Level Up!

The field of video game development is ever-evolving, and Baylor alumni are at the forefront of the industry, shaping the stories that players engage with and the interactive experience of the games. 

Many Baylor alumni who are now influential in creative, technical and ethical dimensions of the industry came to be there by way of unexpected routes. The common thread is they think critically about the human element of games — both how people engage with games and related technologies and how these technologies can reflect the best of human experiences. 

Recent trends show that 65% of Americans play video games, with engagement across age groups, geographic locations and professional backgrounds on console, smartphone and computer platforms. Players aren’t just playing for entertainment, either. The game market has grown to include several types of games that employ critical thinking, engaging with storytelling and art, and developing teamwork and collaboration. 

The Human Element

Scott White, B.A. ’93, works at the intersection of computers and humans. With professional experience in both video games and augmented reality platforms, he seeks to understand how developing technologies can serve the human experience, whether it’s for recreation or productivity.

“My job is to understand the user needs, whether it’s for entertainment or productivity,” White said of his role. “And then I interpret that into understanding how users feel, how their emotions are engaged, their goals, the narrative and efficient workflows.” 

“What first drew me to games was the ability to work with all these people from these disparate skillsets that work on one team to build a compelling experience and tell a story.”

White is the principal XR experience designer at Magic Leap, a wearable augmented reality platform, but this role is a progression from a career in design, art and storytelling for video games. His first job in the industry was working for a group that built multimedia in the form of CD-ROM games, educational entertainment and enterprise applications. Throughout his career, White has worked on animatronics, advertising, education software and entertainment design.

“I was never a gamer,” White admitted. “What first drew me to games was the ability to work with a team of software engineers, audio designers, curriculum designers, narrative design, level design, artists and animators — all these people from these disparate skillsets that work on one team to build a compelling experience and tell a story — I found it fascinating.”

White’s journey to the industry started at Baylor, even though at the time he did not intend to professionally create video games or augmented reality platforms. He studied illustration and graphic design, but it was the nature of Baylor’s liberal arts education that prepared him to work in an interdisciplinary field. He draws not only on what he learned in the art program but writing skills, translating thought into action and connecting the technical aspects of game creation to what the user is experiencing.

White has worked for brands like Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man, Harry Potter, X-Men, Barbie, Toy Story, The Sims and Mickey Mouse, and his clients include Disney, Mattel, Hasbro, DreamWorks, Lego, Ferrari, Boeing, IBM, Apple, Google and Sony.

“Building games or experiences for these brands and organizations have led me where I am now, but I was always building someone else’s story,” White said.

For White, it’s the storytelling that encapsulates what is most engaging about video games. He started a couple of companies of his own as a pathway to tell the stories he wanted to tell before transitioning into spatial computing for his current role.

“What I like about games is the storytelling and creating compelling memorable experiences. It’s not about the game, it’s about what’s inside the game; the narration, the motivation, the characters and the worlds that draw us in.”

Whether he finds himself in the role of directing, managing, producing, creating art or designing the interface, White has three principles that guide his work: storytelling, simplifying the complex and designing in the “white space” — the unexplored areas of human interaction where there are no existing design patterns or expectations. 

“Now that I’ve moved to augmented reality and AI design, I get excited about creating systems that are polite, helpful and intuitive. These are all highly complex technologies, so you need people who can simplify them in ways that we can all understand and engage, and you need people who can design in the “white space” that has no obvious path forward, where new trails are blazed.”

“We’re on a path to make digital products that immerse users on a level that is more human and less digital; less screen time and more engagement in the world, easier and intuitive access to data while present with those around us. The future is really rather bright.”

Shaping the Stories that Shape Us

Rachel Payne, B.A. ’99, Ph.D. ’12, is keenly aware of how important language is for shaping experience. 

As the manager of English video game editing at The Pokémon Company International, many of the skills Payne uses in her role were central to her Baylor education, even though the video game world did not come on her radar until much later. As an undergraduate, Payne was a University Scholar major studying English literature, religion and history. Payne returned to Baylor for a Doctorate in English Literature, during which she also taught in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core. Her background in studying how literature is crafted and its ability to convey something of the human experience proved valuable in a job editing the story text of a game that has more words than the combined Lord of the Rings trilogy.

“I was naturally good at teaching, making connections between people and coaching them, providing a safe place for their curiosity to take over and for them to show what they were passionate about.”

Payne started working on video games in 2013 as a contractor for Pokémon X and Pokémon Y. She joined a team that worked with the Japanese to English translator to ensure the scripting after translation resonated in American English.

“But it’s a little more involved than that,” Payne said. “My first job was counting the number of exclamation marks. When certain characters would make statements, it needs to be consistent and for the text to match the excitement and tone of the game.”

This game was the first simultaneous launch of a Pokémon game in both Japan and America, so consistency in character development was important as the game was developed. International collaboration continued to be important in Payne’s career, and now she leads a team that not only examines thousands of words for a game but also uses the art of language to name new characters. 

“We have a brainstorming list of maybe a hundred possibilities, and then we vote for our top three candidates. We send those to the Spanish, Italian and British English teams, who use our same names, to make sure the names work across languages. Then we send it to our game development partners in Japan, to make sure that it sounds good to them. And we do that 100 times for every new generation of games.”

Payne brings an important perspective that contributes to how audiences approach stories. In a process called content review, Payne asks if characters reinforce or challenge stereotypes. Although female representation in the industry has increased since she started working for the company, different perspectives are deeply important for creating characters and stories that challenge perceptions and stereotypes that can sometimes be built into games unknowingly.

“My team often researches diversity, inclusion and representation,” Payne described. “Having women who are able to see things in a different light — just because we’ve been in this world for so long or because we look at it through different eyes — hopefully we make a difference.”

Payne said the most rewarding part of her job is encouraging the passions of her team.  

 “In my academic path, I was naturally good at teaching, making connections between people and coaching them, providing a safe place for their curiosity to take over and for them to show what they were passionate about. That’s my favorite part of my job now, and I get to do that with my team of 15. I get to find out what they’re passionate about and side projects that they want to work on, and I get to ask, ‘How can I clear the roadblocks so that you can do that? Because that sounds awesome, and the company and the world need that thing that you’re passionate and excited about.’”

Seeing people react to new developments and the stories she crafts is a reminder that these games are all about people.

“This brand is so big and so exciting to people. I talked to people whose kids had learned to read because they wanted to be able to play Pokémon. Even if I’m just counting the number of exclamation marks at the end of sentences, I’m contributing to the experience that people have, the joy.”

From Idea to Fruition

Video games were a source of entertainment for Caleb Elmore, B.S. ’18, long before he started working on them. He played multiplayer battle arena games and fantasy action role-playing games like League of Legends and Skyrim, as well as trend-shaping single-player games.

“The thing that I played every day, starting in 2016, as soon as I got home from class was Overwatch. That was a game made by Blizzard, and it made me want to work at Blizzard one day if I ever got into the game industry,” Elmore said.

Now, Elmore is subject matter expert for quest quality assurance for another game at Blizzard Entertainment. 

“I work specifically on the Diablo team, and I work on Diablo IV right now. Basically, I’m in charge of overseeing, if you will, the QA for most quests that people encounter in Diablo IV.”

Elmore also works with other analysts as needed to support their testing for quests, performs what’s called bug triage and ensures issues are going to the right designers to fix. Elmore recognizes that his role is about understanding how a player interacts with the game. 

 “A lot of what an undergraduate degree in physics is is breaking down very complex qualities about the world we live in into simpler equations. That happens a lot in game design.”

“Quality assurance in the game industry is more about having a pulse on what people like and making sure that whatever gets delivered is actually meeting that expectation,” he said. “So there’s a subjective feedback loop involved in QA when talking to design.”

It seems fitting that Elmore now does quality assurance for the company that he imagined himself working for as he played games in college, but his pathway was more serendipitous than goal-driven. 

“The pandemic hit right after I graduated,” Elmore said. “I’d always loved games, so I applied to a contract job to QA a game at a company to just have a better job than food service. It only paid a little bit more at the time. It turned out to be a contracting company that was working with Blizzard, and I didn’t even know Blizzard had an Austin office at the time. In 2020, Blizzard hired everybody that they were currently contracting to be full-time employees, and that’s how I came to have my current job.” 

Elmore’s degree at Baylor, although not obviously related to the video game industry, equipped him with essential problem-solving skills. He majored in physics with a minor in math. 

“Those skills were developed by my physics degree on some level, and they really come into play when debugging a game. And the math knowledge also comes into play a lot, too. Coding and math work together a lot of the time,” Elmore said. “A lot of what an undergraduate degree in physics is is breaking down very complex qualities about the world we live in into simpler equations. That happens a lot in game design. A game is a composition of hundreds and hundreds of very complex systems that were developed by several different people, and having to break things down and find the true source of a problem is a very valuable skill in the game industry.”

The transferable skills Elmore gained and honed as a student at Baylor make him very well-suited to his job. His advice for students hoping to enter the industry making video games someday is to be able to bring ideas to life with skills. 

“Someone who aspires to see their ideas in the game industry but doesn’t develop their skills is referred to as an idea person,” Elmore divulged. “You can’t just have ideas. You also have to be able to code and make those ideas. You have to be able to show an idea and make it and build it.” 

Competitive Gaming

Video games develop social communities between players, and several games lend themselves to competition between individuals and teams, similar to traditional sports. Baylor alumna and former middle school teacher Danielle Johnson, B.A. ’05, found herself in the world of esports because she saw the potential for video game competitions to bring students together based on their interests within a context that connects them to school, community and personal development. 

“Just like in school football teams, we are working on teamwork, coachability, communication and leadership. How to take a loss, how to take a win,” she said. 

“Our goal is to connect kids to each other so they have a community and to connect them to school so they have accountability.”

Johnson is the co-founder and executive director of the Texas Scholastic Esports Federation (TexSEF), a teacher-run, nonprofit organization serving Texas schools. Nearly all the staff of TexSEF are or were public school teachers, and the organization equips teachers in public schools to be coaches for their school teams in the statewide federation. 

“Our goal is to connect kids to each other so they have a community and to connect them to school so they have accountability,” Johnson said. “Kids that are on their school esports teams go to school an average of seven more days per year — this is huge because it means they want to be at school.”

In the Fall 2024 semester, about 120 schools were involved. 

“There’s a ton of games, and we have 10 this year. The most popular title across the country is Super Smash Brothers Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch. After that, it’s Rocket League Valorant. Those are the top games, but we play what the kids are playing,” Johnson said. Titles are often added to the following year’s lineup by student interest.

Johnson said TexSEF has a lot to look forward to in the Spring 2025 semester, but she is most excited for the state championship in May, hosted by Baylor at the Mark and Paula Hurd Welcome Center.

“We put on the largest championship in the country. It’s called the Undisputed State Championship, so it doesn’t matter what league you play with,” Johnson described. “I am personally very excited because Baylor is like my home. Bringing this to Baylor and using all those new facilities that were not there when I was a student is really special. And I hope it brings a spotlight onto esports and showcases how big this is.”