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Brennan Plunkett

From Hellgatewiki.com

Brennan began his career in the gaming industry at Blizzard North in 2001, working on an as yet unannounced project. Before joining the wild and woolly world of the games industry, Brennan was programming in the less exciting (but only slightly less bloody) fields of banking and voter management. Currently, he's happily coding away on Flagship Studios' first game, Hellgate: London.

Brennan has been a video game aficionado since grade school and even today continues his futile quest to play every game when it's released. His non-videogame hobbies include photography, movies of all kinds and videogames.

Personality Quiz

In May 2007 Brennan took the time to fill out a personality quiz for the Hellgate Wiki.

What does your job actually entail, on a day to day basis?

Programming UI mainly. Lots of code monkey work. I do a lot of making sure this button presses when you want it to and your mouse cursor doesn’t disappear when it shouldn’t. Games in this genre rely so much more on the UI than other games. Most people don’t think about that when they’re playing, and usually that’s a good thing. I once read someone say that a good movie score shouldn’t be noticed immediately; that it should convey the mood without distracting you from what’s transpiring on screen. That’s kind of how I feel about a game’s UI: it should allow you to interact with the game as smoothly as possible and the less you have to think about it the better.

When and why did you know you wanted to work in the gaming industry?

Yeah, some time in grade school. I got hooked on PC games pretty early and they haven’t let go yet. When I first played some games on friends’ computers I was enthralled. When I got my own computer at home it was a done deal. I knew that I really enjoyed playing the games and once I tried out programming I found that I really enjoyed that as well, if not more.

If you didn't work in the gaming industry, what do you think you'd be doing instead?

Still programming. I’d personally prefer scientific or law enforcement areas. I worked for both and they both have pretty interesting domain knowledge. I’ve also done financial and election stuff and… no. Not again.

Can you name a major influence on your work?

The Wizardry and Ultima games. Those are the first ones that gave me a love of games and I spent so many hours with them. They still rank up there for me as some of the most fun and best-designed games ever.

If this were the single most interesting question you'd ever been asked in an interview; something no one has ever asked you before, what would your answer be?

A deflated blowfish in the observatory – but only on Wednesdays.