Dev Diary: Jason “Pex” Ryan

Greetings! I’m Jason “Pex” Ryan and I’m the Online Events Manager for Star Wars Galaxies. Some of you know me pretty well by this time, others, not at all. If you don’t know me or what I do, that’s okay. I’ve been asked to put up a Dev Diary to indoctrinate…I mean, “inform” you about what I do around here. A bit of “the man behind the curtain” stuff.

So what is it I do here? Well, the easiest thing to say is that I get to be Darth Vader. That’s an over-simplification, but it’s true. Anytime you see one of the Star Wars characters interacting with players and being generally where they aren’t supposed to be, it is me behind the keyboard pulling the virtual strings. I get to be Luke, Leia, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, Admiral Ackbar, Watto, Nautalans, droids, Ewoks, etc. Playing these “named characters”, as I like to call them, is fun, but it’s only part of running events for SWG.

I’ve been working on SWG since just after launch. Before I was hired, I managed to finagle a beta account while working at another game company, so I’ve been following the game as long as any veteran has.

Unlike the rest of the SWG development team, I am not located in Austin. I am based out of San Diego, CA where the majority of the SOE community team is located. The SWG community team is in Austin; I’m just the odd exception. After all, the weather in San Diego is so much better than Austin. I am in instant messenger, phone, and email contact with my Austin brethren all the time, so it’s not too distracting. It’s a digital world and, as GreyPawn says, “I type faster than I talk,” so it all works out.

The majority of my day is spent in the forums and planning support for player events. SWG is one of the few (only?) MMOs that allow players to request event support for their player events, and I’m in charge of all those requests.

To request support, a player will submit an event request to me (there’s a form to fill out) by way of a forum private message. I’ll read it over, see if it is feasible, and then try to fit it into the schedule. I try to fit as many as I can and talk with players about what they want.

A lot of what I do is expectation management. There’s only so much time we can give to each event, and my tools are not as all-powerful as I may make them appear. The goal is to give the player a realistic view of what the event will look like. I think the players are generally happy with the event support they get.

Of course, my busiest days are Friday and whichever weekend days I schedule for events. Those days can be pretty long with events starting around 9:00 or 10:00 AM and ending around 8:00 PM. Sometimes earlier. Sometimes later. Sometimes both.

Most of the live event support I provide (as opposed to providing decorations) falls into two categories: combat and speeches…or both. When I run an event of either kind, I usually have two computers running. I have a desktop system and a laptop set up side-by-side. I use the laptop to communicate with the event organizer and take screenshots and the other system to spawn MOBs or run the named characters. This keeps everything much easier to handle.

The big question I get lately is, “Has Storyteller affected how many event requests you get?” For a while yes, but I’m seeing things creep back up to pre-Storyteller level. What is good is that the requests are primarily augmenting Storyteller-created events, and that is what we wanted to have happen. I like that we’ve put a lot of power into the hands of players for running their own events.

Of course in-game events are only part of what I do. I also help provide the designers with ideas and documentation when they are working on event-related content such as Storyteller or in-game holidays. When we have events like the Block Party or Fan Faire, I get to do panels and run the Live Quest, which is a very fun task for me. In what other job can you expense a trip to Toys R Us?

I hope you enjoyed hearing about events and what it’s like to be the guy that plays Darth Vader in Star Wars Galaxies. If you want to know more, or have some questions, come over to the Events forum. Hopefully you’ll be inspired to run an event of your own.

Jason “Pex” Ryan
Online Events Manager