Jonathan Burroughs

Name: Jonathan Burroughs

Job Title: Designer

Company: Headstrong Games

Projects
The House of the Dead: Overkill
Battalion Wars 2
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat

Why I Am A Game Industry Rockstar: I'm not a rockstar. Often work is tiring and I feel like my creativity goes unrealised and unappreciated. Sometimes its just a 9 to 5 in an office with broken air conditioning and a surly security guard.

But most of the time, the vast majority of the time I'm utterly fulfilled doing a job where expending effort is a delight and working hard feels like time well invested. Where I am surrounded with like-minded people who share a common background with whom I can discuss subjects that matter to us equally. Where the product of my efforts is as fun to forge as, ideally, it is to use by those who sit down and play it when its finished. And if it isn't and they're unsatisfied then I'll damn well do a better job next time.

And it pays the bills.

One Thing You Don't Know About My Game: Some months ago I came into the possession of a large African sculpture, left to a colleague by a friend and former coworker before they departed to join another developer. Taking a fancy to horrifying depiction of an elephant being mauled to death by four, crudely carved lions in wood I stole it for myself and ever since it has been the centrepiece of my desk at work. When times are tough, workloads heavy and the evenings grow long I look into that elephant's cold, inanimate eyes - a snapshot of the cruel, mortal inevitable - and take a pause for thought. And then I stick Post-it notes to it; mostly work-related.