Edward Dutton interviews computer game designer Lee Walton

In Oulu since September 2006, the computer game designer found his Oulu love a couple of years ago when he was working for the computer game company Electronic Arts. ‘We met in a pub in Guildford,’ he says. ‘Grr! I wish I could remember the name. Oh! What was it?’
His Finnish girlfriend was in the UK training to be an English teacher and for ‘a couple of years’ they found themselves in a long distance relationship: ‘A lot of MSN, Skype, phoning . . .’ while his future wife finished her English degree. They finally got married just over a month ago ‘in the Dominican Republic!’ he smiles. ‘We wanted to get married on neutral turf!’ Lee is English, originally from Northampton.

Designing Computer Cars

Before he met his wife, Lee worked in England designing cars for computer games . . . though it wasn’t always meant to be this way.
‘I did a degree in car design but there weren’t that many jobs in car design so I registered with an agency and there was a games company that needed someone to do the 3D modelling of cars . . .’
This was ‘great’ because ‘I could actually design my own cars for these cars for these games . . . which is what I wanted to do all along!’
Lee was involved in the games Burnout Revenge and Total Emersion Racing (for the Playstation and Xbox) amongst others. He tells me all about the computer game industry. Apparently, it’s ‘a bit like the film industry’ and involves people ‘pitching ideas for games to companies.’
In Oulu, Lee is working for Farmind on Kirkkokatu as their ‘Art Director.’ At 31, Lee tells me he is older and more experienced in the business than everybody else at the company!
Turning up in Oulu unemployed, he got his job entirely through ‘talking to companies.’ A year before he came to Oulu he was looking into work and was offered a job designing computer games in Helsinki ‘but I really liked Oulu’ he insisted.

‘Unbelievably Friendly’

He contacted people by email – which he found got a lot of responses – and finally he was put in touch with the CEO of the small and expanding Oulu company by someone in Helsinki, ‘who was basically his rival’ says Lee, still amazed.
‘People seem so friendly here,’ he says of working in Oulu. He got work via email which Lee exclaims is ‘staggering! So unbelievably friendly.’
Apparently computer game design in the UK is a far more cut and thrust world with people head hunting other game designers and conniving to avoid paying commission fees to the agency that finds the designers by lying and saying you didn’t go to the interview they set up when you did.
‘I don’t miss that. I’m an honest guy and there’s a kind of ruthless, screw the other guy over attitude in this industry in Britain.’

‘Modest but Honest Society’

In Finland, by contrast, Lee insists that, ‘I don’t think you’ll get a more honest businessman than a Finnish businessman.’ Even Finnish CVs involve playing down what you’ve done, says Lee, in contrast to British CVs where you ‘big yourself up’ to the extent that Finns might think ‘you’re an arrogant idiot. It’s an interesting difference,’ he says. ‘They’re a modest but honest society.’ In general Lee has found it far more laid back in Oulu but oddly, ‘only a little bit less work gets done.’
‘It’s difficult to get used to going home at weekends!’ Lee tells me. ‘When I worked for Electronic Arts it was 7 days a week, or at least 6 and I’d be there until 9pm.’
It’s been difficult to get used to ‘everyone just leaving at 5’ says Lee. Also ‘the language is completely impossible’ Lee admits. He’s found some Finnish rules fairly strange such as a ‘nasty experience’ when he was almost killed when a car knocked him off his bike and there was some debate over whether charges would be pressed against him.
‘I assumed that if he hit me then he’s in wrong’ Lee continued to protest. And even in the world of Finnish game design you have to be careful. Lee cannot talk to me about future products – in case the ideas are stolen – and to even go into certain parts of the office I’d have to sign a ‘non-disclosure’ form.
Lee’s advice to expats seems clichéd but it’s certainly worked for him. ‘Get to know people’ he says. It works brilliantly here . . . better than anywhere else. Everybody just seems to know everybody else. With my boss, he was recommended to me by the head of a rival company and I’d never even met him. It was all done via email.’
The biggest challenge that Lee has found here ‘other than the language’ has been ‘communication.’ He finds that Finns tend to ‘keep quiet’ and not tell him if there’s a problem but at the same time he has found them to be ‘blunt in a good way.’

‘Sausages’

Lee’s company mainly designs for the Nintendo DS and he shows me a Poker game which they made which has just come out. Some people at Farmind even designed their own game called Puzzlescape and Lee tells me about how, when he was a kid, he was more into Sega than Nintendo and regretted never managing to complete Alex the Kid in Miracle World, its trademark game before Sonic the Hedgehog.
He’s enjoying Oulu and there’s not that much he misses about the UK. ‘Sausages . . . seriously!’ he realises. ‘They’re just not the same here!’ Also, ‘Cheddar cheese . . . and pub meals. Here pubs are just about alcohol!’
One of funniest things that’s happened to Lee in Finland was getting a long distance train and being quizzed in detail all the time by a middle-aged Finnish man on the English language. He found this ‘very friendly’ but wanted to say, ‘I don’t know. I’m not an expert. I’m just someone that speaks English.’
As I leave, Lee’s frustrated that he still can’t remember the name of the pub that ultimately found him his wife and brought him to Oulu. But he emails not long afterwards.
‘The name of the pub just popped back into my head! The Keystone in Guildford! I even proposed to my wife in The Keystone, six months after we met there!’