July 19th 1999 is still one of the best days in my life. My first day working in the video game industry.

 

I was hired by Mindscape as one the dozens of internal testers that would be working on the reboot of the Prince of Persia franchise. This project was full of some pretty amazing experiences for my first project. I was working at, for the time, one of the legends of the gaming world, Mindscape / SSI. I was working on a high profile IP. I was also working on site with the developers.

 

This project put me on an accelerated course of learning what really went into making a video game.

 

During the course of this project I was hurled head long into the world of game development. I found myself learning the commitment that was a necessity of a developer. It wasn’t uncommon for me to be working any where from 80 to 100 hours a week. I learned to develop my communications skills and the skills necessary to work in a team environment. And ultimately I learned to make myself an integral part of a team so as to survive the first of many rounds lay offs that I learned were an unfortunate part of life in the industry, especially QA.

 

Though the final product was less than a success I had survived my baptism of fire. Even now knowing that the world of game development was a harsh dog-eat-dog world I was sure that I had made the right choice. I had always wanted to make video games and now that I was here I was going to stay.