Raven Team Bio: Andy Dohr and Justin Dinges

April 10, 2009

Name - Andrew Joseph Dohr (*you* can call me Andy!)
Title - QA Tester

Q: How long have you been working at Raven and how did you get into the video game industry?
I’ll be celebrating my one-year anniversary with Raven on March 31st! I’ve have a deep, deep love of gaming ever since I started at 4 years old. I have to thank my parents for being so understanding and lenient with my gaming habits ever since that time, and now that it’s how I make a living, they probably don’t mind I’m always so pale. I’ve yearned to be a QA Tester ever since I found out that it was valid employment (I presented it as my dream job in middle school), so I spent a lot of time learning the basic skills with public and private beta testing throughout my teen and college years. I graduated from UW with a degree in Political Science; after a short, strange trip to Vietnam and a year-long stint working in an Apple stockroom, I found the open position for a QA Tester on Raven’s website, applied, and was lucky enough to get hired (I can say that my college education favored a lot more heavily in my getting hired than any previous experience with testing; for anyone looking to get into production-side testing, stay in school and learn to write professionally). I really can’t say how unbelievably awesome it was not having to move across the country to work in the gaming industry; I’ve lived in Wisconsin my entire life and grew to love the Madison area when I was in college, so it’s fantastic having all my family and friends close by. Raven is far and away the best place I’ve ever worked and it’s impossible, at this point, to imagine anything better. Truly a dream job.

Q: What games are you playing right now? Did you have a favorite game growing up?
A: The development team plays a lot of Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead together, so those two are constant favorites - my Steam tag is RVN|POSTMODERNISM if you want to play! On my own, lately I’ve been playing Fallout 3, Fable 2, Penny Arcade Adventures, a little World of Warcraft on and off, and a lot of smaller games like World of Goo, Audiosurf, Castle Crashers, and Crayon Physics Deluxe. My favorite game forever and always is Earthbound for the SNES; I find time to play through it entirely at least once a year. The humor and storytelling are still the best in any game I’ve ever played. In at a very close second: River City Ransom for the NES.

Q: Do you have a favorite Super Hero? If you had a super power, what would it be?
A: I’ve been partial to Nightcrawler ever since playing the X-Men arcade game (the double-screened beast where everyone wanted to be Colossus) when I was younger. He has a pretty unique look, power set, and back story, all of which I appreciate. Otherwise, I really appreciate the subtle but awesome power of Professor X. If I could choose any super power, I’d go with something low-key like the power to influence people’s thoughts; I’m not flashy, just power-hungry.

Q: What has been your favorite part of working on the X-Men Origins: Wolverine video game?
A: The people at Raven and the magnificent, magical things they come up with to put into games. I had the distinct honor of being the testing ground for a ton of features in this game, and the amount of new stuff I was able to see literally every day really is what really got me excited to work on this project. Of course, this means I also have fond memories of a few things left on the cutting room floor, like a gameplay mechanic where Wolverine could instantly defeat any enemy after grabbing them. It looked awesome and really fit with Wolverine’s fighting style, but obviously, being able to eliminate any enemy with no effort is a little tough to balance (and broke EVERY boss fight), plus the amount of time it took to pull off took away from the frenetic pace of combat.

Q: What do you think fans will love most about the X-Men Origins: Wolverine video game?
A: If you’re looking for censorship and party hats, this is the wrong place. Wolverine fans will appreciate how his character is handled. Wolverine is mature, complex; we don’t resort to ham-fisted, goofy, or profane dialogue to progress the plot. Action game fans will absolutely adore the combat that the team has put together; it’s very fast-paced, very responsive to player input, and incredibly varied in the amount of moves and animations Wolverine has to dispatch of his enemies. The combat really has to be seen to be believed.

Q: Do you have a favorite moment in the game?
A: Early in the game, Wolverine has an insane brawl with Victor Creed inside and outside of a bar. It’s super gratifying to make a huge mess of the inside of the bar, then take it outside and finish the fight in a fantastic-looking thunderstorm.

Q: A favorite character?
A: Outside of Wolverine, John Wraith makes a few brief appearances, but he has a stand-out moment late in the game that makes him look incredibly badass. Again, needs to be seen to be believed.

Q: Favorite line of dialogue?
A: “Time to get to work.”

Q: How many cups of coffee would you guess Raven consumes a week?
A: 500 billion – not a guess.

Q: How many lines of code would you guess Raven writes a week?
A: 800 trillion – also not a guess.

Q: If you weren’t developing games in Madison, where you would you set up shop?
A: At the same time I was applying for Raven, I had an opportunity to be a local government clerk and put my degree to use. YEAH HMMMM TOUGH. If I had to pick a dream job outside of gaming, though, I’d love to work for the State Department or CIA; there’s something about staying on top of world events that I also really enjoy.

Q: What’s the one thing about the X-Men Origins: Wolverine video game that you can’t wait for fans to see for themselves?
A: I absolutely cannot wait for people to experience our combat for themselves; it’s got unique stuff that people will go crazy for and will change opinions about what can be expected from a “movie game.”

Name - Justin Dinges
Title - Environment Artist