We sat down for a chat with Mathilde Nord, Director of Development for Avalanche’s Central Tech department. That’s where all of Avalanche’s proprietary tech is created and developed, including our Apex – Avalanche Open World Engine™ – the beating heart inside all our games. The result of over 20 years of hard work, passion, and constant evolution, Apex allows us to create worlds like no others. Mathilde gave us a peek into what it’s like to work within this unique Avalanche team.
Q: How long have you been at Avalanche, and what is your current role?
A: I’ve been with Avalanche for nearly 8 years. I started three months after the release of theHunter: Call of the Wild. I was almost invited to the release party, but I missed it by a hair.
I landed in Central Tech from the beginning, where I was hired as a Technical Coordinator, which essentially meant being responsible for production. We were a small team of 12-15 people back then. We’ve grown quite a bit since, and in 2020 I became Director of Development. It’s a similar role to what I had before, but for a much larger organization, having now a team of 60. My work is both strategic and operational. On the strategic side, I’m responsible for defining Central Tech’s processes, practice, and production goals. On the operational side, I manage a team of great producers and the day-to-day aspects of their production work, to ensure the overall delivery of Central Tech’s portfolio.
Q: What exactly does Central Tech do?
A: Here at Avalanche, we have our own proprietary tech: our Apex - Avalanche Open World Engine™, and the tools – including the content creation tools – used for developing our games. The creation, development, and maintenance of all these elements are centralized under the responsibility of Central Tech. Of course the game teams have the freedom to come up with their own solutions and innovations. So it’s a dialogue, but we try to integrate and harmonize everything that concerns our tech and tools. The bulk of people in Central Tech are programmers, with a couple of QA and technical art roles.
Our engine is specifically tailored to the type of games we make, and having the engine team in-house makes a big difference. We’re in constant dialogue with our colleagues in the game projects so that we can evolve our tools in the right direction.
Q: So yours is a very technical role. What’s your background?
A: I’m a computer science engineer. I majored in AI and robotics, so nothing to do with the games industry. At the beginning of my professional career, I was working with the programming of industrial robots. Then I moved on to developing the software that controls and monitors large infrastructure complexes, such as the power grids in New York and Cape Town, and gas lines in California. As you can imagine, it’s very important to make sure there are absolutely no bugs in that kind of software. I followed a sort of natural flow. I started with programming, then moved to scrum mastering, project management, and ended in program management.
Q: How did you make the move to the games industry?
A: When I was a Senior Program Manager, the HR Manager at Avalanche called me and said: “Hey, we have a role that we think you’d be perfect for”. I wasn’t a gamer, and I had never considered working in the games industry before. But when I got here I was surprised by how advanced the tech is. Some of what we’re doing in the fields of streaming, and graphics is very cutting-edge.
I was also really impressed by the creative atmosphere, which was completely new to me. I had been working with these really big tech companies on massive projects where the software just needed to work. And all of a sudden, I had to consider other questions like: “Is this fun? Is it beautiful?” Seeing that mix of tech and art was so much fun.
During one of my interviews I was taken on a tour of the office and was shown a screen of Rage 2. The team explained how they were building the game’s environment, and one thing that struck me was seeing grass and weeds sprouting between the cobblestones on a road they were creating. That’s when I realized, there must be someone here thinking of all these little details that make the world come to life. I had never thought about games that way. It suddenly dawned on me how much work goes into making a game. So it felt like a fantastic challenge to jump into a completely new industry. On top of that, everyone is very talented. For most people here, working in games is their dream job. It’s very inspiring.
Q: What’s your favorite part of your work?
A: True to my engineering roots, I’m a problem solver at heart, and that’s the aspect I enjoy the most. The fact that Central Tech is set up as a service organization, supporting all of Avalanche’s game projects, really suits me.
Our Technical Product Directors collaborate a lot with our game teams, discussing what they need. Sometimes the game teams come to us requesting features or asking for solutions to specific issues. Other times, we go to them and show some new features, tech, or improvements we think they might need or find useful.
I really like this collaborative environment where we work together to find the best solutions, specifically those that benefit all of our games.
Another great aspect of being in Central Tech is, well, being central. You feel part of all the games being developed, and you get a better understanding of where the company is going.
Q: Traditionally, and looking at the industry’s statistics, programmer-heavy departments tend to be male-dominated. How has your experience been in this regard?
A: Having studied computer science – where, at least in my time, women were less than 10% of students – I got used to it in my early 20s. My way of looking at it is this: if you’re interested in something, just go for it. Most likely, everyone who applies for a computer science degree is going to share similar interests and passions. Certainly more so than the people you met in high school. At least it was like that for me. The more I specialized, the more I found this to be true.
In my current role, I’ve been actively trying to get more women in Central Tech by paying more attention to underrepresented candidates. It’s well documented that women tend to avoid applying for roles if they don’t think they meet each and every requirement listed in a job description. Or that they might not mention a qualification in their CV, even if they have substantial experience in that field. Changing the way we write our job ads, and paying particular attention to the applications we receive from underrepresented applicants – to make sure nothing goes missing between the lines – are some of the ways we can address these issues. We also need more women to apply for technical degrees at university, and that’s a bigger systemic shift. In our production team, three out of four people are women, so things are changing. But that’s an exception, and looking at Central Tech – and the industry as a whole – men still cover the vast majority of roles.
Q: What’s your advice for people wanting to work in the games industry?
A: One of the things that I’m the most proud of when I look at my career path is having dared take the leap from one industry to another. Going from software development for big infrastructure projects to the games industry is not something I would have ever imagined doing. But then the opportunity presented itself, and, in an unexpected way, I found something that I love doing. So my advice is to not be afraid of jumping into something completely different. Cease the opportunities that are thrown at you, no matter how far-fetched or outlandish they might seem. Most of the time, you’ll be surprised.