Dan Johnson (1974-2006)
Dec 12, 2006
Yesterday I attended a memorial for a colleague. I learned of Dan's death just after Thanksgiving, and was deeply saddened. Yesterday, at a nice restaurant in LA, many of Dan's friends and colleagues gathered to honor him, and to offer our sympathies to his parents.
Dan was simply one of the best guys I ever knew. Talking with old friends yesterday, we all marveled about how universal this feeling was. I think we've all known people who were that "great guy" or "great gal" but who achieved that likeability by being a patsy or do-gooder. Dan was none of these things. He was just a lover of life, who made you want to be around him.
Dan was an environment modeler, and my work with him was as a level designer. I would hand Dan maps, and it was his job to make them come to life in 3D. He was certainly talented - his worlds had flair and life. But there was something more than that. As a I designer I secretly hoped that the schedule would align so that Dan did all my maps. I could count on handing Dan a map, and the map reaching three dimensions in a better state than what I handed him. I would imagine some of this was from Dan's incredible capability for empathy - he could see through the map what I *really* wanted, but he would also make those little improvements that I didn't think of as well, sometimes correcting some nasty screw-up or another.
Then Dan would do this magical thing - he'd show me the 3D version, including his changes, and say something like, "I knew that was what you really meant for that area." And he was totally wrong - What I had envisioned was usually totally inferior to what he had created. But Dan was so sincere, he would actually have me believing him. "Yeah," I'd say, "just like that."
When Dan was young, he had some physical problems. I was never quite sure what they were, and it didn't matter. But I knew that Dan had at one point spent a year in a Shriner's Children's hospital. I imagine that it was this experience that gave Dan the joy he had toward life. His chance to fully participate in life led him to do just that. He pursued his dream, he became a 3D artist. He worked on wonderful games like Spyro and Ratchet. And somehow, through it all, Dan failed to become the self-centered prick that so many of us would have become. He was, simply, one of the most generous guys I've ever known.
Eventually Dan's physical problems caught up with him. It appears that an interaction of prescription drugs, which he took his whole life, was the cause of his death. In the memorial, Dan's mother told us what she thought Dan might choose for his epitaph, and said in her perfect Iowa drawl, "Well, that sucks."
Yeah. It sucks. A lot.
But there's one thing. Dan didn't die. Not like the rest of us will. Not like I will. We loved Dan so damn much, that his likeness has appeared in every game he worked on. Frequently he didn't even know it. When we needed a texture for some coins in the Spyro games? Dan's face. Though I didn't work on the Ratchet games, I've been assured by Insomniac friends that Dan was in those, just the same. And when Ted Price spoke yesterday, he told everyone that Insomniac will continue to put Dan in their games. He's too much a part of them all not to.
See ya later Dan, in all those old familiar places. Thanks for the memories