On Monday my friend, his wife, and their two dogs are packing up and making the very long drive from Cincinnati, Ohio down to Austin, Texas, where a job with Bioware, a large video game company, is waiting for him.
This is a very big deal. Bioware are responsible for making my favorite PC games ever, the Baldur’s Gate series, as well as the great Dragon Age: Origins, its upcoming sequel, and the critically acclaimed Mass Effect series. He’ll be starting off by working on one of their current projects, the MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic. It’s basically World of Warcraft for Star Wars fans. Got your attention now, fellow nerds?
A year ago I stopped work on all of my personal projects to help create games, design, and write music for a small iPhone app company he was trying to start up with two ungrateful morons. Two ungrateful morons who basically tore the company apart before we had even released a single game.
And now he’s working for freaking Bioware.
Anyway, it’s been a long time coming for my friend. He’s been screwed over and he’s been rejected and he’s watched countless people that he helped train get jobs in the gaming industry before him. He was beginning to think he was fooling himself, thinking he even had a chance of achieving his goal.
Now, it’s my turn. We’ve always been a bit competitive, and if he thinks I’m just going to sit here in the gutters and watch him live his wildest dreams, he’s got another thing coming. The race is on. It’s like I told him yesterday, “It’s not that I don’t want you to be happy, I just don’t want you to be happy before me.”
Never take your eyes off of the underdog, folks.
“The Underdog” by Spoon
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