Year 8 2007 (continued)

In July of 2007, I bid adieu to Buzz Monkey Software and started the process of moving to the Seattle area. I began working for iWin, Division 90. iWin is a casual games hub, similar to Big Fish Games. Division 90 was a new content team they started. It was a small team, composed of 6 people including myself. I was to be the Senior Artist and would be creating the brunt of the 3D work. Not too long after I was hired, we hired a bunch of interns to do the "grunt work."

Div90's game was Garden Defense, a tower defense game for the casual games market. An army of insects were swarming gardens all over the neighborhood and it was up to you to place an array of insect-eating plants as well as repelling gadgets to stop them. Such gadgets included the bazooka-toting garden gnome and the quicksand-creating cherub statue fountain.

It was a fun little game and I enjoyed my time working on it. I created all of the insects, plants, and gadgets in the game. The other artist on the team (my art director) created all of the background gardens. We managed to get it done in about 6 months.

(You can play it free if you want, from iWin's site.)

Around late November, we started brainstorming new ideas for our next project. I was enjoying the camaraderie of a small team again and actually creating art, even though the art wasn't super complicated or at all pertinent to the hardcore market. After a week or so of thinking up ideas, in early December, we got the news.

We were all laid off.

To put it mildly, this was a shock. It was the first time I was laid off with no warning or even any thought of the possibility. I was getting married in two months! I had just bought a house a few months ago! Christmas is coming! What am I going to do?

NEXT: Zombies! No foolin'!