New Job(s)!

All of a sudden I've gone from having no job to having two! They're both part-time, and they're connected to each other, but they're also pretty distinct and the combination adds up to a really good situation that makes me pretty happy. I will explain in more detail but, as anyone who knows me well would expect, I want to start with the big-picture context. I believe I have stitched together a nearly ideal situation for myself for at least the short-term, but it's a bit difficult to explain ...

I said in my initial Job Status Update that I see myself as a potential start-up CEO in the digital gaming space, but that I wasn't sure I knew enough about the technology side of things to execute successfully even if I did manage to get a project or a company funded. Ideally what I need to find is some partner that knows the programming side of things cold. In the absence of that I've been looking for executive-level jobs at established companies with any eye toward learning more and meeting more people.

Multiple friends have encouraged me to just skip that step and cut straight to the more entrepreneurial portion of my career and I needed something other than my job search to pour my energy into anyway, so I have in fact put together a start-up: Mind Twist Games. Mind Twist is a collaboration between myself, Richard Garfield, and Skaff Elias and under this banner I have been attempting to put together funding and a development plan for an online game project that Richard has designed.

I quickly realized that the folks I knew at Mind Control Software would be ideal developers for the project. If you've played their game Oasis then you can probably guess that they are kindred spirits - true Thinking Gamers. They've also been (wisely imo) hiring several Wizards Digital alumni (including Andrew Finch and, recently, Alan Comer). Anyway, they were indeed quite interested in working together and in fact at this point we have decided that instead of me trying to get Mind Twist up and running so that I can then hire them to code this project, we're better off joining forces and working together to get the project funded as part of an expansion of Mind Control.

So that means I'm now officially playing the start-up lottery, pitching venture capitalists on behalf of Mind Control Software in an effort to get the money required to bring Richard's latest game design vision to life.

Meanwhile, Mind Control is in need of additional business development resources to help out with their existing business (they are a 20-30 person development studio that's been around for over a decade) and I'm certainly not opposed to the idea of collecting a paycheck between now and the time that Richard's game is up and running and successful and making money. So I have agreed to join Mind Control as a part-time Director of Business Development. This way I have enough work and enough income that my own personal finances won't be marching backwards while I get to spend a big chunk of my time trying to build something from scratch. Like I said at the top, it seems like a pretty ideal scenario for me: I get to have the fun of a start-up project while also having sufficient financial security not to live and die with it. Plus along the way I get to watch a rock-solid engineering culture function and see how much I can help them accomplish.

Anyway, I guess the short version of that is that a) I've joined Mind Control Games as a part-time Director of Business Development, b) I'm also starting up a pretty cool online game project with Richard Garfield, and c) There are several different ways that these two part-time jobs might merge in the future. However this plays out, it should be a lot of fun!
Posted by Randy Buehler at 5/22/2009 11:08 AM
Categories: uncategorized

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