A long time ago in a place far, far away...
I used to clean windows, in a small regional city called Bunbury. Not the operating system type, but the kind you look through, made of glass. :-) The money was good, the work was fun, and it helped me through the last year of my Comp. Sci. degree. Well, I never actually finished that degree. Ah well. Even so, I always hoped one day to build computer games instead of washing windows!
One day, while cleaning windows and contemplating what I wanted to do in life (game development seemed like a distant dream), I struck up a conversation with an older gent. He told me about his son, who spent day and night in front of his computer, making 3D graphics with a computer language, and apparently he was really good at it! His son was now working in Scotland, and had worked on a game called "GTA". Of course, at that time I had played the demo of GTA and knew exactly what he was talking about.
Why do I remember this quaint little story, more than a decade later?
I think that this was a turning point, where I realised that it was possible for someone in a remote town in a remote country to get an awesome job, building computer games. I think this event is probably a major reason that I am building games today, instead of accounting systems, or worse... web pages!
Why am I telling you this story?
Today I received an email from an Australian who is working in the UK, and is keen to move home. He works with computer games, and is investigating the local scene to see what it has to offer. He also happens to have worked with Take Two... on the GTA graphics engine... 14 years ago, and is from Bunbury. Yep. He is that guy.
Amazing. What are the odds?
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4 comments:
What did you tell him? - Considering your last blog post :)
Just pointed him towards our awesome planet.pigmi.org and gamejam.org communities. :-)
I remember this story from this guy who studied economy or something.
At some point in his life, he and his girlfriend moved to an African country (forgot which one) and lived there for a year, just to see what it was like.
And there, in the middle of nowhere, he bumped into a former class mate of his!
I guess the world really is a small place ;)
As the old saying goes, if the odds against it are exactly a milion to one, then it's practically guaranteed to happen...
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