Vanguard: MMO's Latest Yellow Brick Road: If Brad's the Wizard, then Dave's the Tin Man

The first thing I noticed about Dave when I met him at the Vanguard Summit in California in October was the air of confidence and relaxation he had about him. How could this be? Here the whole Sigil office (the company created by Brad McQuaid, CEO, and head honcho at Vanguard) was a-tizzy with 21 reporters tromping through their offices, noisily exclaiming about everything they saw, greedily asking questions, and generally putting the office routine into an uproar.

Quiet and unassuming, Dave wore a little grin of mischief that seems permanently hovering over his face. Later that evening, at Dave & Busters, he enhanced that ambience with an additional air of kindness and caring. Unfortunately, we didn't get to talk much there. It wasn't until I interviewed him face to face on IM the other evening that I got to know David Gilbertson, lately promoted to Producer at Sigil, the man and the person. His story...to use an overworn phrase...rocks!

A man who seems to lend himself to nicknames, Dave is called by his co-workers White Ninja...another tag is Nightcrawler. Apparently the latter nickname came first...a reference to the X-Men hero of the same name. Then the artists at Vanguard dubbed him the White Ninja. Both nicks are an allusion to Dave's astonishing ability to be there one minute and gone the next. If you want to catch Dave, you have to be AWFULLY quick.

So why have I dubbed him the Tin Man? Is it a reference to the legendary man of kindness himself who thought he needed to have a heart in order to be all heart? Not entirely, although Dave is well liked by his co-workers and staff. It's more of a notation on how Dave began, before he got in the game-producing business. He started out in school trying to develop his artistic abilities through drawing. When he reached junior high, some art work of others really impressed him ("I saw some people drawing in a style that was awesome, way better than me...") to the point that he felt he didn't have enough talent, and he dropped art as a career line. He actually didn't realize, until a couple of years ago, that there are many different styles of art, and that his style was perfectly acceptable.

"Bummer for me," he said, "but it all works out for a reason..." Which is part and parcel of Dave Gilbertson's unique philosophy on life. He went to great pains to explain how he arrived at some of this wonderful philosophy, which he lives by...and, as I told him at the end of the interview, it shows.

He considered several options and finally ended up right out of high school, working as a precision metal sheet worker, grinding cases for Kaypro computers.

"I moved up fairly quickly and, in a couple of years or less, I get offered a chance to program the machines..." Dave explained. "Back then it was only in 2D."

I was having trouble getting my non-technical brain to wrap around what he was saying, so risking looking like a dummy, I asked what he meant.

"Picture a paper hole punch, with the paper being metal, and the machine itself with about 40 different shapes you could punch," he said. "So... I would take a print that a draftsman drew up, and redraw it in a CAD program, assign tools to it, and the machine would read the program and make the part."

Soon, 3D modeling became available, allowing Dave to model the part in 3D, convert it to 2D and write the program. "You have to look at a print, in 2D, with different views, picture it in 3D in your head...and build in the program, all the while, taking into account how the metal would deform when it's bent..." Dave said. "I enjoyed the challenge."

Dave worked in the sheet metal industry, now a regular Tin Man, totally familiar with the different raw materials and machines used to create the finished product. And all the while he didn't know what he really wanted to do with his life. He had loved the challenge of "rewiring his brain" to think differently, so he could look at a print and translate it in his mind to the way it would need to be reproduced to get the machines to cut the piece out properly. But he was getting bored.

"So I started freelancing on the side for other shops... not that my work at my first shop was all that easy...I still enjoyed it, and I was really good at it," he said, "but I wasn't learning anything new."

Dave took time out to assure me that he really was getting to the point but had to provide the background material. I was startled since I was enjoying the story immensely. He continued:

"While freelancing, I get offered a job at a very small shop, maybe three people or so. The owner is thinking of selling, and wants to train me to take over the business...so I take the job. I find out later he isn't retiring anytime soon, and his daughter will most likely take over...oh well..."

He's not focused on the negative side, though. You don't have to talk to Dave very long to find out exactly how positive this guy is.

"So I start work, get things upgraded, bring in a lot of new business from previous contacts...the company moves to a bigger location, buys more machines, hires some more people, etc. The first year working there was not very fun...in fact, towards the end of that year, I think I'm starting to get an ulcer from the stress from the boss..."

Dave spoke about the boss, how he seemed to have trouble dealing with the company and the decisions necessary to make it work. Dave's stomach is killing him, and the boss makes no logical sense, that he can discern. And here was the big turning point.

"I think about quitting..." Dave said, "but I decided that there was no way I was going to do that...so then I decide, you know what? Screw it, I'm going to do what I think needs to be done at this shop. If he doesn't like it, too bad. And after I did that, working with him was very enjoyable."

My eyes bugged out. "Wow," I said, "and he liked what you did?"

Dave explained: "All this time, he was trying to get me to think like a boss...and not an employee. Now I could argue that his way didn't make sense, and it could have been done a better way. But it worked, and, since then, stress hasn't been an issue. It wasn't worth giving myself health problems over it."

I wasn't sure I had the concept firmly in place and asked him, "So your motto is, 'I do it my way'? Because you do seem very laid back. And still get a ton of work done."

Dave set me straight. "No, not exactly," he said. "It's more like this...I can only do the best job I can do. If after that, it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, but I gave it my best shot. And I'm satisfied with that."

This truly seemed like part of Dave's inner philosophy, and I was struggling to make it as clear for myself as I could. He thought a moment, "trying to find the right words without sounding like the dork on the mountain spouting wisdom." And he laughed at himself, then continued:

"You really can't spend your life, as a person, whether at work or not, trying to make other people happy...because you will always fail. So I have decided that I need to be satisfied with myself, that I have done the best that I can do...and if I do that, then I have no issues with stress. Will a boss be satisfied with that? Maybe, maybe not but, in one sense, it doesn't matter, because I tried every thing I could think of. And if I realize I made a mistake, which will always happen at one time or another, I learn from it...I don't beat myself up about it. Because, in life, one is always learning..." He stopped, looked at me and grinned sheepishly. "OK, that sounds corny. haha"

We discussed the relative corniness of it and why did truisms always sound so corny. Then he said, a little more seriously, "If I had not gone through that path in life with the crazy boss, and learned how to deal with stress, then I wouldn't be the same person I am now, and most likely not be in the position I am now."

There was a bit of a pause while I digested all that information.

"Ever notice that, through life, kids always make the same mistakes as their parents did?" Dave interjected. "So you can try and explain to a child why they shouldn't do something, or how they should be...but, in the end, the majority of people aren't going to understand it until they have gone through it. Just like sometimes a regular worker isn't going to understand what a manager has to deal with until they are one. So I try and keep that in mind when dealing with people..."

He was just getting warmed up on the subject. "I don't know about you, but when I was 22...I realized I didn't know squat when I was a kid, but at 22, I had it figured out. And at 30, I thought the same thing about 22...and so on. I sometimes wish I could live a 1000 years, so I could learn more, and observe life more."

At age 37, Dave is married, with one child. I wanted to find out how this extraordinary man had gotten from working with tin (okay, metal, but I am very fond of my analogy) to working with heroes and orcs and wholesale pixelated slaughter.

It turns out that Dave and Brad had been friends way back when Brad worked at the nursery...wait a minute! Brad worked at a nursery? I couldn't picture Brad changing diapers and getting kids into a duck line for outings. I had to ask. "Nursery? Um...what kind of nursery? Not a kid nursery? Surely, a tree nursery or something."

"Yeah," Dave said. "A tree nursery." Apparently the same images hadn't occurred to him that had come to me. "Anyhow, Brad told me, some time in 1997 when he was at Verant, if I could learn their program, I could work there on EQ, but I decided I didn't want to take a pay cut, so I passed."

We both laughed at that. "I would just come over, and he would show me how the game was coming along. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had taken that first offer. Later on, after EQ shipped, Brad mentioned that, if I could prove I could make art, he would see about getting me hired...this was in mid to late '99, during Kunark, and he had an opening. So, I got a copy of 3D Studio Max modeling software, bought some books, and spent about three months learning the software and making objects."

It seems that the precision required in metal cutting is much higher than that of creating models for a video game.

"In CAD, I modeled stuff to .0001 of an inch," Dave said, "but in games, you don't type in numbers, you just make it look good. So when I first started, I was trying to find out where to type the numbers in to make a chair. It was pretty funny...I remember asking my lead when I started, 'How do I tell the program to make the chair leg 2.25 inches wide?'

"In games, or in art, you mostly need to get proportions right, not the actual numbers."

For the first four months at Verant, Dave continued working with his metalworking. "I would work from 6am to 9:55am at the sheet metal shop, and then 10am to 7pm at Verant."

I asked the question everyone would probably ask. "Ohmigod, why?!"

"The sheet metal shop couldn't afford to have me leave. Plus I took a major pay cut to work at Verant and needed the money." Seemed reasonable enough to me.

When I asked about leaving Sony to join Brad at Sigil, Dave laughed. "I didn't have a choice, it seems," he said. "Brad asked me why I wasn't packing and pretty much told me I was coming with him. So I did."

And he hasn't regretted a day of it since.

Lead Artist is a catchall term that means, at Sigil, staying on top of the artwork, hiring, firing, cleaning the toilet, scheduling which art is done...and not getting much of a chance to actually do the art.

"I did create most of the terrain of Thestra," David said, a little wistfully. Then he brightened, "and I modeled one of the rocks." He added, "I did some of the environment art for EQ2, but so far haven't come across it in game. Maybe I didn't get to a high enough level yet."

Recently promoted to Producer, Dave says his job hasn't changed that much. He still oversees the artwork schedule, what stays and what needs to be done over. He still unclogs the toilet when it needs it, and he still keeps the guys on their toes with his now-you-see-me-now-you-don't White Ninja act.

His advice to aspiring artists and associate producers in the industry: "Persevere!" He added, " Many of the guys I have hired have been because they were persistent. Don't sit around waiting for the opportunity to happen."

He said that people like Brad and others have dreamed of this their whole lives. "I haven't; it just came to me. But I finally recognized it when it did."

One of the questions I ask every person in this series: What is the highlight of your day? Here's Dave's answer:

"It sounds corny, but coming into work. I enjoy seeing decisions being made and the game coming together." He added, "I've never enjoyed a job as much as this one."

And so the Tin Man ends his day as he began it, with a smile that goes all the way to his heart, full of energy and delight. There's no doubt in my mind as to what makes Dave Gilbertson's world go round.

Photo credits:
- All photos of Dave Gilbertson in this article are cam shots taken and transmitted by Dave Gilbertson while Dave and Raya chatted.
- The screenshot of the rock is a Warcry exclusive shot, showing a yet-unnamed zone in Vanguard. The rock was modeled by Dave Gilbertson.

For more in Raya's series of PEOPLE BEHIND THE SCENES AT SIGIL's VANGUARD:
- Spotlight on Cindy Bowens