Dragon's Gold: The Magic of Mindset

Power Leveling Your Career: Patrick Fram on Finding Allies and Breaking the Industry Gate

• Justin Mills • Season 1 • Episode 48

Share episode

What happens when you pour five years into building a successful team and product, only to have the entire studio shut down due to forces beyond your control?

Game designer Patrick Fram (known for X-Defiant and The Division 2) faced this exact "darkest hour," forcing him to reckon with the "golden handcuffs" of a stable role. 

Patrick shares his journey from a young enthusiast who had ideas for games but didn't know where to begin to mastering the highly competitive game creation industry. 

He discusses how he leveraged allies to "power level" his career, fought deep imposter syndrome in AAA environments, and ultimately found creative liberation by founding his own studio, Quintessence Games. 

This episode is an essential guide for any strategist looking to turn a major career setback into their next ultimate quest.

Key Takeaways (Bulleted):

• Why Patrick’s friend gave him the biggest piece of advice: "other humans have already figured out how to do it. So there's no reason we can't".

• The strategic necessity of doing tertiary work and creating relationships to get your foot in the door of a highly competitive industry.

• How overcoming deep imposter syndrome leads to newfound confidence and the ability to mentor younger developers.

• Patrick's wisdom on why a massive studio breakup actually provides the opportunity to form new, stronger alliances across the industry.

• The ultimate legacy: realizing that anyone can learn any skill with discipline and study—you don't have to be a "super genius".

Tools & Weapons:

• Click and Play: Visual software that taught programming logic and mechanics before jumping into code.

• AI Tools: Augment skills, help with syntax, and create self-tutorials to speed up the process.

• Fellowship/Allies: Seek friends and mentors who can help "power level" your skills and knowledge.

• Mindset Shift: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome by validating your skills in high-caliber, real-world projects.

• Discipline & Study: The path to mastering any skill you desire, regardless of natural aptitude.

Send us a text

About Gold Dragon Investments:

At Gold Dragon Investments, our mission is to bring joy to others by helping them win the game of investing. Helping every client become the hero of their financial journey. We believe that wealth is a tool, but joy is the ultimate outcome.

Through meaningful partnerships, we strive to empower our investors to create freedom, and build lasting legacies of purpose, fulfillment, and wealth.

Join Us on the Adventure:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome once again to another episode of Dragon's Gold, the magic of mindset. Today we have the pleasure of having Patrick Fram, a multi-disciplinary game creator, facilitating and working in games like X-Defiant, Whole. The Division 2, Boom Blastica, Mecha Mecha Panic, and other games, a myriad of others. Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the show, Patrick. Oh, absolutely. It's a pleasure to have you, my friend. So, well, as I like to do, let's dive right in. What's the origin story? Where did it all begin for Patrick? Um, I mean, it probably is a common origin story, but as an 80s kid, like, you know, I was just, I fell in love with video games at first glance. Like my dad was a, my dad was a sort of a computer guy and also a gamer himself. He was big into board games, big into chess. And he brought home a Commodore 64 one day, which, know, with some games on it. And I was just blown away. I was hooked. Like that was just like magic to me. Because I was already, you know, super interested in just games just like having a good time and stuff like that and video games sort of brought that to a level that I'd never seen before and so that's sort of that's sort of what struck the core with me was honestly like so simple games for the Converse 64 for MS-DOS for the Atari for NES all that stuff even like the Mrs. Pac-Man machine at the the putt-putt course all those things were just like Isaac I I wanted I want to make this I want to I want to do this myself I want to play as many games I can and I want to figure out how to make them And so. m that Patrick, you just took me down memory lane with that. That was incredible. knowing that you have this excitement, this drive, this passion, how did you then focus that and start turning it into a career? So I guess it never honestly dawned on me that it could be a career first. Like I just sort of wanted to do it on my own. And so I was just, I made it my goal to sort of learn every aspect, every skill that it takes to make a game. So, you know, that means like, you know, drawing the art, mean, like designing it, it means like learning the programming, even writing the music, uh everything. Basically I just wanted to be able to make the, make myself. And so as a little kid, I had all these, uh these game design documents that I had of ideas for games. was like, I'll make this someday when I learn how to program. And I was just trying to learn all the different parts, get everything ready and prepared for it. And my good friend Kenny, like I would bounce these ideas off of him and he just said one day, like, why don't we just try to make one? And I was just like, I don't even know where to begin, man. Like, I can't do that. That's for later, Patrick, to figure out. And he said something that's the biggest piece of advice in my life, which is that, he's like, well, other humans have already figured out how to do it. So there's no reason we can't. And I was just kind of like, I guess you're right, man. Let's just do it. Let's figure it out. And so it was definitely with his help that he kind of got me past some of the technical hurdles and we figured out how to. Yeah, how to actually get some games made and they were real simple and really amateur, but it sort of, you know, that started it and I've just sort of never, never stopped since man. I love that so much, Patrick. I think of that boulder rolling down the mountain, right? And gaining momentum and acquiring, getting bigger. The thought about having friends, the fellowship we call it, the allies, the mentors, the people that come along the way, hearing about your friend being able to give you that level of inspiration, helping you to overcome or to open that door and then to be able to walk through it with you, incredible. Along the way, that fellowship, who else might you cite on your fellowship? I definitely would, the first thing that comes to mind is my physics professor in high school, and also he was the, he led the high school web team, Thomas Ramsey. He was, he must've seen something in me because he let me be part of the web team. And even though I never really produced hardly anything for the high school website, I was mostly just screwing around learning to animate and learning to make games. You know, I would spend two periods there every day. just sort of practicing, getting better at it. And I learned more from that, just being able to experiment and have access to the technology than I did in any of my other classes. That probably helped more than anything. And so, yeah, I definitely want to put a shout out to him because he definitely helped me develop all those skills early before I was even really in college for it. And then uh another name that jumps out is a good friend of mine, my college roommate, Harrison Pink. He actually went to school for game design. And so, when we kind of were out of school and trying to get jobs together, he sort of had all the information that I was missing on what I needed to do, you know, to sort of get into the game developing, game creating, you know, space, how to network it, how to, you know, yeah, get my foot in the door. And so he has helped a lot over the years for that sort of thing. Patrick, I think those two sightings are so powerful. One, in that teacher allowing you that freedom to explore, seeing in you something that you had a fire and excitement and passion, and then he helped you, in this case, just by allowing you to be a part of it, right? And just by opening that door and letting you walk through, but you had to walk through and you had to keep applying yourself. You had to keep learning. But that fire keeps the excitement there. Hearing too about the idea of taking the knowledge and sharing that information, knowing your friend had gone through these courses of the level design and then being able to leverage his information, his knowledge through your friendship, through the power of your relationship, without even having to attend those classes, asking very specific questions that you needed answered for your game generation, being able to have that level of support, I think is just another reminder of how we don't go this journey alone. Even when we're the ones that have to take that step and push forward, it's oftentimes the people that are next to us along the way that help us in that journey. And I just think that that was such a powerful reminder of that. Absolutely. Well, it's never, it's never easy. And along the road, we run the gauntlet, these trials and tribulations, things that come up along the way that make the road bumpy. What are some of the trials and tribulations you've had to overcome in your journey? think the hardest one for any game designer is just actually getting your first job at game design. It's so hard to break into the industry. All the postings say they want five years of experience or they want, let's you've already been doing this for a while. And so it's very hard for you to break in and convince somebody, yeah, I haven't done it at all yet. Let me get in when we try. And so that was definitely hard. I came at it sort of sideways because uh I went to school for animation. And so I started doing animation specifically for video games. I would kind of focus on video game projects and was doing the animation for them. And that sort of evolved into me started taking down some of the programming tasks, eventually like doing development. And then, after doing that for long enough, then I had enough credits with my name on it that they started to let me do game design. And so it definitely was tough to do. There was a lot of... doing stuff that wasn't quite game designing, know, in anticipation that eventually this will lead to doing it. And so, yeah. but Patrick, that piece is exactly what people need to know here and recognize. It's that constant forward motion. It's oftentimes doing things that are tertiary, not exactly what you want, but in the field that you want, right? Getting in the right rooms, being next to the right people, making sure you make the right relationships, right? Because oftentimes once you get, just as you said, it's so hard to get in. Oftentimes the people that are able to walk through that door. Yes, your skills speaks volumes and you need that. And that will oftentimes keep you there. However, getting that door opened very commonly comes from knowing somebody, right? Having that relationship or at least, and even if that just means getting to the interview table, just being able to get into have that conversation to try and sell yourself, right? Um, and your skills and your quality. So I just think that, that, ah I think you're just dropping a lot of gold here, brother. That's what I think. So Patrick, while that road is bumpy, there oftentimes is a moment, perhaps we would call it the darkest hour, perhaps one moment in particular in your life, whether personal or professional, that was incredibly hard to overcome and perhaps you thought you weren't going to, but you did, or perhaps you are. And the question I have for you is what that might be and how have you overcome it? Yeah, I think it's the latter. I think it's one that I'm still working to overcome, honestly. So this last year has been a bad year for games. There's so many unemployed game developers right now, probably more than ever since the 2008 financial crash. My studio was one of those that got the ax. Ubisoft San Francisco was one of several Ubisoft studios that shut down. And we uh were in the middle of a successful game. We had an amazing team. it was, we sort of lost it all. Like the game's been uh shelved and the studio's been dispersed and everyone's sort of, you know, looking for their next role and stuff like that. And so, yeah, that was such a blow because we had, I'd spent, I guess it'd be like five years putting that team together and building that product. And so to have it all sort of just unceremoniously ended was definitely probably the hardest because it wasn't... uh It wasn't even like we didn't do a good job. was just forces that were beyond our control that sort of uh put an end to it. how I chose to recover from that is that to some degree, working in a big studio like that was a little bit of a golden handcuffs on me in that I would just, I never had time to work on my own stuff. I never had time to get involved in smaller projects. And it was, there was never a better opportunity for me to jump to. So I was just kind of stuck there at that studio, not in a bad way, but there was. nothing else could really uh draw my attention away from it. So having the free time uh and the freedom to explore things, I've chosen to dive into all those projects that I wish that I had developed on my own and starting teams with other developers and working on small projects and just doing all those dream projects that I wouldn't have ever found the time for otherwise. I love that. And it sounds crazy to say, but I do love that in the sense that you did everything right. You built the team over five years. You were producing a great game, something that you were proud to bring to market and that everyone was there with skill producing. And as you say, forces beyond your control, things you can never cause is the hammer blow to come and shatter this team to split apart all the pieces that have come together forcing you then. to have to make a choice because that you would use sort of golden handcuffs, like that opportunity, the existing opportunity that you were uh working with was one that you didn't want to deviate from. Being forced into that while incredibly uncomfortable, especially when outside your control, can oftentimes have a massive silver lining, right? The opportunity that you now can bring to like the dreams and things that you've wanted to, that you now have. a uh plethora of connections that you've created in the space because of the people that you've met in the relationships that you've made. And also recognizing that you know some key talent that may also now need some work. And so perhaps they have some free time and it's an opportunity that you can then make some new alliances, right? Form some new teams and create something that no one ever anticipated. Totally, it's something I say whenever a friend or a colleague or a fiance is upset about someone departing the team or when a team gets broken up. That's kind what I always tell them. like, think about this way. Now you have a whole bunch of people who know what you're capable of that now work at different companies. And so now you have allies all over the place instead of all in one basket. Hmm. So powerful. And I love it. It resonates and I'm fairly certain I'm going to make a clip of that, Patrick. Just there's actually a lot in this I've already considered making like that's going to be a clip. That's going to be a clip. You're just dropping gold, brother. It's like it's it's absolutely how I feel. I just think that what you're saying makes so much sense. And I think that especially as you say right now, like in the in the existing uh market and just recognizing all of the turbulence that's occurring and things that are the uncertainty that's about um that this this type of inspiration is what I think people need right now, so grateful so Dragon's Gold, moments, accolades, uh awards, things that you may have acquired over time and through your experience and on your journey. And sometimes it's just a mindset shift. What might you consider Dragon's Gold on your journey? I think the biggest sort one that I would consider, and it is sort of a personal one rather than actual accolade or anything, is just getting past my, what do call it, um imposter syndrome, honestly. So I worked in such small teams and much smaller games, getting to finally work in AAA. I had so much imposter syndrome coming into that, thinking that like, I've done a lot of games, but I've never done games of this caliber and this size before. There's no way that I'm going to be able to hang with these guys and this team. And so just being able to exist in that space for a while and have the sort of positive feedback of like, yeah, my designs are uh capable. They're getting through the gauntlet. They're getting into the game. I'm actually contributing to this project and actually listen to and... oh and respected here and able to pass on things to younger developers. That was the biggest thing. That was honestly the biggest thing for me. To be able to just put my mark on these games that have millions of people playing them that they get to see and to know that I can actually do this. can contribute to these projects too. uh That was such a big shift in my confidence as a designer, honestly. Patrick, beautiful. The idea about that shift in confidence, right? That means so much. It helps you later in your journey. It helps you to create a better product then. But I would say something that you mentioned in that that impacted me personally when I heard it so much was you talked about sharing it with young developers. You're in it. You just shared the trepidation, I don't know if the word worry or fear, like the imposter syndrome, the thought that you may not be good enough, but then proving that you are, right? Feeling that you are, and you get that support, and it's good to hear it externally, but you have to feel it internally. And if you then recognizing that, and then being able to share that with other young developers to help to give them that same growth and that ability that that confidence, right, that you gained and acquired over time, that's incredibly powerful. And I love that that was important to you. It's great to be able to give back because I definitely had my share of mentors along the way that would, yeah, they would sort of power level me with all the stuff that they've learned uh and impart that on me. And I definitely wanted to get to that point where I could do the same thing and help other people sort of navigate it and get through this and yeah, get established in the industry because it's so difficult to do and nobody can really do it alone. You kind of need people to help shepherd you there. uh it, and to help power level. What a great, like perfect, paints the picture like in my mind, incredibly vividly. I love that reference, so thank you. So Patrick, we talk about the legacy, right? And I like to think of it as a hall of heroes, a massive statue of Patrick Fram. And it has a plaque that can say anything that you want. What would you want it to say? Man, I kind of harken back to that sort of that nugget of knowledge that Kenny gave me earlier, which is that like, just like to, I would say that like, you it's possible for you to learn how to do anything, you know? Like it's sort of a version of the, you know, can do whatever you dream to. It's not so much that, it's like you can learn the skills that go into it. Like there's nothing stopping you from learning those things. It's... It was only sort of when I sort of acknowledged that, but I could like, yeah, you're right. These things are all possible to learn. They're all things that a human being can do. You don't have to be a super genius. You don't have to be born a special way. You don't have to have a brain that works a certain way. These are things that anybody can learn with enough discipline and study. And so I would definitely want to, that's the thing I want to impart. You might not have the aptitude for it and it might take you more work than someone who does, but like you can get there. And so. There's nothing stopping you from learning any skill you want to to accomplish what you want. so powerful and true. And I think that that's. Thank you. Of So what's next? What's the next quest for Patrick Fram? Well, I'm still looking for a bigger studio to join. If one comes along, it's a good fit. um I actually did, me and some guys used to work with founded our own sort of game studio in the meantime called Quintessence Games. We're working on our own IP, basically, like a stealth horror sort of game. it's, we've already put like, um I haven't been on the project the entire time, but it's already got like two years worth of work on it. And so we're taking it to the past proof of concept. We're working on. I'm actually developing it out uh and run it with it. And so it's so cool to be able to uh do that after all this time. I've only been working in big studio games and other people's ideas for so long that it's very liberating to finally be like, have full creative control over this. We're deciding what to do. and we all have the tool sets now. We've all been leveled up from working in the industry. We've all learned so much from that experience. And so now we're kind of able to take that and apply that to our own project. So yeah, that's the next big thing for me. I it. Well, I wish you the best of luck on that journey, brother. And I look forward to playing the game. tools and weapons, uh resources, things that you've used or learned along the way, is there anything that you would share as tools and weapons for your journey? Sure, there's one I can think of at the very, very, very beginning, and then there's one that's more recent, I think, that are both really powerful. So when I first got started, I didn't really know how to make a game. There wasn't a lot of software for kids to make games back in the 90s, but there was one that my friend Kenny would as well find. It was a product that the Click team makes called Click and Play. They eventually went on to make Games Factory and Multimedia Fusion, and those were all softwares that were, they were game engines sort of that... They took the coding aspect out of it and sort of made it more visual and less intimidating. So, you know, it taught me how to do programming logic and how to build all the parts to a game without really scaring me away from the programming side of things. And so that eventually when programming did enter the scene, I was just, I was ready for it. I was just like, that's fine. This is the same, I'm using the same tricks and the same logic loops that I did with all these other softwares. It's just, now it's just text instead of pictures. And uh it smoothed that transition so much. So I know there's probably different tools these days for kids to learn how to program. like, yeah, if you're a parent who has kids that are looking to get into it, like just do a little bit of research and I'm sure you'll find some, there's gotta be way more tools that make it more accessible for kids these days. And yeah, it helps so much just get past that initial load that you have to learn to start doing it. And then, More recently, I'll probably get like, I always get some pushback when I mention it, but, but AI tools honestly have helped so much recently, not to like replace skills, but to like augment my own skills. Like whenever I, you know, just forget the syntax or something, or don't know why something's working or don't know what the proper structure for, you know, to build this thing as, um, AI, AI tools can kind of just build you your own tutorials for a lot of these things. And you definitely have to have your own. uh, your own knowledge too, because sometimes they'll give you bad answers. You have to know when to disregard them and when not to, but it can help so much. Um, it's I there's, we know it's in all the projects I've been on, AI tools have sort of like become more and more prominent, not to replace people, but to just sort of, yeah, make us each better at what we do. And so there's a, there's a, yeah, it's a great way to, to just offset your own abilities and, and yeah, get better at stuff and learn how to do it. Yeah, and the evolution, right? Technology is changing. You can change with it or not. That's your choice, right? But the river is gonna keep moving. I'd rather be on the boat that's sailing hard and fast than is watertight. So, we're analogy, but it's what I thought of. It goes really quick. And what I mean by that as well, the idea of the evolution, you talk about using AI in technology as augmentation. And I think that's incredibly powerful. So often I think people do think that it means it's all or nothing or replaces. And I don't think it is. I think that it's something, it's a tool that you use to strengthen your skills, to save you time. Like even if you're, if it's helping you with ideation and it gives you a framework that you then flesh out and build, if 80 % of it's done for you and you give it that final piece that makes all the difference, that brings the product to life. Is it any less enjoyable? Is there any reason that you shouldn't use that? I can't think of that. And uh I just think that you bringing that up, especially in today's... climate, if that's the right word, uh in regards to technology, I just think that we're on a precipice. at it. And the opportunity right now is we can jump, and we have the ability to fly um using these So I've got actually a couple more questions for you, Patrick. Now I'm going to open it with my the first uh most important and the end of the official questions, but I got a couple of bonus I'm curious about. So the first and most important is if you could be any mythical creature, what would it be and why? Man, I change my answer on this every time I think about it. I oh don't know. I think my honest answer would be just some kind of wood elf or wood troll or wood gnome or something like that that just sort of spends all day in nature just chilling. I love to camp. I love to hike. I love just being in nature. But I can't make a career out of that. So I have to come back to civilization from time time. That's just, to me, that would be so relaxing and refreshing and I would love to live that life. I love it. I pictured you chilling in like a nice glade. Like I could see it just looks comfortable. I'd like to come sit next to you and hang out. It sounds like a fun place to be. I love it. So thank you for that, Patrick. So one of the, some bonus questions, just curious. And I thought about it about three times during this interview. It was like, so your friend Kenny, like I, one awesome friend sounds like also how many jokes, South park jokes were made with that? You know, it's probably why he sort of like changed his name to just Ken when he kind of went to college, you know, so I call him by his childhood name, but most people don't know about it anymore because they probably got tired of it. Definitely living in the 2000s and 90s, it's going to come up a lot for sure. Yeah, I feel almost bad asking that, but it was humorous and I was curious, so I wanted to ask. The South Park connection is kind of interesting because the early animations I did were so rough and so bad that they reminded people of South Park all the time and I kept getting told like you should go work for South Park, you should go work for South Park and lo and behold ended up working for a South Park project at one point and so I think that was very serendipitous. It's funny how the universe works, right? Things unfold in ways that you may not have always expected. Working on the South Park project and X-Defiant and all of the things that you've done, I'm curious, which project did you enjoy working on the most and why did you enjoy it? I mean, it's a tough pick between uh X-Defiant and South Park. X-Defiant, because I had such a um lead role, and so I could really shape the way that the system design happened, and I had a lot of control over that and a lot of say in it. And that was really, you know, all the systems in that game are my fault. They're my design, you know. Like, can take responsibility for all of them because I was in that position. On South, but... South Park is really kind of a dream come true because as someone who worked in animation, someone who worked in storytelling, someone who loves to do comedy and type of entertainment, that was sort of the golden intersection of all those things where I was designing minigames, designing levels, doing storyboards for it, pitching jokes to the South Park writing team and having those come back and them saying, yes, this joke is good, put it in. oh That's super rewarding to have all that stuff, all those skills sort of culminate on something that's that aligned with all of them. That was probably the best. it. I love it. And it's bringing laughs to people too, right? Like I think it's amazing. Laughter is a wonderful thing. And I think being able to, uh, to be able to affect and inspire like that and be able to have that kind of impact is, pretty amazing. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah, of course. My friends, thank you for joining us once again on our quest to inspire, educate, and empower you to turn your dreams into reality, one mindset shift at a time. We'll see you next time.

Head Shot

Justin Mills

Host
Head Shot

Aaron Iler

Producer
Contributor

Patrick Fram

Guest