Interview: Mitch Lagran, mentor

A brief interview with Mitch Lagran, one of the invited mentors for the Vancouver Game Jam.

Cody Church: So could start by introducing yourself and stating your profession?

Mitch Lagran: Sure, I'm Mitch Lagran and I'm a game designer and game artist at Koolhaus Games.

CC: So, what's your opinion on the Game Jam so far? As one of the invited mentors, have you had a chance to really get in there and offer some advice?

ML: Oh yeah, I've been constantly checking out all their work, and it's looking pretty awesome so far. They all seem to know their stuff quite well, so I haven't had to show them too much. I mean, some of the guys that are participating are seniors to me, so . . .

CC: Given that, have you noticed anything interesting in the approaches that the participants have taken in the Game Jam so far?

ML: Sort of. What I find interesting is actually in how different the teams are. Right from when they started making the teams and we ended up where most of the artists were on team, and another team where they were all programmers, and there's the team of 8, the team of 3, just the variety of it and how they all deal with it . . . I find it really interesting. One big team has a set project manager, and then some of the smaller teams just seem to do it by communal agreement. I haven't noticed too many trends between the teams, since they're all doing their own things.

CC: Is there anything from the Game Jam that you notice has a direct parallel to how game development works in the real world?

ML: Ah, well, it pretty much works just like it in that somebody pitches an idea and gets everyone else on board. You've got your idea, then after that most of the teams did proper pre-production and paper prototypes, planned it out, made schedules, and divided up the work just as you would in professional game development. It was all pretty much done on par with the industry work process.

CC: You'd expressed before that you'd been interested in participating. What had you been looking forward to experiencing had you been a participant?

ML: Oh, just making a game really quickly. I'm really into the idea behind rapid prototyping and just making ideas really quickly and efficiently. Rather than making a fully finished product, just trying to get a cool and creative idea out there. I love this kind of thing, and that's what really got me interested in it. Propaganda Games did a 'mini-game' week awhile ago. They basically just got the entire company to stop work on any current games and, for a week, they divided everyone up into teams of 5 to 8 and in that one week everyone there had to create a full game. Very similar to this. It was like their own Game Jam. And apparently it had quite an effect on everybody there. I really like that sort of idea of just creative craziness, do whatever you want as fast as you can. It's really useful.

CC: I guess the pressure really helps people figure out where their priorities lie.

ML: Exactly. You basically cull all the fat off it and get it boiled down to whatever little bits people think is most important for that.

CC: One final question . . . is there anything in your experience in professional game development that you can share with the participants that's not common knowledge?

ML: Just the overarching game production. Until you actually made games and worked on full project and completed it . . . knowing how to program or model or anything like that is meaningless if you can't actually put it into play in a full production. And it shows: the teams in the there that have industry experienced-people tend to be very organized and understand the production flow. Some of the teams weren't sure how to even divy up their work properly or how to compile everything together. I think the biggest thing is just knowing how to work with the team and coordinate a team to get a project completed.

CC: All right, Mitch, thank you very much for your time.