Come and Make: Dune

When it comes to a job in video games, game developers often face a choice: Either work for a big AAA game developer on a massive, multi-year project, or join an indie outfit on a smaller, more personal title.

There are pros and cons to both. It’s the bigger companies that work on the big brands and create the more ambitious games (at least technically speaking). But the downside is that they can be a bit more corporate, and you don’t get the same vibe and connection you can get with a smaller outfit.

However, there is a middle ground with developers such as Warp Digital. Warp Digital has fewer than 30 employees, but it teams up with AAA companies on some of the biggest games imaginable. In fact, right now it’s working with legendary developer Funcom on its new survival game set in the world of Dune.

We caught up with Piers Duplock, senior producer at Warp Digital, to discuss the new Dune project. And what it is like to work for the company:

Tell us about this new project that you’re working on?

One of our main exciting projects right now is the Dune game that we’re working on with Funcom. It’s a new game set in the Dune universe, a big, AAA sandbox survival title. We've been lucky enough that we've been able to supply a full feature team to Funcom, although I can’t share too much about the game at this point.

So you're currently hiring for the project? Who are you looking for?

So we're looking for three main positions at the moment.

We are looking for a lead programmer to lead the programming side of our feature team. We’re working on some really interesting technology. It's an Unreal-based project and we need someone experienced enough to come in and lead a medium-sized team of programmers to complete a feature set that shall remain nameless.

We’re also looking for other Unreal engineers. These will be more mid-level engineers so we can bulk out that team and help get that feature complete.

And the third position is an Unreal rendering position. We already have a few people in the rendering team, and we are looking to add one or two more in there to grow out the rendering features of Unreal and really push the boundaries in terms of the visual aspects of things.

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What makes Warp Digital such a great place to work? Outside of Dune, Why should people come work for you?

I really like it here simply because you get to work on massive, massive AAA projects. These are games that are huge in scope and very exciting to work on. However, you also get the small company vibe and feel of a place that’s only 20 to 25 people big. Everybody takes care of everybody at Warp Digital. We all know each other, we all hang out with each other, and so we still have that very small company feel. But we have the opportunity to work on the absolute best games in the industry. It’s the best of both worlds. I feel like we are in a very lucky and privileged situation there.

Also, variety is always a great thing for a game developer. I've been here for nearly five years now, and I've done 11 titles and all very different titles as well. So although this position right now is for our Dune project, it won't always be that game. There will be more down the line and it will be very varied. For instance, we are currently also working on the rhythm shooter game Metal Hellsinger, which comes out next month. And that is a very different game to the one Dune is. We also just worked on [cute settlement building game] Autonauts with Curve Games, which came out in June. Again, that is very different project in every way. So there's a lot of variety for the people who like to see and experience different things.

For more on the jobs going at Warp Digital, plus details on how to apply, click here.