Plan for Stephen Zepp

as an Associate!

After getting to work with Josh Williams remotely for a few months, as well as interacting with everyone at GG on the forums and via email, it became a pretty logical idea to come out to Eugene and do some intensive work as a semi-intern getting to know Torque as deeply as possible in a short period, while working to help out wherever I could. The original plan was to work out some ideas for Torque Boot Camp (see below), as well as work as a point man for my team regarding some updates and enhancements of the RTS-SK that we had developed.

Things evolved very quickly once I got out here, and Jay Moore and I spent many hours (and many brain cells!) talking over endless beers about GG's plans for education of the various Torque communities, and how to best go about providing the seminar-style classes. These grew into larger scale discussions with Josh, Mark F., Matt Fairfax, Jeff Tunnel, and many others here at GG, and it quickly became obvious to even me that GG just about required a full time employee focused on just these type of issues. As it turns out, they knew it all along, and I was just being a bit dense when it came to who they had in mind...

Added to this, Jay filled me in on some super-secret areas where Torque is being explored in non-indy spaces and markets, and with my background from a previous career, there was an excellent base of knowledge that could be drawn from to help GG develop this space as well. My experience here at GG quickly went from talking about the RTS-SK and other tech areas to drawing up the beginnings of business plans and curriculum plans for a variety of future offerings, and one look at the synergy between the Torque Boot Camp plans and these other offerings made it abundantly clear that they meshed extremely well--once again I had a targetting reticule on my head and I didn't even know it!

It didn't take Josh, Jay, and the rest of the gang here long however to explain exactly what they wanted--and after that 3rd or 4th or 8th pint of Eugene beer, even I could figure out this was an opportunity I just wasn't willing to pass up. Honestly, it didn't take much effort to convince me once I got here to GarageGames and met everyone, so as of June 1st, 2005, I'll be a full time employee of GarageGames, focusing on the Education division as well as some commercial/serious gaming areas that GarageGames is exploring.

I think the greatest thing about this opportunity from my perspective is the fact that here at GG, games are still the most important thing around--and every step along the way, everyone in the company assured me that they would respect my desires to continue working on Nemesis Vortex, and even assist me however they could in our design and development--and even in the last 3 weeks that assistance has taken us leaps and bounds past some critical stumbling blocks. Not only that, but as a spare time developer, I'll be able to assist getting some of the really amazing ideas and implementations (well, the ones that just need a little polish and testing anyway!) out the door and into the hands of the community here where they can do the most good.

I can't describe how excited and motivated I am right now--it's simply amazing to be sitting here watching Torque technology and products being made daily, and seeing where Torque and GarageGames is going to be not only just over the horizon, but in years to come. It's simply mind boggling to realize that I'm going to be a part of that trip!