In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, Petter and Dóri meet Julia Stegemann, Lead Knowledge Manager in the Snowdrop team at Massive Entertainment and Ola Holmdahl, Snowdrop Operations Director, to find out more about how their job works, through a discussion that touches on Academia, table-top games, late medieval love songs and more! The Snowdrop engine, with its flexible and empowering tools, has helped develop a number of Ubisoft titles such as The Division, Mario + Rabbids, The Settlers, South Park and more upcoming games from Massive and Ubisoft. But how did Snowdrop come to be? Why was it developed in the first place, and how do you set up the users, the game developers, to easily find the information and guidelines they need to do their craft?

In this 20th (!) episode of Behind Massive Screens, Petter and Dóri meets Conny Bengtsson, Technical Artist for Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, to find out what makes “technical art” technical. The discussion turns into a journey of spinning backpack fans, how you make glasses fit on characters’ faces, helmet shaders and – believe it a not – a big pile of virtual shirts that needed fixing. We also get an insight into how Conny and his team worked on the latest The Division 2 apparel event, Nexus, and what brand-new innovations they brought to it.

Once a video game has been released, how do you keep track of all the discussions surrounding it? How do you gather actionable feedback to improve the game? How do you keep a conversation between developers and players going? And how do you make sure that a game’s community stays engaged and informed? In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, Petter and Dóri meet Daria Ilyina, Community Developer at Massive Entertainment for Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, to find out more about how their job works.

In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, we delve into the subject of online programming together with Senior Online Programmer Omar Elbehaedi to find out what makes online games tick. We also delve into the subject of why code is beautiful and discuss that most forbidden topic – netcode. You head into a Team Deathmatch, the Dark Zone, or a 4000-player battle in a space MMORPG. The players are located all over the world. The bullets are flying. But how does the technology that makes all this possible actually work? What do the online programmers do behind the scenes to make sure the information is sent over the Internet, in the most effective way, and that all those connections are stable? Resources Books: A Tour of C++ 3rd edition, by Bjarne Stroustrup - https://www.stroustrup.com/Tour.html C++ Templates: The Complete Guide 2nd Edition by David Vandevoorde, Nicolai Josuttis, Douglas Gregor - http://www.tmplbook.com/ YouTube channels: That Dev Ops Guy YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@MarcelDempers Onur Mutlu Lectures - https://www.youtube.com/@OnurMutluLectures Tools: Kubernetes - https://kube.academy/ Intel VTune Valgrind perf (Linux) Prometheus Loki and promtail Grafana

In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, Petter and Dóri meet Marthe Jonkers, Associate Art Director at Massive Entertainment, to learn about the role that art direction plays when creating a game – the impact it has on a game’s development, how it helps set a game’s style and tone early on, and how it together with concept art communicates ideas to developers. We also get insights into what it is like to work in the Japanese games industry, and what it can take for someone from outside of Japan to ace a job interview there. And what role did a certain scary zombie girlfriend play in Marthe’s career? Let’s find out! Resources: Shotdeck - https://shotdeck.com/

When designing a game, how do you make sure that the player gets the information they need while playing? Or navigate menus and button prompts in an intuitive way? In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, UI artist Anna Kuzminska takes our dynamic hosts on a journey through the fascinating world of user interface design – from fonts and art to colors and shapes. Resources: We Can Fix It In UI - https://onewithmachines.notion.site/onewithmachines/WE-CAN-FIX-IT-IN-UI-9f588869324a45e2b2d0595546ce77d1 Design Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design - https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Interfaces-Patterns-Effective-Interaction-ebook/dp/B082WQ28FM Behance - https://www.behance.net/ The Game Assembly - https://thegameassembly.com/ Game Empowerment Movement (GEM) - http://www.gamehabitat.se/gem/

Ever wondered how game developers create stunning visual effects in video games? How they make red barrels blow up and explosions look great? How cars in racing games kick up dirt, or how the energy crackles from magical potions? In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, we meet John Behrens, VFX Artist at Massive Entertainment, who tells us about visual effects design and what is going on behind the scenes when the bullets hit the red barrel. Real-Time VFX - https://realtimevfx.com/ The Elementary Particles (GDC Vault) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7wFPkGmWdI Shader Sauce: How to use Shaders to Create Stylized VFX (GDC Vault) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqdVG_qcKok John Behren's ArtStation - https://behjohn.artstation.com/

How do you become a playtester for video games and how does a playtest work? And what are the User Researchers, that are running the tests, looking for? In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, we meet User Researcher Hanna Rosvall, who will give us a look behind the scenes. What tools do User Researchers use, how does a games lab look, and what’s going on behind those mysterious one-way mirrors? Let’s find out!

Ever wondered how to start working on artificial intelligence in a video game and how the AI in The Division was put together? What do you need to keep in mind when creating AI for an NPC? And how do you get started in modding games and what can you create using the tools available? In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, Associate Game Director Drew Rechner covers these subjects in detail, since he’s worked with both – and has built one of the most ambitious Neverwinter Nights mods ever created.

In this special episode of Behind Massive Screens, we meet Thomas Parrott, author of Compromised, the latest The Division novel! Learn about how Thomas immerses himself in the worlds he writes about, the research he does, what inspires him and how he has worked with the team at Massive on both Compromised and the previous book in the series, Recruited. And what is it with The Division universe and its characters that make them so fascinating to write about?