How do you even get started with figuring out which props to create? Do you make a master wish list? How do you organize that list that likely has thousands and thousands of props on it?

Like I said at the start, we're a content team that serves the other teams. So we work with the designers and with the different artists in the studio, and we'll get request lists from them. So they give us, oh yeah, this is a particular gameplay feature we want. We want something that does this. And then it comes to us. We then work with the concept team. We've got really strong concept guys here. And we've gone through a few different phases of how we approach doing this. What works really well for us is that when environments are being concepted, the concept guys also consider what functionality is in there, what gameplay is going to be in there, and what props they're going to need. So if we're doing a hangar, and we'll talk about that probably later, what makes sense in this environment, and what will have gameplay? And as we expand to different areas of the game, we just continually add to that list. When I first took over the props team, or created the props team, probably three years ago, I guess it was, I already inherited a few thousand props, and trying to get that stuff organized was quite a challenge. We have a pretty strict naming convention and folder structure and that sort of stuff that does help. But you're right, the sheer number of assets we make is pretty huge.

Yeah, as well, specific sets of assets can go a very long way. So that's another thing we do: if there are assets that are very specific that aren't needed first, they'll likely go to the bottom of our backlog. We're not going to make things that are going to be used sparsely and are not necessarily needed for gameplay right now.

It is quite a difficult balance sometimes, because the stuff that you need to make a level work is one thing, but then there's the stuff that you need to actually make it feel exciting. The surface outposts were a really fun thing to do because a lot of that was storytelling, and that extra layer of immersion and history is a really nice thing to be able to do. We also work quite closely with the writer teams, because they will look at a particular environment and they've got the knowledge of the lore to be able to say, oh yeah, this particular back alley is where this character lives and his history is this. It'd be really cool if we could have these additional props that sell his story, or this guy's really into taking things apart and he needs this real cool workshop. Even to the point where, if you look at Squadron and at some of the AI characters' bunks, it might only be one or two lines, but those one or two lines, like I say, they sell that story. So they might have a particular medal from when they won a race around a moon or whatever it is. So we get things fired at us from all different areas, and we just prioritize them and get through it.