When it comes to working in the video game industry, the most obvious entry points are art and design. But, like many gamers already know, there’s a lot more that goes into putting a title out into the world, so much so that figuring out what various gaming jobs and positions actually mean can be challenging if you’re on the outside. Luckily for us, Diablo IV Associate Production Director Tiffany K. Wat — who oversees the systems side of the recently launched game, including UI, VFX, engineering, console development, and live operations — has the perfect analogy for her role. Video game production, she says, is surprisingly similar to wedding planning.
“People famously know that weddings are extremely complicated to plan — I’ve only planned one, and it actually got canceled by the pandemic — but I find that my job producing video games made planning my wedding extremely easily,” Wat told Refinery29 Entertainment Director and Twitch host Melissah Yang during Thursday’s stream. (And don’t worry, Wat eventually got married at her local city hall.) “How many people do you have driving the decision-making and pulling you in different directions? Ultimately, you have to plan something and deliver it by a certain date. And, you’ve got the same constraints: you have your budgetary constraints, your literal ability to do things, so your resource constraints, and the vision that you’re trying to hit.”
That’s exactly what Wat had to navigate, working like a project manager alongside the development team and the wider Diablo and Blizzard Entertainment teams to ensure that the newest installment of the popular action role-playing franchise reached fans on time and in the best shape possible when it debuted last month. Of course, there’s a lot of testing — aka playing — the game, too. It’s also work she still continues to do as the team preps to drop Diablo’s Season 1, “Season of the Malignant,” on July 20. Throughout the years-long process of working on the game, the goal has been the same: to create an incredible user experience for both long-time fans and newcomers alike while honoring the long legacy of Diablo and still finding ways to grow the story.
It’s a job that Wat wouldn’t have been able to believe was real, let alone one that she holds, as a teenage gamer who grew up playing Warcraft and Diablo. Wat originally planned on going to med school, but when World of Warcraft came out while she was completing her bachelor of science at the University of California, Irvine, she had the chance to meet like-minded gamers online and discovered that maybe there was actual career potential in the industry. Friends at Activision alerted her to an opening in QA (quality assurance testing), and she started at the company in 2007 right after graduating. She joined Blizzard in 2011, starting in QA before transitioning to production, and over the course of her career has worked on games like Call of Duty: Black Ops, James Bond 007: Blood Stone, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, and Diablo III.
“My passion for Blizzard has always been there,” Wat said. “Then my life just kind of worked out that way.”
Today, people who want to break into the video industry have the chance to do something Wat never did: take a related program at college. It’s a great way to learn skills and get your foot in the door, but she also wants people to know college isn’t the only way to land a job in gaming — in fact, she hopes you chase your dreams even if you don’t have that experience. Many people she works with have different backgrounds and transferable skills that enable them to work in the industry. Wat herself had a crash course thanks to her earliest roles. “I was in QA for six years, and it was the best foundation for me because I got to work on so many different types of games,” Wat said. “Working with so many different development studios built up a good foundation for me on how the general game pipeline works and what is the development cycle.”
Now, there are so many types of studios where you can get your start in, and Wat wants to encourage people who want to work in gaming to look for jobs everywhere. Yes, she was lucky enough to start at a company as major as Activision, but you can learn and do just as much — if not more — at smaller, indie studios who are also creating amazing work.
But regardless of where you’re applying and what your dream role is, in Wat’s mind, the most important qualities to possess are a passion for gaming and a hunger for learning how they are made. “What’s really cool about this day and age is that there are free engines you can download — Unity is one that is super cool — and then you can hop on YouTube and look at hundreds of videos of tutorials,” she said. “If I was talking to somebody who didn’t have any formalized game experience but wanted to become a producer and they told me, ‘Hey, I’m working on these side projects, I’m building a game in Unity, and I have a basic understanding of the pipeline looks like working from an art standpoint, design standpoint, QA…’ those are the types of applicants that are really, really interesting.”
As for what advice she’d go back in time and tell her younger self that would still be relevant to hopeful applicants today? Wat admits it may seem basic, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable: Believe in yourself, and practice self-reflection. “Envision the future you want and keep driving towards that,” she said. “That’s a really, really good way of helping you align your priorities in your life to help you build towards what it is that you want.”
Refinery29 Twitch streams Thursdays at 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET.
