GS: Given that you've spent your entire career at either Looking Glass or Ion Storm/Austin, isn't it a bit daunting to cut the ties?

HS: Well, I worked for Origin--where I met Richard Garriott, Warren Spector, and Chris Roberts...all great people. Also, while there, I was fortunate enough to interact with Doug Church and some of the Looking Glass people. That was a life-changing time for me. Those guys were so smart, so fun...Looking Glass rocked. After that, I moved from Austin to the Bay Area to work with a startup called Multitude. Edward "Ned" Lerner, one of the founders of Looking Glass, had founded Multitude with Art Min, a wonderful human being, leader, and game designer. We made a game called FireTeam that--while not a huge financial success--was innovative and cool. I'm superproud to this day of what we did with FireTeam. Multitude was like "game mechanics boot camp." I got to work again, off and on, with Rob Fermier, Marc LeBlanc, Doug Church, and, of course, Ned and Art. It was a small company (initially), and we had a blast. We all learned a lot too. When FireTeam hit beta, I moved back to Austin to work with Warren on Deus Ex. I was at Ion Storm for almost six years--an amazing time in my life. So, yes, it's daunting to walk away from all that; some of my best friends are at Ion, some of my mentors and some of the smartest, most passionate people I know. I would stand shoulder to shoulder with them any day if they really needed me.