Akash Dholakia

Lead Environment Artist at @SplashDamage. Worked on #GearsTactics, Halo Wars 2, Rise of the Tomb Raider.

[Charlie Cleveland @Flayra]

What is a Wave but a Thousand Drops?

I started my journey into video game development more than 25 years ago, back before there were any books or courses, back before there were engines to license, back before it even felt like a viable career.

My high school friends and I spent our summers in Burlington, Vermont not working for others, but working to try to create a video game. Every summer we tried and every summer we failed. Failed to have anything even remotely playable before the leaves developed their autumn colors and threatened to fall. But we kept trying, until the final summer after my college graduation in 1996, when just two of us worked through the fall and got our first game playable: an underwater (!) Star Control II clone called Aquarium Fighter. When I played it against my friend for the first time, and I evaluated the fun, controls and balance, I instantly became hooked. Hooked on making games. Hooked on making not-fun-things (but with potential), fun. That game helped me land my first professional game programming job which I used to pay off my credit cards, and I started iterating through the now-familiar cycle of making money to make games.

Now we’re halfway to 2026 and the world is a very different place. Anyone can learn how to make a game on YouTube using free engines. But making money off of making a game has become truly brutal. Like the world’s wealth distribution, it’s feast or famine. Game development is a career now, and it can be a very profitable one. And the artistic heights that games have reached is jaw-dropping: Starcraft. Braid. Limbo. Minecraft. League of Legends. Hades. Inscryption. I dreamed, but never thought, that the design, technology, art and business models of these games would one day be possible. Nor would I ever have believed that games could overtake Hollywood, even if they “weren’t art”.

Without realizing it, I started Unknown Worlds in 2001 by making the Half-Life mod Natural Selection. I worked with a distributed team back before a health crisis mandated it and we released not half-baked games, but documents describing level design and textures for making those levels, with the hope that the community would make maps. Lo and behold, they did. And we eventually hired some of those people, giving them careers at Unknown Worlds, however shaky the long-term prospects might be. I asked the community to send me $20 bills in the mail so I could keep working on the game, and you did. $18k was a tough salary to live off of, but I made it work and loved every moment of it. Like a design hook, but I was hooked on design. So hooked that I spent 10 years making the sequel.

There’s no way that could’ve happened without Max McGuire and his belief that the game was something special. With that, we made just enough money to get Subnautica into a stripped-down early access, which allowed us to find the fun. It didn’t have submarines, base-building, story or survival. But through the early access process, the community helped guide us forward until we found something we all loved. Something we loved to make and something that millions loved to play. There's no way it would've been as successful if we had waited until v1.0 before releasing it to the public.

I tell you all this because I want to tell you that game development is in my blood. So is iteration and early access. Our games have thrived because of it, and one of our games failed because we thought we knew better. I was most passionate about that game, and it fell flat. We worked on it 5 years before our early access, thinking that this time we were experts and we knew better. But fewer people played that game than even that humble Half-Life mod. Even though our studio had financial success in that period, and even though many fans fell in love with the game, it really wounded me and I needed time to heal. Sometimes it feels like I’ll never get over that one.

So with all this as background, I hope you can see why we were so excited to release Subnautica 2 into early access. Many of the folks that started the journey with us nearly 20 years ago have worked hard on Subnautica 2, and they're joined by some incredible new talent who were drawn to the studio by their love of the games and their passion for the way we've made them. We know (and love) that the expectations for this sequel are high. But the team has poured their hearts into the game and their dedication really shows. We helped pioneer early access and our community seems to love it just as much as we do. It’s the best way to develop a game like this.

So you can see why for Max, Ted, myself, the Unknown Worlds team, and for our community, the events of this week have been quite a shock. We know that the game is ready for early access release and we know you’re ready to play it. And while we thought this was going to be our decision to make, at least for now, that decision is in Krafton’s hands. And after all these years, to find that I’m no longer able to work at the company I started stings.

I want you to know that whatever happens to the founders, to the team and to the game, our priority is, and has always been, to make the best damned game we can for the best community in the world. With your Gorge plushies and your hand-drawn fish fan-art, and yes, your hard-earned dollars, you’ve supported us in every way, in every season, cold and warm, since Half-Life modding was even a thing.

And I also want you to know that this is not where the story ends.

-Charlie (“Flayra”)

[Subnautica @Subnautica]

So. You all have a few questions! 😅

We have some answers ➡️ https://t.co/lWiZSw8oI0

[Akash Dholakia @yurid9]

@LiamTart @PlayVALORANT Glad I could help.

[Akash Dholakia @yurid9]

@TheCartelDel So good. Damn.

[Nikola Damjanov @damjanmx]

Quick tip!

You can plug the baked curvature map intonthe height channel with low value to make the edges/cavities pop in your normal map.

#quickTip #texturing #MadeWithSubstance #SubstancePainter #pbr

[Akash Dholakia @yurid9]

Excited to have a game I have worked on as a lunch title on the Xbox Series X.
Gears Tactics for Xbox Consoles - Announce Trailer https://t.co/h8Nms0PlNd

[Afterburner Studios @AfterburnerDevs]

We left AAA game development so we could build our dream game: fluid modernized combat ⚔️ + rogue-lite exploration 🗺️ + relationship building 👋

The result is Dreamscaper. Available now on Steam: https://t.co/FOmJag6AoA

Help us spread the word by liking & retweeting!

[Ryan McCaffrey @DMC_Ryan]

One. More. Sleep.

And I DEFINITELY see what they're going for here...😎

[Akash Dholakia @yurid9]

@SeanNoonan @Lisaistheboss Gonna miss you at work man. Good luck. About time you stop commuting every weekend and make it easier for yourself.

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

Accounts hacked by Bitcoin scammers:

- Bill Gates
- Elon Musk
- Joe Biden
- Warren Buffett
- Kanye West
- Michael Bloomberg
- Apple
- Uber
- Jeff Bezos
- Barack Obama
- Benjamin Netanyahu

[D. or Davison Carvalho 🕷 @colorblindmess]

Another screenshot, this one with artificial lights to make the scene feel less organic and less human.

#Modo + #UE4

[Akash Dholakia @yurid9]

@colorblindmess Idk what this is but I do know that it looks amazing.

[Akash Dholakia @yurid9]

@LiamTart Yeah, as much as I hope he would learn the lesson, he is gonna go back and do that all over again to someone else. That's the vibe I got.

[Akash Dholakia @yurid9]

I recently had a chance to contribute for the Substance Magazine @Substance3D talking about #GearsTactics

Proud to have worked on such an awesome game at
@splashdamage

https://t.co/aDOk7CnC3L

[Raoüf @Wolvawab]

Destroyed Beauty – Texturing Gears Tactics with Splash Damage https://t.co/bGZmRxXoMf

Kudos to the teams at @splashdamage and @CoalitionGears. Thanks to @Substance3D for making such an amazing toolset. #gearstactics #MadeWithSubstance

[Akash Dholakia @yurid9]

@JeryceDia @unity3d @Substance3D Looks so good already.

[Akash Dholakia @yurid9]

@_moyparra Loved this one. A big fan of Apex Toons and love the little clips you create. Good stuff.

[Moy Parra 🎮 @_moyparra]

🎥 A little behind the scenes on animating Loba 🐺...and...a little extra something as well 😅 #PlayApex

https://t.co/MyeUpqAaOe

[Akash Dholakia @yurid9]

Got my Dev Team care package. Proud of the team. #Gearstactics @splashdamage @CoalitionGears

[Akash Dholakia @yurid9]

@AlbertoCGArt Thank you :)