last edited 9/8/2020 Alex Iglesias: MechWarrior Online Illustrator last updated: 2/21/2018 When Alex Iglesias, the celebrated creator of the designs of MechWarrior Online video game franchise, he hit people like an laser barrage with his fresh style, and sustained praise to his designs amongst the player base. He produced artwork for Catalyst Game Labs and is most noted for his work as the lead Battlemech artist at Piranha Games. Getting into Battletech, Iglesias was exposed from his uncle who had a mountain of books and a gaming computer where he was exposed in the early 90’s. From there the rabbit hole went to MechWarrior 2: Mercinaries, MechWarrior 3, MechCommander, MechWarrior 4, Living Legends, Battletech Novels, Battletech CCG, and The Pods. The mechs were the attraction, but the novels were what kept the interest in the BUC. The Fandom continuued from Iglesias in his urge to collect things from what was available. This would include some source books, technical readouts, some board game boxes, and knick knacks, but with such a small niche of players and no idea how to play the board game it sorta was more for the collection. Back when Iglesias started drawing things it was at really young age of crayon drawings of tanks and random sketches. This would continue as he got older and started getting into robots to explosions and eventually Battletech. But with Battletech he would try and draw game manuals when there were still books that came with the cames, game box art with terrain maps, and other Battletech products with art that that he could find to copy to try and mimic the art styles. Professional life started when school life concluded. The beginning and the end was with a BFA in illustration from Ringling School of Art and Design, Gnomon school of visual arts classes, and previous work at Day 1 Studios, Ignition Entertainment, and freelance. He would always be updating and working on things with Deviant Art with mechs and plenty of them. It was a way to go and get out there with the internet and get some recognition and comments from people who enjoyed his art style. Then jumping to getting involved with Catalyst Game Labs (2007) Mike Vaillancourt worked on a few illustrations (Cthulhutech books) introduced Iglesias at Gencon to Catalyst Games who were mostly Ex-FASA writers and staff along with their Art director Brent Evans who later sent in for some book cover illustrations. Piranha Games came into the picture with Bryan Ekman asking for Iglesias for the challenging role of adjusting proportions, art matching game specs, and refreshed designs completely in some cases. This would be a change for Iglesias in looking at some of the older designs and making them fit for game design, which is not as easy as it sounds, since it has to fit for gameplay and its animations. When working on mech designs Iglesias had stated that his approach would first look at the original design, then secondly emphasize aspects of it while maintaining its identity, while replacing or reducing other elements for its fit into the game world. What this did was to keep in the tradition by respecting the many designers who made variations on the mech with their distinct changes to the designs themselves, like some of the unforgettable designs of the Battletech CCG. The experience was not only tradition, but it was also challenging in taking on the MechWarrior revival frontier and the adrenaline of being lucky enough to work on a beloved IP. With authentic love for the MechWarrior series and the Battletech Universe game Iglesias a creative power supply in his head to take off from to develop new design concepts. The Drawing process first starts with getting a reasonable amount if not all the existing art for a Mech to referance off of. Taking the design at its essence begins the process of identify design elements and shapes that make for the visually distinction of the previous designs. From there it is looked on the inspiration of the designs in the cockpit to the torso and event in the armor or arms themselves. The shape may start as a blob of black and white and then slowly mold into a silhouette or rough draft that changes for awhile with experimentation into several favorable concepts. It proceeds to cleaning up the lines and making distinct shapes for a clearer view of the illustration and finishing up with that begins the color process. The coloring process involves working on the lighting, weathering effects, paint jobs, and of course the color. Fans who had seen many of the artwork from previous Catalyst Games books noticed the gritty more realistic designs that brought more of that old Battletech feel to the designs. This would follow and build a fanbase that would start people talking about the designs as well as MechWarrior all over again. The concepts that were available online which werent chosen for the final models were seen as contrasting, like in the Atlas faces that would take models to the next level. Creating the designs of the game brought back the ideas that people had in the woodworks of faction based designs, specialty designs, and it was just exciting seeing all of Iglesias’s work come to the screen. Toxicity of Fans had a hard time if not impossible time transferring from Piranha Games to Iglesias for having so much vision of what is respectful of lore. They can’t say that the expectations weren’t met with the difficulty of making mechs look nice and show the life of each mech in a great way that enhances the old designs. Even the controversy of adding hips to the Nova, Viper, and Locust almost just seemed passed over for the designs staying so true to the sourcing. The enhancements just feel naturally like they would be natural updates to the mechs designs without it leaving the feeling that its from the Battletech Universe. While each piece is not completely preserved it is one of the best renditions when even compared to its original designs, which sparks the curiosity that if mechs did stay true to the old designs as well... fans would not beable to contain the imagination of what could be with Iglesias’s creative visions for the IP. Russ Bullock: President of Piranha Games last edited: 2/21/2018 If you played Mech Warrior Online in the past few years you probably know the name of Russ Bullock. Russ Bullock is "President of Piranha Games" and came from projects like Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza, World War II: Sniper, EA Playground, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and Duke Nukem Forever. He had enough under his belt to finally work on Mech Warrior Online with the confidence that he and his team at Piranha could tackle the monumental task. Taking on MechWarrior is a hard task, since it was years in the making of its ip. The challenges ahead would be the game planning, game visuals, game music, game mechanics, and game balancing. It would need a core root of philosophies of Piranha Games in its core game design and be followed as the shining standard of other titles to expect from the developers. The game was invented from the alpha to the beta and what ended up being the finished basis of what would eventually be a much bigger project. This would be later explained in the attention to detail that Bullock takes in his game titles.
When he makes games he always tries to go deep into the details and is known for complexity in his approach and does think about the player base for better or for worse. But what is overlooked is many times when the with the complexity of the approach it looks at things from so many angles with so many details. With Battletech and the end of options and customization being the heart of the game would seem like a perfect fit in Bullocks way of approach to making games. While it was a great fit it was also possibly one of the best strengths and weaknesses of challenges that would await in development. This complexity starts with the game first having a sense of control. Having the sense that the person is controlling the robot in the battle for domination with a team. With the sense of fans and conrads in development there were people who were taken seriously, until there were so many points of view that things seemed buried in too many details as well as what was constructive in communication. On a positive the extent of detail that was worked on by each grade up the game got in patching and design had always moved the project forward. The immersion of the experience of feeling like the pilot who was a warrior of whats right to a faction. Even actually having units that would represent and celebrate the faction itself to feel more like they were apart of the world within the friend group and shared fiction. When working on games it would be a number of things to capture for the entire experience. This would take him back to the opinions of his fans to see what they would want in a MechWarrior title from people who played all sorts of Battletech Games. Thinking back he would consider Project Juggling for company sustainability, Game Balancing for game enhancement, Game Development for game content creation, and In person or Events for communication. The list goes on, but these were seen from how they were, how they are, and what will be. It would be a colossal undertaking to organize all the details to keep a straight line of work to get it all done. It is to no surprise many times Bullock was known for over exerting himself and working pretty long on the details. Overtime people have not played MechWarrior games. And we ask ourselves why have people stopped playing MechWarrior. Often times its because the: beta promises weren't kept, customization is difficult, and the player base feels insecure in game. While there is so much to do with such a small studio it is always still the consideration of the first time players to the very experienced ones as well with every other detail. Russ and his team took a leap of faith to solve the complexity of at least the gameplay with the Skill Tree. This was the first huge change from the origins of the plan on how to make the game better. While there was major back lash it helped with the advancement of playstyle direction which a player could choose. In a way it also helped with role specialty in its early promises, but far from complete it was a step in the right direction. The History of Russ Bullock and his taking responsibility in PGI has led him on a bumpy road. This would involve projects of User Interface 1.0, User Interface 2.0, and Community Warfare, which have stories of their own, so we won't talk about this here. At first there was regular updates about the project, but as things went along with development and certain aspects were changed there wasn't a complete official answer dedicated to what had happened. What this did was leave many answers completely evading the questions and were recalled as tone-deaf moments. Which ultimately effected the marketing of word of mouth. This had started from not being clear with the: (1) MechWarrior License (securing issues) which had people at first excited and at the edge of their seats to feeling misled and forgotten. (2) Third-Person-Shooter Perspective, was where most players from the previous games were grasping at their memories in nostalgia from the previous MechWarrior titles and then dropped with function being neglected and championed over for exclusive first person optimum play styles. People were divided on this as some people did take into consideration some of the studios hardships who may have already had or been exposed to game making, while many opposed the ideas because they never had been exposed to "making of a game", "fleshed out interviews", "staff updates". Eventually they did get some of that content, but a lot of it still felt unclear and confusing, distant and interpreted as dishonest. These avoiding conflict strategies to lower conflict eventually just stored everyone's opinions in a hide away, people were playing the game out of fear for the series dying, and people who once went to the game as escape from the real world had then started to see the game as the reality and other games as their escape. This had resulted in community backlash of those who had felt forgotten from brand loyalty and trapped in the older games without feeling considered, so they ended up doing a number of negative things. There was again divide amongst players who discussed improvements that would never be and then players who would become the vocal voice of loud angry typers of insult and discreditation, team killing group squads, and community toxicity that grew at a rampant page to ruin the PR strategies that already had a slanted angle to it. This was already on top the usual controversy that is discussing any sorts of non-bias balance changes that lead a particular play style to victory, so many peoples honest suggestions got lost in a vast loudness of wild text and white noise. PGI had a lash of their own of certain streamer favoritism, insults of finances towards the fans, and blaming vague situations on heavy game play promises. Neither side won, but both sides loss in their morality, product confidence, and conscious loyalty that kept them both going. Russ Bullock being the main person running the company would be the one who took the strongest blow to his reputation in fan perspective, casual perspective, and marketing perspective. It was really keeping in all the frustrations that led to this and made the company have a mistake on their hands as any company does, but this was quite public in one of the townhall MWO meetings. This was around the time of the skill tree, so it happened that even though it would do more good than harm... the skill tree would happen to be the excuse for peoples reasons of leaving once again instead of pointing to Russ Bullock in people becoming really afraid of being permanently banned. This was from PGI taking things seriously with the game with no possibility of suspension and only fear of the ban hammer for fans actions. Fans met in groups to have nothing but retaliation for the company in further analyzing and discussing their mistreatment and claims. While out of the game if banned there were many people who went on to reddit outreach and to places of grouping of online people to band together to see the destruction of the company. As each game has its toxicity there were certain points that even supporters had a hard time ignoring after awhile... But that is a discussion for another article. What happened after would be Russ Bullock taking a step back at what all just had happened and making his team work on renewing confidence in the IP when the announcements of planning for MechWarrior 5. This did not overshadow his actions in making sure to take care of his team who has supported him throughout the journey of development. Protecting the team of PGI was important in the values of keeping things close on the inside with any small team becoming close in their limited work environment. The group had invested so much resources and so much development hours that were left unseen that it would be a crazy idea to leave that behind as a company and financially speaking. It was only natural to protect their staff they had to slowly get them away from all the comments so that they could concentrate on the content of the game development. The drama that sparked online from the communication mishaps were catching up with players and developer. There needed to be just a break from all that to concentrate on making MechWarrior Online meet its deadlines. Fans started to notice that people on the forums started to slowly fade or have less contact, some noticed that mass arguments were left deleted or uncontrolled that the community felt worse on the forums, and some people just left the forums entirely to discuss on other online platforms like social media sites. Bullock and his team had taken the blow and continued with MechWarrior Onlines development for years to come. The reason why it lasted so long, was that while many left during the windfall there were still the other half of the loyalist supporters to still kept their faith alive. This hope was in daydreaming about prolonged promises, eventual era and mech availability, and dreamers of more available modes and maps with proper community toxicity support. Since the angle of PR never really had changed and the communication stayed the same the company and Russ himself would have a hard time shaking off the stigma from the past. This stigma had led discussions of loyalists that would defend the company from toxic players as a white knight of whats doing right and comparing non-believers as the dark knights of evil. Each blow to anyone with discussion of controversy, critiquing by constructive criticism, and further developments were often times scorned by the players who had survived the alpha beta days to modern day Mech Warrior Online. The Bullock controversy had settled as a dont ask or dont tell sort of tale. Eventually this heightened where many people would just refuse to discuss the future or any mention of previous mechanics as lost hopes and dream or opening old wounds or online bullying to bring up painful memories associated with the game title. Even stories about Russ Bullock, Bryan Ekman, and the rest of the team was seen almost as a negative thing in general. This made Bullocks job ever harder with the increasing niche of divided Battletech fans from the Battletech Universe Community, chasing the trend of Esports gamestyle specialty role units, with a niche IP that had people craving more reasons to be invested in the series lore. Fans now mention it as a iron wall of no casuals entering and no hardcore players leaving, which has led to an influx of long term players who are counted as financial whales to be the main supporters of moving the game forward. Historically many of the happenings were discussed in group places outside of official sources and not people directly from Piranha games. Because the company and the way its run implying Russ Bullock himself controls the silence in not letting out too much information that led to the initial controversial discussions. Its always sad when really talented creators like Russ Bullock are unable to make games like MechWarrior Online the way they want to, because there naturally has to be so much emphasis and need to chase after money that keeps the game afloat. If a creator needs to hit a profit bar they are forced to make some decisions which they will not really want even for themselves. What at one point had made so many people so happy that has generated revenue in the first place finds itself looking for its identity once more. Its hard to know how this will end up for Russ Bullock and ultimately Piranha Games. Things could work out at a slow pace, or things could get worse, or things could take a leap for the better. People will just have to wait and see as they have been for quite sometime... But to end on a note that MechWarrior is very much alive and kicking, however it certainly could be in a better spot is still becoming a better and better title. And continuing regardless of the past, Russ Bullock is still trying to make the game the best that he can to his abilities.
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