By Kolin Kriner
“Cardinal Creatives” is a weekly column that celebrates creators in Plattsburgh, both present and past. By spotlighting diverse talents throughout our community in all forms, we create a window into Plattsburgh’s art scene.
From gaming with his brothers in his youth to designing video games as a career, Lucas Annunziata built a life for himself driven by passion — and he has found himself here, in Plattsburgh.
Annunziata grew up in Southern Vermont, a place that offered little for activity, so he traveled to an alternative place — video games. This gravitation created a love for video games, as they were something that brought him joy and fondness.
As he entered high school, Annunziata wasn’t sure yet what he wanted to do. He was taking art classes at the time and decided design was something that he enjoyed. He would also commonly see ads for Florida’s Full Sail University, which offered course work in video games, which inspired him to look into making them a career. However, Full Sail University was a place Annunziata couldn’t afford.
When he started his college hunt, he took a tour of Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, as it was close to home but offered a degree in game design. After the tour, he decided that Champlain College was the right school for him.
“I didn’t even look at any other schools,” Annunziata said. “Once I committed, I began applying for every scholarship I could.”
He was awarded the Vermont First Scholarship, which paid for a majority of his tuition. He graduated in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in game design. After that, Annunziata took on an internship in Los Angeles.
The unpaid internship saw him doing design for small games for the Sony Playstation for Home. The company he was working for shut down shortly after his internship ended, but it led to him receiving a handful of job offers. Amongst these offers was one for a Canadian video game developer Torn Banner, which he decided to take a chance on.
The company was just starting, had no funding, and was fully remote. This allowed him to stay in Burlington with some friends while working for the developer. Torn Banner released its first game in 2012 called Chivalry, which was available on Steam and served as a good kickstarter for success. The game did better than the group had expected, selling 1.5 million copies.
This allowed for the company to settle in Toronto and have aphysical studio, where it began working on Mirage: Arcane Warfare. Mirage allowed Annunziata to work on more stylized art, drifting away from the realism art he had previously been working on with Chivalry. This creativity gave him confidence in his work.
However, the game tanked, and so Torn Banner began working on Chivalry 2. Annunziata wasn’t interested in this prospect but remained with the company for a few months before deciding to search for another job.
While looking for different work, a recruiter from Blizzard reached out to Annunziata to work on its popular game, Overwatch. In 2018, he moved to Irvine, California, to begin work.
At Blizzard, he worked on environment design. The first map he worked on was Busan, which allowed him to gain more experience with map design. He worked on various other maps as well, but one that he holds close to his heart was Toronto.
Annunziata himself pitched the idea for the map and pushed hard to make it happen. He explained that the experience was really cool, as he was able to design a map based on a place where he had actually lived.
“It was a way for me to write a love letter to the city,” Annunziata said. “It’s a big place for the media, as many films utilize the city to impersonate other cities. It was cool to be like, ‘No, this is Toronto.’”
In 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic launched Blizzard into what Annunziata described as a “weird period.”. Due to quarantine, many people were home, creating a large market for investment in video games.
Many were tempted away from Blizzard for higher paychecks, but Annunziata decided to stay with the company. During this time there was a lot going on in California, including natural disasters such as wildfires, which people had to evacuate. This made Annunziata and his wife decide they wanted to leave Southern California.
The couple decided to relocate to Plattsburgh as they had family in the area. Life was comfortable, and while working remotely, he was promoted to lead environment artist for Overwatch. In 2023, however, Blizzard started to push back on remote work, and a merger with Microsoft made job stability begin to feel tarnished. Due to this, he gave a 6-week notice, and shortly after, thousands of employees were laid off.
Since leaving Blizzard, Annunziata now works for Moonshot Games, where he is currently working on an unannounced project. Additionally, he works as a mentor to aspiring game designers. He and his brother are also working on making a game together.
“Every project I’ve worked on has been someone else’s,” Annunziata said. “I want to make a game that’s my own.”
He now has a 1-year-old son, and when his son doesn’t have Annunziata’s attention, Annunziata taken to painting and 3D printing. He also takes some time to play video games every now and then on his Steam Deck and enjoy taking walks.
“Working from home is more taxing than you realize,” Annunziata said. “It sort of disorients reality, so I try to take a walk every day.”
Annunziata believes anyone can get into designing video games if they really set their mind to it.
“If you want to do it, you can do it,” he said. “They have videos that can teach you. You just have to commit to it.”
View Lucas Annunziata’s portfolio at https://lucasannunziata.com/
