Everyone who works in games has their own unique story of how they started, after all, it’s a fairly new and rather small industry. The best way to describe how I got my first job in games is that I really just stumbled into it.
All my life I’ve been a nerd, I like to say that I was born into it. Both of my parents, despite my mother’s protests, are super geeky, and my older brother grew up on comic books, cartoons, and video games. Now, this doesn’t necessarily make them nerds, until you factor in that our family’s vacation each year was a trip to San Diego Comic-Con International. The same Comic-Con that now has an online lottery-style waiting room over eight months prior to the con just to try to buy tickets. The first year my family went, my mother was still pregnant with me. Pretty sure that was the beginning of the end of my hopes of ever growing into anything other than a nerd, and I wasn’t even born yet.
As a child, I really didn’t see myself as too much of a nerd. Sure I played games on an hand-me-down Gameboy and would beg my brother to play Duck Hunt for the NES any time I saw him playing Super Mario, but I also liked Books, Sailor Moon, Barbie, tag, Disney, jungle gyms, and Saturday morning cartoons. As I grew older, I tended to prefer to watch my brother play video games or sometimes play multiplayer games like Golden Eye and Star Fox 64, only really playing games like Pokémon on my own and usually preferring to read if I had free time. I remember it wasn’t until about the time that GameCube came out that I really began playing a lot more games, and it wasn’t until I got my own PS2 that I started considering myself a “gamer”. I remember one Christmas I got a copy of Animal Crossing from my brother. He shrugged when I opened it and confessed that he went to a game store (back when there was more than just Game Stop) and asked for a video game for someone who doesn’t play games.
Ooh were they right. I spent hours playing animal crossing, and later discovered the wonderful world of The Sims, which I sunk more of my life in then I care to admit. It was around this time as well that I began discovering anime (outside of Studio Ghibli, Sailor Moon, and Dragon Ball Z). My best friend also began introducing me to JRPGs (Japanese Role Playing Games) like Final Fantasy, the Tales series (at the time specifically Tales of Symphonia), Star Ocean, and Lunar. Not too much later, another friend of mine got me started on an MMO called Guild Wars, and with that I was hooked.
Throughout high school and college I spent at least 8,000 hours on Guild Wars & Guild Wars 2 collectively. Plus I played through Kingdom Hearts, Ratchet and Clank, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit (GameCube), Rock Band & Guitar Hero, Super Mario Sunshine, Paper Mario, God of War III, Mario Kart, Portal & Portal 2, Minecraft, Borderlands & BL 2, and countless others. Not to mention all the anime, manga, sports, job, clubs, and of course school work I kept up with too (thinking back on it, I wonder if this has anything to do with my insomnia).
Anywhozies, all of that was to lead up to me graduating college wanting to go into sleep research or something dealing with artificial intelligence. So working in a lab that monitors people as they sleep, for research. Only problem, I had no idea where to find a job in a sleep research lab or what to even look for to apply for such a job. Instead, my first job out of college was at this terrible scam of a company which forced us to cold call people and try to convince them to refinance their homes (there’s more to talk about with them but I’ll save it for another time). After working there for less than a week, I decided to apply to just about any other job I could find. When my mom noticed how much I hated the place I worked, she suggested I should apply to video game companies in the area, since I spent so much of my time playing games. After she convinced me that there was really nothing I could lose by just applying, I sent my resume to just about every game company I could find a listing for (in addition to still applying to all the random other jobs I came across). I got lucky. After about a week of sending out my application, I got an email asking me to come in for an interview for a Quality Assurance (QA) tester for a video game publishing company, which I was entirely over dressed for (game companies are pretty casual, going into an interview wearing a blouse, blazer, skirt and heels to be interviewed by a guy in shorts and a t-shirt is, well, awkward). They hired me about two weeks later and I began working on my first game, Barbie.
TL:DR – I was a nerdy kid with a nerdy family. I wanted to work in AI or sleep research but didn’t know where to apply. I found a list of local video game companies and sent my resume to everyone who was hiring. I got a job as a QA tester a few weeks later.
. It was a wonderful experience and I feel like it helped me to grow as a writer with both dedication and creativity. The “rules” I gave myself were to write a story between 100 and 350 words and each story had to be posted on my blog daily at noon. Another rule was that each story had to be unique and couldn’t be a sequel or a sort of fan fiction based in a previously established world. Overall I felt rather proud that I was able to complete the challenge, though I did have to use some prompts I found on the internet for inspiration on some of the days where I just felt little motivation or inspiration to write. One of the most important things I found was to know when I wouldn’t have time to write and be sure to prepare something in advance.
I was at a beautiful gathering; a gala maybe? I wore a gorgeous floor length gown that glittered when I twirled and was dancing, slow dancing, maybe the waltz in a grand hall with a marble floor. The hall had giant intricate pillars that lifted for miles and I truly would have felt like a princess except for an aching feeling in the pit of my stomach telling me something was wrong. Servers carried platters of champagne and finger food by me as I danced with him. I looked over his shoulder anxiously, looking for anything suspicious, but all I saw were happy party goers minding their own. It was nearing the time I had to leave. I had a work party or something I needed to make it to, but I wasn’t planning on going. He was up to something, something he didn’t want me to know. I had been with him for a while now, and my gut told me there was something he was hiding. My head did the rest, thinking the worst, as I searched the room, looking for her. Nobody looked out of place. When it was finally the last moment I could leave and get to my other engagement on time. I excused myself, parting with a hug and words of well wishes. I headed toward the door, but ducked behind a magnificent pillar, he didn’t seem to notice. It didn’t take long for her to appear. Her gown was beautiful and she seemed a bit younger, but I was too far away to get a good look. Her long blonde hair looked natural, but as I got closer, I could see her darkened roots.
With all the stealth of a graceless bull in tap shoes, I marched to his side, placing m hand on his arm while they danced. He gave me a surprised look, but didn’t appear alarmed. Neither did she. I began to question if I had been wrong the whole time, and cut in, lying that I’d gotten a text message saying my meeting or party or whatever had been postponed. The other girl stayed close at my heels as we danced, waiting for the moment I stepped away, a moment I didn’t plan to give.
And with that, before my eyes, Suzie transformed from the beautiful young woman that she was into a small, child; sweet, adorable, and full of life. I smiled at her, a real smile.
Again this year, for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) I tried to write a novel. I didn’t get very far, especially because I was also trying to get my daily flash fiction writings done (success!) and keep up with life in general (I survived the month so successful again). Definitely had to fail somewhere though, and for the fourth year in a row now, that failure came from not finishing my novel (which is a bummer because I was really excited to get one done. I haven’t scrapped the story though, and plan to get back into writing it soon.
This Thanksgiving, I had a very strange, very upsetting political conversation with my family that resulted in me storming off into the night. I do feel bad about leaving, but finding out what I learned proved more upsetting than I imagined. There were members of my family, family that I see often, that were able to justify themselves turning a blind eye on issues that I find to be very important. See, I’m a supporter of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and most of the equality things that surround it. When I found that they weren’t I tried to understand why, but whenever I tried to explain my reasons, explain that the “all lives matter” is a way to sweep the situation under the rug, I was outnumbered and spoken over. Since my immediate family, mother, father, brother and close friends all have similar thoughts on the matter, seeing the spike in violent hate crimes, seeing the percentages of unnecessary deaths to blacks compared to other ethnicities, I couldn’t quite get why anyone living in a large metropolitan area couldn’t see it. When they told me that “everyone struggles, if you want to get out of a bad situation bad enough, you just pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and do it,” my heart sank. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was, to me, like telling a rape victim that she wanted it, that she had it coming. Not quite the discussion I wanted to have over the Thanksgiving turkey.
Frantic, I needed to warn my people, but fortunately, the islanders had already beat me to it. They told me that they’d sent for an evacuation and that the inhabitants were headed toward a secret sky base, one that I didn’t know existed. I sent my captain, the man I’d saved from the water, to go lead the sky ships safely to their new location, speeding up time for them to ensure their success. Meanwhile, I was also able to see that the enemy captain’s ship would transform each night, changing it from a floating ship with sails to a luxurious modern building, that floated. I remember thinking something about a worker’s union, but that was about the extent of that.
Nearing the end, my vision flashed over to what appeared to be the third member of my initial group. The woman with dark red hair. She was in a beautiful, bright room, with mirrors and high ceilings. I heard someone ask “When did she get those tattoos?” When I looked at her back, I saw what they were referring to, but it didn’t look like tattoos to me. My view honed in on what I finally realized were the laces of a corset, the corset of a white wedding gown, with names scrawled across them. When pulled tighter, the names changed, and I finally realized that they were credits, to my dream…
This ride is amazing. The first time I rode it I was grinning ear to ear because of my love of Twilight Zone as a kid and how great that it was that Disneyland’s California Adventure incorporated it into their park. The entire building is themed, sometimes even having live period music. Much like the Enchanted Tiki Room’s waiting area and the Haunted Mansion, the story is introduced in a waiting room, playing a synopsis about the strange occurrence that occurred in the hotel themed attraction and readying guests for what is to come ahead. After, the line leads through an amazingly detailed boiler room area full with a furnace and antiqued set-up.
Something cool, is after you get off the ride, but before you reach the gift shop/picture area under the staircase, you can see the a set of feet sticking out from behind a crate. When facing the stairs as if you would walk up them, the feet are under the right-hand staircase. Ask a cast member to show you if you have trouble finding them, it’s definitely worth it to see in person.
I think it’s also important to note that the Tower of Terror ride in Orlando Florida is a bit more interesting than the straight drop in Anaheim’s California Adventure. The Hollywood Studios (Orlando) ride moves not only vertically, but horizontally, taking guests through different rooms, which was less plausible in the Anaheim location because of the physical space available for the ride.
Other parks that have The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror Ride:
In my Mind 