Tabula Rasa : Illumination - Starr

Hometown
Baton Rouge, LA

Favorite games
Diablo 2, GTA: Vice City, Medal of Honor, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Texas Hold 'Em Poker, Dominos, Euchre, Scrabble, Frequency, Starcraft, Command & Conquer, Fallout, Half-life

Favorite books
2001, Consider Phlebas, Diamond Age, Slant, Lord of the Rings, Dune, Star Fraction, Red Mars, Hope for the Flowers, Game of Thrones, Childhood's End, Ender's Game, Eon, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Stranger in a Strange Land, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Neuromancer, Cryptonomicon, Hollow Man, Hyperion, Crook Factory, Confederacy of Dunces

Favorite movies
2001, Withnail & I, Star Wars IV, Raising Arizona, Brazil, Blade Runner, Fellowship of the Ring, Two Towers, Return of the King, X-men, Terminator 2, Matrix, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, 12 Monkeys, Seven Samurai, Princess Mononoke, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Road Warrior, Abyss, Big Blue, Professional, La Femme Nikita, City of Lost Children, Aliens

Favorite website
http:// www.google.com/

Favorite bands or songs
Hard to narrow down. I have nearly 1000 CDs. Faves include David Bowie, Radiohead, Flaming Lips, Outkast, Jane's Addiction, White Stripes, Beck, Beastie Boys, Built To Spill, Pixies, New Order, Bauhaus, Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, NOFX, Green Day, Grandaddy, Ween, Weezer, Bjork, Nine Inch Nails, Blink 182, Air, XTC, Cure, Chemical Brothers, Gipsy Kings, G Love and Special Sauce, Sonic Youth, Digger, Tito Puente, Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Favorite quote or personal mantra
"Stable, fast, and fun; in that order."

Previous projects
Ultima Online (Project Director), UO2 (Producer), Ultima 8 French (QA lead), Bioforge (QA lead)

Describe your job
I manage the entire project. The managers for art, programming, and design report directly to me. I am in charge of the schedule, budget, and overall game mechanics.

How did you get into the industry?
I answered an ad in the newspaper that said Origin needed videogame testers. I couldn't believe it was real.

What do you like most about your job?
I love being on the cutting edge of interactive entertainment and I love working with the amazingly talented people required by that.

Who are some of your role models or heroes and why?
My father is my biggest role model. He worked really hard his entire life doing something he loved that was creative (antiques) and he managed to make money at it too.

What sources have inspired you?
My favorite books, movies, music, etc. (see above) have all been sources for me.

What tools or software do you use most often?
Microsoft office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc.), ACDSee

What have you contributed to the game that you are most proud of or what is your favorite feature of Tabula Rasa?
Tabula Rasa has been a very collaborative effort so it is hard for me to identify any particular feature that was from just me so anything I identify here will be things that I worked on with others. With that said here are a few things I am proud of. One is that I have helped to keep our team committed to my mantra of "Stable, fast, and fun; in that order." This means good solid engineering practices and a commitment to process. Second is that I am proud of the overall game mechanic of Tabula Rasa which seeks to eliminate the huge amount of downtime associated with most online games (travel mostly).

What evolutionary or revolutionary changes would you like to see in games?
More immersion (ala GTA) balanced with very simple and easy to understand game mechanics with zero downtime for the user.

Describe one of your most memorable adventures/encounters in a MMOG you've played previously.
I was playing Blackthorn in UO alongside Lord British (Richard Garriott). It was near the end of the Beta test and we were giving a tour of the land with stops in various cities to give speeches. When we would do events like these we would usually make ourselves invulnerable but this state did not persist past that particular login so you had to reset this flag each time you logged in. During one of the stops the server crashed because there were so many people crowded around trying to see us. When we logged back in Richard forgot to make his character, Lord British, invulnerable. We started giving the speech and one of the players cast a field of fire at our feet. I was invulnerable so I just laughed at the crowd and said something stupid like "Is that the best you can do?" Richard of course wanted to play along as well and ran into the fire field, and promptly died. I got upset and started summoning demons in the crowd and saying more stupid things like "How dare you!" It was an amazing example of how the players were much more in control of this experience than us, the game creators.

Describe your current pc and/or tell about your "dream machine."
My current home PC is a Dell. It is a 1.9 GHz processor with 512 MB of RAM and a 64 MB GeForce 3 Ti 500 video card running Windows XP. My dream machine would be another Dell but with the latest and greatest. Things like a 3.2 GHz processor, 1024 MB of RAM, and a 128 MB video card.

What advice would you give to someone with aspirations to do what you do?
Play as many games as you can. Then write critical analyses of every game you play determining things like what would you change to make it better. Other advice would be to read as much as you can; everything from history to science fiction. Build some game levels for games that have available editors like Quake, Unreal, Never Winter Nights, etc.