New Job NCSoft Austin – Texas here I come!
Great news!!
I’m going to be working for NCSoft, in Austin, TX as a 3D game programmer!! I’ll be working with the Java Monkey Engine technology on a super-secret project (You know how it is with video games).
NCSoft is a premiere developer of PC based MMO’s like Tabula Rasa, Guild Wars, City of Heroes, City of Villains.
Now the really interesting thing about finding this job is that I have no direct game development work experience (by day I’m a java programmer for a military contractor, by night a ninja monkey game programmer), but as a personal passion, I’ve been learning, prototyping and extending projects using the jMonkeyEngine technology, and so through the jME community I was able to get in touch with two of the creators of the Java Monkey Engine who work at NCSoft Josh Slack, and Mark Powell. Over the past year or so through discussion with Mark and Josh and vigilantly monitoring the NCSoft jobs site 
I noticed they had some open positions for 3D client developers with Java Monkey Engine experience!! I immediately sent my resume in, and was lucky enough to get the chance to fly down to Austin and interview with the team!
The interview went great, I met some incredibly creative and interesting people (I absolutely can’t wait to work with the team). I was nervous that because I didn’t have any direct game related experience that I’d lose to a candidate whose been in the industry, but I feel that my passion, plus my unique experience and involvement in the jME community helped tip the decision in my favor.
It’s going to be a little crazy for my personal life, because I quit my current job (gave them my 2 weeks notice friday), and I’m going to be packing all my stuff up and shipping down to Austin, TX in 2 weeks!! I’ll be leaving behind 90% of my family and friends (except for my friend Matt who plans on quitting his job, and joining me on the cross-country adventure by moving down to Austin with me and finding some job down there). I’m at a point in my life where I need the change, I want the adventure, I’m up for the challenge and plus this job is a dream come true for me! Also Austin is supposed to be an incredible place to live and I can’t wait to check out the music scene and apparently there’s a huge technology maker/hacker scene down there, I’m excited!
Once I’m down there I hope to continue writing about my experiences working for a game development company, and also some more ideas I have on how people from the larger “corporate” software industry can break into the game development industry. Especially with the unique technologies like the Java Monkey Engine which is going to require developers to have strong Java and computer graphics experience, which is very different from the traditional C++/OpenGL game technologies.
It’s going to be very interesting to be part of the jMonkeyEngine community as more commercial companies begin to utilize it, I’m hoping that companies will realize that the competitive business edge is not in the core game engine framework but in the unique proprietary gameplay and tools specific to the game built on top of that technology, and that by leveraging and contributing to open source standardized core game technology, they can create a cheaper higher quality end product across the industry. Then the industry won’t be driven by a select number of multi-million dollar blockbuster games, instead it will be driven by a massive selection of games which allows developers more freedom to develop creative and engaging gameplay and stories. (or at least that’s the idealists dream right )