#MeetIronGalaxy – Kieran Peasley

To create unforgettable video game experiences, designers must be flexible to the genre. The goal is create challenges that are fun and rewarding. Sometimes the designer shapes the way players can overcome obstacles. Other times, players find ways to break the rules of a game to clear those very same obstacles. Those systems, intended and unintended, belong to designers. Time to meet Kieran, a designer who is willing to tackle any element of design.

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Iron Galaxy: Yo! What’s your name and what do you do here at Iron Galaxy?

Kieran Peasley: I’m Kieran Peasley and I’m a Game Designer here at Iron Galaxy. I know that’s kind of a non-specific title, but designers at IG pretty frequently have to put on different hats for different projects, so it’s a little more rare to be a specialized designer here. If I had to pick a specialty, I’d say Level Design. One of my biggest contributions so far was helping build parks for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4.
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IG: Lots of hats means lots of skills. You’ve got to share what else you’ve contributed to here. Before that, tell us about the most challenging aspect of your job.

KP: IG gets to work on a lot of different games, and I’m not necessarily a part of the target audience for all of them. As a designer, it’s important to be able to differentiate between what I like or dislike, and what our players might like or dislike. Putting yourself in those different headspaces can be tough at times, especially for games or genres that I’m either unfamiliar with or overfamiliar with. I’ve tried to branch out into genres of games I might not normally play over the years to try and help with that, but there’s always more work to be done in that regard.

IG: Forward thinking. How collaborative do you get to be with different teams across IG?

KP: Very. It’s hard not to be collaborative in game dev. Depending on what you’re working on, you can be collaborating with just about every discipline at the same time. While working on parks for THPS 3+4, I was consistently working with Art, Engineering, and Audio to bring all the different pieces together, as well as with QA to catch and resolve issues throughout that process. It can be a lot to manage at times, but seeing everyone’s work come together, and often being the person putting the pieces together, is a really satisfying part of the job.

IG: It sounds like a team effort that relies on a lot of trust! Aside from playing video games, what’s another hobby you enjoy?

KP: Generally, I just like spending time making stuff. I did a lot of art growing up, and I still occasionally boot up Photoshop to make art for in-jokes with friends or for personal use. My last big project was putting together some art for my fight stick, and later for one of my friends as well. I also dabbled in cosplay when I made a Halloween costume for our office party last year.

IG: Sweet art! We spy a Marisa front and center. What games have you spent the most time playing and who are your favorite characters?

KP: Steam tells me it’s Street Fighter 6. It’s not my first fighting game, but it’s the first one that I really committed to “getting good” at, so I’ve put a lot of time into it since it came out. Humble brag: I’ve been breaking into the Top 50 NA Marisas in terms of MR the last couple of ranked seasons, which I’m happy with, given my original goal was to maybe hit Master one day. Overwatch 1 is also probably up there as well but I don’t think I have an accurate way to track those hours anymore. I probably put more hours into playing Zarya and Ashe alone than I did into a lot of games.

IG: What’s something you feel everyone must do once in their life?

KP: Look at this picture of my cat.

IG: Life mission complete. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would you choose?

KP: Put an over-easy egg and some bacon on a cheeseburger and I’m yours for eternity.

IG: We’ll take some protein with that protein. What was designing “Andy Land” like with pro skater, Andy Anderson?

KP: It was a lot of fun! Andy was really easy to work with. He came in with a lot of enthusiasm and had a lot of fun ideas for things to try, make, and recreate once he saw what Create-A-Park could do. I had never done any sort of promotional work like that before and I was a bit unsure of how it would go, but once we started talking the cameras and time kind of disappeared. I think I found out afterwards that we were recording us building the park for almost two hours, and it felt like maybe thirty minutes to me at the time, if that.
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IG: Definitely sounds like a good time. Try out Andy Land under Developer Parks in THPS 3+4 today! How did you find your way to IG from Michigan State University?

KP: The capstone project for the Game Dev program at MSU has teams of students partner with mentor studios to build a game over the course of a semester. I wasn’t on the IG team myself, but IG was very involved with the program and would visit the class to do presentations and meet with students. I learned about the kind of studio IG is and the variety of games IG has worked on. I put IG at the top of my list of studios I wanted to apply to. It took a couple of years and a global pandemic, but I made it eventually.

IG: You’re a welcome addition to IG’s design department. Continuing with your design efforts, you mentioned you’ve worked on a variety of different projects for IG. Including level design, what specialties within design have intrigued you the most? What other areas would you like to explore next?

KP: Level design has been very interesting to work on, especially for a game with movement and objectives as unique as THPS3+4. The effectiveness with which you have to try and communicate things about the parks given the players constant speed and potentially changing orientation means you need to use a lot of tricks, some of which are sort of more generally applicable level design practices, but others feel like tricks much more unique to that series of games that I had to learn as I went. Aside from that, I’d love to end up on a project where I could try my hand at combat design for a fighting or character-action game.

IG: We’ve got our fingers crossed that one of your next projects will allow you to explore those elements of design next. The Intersection, your creation, is one of our THPS3+4 Developer Park favorites! Can you show us your best run through of the goals?

KP: I pulled this off in a totally reasonable number of attempts, I swear.
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IG: Impressive! What’s one genre of games that you think is underrated?

KP: It feels like the expected answer for someone working at IG, but I do have to say fighting games. Developing an understanding of a fighting game and a character and putting those understandings to the test against another real person (especially in-person) is a very uniquely satisfying experience among competitive games I’ve played. Also, becoming comfortable with motion controls makes even just inputting commands in a game feel like, in the best way I can describe it, I’m a mech pilot that can on command flip the correct sequence of switches to fire my rail gun. It just feels good.

IG: Spoken like a true Iron Galaxian. What movie have you seen the most times?

KP: Probably Fantastic Mr. Fox. It’s a movie that some of my friends and I all enjoy rewatching, so I’ve seen it a lot on my own and at group movie nights.

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‍IG: You and your friends took this Badger quote to heart. "Well, I guess we should, ah, probably split into a certain number of groups and start doing something." What’s the one superpower that you’d like to have?

KP: Telekinesis functionally gives me flying and super strength without the additional limitation of having to be able to hold everything I want to move, so probably that?‍

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IG: Leave it to designers to think outside of the box for that question. You get one wish. You can’t wish for more wishes. What do you wish for?

KP: More wishes. Maybe you’re lying to me. Maybe I CAN wish for more wishes and you’re just being greedy.

IG: Big brain answer. What fictional universe would you choose over our own? What if there was no coming back?

KP: I feel like it's got to be a common answer, but I have to say the Pokémon universe. Just let me have an Arcanine.

It’s indeed common, however not any less special. Arcanine being your favorite Pokémon is a new twist to the ever-growing Pokémon Iron Galaxy universe. Thanks for sharing some BTS of your responsibilities at IG and what it was like working as a Level Designer on THPS 3+4. You’ve revealed what it’s like to work at IG as a designer and developer. We all have that unique opportunity to wear different hats, continuously improve our skills, and ship a great game with an awesome team.