Like most of my peers, I grew up on games. When I was just a little tyke my parents saw video games and computers as something special that would define my generation, or at the very least, keep us 5 kids out of their hair so they could do (arguably more boring) “adult things.” Whatever it was, I will always remember the TRS-80 and it’s cassette tapes from Radio Shack, our (several) Atari 2600’s we picked up with $0.50 – $2.00 games at weekend yard sales, our various varieties of Apple computers (IIe, IIc, IIgs), and my dad’s monochrome IBM followed by a powerful new color 486/33 PC when I was in 6th grade. Graphics weren’t always the driving force, as I found myself pouring hours of time into text-based MUDs on local (pre-internet) BBS systems with my friends. The world of online gaming was new and exciting, and along with my experiences on Sierra’s ImagiNation Network (which is recently undergoing a grassroots revival), I was slowly and sneakily being pulled further in to my future career.

Let’s not forget the console systems! Rewinding back to the night my mom brought home a brand new NES system with the original Super Mario Bros… it was an amazing time of excitement for my brother and I. We were supposed to go to bed, but mom and dad were overcome by our enthusiasm and allowed us to set it up and play for several hours. When she later got me a subscription to Nintendo Power Magazine I was finally “jacked in” to the video game world. I was always a Nintendo fanboy. While my friends gobbled up the SEGA Genesis (Mega-Drive) I waited patiently for the SNES. When the Saturn and Playstation hit I held my ground for the N64. I still remember countless all-nighters with my High School friends on four-player Mario Kart 64 battle mode. I rarely lost.

In High School our family upgraded to a Pentium machine and I got my first taste of PC 3D graphics not long after, courtesy of my first dedicated graphics card (Nvidia RIVA TNT2). I spent many long hours with online multi-player Quake and Quake II (Rocket Arena), honing my skills as a rocket-jumping ass-kicking mofo. In College I upgraded to a home-built AMD Athlon 700 with a whopping 1GB of RAM for my digital artwork. This was the perfect system to pwn my roommates in the original Counter-Strike. I remember those days well, all four of our bedroom doors open, screaming and laughing at each other, conspiring against internet players, and shunning off “important” things like school work and sometimes our jobs!

I still didn’t “get it” though. I was in the Digital Arts and Sciences program at the University of Florida through the encouragement of my mom, but I had originally wanted to major in Theatre (she talked me out of it). “You can make video games!” She said excitedly. Oddly enough, I sort of blew it off… I didn’t want to make video games. I wanted to make movies! And that’s what I did. Following 4 years of University studies in computer graphics, art, and programming, I moved out to Los Angeles and started working in film VFX.

I loved Los Angeles. I made great life-long friends there, took up surfing and snowboarding, and learned a lot about myself and my life and my work. I was at a small company working for a man who would later become one of my closest friends. As it is with many people in L.A., I had the opportunity to peer into the circus tent of Hollywood production from many angles through my friends, colleagues and business contacts. I stopped playing games, but I kept working on them and researching them. After nearly 3 years of pouring my life into two jobs (professional VFX work and amateur game work), I made the tough decision to stop taking a paycheck and focus entirely on founding and developing Artificial Studios with my friends Tim and Jeremy. Our efforts paid off when Epic Games acquired the rights to Reality Engine in May 2005, and we went our separate ways.

The rest of the story is out there on Google in various bits and pieces, but making games is my life now. I’m not a producer, a programmer, an artist, or a suit, although I’ve done all of those things with varying degrees of success and failure. All of it, everything from the first time I basked in the radiation of a computer monitor, has contributed in some way to the inevitable development of my mutant powers as a Video Game Technical Artist. It took me a while to get comfortable with that fact – that I was different and didn’t exactly fit into the traditional mold of an artist or programmer. But as game projects and the technology and tools that drive them have become more complex, opportunity has appeared before me as if a bridge were being built beneath my walking feet over a bottomless gorge of uncertainty.

I guess my mom was right, after all. So thanks, mom, for nurturing and encouraging my development through the years where other parents only scolded or stayed indifferent. However, though you are certainly wise and eerily clairvoyant, I look forward to kicking your butt in Wii Sports when I come home for Christmas!