Great Monday

This morning I headed into work, and started my week with the link I posted in my previous entry.  The day was off to a good start.

For lunch Nathan, Dave, Owen and I went to Ikea for some cheap hotdogs, then we drove down to West Ed to buy a hard-to-find game.

When I returned to work, Zac (my boss) immediately said “Dale, come with me!”  I had no idea what this was about.  He took me over to Jason’s room and told me I was being moved to the PRC (Post Release Content) team to do QA Design work for them!  I’ll be moving offices (window office!!!), attending all the QA Design scrum meetings, and working exclusively with them now.

If you remember, a few weeks ago I took some initiative and brought up the idea of doing some QA Design work for PRC, which the right people seemed impressed by.  Since then, on my down time, I’ve been playing the PRC stuff and submitting design bugs, and have been getting very positive feedback from them.  Well apparently the need for some more dedicated QA Design work on the project came up, and my name came to mind.  So the power-play a few weeks ago accomplished exactly what I wanted it to, and as a result I’ll be making a jump to the career-path I’ve been trying to get on for the better half of a year!

This is great news!!!  I applied recently for that QA Design fulltime salary position, so this can’t hurt my chances.  And the job comes with much more responsibility.  As an example, immediately after I got the news I returned to my desk and had several meeting requests waiting for me in Outlook.  The rest of my day was spent in meetings!  The first was a playthrough of some PRC with the QA Design team to critique some of the new stuff.  I was nervous, as I didn’t know any of these people, and many of them were big names, including David Gaider, lead writer for Dragon Age.  I wanted to make a good first impression.

Despite my intimidation, I spoke up during the meeting, introduced myself to people, etc.  Throughout the meeting I made my ideas heard, and several were even accepted.  That means they will be changing elements of the game based on my ideas.  Not just technical stuff like “That door won’t open” but more creative stuff like “This should happen in a cutscene to emphasize the emotional impact of the event”  I find that amazingly cool, that I now have some creative input on the final product!

Tomorrow I have a meeting with someone from the team and they’re going to show me the infrastructure and all the tech stuff I need to know for the job.  I’ll probably be moving offices by the end of the week.  I will miss the office I’m in now though; Zac is a great boss, and the whole room is filled with great guys.  Reid and I always have intense debates while we work, Dave and I always rib each other, and we all collectively rib Owen, lol.  I will definitely miss that.  Though I’m just down the hall, and when Nathan moved offices to help with the audio team it’s not like we never saw him again.  Hooray for in-office MSN.

My calendar is literally packed now with all the meetings I have.  I’m really excited about the more involved role I’ll play now.  The more responsibility I’m given, the more chances I’ll have to prove I’m the right person for the position.  And I truly believe I’d be great at this job. 

                                                --  Meetings!  --

Also, the PRC project I’m now on will be my 4th official sku with my name in the credits!

I find it funny that I was never the ambitious type.  There was a time when I thought I’d be fine working at Pita Pazzaz in the mall food court the rest of my life.  I was a total screw up, but put me in the right place and suddenly there’s a fire I can’t put out.  And I love it; I love that I’m always on the way to something even better, while loving where I’m at.  I love that the further I get, the more I have to show for it.  This has been a great ride so far, and I feel I’ve grown along the way.  I’d really hate for this ride to end, or more specifically: I’d hate to have to take a 3 month hiatus from it.  But today was a big step in the right direction.  It was a good day.