by Cali Girl

Westwood Studios
On Friday November 5th at 9:30am PST, we all met at the front entrance of the Luxor hotel to be picked by a Limo. While we were driving up to the front entrance of Westwood Studios, I started feeling like it was a dream. I believe it was because of the thought of visiting the developers of my first favorite multiplayer game of all time that I played a great deal of hours on Mplayer.com with, Command & Conquer.

At the door, we were greeted by Public Relations Director, Aaron Cohen. As we walked inside, Public Relations Coordinator, Chris Rubyor came around the corner to greet us too. It was so nice to see them all again. I also had the chance to finally meet receptionist, Judy Matteson. Judy has always been so nice when I would call for Aaron and Chris in the past.

Westwood also had a huge display of glass trophies and other type of awards received by Westwood Studios.

Adam Isgreen
Our first stop was to meet Adam Isgreen. Adam was the lead designer on Red Alert and became the lead on Tiberian Sun after Erik Yeo left. He originally started working at Westwood Studios a bit after the original Command & Conquer was released. His current project is the C&C Tiberian Sun: Firestorm Expansion.

Joe Kucan & Kurt Vordahl
Aaron walked us across to another Westwood Studios building right next to the main one. The building had a huge cinematic filming studio in it, with even more offices.

We were greeted by Joe Kucan. Joe is the actor known as the ruthless Kane Character in the original C&C game as well as the Tiberian Sun movies in games and cutscenes. Joe talked to us about what it takes to make a movie for all of the Westwood Games. I had the chance to see the early development of the Firestorm Expansion movie. It was very entertaining, I really want to see what happens in the next Tiberian Sun series.

Joe Kucan is a very nice guy with a really cool personality and has a way of talking about things that makes you have an automatic smile on your face. By getting to know Joe in person, it seemed like he was the exact opposite of his Kain Character in the C&C Series which showed me how talented he really is as an actor.

What truly amazed me on meeting Joe Kucan in person is, I found out that he was also the Film Director for Westwood Studios' games. I had always just pictured him as the man behind Kain's evil character in the games.

Kurt Vordahl, Film Editor of Westwood Studios is another person I met. Kurt edits and fine tunes the movies. It was awesome to meet such cool guys who put their mind and heart into the development of the movies and cutscenes in games that I have always enjoyed watching in many of Westwood's games.

Frank Klepacki
I am a fan of most of the music found in the Command and Conquer games, so meeting Frank Klepacki was truly an honor. I didn't know Frank was also the guy who created music for many other game titles such as; Dune II, Dune 2000, Bladerunner, Lands of Lore, Lion King, Young Merlin and Monopoly. Frank played us a live and wild tune while we there, then he let us listen to some of the music he is currently working on for Westwood; Nox, Renegade and Firestorm.

The two tunes from Nox I recall were irresistible. One had a nice cheerful tune which gave a nice warm feeling, yet it also had a moody sound to it. Frank mentioned that it may be the opening theme for Nox. The next tune I remember was the Warrior theme which glowed with action, something similar to the Lone Ranger. I could actually see a warrior running and attacking someone as if I was listening to the music while I was watching a movie.

When Frank played the Renegade and Firestorm music, I felt I could sit there all day. The music made me feel right at home. All I needed to do is get in a game of C&C. While I listened in on the music, the first thing that came to mind was how extremely talented Frank is. How can he conceive such creative music for just about any type of game? It really is vital when it comes to games such as Command and Conquer. I have always enjoyed the way it felt when I played the original C&C game, the music would totally set the right mood.

Aaron mentioned to all of us that Frank is also the Commando's voice in the original C&C. I used to love the way that guy would say, "I've got a present for ya!"  Although, the only time I didn't enjoy hearing that voice was when he would attack my base and I would see one of my structures demolished. Especially if he was attacking my Construction Yard! Now that's when I would feel all hope was lost to win that game.

John, Paul & Virtual Ted
While we were finishing up, I saw John Hight poke his head in through the door. It was a pleasure to see him again. Another person talking to him outside Frank's room was Paul Mudra, who does all the sound effects.

As we were getting ready to walk back to the main Westwood Studios building, Aaron pointed at Theodore 'Virtual Ted' Morris' office. He was sitting there working at his desk. I noticed a really nice fish aquarium with some cute fish swimming around.

After taking a picture of Virtual Ted, John Hight pestered me on how I was to make sure Ted stayed Virtual. John is such sneaky Joker. In fact, I always have to scan his whole face to see if he is joking or not. :)  I realized later that I met Virtual Ted last May at E3. He was the one who showed Tiberian Sun to me before it was released. I just never put his nick name and original name together this whole time that I have been talking to him through email.

Las Vegas Weather
As we walked back to the main building, the Weather outside seemed to be so much more different than I expected. All my life I have always thought Las Vegas, Nevada was a city of air conditioning. I thought no one could even walk outdoors because the city is practically in the middle of the desert. It actually felt like a nice summer day in my hometown in California. I mentioned something about it to Aaron, he replied with, "Actually, just about three months out of the year is when we have really hot weather, but when people have air conditioning it's really not a bad place to live."

Break Time?
We all grabbed drink in the Westwood Studios Breakroom. In this room there are computers, one side has soda and food vending machines, another side has a nice big glass window and then a walkway to get to the kitchen. The kitchen was occupied the whole 5 minutes we were in there. Many employees were walking in and out getting their drinks, cooking food and other related things.

Testing Lab
The Testing Lab room was packed with all kinds of computers, each had different settings or hardware to test Westwood's games. The first thing I heard when I entered the room was some hard rock music blasting. It felt like there was a party going on but most of them wouldn't even look up because they were all working away on a specific project.

Aaron and Chris mentioned that the Testing Lab is usually where many Westwood employees start off. I guess it would be like how the grocery stores start most of their employees, first a bagger, then you go up from there as you work your way up for different positions you're qualified for. Only, from my own experience in beta testing, it is a lot more fun. The Beta Tester has less physical labor, more mind knowledge at finding bugs then reporting bugs and/or other problems along with knowing the strategies in the game.

A really cool thing I noticed in the Beta Testing Lab was 6 banners hanging above. Each of them had a symbol, the two I noticed right off was GDI and Nod, the other banners were from C&C Red Alert.

Many gaming Companies let outsiders beta test their games. Westwood would rather keep beta testing at home base for many reason and I can understand why. For instance, it can really hurt a game in the early stages of development from hackers along with other related issues.

Chris' Background
As we were walking towards David Yee's office, Chris Rubyor mentioned that he originally started six (6) years ago with Westwood Studios as a Beta Tester. In February of 1994, he began working in the test deptarment. The first game he tested was Kyrandia Book II: The Hand of fate. Chris moved into the Public Relations department January 1997, his last major game tested was C&C: Red Alert.

David Yee & Renegade ->