Options

This entry was originally published at Ken Noland

Lately I’ve been considering some of my options. What do I want to do? Where do I see myself in 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? A lot of these questions rely on what I have going on now. I work for an awesome game company developing racing games for the PS3. It’s amazing work and it keeps me pretty busy, but still, there is still room to grow.

What do I want to define myself as? Do I want to be a programmer for the rest of my days, or should I explore options such as becoming a designer, lead tech architect, or move straight into the business of gaming? Being a game programmer was my goal, and now that I’ve attained it, and been a programmer for some time now, where do I go from here?

I’ve specialized in areas such as networking and sound. Do I really want to specialize in that, or should I expand and become a graphics and physics programmer? Should I develop better solutions for sound in the games industry, modeling acoustical properties based off geometry within a scene, or should I start making my own graphics engine, like I did with Trival?

Heh, Trival, that brings back memories. It was meant to be an experiment, something the world was never meant to see. It was my playground, yet despite all circumstances, it began to grow into a business that was then trampled by the publishers. Another game that never saw the light of day. Anyway, it’s tough to think about the future without some reminiscing of the past.

I suppose these are all questions that we face during some junctures of our lives. It is much harder for people like me, people who are, by their very nature, unstable yet driven. Plans fall through regularly and so I’ve become accustomed to not planning and just going with the flow and pushing forward. So far that has worked to my benefit these last few years, but now I’m in a different spot. I’m older! Should I actually attempt at settling down and becoming more stable, or should I continue this wild pursuit of happiness?

These are questions that will be answered in time. For now, I’ll just continue going with the flow since its worked well so far. Eventually, I’ll have the answers to all of this, even if that is my 2 year goal… just to have an answer for where I want to be in 2 years!

-Ken Noland