East Cleveland/Shaker kid's havoc-wreaking at home was foundation for his success as NBA game developer
Anthony Williams working at video game exhibit during All Star weekend in Cleveland.
MILLENNIAL PARENTS ALERT: if your rug rats tend to break rules and the occasional household item, do not be overly alarmed. Your hyperactive offspring may eventually break technological barriers as well.
Sprinkled amid the bright lights and hundreds of celebrities at Cleveland’s National Basketball Association All-Star Weekend were some homegrown rising stars who had honed their crafts to a level event organizers couldn’t help but recognize.
One of those rising elites was millennial Anthony D. Williams Jr. His Kia NBA Arcade game display was one of the big off-court highlights of the weekend extravaganza.
“The graphics I animated for the game appear when somebody makes a shot,” explained Anthony D. Williams, Jr., referring to a variety of colorized digital messages and moving images that flashed in the background of his Kia NBA Arcade display. His digitized three-dimensional setup was one of several featured at the NBA Crossover mega-event at Public Auditorium this past weekend.
“I developed all the codes that make the game work, and the ultrasonic sensor that simulates a controller, whether it’s a Playstation or XBox or a PC,” said Williams, who grew up in East Cleveland and Shaker Heights.
The league’s 71st all-star game weekend marked his second gaming co-partnership with the NBA and Kia. His product debuted at the 2020 classic in Chicago and was promoted on various Kia advertising platforms. A promo for the February Cleveland classic appeared on Kia USA’s Instagram.
"all these 'failures' taught me something. You learn through trial and error what you as an individual can create by yourself.” — video game developer Anthony Williams
“The NBA wanted a video game, but they didn’t want to use a controller and didn’t want to use the (now defunct) Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. They wanted to use a real basketball. How do you make a real basketball in to the controller of a video game? You do that with outside-the-box-thinking and innovation,” said Williams.
Since 2014, Williams, now 32 and living in Los Angeles, has been a team-leading application developer for American Honda. He has been making his own video games and apps for a decade. “My work with Honda has definitely helped with my personal goals and other opportunities, specifically the NBA.”
Williams' career accelerated in August 2018 when his supervisors called on Anthony’s technological know-how to help address an urgent need. He was ready.
“There were vehicle safety problems that Honda had nationally that needed to be solved; and the one thing that they wanted was augmented reality (AR) in their application. I can’t think of many things that do AR very well; but video game technology does it extremely well. So, I was able to use video game technology to complete the augmented reality, and then innovate further using different technologies for the artificial intelligence.”
Williams and his development team launched a rescue effort that culminated 14 months later with the invention of the Vehicle Service Maintenance Augmented Reality Tool [V-SMART].
“That safety product was built on game engine technology that ended up (potentially) saving the lives of more than 1.4 million car owners,” according to Williams.
Years before attracting the attention of either Honda or the NBA, Williams devoted painstaking efforts to build his portfolio. “I have personally developed probably thirty or forty games that I call ‘failures’ because I never launched them. I’ve got some cross-platform games where you can play on Android and see an update on iPhone, and you can play on iPhone and see an update on Android. So, you can play with your friends,” he said of his earliest efforts. “I’ve developed some virtual reality games that were compatible with the former Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest headsets. I never released any of these; but I feel like all of these ‘failures’ taught me something. You learn through trial and error what you as an individual can create by yourself.”
Williams’ road to dazzling sports graphics and automotive safety innovations began in childhood. “In 1997, a game called Final Fantasy VII was released on the PlayStation One game console. That game blew my mind for what graphics could be as far as a video game. Ever since then, I’ve dedicated myself to making video games. I was too young to understand the technical ins and outs or anything like that. I just thought the graphics were amazing and I wanted to make the art work like that. So, I pursued art.”
Williams’ mother, Alabama native Courtney Dixon, does not recollect those early years of discovery as fondly as her middle child. By the time she had moved Anthony, his older sister Ashley and younger brother David from East Cleveland to just south of Shaker Square, the restless preteen was tinkering regularly with all sorts of household items. “He would occasionally take some of my appliances and literally take them apart to see how they operate,” recalls his mother in a moment of recaptured agony. She admits to not realizing at the time how far Anthony’s curiosity would lead him.
“Even as a one-year-old, he would do daring things in the house that I thought were outright dangerous. Let’s just say I involuntarily sacrificed a few personal possessions in the name of his intellectual development,” she recalls with a wry smile.
Following his graduation from Shaker Heights HS in 2007, Williams enrolled in the highly rigorous Art Institute of Pittsburgh. The talents of his new peer group brought him a stark realization that the future developer needed to refine his skill set. He was lucky to be close enough to home to get family support for some of his out-of-class challenges.
“One time his car broke down and we knew no one in Pittsburgh,” recalls Dixon. “In the span of a few days, we ended up making four unexpected trips back-and-forth to Pittsburgh, two hours each way, to not only get his car fixed, but get his car back to him. Each of these trips happened after I got off work at 5 pm.”
Dixon saw the fruits of her investments when she attended Anthony's graduation exhibit, where both his personal and intellectual growth were on display.
“I thought his artwork was phenomenal. I also loved the fact that he wanted me to enjoy not only his work, but he pointed out other people’s work as well. He showed that he realized he’s not the big fish in the pond, but they were all there together. What stood out to me the most was that he also praised others.”
NBA legend Clyde Drexler signs autographs at Anthony Williams Jr.'s display during All-Star 2022 Weekend
One of the NBA’s all-time greats, who spent more than an hour signing autographs in the center of the Kia display, approached Williams during his celebrity appearance.
“Clyde Drexler paused signing autographs and asked me if I had developed the game and how it was made. After explaining it to him, he said, ‘You are extremely talented. You need to take something like this and go to the annual Consumer Electronics Show (the USA’s largest annual tech vendor convention) and see if you can get some funding. Because this type of idea is what is needed.’
"I really appreciated his praise," Williams said.
“If you get frustrated and quit, that’s when you truly fail.” — Anthony Williams
A game developer who is serious about achieving industry standards can expect to invest several thousands of dollars for equipment, education, and licensing. Williams advises aspiring independent game developers to start as he did: using free software. He recommends Blender for 3D Modeling and Rendering software, the Unity3D free version for level design and gameplay, and/or the Visual Studio Community which allows coding for free. Williams cautions, however, there are some intangibles that are critical to survival.
“You can make a video game and not know any art at all. But you cannot make a video game and not know any code at all. I would tell them to start programming, because even if you are unable to get hired making video games, you can still make them by yourself at home. A programming job is gonna pull you at least $100K a year.”
Williams also proffered some wisdom that has application in most any field.
“A person that wants to be able to succeed in this type of work has to be willing to accept failure and to understand that failure is just another step in your journey. It’s not truly a failure, and you can’t think of it as that. You have to think of it as a trial. When you try a product and it doesn’t work, you now know to not do something like that, but to do something else instead. Your stuff has to work when Kia and the NBA need it to work.”
The ultimate conclusion of this inquisitive once over-active toddler? “If you get frustrated and quit, that’s when you truly fail.”
Catch a glimpse of Anthony Williams’ work at https://anthonywilliamsjr.blogspot.com/
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Derek Dixon is a longtime contributor to The Real Deal Press. He is married to Anthony Williams' mother.
