Challenges
23 Aug 2007I can still remember my first day of work here at EA.
I walked into the lobby downstairs and had a seat near security. Rob came by and chatted with me for a while (the friend who got me the job out here) and then as we finished catching up the franchise head of NHL came along and took me up to see the work area.
I remember in great detail seeing my cubicle for the first time. My own two and a half almost walls; a name plate on one of them. It all sounds silly, I know, but coming from where I had come from and the way my life had been going it was a huge moment. Touching even.
There was no expense spared. I had my own TV, devkits, dual monitors, multiple keyboards, a shelf, some drawers and the most amazingly comfortable chair in the entire world to sit in. All quite a step up from everything previous in that regard.
It was the first step toward fulfilling, no living a dream. I had always wanted to make hockey title since I had played the immortal classic Ice Hockey. I love hockey. I always have.
So here I am now. I have lived the dream. I have shipped two of the greatest hockey games ever made. I hope that all of the friends, family and critics alike will agree that 08 is simply fantastic.
I have an unending thirst for challenges though. No matter how much I try to downplay it and pretend that I am happy just maintaining the status quo, that just isn’t the truth.
I know there is another challenge in my professional life that I have to take on at some point. I need to be part of a start up again. One that has a chance. One that works hard and goes far. I know so many amazing programmers, almost all of whom would love to work with each other again, that I am not the least bit worried about finding the programming talent. The trick is the business end, as it always has been. I need to find a company willing to give us a contract.
If that little bit could get kick started somehow, I already have a 10 year business plan. I know the life cycles I would put on the projects. I know the projects that I would do. I know what order they would be done in, how many people it would take, how they would overlap. That’s all figured out. That initial investment of money is the part that always eludes me.
I, am not a schmoozer. Although everyone agrees that if I could ever get schmoozed into a business meeting with someone who had some money that I could convince them of anything. That if they heard the passion and the thought that has gone into this whole idea that they would shower us with money.
Ultimately I want to start a company of about 20 people at first. Then over the course of the first five years it would slowly staff up to about 120 people. Three teams working three separate games. From the 5th to the 8th year we would staff up to around 150 as people shift onto our fourth and last team.
That would be the end of the growth. That would be as far as I wanted it to go. I’ve seen too many huge companies and teams that become disconnected at some level. I work in a building that has a higher population than many of the small towns I grew up in.
In no way is working here a bad thing. It is quite the opposite. This is a great place to work, surrounded by bright people and beautiful scenery. After having worked so hard to build this foundation though, I’m loathe to just coast along, tweaking things here and there, adding slight improvements to the parts of the game I work on. There is no more room, now that we have a solid base, to do radical and crazy things.
When will it all happen? That’s hard to say. It could be five or ten years before everything works out to where I could branch out and do my own thing. It could be in a year.
Maybe it will never happen. Life is a crazy thing.