John Whitmore, VP, Studio Design Director

What’s it like working on medical video games?

I worked on console games for over fifteen years and mobile games for another ten years. When I first started, there was this sense that everything you did was something no one had ever done before. We didn't have middleware back then; there was no Unreal or Unity. Everything you did, you were cooking yourself. That's the situation we are in medical games right now. It's brand new every day.

Jennifer Chu, Associate Producer

What do you enjoy most about working at Level Ex?

At other game studios you tend to work with the same types of consoles and hardware every single time. With Level Ex you're constantly working with the latest and greatest technology that's available. This includes augmented reality/mixed reality, and the latest portable devices. It really presents a challenge.

Ray McCaffrey, Executive Producer

What does it take to succeed at Level Ex?

One of the qualities that's absolutely necessary to work here is having a deep intellectual curiosity.

Andy Saia, Tech Director

What’s one of your favorite memories of Level Ex?

There are so many things that I've gotten to do at Level Ex that I would've never gotten to do at a different company. We went to Northwestern Hospital where doctors showed us how to do procedures on mannequins. I went to Germany and looked at brain scanning technology and different devices representing the state of the art in brain surgery. Or, getting to work on grants like the NASA proposal—I never thought I'd be working on something for NASA in my entire life.

Jacob Mooney, Technical Designer

How does Level Ex demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion?

Level Ex is the first company that I’ve worked at where I have not only heard that the company cares a lot about diversity, but I’ve seen it. From what we do during Pride, to the kinds of questions that we prioritize in the hiring process, to just how comfortable I can see people of color and of other minorities being at this studio—I can know that people feel safe here.

Ray McCaffrey, Executive Producer

What’s one of your funniest memories of Level Ex?

We needed some help on a project and were short on designers, so the medical team was like, “Give us Unity and show us how to input the data that you guys need.” And sure enough, two days later, a bunch of MDs and biomedical engineers were chugging away in Unity helping to build prototypes. That was one of the more hysterical things I’ve come across.

Elsa Varghese, Manager, Medical Team

What’s it like collaborating with the game development team?

Working with game designers and looking into the psychology of what makes a great game—then working with developers and finding out how they actually implement what I'm talking about or what I envision that our physician experts would like—that's incredible.

Victoria Perizes, Biomedical Solutions Specialist

What unique problems do you encounter working on medical video games?

Here you have to think, “What does it look like if you APC [use Argon Plasma Coagulation on] the tissue for too long? Or at what point does the person die because you APC there for too long?” You usually think about it from the patient safety perspective. You wouldn't even think about the issues of doing something too long, as it is just too dangerous. So the interesting challenge in interfacing with a software engineer is to recreate that in our games—to take that idea and translate it in a sensitive way.

Dan LaDuca, Lead 3D Artist

How does Level Ex support you?

We push the boundaries of software, of the intellectual side of what we do in gaming, and what's really cool is that they support you as an individual. If you want to work on your own projects at home, they want you to do that. They want that personal growth. There are other places that ask you not to work on personal projects. This place is so much different: they want you to be happy because they know that a happy worker produces way more than someone who's miserable. This is why the crunch culture isn't here. You are a person and not a number.