Stasio Interviews Scott Marison

by Stasio

August 24, 1998

Q: So, just how did you land your job with SSS? Did you know Rick Goodman before hand?

A: Well, before I began working for SSSI, I was working at a game company called 5D Games (making a 3D 1st person shooter). In January of this year, I received a call from Stainless Steel Studios Inc., as they were looking for programmers. At the time, 5D was still up and running, but they had financial troubles. I told them I would know more in a few months if 5D would survive or not. A few months passed, 5D died, so I contacted SSSI again to let them know I was interested. The rest is history. And no, I didn’t know Rick Goodman beforehand.

Q: In your biography it says you worked on the game engine for Indycar Racing 2 (now CART Racing) and Grand Prix Legends, two racing races. How different was it to switch to a RTS game?

A: Well, my first job in the game business was at Papyrus/Serria, working on the Win95 version of IndyCar Racing II. It was basically a port (as the DOS version was already finished), so the underlying physics engine stayed pretty much intact. However, I worked on the new Win95 UI a lot, along with the replay feature of ICR2. For GPL, I had begun work on some of the low-level game engine, including a file system library and a UI for it. At that time, I moved to 5D Games. I would say that no matter what game you work on, they are really not all that different. You still need to follow the same types of disciplines regardless of the game type. At Papyrus/Serria, it was racing games, at 5D it was a 3D 1st person game, at Stainless Steel Studios Inc., it’s a RTS. But the inner guts of the game pretty much remain the same. You need to draw things to the screen, you need to update the world, you need to make AI decisions.

Q: Was the step-up quite large from a low game engine programmer to the lead engine programmer?

A: Yes, to a degree. I’ve worked on a lot more design documents this time around, and have a bigger responsibility as a lot of the design is going to be influenced by me. It’s a fun challenge, something I have wanted to tackle. But it is significantly different then when I was just told “go do this” or “go do that”… it’s now my job to define and design what the “this” or “that” is before I actually go off and do it now!

Q: Do you like your new leadership role as you said above there you give your commands or decide what you want, compared to being told what to do?

A: Yes I like it… I have more control over my destiny now. 🙂

Q: With SSSI how many hours do you work in a week?

A: Oh that can vary depending on what is going on, but 40 hours a week is usually the minimum…. and once things get really busy, it’ll be long hours (but fun hours!)

Q: What is your favorite part of the job?

A: My favorite part of working at SSSI is that I believe I’m working on a game which will really be great, a game which should really push the RTS genre forward.

Q: And what is you least favorite?

A: The long hours can be hard on you sometimes, especially with family.

Q: Will Empire Earth: A History of the World be the best RTS ever?

A: Our goal is to make EE be one of the best, if not the best, RTS to ever be released.

Q: Hehe what I thought, but of course we all know that EE will be the best game ever, any final words or comments?

A: Sure… Following in the steps of some great RTS games like AoE or StarCraft can be really exciting and I think that EE is really going to make RTS fans rethink what a RTS is and can be. It is going to be a very fun experience working on this game, as it is already. It’s still early on in the process, but I am already anxious to play my first multiplayer game on the internet vs. people who brought the game!