Q: Could you tell us how you went from a fan to an employee of BioWare? What are your key qualities that got you hired do you think?

A: Back when NWN was released, I was excited about some of the things BioWare was trying with the game. I have always been a fan of MMORPGs and the idea of being able to roll your own small scale ORPG intrigued me. I had spent time on my site documenting file formats and providing some 3rd party NWN utilities. I had also spent time on the NWN forums trying to answer questions and hanging around like a love sick groupie. Around October of last year, I decided that it was time for me to move on from my current job to something a bit less stressful.

The first thing I had to do was something that would help set myself apart from the thousands of other resumes BioWare receives. To do this, I decided to write the script compiler (a.k.a. NWNNSSCOMP on my site). Once the initial version of the compiler was done I wrote my resume and sent it off.

Over the next few months, I exchanged a few email with Mark Brockington who wrote BioWare's script compiler. But excluding one or two mentions that I was interested in a job at BioWare, the emails were mostly just about script compiler issues.

By the time this January rolled around, I had mostly given up hope that BioWare would even talk to me. But any time I got a message from BioWare complementing me on something I did, I would take the opportunity to let them know I was interested in a position. In March, someone from BioWare did mention that BioWare wasn't ignoring me in fact they were interested but time limitations prevented them from acting.

Then after a long night in the hospital waiting for the doctors to decide why I had a spot in my vision, I received an email from BioWare asking me if I would be interested in a phone interview. Hmmm, let me think about it. That Friday I had the phone interview which went well. A week later they asked me if I would fly up to Edmonton for a face to face interview. Hmmm, let me think about it. The funny thing about the interview was that it was the same week the World Health Organization (WHO) issued that bonehead travel restriction on travel to Toronto. There were rumors that the U.S. government would also place a ban on travel. That whole week I worried that my trip would have to be canceled since my connecting flight was through Toronto.

After the interview, they offered me the job and the rest of the story is basically public knowledge via the notes I have posted on my site.