The Only Thing That Matters

The Natural

Just a few blocks from F5 Labs in the Pioneer Square District stands an old brick building that looks remarkably like an artist's loft turned into a silicon sweatshop. A hundred years or so ago, the building was the State Hotel (the neon sign outside still reads "Rooms 75c"). Now the three long, narrow floors of the old hotel have been turned into the headquarters of Zombie Virtual Reality Entertainment, a CD-ROM gaming company that has done work for MTV and produced a number of hits such as Zero Population Control, Ice & Fire, and Locus -- two ingenious variations of "first-person shooter" games and an intergalactic hockey-like game.

Cofounded in 1994 by Mark Long and Joanna Alexander, Zombie is 50% female and more than 50% artist, with a workforce that gives the company the look of an independent film operation or a graphic-arts production house: young, hip, playful, wasted.

In a corner next to a large window sits Sandra Smith. Small and slender with auburn-tinted hair, a light dusting of freckles, arresting blue eyes set off with black eyeliner, and a thin silver ring in her nose, she looks more like an art student than an engineer. In fact, the wall behind her attests to her training: hanging there are several pictures, postcards, and little posters of artwork, along with a bouquet of dried red roses and a poster announcing an artistic installation of hers, entitled "Mall Me!" -- a mixed-media installation that is part of the Center on Contemporary Art's "Nirvana: Capitalism and the Consumed Image" show.

Smith's journey from art student to game producer may be unlikely -- or it may be inevitable. She's a classic example of a talented and bright young worker attracted by degrees into a job and an industry that she never even knew existed when she was in college. It's only after she arrives at the destination she never was headed for that it becomes immediately and obviously apparent that it's a natural fit.

After graduating from the University of Delaware with her art degree in 1990, she found herself full of ambition and dreams, and stuck in an East Coast job market that seemed to lack both imagination and opportunity. So she did the only thing you can do these days: she headed west.

A year later, she looked around her and saw that she was still full of ambition -- and she was still nowhere. This time, nowhere was called Albuquerque -- an economically depressed place that was a desert in more ways than one. "It was beautiful," Smith says, "but it was depressing. I had a pretty good college education and couldn't find a job to save my life." So she and some friends moved to Seattle, where a group of friends -- including fellow UD alum Mike Almquist -- had moved two years before. "We'd never been there before," she recalls, "we'd just heard about it." Within a matter of weeks Smith found a job as the assistant director of the Center on Contemporary Art (COCA), a nonprofit arts group known for its experimental exhibits. She was soon buried alive in work, raising money, doing budgets, curating shows.

"I was just super-stressed out," she says. "With nonprofits you're always trying to get money, and even after you get the money, it seems like you never have enough." Besides, there really wasn't anywhere to go at COCA. But two friends from COCA had previously gravitated to Zombie. Both had taken the office manager job there, then moved into producer roles within a matter of weeks. "I saw how quickly my friends moved on at Zombie," Smith says. "I knew I had the skills to do what they were doing, so I saw it as an incredible opportunity."

Smith worked as Zombie's office manager for a few months before she was dispatched to Moscow to assist with the art direction of Ice & Fire, a game composed by two Russian developers who'd invented Tetris. Now Smith's producing a new game, Special Operations. Based on U.S. Army Ranger tactics and training, it features a realistic, cinematic series of Ranger missions with three-dimensional characters moving in real time through breathtaking landscapes. Smith oversees the work of four programmers and six artists, reports to the title's publisher and underwriter, BMG Interactive, and deals with people and situations she never imagined she'd encounter.

Like her boss. Zombie cofounder Mark Long is a former Army Ranger who keeps his head shaved, wears tight black T-shirts that are stretched to the limit by bulging biceps -- one of which is encircled by a tattooed crown of thorns -- and has a taste for high production values and clever presentations of gore. "We've already got some cool artwork in this title," Smith says, pulling up an image on her terminal. "Like this blown-off face. It's just really disgusting."

Long's style of management involves peering over his peoples' shoulders, offering a nonstop series of opinions. In a meeting with Smith and her team one day, he suggests that Special Operations players be allowed the point of view of only one member in the team of Rangers taking part in the battle.