Adventures in futility.

The plan was to simply place this post in front of you with little or no fanfare, as one might toss a fish that was past its prime – gingerly. Of course, by acknowledging this fact I’ve already eliminated this as a possibility, but I solider on.

A lot has happened in the past couple of weeks, some of which I’m eager to talk about and some of which I’m not. Telling it all in a single post would probably be overwhelming in the “too long, didn’t read” sense of the word. As such, the plan is to break things up over a few posts knowing full-well my track record regarding this sort of scheme. I don’t know what order or how many there will be, but I’m almost positive that they’ll end up achronological. This is a word I’ve made up to mean “out of temporal order” because I didn’t feel like typing that phrase out and, honestly, I sort of thought it might have been an actual word to begin with. I was wrong, but that has not stopped me from using it anyway. Such is the author’s dark power, I suppose.

Back to the matter at hand, I currently find myself in Madison, Wisconsin in the midst of a furious apartment hunt. Darth has come along for moral support and to provide much appreciated experience on the matter of finding a place to live in a city you’ve never visited before this moment. We can get on to the matter of why I’m moving to Madison in the next post, but for now it should be sufficient to know that I am. Finding an apartment in a new city is always a chore, I imagine, but in this particular case the problem is exacerbated by what must be the most asinine arrangement in the country: every single downtown and near-city rental property leases in August. Not just sometime in August, mind you, but specifically on August 14th.

What this means is that anyone moving to the city at any other time than August is completely fucked if they want a decent place downtown. Or, at least, if they want a decent place that falls within their price range and space requirements. My needs are not extravagant, and I think I’ve put myself into a range where apartments certainly exist – I know this because I have seen the listing myself. Unfortunately, none of them are available now.

After several days of hunting (and one more remaining on Monday) it seems that I’m probably going to be limited to one option: take a cheaper and less than exciting place until August and resign myself to going through this entire silly operation again except, this time, with an eye towards summer availability. There is some appeal to this plan…I can save a lot of money for the first half of the year if I go for a cheaper place, money that can be put towards the paying of student loans, buying of furniture, saving for emergencies, traveling, hard drugs, and that sort of thing. What’s more, I’ll have time to do a truly thorough search of downtown and will likely have a lot more options to choose from. I’ll also (theoretically) have a better idea of what it costs to live in Madison in the first place.

So, not an ideal situation by any stretch of the imagination, but maybe it won’t be so bad. I can also decide to go the irresponsible route and choose the only nice downtown place I’ve found. I really like the landlord (she actually lives in the building!), the place itself is decent with a great view, and it comes fully furnished with shockingly nice stuff and brand-new appliances. It is also, of course, at the far end of what I can afford.

Tune in next time to see how responsible I turn out to be.

If you walk without rhythm you won’t attract the worm.

Game development is kind of a tricky industry right now. On the one hand, it’s gotten big enough to pull down dollars that put it near or at the top of the entertainment world and has managed to bridge the gap between casual and hardcore. Everybody plays games now, and there’s certainly no shortage of young men and women raised by the NES who would love to be a part of it someway, somehow. Unfortunately, the game industry suffers from two problems when it comes to finding employment: it’s relatively young and, in some ways, it’s a lot like Hollywood.

That is to say, unlike the automotive industry or the military industrial complex, the game industry doesn’t have many well-established routes of entry. Oh sure, you can put together a kickass mod or create a quirky indie game and get lucky – and you’ll hear no end of stories describing this track – but that’s hardly a tried and true method. Aside from the big publishers like EA and Microsoft, spamming out copies of your résumé is a good way to feel like you’re tossing bits into an invisible black hole. And, unless you’re fortunate enough to live in California or Seattle, odds are your university’s career fair doesn’t have any game companies in attendance.

Thus, my summer this past year consisted largely of what I’ve just described – sending dozens of digital resumes and cover letters to die friendless and alone in the wilds of the internet. It’s hard to overstate the psychological toll this eventually takes…the almost complete lack of feedback one receives, aside from the occasional flimsy rejection letter, is tough to deal with. Indeed, I think I stuck it out a lot longer than most would have and possibly longer than I should have, but I’m happy to say that it seems to have worked out in the end!

As of a week ago I’ve accepted a position as “technical level designer/game programmer” at HumanHead in Madison, Wisconsin. Odds are that title means very little to most of you. I’ll confess that it doesn’t mean all that much to people inside the industry either! This is another of the many problems aspiring game developers run into when trying to find a job – the lack of standard, comprehensible job titles makes it almost impossible to figure out what kinds of positions you should be applying for. In any case, it basically means that I will be supporting more experienced level designers in creating scripted sequences and events as well as small gameplay elements. Because HumanHead is a small company and my project team is also small I’ve got a very real opportunity to have a direct creative impact, something most entry level game developers would kill to get.

In a lot of ways this represents the dream job. It’s about as close as you can get to an entry-level game designer position, and game design is exactly what I want to be doing in the future. Because there’s scripting involved I also get to apply my CS degree to some extent. Most importantly, I get to work on a big title with a small team on which I can make a real, noticeable difference. The people I met at HumanHead are all friendly and interesting and we got along great. The atmosphere of the studio is very non-corporate, with casual dress and direct interaction between normal employees like me and the actual owners of the company.

I’m really excited to see what the next few months bring. I’m also considering writing up an short article detailing the path I took into the industry and discussing the value of networking outside the industry itself and how the contact that gets you the job can come from the most unlikely of places. I figure it might be of use or interest to others who want to break into the industry themselves.

It is done.

The table is all set for my relocation to the fine city of Madison – my application has been approved and I’ll be able to sign the lease as soon as I get down there to move in. As it stands now I’m looking to be out there by the end of next week, which most likely means the 17th or 18th.

The place itself is decent, not perfect but it’s inexpensive and will allow me to build up some pretty substantial savings by the time the lease is up in August. It’s a one bedroom place of moderate size with a decent kitchen, something that might not seem important but was actually pretty tough to come by. There are several downsides, of course: communal, coin-operated laundry facilities, baseboard heating and a location that’s pretty far from downtown. It is, however, closer to work than a downtown place would have been (more or less right in between the two locations).

Although I’m very excited to get started at HumanHead, I must admit that the pace of this is becoming a little bit stressful. In reality it’s been almost a month since I got the offer, but with the holidays falling right in the middle it feels like I’ve been running non-stop for quite some time. As it is I’m slated to start working “as soon as I can get out there,” which could be as late as the end of the month but it definitely feels like I shouldn’t drag things out that long. Next week makes the most sense because it’ll give me the long MLK day weekend to get things organized and under control, after which I can get started for real.

Sorry for the mundane nature of the past few posts, but this felt like a good way to get back into the swing of regular updating. Once I get moved in things will (hopefully) move in a direction that’s less generic descriptions and more entertaining.

Fuzzy mathematics.

I don’t normally do a lot of furniture shopping, but the prospect of moving to an unfurnished space next week has compelled me to do some browsing. After bouncing among a few websites and physical storefronts I was struck by what seems (to me) to be a completely ridiculous industry practice: displaying vastly higher prices that I should “expect to pay” or “compare at.”

For example, one of the things I’m in the market for is a queen bed. According to this listing (chosen at random) on a local retailer’s website, this mattress that they sell for around $700 is apparently worth somewhere closer to $1400! There’s no indication of where I would expect to see this higher price and, in fact, all of my browsing leads me to believe that $700 is the average price for this product. So why the prevarication? Are some customers really credulous enough to look at that and think they’re getting a phenomenal deal?

At least in the case of this retailer, all it did was cause me to almost dismiss them as an option when my cursory glance revealed that they were (it appeared) way over priced.

I also dropped by Circuit City to make use of various Christmas gift cards. In an incredible stroke of luck I managed to pick up a pristine copy of Okami for less than $10 and, equally surprising, a copy of Puzzle Quest for only $20. Both of these are excellent titles that I’m somewhat ashamed to admit I haven’t yet partaken of, but getting such good deals on tough to find games makes me feel just a teensy bit better. There’s still some money left over on my gift cards that I’ll likely use to grab a wireless router for the new apartment – I’m leaning towards the tried-and-true Linksys WRT54GL, but if anyone has any other suggestions I’d love to hear them.

Finally, I couldn’t let this heart-wrenching trailer slide by without comment. I know, mentally, that this is hardly the first time Soul Calibur has included unlikely, non-canonical guest characters but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m witnessing the final gasps of this series.

I haven’t liked Blink 182 since I was in high school.

Things are pretty much packed up now, needing only to be loaded onto the U-Haul truck I’ll be picking up in an hour or so. Interestingly, there’s a combination of excitement and trepidation as my official “moving day” approaches. I’ve been convinced for more than a year that leaving Michigan is the Right Call when it comes to pursuing my projected career path and opening up new horizons. It’s equal parts pragmatism and idealism – obviously there’s hardly any game industry presence in this state, which is a big factor. But there’s also a sense that leaving what I know behind will, in some ineffable fashion, bring up new challenges and opportunities that I might not even realize exist right now.

Of course, until recently that was all theory. Now I’ve got to actually make the move and, perhaps more importantly, leave behind the comfort zone of familiarity. Close friends that I’ve known for years will stay behind, and though this sort of thing has been the case ever since I started college at MTU (and studied abroad in Japan, for that matter!) this time it feels different. With school and with Japan there was always the background knowledge that I would be returning to the Novi area for a summer, or for long holidays, or whatever, and that things would, if only for a few weeks, return to old-fashioned normalcy.

I’m not afraid or even worried, at least not in the traditional sense, but then the feelings themselves are tough to pin down. Soon I’ll be in a new city and a new state, working a new job in an industry I probably don’t know as well as I think I do and performing a task for which I’m almost certainly not as prepared as I think I am.

I guess this is growing up.

Pre-update preparation.

This is just a brief update to let everyone know that I’m officially moved in and have completed my first week of work at Human Head. There’s a bit to talk about, of course: stuff regarding the new apartment, the trials of my first week in a new city, details regarding my first week and how that went, etc. I’m still not quite decompressed enough to say much, though, so I’m going to hold off on making a real post until the end of the weekend.

Sufficient to say, so far, that things are going about as well as can be expected. The apartment is satisfactory and everyone at Human Head has been friendly and helpful, thus far, so I’m pretty happy with that. I haven’t had much of a chance to explore Madison for multiple reasons, not least of which has been the ridiculous weather this week: sub-zero temperatures pretty much every day. Things are supposed to warm up after today, though, so hopefully I’ll be able to do more of that in the near future.

Further updates to come over the weekend, for those of you still interested.