David Polfeldt - The Dream Architects: Adventures in the Video Game Industry

Copyright 2020 by Lil Factory AB

Cover design by Alex Merto
Cover photo Massive Entertainment / Ubisoft
Cover copyright 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

This is a work of creative nonfiction. While the events are true, they may not be entirely factual. They reflect the author's recollections of experiences over time, and these memories can be flawed. Additionally, some names and identifying details have been changed, some events have been compressed, and most conversations have been reconstructed.

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First Edition: September 2020

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Polfeldt, David, author.
Title: The dream architects : adventures in the video game industry / David Polfeldt.
Description: First edition. | New York : Grand Central Publishing, [2020]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020000159 | ISBN 9781538702611 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781538702598 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Polfeldt, David. | Video games industry--Sweden--History. | Video game designers--Sweden.
Classification: LCC HD9993.E453 .S876 2020 | DDC 338.7/617948092--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000159

ISBNs: 978-1-5387-0261-1 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-0259-8 (ebook), 978-1-5387-5418-4 (intl trade paperback)

E3-20200814-DA-NF-ORI

To my fellow dreamers, in particular Isa and Harry, with love

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My friend Jonas and I were having coffee in Stockholm. We sat in a poorly lit corner of the Ritorno caf, as we had done many times before. The place hadnt been renovated or touched in ages. It looked like a backdrop to a silent movie, and we enjoyed the sensation of sitting in exactly the same chairs, eating cheap sandwiches from the same plates as several generations of artists must have done before us.

Do you remember Paul K.? Jonas asked.

Paul was a mutual friend of ours from art school, a guy I greatly admired. His artwork was astute and elegant, he dressed like an English shoegazer, and he was dating Linda, one of the coolest girls in school. They were two hipsters decades before the term was invented. The couple lived in a run-down apartment theyd transformed into a cozy, tasteful home, decorated with rare collectors itemsa Lisa Larson ceramic figurine on a living room shelf, a casually placed original Joost Swarte sketch. Paul K. and Linda had always been the art school it-couple. Theyd set the hipness bar very high.

Yes, yes, of course. Hows he doing?

Well, said Jonas, Paul has become completely obsessed with World of WarCraft. He cant stop playing. Hes in love with it. Linda is too.

Paul K. loves World of WarCraft? I looked at him carefully. Was he joking?

When I first joined the video game industry, it was universally seen as a very suspicious business. I often felt as if those of us who worked on games were thought to be part of the porn industry or some ultraviolent, under-the-desk, VHS black market. This wasnt just my imagination; it was what people told me to my face.

At a dinner with friends from art school, confessing that Id begun to dabble in computer games was akin to burping out loud at a castle dinner with the king. The crowd I hung out with was made up of musicians, filmmakers, writers, artists, and academics. All very respectable, sophisticated bohemians who prided themselves on having very good taste in art and culture. All of us were born in the mid- to late 60s. We were just a few years too old to come of age during the advent of the first gaming consoles, like the Magnavox or the early Ataris. In fact, we didnt grow up with computers at all, which meant that we were at risk of becoming a very outdated generation. But at the very last minute, most of us made the giant leap, landed right at the edge of the digital frontier, and managed to stay in tune with the future. Still, many of my friends never discovered the joys of computer games and remained suspicious of them even as their love for the digital realm grew.

Teachers and parents expressed concerns about my choice of profession too. As an adult, going to a meeting at my childrens school and admitting I worked in game development was a bad idea. Id immediately get bombarded with questions and openly challenged as if I were a satanic worshipper hell-bent on corrupting the youth.

I leaned on a few provocative lines for use whenever people felt like attacking my job. Yes, Id say, its correct that games are like jazz: highly damaging to the youth! This was puzzling to my friends who associated jazz with nice, safe, wholesome values. Wasnt jazz something that our grandparents were into? Something that youd hear at a retirement home? Yes, and that was my point. Once, even jazz was demonized by concerned parents who believed that the music was corrupting the young and turning them into a lost generation. Older generations always cry wolf as soon as their kids are into something different. Its inevitable. Sometimes its precisely the reason a younger generation takes up certain hobbies: to alienate the elders. What on earth is this invention from the evil mind of Beelzebub?Its just jazz, my friend.

While my career began to take off, and my love for games intensified, so did my outsider status in the art crowd. Although my best friends were themselves outsiders, my unusual new hobby put my belonging at risk. I was hanging out more and more with programmers and computer-based artists (who would draw only in pixelsan unimaginable thing!). But I didnt get involved in making games because I wanted to impress anyone. My choices were based on passion and curiosity as much as luck and chance. It took years and many twists to get anywhere at all, because when my journey began, there wasnt much of a video game industry to explore.

Id been working with games for more than a decade when the WoW phenomenon first happened. I, too, became fully immersed in my new alternate life as the Night Elf Titov, a hunter who strayed from the beaten path, taming legendary spirit beasts. The game that Blizzard created transcended the old boundaries that had kept the industry in a narrow niche for such a long time. With