Give us a little background on yourself, how you wound up in the game industry, and how you came to work at Turbine?

What you’ll find in this industry is that most designers have very different stories. I’ve had a wide assortment of incarnations. I worked for a while in talk radio, film, and industrial psychology, but I’ve always been a gamer-geek at heart. After spending some time in Hollywood, I decided I needed to try to get into the games industry, or I would regret it for the rest of my life. I think I must have applied to every game company in existence, at least twice.

I finally got in touch with the Lead Designer of Earth & Beyond at Westwood Studios and sent him a writing sample. He liked it, but unfortunately, they weren’t hiring. Then two months later, out of nowhere, I got a call from Westwood, saying that their writer had quit and they needed a replacement immediately. Two weeks later, I was in Las Vegas. I spent a little over a year at Westwood, on both the Dev & Live Teams for Earth & Beyond. Then I moved on to High Voltage Software in Chicago as a Producer. Afterwards, I came back to design at Turbine, working on MEO. Been here since January 2004.