Versus Software

I think any close friend I’ve had through out the years knows that if there’s one thing I love is games and game development. It’s something I always knew I wanted to do professionally.

Now the idea in itself wasn’t the problem, reaching that goal however, was. As a Brazilian living in Brazil for most of my life, I often felt in a situation where I had to somehow find a way to break out and make it in the gaming industry. It was like I was in an uphill battle to at least get my foot in the door. How could one find a way to cross the ocean and prove himself?

For most of my childhood and early teens I had no idea how this could be done. I remember reading and re-reading countless interviews with game professionals, on how they got their start, trying to find a pattern so that I could follow the same approach. To my frustration, those interview didn’t help at all. Most of the developers said they landed on the industry ‘by luck or chance’. That was of no help to me.

You see if you want to become a doctor, you go to Med school. If you want to become a lawyer, you go to Law School. It’s a pretty A to B basis in terms of career paths. Due to the nature of the gaming industry, my frustration was the lack of a clear path on how to become a developer. Just because you went to college and got a Computer Science degree, that didn’t mean you’d eventually find a way towards a game development house.

However, like most stories, that all changed one day…

Years ago, circa 98-99, I was watching an episode of Cybernet, an old british program about games. In that episode, they were interviewing several famous developers and asking them on how one could find a way to join the gaming industry. Some of them gave vague answers, others told about books you could read, etc. None of it, to me at least, gave a clear and concise structure.

Then showed up a developer named Gabe Newell. I’m sure most of you have heard of him. His approach to it was quite simple, something alone the lines of:

“Develop something. Anything. Show it off to friends and to developers. Get the feedback they give you and insert it into your development process. Improve and expand what you’re doing. Keep doing it and eventually you should pick up the interest of someone willing to hire you.”

When I heard that, it was like I was shot with a diamond bullet. It was simple, brilliant and elegant. If you want to become a professional game developer, just develop games until they are good enough to spark interest.
I finally had what I needed: a plan.

And boy did I take that plan seriously. I took it for granted in every sense of the word. I bought dozens of books to develop my projects. I setup time during my college years to develop my projects. I gave up on academic scholarships with my professors so that I could focus on my projects.

Everything evolved around them. If I had free time, projects. Vacation time, projects. Weekends, projects. Time in between classes, projects. I became obsessed with it as some of my colleagues probably noticed, but to me it was a chance.

In some ways I felt it was my only chance.

Now these projects they were simple, crude, unfinished and lacking any real polish, but by god I worked on them. I re-wrote the Solis engine and editor so many times I grew used to it. I remember during my late night coding sessions taking the conscious decision on developing the entire Solis scripting language and interpreter. I said to myself “I guess during an interview process, this should impress someone”.

And it did, for I was asked to explain it during my on-sight interview at Microsoft, in Redmond. Two weeks later, I got the e-mail saying I go the job.

Thus here I am saying that the plan worked. Of course I owe to my family and friends for their support during those years, but in some ways, I wanted to say thanks to Gabe N. A long time ago, in a forgotten interview, you showed a young Brazilian a way to get things working.

And they did. Thanks.