In 2007, I slipped into the back of the room where a meeting had just started to discuss the early plans to transform Stardock’s own digital download store and downloader, Stardock Central, into a platform that sold so much more than just our own products. It would sell games from other indie developers, major publishers, and even Windows utility software like anti-virus and office suites. We were coming up on the launch of Sins of a Solar Empire, and this was the opportunity to release it along side a bigger and better digital distribution client than anyone else had on the market at the time. We’d been doing direct download products since 1999, this was something we knew how to do!
This wasn’t even a meeting I was supposed to be in. I mean, at the time my job was to just run the community websites, keep the news posts fresh, moderate the forums, work with our army of community volunteers and try and scrape together what revenue I could through ad sales. I had started to help out with testing on Sins, but this was definitely far far far outside my realm of responsibility. But Stardock was a pretty small company at the time, I believe I was somewhere around employee #35, and it’s hard to have meetings about exciting new projects without word getting out, so for the next few months I just kept showing up & adding my $0.02 to the discussions.
Before long, I was packaging games and applications to be distributed through Impulse, what Stardock Central became by its launch in 2008. I was working with independent developers and AAA publishers from all over the world. Paradox Interactive was my first major account, and THQ was my first AAA publisher. Over the next few years, we built the tools and processes from scratch to operate a global digital distribution business. We were a small, dedicated team of developers, biz dev, packaging and marketing folks trying to build something great that could go toe-to-toe with some of the biggest names in digital distribution.
By late 2010 several companies came calling, interested in potentially acquiring Impulse and extending themselves into the rapidly growing PC digital distribution market. In the end, GameStop came out ahead and acquired the platform from Stardock and on May 1, 2011 I became a GameStop employee, managing game content for Impulse.
Over the next two years, we grew substantially. Where game content had previously been managed by 2.5 people, I grew the team to 7. Our development team grew even more and we began the work to integrate Impulse with the global GameStop universe. Today, Impulse is available both online, and at over 4,400 retail stores across the United States. This is a big deal as it marks the first time digital PC games could be easily bought in your local mall. We were able to bring titles that previously never would have made it to a retail shelf, and make them accessible to an entirely new audience. Indie games like Retrovirus and Symphony could be bought with cash at your local mall!
I’m incredibly proud of what the team has accomplished since 2007. These 6 years have been an incredible ride and I’ve been blessed to work a group of very smart and talented people from all corners of the industry.
But 6 years is a long time in the games industry, especially to be essentially working on the same project, and as changes to the direction of Impulse started to take shape this year, I realized it was time to move on to a new challenge.
Since early 2013, the changes to Impulse have been slowly taking shape, and in February I realized it was time to start my job hunt. After so long selling games, I wanted to get back onto the production side of the industry.
Over the past year I’ve been out to interview at EA, Blizzard and Valve and done phone interviews with Epic and a smattering of smaller companies. I’ll admit that I was stoked just to get interviews with these companies as they’re some of the biggest names in the industry and are very picky when it comes to who they even talk to. And while none of the roles I applied for were quite the right fit right now, I learned a TON, and each interview I went on went better than the one before it.
So lets rewind the clock to late August, a week before our vacation in Europe. Turns out, that a company just south of Amsterdam was looking for someone to help them get their post production group going in porting their social web games to mobile platforms. A friend of mine there let me know about the opportunity and helped me get in touch with their HR team to try and coordinate something. I was already going to be in the neighborhood the next week, so they wouldn’t have to fly me in or anything so why not set up an interview?
The interview went terrific, I liked everyone I talked with (and they seemed to like me) and the company seemed like it had a good culture, was growing, and had its sights set on some ambitious goals. After an afternoon of interviews, we said our goodbyes and that they’d be in touch with me soon.
Now fast-forward to a few weeks ago. I received an offer letter to join Spil Games as their Post Production Manager at their office in Hilversum, NL. And this morning I accepted the offer! And I start on November 1st! This means that in just over 1 month, Elisa & I will be moving to the Netherlands! Europe! FAR FAR AWAY!
The last few weeks have been a frantic hurricane of activity as we squared away our necessary paperwork, dealt with our apartment and shuffled around all of our worldly possessions. We are now under two weeks away from leaving the US behind for at least a few years. This is a huge adventure we’re about to undertake, and I have no idea where it will lead us in the long-term, but I do know that in the short-term we’re going to be doing a LOT of traveling, meeting a ton of new people and learning a great many new things from new foods to new languages.
If you want to follow along with our adventures in the Old World, both Elisa and I will be chronicling our lives and our perspectives on Dutch life here:
Elisa: Hallo Holland
Mike: The Ginger Expat
Let the adventure, begin!