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Virtual Soundscapes" is a show which brings insights into the often-overlooked aspects of game creation. The show features interviews with industry professionals, revealing the diverse and intricate processes behind video game development and the people that make them. Join me on this journey to understand and appreciate the art and science of games.
You're listening to virtual soundscapes on WJFF Radio Catskill. I'm your host, Matt Hurtado. Tonight, I'm joined by fellow final fan fantasy enthusiast, graphic designer, and senior manager of marketing and digital design at Bungie, Alana Servenak. Alana, thank you for joining me.
Alanna Cervenak:Thanks, Matt. I'm so happy to be here with you.
Matt Hurtado:So, Alana, can you tell me how you went from designing art for board games to breaking into the games industry?
Alanna Cervenak:Yeah. I had always wanted to get into the video game industry ever since I was a kid. I went to college, had a background in graphic design, and, you know, I kinda jumped from freelance role to freelance role and had always been applying everywhere in the industry. Always always stick with it because I got a lot of rejections over the year. And, yeah, I was working at a board game company, and there are a lot of applicable cross skills between the 2, luckily.
Alanna Cervenak:Kind of the stars aligned, right place, right time. You know, an indie publishing label had spun up in New York, which is where I was living at the time, and, you know, it just it was the right fit for me and, you know, finally broke into the industry after a lot of struggle and a lot of applications. So, again, just stick with it if you really care about it.
Matt Hurtado:So you you mentioned that there's a lot of carryover between the designing art for a board game and key art for a game, which is for our audience, it's like any basic it's basic why don't you describe it for me? It's it's what what is key art?
Alanna Cervenak:Key art is basically, like, your main visual that you have for a game. So whether it's digital or physical, you know, it's gonna be pretty much that piece of art that's in your face a lot on storefronts and on box art and whatnot that basically is at the core of your game. It is literally your key piece of art that describes your game. You know, it might showcase what kind of characters you're gonna encounter, your adversary, you know, what to expect for combat environment, etcetera. So it really is just meant to be your kind of guiding star as to what kind of game players are gonna expect.
Matt Hurtado:What what makes an interesting piece of key art for a game?
Alanna Cervenak:I think that it's it's something that really should grab attention very quickly and should spark interest enough that it makes somebody look twice. And I think that in the industry, it's it's a crowded market, so you really only have probably a good 10 seconds to really get somebody's attention. And, you know, there's there's a couple of different ways you can go about it. You can do something very traditional that again is gonna take 10 seconds to show a player everything that they can expect in your game, or you can go completely the opposite and you can do something kind of abstract and almost a little bit confusing that is within the realm of the themes of your game. And it's intended to make players, again, look twice and be like, what am I looking at?
Alanna Cervenak:I I'm interested to learn more about this game, which is my favorite kind of key art to do. I think that playing it too safe, you get lost in the competition. You know, there's a lot of good opportunities to just take the core of your game visually and present it in an unexpected way. That's that's the fun part about key artists. You can have it be a direct reflection of how your game looks, but you can do something really unexpected, and nobody gets upset if the key or doesn't necessarily look like exactly how the game is gonna look.
Alanna Cervenak:So I'm always a big fan of doing something unexpected. You know, I I still remember specifically the the heavy rain box art and how it was just so confusing and so simple just be in this, I'm kind of downpour and puddle and this this piece of origami sitting there on this very ominous background and that was it. And it was the kind of thing that you looked at and you were like, not really sure what this game is about, but it really makes me wanna find out more about it.
Matt Hurtado:Thank you. Yeah. That's that's super interesting. What's is that your favorite piece of key art in a game? Or
Alanna Cervenak:I would even though it is relatively new, I have to hand it to Elden Ring. I think Elden Ring is almost the most perfect piece of key art you could possibly have in gaming. That is it is it is just an artistic marvel. It says a lot about what to expect with also somehow not really saying anything at all. And it's it's really become one of those pieces of here where feel like even if you don't play Elden Ring, if you are just a gamer in general, everybody knows it.
Alanna Cervenak:It's just, it took a lot of traditional key art kinda tropes and broke it in all the best ways. I I look at that piece of art all the time as just a constant inspiration. It that would definitely be my favorite currently.
Matt Hurtado:Yeah. I agree. It's really good. So you've you've come up so far in in your career. You you were at private division.
Matt Hurtado:You you started off as a graphic designer and then eventually became an art director. And now you're senior manager of marketing and digital design at at Bungie's, at Bungie. So what like, how has your role progressed? Like, what is that what is your what does it entail now versus what you started as?
Alanna Cervenak:So interesting in the gaming industry because art director can mean so many different things, and it's really dependent on the studio or on the publisher. But, you know, I threw out my 5 year now journey. I have really stepped into the role of overseeing at a very high level conceptually how marketing pieces should look how art should look. You know, I originally starting out in the industry was doing a lot of the execution work on something, and now it is more my job to bring a lot of different opinions from a lot of different teams in one room that sometimes might conflict with each other and figure out what exactly it is we're trying to say with something. You know, how do we make all of these different opinions and these different pieces work together?
Alanna Cervenak:And, you know, how do we visually represent what it is that we wanna say? And I now get to hand those notes and those thoughts off to really exceptionally talented people, and I get to watch them execute it now, which is also really fulfilling, just kind of in that more director level role to be able to see all these incredible people on the industry executing a vision you might have for something.
Matt Hurtado:Yeah. Do you ever do you ever miss doing getting your hands dirty in the art?
Alanna Cervenak:I do. I definitely do. It is a battle with myself sometimes to have an opportunity to work on something and be like, oh, I could do this. But, you know, it's there's only so many hours in the day, and that's that's why you build a team of experts, so you can again, have that fulfillment of watching them get to execute. But I definitely do miss rolling up my sleeves and doing the work.
Alanna Cervenak:I get occasional opportunities too, and I really, really cherish those moments still because, nothing really feels as great as being able to put together a piece of art for something.
Matt Hurtado:Yeah. I feel the same way when we're programming is involved. It's like the more meetings I get into, the more I'm like, oh, man. I miss keeping the keyboard.
Alanna Cervenak:Right. Like, headphones on just being like, alright. I'm in the zone.
Matt Hurtado:Alright. Well, I saved I saved the most contentious question for last, Alana. How do you feel about generative AI, and do you think it has any place in the industry as it stands today?
Alanna Cervenak:No. It doesn't have well okay. It it can have occasional places to make an artist's life easier, but the general answer I have for that is no. The thing about AI is, you know, it it can only take existing data from something. It doesn't ever have the opportunity to be truly original.
Alanna Cervenak:And the best games of all time are games that do something different and something unexpected. And that goes from the gameplay all the way down to the art to everything. And you're just never gonna get that experience with AI ever. I do think that there are good opportunities to eliminate some of the very small repetitive work that an artist might have to do, which just frees them up to make those really high level human creative choices. So that's like a a small win, and I feel like at times it could potentially be applicable there.
Alanna Cervenak:But, you know, you really you look at games that are just created by people who are really passionate. You know, I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 a lot, and that is a game that is just so full of detail and so full of human emotion and perspectives. And it's really what makes it such a fantastic game. You look at that game, and you think this is a technical marvel, and you can tell that it was created by people. You know, obviously, it's got plenty of game of the year awards to support that ideal, and, you know, that is just something AI is never gonna be able to replicate.
Alanna Cervenak:I think my favorite thing about working in games, and it's why I plan to stay forever, is I have met the most exceptionally talented, smart, passionate people in this industry and it's genuinely really inspiring every single day and you're never gonna get that with a robot. It's the the work I have seen people in the industry do together as people, just creatives all in a room together really thinking about something and just going through the process, it just it cannot possibly be replicated by AI. So I have very strong feelings that the people in the industry are what make games great, and that is what we should continue to do.
Matt Hurtado:I totally agree. Alana, thank you so much for joining me.
Alanna Cervenak:Thank you for having me. This has been awesome.