?

Alex: Eventually I ended up going back stateside to Florida and I realized I wanted to do this professionally. After a little bit of time I worked up enough things to put a portfolio together which I then sent out. I had a choice of either China, Germany or California for my first job in the industry. I didn’t want to go to China because I’d have to learn another language, and I didn’t want to go to Germany cause it was a start-up so I ended up moving to California and working for Infinity Ward.

Abbie: So you didn’t do the route through college and studying games in school at all.

Alex: Yeah, one of the big transitions I had was going from an international school back to state schooling. There’s a big gap. I was considerably further ahead which meant I was bored pretty much every time I went to school. So I actually never did finish high school, I dropped out. Instead of going to college I decided I was going to hunker down, work on what I like doing and make a portfolio and it seems to have worked.

 

Abbie: Yeah, seems like it went just fine.

Alex: I consider myself the luckiest person in the world. I mean, I had no credentials to my name, I built myself up from the ground level. I think anybody can do it, that’s the thing. If you have the patience to learn and to experiment and to push yourself, I think you’re able to do anything.

Abbie: So is it exciting starting from scratch at Respawn and working on something new?

Alex: It’s all sorts of exciting but at the same time it’s incredibly trying. I’ve learned to be very patient with everybody and to accept the fact that I may work on an element that never sees the light of day. As long as it’s small steps to the grand scheme of things, it’s worth it. And right now, I love the experimentation going on. We’re doing things now that I was doing back when I was in an attic with my brother…trying craziness out.

Abbie: So what are your favorite games, what do you play?

Alex: Half-Life is definitely #1. I started in that game and still reference it constantly. It was the first game that really brought me a compelling story in the game world. When I can sit back and sort of listen to the world play out its own dialogue and be itself, I can really get immersed in that. I think a lot of games lack that. Counter-Strike would be #2 because of how amazingly it redefined the shooter genre. I think something along the lines of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is third or maybe Goldeneye. I was always Jaws and someone would always pick Odd Job and drive me crazy. Fourth might be the Metal Gear series, if I had to pick it would be the first one, on the PlayStation.

Abbie: What drives you crazy in games?

Alex: Invisible walls! That does it for me. When I’m running and suddenly stop. #1 thing. I’ve broken a lot of games. But some games are fun to break.

Abbie: You actively try.

Alex: Constantly. But sometimes it just happens. The moments where I’m compelled, in the level, to continue playing I’ll continue playing, but the second I’m bored, I’m going to go try to break the level.

Abbie: How does working in games change the way you see games when you’re playing them?

Alex: Sadly, I don’t enjoy games as much as I did before, as a  hobby turns into work, you start to hate the hobby. I still play Counter-Strike these days, but it’s become so damn hard to be good at that game unless you play it all the time.

Abbie: So what else do you do outside of work?

Alex: Studying, practicing, running in the park. I lead a boring life.

 

Abbie: Really? I heard otherwise. I have heard about the dune buggy.

Alex: Yeah, I used to drive it on city streets, and through the desert, too. My brother and I got strange looks when we took the Mad Max gear with us. Football armor and helmets. My brother with two mohawks. And we drove it to Vegas. We constructed a roof for the thing from tarp, otherwise we would get sunburned. The brakes failed, the roof got destroyed, we got hit by a sandstorm, a rainstorm, there was a cop…nothing stopped us. Including the brakes, sadly. We got back into town stopping this thing by down-shifting and using our feet.

Abbie: Did the cop think you were crazy?

Alex: We had a tarp over our dune buggy in the middle of a sandstorm because we had no shirts and….I know, it’s like a rabbit hole…and we’re under this tarp, the cop drives up and we just hear “Everybody ok?” and we put hands out with a thumbs up and he said he would check on us later.

Abbie: Did he?

Alex: Nah, but the tarp melted onto the engine which we then spent the next hour scraping off and then we kept going.

Abbie: But you made it.

Alex: Yeah, we made it. A lot of sunburn, sand scratches and the entire thing was soaked cause it went through the rain as well. It was awesome. I wouldn’t have changed anything.

Abbie: And now you can fly there. You’re Respawn’s first licensed pilot, right?

Alex: Yes. I wanted to get the license in order to travel back and forth between friends but once I got the original license I wanted to keep going with it, so now I’m working on an IFR license which is basically meteorological condition licensing, so thunderstorms or rainstorms, I can learn to fly through those. That way I won’t be impeded when there are clouds around. It makes the world smaller and a small world is very nice. When you can fit it in the palm of your hand and just travel to places and visit people. So convenient.

Abbie: Was it difficult to learn?

Alex: Yeah, it’s challenging, but it’s a good kind of challenge, it’ll really stretch your memory and definitely push you, which is something I was looking for. The coolest thing, so far in this whole plane experience, was when I first went up solo and I called air traffic and said I was doing a solo flight and all of the sudden I heard 7 to 9 guys, commercial pilots, call me back up and they all said congratulations, congratulations, congratulations, one after another. Felt good after that. Now I’m working on my multi-engine license. Faster, further, higher and all that.

Abbie: Where are you flying to now?

Alex: Santa Inez, which is a 3 hour flight, there and back. With a multi-engine license I should be able to get to San Francisco on one tank…then Seattle and Mexico, hopefully. I have some big plan and I don’t know where I’m going. One step at a time. I’ve had the radios fail while flying, I’ve had the luggage door open while flying and nothing’s worse than the windows opening at like, 120 knots and suddenly stuff starts flying everywhere, but…it’s fun!

Abbie: How do you prepare to handle those situations?

 

Alex: For 8 hours of training they put a big blindfold on you and they say fly the plane and you fly the plane. It’s instrument training and it’s so much fun. I’ve used flight sims too. It’s scary how accurate flight sims are. I thought “Others have trained on this, why not try it?” So I sat and played with Simulator X. You look around the cockpit and push all the buttons and it all works the same way.

Abbie: What do you do after you conquer the air?

Alex: That’s going to be a while but I actually know. I’m gonna learn the piano. I want to be able to play an instrument.

Abbie: Why piano?

Alex: It’s like a big keyboard. I think I’ll be able to do it.

Abbie: Like a computer keyboard?

Alex: Yeah, like a computer keyboard. I think I’ll be able to get in sync with that enough. I’m sure every piano teacher would cringe if they heard that comparison. I want to be able to play covers of all sorts of stuff. I don’t necessarily want to play piano music…just covers on a piano. Whenever I go to a hotel, they’ve got a piano. That just looks like fun. It’s going to be awhile after all this plane stuff. I might go for a commercial license.

Abbie: And then you can fly us places on the non-existent Respawn jet.

Alex: I’m trying to trade my car for a plane.

Abbie: I don’t think you can fly to work…

Alex: I can park a Cessna in a 7-11 parking lot. On a windy day I could probably park it on the roof of the parking garage.

Abbie: I don’t want to know how you know that you can park a Cessna in a 7-11 parking lot. Anything else you want to add about planes, dune buggies or Respawn?

Alex: The thing I just love about Respawn is the people. Everybody here makes it such a great company to work for. Everybody is so passionate about what they do and so good at what they do. It’s funny, I’ve gone headfirst into the games industry and the last games I made, I felt like I stood on the shoulders of giants, but for the first time I feel like I can step down and look them in the eyes and make that game with them. I know what we’re going to make will be amazing. I can’t wait.