Featured Employee: Alexx Kay

Here’s why we think Alexx is swell:

Alexx Kay, a.k.a. ‘A-kay’ or ‘AK-47,’ has been a fixture at Irrational for many a console generation.    His ascent to greatness began in the pits of QA, where his prolific bug-finding skills on Thief and System Shock 2 were unmatched and unrivaled.   His keen mind for game design and his near-neurotic attention to detail led him to become co-Lead Designer on Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich, where he helped bring life to the Freedom Force universe – and not just with his design skills.  Alexx also boasts an impressive set of pipes, and so lent his voice-acting talents to a variety of characters including the devious Mr. Mechanical.   Just ask him to “do the voice,” and you’re guaranteed a chuckle.

Most recently he worked on BioShock as a level designer and all-around smart guy.  His technical acumen makes him a natural liaison with the programming team, and he now plies his trade as a Senior Designer and general font of wisdom.    We hope he fills the hallowed halls of Irrational with his jovial laugh and design insight for many years to come.

Also, his beard kicks ass.

Your title is ‘Senior Designer.’  What does that mean?

I wear a lot of different hats, depending on what needs to be done during different phases of the project.  The job of a Designer is, broadly speaking, to make sure that what we’re building is fun for the player to experience.  Being a Senior Designer means that I’ve got enough proven experience that people trust my ideas and instincts.  It also means that I sometimes get given responsibility for entire systems at once.  (What those systems are remains, sadly, Top Secret for now.  I really wish I could talk about them!)

I hear that you do some acting every now and again. Would you like to share anything about that?

I did some acting in high school, and then later as part of the Society for Creative Anachronism.  Last year, a friend of mine talked me into participating in his production of Shakespeare’s Henry V, which was lots of fun.  Well, at least up until the point where, during the preview performance, there was an error in the fight choreography, and I took a sword blow to the head.  Head wounds bleed like nobody’s business, but my costume had a red hat, so it wasn’t immediately apparent to the audience.  As soon as I got offstage, I got it quickly bandaged.  I’m very proud to say that I finished the performance before going to the ER, and most of the audience never realized what had happened.  The show must go on!

What games have you worked on?

I started in the industry doing QA on Thief: The Dark Project.  Then I did QA on System Shock 2, but by the end of the project had moved onto ‘Additional Design.’  I was an Associate Producer during the early days of the (never-completed) Deep Cover and The Lost, and did some voice acting on the original Freedom Force (“Tremble before the might of MISTER MECHANICAL! AHHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!”).  I parted ways with Irrational for a time, and did another QA gig at Impressions, working on Zeus: Master of Olympus.  Did some contract work designing an educational MMO for a dot-com bubble company that has since vanished into the mists of history.  Came back to Irrational to work as a Designer on The Lost, and then Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich, where I got promoted to Co-Lead Designer.  Then I was a Designer on BioShock, and the BioShock DLC for PS3.  Since then, I’ve worked o– mmmmph! Mmrrrgg! [further sounds of struggle, as the powers-that-be keep Alexx from spilling secrets...]

Describe life at Irrational in three words or less.

Always challenging

What is your favorite game of all time?

Measuring by sheer quantity of fun, it’s got to be World of Warcraft.  Though I think the most concentrated fun I ever had was in Thief: The Dark Project.

Name a game everyone should play once in their life.

Passage, by Jason Rohrer.

What are your hobbies outside of work?

Gaming, naturally.  Reading, in a variety of genres.  Comics.  Theatre, Elizabethan and/or experimental.  Maintaining The Dragaera Timeline, an obsessive cross-referencing of the fantasy works of Steven Brust.

What is your favorite movie?

Time Bandits.

You’ve been in the industry for a long time. Do you have any design wisdom you’d like to impart to  aspiring game designers out there?

Decide first if you want to go big or go small.  Do you want to be part of a team making huge games of astounding scope and spectacle?  Or do you prefer the purer artistic vision that can be achieved by smaller teams?  If you want to go big, learn to specialize.  Having knowledge of lots of disciplines has value, but big companies are rarely looking for jacks-of-all-trades; they want someone who can deliver high-quality work in a tightly-focused specialty.  Conversely, if you want to go small, learn to do as many different kinds of tasks as you can, because there may not be anyone else to do them.

Learn enough discipline to bring projects to completion.  This is a skill that will serve you well in every aspect of the gaming industry — and in life outside the industry.

What’s your favorite Irrational story?

While we were working on Freedom Force, we were approached by an outfit called Electric Playground, who wanted to do a preview story about it.  EP was a cable-based TV show about gaming, sort of like XPlay these days, only with a much smaller audience.

Their shtick was that they liked to stage live-action versions of the games that they reported on.  So their reporter came in a superhero outfit, and they brought another one (mostly in white) for Ken Levine to wear as “Captain Irrational”.  Being well-noted for my super-villain hamminess already, I got to wear a mylar cape as “Dr. Sno-cone”.  A couple of our more ethnic-looking employees were chosen to be my minions.

This was when we still had the South Boston office.  There was a dilapidated garage next door that was the scene for the epic battle.  Ken and I pretended to toss power beams at each other, and the actual beams were Photoshopped in (badly) during post.  They even did some filming from the roof of our building, to get the “isometric top-down view” thing going.

After the fight scene, they interviewed me and Ken, still in costume, and in character.  (Fun fact: in early builds, Ken Levine recorded temp voice for Minuteman.)  It was a wonderfully silly day, though Ken was embarrassed by the whole thing.  Years later, I actually ran into someone who recognized me from that show, so I guess it did get on the air.  Sadly, it doesn’t seem to have made it onto YouTube.  Ken’s probably just as glad