Tuesday August 10 1033

Everything going alright here. Blake, the guy who brought me here from online, left the company after a period of inactivity, so I'm a truly one-man design team de jure now. The company is eager to bring me back, so I've told them I'm willing to do another 6-month stint in return for the entirety of October off and a pay raise. It's a pretty sweet job here, where I get to do a variety of creative, math-y, and design tasks and get to work pretty independently.

It's also kind of nice to be able to live comfortably *and* save real money at the same time, a winning combo. For example, assuming only a lackluster income for the game, my revenue share will easily pay my monthly college loan payments each month for several years. Free apartment is a huge boon too, and it's been a pretty good proposition so far. Those two together go a long way to eliminating the small amount of debt I have. I am able to tuck away ~$700 each month right now without having to skimp too much on my living: that's money saved for troubled times and future possibilities, and it's nice to have earned myself a cushion from scratch, building entirely on familial social support and my own hard work.

The only drawback is being so far from friends and family, and so I've made clear to the company I'll not do another 9-month stint again: that's far too long to be back home. However, given the opportunity not only to finish this game, but to actually initiate a game of my own design and assemble the design team of my choice is something I've always imagined I'd like to do, and I'm quite excited. Certainly more exciting than finding a US Census Bureau statistician position. I mean, I've been making games since when I was little, so when I am given a budget, a whole art team and a bevy of programmers with the only constraint being that the game must be 'multiplayer', you can only imagine the possibilities.

What kind of game should I make? An MMORPG set in my imaginary world? Make a variant of Emperor of the Fading Suns where everything works? Some enormous game a la Animal Crossing? A game consisting purely of explosions? Who knows!