The Year That Was: 2008 (Part 2)

Here’s part two of my “Hey, 2008 was pretty crappy but there’s a lot to be thankful for!” list. Read part one for the first four entries.

Green Card

This year I was (finally!) granted permanent residency for the US, after having lived here for over 10 years. And that makes everything a lot easier! I was lucky enough to receive an O-1 visa when Ritual Entertainment first brought me to America, and that made it possible to stay indefinitely (and switch jobs twice) with comparatively minor headaches. But it also brought the pressure of having to be employed without a single lapsed day, annoying immigration procedures at the airport and bi-yearly trips to my favorite heavily fortified building in all of Frankfurt, the American Consulate. All of those things are in the past now, and I can enjoy life in America with one less monkey on my back.

BBelief2008

No, it’s not finished. And at the rate I’ve been going lately it’s probably gonna have to be called “BBelief2010″. Well… it should be. But it won’t. Anyway, the point of making BBelief2008 was never its release. It was me, reconnecting with my old Quake editing days, without the pressure of having to be all normal mapped and “next-generation”, and just having fun doing hands-on level design work while watching the Olympics. It allowed me to test some assumptions (“After twelve years of experience, I should be able to churn this out in 2 weeks, right?” – Rrrright…) and gave me the opportunity to write some good articles on the subject. Just as importantly, it let me reconnect with some people who are keeping Quake editing alive! Thanks for visiting the page, and thanks for your patience! I promise that there’s no way the final level can live up to the wait But I’ll try to finish soon after some higher priority stuff blows over.

Family and Friends in Germany

In tough times, you need a support net, and our recent trip to Germany made that all the clearer. Celebrating Christmas with my family was a great experience. Not just because we got everybody to play Wii Sports It was a great way to celebrate. It also allowed me to do this, which for a casual Wii Bowler like myself, was a personal high:

Spending a long night with friends that we hadn’t seen since our wedding (or even longer than that!) was great, as well. We had a great time catching up, and did some real bowling to round it all off (scores weren’t quite as high as on the Wii, but still respectable!). My only regret is that I don’t have enough time to see all groups of friends that I used to hang out with. There’s people from my high school and neighborhood that I haven’t seen for several years. Ah well, maybe next time.

Family in America

‘Nuff said, really. It’s good to have a family in America, and spend holidays (and plain old regular times) with them. And on top of that, we took family to Germany for the first time, as well!

Work/Pitching/Coworkers

Finally, I have a lot of good things to say about my year at Factor 5. The year didn’t exactly end on a high note. But a lot of good things happened this year that I’m taking with me: I worked with two kick-ass, tight-knit teams that created the best project prototypes that I’ve ever worked on in my 10 years as a professional game developer, and I got a lot of pratice creating and presenting game pitches that are way beyond anything I could have done even a couple of years ago. Those were definite highs, and experiences and skills that I’ll take with me, regardless of what the future holds.

So that’s 2008. Or at least a few aspects of it. Not too shabby, now that I have looked back at it.

Bring it on, 2009!