This news post today regarding BioWare and LucasArts made me recall a phone conversation I had on the lawn outside AltaVista back in 2001. A producer from BioWare called me and said they were using a set of textures I’d made to prototype KOTOR. They wanted to know if I was interested in moving to Canada.
It was then that I realized that the game industry, as attractive and fun as it could be, was not going to, well, pay well enough to have the life I wanted to have. Especially in 2001. In Canada.
I ended up taking a 50% pay cut to go work on a PS2 game in Seattle later that year. Silly me, not learning.