Three years ago I took a different approach in my career, working at Midway Home Entertainment in San Diego. While there I worked with Josh Sawyer and David Kunkler, lead designer and producer, respectively. The project was Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, and it had ambition. There were some great ideas in there. Then, well, reality sets in.
No finger pointing, no flaming. Isn't my style. Let's just say at least three things got missed that I think shouldn't have, and the game shipped pretty much on time. There's a benefit to shipping on time and at one point I was convinced of that goal above all else in a product. "Unreal" seemed to take forever, for example. When I told my father about the continual feature creep his response was "put it in a sequel." Seemed like a great idea. Then it came out and, well, sold a lot of copies. In fact, most games that have sold the MOST copies out there either follow the Miyamoto method (add six months to what you think the release date initially will be) or just plain go until they're done. Granted yes, Battlecruiser 3000 didn't exactly sell four hundred million copies which is how many it would have needed to actually make money, but my favorites pretty much go until they're ready.
As I'm sure hundreds of us have either spoken or written about (wait a minute, I'VE written about it before!), there IS a good marriage between schedule / budget / financial survival and stability and creativity yielding an enjoyable gaming experience.
Long story short, I think Obsidian can find that marriage and I want to be a part of it. I'll be starting up an audio department with them working on several projects, not the least of which is the Alien franchise, which I have been a rabid fan of since I was five years old.
Josh and Dave now work in their respective roles at this Santa Ana based developer and I'll be joining them on May 1st. I couldn't be more excited at this opportunity and more news will follow as I come onboard and get rolling.
