I hope this scroll finds you well.

My name is Bobby Gehr-- I am a game developer from the lands of Los Angeles. I have long trained in the arts of code, design, and creation. I have been programming and practicing game development for most of my life!

The purpose of this drifting message is to express my deep excitement and interest in joining your team.

I reached out to your team regarding the potential of my recruitment, and have been working on compiling my portfolio and crafting an application since I received a response. I hope this parchment reaches you in good time-- As I may have confused application with application (this scroll being just one of several), and travel by raven can be slow.

When my DM  first reached the Order of BitShift, I was obliged by a BitKeeper to answer three questions-- By tradition, I shall do so now:

❖1   What do you enjoy most about game development?

In the abstract, it is the process of turning a high-level concept born of pure imagination into something concrete, quantified, and real. A shareable experience that uncovers people who resonate with your imagination. Further, I love the iterative process of distilling a concept into a fun system, implementing it, and discovering the gaps in one's human intuition along the way-- always gleaning new insights therein. This is very rewarding to me.

In practice, I enjoy many aspects of game development. As I said, I quite enjoy the process of architecting something informal into something procedural. I love coding systems-- gameplay, procedural content, or otherwise-- but I also enjoy working in the arenas of design and art. I have a knack for pixel art, and art in general. I am experienced in Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Photoshop, Aseprite, and general game art workflows. You can verify the scope of my skillset in my portfolio attached to this scroll. Whatever resource the team is missing at a given moment is the resource I am willing to be, within the specific scope of my experience across these fields.

Most importantly, I think I have a good sense for understanding the "essence" of a game's intended identity. Discerning what ideas stray from it and what ideas support it. This insight is what makes my skillset valuable, and I'm ready to use it in an agile manner.

❖2   What would you like to get out of working at Bitshift?

In working at Bitshift-- and in my life as a guiding principle-- I'm looking to follow my passion and create something awesome. Something pure of intent-- truly fun and filled with wonder. That's what I've observed is the bedrock (heh) of Bitshift's ethos, and really is the reason why I'd love to work here. At Bitshift, I hope to create something I consider one of my life's works.

Raytraced sparse voxel octrees? Yeah, count me in. Party-based first-person dungeon crawler? Yeah, I'll be there. Much like how Notch saw something special in those early prototypes that inspired him to start a studio, every sneak peek and musing about the game gets my head spinning with ideas.

In addition to working on something I truly care about, I'm excited by the idea of collaborating in a tight-knit manner with like-minded people. I want to meet people that actually like discussing the esoteric stuff I like to talk about. I want to contribute to an atmosphere of open discourse and dense development. I want to be part of a team with hardcore motivation, high skill and adaptability, and passion for the craft.

I don't want to work on just any big name title, or any studio that offers clout but cripples your creativity. I want to work at Bitshift for all the things that make Bitshift Bitshift. If my application doesn't work out, I suppose I could order funny face paint and big red shoes, read a book on... the principles of gambling? and apply to the AAA games industry, but it's not my vibe.

❖3   What is your favorite video game?

My favorite game (if I had to choose) would have to be the original Dark Souls.

I had the good fortune of stumbling upon this treasure of a game as a 13-year-old wandering around GameStop. I had never heard of it before, but its presence and art just looked so cool... that I convinced my brother to get it so I could play it later while still getting Battlefield 3, which had also just come out xD.

To this day, no game has ever given me such a sense of immersion and wonder.

There are two things that I love (and think are paramount) in a game:

It's easy to make an argument for Dark Souls' immersion, and many have done so already. But the idea of Dark Souls as a sandbox might be more opaque, and more interesting.

I don't imagine that lots of people would jump to "sandbox" to describe Dark Souls, but I'd like to argue that Dark Souls' sandbox elements are what separate it from a generic action RPG. If we can break down the definition of a sandbox as an environment that follows a consistent set of rules whose parameters and configuration are adjustable through interaction, we can start to identify features in Dark Souls that represent this definition.

In a game like Minecraft, a game everyone agrees is a sandbox, it is clear that the element of highest configurability is the world. In Dark Souls, however, the environment is about as static as Minecraft's player-- and it's one's player in Dark Souls that is the most configurable element and the primary outlet for player agency.

Even in a game with a narrow goal space like Dark Souls (ring the bells, acquire the lord souls, kindle the flame), it is the wide solution space to reach that goal that makes it a sandbox experience. The game leaves room for emergent gameplay experiences. This is what makes Dark Souls such a memorable experience-- you feel like you "exist" within the constraints of a dark fantasy world, and that those constraints interact with your unique choices in a satisfying way. It's that element of grounded creative expression in a breathtaking and logically consistent world that earns its reputation as a "masterpiece."

I could talk about Dark Souls forever, but one idea it helped me understand is that sandbox elements can exist even in game genres that are necessarily narrow in their experience goal rather than as broad as in a more obvious sandbox, and that these sandbox elements are crucial to creating a resonant connection between the player and the game. That's what I feel all my favorite games have in common, whether it be Dark Souls, Halo, Battlefield, or Minecraft.

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The ritual is completed then. I eagerly look forward to hearing back from the fellowship. In the meantime, I shall return to my studies.

It would be an honor to work alongside you and build amazing things in .

These portals will transport you to my portfolio, as well as my resume:

Portfolio

Resume