Watershed
Here's the definition of "watershed":
It's also, coincidentally, the name of the building where I and a few dozen other developers worked on a game called Kerbal Space Program 2. I really loved that office - right in the heart of Fremont, a block away from the Burke-Gilman trail on Lake Union. Of all the memories I'll take with me from my time on that project, the most vivid will be of the summertime meetings, the "walk-and-talks," that took place outdoors on the trail. Those are happy memories.
Of course not all of my memories from that project are happy - for nearly seven years, I helped to push against a boulder of tech debt and procedural complexity in service of a vision that I felt would culminate in a great game. A big part of my job was to communicate - both to the team and to the public - the imminency of that vision. "Yes, today is hard. Tomorrow will be beautiful."
This summer, our studio was disbanded. This came as a complete surprise. It happened so quickly that I sometimes still wake up having forgotten that I no longer have a job. I worked on the project for so long that I'm not sure it'll ever fully fade away. It's like a phantom limb. I am certain that the full impact of this setback will continue to come to me in little waves of realization for many years to come. Is this it for me? Am I standing here, like a baffled antagonist in Fist of the North Star, having already received the killing blow?
I'm unemployed in Seattle, I have a family, and I turn 50 next year. Tomorrow may not be as beautiful as I'd hoped.
I did learn a few things. I learned that I like making things with my own hands, and that I never again want to be promoted more than one level away from where people are bending the metal. I learned that the big-company tradeoff of creative autonomy for job stability can be illusory. I learned that the life of committee decision making and heavy communications oversight is exhausting. I learned that my "razzle dazzle" (a term I learned from my son's preschool) is that I tend to fall in love with whatever I'm making.
I started this blog over a decade ago after I left a previous game job, and it originally chronicled my journey into comics. That was an enriching, sometimes infuriating, and not-all-that-profitable experiment that's still ongoing (I still draw Nonplayer in the morning before work).
Now I'm starting a new experiment: to see if I can make a game with a very small team (currently me and my friend Dan Goes). I want to start posting here as I re-learn the pipeline after many years of being a guy who tells other people what to do. I want to make something of my own again, and to be honest I don't have any idea what steps to take, other than to put one foot in front of the other.
1. an area or ridge of land that separates waters flowing to different rivers, basins, or seas.
2. an event or period marking a turning point in a course of action or state of affairs.
It's also, coincidentally, the name of the building where I and a few dozen other developers worked on a game called Kerbal Space Program 2. I really loved that office - right in the heart of Fremont, a block away from the Burke-Gilman trail on Lake Union. Of all the memories I'll take with me from my time on that project, the most vivid will be of the summertime meetings, the "walk-and-talks," that took place outdoors on the trail. Those are happy memories.
Of course not all of my memories from that project are happy - for nearly seven years, I helped to push against a boulder of tech debt and procedural complexity in service of a vision that I felt would culminate in a great game. A big part of my job was to communicate - both to the team and to the public - the imminency of that vision. "Yes, today is hard. Tomorrow will be beautiful."
This summer, our studio was disbanded. This came as a complete surprise. It happened so quickly that I sometimes still wake up having forgotten that I no longer have a job. I worked on the project for so long that I'm not sure it'll ever fully fade away. It's like a phantom limb. I am certain that the full impact of this setback will continue to come to me in little waves of realization for many years to come. Is this it for me? Am I standing here, like a baffled antagonist in Fist of the North Star, having already received the killing blow?
I'm unemployed in Seattle, I have a family, and I turn 50 next year. Tomorrow may not be as beautiful as I'd hoped.
I did learn a few things. I learned that I like making things with my own hands, and that I never again want to be promoted more than one level away from where people are bending the metal. I learned that the big-company tradeoff of creative autonomy for job stability can be illusory. I learned that the life of committee decision making and heavy communications oversight is exhausting. I learned that my "razzle dazzle" (a term I learned from my son's preschool) is that I tend to fall in love with whatever I'm making.
I started this blog over a decade ago after I left a previous game job, and it originally chronicled my journey into comics. That was an enriching, sometimes infuriating, and not-all-that-profitable experiment that's still ongoing (I still draw Nonplayer in the morning before work).
Now I'm starting a new experiment: to see if I can make a game with a very small team (currently me and my friend Dan Goes). I want to start posting here as I re-learn the pipeline after many years of being a guy who tells other people what to do. I want to make something of my own again, and to be honest I don't have any idea what steps to take, other than to put one foot in front of the other.
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