This, and the whole Shovelware Mine series, is a repost from cohost
Many years ago I wound up working at the infamous Wii shovelware developer Data Design Interactive. I wasn't there for very long, and it was shortly after their Wii era, but it was an... interesting experience. I want to start out with how I got the job and the initial impressions. This might be a little long.
Way back in December of 2010 I had graduated college with my degree in Computer Science and I was desperate to find a job. In May of the following year I was still jobless and I saw an ad for a junior programmer at a small game development studio. Considering 80% of my brain is dedicated to video games I applied instantly, even though I was sure I'd get passed over like with the previous dozen applications.
Fast forward a week later and I get a call from an unknown number. In those halcyon days my phone wasn't completely overrun with spam calls so I picked it up with a curious "Hello?" On the other end was a British man who introduced himself as Stewart Green of Data Design Interactive and he wanted to schedule an interview with me! In the six months I had been looking for a job I had been called in for an interview exactly one other time, so this was huge, on top of it being a video game job. I was pumped.
The interview comes around and I drive up to Sarasota, manage to get turned around and find myself on the wrong side of the street and almost walked into a meat & cheese company's HQ, but thankfully I found the right place on time. I open the door directly into a conference room and see two people seated at a large table. They greeted me and invited me to have a seat at the table. The shorter, balding man introduced himself as Stewart, the man who called earlier, and the other as Karl White. Both of them were exceptionally British.
The interview started with some very generic questions "Tell us about your education", "Why do you want to work with us", etc. Eventually they got to "Can you show us some of your work?". Ah, now the stuff I had prepared for. I whipped out my shitty little Dell netbook and loaded up a few of the game I had cobbled together over time, though most were just clones of various arcade classics. They nodded approvingly, but they both had some strong poker faces so I couldn't get a good read on what they thought. That's when I pulled out my trump card: a nintendo gameboy emulator built from scratch during my senior year of college. I loaded up a ROM of some weird homebrew game about ants, because taking pirated ROMs to a video game development job interview seemed like a bad idea. At last, I had found a crack in their expressions - it looked like they were impressed.
The interview had ended and I drove home feeling pretty good, though I kept my optimism in check - I had no idea how many people I was competing against. Only a week later I got another call, but this time I recognized the number. "We would like to offer you a position for $35,000 annually" Stewart said, immediately sending me over the moon. I thanked him profusely and pranced around the house in joy. Those previous six months with no job or school had been the lowest point of my life and it was finally over.
My first day rolled around the following Monday and I hit the road for the 45 minute commute as my nerves wanted me to puke. Interestingly I had been given a different address than where the interview was held, so I got to search for the office again. I pull into the address - it's basically a strip mall along a canal, and my destination was up an odd staircase to a loft above a clothing store. I turn the knob on the door and... it was locked. I checked the time and I was only about 3 minutes early. Confused, I look through the window on the door and see a one-room studio with two desks, three chairs, a big box and absolutely nothing else. 95% of the floor space was completely empty.
At this point I started to freak out. Did I get the wrong address? Did I get the wrong start time? Was this whole thing bogus? I start walking down the stairs considering my options when I see Karl on his way up. "Ah, you're locked out, huh? Let me get that" he says as we walk back to the door. Karl sets his things down on one desk and comes over to me standing there confused. "It was just Stewart and I in the office until now." he walks over to the box in the corner "Sorry about the state of the office. We just moved in. We'll need to get your desk setup." he said apologetically as he started cracking open the box to assemble the desk.
About 20 minutes of the two of us assembling this desk, Stewart finally arrives. I shake his hand, he puts his things down and he heads out again. A few moments later he comes back in with a desktop computer in tow and assured me they'd get me all setup. About an hour into this "setup" what sounds like an air raid siren suddenly screeches from outside and I practically jump out of my skin. "Oh that's just the drawbridge warning" Karl assures me. I look out the window and sure enough the drawbridge barely 100ft from the office is raising. "It goes off every hour or two" my eyes cross as I look out the window.
The rest of the day was taken up with finishing the desk, installing visual studio, doing some HR paperwork, getting me connected to the subversion repo, and looking through the documentation for the proprietary GODS engine. 5 PM rolls around, I pack up and start the 45 minute drive home while contemplating the emotional rollcoaster I experienced that day and thinking "What did I get myself into?"
