State of the Nation

Unfortunately, due to the economy!!!!1! (scary, isn’t it?), I now have to start hedging my bets.

I really don’t want to, but it has come to this. We have a few irons in the fire right now, but they’re not done deals. So… in the eventuality that they don’t come to pass, I need a backup plan.

It’s time for me to unburrow, get my head back out of the sand, and start looking.

What I’m looking for:

• A leadership position, preferably director level, on the engineering side of things.
• A position where I get involved on the business side of things. I’ve been doing a fair bit of project planning, budgeting, networking, setting up pitch meetings, so on and so forth – in short, business development – for the past year or so, and I’d like to see that continue.

Skills:

• I’m up to speed and up to date on everything games, particularly console development, performance optimization and tool chains. You need your XBOX optimizing or your PS3 performant? I’m your man.
• I’m a dab hand at architecting new systems.
• Great communicator.
• Great manager.
• C#, C++. Hi! I’m your man. Don’t worry – I got this.

Not So Skills:

• I’m out of date on my SQL skills. I don’t know PHP, Ruby, etc. I could learn them, but I’d need a couple of months ramp-up.
• My Win32 skills are rusty, but they’d come back pretty quickly.
• Java, equally rusty. Last time I seriously hacked around in it was JDK 1.4.

Bonus Features:

• I used to be a freelance journalist, and can handle talking to editors, PR, press releases, blogging, etc. (In fact some of my blogs posts were picked up by Gamasutra back in the day when I was writing for the Surreal Software Game Design Blog… and I also have over 120 published articles in real, honest-to-goodness news-stand magazines).
• I’m a dab hand at fleshing out and strengthening story ideas and structure for video game pitches, and writing dialogue. (My short script UNSEALED won the Feb 2008 award for Best Short Screenplay on Francis Ford Coppola’s website).

Ideal Jobs:

• Director of Engineering of a video game company startup, or a studio within a larger video games publisher.
• Film producer
• Film director
• Member of a writing team on a television production.
• Involved in some capacity with a medical foundation, working on accelerating medical research via datamining (I figure I can get the usual 15-25 year cycle down to about 5 years, or at least highly focus the research on the best areas for the biggest bang for the buck. My specialist hobby is later-life diseases such as arthritis, osteoporosis, alzheimer’s, some forms of cancer – and you can find out more from my blog).
• Consultancy/contract work in the games, embedded or Win32 space.
• Port work – taking games from platform A, and porting them to platform B. (And I have a team I can spin up at a moment’s notice to do this, if that’s your fancy).
• Creative work in advertising, film or marketing. (I’ve done a fair bit of editing in my time).

I’m open to discussing all opportunities. I would love to hear from agents, or from recruiters hiring for specific high-level positions. Ideally, I would like to remain in the Seattle area, although I will consider anywhere on the West Coast.

So please, drop me a line if you’re interested. The clock is ticking, as I have potential opportunities on the table.

Thanks,

Simon