Doing What You Love, Part Deux

For those of you keeping count, it’s been a while since my last blog, November of last year in fact. Some of you have e-mailed me personally (“Yo, Deb, why’d you drop off the face of the planet?”), while others new to the Torque community might be reading this thinking, Um, who are you? (Answer: up until last year, I was the marketing gal for Torque).

You can read this as a Where in the World is Deborah Fike? blog, and that’s cool. But I hope that you read this more as a sequel to the very first blog I wrote on the site, entitled “Doing What You Love.” In my life, I’ve discovered that the more things change, the more things stay the same. To illustrate my point, check out these two snapshots of me taken roughly ten years apart:


You might notice a few similarities. In fact, you may wonder if I changed at all, other than to keep up to date on the latest anime. However, the girl on the right has been through a lot of changes, including two different degrees, living abroad for two years, one long (and unfortunately unsuccessful) relationship, and a happy marriage.

But the biggest differences are the ones you can’t see. The girl on the left has been sketching stories for comic books and epic fantasy novels during Calculus class. The woman on the right, on the other hand, has written her way through two complete novels, won a sudden fiction writing contest, founded two separate creative writing groups for beginners, and got a great job writing for a living on the Torque site. And that hard work has finally paid off. I am now a paid game writer for InstantAction, Torque’s sister site. It is literally the job that girl on the left dreamed about.

I can honestly say that my 2 years marketing Torque has been the most inspiring period of my life. I met so many dedicated indie developers that it pushed me harder to do what I love. Every day when I sat down to work, I was surrounded by an online community of people devoted to their dreams and goals, and I could do no less.

And I’m not the only around here chasing their dreams. My husband Jacob Fike, former web developer for TorquePowered.com, has been coding away in our living room trying to start his own online business. Last month, he launched the closed beta version of Fellowstream, an online team management tool that has both personal task management and project capabilities. (For those of you with REAL longevity on the site, you might remember that Jacob got his start by making Overlord, a project management program still sold on this site.) He’s accepting sign-ups for the closed beta and would love to hear back from the Torque community if you guys are interested in this stuff:

Click here for Fellowstream beta sign up.

Even though both Jacob and I have moved off the Torque team, we both miss the camaraderie. It’s nice that I personally still get to see the Torque guys every day at the office. It’s obvious by the energy that exudes from the Torque room that they’re doing what they love too. They’ve got quite a few things lined up for 2010 and beyond that is going to change game development. It almost makes me wish I hadn’t changed teams.

I hate good-byes, so this isn’t a good-bye. I’ve been lurking on the site and keeping up with you guys. A bunch of you still e-mail me once in a while, and I hope that doesn’t change. I wish I could talk about the games I’m working on, but I’m under NDA, so until then, I hope you keep up with me on the Fellowstream blog and via e-mail.

Cheers and as always, Happy Game Development!

deborahm AT instantaction DOT com