The Xbox designers behind achievements, Game Pass, and more, have left the company.
Chris Novak started as Xbox’s Designer Director in 2002, then became Design Architect in 2009, and finally became Research and Design Director in 2016, when the company refocused on gaming after the Xbox One’s entertainment-centric launch.
Novak told Polygon that he was leaving Xbox after nearly 20 years to take a break and reset his life.
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“Some very exciting things coming to Xbox will be dedicated to years of work going on there,” he said. “It’s going to be amazing, but do I want to commit? Or do I want to admit that I’m happy with what we’ve shipped?”
This includes what Novak calls an achievement system, which reinforces Microsoft’s philosophy that players should be able to play as they please.
Novak said Xbox Live was originally intended to have up to five achievements per game, but playing Project Gotham Racing 2 taught him and the team these different playstyles — most players want to win, but some want to Take beautiful pictures.
One of Novak’s favorite products is Microsoft’s Touch Adaptation Kit, which allows Xbox games to run on mobile devices, which he developed after Xbox boss Phil Spencer focused on cloud gaming.
“As part of the xCloud work, we spent a lot of time tracking this down with the xCloud engineers and making sure all the technology allowed us to render this output to any device,” he said.
Regardless of the product, however, Novak says the biggest challenge in his job is continuous improvement, not just change.
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