Not entirely sure how to phrase this so I’ll just sort of throw it out. I finished my schooling at the Art Institute of Portland last week and spent basically all of this week on the road or on planes to the bay area interviewing with three different game studios. Two of them made offers, and the one that I liked best was, I’m sorry to say, in the bay area.
And so, I’m basically writing this post to say goodbye.
I’ve lived here all of my life, so it’s not an easy thing to leave it all, and I’ve had a lot of fun in the gaming community around the northwest, and I would’ve loved to be able to go to Seattle where I could still stay in the middle of it all. However, when the best opportunity isn’t Seattle, at some point I have to pick up and move. I’m not looking forward to the mad dash of cramming everything in boxes and heading off to the east bay (I’ll be working with Backbone Entertainment in Emeryville, CA to be exact… it’s stuffed away in with Oakland and Berkeley across the bay from San Francisco) but that’s going to be the story of my life over most of the next week before I take off.
There will be ways to get back up to the Portland area again, and believe me, they’re going to get used. I’ll generally put up a post when I know I’m going to be coming back at a given time with any real chance to break away and play, and I certainly wouldn’t mind meeting up with a few of the gamers to play, tournament or otherwise, when I’m up here. If I’ve really got scads of time I’ll probably even take a quick drive up to Seattle to play. I’ll have money to fuel a bit of a travel budget again, to some degree, although there’ll be a transition time where I’ll be settling in and paying off a few debts incurred during my schooling that’ll probably last a few months. There also is a sister studio that Backbone holds in Eugene, so it’s possible that I’ll be swinging up there from time to time on a long road trip to work there from time to time in order to be in closer reach to visit my daughter, but I don’t know how often that’ll happen.
So that’s about the size of it now. It’s been a lot of fun playing with all of you guys, and I would have liked to stay in the area once I got out of school, but it doesn’t appear it was meant to be. So with that, I bid thee all a fond farewell.
EDIT: And just in case anyone is wondering, this is NOT an April Fool’s joke.
You were the initial motivation for everyone in Eugene to get better, ever since that first time you came down and creased everyone with that rogue/doom shit. You were also a close rival, even though in the last year or two I’ve made off with a few more wins, the games have always been close and fun. Sad to see the godfather of the Oregon scene take off, but I’m glad you have some real life related shit that’s making you do it. Have fun, take it easy, and stay in touch, yo.
BOOOO! I just heard from you already took off. I was hopin there’d be some time left before you went . Anyways nice knowin ya. Apparently we’ll be seein you again though. So good luck until then. After that, semi-good luck. Peace.
Well, thank you one and all for the sentiments. You guys will most likely see me again sooner or later, and I’ll try to drop a note in this forum when I know I’m coming back to the area.
I can relate that I’m working on the game Death Jr 2 by Backbone Entertainment, which was just announced by Konami at E3 yesterday (thus absolving me of non-disclosure requirements to keep mum).
It’s for the PSP. I’ve been working on tuning up the sound engine for the game and making their build tools work better, and I’m lobbying to get involved with the AI for critters in the game as well. My current understanding is that they’re planning to release it in October for Halloween. So buy it, foos!
OMFG. He works at Backbone too. I never knew that.
No, I haven’t been working with him to my knowledge, I know a lot of Daves around the office but he isn’t one of them as far as I know. I’ll have to look on the Who’s Who site when I get back on Monday.
BOOOO! I just heard from you already took off. I was hopin there’d be some time left before you went . Anyways nice knowin ya. Apparently we’ll be seein you again though. So good luck until then. After that, semi-good luck. Peace.