Excerpt

Everything is bigger in Shanghai. A bastion of economy situated at the mouth of the Yangtze River, the city hosts China's main stock exchange, a glittering symbol of Shanghai's status as the world's largest and busiest port. Luxury hotels and businesses soar over a population of twenty-four million and counting. British colonial architecture, relics of the Opium Wars, sits in the shadow of tower high rises. Tunnels and bridges connect the two sides of the Huangpu River, unifying old and new Shanghai: a megalopolis where traditional styles clash with the glass and steel of modern architecture. At night, the city's skyline flares into Technicolor brilliance. Neon flashes from all sides, illuminating a city of both antiquity and modernity.

Thriving economies come at a cost. In 2013, pollution coughed up from innumerable factories and automobile exhaust pipes choked the skyline. Schoolchildren were proscribed from venturing outside their homes. Traffic thinned. Authorities cancelled sporting events, and high demand for masks and air purifiers left local stores running low on supplies.

Shanghai was not always so dense. China's economic jewel originated as a fishing village between 5th and 7th centuries A.D. The city flourished thanks to high demand for silk, cotton, and fertilizer, three of its chief exports. In the 1990s, Shanghai began recording economic growth upward of ten percent per year through the start of the new millennium. As early as the mid '90s, the Pudong district was a tract of farmland. Now, Pudong is the beating heart of Shanghai's financial district.

Financial movers and shakers were some of the first to benefit from the economic growth spurt felt across Shanghai and the People's Republic of China. Game publishers were quick to follow. The high cost of personal computers and software relative to the populace's median income led to growing interest in Internet cafes, where males between the ages of eighteen and thirty plugged into online games such as Blizzard Entertainment's World of WarCraft for days at a time. Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, NCSOFT and other publishers flocked to put down stakes in the East, hoping to cash in on the growing mobile and online-gaming scenes.

In 2006, publisher 2K Games opened 2K Shanghai, the first of many Chinese studios the corporation would collect under the 2K China umbrella.4 Their first job was to localize Sid Meier's Civilization IV for the Chinese market. Following that, they would pitch in on other titles in development at sister studios until they cleared enough room on their plate for their own games. The studio grew slowly, filling its airy bullpen with cubicle farms, coffee stations, foosball and Ping-Pong tables, and a lounge where developers could grab a drink and a snack.

Early on, 2K Shanghai's small band of developers consisted mostly of local artists and programmers. More diversity was stirred in as the studio recruited budding developers from around the world. One of those developers was Matthew Davis, who had earned his degree in computer science in Northern California. "By the time I graduated, I realized I wasn't a massive fan of programming. I knew just enough to sustain me on my own, and I wanted to get into the games industry."5

Davis had attended the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) held in San Francisco every spring. Besides offering the chance for developers to attend talks given by design luminaries, GDC is the ultimate job fair — both for studios looking to recruit, and for hopefuls like Davis looking to get a foot in the door. He had passed out his resume to studio representatives at every booth he visited and crossed his fingers that he would get to work on something creative. "When I was applying for jobs at GDC fresh out of college, some guy asked me what types of games I wanted to make. I paused before answering, and he answered for me: 'Anything but sports, right?'"

When a rep from 2K Shanghai invited him to relocate to China, Davis had jumped at the offer. He'd arrived in late 2007 and became a jack of all trades, writing code for games on social networking services and porting titles from one platform to another. None of the projects set his world on fire, but it was a job in games, so he stuck around.

Eighteen months passed. After work, Davis met up with friends outside the office to engage in one of his favorite pastimes: playing board games. Justin Ma, one of 2K Shanghai's newest hires, quickly became a regular at the meet-ups.

Ma was something of an anomaly in the Chinese games industry. He was a graphic artist fluent in 2D and 3D art, he dabbled in design, and he wrote code on the side. "When I was in China, I had some connections at 2K Games Shanghai. I applied to them, and they basically said, 'You're really all over the place. If we hire a designer, we need a designer. If we hire an artist, we need an artist.'"6

Ma's rejection was not unique. On teams numbering in the dozens or hundreds, each developer brings one or two specialties to the table. Going indie calls for versatility. "Whenever I talk to someone who wants to be a designer, I tell them to do some art and programming as well, because if you're going to work in the industry, you have to work with other people, and that requires a general knowledge [of other facets of development]."

Shrugging off the rejection, Ma continued looking for jobs. To his surprise, reps from 2K Shanghai called him back. They explained that they happened to have need of someone with his diverse skill set to pitch in on BioShock 2, a shooter set in a dystopian underwater city. Ma's job would be to design 2D overhead-view maps of each level.

Ma accepted the offer in 2009 and ended up taking the desk beside Matthew Davis, who was writing code for Top Spin 2 for the Nintendo Wii console. The two clicked. When fatigue from the hustle and bustle of working on big-budget projects like BioShock and Top Spin set in, the two friends discussed a shared goal: to splinter off from the monolithic industry and design games of their own.