Eric Undersander
Senior Programmer
I'm in Timonium, Maryland today. Yesterday, it was Redmond,
Washington. These past few weeks have been a flurry of
phone calls and flights, rushing from hotels to make appointments.
I'm using an alarm clock for the first time since I left
my job at Electronic Arts a few years ago. To pursue my
own computer game project--that was the plan. It didn't
exactly pan out, though, which brings us to...
Now. The offices of Big Huge Games. I'm standing at
the only computer workstation in a large conference
room. The two men sitting at the table (I've forgotten
their names) have just given me a problem to solve.
It's more difficult than the others and I sense it's
the last one. The room is silent as they wait and I
think.
"Given a list of integers, find..." etcetera
etcetera--it's a computer programming problem, or more
properly, Computer Science. I studied CS at the University
of Texas, in Austin. I remember once a professor asked
for a show of hands, who plans to work in the video
game industry? In a lecture hall of 50, I was one of
three. I spent the following semester interning at EA,
contributing on Madden 2002's graphics engine. I suppose
those other 47 got internships debugging bank software.
Presently, a solution occurs to me, a way to process
the numbers, but it's terribly slow and inefficient.
I mention it anyway, hoping to engage the two men and
break the awkward silence of the room. Nope. Still waiting
for a real solution, they remain expressionless, motionless,
silent.
The first computer game I developed was called Insult-a-thon.
It was text-based and resonated strongly with my peers
in the 14-year-old demographic. Next was FreeFall, with
its paratroopers and pixelated Mode-13h graphics. Computer
games are escapism, pure entertainment with no consequences,
and after a decade, I'm still excited to be making them.
Ah! The solution hits me now. It's simple, requiring
just a few sentences to explain to the guys. It's efficient,
too, perhaps 100 times faster than my first idea. "Ok,
go ahead and code that," one says. They are satisfied
with the idea, and now they want to see if I can implement
it. Turning to the workstation's keyboard, I begin to
type.
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