Wentworth Grad, Video Game Designer Redefines What It Means to Be an Artist
One of his earliest memories includes playing video games with his two older brothers.
Now, Wentworth Institute of Technology graduate Michael Berthaud works as a game designer and programmer for Warner Bros.
“When I’m designing a project, the concept I tend to start with is, ‘What is the feeling or experience we want to communicate and how do we systematize that?’” Berthaud said. “Whether it’s a physical, interactive artwork that I’ve produced or a purely digital game, I’m always trying to establish this series of rules that, when they interact with each other, they create a certain environment that is conducive of the emotion we’re trying to invoke. That’s normally the foundation of my creative process.”
Berthaud’s current design credits include well-known games produced by Warner Bros., though pending the release of the upcoming titles, he can’t say which. His resume, however, features collaborations with other notable entertainment corporations.
“In my past, I’ve worked with Rovio, the company that made Angry Birds. I’ve made some indie titles with Google when they had a games division,” Berthaud explained. “I’ve also made a project called Artisan’s Tale that I worked on with Niantic, the company that made Pokémon GO.”
A 2022 graduate of Wentworth’s Computer Science program, Berthaud grew up in a family of artists and developed an interest in creating digital art early on.
“At a young age, before attending Wentworth, I knew that I wanted to express myself and express my ideas digitally through games,” he said. “Computer science was just the means for me to do that and to hone my skills.”
For Berthaud, the enthraller has never been just playing the game. It’s the story, the structure, and the artistry of it all.
“There’s this thing that happens where we all watch movies and everybody wants to direct a movie. But for me, with games, it was always deeper than that. I played a lot of Japanese role-playing games, and the one that made me really want to make games was this really old game called Xenogears,” Berthaud said. “It’s my favorite game of all time, and it absolutely changed my life. I think I’ve played that game thousands of times, but it’s the first one where I thought, ‘I would actually want to make this.’ It was the first game that I think connected with me on a spiritual level.”
While earning his degree at Wentworth, Berthaud worked for an independent video game design company, which became part of his co-op experience at the university. The combination of his computer science courses and his professional obligations had him searching for more artistic outlets—an exploration he believes expanded his mind, and ultimately, his talents.
“During college, I would always go to galleries. I would read art papers and things like that in my free time,” Berthaud said. “I would read philosophy, and I was always interested in things that weren’t necessarily engineering and computer science, just for my spirit. Feeding that other part of my brain.”
“There was actually one semester that I just didn’t take any CS classes. I took art history. I took a screenwriting class,” he recalled, through Wentworth’s partnership with the Colleges of the Fenway. “When I was going home after classes, I was working as a game programmer, so it was really nice to have a pure humanities-focused semester.”
Before Berthaud began studying computer science at the university, he taught himself many of the necessary elements of programming during his formative years.
“I knew I was going to make games, and I’m a voracious studier, so I would just go straight home after high school and practice programming,” he said. “And that’s just how I developed my skills before I was even taught.”
“There are also these things called game jams, where you get a random artistic theme and you have a tight window to make a game about it,” he continued. “And I would go to those a lot after school.”
Reflecting on his career path, Berthaud said that while he knew he wanted to stay involved with art after college, a specific profession wasn’t always clear.
“I’ve always been attracted to visual arts. And so, because I was so mathematically inclined and very, very logical, everyone thought I was going to be an engineer,” Berthaud reflected. “But I didn’t want to make only functional things for utilitarian purposes and instead wanted to use my artistic voice to express my current thoughts and ideas to others.”
And whether he’s working on expansive projects or designing popular video games, Berthaud is interested in changing—and recomposing—the narrative by redefining what it means to be an artist.
“I’m super, super digital when it comes to art, and I feel like when you tell people you’re doing art in school, most of the time they’re thinking about drawing or painting,” he said. “But there’s so much more to it than that. I know there’s so many people that do computer science that are very creative. And engineers are very creative, but people sometimes assume that engineers are making something that’s purely functional with a utilitarian output.”
In addition to his work as a video game designer, Berthaud has also created large-scale art installations, including an interactive light sculpture titled “Sweet Spot” for the Boston Public Art Triennial, which showcases public art throughout the city. The opportunity, and the work itself—which was on display at the Roxbury branch of the Boston Public Library and can now be seen at the Boston Cyberarts Gallery—helped to solidify a piece of his artistic identity that he had long understood.
“No one ever called me an artist until I actually made a sculpture,” he said. “I’ve been making games since I was 16, but it wasn’t until I was 24 years old and I put something physical in the ground that I felt like people viewed me as an artist. With my current work, I want to continue to challenge that mentality.”
Part of that perspective, Berthaud surmises, is rooted in the nature of video games as a medium.
“When video games first came out, they were immediately commercialized, and that society’s outlook on games was that they’re more of a utilitarian device, that they’re supposed to serve you, not challenge you,” Berthaud continued. “Historically, people don’t view games as objects to emotionally interact with in the same way as other art forms, like paintings.”
One game at a time, Berthaud aims to defy that perspective. He believes his education at Wentworth provided hands-on experience that allowed him to gain personal insight into his artistic process, which has continued to contribute to his success as a video game designer today.
“I think that the biggest thing for me at Wentworth was the co-op program, because that gave me creative balance, and allowed me to learn and study at my own pace, in my own way,” Berthaud said. “One of my early major projects was with this influencer couple in Los Angeles, and I was only able to do all that traveling because of the university’s program. It gave me more time to be entrenched in the company, and that was really important for a student like me.”