Each week on Show Us Your Rig, we feature the PC game industry's best and brightest as they show us the systems they use to work and play.
David Rosen—founder of Wolfire Games which, in turn, created the Humble Bundle—clearly knows what he likes. He works from three different locations; one in the Double Fine offices, one in the Humble Bundle offices, and one at home, but they all have matching mice, keyboards, mouse pads, and chairs. He's also an incredibly smart guy, as evidenced by a talk he gave at GDC earlier this year about the procedural animation in his latest game, Overgrowth. David was kind enough to take some time and show us not one, but all three of his rigs.
What's in your PC?
I actually have three different setups! All of them include:
- Razer Goliathus 2014 Extended CONTROL Soft Gaming Mouse Mat
- Logitech G500 mouse
- Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000
- Ergotron LX Desk Mount LCD Arm, Tall Pole
- Steelcase Leap chair
- F.lux
My setup at Double Fine has:
- Free GB-BXi7-4770R Brix Pro from Steam Dev Days
- ViewSonic Monitor VX2252MH 22-Inch LED-Lit LCD Monitor
At Humble Bundle I use:
- Dell U2713HM-IPS-LED CVN85 27-Inch Screen LED-lit Monitor
- A mechanized sit/stand desk, not sure what model
A "CyberPower" PC from 2011:
- Intel Core i7 X980 @ 3.33 GHz
- 12 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
- 128 GB SSD C300-CTF DDAC MAG SCSI
- 2 TB HD WDC WD20 02FAEX-007BA0 SCSI
A 15" Macbook Pro from 2011:
- Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB
- 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
- 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
At home I have:
- 15" Macbook Pro from 2006
- GeekDesk Max sit/stand desk
- Sennheiser PC 360 Headset for Pro Gaming
- Heated pad for feet when it's cold
A CyberPower PC from 2013:
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB 16X PCIe 3.0 Video Card
- 16GB (4GBx4) DDR3/1600MHz Quad Channel Memory
- 250 SSD GB SAMSUNG 840 Series SATA-III 6.0Gb/s - 540MB/s Read & 250MB/s
- 2TB HD (2TBx1) Western Digital Caviar Black SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM
- Intel(R) Core™ i7-3930K Six-Core 3.20 GHz 12MB Intel Smart Cache LGA2011
- Dell U2713HM-IPS-LED CVN85 27-Inch Screen LED-lit Monitor
Travel:
- Microsoft surface pro 2
What's the most interesting/unique part of your setup?
Probably that I have three of them! I have a home office, and guest desks at Humble Bundle and Double Fine. I work from home on off hours or when I need quiet (like for recording video narration), work from Humble Bundle when I want to hang out with old friends, and work from Double Fine when I want to be near other game developers.
I also budget an equal amount for ergonomics as I do for computer hardware itself, with adjustable chairs, flexible monitor stands, and sit/stand desks. Usually the bottleneck in development is myself more than my computer hardware, so I have to make sure it's comfortable to use for many hours at a time, especially when doing seven-day game jams.
What's always within arm's reach on your desk?
I always have a water bottle, a notebook, and a pen. Sometimes problems are easier to solve on pen and paper than any other way! At Humble I usually go out to get bubble tea with my brother or other friends, so that is usually on my desk in the afternoon. I also always have headphones handy so I can listen to music in the background: often game soundtracks, predictably, but sometimes the different 'mood' playlists on Spotify.
What are you playing right now?
Right now I am playing a whole bunch of different games to help contribute to the first stage of IGF judging, and I also try to play most major releases to stay up to date on what other developers are doing. Most recently, I've been playing Far Cry 4, Walking Dead Season 2, This War of Mine, and Nuclear Throne. The games I keep coming back to are usually the ones I use as excuses to hang out with friends, in person or online. I'm looking forward to my Wii U delivery so I can practice for the Humble Smash Bros tournament!
What's your favorite game and why?
I could go a lot of different ways with this question, from which games were formative to my understanding of the medium, to which ones were most effective at achieving their goals. I keep coming back to Marathon though, Bungie's second FPS game (after Pathways). It still holds up today as a fun game with a solid story, and holds up historically as an underappreciated leap forward in the genre. It was the first FPS with a significant storyline with interacting characters, the first that allowed the player to look up and down, the first with guns with secondary fire, the first with reloading magazines, the first with rocket jumping, and so many other innovations. It had deep modding potential, especially after they released official tools for the sequels, and that was a big part of my introduction to 3D level design.
