Flying the Kite: Stray Kite’s Visionaries
Bobbie Soques - Technical Designer
Stray Kite Studios is excited to begin a new blog series called, ‘Flying the Kite: Stray Kite’s Visionaries’, bringing a focus on the foundation of the studio… its people! A studio is only as talented as the people that bring great ideas to life and we strongly believe that it is important to highlight who these incredible people are!
While we have plans to eventually do interviews via videos and live streams that allow everyone to dive deeper into their journey into the video game industry and share other stories, these blogs will be more of a Q&A style. This way we can serve a wide range of questions that better allow our community to understand who makes Stray Kite who they are today and where they plan to be in the future!
Our first Visionary is Bobbie Soques (pronounced ‘SO-kez’), a Technical Designer who has been with Stray Kite since its early days and has grown her career beginning in Quality Assurance and moving now into Design. Bobbie encapsulates everything that Stray Kite Studios is about and its values, making her the perfect choice for our first post in this series!
What was your first job in the gaming industry and how did you get there?
My first job was here at Stray Kite! I was hired as a full-time QA Tester after being referred through someone I knew. This was a few months after I graduated college in 2019. I was the 10th person to join!
What inspired you to pursue a career in video game development?
My older brothers introduced me to Kirby when I was about five years old and I’ve been playing video games ever since. When I was thirteen, my brother sat me down in front of Mass Effect 2, and I absolutely fell in love with the storytelling. I only played for a few hours, but I walked away thinking, I want to tell stories like that.
What brought you to Stray Kite?
They were the first people to hire me after I graduated college, lol. I quickly grew to appreciate my role as a full-time QA Tester (versus the contract QA which is the norm in our industry) and the freedom and responsibilities that I wouldn’t have had at a larger studio. For example, I was able to start prototyping out my own games in Fortnite Creative while I was a QA Tester, and we even released one of my original maps under the studio name!
Which game has influenced you the most as a developer and why? Have any studios or artists also contributed to this influence?
Dragon Age: Origins and the Mass Effect trilogy were the games that got me excited about game development, so obviously Bioware is a big inspiration to me. I also owe a lot to games like Firewatch and the Stanley Parable for really opening my eyes to the different things you can do and stories you can tell with video games.
Have you had a mentor or colleague that helped you with your career?
Wow, where to start? All of the folks at Stray Kite have been so wonderful and encouraging as I grew in my career, but I want to give a special thank you to Ryan Slack. Ryan took over as our part-time QA Manager shortly after I joined and has been nothing but warm and supportive even as I graduated from QA to Design. I also want to shout out Paul Hellquist and Shovaen Patel, who have always taken my ideas and interests seriously from when I first joined to now, and have offered great feedback and helped me grow. I also owe a thank you to Morgan Kidwell (formerly of SKS, currently at Bungie), who worked with me directly when I joined as QA and taught me a lot of the skills and confidence that have helped me in the years since.
What has been your most memorable gaming moment? Has this influenced how you design games?
I’ve mentioned before how much I love the stories that video games can tell, but something I’ve learned through the years of playing games is the power of player stories – that is, the stories players tell themselves based on what they did in a game. One time when I was playing Sunless Sea, my ship became adrift in open waters with no fuel to get us to a port. We were also at very low ship health from fighting off pirates a moment before. Faced with no other options, I decided to pray to the gods of the Neath to grant us fuel. Shockingly, they actually answered my prayers– by dropping a lump of coal from the ceiling onto the deck of my ship– and in so doing dealt one point of damage to my ship, instantly sinking it. This is in no way something the creators scripted to happen, but they created the mechanics that allowed for this incredible, funny, and totally on-theme story to occur. Now when I create games, I’m not just thinking of the story I want to tell, but also of the stories players can tell through interacting with the world.
What's the most challenging part of your job? How do you power through it?
I find that the most challenging part of my job is not any of the technical aspects, but taking feedback. When you have an idea that you’re very excited about, it can be hard to entertain any changes to it, even if the feedback is positive (i.e. “I really like x! Can we get more of it?”). But it’s important to remember that it’s not your idea or mechanic, it belongs to the entire studio and the game as a whole. So any feedback is not directed at you, but towards the common goal of making the game better. Once you shift your view to that collaborative lens, it becomes much more fun and rewarding to take and give feedback.
What project or piece of development has been challenging but also rewarding?
When I first became a Technical Designer, I ended up in charge of a minigame in the project we were working on, which was a lot of responsibility for my first job as a Tech Designer! I remember asking Paul [Hellquist, Creative Director], how I should implement a new mechanic, and how shocked I was when he said he had no idea and I should do what I think is best. I was surprised at how quickly I became the local expert on anything relating to that minigame and the systems related to it, when I had no idea how any of them worked even weeks earlier. Eventually I ended up leading discussions and fielding questions and feedback from stakeholders for not just my minigame but others, which was crazy for someone with only a few months of experience in the role! But I am definitely a lot more confident now when it comes to taking charge of features and making design decisions.
How would you describe the culture at Stray Kite?
Very egalitarian! It’s different now that we have more people, but everyone at Stray Kite has a voice and input on the company direction as well as whatever project they’re working on. The company is also very transparent about any company decisions such as a new office or potential contracts, and welcomes feedback and input on those decisions. For example, when offered a potential contract to work on a game, we held a studio-wide discussion where most of the team shared concerns with working on that particular game, and so we ended up turning down the contract.
Share a fun story or heartwarming memory from your time at SKS.
I have a Mass Effect N7 hoodie that I wore a lot when I first joined SKS, to the point that one of the company leads commented on it (jokingly, of course). And so my first week at SKS, I was presented with a cake in my favorite flavor decorated with the N7 logo. It was very sweet and definitely made a big impact on me as an anxious young person just out of college at my first game industry job. I felt very welcome, and have only felt more welcome since.
Any words of wisdom or information that young, aspiring game developers can use as they pursue a career in game development?
I encourage you to try out different parts of game development! I know both college and the industry tend to pigeonhole you into one role early on and keep you there, but there are so many parts to game development that you might not even know exist, let alone that you like, until you try it. When I first got into game development, I wanted to be a game writer. Then in college, I ended up being the producer on a lot of projects. But then I started getting into Unreal and found that I really enjoy implementing and prototyping features in Blueprint. Seek out opportunities to learn new skills at your job or in a personal project. You may find that what you love doing most is not at all what you expected!
We thank Bobbie for taking the time to be our first featured visionary and hope that everyone enjoyed this first post! We will have plenty more to share in the coming months covering a wide range of people across various disciplines within our industry, so keep it locked here on our website and across our various social media channels. Lastly, if you have any additional questions that you would like us to ask in the future or as a follow up for Bobbie, send us an email at Marketing@StrayKiteStudios.com or at any of our official social media channels listed below.