skysenshi.com

It’s been five years since I have last stepped foot in the gaming industry and I didn’t realize that stepping back in would entail a dramatic paradigm shift. My first day alone was filled with concepts that I had nearly completely forgotten (was thrown into my first management committee meeting immediately), proving once more that a completely academic life would never be enough. Especially if my field of study is in game design and development. Needless to say, I went straight to bed as soon as I got home.

[A stylized photo of my office (so you can’t guess where I am haha). Though I am issued a laptop with Windows, I can’t seem to live without my Macbook sooo… They seem to be getting along well. Being in our line of work entails exposure to a lot of gadgets…even ones I have no interest in.]

Contrary to popular notion that all we do is have fun and games in this industry, this actually requires massive amounts of discipline. Observance of time is strict, but of course, management peeps are flexi-time (you know, real flexi-time that doesn’t make you count the minutes like in most sweat shops). Despite that, we have no qualms staying beyond work hours because we’re not tied to the hour, just to the projects. In this company, I am a producer. My boss comes in 15 minutes earlier than I do (at 7.15AM) and the only other two producers are just about as workaholic as most geeks can get. Ah. It has been a while since I’ve worked closely with men who are very VERY productive. (Elvert is a workaholic but I wasn’t with him everyday.)

Dress code? You betcha. Sleeveless shirts and slippers are not allowed. LOL. Seriously, though…it feels good to be back in casual wear, even if I’m intellectually feeling a bit disoriented and highly intimidated.

Paradigm re-shift. There’s so much stuff to learn and re-learn, as I need to sync myself with the process once again. Perhaps I can call myself a little bit crazy for accepting a job right smack in the middle of me taking the comprehensive exams (good luck na lang if I fail) and doing my dissertation (my mom, who’s also taking her PhD, said that I should not have gone into employment so soon). But how else am I going to write game studies if I’m not doing games? Just playing them only allows for a shallow level of analysis.

Culture? While we have diverse personalities, most gamers are obsessed with balance and justice (because gameplay entails a lot of balancing), so I know I would not have problems defining the parameters of integrity among like-minded people. The owner of the company himself is very conscious of ethical issues — in and out of the work environment — so you can expect the same OC-ness when it comes to balancing art, design and technology. It’s in our blood. I mean, heck, we gamers have an alignment for just about everything: lawful good, lawful evil, chaotic good, chaotic evil, neutral good, neutral evil etc.

In a nutshell (or as my FB status says): Feels like I’ve gone back home. Dati nagbibilang ako ng oras bago umuwi. Now parang kulang sa oras gusto ko pa mag-stay. The last time I felt like this was when I was at Level Up…

So there. That’s phase two of my re-invention. Although…I’d have to make major adjustments to phase 1 in order to fit that into my hectic calendar of work and PhD studies.

Anyway, just in case you’re curious, why don’t you try one of our games? =^.^= This one’s a hidden object game that I know a lot of women enjoy. Hihihi. Click the image to download.