Click Nothing

452 Thanks

In the last week or so Click Nothing has taken tens of thousands of hits and generated a couple dozen comments. I have received dozens of messages through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and have seen my inbox flooded with dozens more emails of support, of congratulation, and even of thanks - along with not a few condemnations for those respawning checkpoints from the forum kiddies who figured out I was the one responsible.... It's extremely flattering to know that so many of you would read my sentimental goop, nevermind take the time to comment or drop me a line.

I've been pretty irresponsible in getting back to many of you whether simply to thank you for a kind word or to respond to any of the numerous job offers that have been extended. I hope you'll please consider this post to be the thank-you that you may not receive personally, as there is just no way I am going to be able to get back to everyone. So thank you all so much for your kindness.

I'd also like to take a moment to address a couple of points. It seems that there are some misunderstandings and rumors floating around that I might as well clear up.

First, I am not planning to leave the game industry behind. Maybe the overwealming melancholy of the previous post left the impression that my departure was more extreme or more permanent than I hope or expect it will be. I apologize for any misunderstanding. I still expect to spend the rest of my life or so making games, it just might take me a little while to get that mission back on track. That said, I am not in a hurry. I am going to take the time I need to make sure that the decision I make is the right one. I promise to let you all know in due time when I know where I am going and what I am doing.

Second, as you can probably now guess from the point above, I am not currently employed. You thought respawning checkpoints were bad, but in a time where respawning banks have fucked up the entire economy, some may rightfully think it is nuts to jump without a parachute. I assure you that, as foolhardy as it may seem, my decision was taken neither quickly, nor rashly, and I have been uncharacteristically prudent in my evaluations and actions. For reasons far, far beyond the scope of this post to enumerate I felt the best path forward for me was to go parachute-less. I am not at all worried that I have the time for a little freefall while I figure things out - so please don't worry about that.

Third, if you are one of those people offering a job, or just trying to touch base via LinkedIn or another social network to discuss different opportunities - thanks a million. As much as the support and encouragement of friends and well-wishers nourishes the soul, ultimately it will be the nourishment of a hot meal that I am going to need to sort out in the long term. I am currently in the process of gathering my options, but I am taking it slow and I am leveraging my most direct contacts first, so it might be some time before I get back to you. This certainly does not mean I am not interested - only that I have limited bandwidth now that I am without my army of personal assistants and hot secretaries.

Finally, I am not fat anymore:

 
So while I truly appreciate all the coverage in, and links from, the actual press (which have generated the hits and consequently the offers), please feel free to contact me for an up-to-date photo. I can even provide Speedo shots, or me in fireman gear if the price is right.

Once again, thank you all so much for your support.

More news soon.

More games to follow.

-Clint

451 Weeks

Nine years ago, I was stuck. I was stuck in Vancouver, stuck in school, stuck in a life of habits – mostly bad – and stuck in the tragic comfort of doing the same things, and making the same mistakes, over and over again. There were plenty of good things going on too. I was writing a lot – working on my thesis and writing scripts for independent films. I was making those films even, and working on the film projects of friends. There were a lot of creative things going on then, but the thing that would have the biggest impact on my life was the one that I considered to be only a hobby at the time. I was fiddling around more or less constantly (to the detriment of a lot of my other work in many cases) with the Unreal Level Editor. I was editing existing Unreal Tournament levels and working on levels for Unreal Mods. When I received an email from a friend of mine linking to a job posting from Ubisoft in Montreal calling for people with experience using the Unreal Editor, I sent in a resume on a lark. Six weeks later I was living in Montreal.

Within the same year – with the upcoming release of PS2 and the original XBox, I would hazard to guess that 10,000 other people got their first job in the game industry. A good percentage of them probably didn’t last a year. Another big chunk probably never shipped their first title. Of those that did, very likely whatever the game was, it wasn’t a blockbuster. And of those few remaining out of ten thousand who were lucky enough to ship a blockbuster for their first game in the industry, I suspect exactly zero of them can claim to have had the kind of luck I had starting as a level designer, then working as a game designer and scriptwriter on the original Splinter Cell. I was a rookie on an upstart team that won the World Series in their first season in the Major Leagues. Official XBox Magazine gave Splinter Cell a 96 – topping the 95 they had given to Halo. And it didn’t stop there. In my almost nine years here, I have shipped three games with over twelve million units sold through, and an average meta-critic of over 90%. I’ve been very lucky to say the least.

Yet, over the years, a number of friends have accused me of a certain false modesty in attributing so much of my success to luck. They’ve encouraged me to take credit for the hard work and the dedication. And over the years I have come to understand that, in fact, my hard work has been a non-insignificant factor in my success and resultant happiness. But more important than the hard work, probably even more important that the random chance that put me on such an amazing team, in such an amazing company, at such an amazing time, was one ingredient that I had not realized had been essential in flavouring the recipe of my life. I think today, looking back at the last decade, that the mystery ingredient in all of this was courage.

I am a person of habit. I have many good habits, but the reality is that new habits develop and reinforce themselves everyday, and it is rare that one just picks up good habits. We pick up bad habits, mostly, and the good habits we have and the few we are lucky enough to adopt often atrophy into bad ones. That is what was happening to me in Vancouver a decade ago, and while it is hard to look at your life and say ‘this is unsustainable’, it is even harder to look at your life and say ‘the reason my life is unsustainable is because I am unsustainable.’ It takes courage to do that, and it takes even more courage to take steps to rectify it. Luck and hard work only determine whether or not you regret taking those steps later. I can say with certainty that I have absolutely no regrets about the step that brought me to Ubisoft. I am thankful that Ubisoft fostered a development atmosphere that I, and so many others who came before and since, have felt so lucky to be a part of. I am proud – beyond measure – of the hard work that I and my colleagues have done here. And I am absolutely certain that those things will continue to grow and flourish; creating new opportunities for new developers willing to work hard and swing for the fences. I am certain that courageous people will continue to come here and grow, and excel, and achieve things that they may later foolishly attribute merely to luck.

But I am a person of habit. For me, habits begin to form when I am comfortable and content, and over time those habits settle. Their weight begins to rest heavily on the foundations of contentedness on which they were built. All the courage and hard work required to overcome my bad habits and forge myself a place where I can be happy, leads me back, inevitably to a place where I am once again comfortable and content. It’s a tragic spiral that I have been through a couple of times in my adult life now. It’s the fractal of my emotional landscape; habits recursing through habits, great pustules of discontent revealing themselves to be whiskered with golden curls of incredible joy which themselves, on closer inspection, reveal an acne of sorrow speckling their surfaces, ad infinitum. In the 451 weeks that I have been here, I have adopted many new habits. It has taken tremendous effort to prevent those habits from atrophying into bad ones. Pride burns into hubris. Willingness wilts into desperation. Confidence slows to stubbornness. Passion boils into anger. Each of these faults and others – without care and constant self-examination – risk becoming habits.

I am too comfortable. I am too content. And I know where that can lead for me.

Fortunately, for the first time in my life, I know the way forward. The way forward lies in my having the courage that I did not know I had a decade ago to bid farewell to those tragically comforting habits. I need to walk on hot coals and sleep on a bed of nails. I need to chew on broken glass. I need to drink paint. This post has gotten long enough and I am still afraid to come to the point, but what I really need more than anything is to write these words;

I gave notice of my resignation to Ubisoft on Monday, April 26th, 2010.

That’s me, acknowledging that I am unsustainable and taking the steps I unfortunately feel I need to take in order to rectify it. The odds of me having the same luck I had the last time I took such a step may be 10,000 to one against, but this time I hope my ability and willingness to do the hard work are beyond question. In that context, I guess we’ll find out just how true or false my modesty is. And I’ll be happy to admit it if I was wrong (but not too happy, and not too soon, I hope).

Without Regret

-Clint