About me
Ah, vanity, precious vanity...
Current sugar daddy: Microsoft
On my business card: game designer
SKUs: Rocket Jockey, Army Men Air Tactics (PC), Army Men World War (PC), Army Men Air Attack 2 (PSX), Army Men Green Rogue (PS2), Godai (PS2), Freelancer (PC, in progress). SKU that died in childbirth: Ganymede (PSX). SKU that I worked on for a short gig: Requiem.
Previous employers, in chrono order: IBM Bay Area Boulevard in Houston, CompuRize/CompuTize (Houston-based computer retailer chain), 3COM, ZD Labs, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, ArcSoft, Calico, Rocket Science Games (R.I.P.), In-Vision Communications, 3DO, and more I'm sure.
Alternate functions: member, board of directors, Children's Council of San Francisco; "publisher," Rocket Science Games exiles e-newsletter.
Brushes with greatness (?):
- saw Steve Martin at the Universal Studios commissary on a tour. We were too shy to bug him. He's kinda tall.
- got Mitch Kupchak's autograph in 1985. Okay, so you don't know him. Neither did I, but I do now, and it was interesting at the time. Also got lots of autographs of various Houston Astros. Received a personal letter from PBS' Mr. Rogers. Now that was cool, especially at the time.
- Named ArcSoft when it was just a little shop. The founders suggested Dynamic Graphics, which was already taken by a graphic design firm. I did a copyright search and ArcSoft and similar names came up clean... sadly, I missed "SoftArc." But here corporate conglomeration comes to my rescue! SoftArc just merged with another company to form Centrinity. Eeewww. Sounds like a new aluminum can from Ford.
- Attended Fritz Leiber's funeral. Fritz was da man.
My sordid history:
Graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, where my concentration was in the now-defunct Media Arts department. This involved creative writing, photography, publications, occasional "shows" (public readings), and lots of really bad darkroom jokes.
Went to Stanford and came out with an interdisciplinary degree in English, or to be specific, "Technology and Creative Expression." Wow, took awhile to dredge that up out of the mists of memory. This meant I made a 40-page hyperdoc of poetry, fiction, exposition, weird Oulippean devices, obtuse glossary entries, articles with computer-generated plotlines, photography, and monotypes for my final product. It also meant I got to take a lot of cool computer science, art, industrial design, and creative writing courses.
Also at the Farm: I met cool people. I dj'ed a late-night radio show on KZSU that stank to high heaven. I made the fencing team and quit too early. I learned to play ultimate. I got a few poems published in journals and rags. I got into Debt to the Government (but not nearly as bad as the average, thanks to financial aid and some third-party scholarships).
After graduation, I enrolled in a summer program at Rice University in book and magazine publishing. Learned a lot, most importantly that I didn't want to live in NYC and that, in my opinion, writing is the best gig in publishing. Of course, that's from a satisfaction standpoint, not a fiscal one. Of course, I hardly write anything.
For the past decade, I've worked. See "Employers," above. Exciting, isn't it? At times it has been, actually. Sometimes not in a good way. At some point I'll write up some war stories about being backstage at Oracle Open World, wrangling game levels and cc:Mail databases for Rocket, and gettin' ragged at the Stanford GSB's MBA computer lab.
