The Midnight Society continues to expand! Today, we welcome Darren Bacon to Midnight Society’s leadership team as our Studio Art Director. You’ve seen his incredible design work most recently in Halo: Infinite and Destiny, and prior to that in Electronic Art’s classic Command and Conquer.
As part of our rigorous Clearance Protocol, we sat down with Darren to find out how he ended up in the Midnight Society:
Where did your game development career begin?
I have a background in Automotive Design which led to my first internship at Zombie Studios and kick-started a long career that would take me on a concept art journey in gaming and film. My first paid game dev job out of college was for Electronic Arts, creating art for Command and Conquer.
When did you move into the PVP Shooter space?
Halo: CE had a big impact on me, so I tried for a long time to get a job at Bungie. To give you an idea of how long I’d been bugging them, I finally got an interview around 2011 and the resume they had on file was from, like, 2005. It finally worked out.
I landed my dream job right around when pre-production began on Destiny. Later, I joined 343 to lead concept art for the franchise that started it all — Halo, My automotive design training came in handy – I got to create vehicles like the Razorback. We shipped Halo 5: Guardians and after working on Campaign, I transitioned to art director for Halo: Infinite multiplayer.
What pulled you into the Midnight Society?
The Day One Community development style is really interesting — to build a game with the community is fascinating and forward thinking.
So much of the time, being a AAA game studio in the past was about making a game with a singular vision holder or team who prints it to a disk and ships it to consumers. It’s either a success or it’s not.
I think transitioning to an open development cycle where you build a game with the community will be really neat. You could prototype an equipment piece and put it in the hands of players before you invest a ton of resources into it.
I’m also excited to work in Unreal Engine 5 and collaborate with a passionate team and community.
I’ve heard Dr Disrespect talk on stream many times about his frustrations with the content that comes out of AAA game studios, and he’s like, “okay let’s do it ourselves.” I don’t think anyone else could do it but him.
No argument there. We can’t wait to see what incredible visions Darren comes up with! In the meantime, you can see his breathtaking art on Instagram and follow him on Twitter.
Welcome, Darren!