Pursuing a passion for gaming

Shortly after his first experience of gaming, a young Dario arrived at Bradfield but games, or even capable computers, weren’t something to which he had much access. He remembers only using BBC Micros with the green and black screens on which you could type a basic command like ‘Hello World’, hit execute, and it would print that line out. As an international pupil joining in the Shell, he admits it took him a year or so to really find his feet. “Everybody already knew each other. Residing in Sydney for four years meant I brought the Australian accent, so I felt like an outsider but, once I found my place, I had a really great time.”

He achieved this by getting involved in as much as he could, meeting new people through numerous sports including badminton, swimming, volleyball, tennis and weight-training in the gym, and bonding with his teachers and tutors in the Biology labs and Economics Department. “The more I participated, the more I felt the acceptance of my peers and that meant the world to me. I ended Bradfield at the Summer Ball thinking I didn’t want to leave. I had my friends and routines here, I had everything I liked here, and I was happy.”

Fostered throughout his Bradfield journey, his fondness for Economics led him to enrol for a business degree at the University of Oxford. It was here his passion for gaming came into focus, admittedly spending “way too much” of his downtime playing PC games. By the end of his course, he and his brother were already producing content for games that they would go on to sell professionally.

WE FOUND AN OUTLET FOR OUR PASSION, CURIOSITY AND IMAGINATION.

It began with Doom, one of the original first-person shooter games and one which enabled cooperative play through connected PCs. Dario and his younger brother could not get enough and were amazed by its potential. “We played it so much that the content got a bit stale. One day we picked up a magazine which had a level editor disk attached to it and suddenly we could make our own game. We found an outlet for our passion, curiosity and imagination and that was pivotal for us.”

The pair got an inclination they had the intrinsic qualities to succeed in game development once they started interacting with the wider gaming community via the wonders of higher-speed dial-up internet connectivity (remember that?!). “You don’t know how good your work is until you start comparing it with the work of others”, says Dario as he reflects on those early development days. “A lot of what we saw didn’t feel as polished or as detailed as our work and we got great feedback from the online community.”

Four months after graduating from university, he packed two suitcases and jetted off for another adventure in a new country, this time heading to America after landing a job at up-and-coming developer Valve. Over the next two decades he would work on some of the biggest game releases, starting with Half-Life in 1998 which arguably defined the first-person shooting genre, which sold tens of millions of copies worldwide and was the fastest selling game of its time.

The industry continues to push the boundaries of what is possible for living room gaming and Dario has continuously been at the forefront of that, most recently going full circle to work on Valve’s Virtual Reality return to the series with Half-Life: Alyx. VR is a revolutionary frontier and in over twenty years of testing games, the response to the new title is unlike anything Dario has ever seen. “The technology and the experience is incredible. People were having full-body emotional responses to this game. There were, and still are, a ton of challenges for the medium, but I think we showed that VR is a viable gaming platform.”

DON’T BE IN TOO MUCH OF A HURRY TO ACHIEVE SUCCESS.

Spending 26 years at the same company is a fine achievement in any industry. It’s quite clear from talking about his upbringing and his Bradfield experiences that Dario values being part of a family and achieving things as part of a collective. It is in this exact environment that he has thrived as a designer. “The non-hierarchical culture at Valve made the team feel like a family. We hired people who were at the absolute top of their game, creating an environment where peers were respectful of everybody’s abilities and would be inspired by each other’s work. Being equally responsible for the success of the product gave everyone on the team a sense of ownership and motivated them to do their absolute best.”

After an incredible career Dario has now retired, moved to Los Angeles and started building his dream home. Perhaps now is the perfect time to provide some sage career advice for the next generation of Bradfieldians heading out into the world. For Dario, it comes down to three key things: passion, pride and people.

“Ultimately you want to find something that doesn’t feel like work. Something you love doing which makes you stop and think ‘this feels exciting to me’. It’ll probably take a lot of work to succeed in what you’re doing, and the more you enjoy it, the less difficult it’ll be to motivate yourself to work that hard. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to achieve success. I have found it’s better to be driven by the work and take pride in creation rather than chasing the reward. Finally, surround yourself with smart people who are just as passionate and motivated as you are. That combination can change pursuing a passion into finding a really great career.”

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