Jake Simpson (00:00)
It's been a while. We've just it's been twenty years since we've actually spoken properly and actually just sat down and chatted. I mean we've never been in the same place at the same time anyway, really. and you've gone off and had a career and I should point out when I'm recording this this video, and I'm looking at Karen behind the her and there's some R of hers on the wall. And I should mention that Karen, an old friend of mine, she's now recently moved into the air realm of artist as well as as

Caryn Vainio (00:02)
been a lot of

really?

Jake Simpson (00:30)
UX designer and I actually bought one of your your pieces and I have it on my wall of my office. Yeah. Yeah, it's all good stuff.

Caryn Vainio (00:36)
For

being one of my co actors.

Jake Simpson (00:40)
Well yes, good thing. So Karen, or should I call you Hellchip?

Caryn Vainio (00:46)
a name I haven't heard in so many years. There are so few people left in my life who like would use that name first, whereas it used to be everyone in my life used that name first.

Jake Simpson (00:59)
It was it was a time of your life. So so we should talk about like who you are and and where you came from. So I mean you've been kicking around the industry now for a good twenty, twenty five years or so. You've done many things and we'll go into that in a bit, but so where did you start out? Where what when did you get gripped by all

Caryn Vainio (01:17)
I got gripped, it was circa ninety-eight, ninety-nine. I was an astrophysics student in Wyoming. I was going to the University of Wyoming and I played a lot of games. I I've been a gamer since I was a kid, so that part wasn't new. But I while I was doing my studies in astrophysics, I was also playing a lot of games and a friend of mine introduced me to Quake and I started playing Quake and then I discovered Quake World and I was like, my God, this is amazing.

And my friend happened to tell me, 'cause you should try playing online. There aren't that many women who play. I'm like, well, if there's one way to get me to do something, it's to tell me there's, you know, no, not a lot of women do this. So I decided I was to try it. And I loved it. I loved Quake. And so I ended up somehow getting involved with the Quake community and discovering Planet Quake and the people who ran Planet Quake at the time. And I was low techs, Fargo, Shai this, those those three. And they would hold what they called the Friday Frags, which was Friday night.

they'd host an IRC channel with what did they use at the time? They h they held a shout cast, remember shout casting? It was early music, chat linking. So they would play music and we would they would run a server and everybody would jump out and play. And I I guess I should say that by now we were playing Quake Two. So around that time, I think Quake Two, I can't remember what year it came out, ninety eight, maybe ninety nine, I jumped into Quake Two, formed a Quake clan and everything. So I was pretty heavily into Quake Two. So trying to fit in a lot of Quake Two as well as

what I was actually doing in astrophysics. I was doing research and I was trying to go to school and pass my classes. And I, but I got really deep into the Quake 2 scene. And I was like, I was downloading like Key Grip 2 and making machinimo with Quake 2. And I had a Quake clan called Hell's Bells. And like there are still people that I've played with through my Quake clan that I I know today. Like there are still friends of mine I've made there that we talk. And so I was knee deep in this. I was a regular at the Friday Frags of the Planet Quake. And then they realized

that I was writing stuff I think on my personal website about games. I'm like, Hey, do wanna write for us too? I'm like, Yeah, sure. I've I've only got a full slate of astrophysics and games, sure, I'll do this

Jake Simpson (03:19)
What should I do with my other hat?

Caryn Vainio (03:23)
So I started writing for them and people loved it and knew me as Helpchick. And so yeah, it it and then there was a critical point when sometime that year, I think it was ninety nine, I was going to go, I was getting my bachelor's, I was gonna go to grad school, continue my research, and the program I was gonna go to dropped the PhD program, and I had a year where I had to scramble to to figure out where I was gonna go next. And at that moment, Gabe's

GameSpy, the company that ran Planet Quake, seized the opportunity and said, Well, we would like you to come and work for us and actually work on Planet Quake. So I took the job offer thinking, well, I can go back to science at any time. I'll go back someday. And that was 20 years ago, over 20 years ago now. And so I went to Planet I went to work with GameSpy and eventually started running Planet Quake. And then pretty soon I started running the other websites that fell into what they called their action genre. So it was Planet Half-Life, Planet Quake.

Playing in real. I was known as the first person shooter person. That was my specialty. And so yeah, I did a lot of writing. So that was kind of game adjacent, right? And I soon moved to Activision. Activision kind of pulled me over because I've been working a lot with ID software and the guys at id and the guys at Raven, where you were at at the time. You know, that's how you and I get to know each other was when I was at GameSpy. And I I they I liked that scene. They knew who I was, I knew who they were. And I ended up getting recommended to Activision for a position with their publishing and marketing group.

They really wanted someone who understood the online community. This online community was like some weird unknown thing for them. They just didn't know how to navigate it. And they wanted someone to come and work for them who sort of got these people. And they hired me as what they called their online consultant, online marketing person. So I went to work with them for a while. And that was about three years actually, where I was attached to Activision and worked with the online community, kind of helping put those people in touch with the devs, like doing QA's and like making sure that those websites got

assets released that they can make fan size from, things like that. During that time I was kinda getting frustrated with the fact that at the end of the day I was working for marketing and I kinda didn't feel like I was making a thing. At the end of the day, I'm a project person, I like to have a thing that I've made. Right.

Jake Simpson (05:34)
Yes, I get it. M2 and exactly what you mean.

Caryn Vainio (05:37)
Yeah, so I I wanted to make a tangible thing and I knew I had gotten tipped off from some friends that Raven Software was gonna be looking for a UI designer. And I thought, I think I could do that job, but I really have to like buckle down and have like a thing I can demonstrate that says I can do this. Well, because I was working with its software a lot, I had, you know, access to a build of Doom Three. I knew that at the time that Raven was making Quake Four, it was the same engine, thus the same GUI system.

I basically crash coursed the GUI system from Quay four and Doom Three and I learned how to

Jake Simpson (06:12)
How

long did that take you?

Caryn Vainio (06:16)
the scripting language wasn't particularly complicated and bear in mind that I I like to do light programming since I was a kid as a hobby. So I was I and I was also making mods for Quake Two in my spare time or sorry for Quake Three by then in my spare time. So it didn't take too long. The GUI system was pretty straightforward scripting. I think I opened up because you could at the time you could look at the files. I just

Jake Simpson (06:36)
Wait,

wait, wait. I'm just gonna interrupt you for a second right there, Karen, because I'm gonna say you're you're rushing over this like it's no big deal. it just took me a weekend up 'cause I had this little bit. I'm gonna interrupt you and say that is actually a big deal, right? That is you know, you're just rushing off and say it's no well, no problem, you know. this old thing, you know. That's a big deal, right? So don't don't say yourself sure. You did something pretty amazing there. There's a reason you got the job at Raven, I'm pretty sure of that. And that's yeah, that's an impressive thing. So keep going, yeah.

Caryn Vainio (07:06)
you I I learned just enough to build what I knew I needed to do. I had a plan. What I was going to do is build a portfolio piece that took the world GUIs, which if anybody's played Doom or Doom Tree or Quake Four knows of these interactive in world GUIs, I was going to build an elevator that went between three floors in a level, in Radiance, and then I was going to attach a world GUI to it that looked like something that could exist in the strog universe because anybody was building Quake Four.

So I did that. I figured out how to do it. I think now I I learned the initial scripting system. Took me a couple of weeks to get something solid and I polished it up. Hoped to God that was gonna be enough with my really, really rough portfolio of other like graphic design work I'd done in my spare time because I'm not trained as a graphic designer. I didn't I didn't go to school for design. And I threw it over the wall to Raven and I'm like, here you go. And to my surprise, they gave me a call and said, Yeah, we'll we'll continue. Come on, we know let's let's talk. And so they talked to me.

And it took a chance on me and hired me. And I ended up going to work on Quake Four. And I was the UI person for the console version of it because we were doing a simultaneous PC 360 launch title. And it's really funny because the person is my husband now was the guy who was working on the UI for the PC version. So that's where I I ended up eating him. So I ended up working with with him and another guy who we formed a three person team doing UI. And I really loved it because it

was something where I could at the end of the day I was making a thing. I was actually working on games now instead of just working game adjacent. And so that's so I have more sort of my pre-game development career where I was game adjacent. And then my game development career really kicked in in full force in 2004 when I actually went to work for Raven as a UI designer. And that's how I got myself actually working in game dev.

Jake Simpson (08:48)
Now that so Raven is in Madison, Wisconsin, famously, and it has an interesting clause. When they were bought by Activision, they had a clause in their contract that stated that Activision was not allowed to relocate them. So that's why they'd always say that 'cause the the Raffle brothers who started Raven always but that's their home and that's where they wanted to be. And my goodness me, is it so much cheaper to live there than it is any most other places, isn't it? You know? I mean, you know, you live in Seattle today and it's like you can barely afford a a garage in in Seattle, let alone, you know, house.

Exactly. So you got to deal with the ferocious winters and the the fact that you had to replace the the muffler on your car every year because of the salt on the road. Yeah, I remember.

Caryn Vainio (09:28)
But I lived in Wyoming. I lived in Wyoming and then I moved to Cal now I I lived in Wyoming, then I moved to California to work for Game Spy and Activision. But then so when I came to Wisconsin I'm like, you know, Wyoming, Wisconsin a little different but not too bad.

Jake Simpson (09:41)
Right, okay. Yeah. But I mean Reagan's an interesting place to work, I think, in terms of many people are given opportunities at Raven that you might not normally they they they do gamble on on talent. more credit to them for that. So yeah, I mean there are other issues that, you know, and obviously all this QA stuff that's going on right now is not a not a great advertisement, but as a company it's it's a pretty solid place to work, I think. And there's a lot of very talented people there.

Caryn Vainio (10:05)
It's long lived and to this day, despite it being what we're going on fifteen, twenty years now, still the place that iconically I think of in terms of like what was the game industry like when it was at its most fun to work on. I I mean, there's a lot we could you know, there's a whole tangent about women in the game industry and my experiences related to that, but working for Raven was a unique experience that I've never had like I've never had anything like that since then.

It was a core group of people that to this day I still talk to on a daily basis. I'm still friends with all of them. It felt like we went through something really special together when we were making Quake Four. And I really sort of treasure those memories. And I worked with such good talent. I mean, there were such talented people there. I there's some people I've worked with, like now they've gone on to work for like ILM and some other notable companies. Roger Courts. So yeah, you're right. Exactly. Roger Cords. Yeah, I worked with Roger on Quake Four.

Jake Simpson (10:59)
Roger took me recently to last time I was in San Francisco, he took me up to the Skywalker Ranch. I do yet. so yeah, there has been some some amazing people. And the other thing I would say as well, and I'd like to make this 'cause it's well known that I have had my own particular issues with Raven. My time there was not always as as smooth as it might be. But I will say this. I don't know what your feeling is on this, but I will say the whole blizzard and all the the the the really nasty bigotry and and and you know horribleness that's going on there.

I personally, from where I'm sitting, I don't think Raffle would have had any truck with that whatsoever. I've got to say that I think he's the kind of individual who would absolutely stamp that out the moment he saw it or heard about it. and I've got to give him his due. I I honestly I look at Raven and I do think this is not a place that has the same kinds of issues that Blizzard appears to have or, you know, are happening at Activision Height Command, whatever it might be. I just wanted to say that 'cause I f that I don't know what your experience was, but that was

Again, as a guy, as a white dude, it's kinda hard for me to really put my foot as an older white guy, you know, it's kinda hard to put myself in that position. But it just struck me that that you know, prime raffle would never have any truck with any of that. At least

Caryn Vainio (12:10)
experiences at Raven were they were both some of the greatest and there was there was there was stuff that as a woman I experienced there that in the grand scheme of things was stuff that I probably shouldn't have experienced but it was nothing like what I've heard out of the Blizzard stories. And the the most what I tend what I tended to experience was, you know, there would be casual dismissal of the idea that of of of an idea that a woman would present, but if a guy presented that same idea then suddenly is legit. I often got told that like

no, this work you did is totally fine, only to like have somebody say, I don't really like it, can some can you have somebody change it? Or something like that. It was it was often very like it was never overt. It was, you know, people sort of just not really understanding how they should be working in a workforce that was predominantly male but had some women in there that needed they needed to go out of their way to treat equally. And but but I was never I personally never experienced the stuff that I heard come out of

Jake Simpson (13:06)
Right, yeah. It it's a sun. Absolutely horrific. There's no doubt about it. But and you know, a as a white dude, the only thing I can do is try and try and not do it in in my environment. You know, I mean it's about well I I'm I could tell you a few stories actually of things that happened at EA, but we won't get into that right now. I had an employee, a wonderful girl that worked for me and she was very attractive Asian girl and she worked for me and I got wind of the fact that that the animation department

was tracking her whereabouts in the building. They had a little little IM thing going on where they would she was called the one and they would tell tell each other the ones on your floor or whatever. And they'd all and eventually I had to go talk to the animation manager because all the animators kept leaning over her cube to talk to her and chat her up. And I think she was she was aware of it, but I was certainly aware of it and I had to go and pound on the animation director's tables and say leave her alone. She's got job to do, you know, she's just the same as anyone else. Please stop. You know, it's it's

It's not appropriate environment. But the trouble is that I think our environment attracts so many young, testosterone loaded boys that haven't grown up yet and don't know how to treat a woman properly or how to how to not be a dick, you know.

Caryn Vainio (14:15)
Right. Well what I what I think is great is that the industry is in an age now where we have a lot of senior people in the industry, particularly senior men. And some stories I've heard of some of those senior men, if they see, you know, junior guys coming into the industry and saying saying something inappropriate or making a comment that sounds like it came out of the game industry twenty years ago, I know that some of these senior men say, Dude, that's not cool, you know, we don't we don't say that. And and the idea that when when you've been in this industry for as long as some of us have had, you are their role model. So it's up to

something. And so yeah, that's just the way that I hope that I hope we stamp it out when people understand their role as seniors in this industry.

Jake Simpson (14:51)
I completely concur. I mean, you know, we're all I don't know, we're we can all be assholes at times. I mean, certainly I've had my moments in the past and I cringe at some of them, but you know, it's it's a question it's yeah, yeah. So it's it's a question of learning though. It's a question of understanding your own behavior is inappropriate and being able to go, you know what, that probably was the wrong thing and I need to either apologize and try not to do that again in the future. That's the bottom of my name. Anyway, all right, so Raven then, Quake Four.

Caryn Vainio (15:01)
Right?

Jake Simpson (15:20)
took a little bit longer than it was supposed to though, didn't it? Mm-hmm.

Caryn Vainio (15:22)
Mm. It sure did. And it was crunch was I remember it was nine months of crunch. All through the summer. The first summer I'd been there was just I don't even remember summer in and my first summer there. It was just all crunch. We were working so hard and such long hours. We're coming in first thing in the morning and staying till like I've had I had nights where I stayed until like one in the morning. and and we were doing that seven days a week. It was the hardest game crunch I ever I ever did. Yeah.

Jake Simpson (15:48)
Wow. Yeah, worth it though. I mean the product itself was pretty damn good. I remember playing through it. Right. and it it did look spectacularly good. Mm-hmm.

Caryn Vainio (15:58)
think

we were proud I I think we were proud of the work we did as a team. Like I said, the team of people I worked with on that game, we're still all really tight. We still talk to each other all the time. And I think that our experiences of working on it together are still some of our you know, we still Yeah, but I it was definitely a lot of crunch for a title that I can't remember what the review scores were, but I think it was low eight I want to say low eighties, around eighty. And I I think there are certainly things we wish we could have had the

The runway to do better. All of us who who worked on Quake Four came from the Quake 3 multiplayer scene. I mean, we had we had hired people like like Lunarin, Matthew Bright, who was one of the best map makers in the Quake 3 space. We had a lot of people, mod makers. David Dinnerman was a mod maker. These are friends of mine, I still talk to you today, and all these people had come from the Quake 3 scene.

And we were all very heavily invested in Quake Three multiplayer. We used to play Rocket Arena literally every day at lunch, no fail, did not matter what we were doing. It was a lunchtime Rocket Arena game. We were very competitive. And we wanted to make the Quake Four multiplayer experience like that for us. But we were constrained by a lot of the tech to make that happen. The engine was just very different. There was lot that prevented us from making that. But as well as just there were different visions for the game and it just didn't

I think I think we wanted to make a game that was better received than it was, but at the end of the day I think Quake Four was a was a good game. I ended up playing through it and I enjoyed it and I know some other people have told me that they really loved it.

Jake Simpson (17:26)
I must admit. And it's been a while since I've actually played through a game all the way from start to finish. But you it's interesting that you talk about, you know, you still talk to some of the people that are on that development team. There is a a a contingent of both current Raven people and ex Raven people that I meet once a year in Vegas. I was in John Scott's wedding, for example, and you know, there's a there's a he would have still been around when you were there, I think John Scott would been. He was

Caryn Vainio (17:49)
Yeah, I I yeah, I was there when I was there, yeah.

Jake Simpson (17:52)
Yes. I was the night I was there the night he met his wife actually. there's a story about that which we won't go into right now involving dollar bills. But anyway, yeah, I mean I do get the joined development experience. Again, in my experience, my best development experience I've ever had was similarly at Raven and it was Heretic too. We did that game in like eleven months, start to finish. I came in right at the very beginning of it where we were just starting, you know, I don't know, they've been about three months or two months or something for development on it. And

And yeah, I was really proud of the final product. I thought it was great and we put it out. And then two days later, after we put it out, Half Life arrived. And it kind of got bit steamrolled Half-Life. And as said in other podcasts, I'm I'm I wouldn't mind because Half Life was a better game. I mean Heretic Two was a good game, but Half Life was a better one. Can't deny that. And I don't. It's just those bastards were a year late. Right. You know late. And we were dead on time.

Caryn Vainio (18:48)
Yeah, that's the worst one. Yep.

Jake Simpson (18:53)
Never mind. Never mind. So when you were a Raven was was Raffle and his little cohort still playing Age of Empires?

Caryn Vainio (19:03)
You know, I don't know. Maybe. I'm not sure. I actually Brian Raffle was one of the few people I interact with interacted with very little when I was there. So I actually don't know.

Jake Simpson (19:12)
It was a lunchtime thing that we I remember because they always used leave their doors open and there was like about six or seven of them that played and always had the the speakerphones, they talk to each other. And I just remember s the the the thing or everyone always used to hear was, They're in my town, they're in my town which was Raffle like screaming, Hey my town, give me some wood, give me some milk. I just remember that. Yeah, it was quite funny

Caryn Vainio (19:34)
time I got just at I started at Raven when you guys were in when they were when you guys when when they were all in the original offices that was the remember the map for Soldier Fortune two I think that was the Raven office. It was that office which was a unique experience playing the map for Soldier of Fortune two and then showing up at the Raven office going, this is really weird. I've been here before but not really why can't I talk in here? And so then but not long after that, just like a couple months after I got there we moved

Jake Simpson (19:54)
Where's the shotgun?

Caryn Vainio (20:02)
to the building they're in now, I think they've been in for a long time. Which is a much bigger building, a bigger space. So it didn't lend itself as well to like the conversation. We were so full at that old office that I mean you were just practically the desks were practically smooshed together. And yeah, so maybe they were playing a lot in there, but I didn't hear much of it in there. But then again I was really focused on our Rocket Arena games and we were super competitive and like that's all that mattered.

Jake Simpson (20:05)
That was the purpose of

You know, when I was when I was working at Midway, we were working on Mortal Kombat, we learned at that point you could tell a good multiplayer game by how much bad language it generated. The more people swore at each other viciously, the the better the game. That was something we already

Caryn Vainio (20:39)
Ha ha

Got in trouble for that. We got

in trouble for that. yeah, 'cause we were well, 'cause we were kind of spread out. It was a really big open office plan. but we had cubicle walls, but still it was really big and open, so you could hear people. And our lunchtime games would get super heated. And so we yeah, we would insult each other and call each other names while somebody kept screaming, like and and I guess Beastman's kids were there, Eric Beastman's kids were there. And so like A was very angry and it came over and he

told whoever it was who had who had sword said dude my kids are here you can't do that so we took to shouting the word banana if we wanted to so the code word was banana if you heard someone yell banana it was like you would just got shot on them.

Jake Simpson (21:29)
Yeah. You knew what it meant, yeah. Peasman has kids. my god.

Caryn Vainio (21:33)
Yeah. Well it's just a grown now.

Jake Simpson (21:36)
I'm

just it's I remember him I I remember, you know, having beers with him when back when at Old Chicago. my god.

Caryn Vainio (21:44)
Yeah,

Jake Simpson (21:46)
I don't even want to think yeah, my my eldest is is twenty in like two days. And I'm like, how did that happen? That's not okay.

Caryn Vainio (21:54)
I waited to have kids, so now I'm the I'm the elder person who's really tired all the time because I had kids later in life and all my kids are still my kids are still young.

Jake Simpson (22:03)
Well, yeah, I mean we did too. We were thirty something. Cath my wife is thirty when we we adopted our children. So it's you know, yeah, we're late I mean, my youngest is fourteen at the moment, although he thinks he's thirty seven and he's deaf

Caryn Vainio (22:16)
Our youngest is seven, so it's pretty

Jake Simpson (22:18)
the cute age though. They still want to hugs and they still think you as their best friend and it's not an adversarial God.

Caryn Vainio (22:25)
Yes. They still think you're great. They haven't become cynical yet.

Jake Simpson (22:28)
Yep.

And the Christmas presents aren't seven hundred bucks. Yeah. That's the other thing I

Caryn Vainio (22:36)
Our our older one is ten years old. He's starting to approach the age where the the Christmas gifts get a lot more expensive.

Jake Simpson (22:42)
Yeah, right. I want an iPad. I a you know new, I want a Xbox Exactly. You know, series blah or whatever I know, I know, yeah. Yeah. children. Anyway, right. okay, so Faith Four is done, it's out in the world. Then what? What's next for character?

Caryn Vainio (22:58)
So yeah, so after Quake Four shipped, boy was I tired, it was my first game dev title and I crunched really hard on it. And I did not know that that was like I didn't have any sense of whether that was normal or not. So I had no good calibration for what to expect. So after that, at the same time that Quake Four was wrapping up, the another team, there were three games going on at the same time at Raven. There was Quake Four, then there was Return to Castle there was Castle Wolfenstein.

Or just no, was just called Wolfenstein, just Wolfenstein. There were so many Wolfenstein games. And then there was the Marvel Ultimate Alliance team. So Marvel Ultimate Alliance needed some needed some help on UI. So I started working on that project just to kind of fill in and help out a little bit while team figured out what they were gonna do next, which ended up being the project, the game called Singularity. So the team that was primarily Quake 4, some of those people went on to make Singularity.

Some of us went on to work on Wolfenstein. And that's what I ended up working on was Wolfenstein. And it was really cool because Wolfenstein, the original Wolfenstein, Castle Wolfenstein was one of the games that I cut my teeth on in terms of FPSs. So a Wolfenstein 3D, actually not the original Cast Wolfenstein, that was like even before Wolfenstein 3D. But I Wolfenstein 3D was one of my very favorite games when I was younger. So I had so it was so interesting to play the two the two back to back work on the two franchises that I had

pulled me into games to begin with, Wolfenstein and Quake. So I worked on Wolfenstein for a while and I worked on the console UI as well as the PC UI. And I worked on that for a while longer, but was deciding that I didn't necessarily want to stay at Raven. I I wanted to look elsewhere. I wanted to do some other things. So I started looking at some places elsewhere and gas powered games happened to sort of

come up on my radar and I thought, you know, it would be they were working on, you know, they had done total annihilation. So they were working on games that I thought would just be really interesting from a UI perspective to work on. And they were and and but the big draw was that my family actually lived out here. They are out here in the Seattle area. My family lived out here. I was missing family and my dad and my sister lived out here. So I thought, well it'd be great if I could get if I could go out towards Seattle. I actually didn't know at the time how big the Seattle game scene really was.

So I applied for the position at Gas Powered and yeah, I got hired by Gas Powered and moved out here and that was two thousand seven, I think. So I was at Raven from two thousand four to two thousand seven. And two thousand seven I came out to Gas Powered Games and I began working on the game Space Siege, which was very fun to work on, in terms of the actual work, but was not a game that was very well received. It had a lot of problems, it didn't get reviewed well by critics. But I enjoyed actually working on the UI and I got a lot of

I got to work on a lot of new tools for me. It was it was creatively fun. And then from that after that project, when that project wrapped, I got to work on a really great project that again I wish had been more critically accepted, but was really great. It was the game Demigod. And not a lot of people I think know about Demigod, but boy, it was really fun. And I really enjoyed working on it and playing it. We would play test it and a lot of us had a lot of fun with that. But but I especially loved that one because

I could go back to on each project I've had to re like just ramp up on brand new tools. So like at Raven, we were using the Radiant engine with the GUI system up for up, you know, the in-house made scripting system. And then when I came to Gas Powered, we were actually using the first version of Scaleform, which integrated Flash as the development tool and action script. So that was interesting because I had Flash experience. But then I go to the the same company, a do different project, and we were using Lua entirely.

for the UIs. And I had never used Lua. So I had to do what I did for the scripting when I decided I was going to apply for Raven, I had to just crash course a new scripting language. And I basically taught myself Lua really quick and started making UI in Demigod, which I really loved doing. And that was that was the last project I worked on at Gas Power.

Jake Simpson (27:02)
That would have been that would have been crustail, wasn't

Caryn Vainio (27:06)
Yes, I was Chris Taylor Studio. I was there from two thousand seven to two thousand nine.

Jake Simpson (27:11)
I wonder, would you have overlapped John Maver and Bob Berry or are they already?

Caryn Vainio (27:14)
I yes, I was so I worked with John Maver Bob Berry and John Combs on demigod. It was that project that kind of incubated the seed for what would eventually become Uber Entertainment and Super Monday Night Combat when they all left to start their own thing. Because the Demigod Demigod was a a MOBA. I've I'm suddenly forgetting what MOBA stands for. It's it basically real time sort of almost like a tower defense type of thing. And so we took

They took that idea, went off to form Uber and started doing that. So yeah, I ended up working with them after Gas Powered. So well, not directly. I did a brief stinted valve. Gas powered was experiencing some problems. So I got I was there were layoffs and then there were layoffs and then there were layoffs and then I would love to have some rounds on layoffs. And so I decided that I thought, you know, I think I'm actually gonna go and see this valve. Like I would love to try my hand at Valve.

I don't know what possessed me to think that I was gonna like actually go off and work for Valve, but I thought, hey, I had a lot of confidence then apparently. But I did actually go and do some contracting for Valve. I didn't stay there. I only did a few months of contracting. And then from there, John Maver Bob Barry and Eka and John Combs basically said, Hey, come work for us at Uber Entertainment. And so that's what I did. And I went there and got to work on Monday Night Combat and Super Monday Night Combat, which to date are probably the most fun games I've actually worked on in my career.

Jake Simpson (28:40)
Did you do anything on planetary annihilation?

Caryn Vainio (28:42)
I didn't. I actually left before then. So I was at I was at Uber Entertainment and we were really we let's see, we had shipped Super Monday Combat. We were shipping updates like on a weekly basis. It was actually really hard. This is the hardest period of my game dev slash personal life because I had just had my first our first child and so I I I we were we were s it was really kind of interesting. We were a s very small company, there were only fifteen of us. I was the only woman there at Uber.

And we had one small little office. That was it. We just had a one room office, open office. And we were working on Super Monday Night Combat. And I was I we had just I think we had just shipped it. I'm trying to remember the timeline. And I was I was I was pregnant with my was our first kid. I was nine months pregnant and my the the guys were always like, you know, when are you gonna take your leave and stuff? I'm like, Well, I don't know, I'm still pregnant, like how about just wait till I have the kid and I went past my due date by like two weeks and I kept coming into the office and I'd walk in in the morning.

And the guys would see, what are you doing here? We're like, you're making us all look bad by continuing to we keep falling sick while you come in, because then we look dumb. And it basically worked until like the day that that my water broke and I went to the hospital, had my kid, and took a brief lease and came back to continue working, took a four month leave and then came back to work on some more Superman Combat.

Jake Simpson (29:53)
Yeah, well quite, yeah.

Caryn Vainio (30:09)
And I did that for a few more months and I was trying to balance being a working mom, working at a small startup, on games, we were crunched and I had a a child that was not sleeping through the night and it was so hard. It was there was a there were a couple of nights where I remember my husband Matt, who was working at Sucker Punch and still is working at Sucker Punch down the road from Kirkland.

Jake Simpson (30:23)
Pebbles, yeah.

Caryn Vainio (30:33)
He would after work, he'd get our collect our child from daycare. I'd have to run down to daycare through the day to handle some baby care stuff and then he'd bring our child up, our baby up, to Uber's offices because I was crunching on an update. And I would like feed the baby while I'm waiting for like an Xbox bill to cook and I'd go and I'd nurse the baby and then I'd come back to the desk and then my husband would take him and play with him in the conference room and then like I'd try and like take care of him while I'm working and then it's nine o'clock and I'm like, I gotta go home and get some sleep.

And the guys are like, but we're still working. I'm like, this is the worst. Like I really don't know what to do. And I I couldn't take much more of that, but I didn't have to worry about that choice making that choice because Uber was experiencing some financial strain. They were trying to figure out, you know, how we're going to ramp up our funding for our next project. And they really had they basically gave us all the choice like, look, we really want everyone to stay, but we just don't know how we're gonna have the money to pay you. Well, I had to choose. I I couldn't afford to put my kid in daycare and pay for daycare if I wasn't drawing a paycheck.

So I couldn't justify continuing to come in if I couldn't continue to pay the daycare bill. So I qu I quit Uber. They they basically I I basically quit Uber and then from there, what did I do? yeah, I went to Z Two, which was in which has since been bought. They but were bought by King, which was then bought by Activision, right? So they made mobile games, mobile free-to-play games. So that was a very, very different experience. PCM console games.

Jake Simpson (31:58)
Yeah.

Caryn Vainio (32:00)
PC and console shooters to free to play strategy games. So that was really interesting.

Jake Simpson (32:06)
Tell me y tell me about well firstly, I just wanna jump in with one little story that I that I thought was relevant. you were talking about Wolfenstein, and I'm assuming you're aware of the history of Soldier of Fortune and what Soldier of Fortune originally was. Do you not know about that?

Caryn Vainio (32:18)
I guess I don't know about that. I mean I thought I knew about it but maybe

Jake Simpson (32:21)
Okay,

so Raven, when when they were originally doing this this military shooter, it was Wolfenstein. That's what they built was an actual demo of Wolfenstein. And they said, Look, this is what it could look like today. This is cool. And they sent it to Id and said, What do you think? You know, can we do this? And it went, it took a look at and went, Wow, this is a really great idea. Yeah, this is a terrific. Look at that. Doesn't that look fantastic? Yeah, we're gonna give this to Gray Matter. And there was a lot

are very pissed off people at Raven when that happened as well. We couldn't say we were not allowed to say a word because at the time the relationship between Activision and and ID software was w had to be kept good because Activision was making so much money of all the ID games. So anything ID wanted, you know, you know you just smiled and whatever. And there were just a lot of pissed off people at Raven when that came down. They'd just handed it to Drew Markham over at Grey Matter and we'd done all this well. And so we're left with this demo.

It's like, well, what do we do with it? What do we do with this demo? You know, it's this military demo, it's pretty cool. And and that's where the Soldier of Fortune, it was somebody at Activision who said, Well, well, we've got this Soldier of Fortune license. Will that work? And that's where it came from. And and so that demo yeah, that demo became Soldier of Fortune, and that's where it came from. And and then then we were casting around for like, okay, so we're gonna do a story game, right? That's what it's gonna be. It's gonna be a story game. That's not a story. So we have this principal character. And they introduced us

When we when we got the license from Soldier Fortune, they introduced us to a major, special forces major that they had on spot. John Marlins, yes. Yeah. And he ended up

Caryn Vainio (33:53)
I got I got too inside 'cause I got him for a Q and A when Soldier of Fortune two was released. He came and did a Q and A for me online.

Jake Simpson (34:01)
That he was everyone's favourite uncle, that guy. He wrote a book actually called called War of Valor or something like that. He wrote a book which was a thinly disguised version of his time in Vietnam. And it's a little scary to to say the least. I read the book and I remember saying to John, Wow, you know, if fifty percent of this is true, this is you've done some scary stuff. And when we were actually at the Soldier of Fortune convention, we actually demoed the game at Soldier of Fortune Convention in Vegas, which was a an entertaining story.

For another day. Right. I got to meet a whole bunch of of of his people, of old old friends. They took us out for dinner one night and they were all talking about the stories in this book that he'd written. And I began to realise that yeah, this is not fiction. This is all true. All this stuff happened. And just but scary as shit as well, you know. Just I I remember thinking, Wow, my my worst day is when I have a bug I can't fix.

And his worst day is when there's bullets flying everybody and his mates are dying. It's just you know no no there's there's no scale of relation at all there, but yeah, relativity. Anyway.

Caryn Vainio (35:09)
that that thing between I guess it worked out well for you guys because if I recall, Soldier of Fortune did pretty well. I mean it was a it I it there was Soldier of Fortune one and two and it did pretty well for

Jake Simpson (35:19)
There was actually a Soldier Fortune three. it was made by the Activision Budget Group and it was not a success. And I know I know Mullins had no part in it because apparently they offered him one third of the money and and said you still have to do all the thing and he went, Yeah, I'm not doing that. And I don't blame him either. He even pinged me about it and he you're still involved in that. I'm like, nowhere near any of that. No. But yeah, that it was funny. One, you know, Activision had no interest in it, and they were just like, We'll be throwing this this this license of Act Raven to shut him up.

And I know Ken Hoekstra, who was still around at the time, he did an outstanding job of of publicising Soldier of Fortune and the Smith Industrial dance and all the rest of it. And then when Soldier of Fortune two came around, of course Activision had to have their fingerprints on success. So you know, well they they took responsibility for all the advertising. They did a pretty good job actually. I it wasn't a bad job they did, but it was still all taken out of Raven's hands, but it was quite a successful product.

That's actually Soldier Fortune was what prompted me, I mean, after my time at Raven was done was what prompted me to actually go to the EA and do the Sims because I was so tired of blow blowing stuff up, I thought it was time I started building something rather than blowing shit up. You know, that's kinda

Caryn Vainio (36:27)
I think we all go through that, those of us who were maybe not all of us, but I feel like if you've worked on first person shooters for a long time, after a while you just feel the need to like instead of destroying something, I'd like to build something.

Jake Simpson (36:38)
Yeah,

yeah. It it that's exactly where I was at. Okay, so D two and you worked on so how was it different? Tell me you were talking earlier about it was a very different environment. I mean I'm not just talking about the environment in which you worked, but the actual work itself. How is it massively different? Tell me.

Caryn Vainio (36:55)
Yeah, so it was different in a couple of ways. So first, it was the first time I had actually begun working on a mobile first project. Prior my prior experience had been I'd started in PC land and then I went to PC and console. Then I went to like console first. And then this is the first time I was making the jump into mobile first. So these were iPad and iPhone games that I don't think even actually come to think they didn't have a PC or a console part. They were only mobile and iPad. So

As a UX and UI designer, I had to really rethink everything I knew about. I mean, I had a lot of I guess what you call accessibility things I had to think about in my actual development work for working with consoles, right? You have like safe areas, you never know what kind of TV a person's gonna have, for instance. So you have to make sure that the UI is readable. I I, for instance, at at Raven, I had a deliberately shitty TV on my desk. We went and found the shittiest TV that somebody wanted to get rid of, and that was what I had my dev kit.

up to so that I could if it was readable on that TV, it was readable for anyone. So there were those things were already I could carry those over to mobile. But you had the whole idea of just moving from a controller input to a a touchbase input is very, very different. So I had to do that. I was also going through a a a period of of understanding what my strengths were because I had come into the game industry in actual game dev in 2004. This was before the iPhone, right?

So and I didn't come to it with any kind of formal training. I just kind of threw together the demo. I my strengths were that I could learn how to program things lightly and I could learn scripting languages really quick. And I could throw together working things, what we would later call white boxing, right? I didn't even have a term for it then. It was just I could throw temp versions of things together for people to try and then we could make them real and look nice later. That skill wasn't that didn't have a title when I started doing it in the game industry. People kept calling me a UI artist.

But that's not what I was. I didn't do UI art. What I did was UI design and prototyping. And I was a problem solver about how to organize UI, how to make things understandable with what you're looking at, how to get through UI flows quickly. But none of that well, a UI artist is an incorrect label for that. But nobody had a term for that. But then in 2007, the iPhone gets released, right? And suddenly the term user experience design comes into the public domain, right?

We start understanding that there's this term for it's not just making boxes in a UI. It's actually building a a usable interface and problem solving and making things work nicely and feel good to use, right? And be problem free. And suddenly I understood, that's what I didn't know that's what I do, but that's what I do. I I'm not an R UI artist. I'm a UI, I'm a UX designer. And so I started to lean into that and I think, well, wait a second, like how can I I started to feel like I was

Jake Simpson (39:34)
Yeah.

Caryn Vainio (39:46)
I was lacking the skill set of being able to create beautiful 2D art for UI because people would make the assumption that I was a UI artist and I wasn't. So I started thinking, well, I've got to fix this. I either have to get really good at UI art as well, or I've got this thing here where I'm a user experience designer. I can lean into that and I can actually pull from outside of games to be better at my job. So I started actually going through a phase, started at Uber and I continued it through Z2.

Well, I started really researching what other people, whether what US designers who worked for places like Apple or on websites did to process and and build their UI. I started pulling in things like paper prototyping. That was a thing I had never done before. I started doing paper prototyping. I started doing a lot more wireframe testing in the kitchen. This is the thing I would do with V two. I'd use Flash or something, or maybe not Flash because it was a mobile, but I would build I would use keynote or something like that. And I would build these hotspot

things out of UI images that I built. And I would go in the Z2 kitchen and I'd sit at a table and I'd have my snack and then I'd somebody come in and be like, hey, can you come over here? I need you to try and do this thing in the game with with this interface. I'd have them quick test. And I would so I just do constant kitchen, what I call kitchen testing. And I started pulling these in as an attempt to just try to be better at my job. I just try to start saying, I I feel like I'm not a good UI artist. I need to be a better UI designer. So I started doing that. So that's a way that my work that things changed for me at Z2.

But then it also changed because I was now working on games that use the free to play model. And there's a lot, of course, that's a whole big discussion in games, right? Free to play. And I I wasn't sure how I felt about free to play. And I would vacillate between, this is actually really great. Like people can play the game to their heart's content. They can choose to pay or not. Or and then I would be like, I don't know, I feel like sometimes we're putting in things that make people want to spend money in the well, like it's production but

Jake Simpson (41:40)
One.

Caryn Vainio (41:41)
Right, yeah, we put the friction in just so they spend money. And and I would vacillate between these two things. And I I I left C two for a couple of reasons. And one of them was because I just did not feel like I was enjoying working on games where there was so little focus about whether the game was fun. And all of the discussion, like eighty percent of discussion was how to work within the free to play monetization and constant, constant, constant focus on market testing.

So though I I know market testing is important for games. I know that plays a role, but this was market testing for the purposes of like how can we improve our free to play mechanics. And I just yeah, and I just I felt like I wasn't really making games because they were fun to make or that we wanted people to have fun playing them. I did, however, come away with a really interesting understanding about who the people are that spend the most money on games, and they were not at all like the people that I thought. And that was interesting and eye opening.

Jake Simpson (42:18)
Income.

Caryn Vainio (42:37)
But eventually I actually left C two and I actually did a brief spin outside of games for a year. well actually that was when I went out of games for about a year and then went game adjacent into VR after that.

Jake Simpson (42:48)
Okay, what would you do?

Caryn Vainio (42:49)
Yeah, so I left C2 because a a friend of mine from Uber Entertainment had actually pitched me on a startup that he was involved in with three other people. And it sounds super, super boring when I describe it. They were a startup that was going to make an app having to do with network administration. Now that sounds really boring, but when you're a UX designer and UI designer, they basically wanted to treat the concept of network administration like massively multiplayer games networking.

And I thought that was super interesting. They basically wanted to create the Google Maps of network administration. You could create a live, really interesting, data rich, but constantly evolving map of live network data from your network. And that wasn't something that really existed. A lot of the network administration tools felt like they were back from the Windows 3.1 era. So this is like a wide open green field for me as a designer. So I went off and became the principal designer for Luminous Network.

And it was really, really interesting and I loved it. It went back to my web development skills, which was really fun to pull from. And but unfortunately we didn't have the financial runway to stay viable. So after I think about a year to a year and a half, we actually had to close our doors. And when we did that, I was like, Well, what am I gonna do now? Like I've got to step back and sort of think about what I wanna do. Do I wanna go back to a game company? And I didn't have much time to think about it because

Someone from a guy named Todd Hooper, who was the CEO of a company called V Real, came and approached me and said, Hey, I was told that you're looking for something. I'd love to talk to you. And so he takes me out for coffee and we're talking and telling me about a startup, V Reel. And I asked like, So what are you building? And says, Well, we basically want to do the equivalent of t Twitch streaming, but for VR, where you're actually in the VR experiencing, experiencing the game streaming in VR. I'm like, Well, that's mind bending. He's like, Yeah, it's a little mind bending, it's really interesting.

And I said, Well, there's one problem. He said, What's that? I said, I have not worked on anything with VR. He goes, don't worry. None of us have. It's cool.

Sounds great then. my god, well that's not a problem. So, and it was a it was a startup. I think there were only like maybe two there were maybe 15 to 20 of us, and it was it was kind of interesting to go work at a startup again. I kind of liked that. It was really interesting work. The problems I had to try and solve were really mind-bending. I mean, imagine that you know, that you're playing a VR game and you're streaming your VR game, and then I put on a VR headset and I go into your game, but I'm not

I'm not able to interact with your game because you're playing a game. I can't modify the game. But I can observe you playing your game in VR, but we have to maintain separation. Like, like I can't interact with you in only certain ways. Like, how can I interact with you? You want to be able to interact with me because I'm your audience. So there are massive amounts of interesting problems to solve. I think I worked there for I can't remember. Well, it must have been it must have been twenty eighteen, up until twenty eighteen, 'cause that's when I

went over to what was Oculus Research at the time. But I I worked at VRL. I liked it. I liked the problems we were solving. But a lot about it, the the problems that we were solving, they were interesting, but I felt like I was struggling here and there to sort of integrate what I really wanted to do with what we were technologically capable of. And at the same time at that time, Oculus Research came calling. And I would not have gone to look for something else except that and and in fact I had actually Google had asked me,

If I was interested in coming to work for them, somebody else in VR had come and asked, I was like, No, now I'm good where I am. But then Oculus Research came and I was like, wait a second, I might be interested in talking to you. So Oculus Research came and chatted me up and said we could use some experience over here working on next generation augmented reality stuff. Would you be interested? So I went interviewed. It was a really cool opportunity to basically work with a next gen tech and be the people who are trying to create like visions of stuff of what would be in the future. And that set me on a forty out of

been four years now that I've been working there. So yeah, that was so I haven't been in games for the last bit. it's been on future tech, but yeah, that's where I'm at now.

Jake Simpson (46:47)
Still, I you know, games help you on your way and I'm sure that there's still some overlap in terms of, you know, the metaverse or outside of business. I mean

Caryn Vainio (46:55)
Well interesting thing is I primarily work with graphics research scientists and display research scientists and I don't think I could do the work I do with graphics research scientists if I didn't have my games background. The whole reason why is because I have a games background. I think that makes me able to talk to them about the technology.

Jake Simpson (47:10)
You have a unique skill set that enables you to do what you do and so nobody should mess with your kids. sorry, that's a take and reference rather. Okay. we've got a little bit of time left. I was gonna say now we need to talk 'cause you've got a couple of interesting hobbies. And in fact, you know, one of your hobbies really it it indicates on where you live, is that not so? You you raise alpacas. Is that isn't that true?

Caryn Vainio (47:34)
do I have four alpacas. They're a little herd out in my backyard. Yes I do. And I raise them because of the one primary hobby I have out of the couple I focus on is I spin my own yarn and then I make things out of that yarn. So yeah.

Jake Simpson (47:49)
Yes, yes. We've heard many stories of the the the Karen knitting stuff. Yes, I've heard of it. And and it's worth also pointing out that your husband Matt, he's also you s you mentioned him earlier, he's at Saka Punch and he was involved in ghosts of whatever it was called, Tsushima. Yeah, so he's done his bit as well.

Caryn Vainio (47:56)
Yeah.

Yeah. He's yes, we've both it's funny, we were just talking the other day about we were joking around about being a power couple because it our last name, Vineo, is very unique. There aren't any other Vineos in the game industry. So inevitably people will be like talking to one of us and saying, Aren't you related to yes, they're my wife or they're husband. But like it's all if people know who like they're like, Are you related to? So we get that a lot. he is the lead effects artist over at Sucker Punch and yes, they released Ghost of Sushima right after the pandemic shut everything down.

We were just reflecting on that the other day about how I was working on some pretty intense stuff like intellectually for my job, my current job on on graphics research. And they were in they had were in crunch mode when the pandemic closed everything down. So they had to figure out how to get everyone home and continue to work on Ghost of Tsushima. We he was like just reminding me the other day, do you realize that he says we shipped Ghost of Tsushima while we were homeschooling our two elementary school children?

And you were working for, you know, for Facebook slash Oculus slash meta on this stuff. So I don't know how we did that.

Jake Simpson (49:14)
I think sucker for punishment is I think phrase that jumps to mind. You know, yeah, I know I know you know. Yeah, there's there's when there's lots going on.

Caryn Vainio (49:25)
But yeah, I love I I love Ghost of Sushima as I'm a huge fan of the game. It's like well, I've played all the games he's worked on, but this one was the one I purposely kept not I didn't I really didn't want to see it. I had seen a little bit of it. I'm like, I know I'm gonna love that game. I don't wanna see it until I can actually play it through and I did and I just I am absolutely a huge fan of the game.

Jake Simpson (49:43)
It's the most cinematic one of the most cinematic things I've ever seen. It it's just every now and again you see people who've taken pictures in in game and you're like, Jesus, that looks nice. You know, I mean that's we're really hitting the hitting the the the the photorealistic aspects of it and it's absolutely it shows off the PlayStation in the best possible way, it's no doubt about it.

Caryn Vainio (50:03)
Yes,

it does. I agree.

Jake Simpson (50:06)
Well, I mean, this has been great. So you've been you know, you've been kicking around. Do you still talk to any your Quake Quake clan mates? I mean, one of your Quake was was is John Carmack's wife, isn't that right? Wasn't she one?

Caryn Vainio (50:18)
No, no, no, no, no. We never no Anna Anna Kang, I want to say no, no, no, no. I never she was never part of my Quake clan. She you know, she was in the running in the same circles, but I do still talk to some of my well, I I don't talk to the to the ladies I used to play with. I've lost touch with them. But there was a when I had my Quake clan held belt, there was a group of guys who are like, We want to play with you guys. I'm like, All right, you can be like our like adjacent like group, like along with us. Yeah, I'd be your

And one of them and one of them I still talk to to this day. He and I still chat on Facebook and yeah, so we've been playing we don't play games together but we still chat twenty years later.

Jake Simpson (50:56)
You know, it it strikes me that maybe it's time for Hells Bells to to there's plenty of you know, have an Overwatch clan or something like that.

Caryn Vainio (51:04)
Right.

right. I know. I play Overwatch. I haven't played Overwatch the last few months, but my s I my son got interested in Overwatch and he and I were playing together for a long time. And then then there's the idea that like, you know, I mean, my husband, I actually technically knew him before I met him for real at Raven because he was part of the mod scene. He was on the urban terror quake mod and I as the Activision online mod person would often talk to people, including his group. So when I actually got like to interview a Raven, he's like, I think

We kinda like sort of Yeah, right? Like yeah.

Jake Simpson (51:36)
You from somewhere? Somewhere.

Yeah, my wife did the same thing on our the morning of our second wedding anniversary. She looks like don't I know you from somewhere? Yes, dear, thanks a lot. anyway. Yeah. Actually, it's a funnier story because obviously as a green card holder, as a you know, I married my wife and then I got a green card so I could work anywhere next week up at at midway.

You get a green card for two years and then you have to go in for the interview, you know, the interview with immigration where they pr you prove that you're still married, that you you you're not a marriage convenience and that that you you know, then they grant you the the the lifetime green card. And on the wedding of the morning of our second wedding anniversary, she woke over and she goes, Well, it's been a pleasure working with you and it's I packed a couple of bags for you. Thanks very much, and I hope things are good for you. I'll catch you later. Thanks, man. We're we're about to hit thirty years actually in

Caryn Vainio (52:29)
That's nice.

Jake Simpson (52:30)
Yeah. Anyway, all right. I really appreciate you spending the time with me, Karen. It's been very interesting and I'm you are without doubt an inspiration to many, many women in industry, no doubt about it. I mean, just having survived this long and still not being ground down by it, but actually, you know, having a successful career, that's just such an inspirational thing for all for a lot of women, I think. That's part of why I wanted to talk to you, because you are an unsung hero.

Caryn Vainio (52:54)
Yeah, I appreciate that.