UNEMPLOYED

Well, I just noticed that ubvb hasn't had a post in a couple of weeks, so here I am. I'm once again job-free, so I have some spare time in which to ramble...

So, a little background here. I quit a regular job (because the company sucked, because that's what you do when the rats start fleeing, because that's the only way i could figure out to get paid) first thing this year (literally -- I went in to my director's office on the morning of January 2nd and said "I'm here to ruin your day.") and started job hunting. Basically I turned a bunch of computer game industry recruiters loose to see what they could find for me. I had one real interview which, while it went pretty well, didn't get me a job.

During this time, a company that Robert and I had worked with at our little startup a couple of years back was courting the two of us to do a port project. Without going into too much detail, the money looked good, and the project looked tractable. On the down side, this project was closely related to the project that finally exhausted the startup, so there were going to be some psychological hurdles for Robert and I to deal with.

Still, it isn't often that you get paid lots of money to work through your psychological baggage, so in the end we said yes. Getting the project started up took a little longer than we might have liked (but that had its upside too, as it gave me quite a bit of time off), but we finally got a pre-contract Letter of Intent, got some money, got some equipment, and got started.

Just as we started to hit our stride and get familiar with the development system and target platform (the Nintendo Gamecube, which I highly recommend for its developer-friendliness), the publisher pulled out of the project. The Gamecube isn't selling as fast as they anticipated, so they don't think the game will sell.

It seems to be easier to deal with a cancellation early in a project than later once the project has really started to take shape and life. I'll spare you the first analogy that came to mind.

The company who hired us to do this port has a number of projects in the works, and felt bad about the situation, so they flew us out to Texas to discuss things we could do for them.

Now, what they really want is for me and Robert to move down there and join the company. Not gonna happen, if for no other reason than the fact that it was 92 degrees and humid when we got there. What Robert and I really want is for them to send us fat monthly retainer checks until there's something for us to do. Also not gonna happen.

So we talked, and it was nice to actually meet some of these guys face to face (Robert had visited them once before, but I'd only dealt with them via email and phone previously), and it was clear that their head honcho is a good guy who believes in not fucking people over, and who thinks Robert and I are talented and valuable. So in that sense the trip was good. On the other hand, I don't think any of the projects they have in the pipeline are good fits for Robert and me, so I'm going to "thanks-but-no-thanks" him for the time being. It was a social networking exercise, really, which is fine.

So once again the recruiters are on the prowl for me, trying to dig up some job that I can be happy in, and right now I don't even know if I want to be in the game industry any more. I do know that I'm going to talk about the possibility of moving into a game design position in any interviews; I'm not going to take a game-industry job if that's not at least an option. I think I need to seriously start looking at other sorts of
programming positions, at any rate.

In the meantime I get to cook dinner for my lovely wife, and keep the cat company, and hone my Counter-Strike skills, and do some recreational programming. And that's all pretty good.

Posted by russell at May 03, 2002 10:52 AM