Once upon a time, in late February 2008, I was in NYC for a model UN event of all unlikely things.
I stayed at an uncle’s house close to 168st & Audubon Ave., and had some days and time to explore Manhattan. I also had the drive to explore it: it was my first “grown up” trip, all of 17 and a half.
Up to some years ago I was under the impression I’d walked Manhattan fully north to south in a single session, but I’m not so sure anymore. It’s 20km, and at an average pace of 4 to 5 km/h, which is between a normal and a mild hurry for me, it’d have been 4 to 5 hours, which tracked my memory of how long it took. But I stopped on the way, and was curious, and all that stuff, so there’s a likelihood that I walked a few kms less than that. At the very least I moved from 168th to 27th st — which is where Kaos Studios were located.
So I stopped by; I was reminded of this story because of an article about Avalanche Studios, whose starting staff had previously been part of Kaos Studios.
I remember I was shook about the game they were developing: the just-released Fuels of War, which supported an astounding 32 players simultaneously (I recently found out it was upped to 50). The PC version supported 64 players!
Anyway, as a fledgling programmer this was panacea. I happily signed an NDA and got a studio tour after dropping in impromptu. I was very excited by what I was seeing, but at the same time it felt alien to me; all these high end computers, people editing 3d assets and stuff like that filled me with all sorts of feelings. It felt so far away from my daily life, it felt unattainable. Had I lived in NYC I might’ve pitched to intern at the studio for free, but living in the DR it felt especially far away and especially impossible to be part of the gaming industry.
Not much point to the story; it just reminded me of how hungry I was for opportunity. I wanted to go to MIT to code with the great coders in the CSAIL. It was all wistfulness and dreaminess: my high school grades were not very good, we couldn’t afford MIT. I later wanted to get into the Vancouver Film School to do their course in videogames. I read Gamasutra‘s “gamadaily” newsletter religiously, all the dreamy stuff.
Life moves on, of course. Now my friend Luis, who I met because those dreams didn’t come to pass, has been cooking OverKnights for a while in his own game studio, Obitus Games, and having pitched in lightly at the start of the project might be the closest I’ll ever get to the games industry besides hobby development and being a fan of Nicolas and Julious at Morphcat Games, Tarn and Zach at Bay 12 Games and of course Kornel Kisielewicz at Chaosforge.org.
And that’s OK. Not all dreams come to fruition. My path has been through development for enterprises, a brief stint at community outreach with some talks sprinkled here and there, the startup grind, the indie dev grind, and the consulting grind. It’s been a fun and varied road, and led me to my current endeavor to oil the machinery of social coordination and commerce, starting with qualified signatures, at Digito.
Like my hobbies past and present of music, reading sci fi and fantasy, writing, and following my curiosity where it leads, games are part of my personal history, and that brief look into a Real Game Studio back in 2008 left an impression and now fills me with nostalgia.
It makes sense to remember that I now have better tools than then. I hope I can do my younger self proud in my endeavors. I hope my mementos and trinkets help me remember where I’ve been, and value where I am.
