I suppose to answer that question, I would have to start when I was roughly 10. We had just moved from Brooklyn New York to California. I had wanted to be a veterinarian since before I could pronounce it. Then, a wonderful thing happen. Sony Playstation. My Mom had told me that if I did good in school she would buy me one. I did good in school and got one. Then another wonderful thing happened two years later. Final Fantasy VII came out. I had never heard of the series and found it kind of hilarious that it was the 7th one of something that was supposed to be final. I think the game came on like 4 discs. It was a huge freaking game. Anyway, a friend of mine suggested it to me and I saved up some money and bought a used copy for like $20. The thing that differentiated Final Fantasy VII from every other video game I had ever played was that it told a story. And it was a story that captivated me. I wanted to know what was going to happen next. I played the game non stop for two weeks and beat it. After viewing the final cinematic for the game, I knew right away that I wanted to be a video game designer. Expected me to say film maker? Yeah, we’re not there yet.
I obsessed about video game design. It was all I could talk about and think about. I looked up stuff online on it, read books about game design, and hung on every word of Peter Molyneux. Who, by the way, I still feel is a genius. Peter Molyneux is an English game designer who designed the Black and White series and the Fable series. Here’s a trippy little tidbit. Around the era of the Playstation 2’s & X-Box’s release, Peter Molyneux was asked
“What do you think is vital for future systems to succeed?”
His answer was:
“The next big thing, won’t necessarily have the greatest graphics ever seen, it may not have the most memory, or the fastest processor. It will change how we interact with it. Because, we have been using a controller for too long. We have been doing this [holds hands up like he's playing a controller] for too long. I don’t know what it will be or how it will work, but it will change how you control what’s going on, on screen. You watch. Someone is going to come up with it and it’s going to explode.”
What’s the hottest system out there right now? Nintendo Wii. The console that changed the way we interact with what’s going on, on screen. He said this, years before the Nintendo Wii was even thought up.
I was absolutely obsessed with video games. I played them constantly, talked about them constantly, and even wrote up my own design documents for them. Yeah, I didn’t get laid much growing up or at all really, but whatever. So, one day I wrote up a design document for a wrestling game. I wrote up two versions. A short version, which was roughly a page and a long version which was 28 pages long. Being the naive youngster that I was, I e-mailed both versions of this design document to a video game company. I’m not really sure what I expected to accomplish out of this. Maybe it was just sort of a rush to know that someone somewhere might actually give this thing that I had spent so much time on a look. Two days later, I was going through my usual routine of looking at every video game website on the planet to check out what was coming out and I see an announcement for a new wrestling video game. I click on the link and what do I see? The short version of my design document that I had e-mailed to the video game company 2-3 days ago. O, stupid little me. At this time, I still thought the rest of the world gave a shit about my aspirations and dreams. But what hit me was sort of a mixture of excitement and anger all at the same time. On one hand, my idea had been stolen. On the other hand, my concept was being made. So it meant that someone, possibly many people, thought it was a good idea. Well, the game came out 6 months later or whenever and it fucking exploded. It was the number 1 selling video game for weeks and weeks. It got shinning reviews from all of the reviewers about how it was going to fundamentally change the way wrestling games were made forever. It absolutely dominated sales and was the talk of the video game industry for quite some time. Again, came those feelings of anger and excitement. I had showed my design document to all of my nerdy video game playing friends. One of them even called me the day the design document was put on the website.
“Dude, I was on [website] and I swear to God, I think your design documents short description is on there.”
After the release I got tons of calls from friends saying stuff like:
“Your game is fucking awesome man!”
Yeah, it was a little tough to swallow, I’ll admit. But I got over it and it brought me to where I am today.
So, despite being ripped off, I plugged away. I kept writing design documents. I wasn’t so quick to e-mail them to every video game company under the sun of course, but I kept writing them. Now, on to the high school situation. I was diagnosed with dyslexia at a young age. In middle school, I was told by a guidance counselor that I probably wouldn’t be able to graduate high school and in fact that I would probably never make it to college. First off, what kind of fucking guidance is that? Second of all, I have a bachelors, and my own website now that nobody visits, so fuck that guy. Anyway, my Mom put me in a private school which I was in for a year and really enjoyed. Then, the bitch that owned it stole a bunch of money or something and it shut down. So, my Mom put me in home schooling and hired tutors. A group of about 6 kids would meet at my house everyday and we would plug away on home schooling assignments. That eventually died down and it was just me in home schooling. By the way, a trained monkey could pass home schooling. So, my senior year rolled around and my Mom decided that I should go back to public school. At this point, I had absolutely no clue how to talk to people. All I knew were video games, masturbation, and those home schooling packets. None of which are group activities at that age. So, there I was, in high school, with no clue of how to interact with people. Surrounded by people my own age with no clue of how to act or what to say to make friends. I was a huge dork in high school. Nobody talked to me and I mean nobody. These two guys gave me shit every once in awhile, because all I did was walk around on my lunch break.
“Hey man, where are you going?! Your always walking around with nowhere to go!”
Neither one of them grew up to be stand up comedians but I hear one of them is actively pursuing a career at Taco Bell.
I was still writing design documents at this point, so at least I had that. High school ended and I graduated with a 3.8 GPA. So fuck you again Mr. Guidance Counselor. So, it was off to college I guess.
College was much easier to make friends. I went to a design school, mainly because the sales person lied to me and said that Graphic Design was the best choice for someone who wanted to go in to game design. Bullshit. The only thing that graphic design and game design have in common is that they both have the word ”design” in them. So, I did that…. For four year. After two schools, I got a bachelors in Graphic Design/Illustration. Again, fuck you Mr. Guidance Counselor. Well, shit, now what? Get a job.
After college, I got a job as a video game tester. Now, that sounds way more awesome then it really is. Try playing a video game for 8 hours straight for 5 days a week and tell me how you feel about that game after about a month. The first project I was on, was a Barbie game. Swear to God. Eventually, I got put on a more serious game and that’s when I discovered that there was a thing called “triple time.” I’m not sure if it’s legal or not, but I got it and it was awesome. Triple time is when you work over 24 hours straight. I worked 28 on two separate occasions. I have to be honest though, I don’t think anyone after 18 hours of a video game can comprehend anything going on that video game. I was just a moving shell at that point. When I got home, I was so out of it, I tried to open my front door by clicking my car alarm for roughly 10 minutes. I contemplated sleeping on my front porch at one point. I worked for 19 days straight while on this project without taking a day off. They weren’t 8 hour days either. Most of the time they were 12 hour days. You get used to it after awhile. You really do. In fact, after that project, I got put on a project with normal hours and at the end of the day for roughly a week straight I would walk up to my boss and say “That’s it? I can go home? Seriously?” While working as a video game tester, I got to play games that weren’t out yet, go to exclusive conventions, and be surrounded by some of the greatest people I have ever met. And 90% of them were all just as crazy about video games as I was.
Every year, they would select some people to help out at E3. E3, is a video game convention that happens once a year where all of the video game companies show off their new stuff. The first year I went, I was overjoyed and beyond myself with excitement. So, I went and worked for the 8 hours that they needed me and then I walked around the floor looking at shit. It was pretty awesome. After E3 though, the job started to get to me about 3 months later. I wasn’t really advancing at all and the attitude towards testers sucks in general in the industry. The way game companies figure it is, fuck it. If you leave, we have thousands of other people that would kill for your job. We pay you to play video games, deal with it. Needless too say, by the second E3, I wasn’t overjoyed. In fact it was like “What?! I have to work that bullshit again?! God damn it!” Sitting outside of E3 for the second time, I was a little curious about what I would see, but not really. Its 6AM, I’m tired as hell, because I was working overtime till 2AM the night before. Next to me is a group of gamers talking. One of them was sitting like right next to me. Sitting next to me, he says to his friends “Man! I’m going to see the Square booth, I don’t give a shit who gets in my way. I’ll knock a mother fucker over if he gets in my way! No one is stopping me from seeing that booth, fuck everyone else! I’ll knock over a little kid! I don’t give a shit!”
Just to show you my state of mind at that time, this is what I said to him:
“You try and knock me over, I’m going to knock you the fuck out.”
He just sort of looked at me and then got up and walked off. After working E3, I had a little bit of time to look around. So, I did. I was there for probably a half hour. I kept thinking about what that guy that morning had said to his group of friends. I thought to myself
“Do, I really want to make something for that guy? Nope.”
So I left E3 totally uninspired. After E3 all I could ask myself is
“Do I really want to do this with my life?”
Eventually I came up with the answer of “I don’t know.” So I switched jobs to a company that was much closer to my area and in my opinion, a much better company.
I worked for a company that shall remain nameless, but they ran a certain MMORPG. MMORPG stands for “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.” What does that mean? It means people pay $10 a month to log in to this virtual world and play this game. And it’s a huge freaking game. Seriously, the game has it’s own economy. I was a customer service rep for this game. If people had a problem, they would type up a ticket, hit submit, and it was my job to contact the player and attempt to correct the issue. First off, let me tell you, this company was fucking awesome. They were insanely nice to the employees. We all got three free accounts for the game, free stuff related to the game, Christmas gifts (which were no joke), and constant recognition if we did a good job. I could never really get in to the game, I think I was the only person that didn’t play that game in that entire company. Some of the players that I had to deal with were polite and amazingly nice. But, some of the players, sucked worse then you could ever possibly imagine. They would curse at you, call you names, call you stupid, threaten you, etc… All over a game. Those people made this job, unbearable. There were 2 occasions where I seriously had to just get up and walk away from my computer screen because I was one key stroke away from telling them to go fuck themselves. I am not an angry person in the slightest, to get me to that point, you have to say or do some shit to me that is pretty damn foul or I just have to be in a really horrible mood. This was pretty standard though. You would walk up to your boss and say through gritted teeth ”I can’t deal with this guy anymore could you please take him?” Your boss would look at you as if nothing were unusual and say ”sure.” After about 8 months of this job I was so fucking over it, you have no idea. If the video game tester job made my aspirations to become a video game designer sick, the customer service rep job killed it. After a really bad day with 2-3 customers I realized that those bad customers were probably the most hardcore gamers out there and that they were probably going to be my target audience. I didn’t want to express myself to them. I didn’t even want to talk to them. I wasn’t sure what happened at this point. Throughout my life, I always had an obsession. Veterinarian to video game designer to nothing. I had no clue what to do with myself. I was completely lost. I had nothing to strive for. So, I took a job as a graphic designer for a health care company because it paid a shitload more. I was so unhappy though. I had nothing to shoot or hope for.
One day, I’m at a friend’s house and he’s playing an old copy of Final Fantasy VII. He gets to a crucial point in the story and I was reminded of what I felt when I first played that game such a long time ago. I had such a connection to the characters. I wanted to know the story so badly. Then, I had a realization. I didn’t want to make video games. I just wanted to tell a story. Picking video games as my medium was taking the long route. I thought about how I could effectively tell a story while I sat there watching him play Final Fantasy VII for roughly 2 hours. I’m a little slow, you see. Eventually, I figured it out. Movies. I had my new goal, my new obsession.
And, the rest of this story is still being made up. I really do think that all my experiences have really prepared me to become a film maker. The video game tester job taught me how to go long hours without sleep. The customer service rep job prepared me to be yelled at and called an idiot. While I think I suck at it, I think the graphic design education has given me some edge in shot composition. Also, you have to know something about me. Since I was little, when I want to do something, I never give up on it. My Mom relates this to the story of me learning to ride my bike. She was always busy with work and she said when I was trying to learn, I would always come home with torn clothing and scrapes. She said she watched me one day. I would get on the bike, peddle for 2 feet, fall off, get up and try again. She said I did this for roughly 4 hours straight until she called me in for dinner or something. Right after dinner, I went right back outside, in the dark and tried again. I’m the same way with film making. I’ll never give up on it. Those of you that do film making know that pretty much every aspect of it is a challenge. All a film production really is, is a string of glorious disasters that someone figures out how to fix. I think my insane determination helps me be prepared for that. I don’t give up on a shot, or on a short film. No matter how impossible it seems. I don’t know, maybe there’s something wrong with me. But it works.