thread: 2011-06-26 : Q & A time
On 2011-06-27, Vincent wrote:
Seth: "What's your day job? How long have you been doing it? How does it affect your design?"
I program databases for the office of continuing education at a teaching hospital. We provide doctors and nurses (and social workers and lactation consultants and etc) the continuing medical education they need to stay certified. I create and maintain the databases and interfaces we use to plan courses, hold courses, keep everyone's transcripts, and report back to our accrediting bodies. I've been doing it for almost 10 years now.
My job is an accreted mess of cobbled-together temporary fixes and first draft solutions that we (of course!) don't have time to go back and make good. Plus these past couple of years have been an ever-worsening do-more-with-less crunch. So that's fun.
I don't know if my job has any direct effect on my game design. I love working with people in health care, and evidently it shows in my sense of humor and sense of priorities, which do make their way into my games. There's that, at least.
Weeks: I was hired in the last or the second to last year that employee benefits here included a pension(!), so I expect to stay in this gig just as long as I can. Maybe from now on. It's hard to argue with a pension.
Another part of the problem: as lumpley games gets more lucrative, I'm like the proverbial frog in the proverbial pot of water. By the time lumpley games' profits can support me without my salary, I'll have gotten quite accustomed to living on lumpley games profits PLUS my salary.
Also, I'll have kids in college.
So I dream, but no time soon.
