I played my first game of table-top BattleTech in 1989 and absolutely fell in love with the game. Mechwarriors piloting huge stompy robots shooting the crap out of each other with lasers, missiles, cannons was just so cool and really struck a chord with me. Since then I've played nearly every incarnation of BattleTech including RPG's, card games, consoles, PC games, and even played realtime, text-based multiplayer BattleTech MUSE/MUX's in the 90's. If you're not familiar with that last entry, you should look it up. :)

So yeah, you could say I'm a bit of a fan of the franchise. Fast forward several years and computer programming becomes my career while game programming stays a hobby/dream of mine. There aren't very many game developer job opportunities in Tennessee though so I have to make my own opportunity. I save up enough money to quit my job for about a year and a half to take a stab at indie game development. My wife was super supportive through all this and I was making decent progress on my project when the Kickstarter came out for BattleTech. For $2,000 HBS will turn backers into a hirable Mechwarriors in the game... Man do I want that. But I'm unemployed so I keep it to myself.

I keep up with the Kickstarter and watch as the limited numbers of that level dwindle and eventually tell my wife about it. WHAT? Absolutely not! And she was right. We didn't have any income at the time and it was a frivolous expense we didn't need. It was the smart play and what I needed to hear. But a week passes and she comes back to me. This was BattleTech. Money will come and money will go, but this was once in a lifetime. It meant my runway for pursuing my game development dream just got shorter, but I just couldn't say no to it. When I went to back it, they were out of the 2k slots... So I bumped it up to the 4k tier with the wife's blessing. (Yes my wife is AMAZING!)

Some time passes, I keep plugging away at A Voxel Adventure, writing up my progress on my dev blog at gamedev and enjoying my life in general. I know the game isn't going to be a smash hit, but I'll get to cross "Become a game developer" off the list and I'm happy. Then I hear that HBS is hiring a Combat Engineer and a Tools Developer. My wife tells me I need to apply. I explain to her that it's just never going to happen. 1 - It's a game dev job, 2 - I have no professional Game Dev experience, 3 - for an out of state company, 4 - For a game that I love. The odds of me getting this job are a billion to one. But she wouldn't take no for an answer and RODE MY ASS until I relented to apply. If you do it and don't get the job, big deal. If you don't even try, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. I started gearing my research towards things I thought HBS might find interesting and tailored my resume to something they wouldn't immediately just toss in the trash. And I erased my address. No need for them to see I was in Tennessee... :)

A few days later they ask me to fill out a programming test. I do my best and feel like I knock that out of the park. A few days later they schedule a phone interview with the architect. It goes amazingly. I answer questions about what I've done and what I'm working on. I can tell he's read some of my developer journals cause he mentioned the Tips from your Uncle Eck section. He asks me an open ended question and I explain how I'd tackle it. He says it's one of those questions where there's no right answer, he just wants insight into my thought processes. Later I ask him a tough question, "Who is your favorite Firefly character?" Ooooh that's tough.... I explain to him that there's no right answer, I just want insight into his thought processes. I'm answering the technical stuff, there's banter, things are going great. Then he says he wants me to come in for a face to face interview, it's an all-day thing...

That's when I come clean. I'm happy to, but there's one little snag. I'm actually living in Tennessee right now... And though he doesn't audibly groan, there's a pregnant pause and I can feel the disappointment through the phone. I continue, "But this is a dream of mine. I'm committed to trying, and I'll pay for the ticket to come out there if you'll consider me." Another pause. "I'll talk to the rest of the leads and see what they think. We'll let you know one way or the other." A few agonizing days later, they tell me to hop on a plane and get ready for a full day of interviews. At this point I think they're just humoring me since I was such a big backer, but I go anyway!

The family and I hop on a plane, do the tourist thing in Seattle for a couple days, visit a friend, and I go into HBS to get grilled by the team. I take a bunch of pictures (because I don't think I'll be coming back) and promise not to post anything. I get to play the current prototype - holy crap is it ugly, not fun, and buggy. What are these jokers doing to my baby!?!?! It turns out, that's just early game development, but at the time I was worried about it. The interview takes all day as I meet with different teams, talk about myself, and answer tough questions. Again, I feel like I nail the interview. They're happy with how I did, and the only hurdle is my current address. I reassure Mitch (the CEO and final say of whether or not I get hired) that this is my dream, and I will happily move across the country if it means getting this job. They tell me they're looking through other candidates and will let me know in about 3 weeks.

Four days later, they offered me the job. WTF? I thought there was time! Now that I had the job... Did I want it? Could I do it? For those of you who don't know me, I'm actually very resistant to change and moving across the country is WAAAY outside my comfort zone. Spoiler alert - yeah I took the job, but it was a tough decision to make. I didn't realize how hard it would be saying goodbye to friends and family of 30ish years. I'm part robot, so normally I don't have to worry much about feelings and other nonsense. However, this was significant enough and really aggrevated my emotions chip. It definitely got worse before it got better. But this was the dream!

My wife and kiddo supported me 100% and we took the plunge. We packed as much stuff as we could fit into a single POD, donated the rest of our stuff to a local church, and gave our car away to our friend's teenage daughter. Then moved across the country into a single hotel room while we looked for a place. Going from a big house to a single room puts a strain on any family. House prices were crazy and anything we looked at got snatched up immediately. My first few days at the job were terrifying. The task I was hired to do was create a dialogue editor, so I had been thinking/designing that. But the first task I was assigned was dealing with the terrain editor using complicated 3d math I never bothered to learn. Someone got fired the first week I was there. Jordan freakin' Weisman - the father of BattleTech - sat at the end of my row and I tried real hard not to geek out about it. Stress levels were HIGH! What the hell had I done? Impostor syndrome was hitting me pretty hard.

But I buckled down and made stuff work. They knew I hadn't done this sort of thing before so gave me the time I needed. We eventually found a tiny appartment to live in and I found my groove at work. Stress slowly went back towards 0 just the way I like it. I used to joke about living the rockstar lifestyle of a game developer, but it seriously turned into that for me. Here's some of the amazing things that have happened to me while on the job:

I...

• Got to play BattleTech on DFA as Lazarus with oversized mechs they inflicted damage on
• Since I got paid for that I'm technically a professional BattleTech player :D
• Got added into a DFA Tarot set
• Became a hirable MechWarrior in the game
• Became a character in a BattleTech novel
• Became a cannon character in the Arano Source Book
• Won a BattleTech tournament
• Got a viral achievement named after me
• Became a model for BattleTech swag
• Get asked for my autograph or picture (at least a few times!)
• Became an unofficial liaison between the modding community and HBS
• Got gifts from fans (challenge coin, custom 3d printed mech, artwork, candy, thank you posts, etc)
• Sat on a Gen Con panel with Jordan and Brian (Game Designer) and answered questions about game development
• Made so many new friends from work and members of the BattleTech community
• Met so many cool fans and big names of the franchise (TOO MANY TO LIST!!!)
• Have flown to international locations for work: Canada, Germany
• Got VIP status at BattleTech events
• Got my name in the credits of what I think is the best BattleTech vidoe game in the franchise

In short, it's been an amazing ride for me and it truly has been a dream come true. Thanks for giving me a chance HBS. If 13 year old me was visited by future Eck and told of all the awesome things that would happen. I'd have a tough time believing this devilishly handsome time traveler, but I'd thank him for the pleasant fantasy.

I couldn't have done this without so much support from family and friends. Thanks to my dad for recognizing what a big deal computers were going to be and forcing me to learn how to program against my will. Thanks to my mom for buying that second phone line to support my early internet/BBS/MUSE habits. Thanks to my sister for putting up with my shit as a jerky older brother. I'm not sure how that helped, but I am sorry. :) Thanks to my daughter for being such an explorer and being willing to move across the country. And thanks to my amazing wife for all her support and sacrifices throughout this whole ordeal. I would be lost without you. <3

Now that BattleTech is being sunset, I'll be switching over to the core tech team here at HBS and work on some of the foundation code that the new projects will be built upon. It's kind of like a tools developer but instead of a single project it's for all the projects. I'm really looking forward to what the future holds.

Tip from your Uncle Eck

If you need some motivation to follow your dreams, here's what did it for me. The movie Collateral (with Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise) had a scene that really struck a chord with me. And Zefrank1's video on the time you have left in jellybeans. Each is less than 3 minutes long and they both lit a fire under my ass to follow my dreams.

• Zefrank1 explains your time in jellybeans
• Vincent says follow your dreams
• Awesome tribute video my wife made me