(Beware, gamers, that this particular entry probably has more in common with a TPS report than I want it to. But people keep asking how my job search is going, so here it is in all of its gory detail.)

I left Wizards of the Coast in January and I am currently enjoying catching up on games that I had been meaning to play while I also contemplate various career options. I'm very much at a fork in the road as far as my career is concerned. If I look 5-10 years down the road, I usually picture myself running my own company ... some sort of VC-funded start-up in the digital gaming space. However, as of today I'm not sure I know enough about / have good enough contacts on the technology side of things to succeed. My ability to think strategically and evangelize a vision are well-suited to going out and convincing folks to fund projects (which is exactly what happened with Wizards Digital) but without the right processes and competencies in place at a company for executing on those ideas, the ideas themselves don't amount to enough (again, witness Wizards Digital). So my theory had been to go get a job at a for-real computer game company for some number of years so that I can both learn more and develop my rolodex before then setting off on my own.

The tricky part is that there aren't a lot of jobs out there that match my particular set of skills, experiences, and interests. The ideal job for me would be something like "metagame evangelist" where I was the vision guy in charge of all the game-like things that happen outside and around a digital game (including player-focused stuff like organized play, social networking, community, achievements and also business stuff like item sales, digital distribution, trading, etc.). Wizards of the Coast does some of these things really well and there's a lot of lessons from the tabletop world that apply directly to digital games now that digital games are finally becoming truly multi-player/social experiences. The problems I am most interested in solving right now all center around the new generation of connected gaming platforms (a list that in my mind includes XBox Live, Steam, iPhone, Kongregate, Playstation Network, Facebook, etc.), but they live at the intersection of disciplines that most companies divide up into entirely different departments: game design, platform functionality, business model, online media, etc.

You would think that my run as Director of Magic R&D would make me very qualified to oversee game content creation for another AAA entertainment property, but the problem is that nobody else has a position like that. The Wizards of the Coast investment in game design is unique, as far as I'm aware. It's rare that companies will even have full-time game designers who don't write code, much less a whole department full of them and an executive in charge of running that team plus championing their issues to the rest of the company. Wizards does that because the gameplay itself is so crucial to the ongoing success of Magic and the gameplay is so intricate and complicated that you have to do significant playtesting months and years before you publish the product. I guess MMO's are the closest parallel in the digital gaming world, but they cover this need with Beta testers rather than with internal resources. Meanwhile the way is which Wizards divides the content creation process into three very distinct roles (designers, developers, and creatives) is completely unprecented. It works really well for Wizards, though, so I'm honestly not sure if Magic is the only game that requires that level of attention to the details of its gameplay mechanics or if Wizards has in fact invented a better process that other companies should be copying but aren't. In any case I have yet to find an equivalent content-creation job that I could even apply for, much less would want and get.

I'm not too frustrated by the lack of high-level content creation oversight jobs on the market, though, because I think my biggest strengths are my leadership skills (strategic thinking, communication, motivation, consensus building, etc.). My detailed knowledge of game play issues makes for a nice added bonus that gives me extra confidence and extra credibility as an executive. The trick there is that my expereince as VP of Digital Gaming doesn't directly qualify me on paper for any of the usual roles either. Am I a business development executive? Am I an Executive Producer? Am I a marketing person? What I have is a weird hybrid of a resume that makes me almost qualified for like three or four different executive-level roles, and in theory the sum of the parts should add enough to make me a great fit for any of them but in practice (especially at big companies) they're just going to look at how well I measure up to the specific requirements they have for the specific box that they drew on their org chart. I wind up as the intriguing candidate that they bring in for a full round of interviews despite the (alleged) weakness of my resume and then at the end they decide to hire a more traditional candidate.

Their loss, as far as I'm concerned, but my issue now is that I am starting to run out of Seattle-area companies that I can do this dance with. As a result I've begun getting more serious lately about going the entrepreneurial route. I've got a pitch put together for an online game project with Richard Garfield in place as the Lead Designer and if I'm able to get that funded then it might be time to stop looking for a "real" job and skip straight to the VC-lottery. Of course, as I was writing this blog entry I also got called to set up another all-day job interview for next week (following up on my all-day Tuesday interview).

I'm really not sure what's going to happen over the next few weeks and months. I guess I should just be happy that I'm getting a steady stream of interviews and opportunities despite the current crappy economy.

I'd love some feedback on what conversations you guys would be interested in having here, by the way. Is my job hunt a subject I should revisit? Am I supposed to dive into more detail on what happened and/or is happening at Wizards? Or should I instead be talking more about the games I am spending time playing? What games *should* I be playing while I have time on my hands, anyway?

Randy