I’ve recounted this a number of times, in varying levels of detail, over the years when discussing the topic of how I got into games. This is, I think, the most complete version fit for general consumption.
Around the time I was finishing high school in the late 90s, and opting not to take OAC (the Ontario Academic Credit, aka grade 13), I was starting to think about what I would do once school ended.
Growing up I’d always had a variety of interests and hobbies. Naturally, that meant that while I had some options, I didn’t have a clear path. As is usual for many kids, every year changed what I thought I wanted to do with my life. Late in public school I was in a production of The Miracle Worker and considered acting. In my first year of high school I began reading about genetics and was sure that was what I wanted to do. The next year it was history. And so on. But when the end of my last year in high school was upon me, suddenly I didn’t have that one thing that I wanted to be.
Ultimately I boiled my choices down to a few different options I could pursue; I could…
…study music. I grew up in a musical family, played guitar in a band and classical guitar throughout high school. As much as I loved it, I just didn’t see it turning into a viable career.
…study history. I had a long love of history and always did well in the subject, but it would mean I’d likely have to teach and I definitely wasn’t interested in that.
…go into games. I’ve loved games for as long as I can remember. I started out on the Commodore 64 and was a Nintendo kid. Throughout school I’d submit computer class assignments as little games. The problem was that I didn’t like programming and at the time that was a requirement.
…do something with computers. I fell in with a new group of friends in high school and got into PC gaming. At the time that also meant you had to learn a lot about building and fixing computers, so I already had some experience.
This was the end of the 90’s and the dot com boom was on. What’s more is that there was a well-regarded college not too far from where I lived that offered a 2 year program that would get me into the industry much faster than pursuing a 4 year university bachelor’s degree in computer science.
Deciding that was the best path forward since I could still live at home, I was getting a post-secondary education and it was for a rapidly growing field, I enrolled in the Computer Support Technician program, opting for the fast-track version of the program. That meant I’d be through the whole thing in a little over half the time thanks to a compressed course schedule. And that would have been good, really, except what I and most of the rest of the technology industry didn’t know was that just as I was about to graduate, the dot com bubble burst.
Congratulations. You’re fully qualified to be unemployed.
With no local employment prospects, a few months later I moved in with some friends who had moved to Toronto, and got a job at a book store. Despite my employment situation and being very poor, this was one of the best times of my life. Sure I was living out of cardboard boxes and sleeping on a futon in the corner of the living room, but I was with friends and every day was a LAN party. What are your early 20’s for, if not that?
Around that time there were a number of books on game development released - some readers may remember the Premier Press Andre LaMothe game development series. They were primarily focused on programming because, at the time, that’s the skillset you needed to make games and there were very few packaged tools in the way that there are today. Regardless, I ended up buying a few of them but because of the programming and math involved, neither of which I was much good at, I made a few small things but nothing that really scratched the creative itch I had.
Eventually the technology sector began a slow recovery and I landed a job in IT. At first it was contracting, which was uniquely stressful both as someone who wanted a steady, reliable paycheque, but also as an introvert who was being forced into new situations every few months. Thankfully I did manage to find a full-time, salaried position leveraging my IT skills after a while.
Over the next decade I got married, bought a house and started a family. I dabbled in making little prototypes and proofs-of-concepts for games in my spare time, but it wasn’t my focus. At least not until I got downsized from my job as a systems administrator.
I took the opportunity to reflect on what I was doing with my life and what I really wanted to be doing. I was tired of IT. I got into it because I enjoyed solving problems and being challenged to figure things out, but it had become more about mitigating disasters while being severely under-funded to prevent said disasters.
On a lark I did some online searching for game development jobs in the GTA and I stumbled on a little studio down in the distillery district with an opening for a design intern. I sent my resume and didn’t really expect much to come of it because I had no formal experience making games - just dabbling in making prototypes and experimenting with the first free version of Unity - but, as luck would have it, they called me in for an interview and… I got it. I admit I was kind of blown away.
The role lasted four months and I threw myself into it; I was excited about my work for the first time in years. I was on the Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale team and getting to design weapons and equipment for a DnD game as my first foray into the industry was a dream come true. The idea that things I was making would become official parts of the Forgotten Realms cannon blew my mind as a kid who had played a tonne of Baldur’s Gate (1998) when it came out. I worked on a number of different aspects of the game and my enthusiasm earned me the opportunity to be a major contributor to a pitch proposal that was being presented to our publisher for a chance to make a new entry in a well known and regarded series they had the rights to.
Eventually I was offered a job as a junior designer; this was it, I’d really done it! But there was a problem - because I was starting at the bottom I’d be making less than half of what I was earning in IT. Not surprising really, but also not something that was financially viable for me given I had a mortgage and a family to support. I tried to negotiate but there was no wiggle room.
So, disappointed, I took a deep breath and went back to IT.
I spent the next four years building and refining my skills. On the train during my morning commute and at night after everyone had gone to bed, I was working away. Programming, doing pixel art, designing mechanics and building levels. I made a bunch of different little things, taught myself about procedural generation and planned to make things that were hilariously out of scope for a single person. Most importantly, I learned a lot.
Going back to IT had been hard. It was a means to an end, but it felt wrong for me at this stage of my life, especially after having worked in games where it felt like I had found my people. Everywhere else I worked, when I talked about games I’d get polite nods but no real engagement in conversation. On top of that I had a couple of IT jobs go sour and decided enough was enough. I didn’t like the person I was becoming by being stuck in an industry I had fallen out of love with.
So, as I was browsing around looking for games jobs, I happened across a small indie studio who had an open role for a gameplay programmer. That gave me some pause because while I was writing code almost daily in my own projects and prototypes, I had no professional experience writing code. I didn’t even know if I was any good at it, really. But - nothing ventured, nothing gained - I decided to apply.
Somewhat unexpectedly, I was given their programming test. This was it, again! - my chance to prove I could do this. I spent every free moment of the next two weeks building a three level game with mechanics that progressed over the course of each, a mixture of 2D and 3D art, and a narrative. For a programming test I definitely went overboard, but I wanted to harness all of the skills I’d spent years building and give it everything I had.
I made something pretty fun in that span of time and had a unique take on integrating the core mechanic into the game and justifying it with a silly narrative and characters. To this day when I let people play it, even with its lack of polish, they find it entertaining.
A bit of time went by before I heard back. And… I didn’t get it.
Now, I can’t truly say this was a surprise given my lack of professional programming experience, but it stung all the same. To the studio’s credit, they didn’t send a form letter but a personally written appreciation for my time, effort and talent.
And that was that. There weren’t any other jobs in the area that I could find, and certainly none without more required experience than I had, so I went back to working on side projects and slogging through my days in IT.
About a month later, while on the train home one afternoon, I got an e-mail. I recall having to re-read the e-mail a few times for my brain to really absorb what was happening.
It was the indie studio reaching out with a potential opportunity, if I was still interested.
I had never had a company contact me for a role before. Did this mean I was actually good at what I wanted to be doing? That all the years of teaching myself and honing new skills, early mornings and late nights, was really paying off?
I felt proud, validated, and excited but also mildly terrified; I really had to do it, day in and day out and prove that was my job from then on. I was in my 30s, 15 years into a career with three kids and a mortgage - right around when people in my generation seemed to be getting themselves figured out and stable - and here I was making a big, risky, possibly stupid decision and blowing up my life.
I haven’t looked back since.