Farewell dimeRocker

This is a bit overdue. I left OverInteractive Media Inc. (OMI), the creators of dimeRocker, at the end of February this year. A decision made because I was ready for something new and wanted to return to my home province of Ontario.

My experience with dimeRocker was incredibly valuable. I came on as the 3rd employee (they are now much bigger) and was expected to be able to do everything, even though I was hired as a Unity developer. I had to jump into software architecture design, server-side and front-end programming, and eventually Unity and Flash AS3 development. It was frustrating but greatly improved my technical knowledge and understanding of web-based systems.

The business decisions made during the start-up phase of the company were extremely important. Being able to work through those choices taught me how a company funded by investments stays alive and prioritizes products and features. Some decisions were great and some were mistakes, but OMI was always able to adjust. Experiencing this was hectic and stressful, but we always made it through. Overall the business side of OMI has given me the knowledge I sought to understand what I'd be getting into if I ran my own company.

When I decided to leave I applied mostly to larger video game companies. I've experienced the start-up side of the game industry and now I want to experience the large corporate side of the industry. And since I had an accelerated/rock-and-roll introduction of the programming side of the industry, now I want to experience the creative side by continuing my adventures in game design.

So here I am a couple months later and I've been hired at Ganz as a Technical Game Designer. The studio is based out of Toronto, has about 400 employees at my location, and is famous for their Webkinz franchise. I am working on their recently announced Unity-based MMO called Tail Towns. I've been working at Ganz for about a month now. It's ridiculous how different it is from dimeRocker. I will eventually write about the differences in development and business decisions between a start-up and a large studio, but I want to further experience the large studio to make a fair assessment.

For those who looked to me for dimeRocker related answers, please feel free to continue asking me. Best of luck to the guys (and girl) at OMI, and thanks for the great experience!