Recent Happenings...

Things have been a bit all over the place for me over the past few weeks. I'm getting married in less than 2 weeks (07/07/07), which is pretty crazy whenever I think about it - actually getting a bit anxious and Kristin, my fiance' is clearly stressed while she finishes up all the details.

On July 8th I'm leaving for a month long honeymoon, starting out in England and going throughout Europe, finally ending in a two week cruise/tourfest in Greece. Having been into history for most of my life, I'm really excited to travel and see many of the places/sites of things I've read about.

Partially due to this trip and also simply because the timing felt right, I decided to leave Mission Geoscience, where I've been working for the past 6 months. Its a nice place to work and I'll miss all the friends that I've made. A few of them live nearby and will hopefully continue to be friends long after my last day, which is July 3rd. They mentioned some type of goodbye celebration, which will be fun; they really have treated me well...

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I'm also looking into getting a job in the game industry. I interviewed to be a game tester at Electronic Arts in LA a few weeks back, and they have offered me the job once I return from my trip - in August. My sister has also been of great assistance in helping me look for a design position in southern California and I'm hoping that some of her contacts can help me land a job as a junior designer or level designer somewhere cool. I actually have a phone appointment with one of her friends tonight and he's going to show me the ropes in ZBrush. I've wanted to make games for a long time so now that I have a degree, I'm hoping I can use my amazingness to find a good job somewhere.

I recently started playing some poker and some Warcraft III again. Both have been pretty fun and I think I'll do my best to make sure I leave myself some free time to do both of these things in the coming months.

I'm still working on a Warcraft III map, Overrun, when I have good chunks of time. I probably have a good 30 hours left until all the essential stuff is in there; hopefully I can get it fully functional soon.

Ramping up for Vegas

Figure I'm going to go home and play some poker today. Been taking some time off, but with the bachelor party looming, definitely need to get some hours in so I can pwn all the tourists...

Starcraft 2 and me.

I want to be involved in the balance of Starcraft II game - ideally as a balance designer at Blizzard at some point. Taking a page out of Zileas' book, I want a dedicated place to make balance comments and suggestions. I have always made lots of balance type posts on Blizzard's forum in the past and this time I am going to take a very focused strategy in approaching how best to fix the problems as they arise.

When I interviewed for the game balance design job last year, I felt like I was the perfect fit for it; semi-pro gamer for a few years, who has always tried to think out of the box regarding Warcraft and Starcraft. I never found out what I was missing in particular for that job, but I personally believe it was simply an experience issue. SC2's release has renewed my personal desire to get this job - even if its for WC4 or SC3!

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Anyway, life is starting to get in the way of my poker playing. I'm not expecting to post an update on here for a few weeks at least.