Zelda!

Every once in a while I go through these moments of extreme doubt about my job. The weight of the real world feels super heavy and making video games doesn't feel like a very noble profession.

I think it's obvious that this time around it was triggered by Erick's death.

Whenever I feel like this there's always this one memory that I come back to. When I was about 8 years old my brother and I saw what can only be described as a completely fucking insane ad on tv for The Legend of Zelda. (side note: I would love to talk to someone that had a hand in this over at Nintendo of America... wtf?!?) We were kind of tired of Super Mario and we were hungry as shit for something new to put in the most holy of video game consoles, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

This part always gets fuzzy... but I think that our Dad matched our money dollar for dollar with a most generous donation so that we could scoop Zelda within the first few weeks of its launch. The game was such a huge mystery... no one knew what to expect. I just know that as an 8 year old boy the anticipation and joy that I had when first firing up Zelda was overwhelming. And holy shit... the game did not disappoint. It consumed me for months... just an amazing innovative work from Miyamoto.

So if I can help make one person in the world feel the way that I did when I first slapped that golden cartridge into my NES, then it seems to me that I accomplished something worthwhile in my life. And working at Double Fine I really feel that we're not only making great games, but we have a chance to make someone's favorite game ever.

Sorry for this totally emo and self-indulgent post. I've been cooking up some other topics about some crap that bothers me about the industry right now but they all seem kind of weak at the moment. Maybe next week. :D!

-Brad!

Erick Wujcik

I found out this morning that one of my friends died over the weekend.

Erick Wujcik was an unbelievable dude. We worked at Outrage Games together in Michigan. It was my first full time gig in the games industry. Outrage was cranking away on two games at the time: Rubu Tribe and Alter Echo. Rubu Tribe was the company's main focus and I was hired on to be the first full time programmer on the other game. The two games shared technology, but when it came to gameplay code I was the only one. And I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.

So I worked a lot of long hours trying to figure shit out. And my direct supervisor was kind of a dick. It was hard.

I remember one day I was kind of having a freak out near the end of a 16 hour day. No one was in the office. We had a milestone coming up on Alter Echo and I had to have a chunk of the combat system ready to go. At that exact moment it was in a state somewhere between Complete Garbage and Absolute Shit.

It was then that Erick came by my office... man he worked some weird hours. :D He just sat down next to me and started talking in that amazingly nonchalant way of his. He told me that I was doing a great job and that I was one of the main reasons that we were actually going to hit the next milestone payment. He thought I was the one that was holding the project together while most of the company was busy working on the other game. When I look back at it, this wasn't just a confidence boost from a co-worker... it was more like an affirmation that I could succeed in this industry. If someone with as much experience as Erick thought that I was doing a good job, then maybe I actually was.

Erick was an amazing person. I kind of lost touch with him after Outrage dissolved, but he was a joy to talk to whenever I saw him over the past 5 years. I really hope that he's sitting at a folding table in the sky, chilling out with Gary Gygax, poring over the new 4th edition of D&D.

Erick - you are missed. :(

-Brad!