Who’s Who at Turbine LOTRO
By Shayalyn
When it comes to game developers, some have
full-scale bios
everywhere, complete with pictures and plenty of information. But our
friends
at Turbine are decidedly low-key, preferring to let the game speak for
them in lieu of lengthy profiles detailing their career moves, hobbies,
and number of
dependent children.
But since Lord of the Rings: Shadows of
Angmar is scheduled
to launch late this year, and because Turbine’s developers are well
worth
getting to know, we decided we’d do some major Googling (sort of akin
to
turning over lots of rocks) in order to better reveal them to you. Here
are
just a few names (and a couple of faces) of the people slaving away
(apparently
under their rocks) to bring you LOTRO.
Jeffrey Steefel,
Executive Producer
Jeffrey Steefel’s experience covers 15
years or so in the
entertainment and technology industries, working with companies ranging
from
small start-ups to industry giants like Sony, and now Turbine. As Vice
President of Programming & Production for Sony Online
Entertainment,
Steefel headed digital studios in Los Angeles
and New York,
supervising production, programming and development for The
Station@Sony.com.
Steefel also supervised the launch and operation of many online
franchises
including JEOPARDY! Online, Wheel of Fortune Online, and Trivial
Pursuit
Online. Ever play in the online virtual world of There.com? Steefel
supervised
that launch, too.
Steefel began his career in gaming as a 3D
animator, and
then as designer, producer, and ultimately head of production for 7th
Level,
producing games like Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time and
developing games
with companies that included Disney, Microsoft, and Bandai Digital.
Before
that, he spent many years in the entertainment industry as a performer,
musician and producer/director.
Steefel joined Turbine in early 2004.
As many fans are
aware, he’s the Executive Producer for Lord of the Rings Online:
Shadows of
Angmar. When word comes “straight from the horse’s mouth,” so to speak,
it
comes from Steefel!
Kevin Boyle, LOTRO Senior
Producer, at the 2005 LOTRO Gathering in Providence, Rhode Island.
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Kevin Boyle, Senior
Producer
Kevin Boyle is one elusive dev; I was
unable to find a bio
or even a scrap of applicable information using Google. But I did find
a
picture of him at last year’s LOTRO Gathering. If you see Kevin Boyle,
do me a
favor and ask him to post a bio somewhere...anywhere. In the meantime,
we'll have to satisfy ourselves with prominently displaying Boyle's
proud visage here.
Cardell Kerr, Design Director
Tunnel down through Google links
and you’ll find the name
Cardell Kerr linked with Turbine through Asheron’s Call, to Dungeons
&
Dragons Online, to Lord of the Rings Online. Little information is
available
about Kerr, but we do know that he was once involved in the field of
biotech,
first producing viruses that would differentiate cancerous cells from
non-cancerous ones, and later performing genetic tests for neurological
disorders. Just how did those career beginnings translate to a life as
Design
Director for Turbine LOTRO? Hmmm.
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John
“Catfisch” Lindemuth, Lead Animator
How do you land what is possibly one of
the coolest jobs in
the known universe? John Lindemuth explains:
“It
was like winning the lottery: my boss's sister-in-law
happened to be an animator at a game company on the west coast. Through
her, he
had heard that there was a job opening for another animator at her
company, and
he thought that I should apply. I scraped together a reel and got it to
Sierra
Entertainment as fast as I could. I was flown out for an interview 2
weeks
later, and had my first game-industry job two weeks after that. Eight
years
later, I find myself here at Turbine as lead animator on The Lord of the
Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™.”
You can read the
rest of his Dev Diary about the animation process here.
Chris
“NobOrBob” Foster, Content Lead
Chris Foster goes
back a long way with Turbine, too. In fact, he goes back a real
long
way, according to this tidbit from his dev diary
on the LOTRO site:
Chris Foster, LOTRO Content
Lead, having a Zen moment at the 2005 LOTRO Gathering.
|
“Mark
my words, my friends. NobOrBob was here befeore the
combat prototype and the Shire demo; NobOrBob remembers the first
vision
document and the first Powerpoint presentation. He made specs before
the Big
Designers, and saw the little Interns arriving. He was here before the
Leads
and the Strike Teams and the shredded documents. When the Live Teams
passed
westward, NobOrBob was here already, before the Managers were bent...'
Which is
to say that he is Eldest among the LOTRO team -- a member since
its
inception, and a Turbine employee for over eight years. But he's still
not as
old as Floon Beetle.”
Foster started out working at Impressions Software (part of
Sierra) for four-and-a-half years, where he worked his way up to
producer and
co-designer on a number of games, including Lords of the Realm and
Caesar II.
In an old interview with Stratics, Foster said he came to Turbine
because he
was “ looking for a new challenge in game design, and Turbine was cool,
cutting-edge and less than an hour from my home.”
|
You’ll frequently see Foster answering questions for the
community on the official forums, as well as in a regular (well, sort
of
regular) Q&A tidbit at LOTROSource.com.
Harry “Floon
Beetle” Teasley, Lead Production Artist
Another person you’ll see on the dev
tracker from time to
time is Harry Teasley, known to fans as Floon Beetle. According to the
brief
bio posted with his dev diary:
“Floon
Beetle is the Lead Production Artist on LOTRO, as
well as the UI designer. He has been an artist and designer in the
computer
game industry for 15 years now, and is contemptuously called ‘old man’
by the
toddlers he works with at Turbine. He punishes the other artists on the
project
by incessantly talking about the old days, ‘when we made games by
rubbing two
polygons together.’ His arch-nemesis is NobOrBob, who will pay, oh,
yesss, he
will pay.”
Ryan “Tens”
Bednar, Lead World-builder
Here’s what you’ll find in Ryan
Bednar’s dev
diary bio:
“Armed
with an Industrial Design portfolio from Syracuse
University, and the crazy idea that
making MMOGs would be fun (?!), two years ago I showed up at Turbine's
front
door and asked for a job. Fast-forward to today and I now find
myself as
the World Lead on LOTRO. Us World-builders, or
artist/designer/problem
solvers, are often found deep in the trenches of the engine where many
aspects
of the game come together. Social centers, monster camps, ‘the
middle of
the woods’ – it's safe to say if you've seen it we've built it.
That
is... unless you really don't like it. Chicken George built that.”
When you’re running along through the
wilds of Middle-earth,
not paying attention to where you’re going, and you suddenly find
yourself
plummeting headlong off a cliff into a deep ravine...it’s likely you’ll
have
Bednar and his team to thank for it.
Meghan
“Patience” Rodberg, Community Manager
Patience is her name and,
well...patience is her game. When
it comes to pulling the community together, or dousing forum flame
fests, you
can count on Meghan Rodberg. And as community liaison, Rodberg is the
person
who makes sure that the voice of LOTRO fans carries to the development
studio.
She also works with community managers from fan and news sites,
sometimes
providing last-minute tidbits of information to, erm...certain CMs who
need
help assembling, say, a list of Turbine developers.
From our recent Ten
Ton Hammer interview with Rodberg:
"I
began my online adventures in the late 80’s on local
bulletin board systems, graduating to full-time work and co-sysop
status at one
of the largest subscription-based, privately-held ISPs in the greater Los Angeles area. This,
the early 90’s, was about the time I started to play online games and
MUDS,
which sucked away hours and hours of my life.
"My first job at a game company came
in 1995 doing technical support. I admit
that I may have occasionally sounded distracted on the phone with
customers
when my character was getting killed in the MUD I was simultaneously
playing –
Addict? Who, me? I eventually branched out into working on the
company’s
website and doing some community outreach on gaming-related usenet
newsgroups.
In 1997 I moved to a major PC and console game publisher as their
online
representative. A few years later I put the brakes on my career (except
for a
little freelance community work) to focus on my growing family.
"In 2004, the planets aligned;
Turbine was looking for an Online Community
Manager at the same time I was looking to go back to work. To say this
is my
dream job is a bit of an understatement. My first anniversary on the
project
was January 3rd, which coincidentally is Tolkien’s birthday – I take it
as a
good omen."
So there you have it, the team leads from Turbine. The next
time you spot a dev on the forums, or use the
dev tracker,
perhaps you’ll have a better understanding of who these hard-working
people are
and what they do for the game and the community.
