Show Us Your Rig: Everquest Next's Creative Director Jeff Butler

Show us your rig
Jeff Butler, Creative Director on the upcoming Everquest Next and Landmark , has a rig with a surprisingly clean interior given how much cat hair you can assume falls off the back of his two gigantic Maine Coon cats.

Each week on Show Us Your Rig, we feature the PC game industry's best and brightest as they show us the systems they use to work and play.

, has a rig with a surprisingly clean interior given how much cat hair you can assume falls off the back of his two gigantic Maine Coon cats. The cat pictured above is so large that, coupled with the equally huge monitor behind him, for a moment I thought Jeff might just be very small. Jeff was kind enough to show us his high-res gaming setup, along with his necessitated method of cat containment.

What's in your PC? CPU — Intel Core i7 3770 Quad-Core 3.4 GHz Motherboard — Asus Maximus V Extreme Motherboard Memory — 16 GB Ram - 4x Corsair Memory Vengeance 16 Dual Channel Kit DDR3 1600 MHz 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM Drives — Crucial 128 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s, 3 TB Seagate Video — EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Power Supply — Corsair AX1200 Case — Cooler Master Cosmos II Full Tower Case Display — Samsung 4k UN55F9000AF 55’ TV Mouse — Mad Catz R.A.T. 7 Keyboard — Logitech G19 Programmable Gaming Keyboard with Color Display Receiver — Onkyo TR- NX Speakers — 2 x Polk Audio Monitor70 Series II Floorstanding Loudspeaker Speakers — 1 x Polk Audio CS2 Series II Center Channel Speaker

The most interesting thing about this setup is that the 4K display just eliminates the sense that games are made of pixels. Every time I fire up a new game I stare in awe at the screen.

Cintiq 22HD Creative Pen Display Macbook Pro

Cat

What's always within arm's reach on your desk?

Within arm’s reach at my desk there is usually a giant tuft of fur, or 10. These are often attached to a Maine Coon cat of monstrous proportions. Maine Coons are pretty dog-like in behavior and always want to hang out while I play or draw. My big girl in the picture will come by and pin my mouse arm in mid-raid!

I developed a Cat Storage System for my entertainment center after I realized that I have to keep at least two shelves clear for napping. If you think having enough room for everyone is “great,” you would be wrong. Each cat always wants to be in the other’s spot! So, disagreements over the best napping spots end up with my junk being knocked off of the shelves.

The looks on their faces in this picture are solely because they are not satisfied with their “spot.” Pretty soon a paw will get someone’s tail.

I also lose my chair pretty often when I got up for a drink, so I got spare. As you can see, the joke was on me.

Over the years I have collected a lot of stuff from movies and other intellectual properties, so you can see the swords and figures from a few of my favorite anime have accumulated around my desk. Be careful when you open the computer room closet because - sharp! Though I have never had the chance to drive my enemies before me, I am sure all these swords will come in handy one day. Thx Conan.

What are you playing right now?

Currently, I am playing Marvel Heroes 2015 with a good friend who worked with me on an early pitch of the game. C’est la vie!

What's your favorite game and why?

My favorite game of all time goes without saying, EverQuest. It got me into the video games industry, but even before that I had 14-16 days of playtime every month, for more months than I care to count. For a brief time before I started working at Verant, I was the highest level player in the world.