Eric Stirpe

My career trajectory has been kind of a funny one. As far back as I can remember I was an artistic kid, and I bopped around expressing myself in loads of different ways (thanks, undiagnosed ADHD). I drew comics, wrote stories, programmed little computer games, made movies, but the thing that really captivated me for most of my childhood was animation. So when it came time to figure out what I was going to do for college that just seemed like the obvious path and I enrolled in the Animation program in the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles.

USC's film school was awesome in that you got to take classes from outside your major; so I got to take classes in screenwriting, cinematography, storyboarding, art/production design... and I kind of just loved all of it. I came out of school with a ton of different skillsets and was a real jack of all trades. (thanks again, undiagnosed ADHD)

Unfortunately, being a jack of all trades is not a great fit for the animation industry, which wants you to have one skill that's honed super well so you can do that thing at a studio. So my first few years out of school were tough trying to find work until I got really lucky and landed a job in a writer's room at this weird little animation company which set me on a path of focusing on just developing my writing for a few years.

Eventually around 2013 I got tired of the grind and lack of work in LA, and through a series of lucky breaks (and my weird eclectic skillset) I managed to get a job at Telltale Games up in San Francisco on their cinematics/scripting team. I've loved video games my whole life, but up until that moment it had never really occurred to me that I could be someone who made video games. I guess I thought you needed to be a programmer? Or a wizard or something? But suddenly there I was, helping out making games like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. I set my sights on joining the Telltale writing team and started grinding away writing whenever I wasn't at the office. Over the course of six months I wrote scripts for nearly ten feature films and completely overhauled my writing portfolio so that, when there was an opening for a writer on The Walking Dead Season Two, I was able to put in an application and jump in.

I was on the writing team at Telltale for five years and shipped a ton of stuff; hard work, but super rewarding, and by the end of it had developed a solid portfolio, good reputation, and great network of people across the industry. When my wife and I moved to Los Angeles for her job in 2018, I went with her and started working as a freelancer. I vowed that I would work on as many types of games as possible and, thanks to my work ethic and Telltale pedigree, I managed to make pretty good on that vow. Eight years later, I've worked on over a dozen different games from every genre you can think of, and I finally settled down for a full time job at Remedy Games in Helsinki.

But even with a full-time job, I spend my evenings and weekends working on other games as a contractor. And I'm learning how to write and produce music right now. And I've got plans for making my own smaller games.

Honestly, making every episode was so equal-parts painful and fun that it's hard for me to choose a favorite. They all kind of blur together at this point. Also, from episode 5 onward I was usually working on 2-3 episodes at a time so I also literally can't remember where one episode ends and another begins sometimes.

I do! I have a 13 year old black cat named Otis (or "Oatey" as we usually call him). This is a photo of when we moved during COVID and drove from Los Angeles to Rhode Island in less than two days. He was... not happy about it!

Sadly, we lost his sister Milo this past October due to stomach cancer. That's her in the back of this photo:

The joy of making a game with multiple choices for the players to make and different paths to take is that there ISN'T a canon ending. Any version of the ending and story is canon depending on the player's choices; as is whatever the player wants to imagine what happens next.

Read some older posts on your tumblr page, And I saw that you mentioned you were given a Mcsm Aiden poster.

Do you know where that is? If so could I see an image of it? Perfectley fine if not.

Thank you for reading this and I hope you have an amazing day!

I think it’s up in my attic; I don’t have a designated office in my current apartment and it’s kinda weird decor for a general living space so he needs to live up there right now. Here’s a picture of him hanging up behind me in my old Los Angeles office though ! (This pic is like seven years old now, ha)

haha yes but you’ll never catch me saying which ones 🤫

also; have you learned any finnish?

Hey, that’s awesome! I’ve been here about 4.5 years now and, while it’s had its ups and downs, I’ve been really liking it! Helsinki has been an incredible place to raise my son, and I Iove that I can just walk everywhere. I also really love and respect the Finnish attitudes towards work/life balance and the emphasis on nature; we’re actually just finishing up a week out at a rented mökki so I’m doing my best to fit in. :)