About Me & NinjaBee
Some of the folks at the Utah Indie Dev meeting already know this, but for those who don't (and who actually care), but last month I accepted a position at Sensory Sweep, another local game studio (and one significantly closer to where I live).

It was totally amicable on both sides (as far as I know...) Steve's an awesome guy, and the Wahoo / NinjaBee is about the coolest place to work since the early days at SingleTrac. I highly recommend it. The worst part about leaving when I did was missing the next summer party... the last one was at a big ol' cabin in the mountains, when the whole company was playing games like Mafia and even Murder in the Dark at 3:00 in the morning. If you are a a talented artist, designer, or programmer looking into getting into the games industry, I can't recommend them highly enough.

As for why I left... I guess you could say it was a matter of timing. Since Steve and I are friends first, we kept each other in the loop as things developed. Sensory Sweep actually called Wahoo first to make sure it was okay to talk to me, and then made me a pretty attractive offer. I was recommended by a couple of guys here whom I knew --- one of whom I had worked with before at Acclaim, and trusted his opinion.

And yes, they agreed with my requirement (it IS a requirement now) that I continue to do the indie game development thing on the side with my business, Rampant Games.

So far, things are great. I'm on a brand new project which I am going to be completely unable to talk about for a good while (I think I can say it is multiplatform). It's taking some getting used to the change in "corporate culture" in a much larger company, but for the most part --- programming is programming, and programming games is programming games. I sit in my cubical, crack jokes with my team members, and figure out how to make cool things happen in something that may one day resemble a game.

If it weren't for the fact they will be moving to a new office that's a little further away next month, it would be ideal. I'm really getting used to a commute that's less than ten minutes.

The trick remains staying motivated to write games in the evening after spending the whole day writing them to pay the bills. I found my motivation to do indie games dropping a little at Wahoo / NinjaBee because I didn't hate my day job. Something about being desperate to vacate the 9-to-5 (well, too often, 8-to-6-or-later) grind can really help motivate someone to get that side business humming along. But that's not sufficient cause to choose a lousy day job. It just means I need to discipline myself better.

Labels: Biz

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:15 AM (Permalink)