Interview: David Goldfarb

Hi guys
 I am really excited to bring you an interview with the brilliant David Goldfarb, PAYDAY 2 Game Director, Overkill Software, you may have seen his work on Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3. Both as the lead writer and lead designer, you can also check out his soon to be released work, Payday 2, which is being released on August 13th! I hope you enjoy the interview, I will let you read in peace now!

   My name is David Goldfarb and I am Game Director at Overkill Software on Payday 2. It's a weird title, but basically it means I'm responsible for the overall direction of the game project, features, quality, etc. What is the game supposed to be? I need to be able to answer that question and build a game around it. Fortunately there are a lot of people smarter than me who are there to help make that happen!

1)What games did you play when you were young that inspired you to go into the gaming industry?
      Xcom. Wizardry.  Elite. Pool of Radiance. Dungeons and Dragons. Archon. Diablo 1/2. Tempest. To name a very, very few.

2)What academic route did you take to end up as a lead writer at DICE?

      Actually I was hired as lead designer, I just wound up also writing the game on top of the lead designer role because of my love for narrative. As far as the route I took, I was an english major.. left school.. got hired at QA at what was Acclaim Entertainment, worked there for a bit, went into web 1.0 interaction design, made little games and things there for a few years.. then made my way back into the industry by making a mod for Dungeon Siege called Elemental which led to my first real job in the games industry at a company called Milestone in Italy.

3)How do you go about researching a storyline for a game such as BC2?

     I always loved adventure stories and love researching weird stuff. I did a lot of digging in conspiracy theory,  treatises and web blogs and youtube videos. Fun stuff.

4)If you could see one feature included in next-gen consoles, what would it be?     Decent VR like the Rift.

5)What are you working on at the moment?  I am aware of Payday 2, but do you have other things in the pipeline that you are able to share?

     Payday 2 only. After that, vacation. Then we'll see what's next.

6)What inspires you in your day to day job?

     The team, the concept. Amazing to see people take a concept and make it better than you thought it could 

be, or surprise you with ideas. I love learning stuff from co-workers and enjoy the arguments we have about what will work versus what might work. I love how agile the team is and how committed. I'm inspired watching people play it, too, and playing it myself. I think the most inspiring thing for me is watching  people enjoy the game, or figure out how to do something we couldn't have imagined.

7)If you could work with any game development team in the world which would it be and explain your reasons why?

     I'm pretty happy where I am, to be honest. I don't need to work anywhere else - there are many teams I admire, but I'm at a place in my career where I think I am doing exactly what I want the way I want.

8)What do you think of the recent poll that made EA the worst company in America?  I do not wish to put you in a difficult position, so answer that how you will!!

     I don't think EA is the worst company in America or even the worst company in games. But I think they have a culture that creates problems and a bad reputation that they have a hard time escaping. They need to do a lot of house-cleaning there to reform their image and their operations. 

9)Which do you think is more important, Single Player or Multiplayer and why?

     I don't think either is. I love both, play both, admire both. 

10)What is the biggest difference between working on Payday 2 and working on BC2?

     Payday 2 is vastly more complicated but it is very focused - co-op only. BC2 had single player and multiplayer, both with very different requirements. We are a much smaller team working on Payday 2, 35 compared to 90 or so for BC2. We ironically work a lot faster in such a small team. I think, though, that PD2 and BC2 have a lot in common - both underdog products, both coming out of left field to blow people away, both games really upping the ante a huge amount for their respective franchise (in my opinion and hope, anyway!)

Thanks to David for doing the interview, and thanks for reading.

Ed