My Introduction to Games (A Tribute to Dad)
I’m a level designer. I’m passionate about making games just as much as I love playing them. I’ve probably been playing games since I was about four years old. Games taught me about life in so many ways and helped me become the person I am today. They allowed me to immerse myself in other worlds, become characters that I wanted to be, and create amazing things with my creativity. Today, games help me relax, laugh, and connect with my friends and family. I am often inspired by the stories, artwork, and immersive nature of today’s titles.
I am also fascinated by how games work. Thus, becoming a level designer was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Not only does it satisfy my need for a creative and technical outlet, but it has allowed me the opportunity to work with other developers to make unforgettable new worlds and experiences for players to enjoy and learn from for years to come. I get to make gameplay spaces for other young people to experience like I did growing up, and this brings me so much joy.
Recently, I was thinking about how it is that I came to play games in the first place. Then, I realized that my love for video games began with my father. Therefore, what better day to publish this than on Fathers’ Day.
Happy Fathers’ Day dad!
It all began with Super Mario Brothers for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). We didn’t have a computer, cell phones, or YouTube then. So, I spent most of my time playing outdoors: t-ball, neighborhood hide-and-seek games, tag, fishing, building snow forts, ice skating, swimming in the lake, etc. Honestly, it was many of these kinds of games that make me the level designer and game developer I am today.
When I was inside, however, I distinctly remember my father and I playing Super Mario Brothers together. The game worked as such: Player one would play until they died, and then player two would play until they died. Then, it was player one’s turn again. This went on until we were done playing; I don’t even know if you could save the game to be honest. I was very young and spending time with him meant everything to me because often he was on business trips. So when he was home, we would play games together. I should clarify that what this actually looked like was dad playing Mario for 15 minutes, and I playing Luigi for 45 seconds before the game was back to Mario and dad; this was fine because I cherished this time together and I had no perception of time at this age.
Dad and I played other games too. He loved Monopoly, and we would often play as a family. He took me to the sporting goods store to get a baseball glove so I could play t-ball; he was super excited and showed me how to oil a glove. He bought us Nerf bows and we would have Nerf wars in the house behind couch-cover; mom was not a fan.
We’d go to Denny’s and he would fold up the napkin in a tight triangle so that we could play table-top, flick football while we waited for dinner; mom was not a fan of this either as the football would sometimes fly too far and onto other tables. I imagine that the other guests were not fans either, but we just thought it was hilarious at the time. In lieu of flick football, he’d sometimes settle for magic tricks with sugar packets; he continued to do sugar-packet-magic until I was 19 ye — no, actually, he still does this today.
On several occasions, we also frequented a family pub in our small town; what was really interesting about this pub though, was that the attached store had a pinball machine in it. I remember that every time we went to this pub, dad would take me into the attached store so that we could play pinball while we waited for dinner. Later on in life, I would remember this pinball machine, track down the name of the pub, and decide to write this article.
Dad really encouraged play and discovery of life. He took me camping and fishing, and showed me how to drive a boat; we even panned for gold once. When I think back on it, he was so young at the time; as an adult now, I can compare who I was at that age and its just fascinating. He was playing too, and I love that.
A few years later, when I was in elementary school, our family got a computer (MS-DOS, IBM I think). Dad was so excited to show me that it had two games on it: Snake and Gorillas, and Gorillas was two-player. I was a bit young to understand the math involved, but it was nevertheless fun to plug in numbers into the velocity and angle fields and chuck bananas at each other until we hit each others’ respective gorillas with it. (Play it here: https://classicreload.com/qbasic-gorillas.html) At the same time, our NES collection was growing, as was our family. My younger brother and I would pair up to play the games my father would bring home for us: Donkey Kong, Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Kung Fu, Nintendo World Cup, Baseball, Track & Field, and my dad’s absolute favorite at this time, Gyruss.
Not too long after, I was gifted a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) of my own. I had a few games for it, but what I most remember is my parents taking me to Blockbuster and letting me select a game for the week. Because Blockbuster was an affordable way to try numerous games, I played tons of titles over the years. On SNES, my favorite games included Clay Fighter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, F-Zero, and Super Mario Brothers 3. My parents also bought me my own “computer,” a VTech Talking Whiz Kid Plus — which I was fascinated by. The VTech computer had math and language arts games on it, and I was sure fooled because I loved that thing. I had always been fascinated by digital games though; even in school, I loved the days where we marched down to the library to play Number Munchers on the 5.5 floppies in the new computer lab, and later when we had color PCs, and I was able to play games like Oregon Trail or Sammy’s Science House.
My father was a business man, and around the same time I got the SNES, my family acquired a Windows PC. This was my first exposure to MS Paint. As a child who loved to draw characters and other scenes, I was fascinated that I could make art on the computer. Playing around on the computer in Paint, I realized that I could draw tiny pictures by zooming in and painting/filling in squares with color. I had no idea at the time, but I was effectively creating pixel art of characters like Fred Flintstone. This was my first exposure to digital art and I owe that to dad bringing a PC into the home.
Dad would bring home all kinds of things for my brother and I to boost our creativity and learning. For example, whenever he saw Legos being sold at yard sales, he’d scoop them up and add them to a giant popcorn tin we had at home. Playing with Legos taught me how to follow instructions and read map diagrams — a skill I would use for almost every project in level design as an adult. He also supplied us with a massive collection of hot wheels cars. I distinctly remember carving out roadways in the dirt to create tracks for my cars; every time I am sculpting terrain in a game engine, I think about how it all began by scraping dirt with my shovel to make pathways for my hot wheels cars.
As time passed, I was given a PlayStation, and I really began to fall in love with the immersive nature of video games. I used to spend hours in games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater customizing my character and skating the maps in freestyle mode. For me it was a chance to be whomever I wanted to be; in this case, an amazing skateboarder with really cool clothes and hair. Aside from this game, my favorites included titles like Cool Boarders 3, Twisted Metal, Spyro The Dragon, and Donkey Kong Country.
In eighth grade, I really started to take an interest in digital arts and computers. I took a class where I learned how to make a web page (in FrontPage), an animated 3D model (in Autodesk software), and a slideshow (in HyperStudio). About the same time, dad purchased a computer from a buddy of his. This was a Windows 98 PC and it came with a couple of games on a partition drive: Lemmings and Doom. Mom didn’t care too much for Doom, but dad and I would play it frequently when she and my younger brother weren’t around out of respect. It was bonding time with dad and it was the last game I remember playing with him for many years as I grew up and life got busier for both of us.
In high school, I took several computer classes where I learned to use Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop, GoLive, and LiveMotion (Flash), and we put together a PC with Ubuntu on it; I excelled in these classes and became a teaching assistant where I helped other students learn these things, and I updated the school’s website. I also took creative classes like band, wood shop, and home economics; dad was also instrumental in my participation as a trumpet player in band for nearly 9 years.
In my free time, I played Halo and Warcraft 3 with my friends at LAN parties (local area network). Halo quickly became my number one social game to play. My brother and I also played a ton of Halo together.
True story: every Christmas for quite some time, my father would load us all up in a van and drive 16 hours to my grandparents house. My father decided to purchase the world’s smallest black and white portable tv and rigged it up so that somehow this poor van was powering an Xbox and this tv in the back seat. For hours, my brother and I would play Halo, slayer mode against each other on the tiniest of screens, in black and white, split-screen, and we would intentionally screen-watch each other as a rule. It was great fun.
Fast Forward many years…
The year is 2020. I’m designed a level for my first game project, Project Eclipse. I was honored that my dad was not only willing to playtest my level for me, but he was actually able to navigate it successfully. Furthermore, on the same visit, he agreed to play Fortnite with my brother and I. It was challenging for him to figure out how to walk and aim his weapon, but it was good fun regardless. He called his strategy “chicken mode” and basically, when he was getting shot at, he would just run around in circles until he could hide in a bush, and you know what? It worked, haha! I told him that Fortnite was built in the engine that I made my game project in and that Epic Games made both the engine and the game. About a year later, I would be at a career fair where the makers of Doom were sitting in the same room; it was all very surreal.
Today, I’m an alum of The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University — one of the most well known game development programs out there at the graduate level. I’ve shipped a few games, and I’m in the middle of searching for a new level design role as we speak (shameless portfolio plug). Today, I play all kinds of games and I make levels for a variety of game genres. As Fathers’ Day was approaching, I started reflecting on how I got into games in the first place, and what became apparent was that my father’s love for games and play introduced me to my own passion for games and play. At the same time, his efforts to ensure that I was always learning and always engaging in creative pursuits paid off, and ultimately, led me to my decision to make games.
This article is a thank you to my father for showing me what it means to be creative, bond with people, learn new things, and play. Thank you dad!
Happy Fathers’ Day!
References:
[1] https://classicreload.com/qbasic-gorillas.html
[2] From the family photo album
[3] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_VDAd77B-RE/maxresdefault.jpg
[4] https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/1612-Union-Valley-Rd-West-Milford-NJ/22160935/
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNqmS2MHKsw
[6] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9b/1f/6b/9b1f6bb1e8e1f39060bf446a722d09c4.jpg
[7] https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/01b_dH03iKM.jpg?width=1200&height=1200&fit=bounds&quality=70&format=jpg&auto=webp
[8] screenshot from portfolio: https://www.jacobryanwheeler.com
