Peter Vesti Frendrup
Level Design Portfolio
ABOUT ME
I'm a Level Designer from Denmark, living in Sweden and working at EA DICE as the Studio Level Design Director.
My educational background is B.Sc. Computer Science & M.A. Interactive Digital Media from Aalborg University, Denmark.
I started my career at Eurocom in the UK in 2008. In 2012 I moved to Shanghai to work at Ubisoft and in 2015 I moved to Stockholm to work at EA DICE.
MY JOURNEY
DERBY
England
My professional game development career started in Derby where I got a job as Level Designer directly after finishing University.
My first game was 007: Quantum of Solace on PS2 which was quite a difference for me. I had always only developed for PC. One of the big differences was memory management.
As an example I had a relative long cutscene with several characters that had to be cut into three sections, just so I could fit it into memory by unloading/loading during the cutscene.
Sometimes it wasn't even enough to ensure there was enough memory available. We had to ensure that there was a big enough memory block available. This meant planning for appropriate places where we could 'compact memory' (move things around to ensure the biggest block of memory would be available).
Next I went on to work on the Wii exclusive Dead Space: Extraction which was a Rail Shooter. The increased control over the experience encouraged us to think like movie directors. Combined with the innovations of the Wii Remote this was a very unique game development experience.
One of the more interesting aspects was the introduction of and basic functionality of the enemy AI. Since the player could not move the camera we could obviously not have enemies attack the player from the side or back. Additionally we had to ensure that enemies would not 'path find' outside the player's view.
The next game I worked on was also for the Wii. GoldenEye 007 was a reimagined version of the classic N64 game. Working on a first person shooter with motion control was very interesting. In contrast to my previous game the player now had full control and as such this was much more of a traditional game.
The following year we did a PS3/Xbox conversion of the game called GoldenEye 007: Reloaded. It was on a brand new engine and featured many new multiplayer maps of which I designed two in addition to improving three single player levels. This was the first 60 fps game I worked on and the difference from the PS2 that I worked on a few years earlier was obviously massive.
SHANGHAI
China
Moving to Shanghai was a huge step for me. Both culturally and professionally. I was actually considering moving to Canada since that was the place to be at this time. The recruiter said there was an opportunity in Shanghai so I decided to at least do the interview. After I learned that they were working on Splinter Cell: Blacklist it was a relatively easy decision to accept the job.
Moving alone to the other side of the world to a country was the beginning of the second phase of my career.
This was my first experience working in a multi-studio game development company and for my first game we worked together with a studio in Toronto, Canada. I worked on the Coop Campaign and I learned a lot from working on that game.
My favourite aspect of working on that game was definitely the real time lighting solution as well as how that actually directly reflected whether the main character would be considered 'in the shadows' or not. It was not the usual fake 'volume' solution.
For my second game at Ubisoft I was fortunate enough to be the Lead Level Designer on Far Cry 4. This was my first time formally leading a team and it was my first step towards leading, directing and managing other designers. It was a great experience and this time we worked together with a team from Montreal, Canada.
This game was very different to the previous one given its open world nature. Although both games were driven by a systemic mindset this one was very different from a level design point of view.
STOCKHOLM
Sweden
After some good years in Shanghai I had been looking at potentially moving back to Europe, and closer to my family in Denmark.
When I got an opportunity to join DICE I did not hesitate. The project was Battlefield 1 which was extremely exciting and I got the opportunity to lead the Level Design department of the single-player part of the game.
One of the first challenges was to hire the team. This was a new experience, hiring most of the team and building the entire single-player game in around a year. It was another big step in my career and an experience that taught me a lot.
Following launch I worked on a multiplayer map for post-launch as part of the first DLC pack.
Then I joined the Star Wars: Battlefront II team where I ended up designing a handful of levels. Additionally I spent a lot time post-launch balancing and changing maps in accordance with community sentiment and telemetry.
I joined the Battlefield V team for the last 6 months of production. My primary focus was to help with gameplay telemetry, but I also assisted with feedback and some system design for the single player part of the game.
Towards the end I also worked on a level for Star Wars: Battlefront II together with another internal studio.
