Shannon Loftis: The Rise of Studio Director Xbox World's Edge<

The women leaders who spoke on the Women of Xbox UK podcast all have one thing in common in that they attach human value to their work in video games, whether it be inclusion, sharing or empathy. . Shannon Loftis, Director of the World's Edge studio, has the particularity of having launched her professional career with a great ambition motivated by the vagaries of her personal life and of having carried it to this day in her gaming career. Shannon Loftis recounted her beginnings as a developer, her rise which allowed her to create a space of comfort and exchange for her colleagues and her work as an editor which benefited the famous license Age of Empires.

Some fun facts

The podcast started as usual with Shannon Loftis drawing her player card by answering a few key questions:

In the previous episode, Haiyan Zhang wanted to know what is the funniest thing his colleague has done during her career. Shannon Loftis then rejoices in the fact that her career has taken her all over the world and that the only continent where she has not set foot is Antarctica. When asked if there are plans to conquer this one in Age of Empires, she humorously replies that everyone's representation is important and that she has yet to see an Emperor Penguin in the video game. and that it is therefore time for World's Edge to settle in Antarctica.

Sluggish beginnings and a noble ambition

Shannon Loftis, who has been developing games since 1995, took the time to look back on her early days in the industry. In college, she studied computer science and math, but what she wanted most was to make an impact on the world. The first job she landed after college was at a think tank in Washington DC, where she did statistical programming in an effort to find a solution to world hunger. Although associated with brilliant people from the academy, she soon realized that reporting statistics had no effect on famine, so she moved on to the second major global challenge: cleaning up hazardous waste, fighting pollution , and work for Mother Nature.

Employed in a consulting firm, she relished the feeling of making a difference before being faced with a situation she describes as similar to The Cat in The Hat artwork where you clean the waste from a site, confine it in barrels that you move before they degrade over time and you have to clean up even more. Shannon then moved to Seattle, and unconvinced to stay in the city, she started a temp job at Microsoft where she quickly embraced the nerd culture. A friend then approached her to her surprise to tell her that they were recruiting from a group of game developers since at the time Microsoft wasn't really known for that, other than their games Chip's Challenge and Solitaire. , especially since the events take place well before the first Xbox and even before the launch of DirectX.

After taking the job, he was given the task of developing a game similar to OKbridge for MSN, a game that Bill Gates liked to play online with businessman Warren Buffet, Katharine Graham or the player pro Fred Gitelman. This was obviously a problem for a big database lover, in other words a perfect marriage for Loftis who sees video games as an area where emerging technology directly affects the consumer and where you can do all kinds of experiences with awesome storytelling opportunities. Even if she did not finish the game of bridge, rather entrusted to a company bought by Microsoft, she never left video games following this first experience and worked for a few years with MPG-NET on multi-user dungeon Kingdom of Drakkar before turning to racing games, an important shift in Loftis' career.

Thus, the first game she was able to deliver was Motocross Madness which she developed in collaboration with Rainbow Studios, the title being part of a series including Monster Truck Madness and Midtown Madness. Within a short time, Shannon became the go-to producer in terms of racing games, Microsoft then decided to launch their console, and racing games go hand in hand with console launches. Shannon therefore spent his spring of 1999 touring Europe meeting developers, including those from DICE before the studio was taken over by EA, as well as Martyn and Sarah Chudley of Bizarre Creations, the developers of Project Gotham Racing (PGR) . She notes at the same time that the developers make friends in the industry that they tend to keep thanks to unifying elements like storytelling but also the crazy things it took them to complete the production of a game.

Who finds his place in the video game

Listing the games that made her the person she is today, Shannon starts with RalliSport Challenge which she is very proud of but which by design is unfortunately not eligible for the backwards compatibility program and only runs on the first Xbox. She had just had a baby who slept little and she kept him close to her in the baby carrier, then put her hands around to hold the controller and play RalliSport. Twenty years later, her son loves driving and all things car, which makes Shannon think that her playtime during the baby's insomnia must have burned out some neural connections.

Project Gotham Racing follows because it's a series that Microsoft used to experiment with Xbox features. It is therefore in PGR 2 that they tested the online presence, not yet for interaction with other players but above all on the fact of knowing oneself connected and giving information on what the player is doing. The series was fun for her because it taught her that any ability is a new gameplay possibility; for self-expression; for storytelling.

The game she worked on and which changed her life is logically Fable, which she designates as an iconic license for her. The brilliant Lionhead creators she refers to include Peter Molyneux, as creative and crazy as his reputation says, brothers Dean and Simon Carter, Louise Murray and Josh Atkins. While it was Loftis' first steps into what she calls the world of creativity, she remembers falling in love with Albion so much that she ended up "moving there". The studio artists offered the Fable II publishing team a poster to thank them for their work on the game, the very ambitious development of which complicated the finalization.

Shannon's urge to save the world was reinforced by a very personal event. Of the two children she has, her youngest son was due for surgery at birth, which was rather risky for a newborn. Luckily, her son was entrusted to a most competent surgeon and survived. Shannon later insisted on hosting a benefit dinner for the practitioner. When the latter arrived late, she remarked to him and he apologized, explaining that he was on leave and that he had spent it lobbying for access to care for underprivileged children. Looking back on her ambition to make a positive impact, Shannon felt embarrassed and confided in the doctor she saw saving hundreds of lives when she was "only playing video games".

At this reflection, Dr. Grady retorted “no, no, tonight you have a new DLC for PGR, don't you? I have to go home to play! ". It then became clear to Shannon that games and entertainment are a force for good and that they are necessary. Although the sightings always earn her some teasing, she confidently asserts that play is a fundamental part of life, and notes that societies where play, storytelling and creativity are repressed have very high levels of bad consequences. such as suicide or alcoholism. In addition to connecting humans, the video game would allow us to generate serotonin and dopamine by getting lost in its virtual worlds, solving a problem, or perfecting a mechanic that gives us a feeling of fluidity beneficial to our lives. in general.

The project that gave him E3

Loftis then returned to Seattle where she worked with Kudo Tsunoda. Driven by their chemistry, they co-founded Good Science Studio. The latter is notably at the origin of the Project Natal applications, which gave birth to the Kinect, whose name Loftis and Tsunoda chose and for which they designed a few games. The motion sensor was the World's Edge Director's first platform-scale project as well as her first experience with in-house development, which she describes as superb.

One of the best things about Kinect, she says, is that it was all about inclusion, designed around the observation that most people aren't born knowing how to navigate 3D space using a joystick. The player could therefore do it more intuitively with their body, which was particularly rewarding. The pleasure she took in seeing the wonder in the eyes of the people invited to test the sensor remains etched in her memory. The addition of Loftis' work on the Kinect and other projects has paved his way to the most prestigious gaming scene.

Several times at E3, she notably had the chance to do the demo in Raging Rapids of Kinect Adventures in 2010, the year of the presentation of the sensor before its delivery the same fall. After the Kinect, Shannon took a detour from television only to return to an all-important position at Xbox as First-Party Games Publishing Director, which gave her the opportunity to talk about storytelling at E3 2016. This speech earned her shouts when she mentioned games and a roar when she arrived on stage, enough to fulfill her rockstar dreams “in the space of 75 seconds”.

Like a performance, the show is set up and directed by one person, the “showrunner” who generally has experience gained over time and sets the tone for the show. First-party and third-party game announcements come together to create a narrative, the showrunner creates the story arc and designates the speakers for each part of the story. In this case, Microsoft can take advantage of Phil Spencer who is "a master of the field", so talented that Xbox doesn't even bother to send someone else on stage. For the minute thirty or two short minutes that Shannon Loftis spent on stage, she had to concede forty to forty-five hours of preparation! She specifies that this is without counting the time spent worrying about her make-up, her hairstyle and her clothes. Fortunately, the monitors exist to dictate the right words to them.

An important role commensurate with his skills

The interview process for the Director of First-Party Publishing role is the most competitive Shannon has been through and for good reason: it's a popular and highly coveted role at Microsoft. Adequately, her entire career so far has been publishing games, but Good Science was actually the only studio she worked in-house, so Shannon made a point of meeting studio heads and people who worked on the platform as well. as Phil Spencer and Matt Booty to expose his motivations. The main reason for wanting to get into publishing was the opportunity to work with the brightest developers in the world that you meet and leave with the hope of bringing them something positive if one came to no longer collaborate with them.

Loftis was finally selected and held the role for five years, a job she still thinks she will practice since at the time already she was aware of their desire to focus a little more on PC gaming and associated content. The Xbox team then looked at games that Microsoft stopped producing for the sole reason that they weren't suitable for the console experience, Flight Simulator and Age of Empires were the two licenses that particularly stood out. Realizing the opportunity to recast the IP Age as a franchise, she notes that one of the best things is that the community never went away and created mods some of which were so good they brought back enough to their creators to quit their jobs and found Forgotten Empires. World's Edge works with them to support the Legacy titles they are relaunching, from Age of Empires 1 to 3 DE.

The games mentioned were first launched on DISK, then in dematerialized version around 2011 without additions, finally during the last two years they were relaunched as service games, constantly updated with new content from month to month. the other. The role at the head of the first-party publication brought Shannon Loftis to a stage she never dreamed of treading: Gamescom with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. For the event dedicated to AOE, she was asked to welcome Doctor Merkel to the Microsoft booth, so she learned to speak a little German which Mäxi Graff (CM of Xbox DACH and Microsoft DE) helped her polish. Dr. Merkel, a teacher by training, was very interested in seeing how Minecraft could be used by education staff to engage students more deeply.

The event, which was essentially a performance, was understandably very publicized, which did not prevent Dr Merkel from winking and whispering "you're doing well" to Shannon between two lines of script to support her. .

Editor's note: The Steve who appears on the screen is dressed in Angela Merkel's signature red suit.

A pioneer of inclusion and representation in video games

Shannon Loftis, in addition to having contributed to the development of quality games such as Project Gotham Racing and RalliSport, is at the origin of the important social initiative Women in Games which began at Microsoft before spreading to the whole industry. As with the vast majority of initiatives, it was prompted by the desire to respond to a particular need. The E3 which was originally part of the CES (Consumer Electronic Show) inherited the format as well as certain practices. Indeed, the CES coexisted with a conference reserved for adult content and the two became totally entangled. This is where the Booth Babe was born and people not particularly associated with electronics or games have entered E3.

Even if she makes no objections and does not judge what everyone does for a living, it was clear that the atmosphere was very male-oriented that this gave to E3. Gathered around a dinner, Bonnie Ross, Director of 343 Industries, Laura Fryer and her, agreed that this meeting was in fact the best ninety minutes of the show. The following year they backpedaled by spreading the word and suddenly attracted so many women they had to book an entire restaurant. From there came to them the observation that there was a real thirst for something focused on women and which allows them to deviate from the mainstream and constantly gendered event. The result made it possible to create networks, to support each other on the return from maternity leave for example and to establish a personal Council of Directors for networking as well as for connectivity: it is the birth of Women in Games.

The initiative has had several iterations, going from a recruiting tool for Microsoft, to an interest group at various companies beyond the Redmond giant seven or eight years ago. Loftis and his colleagues funded scholarships and pivoted from E3 to the GDC (Game Developer Conference) to make the initiative centered around developers. Along with scholarships, donations were made to Hour of Code and Black Girls Code, awards were presented, such as speakers and seminars. Women in Games now spans the whole year and inspired the Gaming for Everyone foundation at Microsoft, an interest group to which Katy Jo Wright has brought her mark to evolve into a way of life and thinking. Loftis salutes the efforts of Bonnie Ross, Laura Fryer and a certain Kevin who started Blacks in Gaming, both initiatives served as the seeds for Microsoft's current D&I (Diversity & Inclusion) work.

Speaking directly to those of you who want to join the industry but fear its sexism and sexual abuse, Shannon assures you that you are not alone and that gaming is becoming more and more democratized in terms of tools that allow you to work independently or in a large team. It's a multi-functional process where there's room for everyone, from programmers to audio specialists to artists. There is no list of specific qualifications and the abusive element that Shannon prefers to avoid mentioning, women should not be reduced to it, is "the smallest fragment" of game design and training. an entertainment industry.

To those who are already in the industry and who are struggling, she encourages you to use your network and join a group like Women in Games, if you haven't already, make contacts, share your stories and get advice. If you want to join it, don't stop trying to make your way through the industry, Loftis assures that you will eventually take one of the many paths that lead to it.

Shannon Loftis also worked on the theme of authenticity and the representation of communities via game characters. Her friend Kate Edwards runs Geogrify, a consulting service that helps creators achieve better localization of their games by ensuring appropriate representations of cultures and nations, a role she created at Microsoft. Loftis learned from her that when you engage a culture you want to represent and get their approval, you de facto create an authentic and respectful representation of that culture, even if they don't are not directly represented in the team. Apart from being the right solution in terms of respecting another culture, it improves the game by making it more authentic and engaging.

Rare wanted a wide variety of characters and had a desire for inclusivity from the start for Killer Instinct, which Shannon worked on. When the game was created, they did not have the resources to engage with all the cultures represented. In the title's reboot for the Xbox One launch, there was a character named Chief Thunder, a rather generic Native American superhero. The company Rare was working with decided to meet a specific tribe: the Nez-Perces. In particular, they learned that Chef is an honorary title and not superficial, so the character became Thunder and all his imagery became much more representative, he finally spoke the language of the Nez-Percé.

Editor's note: before and after consulting the Nez-Percé tribe. Click to enlarge the images

Thunder was refined over time, then Rare created a secondary character named Eagle and as they interacted more and more with these peoples, they learned that their tribe is getting thinner over time. The tribe wanted to create a cultural icon and that's what the studio wanted to do with Eagle, it's a character that the Natives of this tribe can present to children as their super hero, "their Captain America", Loftis sees it almost like an act of cultural preservation. Microsoft has approached other titles in a similar way like Tell Me Why by engaging deeply with the transgender and Tlingit community, Age of Empires being a game about history and civilizations, they obviously cannot just read a Wiki about the Mongols. Loftis argues that they must travel to Mongolia, see the horses galloping on the Steppe to understand the significance of a Mongol rider, and meet historians who are directly descended from the people depicted in the game.

This investment is inspiring in the eyes of Shannon Loftis, it connects the human to the story and the experience that the developers offer, in addition to allowing the feeling of authenticity and legitimacy when players approach the game. it is a privilege for her to do this job.

A final positive note

Charleyy Hodson showed off a greeting card made by PopeArt (previously Xbox Pope) that features several Xbox team members in their Christmas onesie. Shannon is delighted to actually own one, practical for cold days and in which you can slip a bottle of wine into each pocket. The image, even though it is an edit and the work of the extras, communicates the joy and love of the crew members, an important point for Shannon who sees a certain integrity in the joy that they feel working with brilliant people and the one they invest in the games they make.