Daniel Ross/Inside the Vault

An interview with Daniel Ross as part of the "Meet the Dev" conversations. Originally posted on several threads on Bethesda's Fallout 3 forum.

Transcript
What's your job at Bethesda?

I'm a QA Tester. I play broken games so you don't have to... Very Happy

How much are you getting paid?

Industry standard, or so they tell me: All the cookies I can eat, but only on Wednesdays.

What previous projects have you worked on at Bethesda and elsewhere?

I worked on Oblivion for PS3 and Shivering Isles. Before that I was sitting where you guys are; this is my first job in the industry.

'''What have you drawn on for inspiration in developing Fallout 3? Books, movies, music, etc would be fine, if you don't want to name any games.'''

Not my department. Razz

How much do you love the fallout franchise (GOBS, CRAPLOADS, etc)

I'm going to admit that I have never played Tactics beyond the very first fight. I'm still working through Fallout 2, because the first time I played it I thought the starting dungeon was lame and stopped playing. I only recently decided to give it another chance and I am a few hours into it at this point and it's grown on me a lot. I've played through Fallout 1 more than a few times, and I loved it every time. That being said, I'm a huge fan of the 50's style and dark setting so let's go with "GOBS" for now.

'''How is the work-environment? Is it competitive or co-op? Do the different teams talk together?'''

I can only speak for QA but we work together a lot, although there is some friendly competition to see who can find the "best" bugs.

Are all the employees from the US?

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm from the US. Shrug

What's your favorite color?

I'm gonna go with blue.

Do you have pets?

None at present. I had a Beta fish named Sir Reginald Fancyfins III but he got sick a while back. Sad

Are you married?

Not yet.

Also, do you play any other TT games?

I play Warhammer 40k. I've got a decent Necron (I actually proxy a Cryx model for my Necron Lord Razz) army and I'm working on a Witchhunter army right now. I've also got a Chaos Beastmen army in the works for Fantasy, although I haven't touched them for about a year. Other than the one model I haven't gotten into Warmachine yet, although it looks awesome.

'''Did any of the devs play any of the palladium games? We spent many of nights playing rifts. I remember when fallout first came out, I bought it because it reminded me of rifts.'''

Ahhh Rifts.


 * Eyes his bookshelf covered in dusty Rifts books*

Let's just go with yes. Very Happy

What are you 're favorite webcomics?

I used to read Elf Only Inn all the time until it stopped updating like a year or two ago. I'll have to check it out again, it was pretty funny. I also read Least I could Do, Penny Arcade, 8-bit Theater and Red Meat. CAD gets me sometimes too.

'''What do you think about Valves distributing service Steam? Do you see it as a good step forward in game distributing?'''

I personally like the idea and convenience of digital distribution, but I haven't used Steam much except when I was playing CS:S a lot a few years ago; but I never used it to buy anything. I tried Direct2Drive when I picked up Civ4 a couple months ago and I was quite happy with it. I also tried the EA download service last year to get the expansion for Black & White 2, which also worked pretty well. The intrusiveness can be annoying on some of them, but you can always remove them I guess. Shrug

Which of the TES games have you played, and how much do you enjoy the ones you had nothing to do with in the making?

I played 2 and 3 a lot before I started here. Daggerfall sucked a lot of my life away back in the day... I don't think I ever completed the main quest, but I loved the game. I haven't tried Battlespire or Reguard yet, but they are on my list and I'll get to them when I have time to play games for fun. Embarassed I did manage to play through Arena back around Christmas.

Did you need a lot of cheating, walkthroughs or hints to finish any of them?

I could have used some help for Daggerfall. Like I said I never really beat it, I just made new characters a lot then and ran through chargen before proceeding to rob shops blind. I don't think I even figured out how to level up until a few days into it. I didn't get the whole "use skills to raise them" thing, having come from a heavy D&D background. In my defense, I wasn't very old when I was playing it... I'm sure I'd do better now.

Do you think the games these days should be a bit harder, even if it would affect the sales negatively?

Did you mean any particular games? Wink

In general I think we need a broad selection of games, some easy, some hard... preferably all fun. There are a lot of varying tastes out there.

Have you read the first "TES5, a veteran's view" threads?

Yup, there are a lot of ideas in there. Smile

Do you have a dresscode?

I believe at one point I was instructed to "wear shoes." I don't think the "suits" even wear suits here.

'''What is your favorite anime? If you're into anime, do you have a favorite manga? Have you watched any post apoc. anime recently?'''

My favorite anime right now would actually be Ergo Proxy. Deep, dark, PA... I guess that satisfies both 1& 2 there? Very Happy

I don't read any manga in particular. I have a couple Initial D books that I picked up for like 3 dollars a while back. Shrug

Got any good recommendations for someone who hasn't watched really any anime before Dan?

I tend to rent a lot off of Netflix. I think my starters (Not counting Voltron or Robotech as a kid) were Trigun, Kenshin/Samurai X, Outlaw Star, and Hellsing. Ranma 1/2, is a decent "starter" anime too I guess; kinda old and silly, it's still pretty funny. It would depend on what kind of stuff the person was into though. I recommend watching them in Japanese with the subtitles on or else it feels like you miss a lot of the original intent.

I swear I'm not actually a huge anime dork, I just like it. Maybe we should go back to something else... Razz

Are you guys required to come in here and post from time to time for your job, or do you just care about us fans?

Not required at all, I do it because I care. Not so sure about these other mercenaries. Laughing

Do devs think this could maybe be achieved through technological advancement (and if so, thru which one ?) or through totally new gaming concepts (again - which ones ?) ?

I think literature has a pretty big head start on video games as a story-telling medium as a whole. I think eventually games will catch up though. I know I have had my moments in games and movies that were very similar to that feeling I get from a good book; going into the Deathclaw cave for the very first time in Fallout and then finding that super mutant corpse being a good example.

Quotes
(Apparently inexplicably) Congo Rats!

On his weekend: I watched both seasons of Dexter and lost my Sunday evening to this game, Spectramancer, that Briosafreak recommended.

As for the office, no shenanigans detected so far...

One guy did steal another guy's sticky note dispenser once, and returned it to him in a bowl of Jello. That was amusing. This was in retaliation for taping the bottom of his optical mouse.

On spectramancer: Oh good, because I ran into an awesome sound bug when someone plays a creature that damages all other creatures currently in play. Sweet looping audio of the damage sound until you quit out.... gotta love it.

On Dexter: Second season was, I think, as good as the first. I need to pick up the novels next and see if they are any good, though I imagine they are.

So good! My favorite TV show by far right now. Can't wait till season 3 in September.

On favourite foods:

Lasagna

Fajitas

Avocado Chicken Wrap (Why yes, I am from California... how did you guess?)

Meatball Sub

Club Sandwich (no tomato, provolone cheese)

On Sarah Connor Chronicles: I've been following it on Hulu. Ad supported, web-based streaming TV. Who'da thunk it?

Anyone figure out why they titled it 'Dungeons and Dragons'?

Planning on watching it tonight. I spent all of last night watching more Chuck.

On which show is better: Hmm tough one.

I'd go Dexter>Heroes>Sarah Connor>Knight Rider

On artificial intelligence and the future of 'virtual reality': Or we could go Altered Carbon/Kiln People style and copy our whole personality.

On the Oscars: Didn't watch. I was probably watching old episodes of Chuck or organizing my iTunes playlists and locating/creating album art

How did I get into TV again? I haven't watched this much TV in years...

On the biggest bottle cap collections: Probably FZ! (Fred Zeleny) unless he's cleared his desk from the last time I passed by.

Or were you talking about in-game?

On reading: I do, but it comes in bouts of reading. So I'll read several books back to back over a month and then nothing for a couple months. I lean toward sci-fi/fantasy by default, but I'll read anything that strikes my fancy.

I watched the uncut T2 over the weekend. I forgot there were a bunch of deleted scenes. Pretty cool!

Cake? Probably chocolate, but really... if it's cake I'll probably have a piece.

Morals vs ethics: Last bit is probably splitting hairs... doesn't immoral behavior include unethical behavior?

Hey accountant man, a debit is always a debit, a credit is always a credit right?

In this case you'd be debiting the children's cancer research account and crediting the criminal dirty money account. It doesn't matter which account you are debiting for the credit though, it's still a credit.

Or in other words, yes it is immoral to steal from a criminal, because stealing is immoral. You can make up for it by donating it to a good cause, but you still stole something and committed an immoral act.

I'll have to work on the second example but so far I am thinking it's not really an immoral act, unless you gave the old employees zero notice, no severance pay, cut them off completely etc. In which case I would also consider it unethical.

Hmm some interesting stuff on a Google search.

As for Dexter, there's no doubt that it is immoral. For the greater good, sure, but he is doing immoral things. Which he kind of realizes during the 2nd season I think, especially toward the end. That's in the nature of the "greater good" concept though; one person does immoral stuff so that others don't have to. Does that make it moral? I dunno, but in D&D terms he'd be operating on a Lawful Evil or Lawful Neutral alignment.

On cookies: I tend to eat the cookie whole, sans dunking. I hate the floaty crumbs in my 2% milk.

On deliberately introducing errors: Wait you think I have access to code?

"Hmm I'll just delete this semi-colon here, add a couple parentheses there... comment this bit out... and we're set for the evening."

It's ok though because I called "Sleep with your wife buggy blue!" before I did it.

If Video killed the Radio star, did the internet kill the encyclopedia salesman?

Encylo-huh? Maybe high school? Pretty sure the Internet didn't help.

'''What does the word "Divinyls" conjure up in your mind? Austin Powers perhaps?'''

Divinyls... a double LP album?

'''If you received 10 Million Dollars (6,509,866 Euros, 4,979,113 Pounds), would you keep your current job? If not, would you work at all? If so, doing what?'''

Probably, but I would drive a nicer car and live closer.

'''Who here just loves studying quantum physics and temporal mechanics? Yeah, I know.'''

I did pretty well in quantum physics for a non-science major.

'''Worst Grade you ever got in school? Why?'''

I flunked a screen writing class once on my first attempt at finishing undergrad. Not sure why exactly but it may have had something to do with the fact that I stopped attending after the first 2 weeks of class. Not recommended, btw.

Dev you have a secret crush on? Dev crush? I have nothing funny to say... stop looking at me like that Fred!

What will/did you have for lunch today?

Lunch! Hmm I dunno. Depends on what's on the menu. I'm leaning toward something with chicken though.

'''Breakfast? (You know it is the most important meal of the day, stop skipping it!)'''

Breakfast was Cheerios and coffee while I read my morning email and caught up on the QA bug database.

Average number of socks that go missing in a month?

I don't lose many socks. Or at least I don't think I do...

Ever stake out the dryer to see if someone is stealing them?

Great, thanks, now I have to audit my sock drawer.

Haven't seen (10,000 BC), wasn't really planning on it and have no real opinion. I heard about the same though. I'd probably rent it at some point.

HL2 was quite good. I pretty impressed by the flow they maintained. I also like the episodic content idea.

I haven't been on a Carrier, but I did get to explore a Tarawa-class LHA in San Diego and an older submarine, (not sure what class but I seem to recall it was smaller and than a Los Angeles-class, Seawolf-class maybe?) back in high school.

I've had cabeza/sesos tacos and lengua tacos before, when I lived in SoCal.

... with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

I discovered Chipotle is closed on Easter. What kind of holiday is this!?

On his guitary stormtrooper avvy

Darn tootin'!

Rock on Storm Trooper, rock on.

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