A Suprising Dilemma

I remember being 9 years old, and I met this kid named Kyle during recess one day. We shared an interest in video games, and we sort of spontaneously started inventing new Mega Man bad guys. Later, I remember drawing out levels for the game on a pad of paper. That was when I decided I wanted to make games when I grew up.

That was the event that sparked my interest in computers. I signed up for the computer class in middle school, and learned a bit of BASIC on an Apple IIe. (I still have the 5 1/4" disks that I saved my code to, though I doubt they work.) In 9th grade, I bought a couple of Simple C++: Featuring Robodog and the Profound Object-Oriented Programming Method and 'acquired' a copy of Turbo C++ from AOL. I took a couple years of programming classes in high school (and by programming, I mean HyperCard, because that's all the teacher knew) and when it came time to go to college, Computer Science was the obvious choice.

I never finished my degree, but I did get an awesome job out of it; I became an Operating Systems Analyst at CSU San Marcos, where I focussed mainly on Linux administration and learned a *ton*. I did that for 4 years (after 5 years of working as a PC technician while a student), but I never gave up on game development.

I bought and read game development books, until I realized that every book just rehashed the same information. I then branched out into other computing realms; I picked up a lot of books on different languages and ways of programming (LISP! Objective C!). I still managed Linux for a living, so I read a lot about open source development as well, along with a number of blogs and news sites. I sent out resumes to the game companies in the area, trying to find a way to get my foot in the door.

As an aside, I never really considered game testing to be an option. While I was in school there wasn't anything close enough, and after that testing jobs didn't pay enough.

So about 2 months ago now, I got my chance. A friend of mine who works at Superscape let me know that there was a position open as a porting programmer. I interviewed for it, got the job, and I started here on July 16th. I'm in! I got the dream job!

And I hate it.

It's boring, un-fulfilling work. I take already existing games, and I get them working on different cell phones. My first week here, I wanted to crawl back to the university and ask for my job back.

I can't give up that easily though; this is a stepping stone to my dream job, right? Only, I'm not sure that it is anymore. I *liked* what I did before, a lot. I didn't realize it at the time, but the challenges and problems I came across while helping to keep the campus' computing environment running and improving were a lot of fun. The challenges I come across at Superscape? Why doesn't this phone want to play sounds? Oops, this other phone's screen size is a little weird, I'll have to tweak the graphics on 16 games to get them all running on it. There's nothing really challenging, it's mind numbing work.

Designing games was the dream job though. But if that's the case, why haven't I been doing it all this time anyway? Most PC games released for the last 8 years have been moddable; I could have used those to make my own games all this time. I contribute code to Egoboo, but I've never been inclined to contribute a module or a new character.

To cap it all off, I've been spending less and less time *playing* games for the last several years. I'll get bored playing, and then go spend some time programming instead. Because I have more fun learning than I do playing a video game.

Have I been so focussed on getting a game programming job that I didn't even notice that I don't really want to do it anymore?

So, my dilemma. I could go back to the University. They've asked me to come back, and offered a raise in the process. I'm sorely tempted; I miss the work, and I especially miss the people. But doing that means giving up on game development. I've worked so long to get here, it seems... wrong, to give up on it so quickly.

But I really don't think it's what I want to do anymore.