Matthias Worch is a level designer who worked at Legend Entertainment. He's currently employed at Epic Games and is heavily involved with the Unreal Engine 5.
Bio[]
Matthias started making games around the age of 8 for the Commodore 64 console. His father booked himself into a BASIC course, and he taught himself programming from the photocopied notes that his father brought home. A couple of years later, he graduated to 6502 Assembler. He graduated from High School in 1995, been deemed unfit for (in Germany mandatory) military service because of a broken knee, and enrolled at the University of Essen right after high school to study English and Biology in a teaching capacity. However, he eventually found out this wasn't his forte.[1]
His real passion, however, turned out to be the building of interactive 3D worlds, using the 3D Construction Kit on the Amiga to build his first 3D gameplay spaces, and later became a prominent level designer in the Doom[2] and Quake[3] modding communities, hanging out in the #quakeed and #level_design channels as "Langsuyar"[1][4], and creating the critically acclaimed mission packs Beyond Belief for the first Quake,[5][6][7], which he revisited in 2008.[8] In September 29, 2022, Beyond Belief was released as a free addon for the 2021 remastered edition of Quake.[4]
He mapped between Deathmatch sessions, where he also integrated the legendary clan Ocrana, which he nodded back in an easter egg located in the Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali level Glathriel Village (Part 2).[4]
As the Dallas gaming scene exploded in 1997, with companies like Ion Storm, Ritual and Rebel Boat Rocker popping up (Seattle would soon offer additional options through Valve, Monolith and Cavedog), he saw many of his IRC editing friends getting offered jobs as professional level designers. This, and the release of Beyond Belief, led him to the realization that he could have a career in level design.[4] So in 1998, he moved there in order to work as a designer at Ritual Entertainment[9] on the videogame SiN. Getting the job wasn't the worst part, as he was a natural fit, but the immigration problems were. After the game was completed, he left Ritual because he didn't liked the direction the company was following.[1]
He then moved on to Legend Entertainment, in order to work on games such as Wheel of Time[10], Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali and Unreal II: The Awakening. RTNP in particular lended him his first bonus check.[11] However, due to issues during development (especially with the TCA Atlantis intermission segments, which, according to him, felt disconnected from the rest of the game), he doesn't have particularly fond memories of the game. He left Legend shortly after the game was released, though scrapped material from his levels eventually made it into several XMP levels.[12]
Afterwards, he worked on several games such as Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3 – Rebel Strike[13] and Lair[14]; Visceral Games' Dead Space 2[15], 2K Games' Mafia III[16] and the cancelled Star Wars 1313[17] before being hired by Epic Games in order to work as a design lead on the special projects group. Aside of his work, he also gave speeches at the GDC[18] and International Game Developers Association. He also had a hand in The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience and the Virtual Production Tech project The Mandalorian.[4]
He resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Victoria, three kids, three hamsters, six triops, five tadpoles, three salamanders, one fish and one parakeet.[9][4]
Works[]
Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali[]
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Unreal II: The Awakening[]
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Semi-official:
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Unofficial[]
Trivia[]
- M. Worch, the pilot of UMS Chantilly that appears in Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali was named after him.
External links and references[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Worch, Matthias. "Sin". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias. "Doom Modding". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias. "Quake Modding". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Boyle, Joshua (Sep 29, 2022). "Nods to Mods Interview: Beyond Belief for Quake". Slayers Club. Retrieved Sep 29, 2022.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias (May 15, 1997). "Beyond Belief". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias (January 3, 2015). "Level Retrospective: Beyond Belief, Part 1". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias (January 4, 2015). "Level Retrospective: Beyond Belief, Part 2". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias (August 4, 2013). "Beyond Belief 2008". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Worch, Matthias. "About". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias. "The Wheel of Time". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias. "Return To NaPali". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias. "Unreal 2". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias. "Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3 – Rebel Strike". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias. "Lair". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias. "Dead Space 2". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias. "Mafia III". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias. "Star Wars 1313". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ "GDC Vault - Matthias Worch". Game Developers Conference. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
- ↑ Worch, Matthias (June 7, 2004). "Solaris Base". You Got Red On You. Retrieved April 19, 2019.