Harvey Smith (game designer)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Harvey Smith
Video game designer, writer
Years active1993-present
EmployerArkane Studios
Known for

Harvey Smith (born 1966) is an American

video game designer and writer, working at Arkane Studios
.

Smith has lectured in various places around the world on topics such as

level design, emergent gameplay, leadership, game unit differentiation,[1] future trends and interactive narrative.[citation needed] At the Game Developers Conference in 2006, Smith won the Game Designer's Challenge: Nobel Peace Prize, for his design featuring a mobile video game that facilitates political social action.[2]

Early life

Smith was born and raised on the Texas Gulf Coast.[3] He grew up playing games like Pong[4] as well as Dungeons & Dragons.[5] He read books by Ursula K. Le Guin, William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov and Roger Zelazny, among others.[6] He served six years in the U.S. Air Force, including tours in Germany and Saudi Arabia.[3] Smith moved to Austin at the behest of a friend to try his hand at video game design.[7]

Career

Early in his career, Smith worked in

Ultima VIII, working with co-founder of Origin, Richard Garriott. Smith then pitched his own game, Technosaur, a real time strategy game inspired by Dune that would have featured "cybernetically augmented velociraptors". The project was canceled by publisher Electronic Arts after 18 months of work.[9]

After leaving Origin in 1996, Harvey Smith went to work at Multitude where they released FireTeam.[10]

After Multitude, Smith's game development career continued in Austin, Texas working with Warren Spector at Ion Storm as lead designer on Deus Ex as well as its sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War.[11] After this he unsuccessfully pitched a further game in the Thief series, to be called Thief: Modern, in which central character Garrett lived in modern-day New York.[11]

Smith then left Ion Storm to work at Midway Games, originally to work on a title called Criminal with "immersive sim values" inspired by Michael Mann's 1995 crime film Heat, but shifting ultimately to work as lead designer on BlackSite: Area 51.[11][10][8] On November 29, 2007, Smith came out publicly to announce how unrealistic the BlackSite: Area 51's development schedule was and through mutual agreement left Midway a day later. He claimed the schedule caused the low reviews due to the fact they were not able to test the game properly.[12]

In 2008, Smith became partner and co-creative director of Arkane Studios in Austin alongside the company's president, Raphaël Colantonio.[10] They went on to release the stealth-action game Dishonored in 2012, which won many Game of the Year and Best Action/Adventure accolades including the 2013 BAFTA award for Best Game[13] and 2012 SPIKE VGA for Best Action/Adventure Game.[14] Smith also co-directed the sequel Dishonored 2 and its standalone expansion Dishonored: Death of the Outsider.[15] Smith is co-director on Arkane Austin's Redfall, an open-world first person shooter, due for release in May 2023.[11][16]

Smith's semi-autobiographical novel, Big Jack is Dead, was released on April 2, 2013, by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.[17] That same year it was on Kirkus Review's list of "Best Indie General Fiction".[18]

Works

Video games

Year Title Role
1994
Super Wing Commander
 		Quality assurance
System Shock
1995 Ultima VIII: Pagan (CD-ROM version)[19]
BioForge
CyberMage: Darklight Awakening Producer, designer, writer, voice actor
Technosaur (cancelled)[20] —
1998 FireTeam Designer
2000 Deus Ex Lead designer
2003 Deus Ex: Invisible War Director
2004 Thief: Deadly Shadows Designer
2005 Area 51 Designer, writer
2007 BlackSite: Area 51 Executive creative director
2009 Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor Quality assurance
KarmaStar —
2012 Dishonored Creative director, designer, writer
2013 The Novelist Quality assurance
2016 Dishonored 2 Creative director
2017 Prey Quality assurance
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider Creative director
2023 Redfall Studio director

Book

Year Title Category Publisher ISBN
2013 "Big Jack is Dead" Fiction CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 1482563657

References

  1. ^ "Harvey Smith's GDC presentation on Orthogonal Unit Differentiation".
  2. ^ "GDC: The Game Design Challenge: The Nobel Peace Prize". Gamasutra.
  3. ^ a b "Harvey Smith". www.amazon.com. Retrieved May 11, 2021.
  4. ^ "Gamasutra - The Subversion Game: An Interview With Harvey Smith". www.gamasutra.com. October 5, 2007. Retrieved May 11, 2021.
  5. ^ "Building a World with Dishonored 2's Harvey Smith". pastemagazine.com. December 21, 2016. Retrieved May 11, 2021.
  6. ^ "Dishonored 2". Game Informer. Minneapolis: GameStop. June 1, 2016.
  7. ^ Grayson, Nathan (October 17, 2012). "Interview: Unmasking Dishonored's Harvey Smith | Rock Paper Shotgun". Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
  8. ^ a b Lane, Rick (September 21, 2022). "Harvey Smith is in uncharted territory". NME. Retrieved January 13, 2023.
  9. ISBN 9781399096911
    .
  10. ^ a b c "The mirror men of Arkane". Polygon. September 28, 2012.
  11. ^
    Future Publishing
    . pp. 70–79.
  12. ^ "Confirmed: Harvey Smith Leaves Midway". 1up.com. November 30, 2007. Archived from the original on May 22, 2011.
  13. ^ "BAFTA Awards Gaming 2013". BAFTA.
  14. ^ "Around the Web: Award Season". The Bethesda Blog.
  15. ^ McKeand, Kirk (September 5, 2017). "Why Dishonored: Death of the Outsider needed new writers, according to Harvey Smith". PCGamesN. Retrieved March 18, 2023.
  16. ^ Makuch, Eddie (January 25, 2023). "Redfall Release Date Confirmed For May 2, As Lots Of New Gameplay Footage Debuts". GameSpot. Retrieved March 18, 2023.
  17. ^ Futter, Mike (May 29, 2013). "Get Big Jack Is Dead By Dishonored's Harvey Smith For Free". Game Informer. Retrieved March 18, 2023.
  18. ^ "Best in Indie Books 2013". Kirkus Review.
  19. Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Gamer Network
    . Retrieved April 17, 2020.
  20. ^ "Technosaur [PC – Cancelled]". Unseen64. April 7, 2008. Retrieved April 17, 2020.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harvey_Smith_(game_designer)&oldid=1188654522"