Wow I missed pretty big anniversary a week or so ago. It’s 5 years since I resigned my position at Climax, a video game developer I’d worked at for 8 years and helped grow from 10 guys in a pig shed to a company with a global reach and $20m a year revenue. When I left I was the Chief Operating Officer, right hand man to the CEO and responsible for the day to day running of the group. It was a pretty big step and one from extreme comfort and security (they paid and treated me very well) into unemployement and uncertainty. It certainly hasn’t been easy at times in the last 5 years and things have changed enormously on a personal a and professional basis for me. Highlights include:
- Split with my partner of 8 years
- Met, courted and wed the Lovely Suze and had our excellent son
- Formed a dev company with Gareth
- Brokered Jeff minter’s visualizer on X360 and won him a publishing contract for Space Giraffe
- Worked on many great games: Crackdown 1, PGR 4, Fable 2
- Formed Ruffian and won the Crackdown 2 contract
- Moved to Dundee
And it’s all for the better. I found my resignation letter that I emailed my boss around noon on the 23rd of August. It’s funny reading it now and the personality traits that made me jack it in are stronger than ever. It’s important to me that I work on projects I strongly believe in and that I fell I’m making a meaningful contribution. That just wasn’t possible for me running a multi-studio, multi-project group like Climax. I’m not cut out for that sort of thing. Ruffian plays to my strengths a lot more and has more than enough to do to save me from my worse behaviour.
Here’s my resignation letter and I’m happy to say I’m still good friends with many of the people I worked with during my Climax years 
From: gaz@climaxgroup.com
Subject: Difficult Email
Date: 23 August 2004 11:51:38 BST
To: Karl Jeffery
But one I have to write.
It’s time for me to leave Climax.
I’ve really enjoyed the years spent help build the company and particularly proud that between us we’ve managed to do the impossible and beat the odds on so many occasions. A quick look at our competitors over the years shows that. I am very grateful for the faith you’ve shown in me to allow me to contribute to the extent I have in building what Climax is today.
My problem is that as the company has grown and evolved so has the role of the group’s senior management and moved from growth to internal consolidation.
Unfortunately I haven’t changed quite so much and what I do now on a day to day basis isn’t a good fit for my skill set and more importantly doesn’t make me happy. It’s really important for me to be able to give 110% of myself to whatever I do and more often than not I haven’t felt the ability to fire on all cylinders in the role I am currently in.
I know myself really well and I can honestly say that the path ahead isn’t one that fits me well and one I can give my all to. That’s not fair to Climax especially as I have a tendency towards self destructiveness if I don’t feel happy in a situation.
What I’ve missed and what I need is to work in an environment based around close collaboration with peers and joint autonomy rather than how I feel now, a middle man in large command and control structure brokering decisions that I don’t feel connected to or feel that I have a lot of input into.
I can see that the structural change we made makes sense for a group our size and that the problem is in me. I need a change and a pretty drastic one that’s very important happens in a way that causes the least amount of problems to all involved.
I am immensely proud of what the company has become and what I want to do is part ways amicably without causing harm to the group in anyway at all. I have many good friends (yourself included) in Climax including a lot of people that I’d want to enjoy the friendship for as long as I live. I wouldn’t want to do anything that would cause them any harm.
There’s stuff to sort out and it’d be good to quickly form a plan of action that works for everyone involved. I am open to pretty much anything as long as the conclusion in the medium term (3 months) is getting back to pursuing a path that I can give 110% to.
Phew. Bit of shock to be typing this to be honest. I’m in Solent today if you want to chat about it. I haven’t talked to anyone else about this and am now looking to you for a way forward.
gaz
It’s the only way to do it when you’ve not bothered for ages. A selection of pics at the end
- I had a tooth out! A very odd experience and probably the least I deserve after skiving off from the dentist for nearly 20 years. Did it hurt? Not really, the local anaesthetic was very effective and my dentist skilled and considerate. Wouldn’t want to do it again though
- Charlie’s been in the wars a bit recently. Bumped his head jumping up to welcome me from work which was horrid and post MMR a nasty combination of upper chest infection, ear infection and a raging temperature. We’re just seeing the end of that right now. Phew!
- We had a great company BBQ at Camperdown park. Nothing complex, people turned up, ate some food and drunk some beer. It was great though
- Had some visitors which is great. Nice times with Jon visiting last month and Bernie / Jim / Lucie early in August. Got Rik / Kel / Callum up this weekend and Peter over as well
- Just back from a trip to Gamecon in Cologne. GDCE and Gamecon didn’t really float my boat to be honest but met some old friends and new contacts which was great. Cologne looked pretty and the cathedral particularly impressive. On the return trip the cabbie asked if I’d just returned from working on the rigs. Must have looked as ruff as I felt
- Work goes very well, we’ve had some pretty important milestones that’s given a lot of shape to the game. Obviously I’m biased but it’s looking really good. We had some peeps from the press in just recently and they seem to agree. A fair way to go yet but right now indications are good. And that always worries me
- And had a nice time at Lunan bay last weekend, just me, Suzey and Charlie pottering about on the beach
My ex-tooth
Charlie walking boldly at Lunan Bay
Ruffivan at the Ruffian Barbie
A while ago I was diagnosed with late onset type II diabetes. Currently it’s not a problem but it is does leave me slightly vulnerable to other long term ailments. Luckily enough the NHS are pretty good at providing help to make sure any problems are caught early and dealt with. One of the more serious risks is diabetic retinopathy, a retinal degeneration that eventually can lead to blindness. Early detection is the best way to manage this condition but it’s tricky as it has no early warning signs.
For that reason the NHS offers yearly retinal digital screenings for diabetics. The process is very quick as all it really entails is having a digital photo taken of your retina. You sit in chair with your chin on a rest to keep your head steady as the camera is put into place. You see a green spot which you’re asked to focus on until you the flash goes off and the picture is taken. The room is really dark so the flash is a little bit of a shock and leaves a pretty big afterimage for about 30 seconds after.
Apparently it’s a little more stressful if you’re visiting a hospital in England. Your pupils need to be dilated to get the best shot and that’s why the room is darkened but in England they’re much more likely to rely on eye drops to do this.
At then end of the very quick appointment I asked the guy taking the pictures if I could get copies of them which he very nicely sent to me this morning and here they are
The white blob with where the veins are intersecting is my optic nerve and the dark blob on the other side of the eye is the macula. I’ve no idea what it does but apparently it’s pretty important too
These pictures now go off to a specialist to look at and if there is something not quite right I should hear in the next six weeks or so. The images are stored and when I get my next screening next year they use this years images as baseline to measure any changes in my eyes.
Charlie’s like the Queen in that he seems to have two birthday’s, an English and a Scottish one For his English birthday he had a really nice time with his cousins, uncle, aunty and grandpops in the sunny Southampton. And the weekend just gone he had his Scottish birthday with friends and family from more northerly climes.
I must admit there was some trepidation on my part at the idea of the house being overun with other people’s children and other people as well. But it was great. Everyone had a nice time, a lot of cake, sausage rolls, pims and beer was consumed and to be honest I’m looking forward to the next one. Excellent organisation by The Lovely Suze played a very large part in it being such a success
More pictures to be found here on my Flickr Site
I had to renew my blockcopycoders.com domain so thought it was only good and proper I get some value for my money and make a blog post.
Since last posting there’s been an excellent development in my professional life; the game we’ve been working on since last year is no longer a secret. We’re working on a great title called Crackdown 2 with Microsoft no less. You can read more about that on our company blog right here. Everyone is super chipper about the enormously good hearted reception we have received and it’s great to finally be out of stealth mode. All that needs doing is stupid amount of work to make an excellent game. Piece of piss
Another significant milestone we’ve passed recently is our son’s first birthday. He’s such a happy little chap and had a brilliant time opening the presents sent by his many admirers from around the country He’s growing up quick and getting the hang of a jet set lifestyle. In the last few weeks he’s flown down south twice; once for a little birthday party and also to my cousins wedding. He’s adapting well and weekends away seem to be becoming less disruptive to his routine.
Also recently we had a really excellent long weekend in Blairmore, near the west coast of Scotland. We rented a cottage and used that as a base for trips around Lochs Lommond, Fyne and Long. We were stuck out on a peninsula and it was a bit of a long drive visiting anywhere outside of it so our next excursion will have to be a bit better planned. I’m thinking we could stay somewhere near Inverness and take a few days to visit the ludicrously large amount of castles they have up there. Some pics from Blairmore and its surrounds can be found here.
Back in England this weekend just gone for my cousin Rachel’s wedding to Ryan. I’d been asked to do photos which was a tad daunting to be honest and also pretty tiring. In my head I had the idea of gadding about taking the odd snap but it turns out to be a pretty hard job involving a lot of running around and shouting at people I got a load of shots and I think some are pretty good. I’m about half way through the selecting and editing process them right. Once that’s complete I’ll need to find somewhere to turn the final shots into a nice album.
My mum was great as she lent us her Rav4 to get around while we were down south. Really nice to see her and George again as well and they were delighted to get some time with Charlie too
6 months now in Dundee. To be honest when me and Suzey moved here we both felt that the business opportunity was almost one in a lifetime and couldn’t be ignored but the downside would likely be moving to Dundee. We thought give it around 5 years here to do what we needed to and put up with living in a place we hadn’t chosen. And as it turns out living in Dundee has been absolutely excellent. We’ve settled quickly in a quality of life that suits us much more than the south coast. It’s a lot less crowded up here and the people are very friendly, on top of that you’re 20 minutes max from some of the UK’s most beautiful countryside. Some of the appeal is age related, I don’t think this would have suited us so well in our 20’s but right now we couldn’t be happier. Which is great
Well that was a nice relaxing weekend and to be honest one we really needed The last few weeks have been fun but a tad hectic, we had a very enjoyable visit from the bro-in-law and family, a quick jaunt down to London for the parents 25th Wedding anniversary topped off with visit to my Nan, Aunty and Uncle to parade Charlie around in front of them.
All great but left us both feeling we hadn’t had much weekend relaxing for a while. So we made up for that this weekend with a bit of a lazy Saturday and a nice trip out to Tentsmuir Point on the Sunday.
Here’s a very short film of Charlie encountering the sea:
Managed to get a few pics as well which you can find here
Sorry for the rather course way of starting this blog but to be honest it’s completely warranted.
Last week saw my Sky HD box go pop, it just wouldn’t turn on and refused to respond to the many different of resetting it a quick googling threw up. All of the sky boxes I’ve had have been a bit flakey but things do break so I called Sky and booked in an engineer to come and sort things out. I was told he’d be there between 8am and 11am on Friday, Nice!
Now I have a fairly old plasma panel, it’s a pretty nice bit of kit but because of its age doesn’t have a HDMI connector but does have component ports for HD. The Sky HD box I had has component outputs but I know that the latest versions don’t. I explained this when booking the call and made it clear I’d need an older style box with component outputs to see HD. “That’s fine” they said.
What could possibly go wrong?
First of all the engineer hadn’t turned up by 11. I called Sky and was told he’d be there by 1pm. He wasn’t. So I called again and was told he’d be there by 2pm. I was a bit annoyed by this point even saying “I really hope when he eventually turns up he’ll have the right type of box because if he doesn’t that would the absolute worst thing that could happen”
He arrives at 2:30pm, new box in hand but completely bereft of any apology and the first thing he does is kick over a cup of coffee onto the carpet. Not a great start. “Does that have component outputs?” I ask as he brings in the replacement box. “What’s component? I dinnae nae what that is?”. We look at the box. It doesn’t. He asks me again what component outputs are. We phone Sky.
Now they tell me this (paraphrased) “We don’t make Sky HD boxes with component outputs any more. We do have many of the old boxes that have been refurbished. We do not know where any of these boxes are. If the engineer has an old style box on his van when he turns up then you can have that. We can not guarantee that he will. We are fucking idiots so we didn’t tell you this when you booked the service call. Do you want to book another service call? The engineer might have the sort of box you want?”
Fuck Sky!
I cancelled my account and went and bought a Freesat box. You can read all about Freesat here. The box I wanted didn’t have component outputs either so in a fit of anger I bought another telly too. GNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGHGGGGGGGGGGG
Freesat seems pretty good, it gives us some HD channels and most of the channels we watch and the HUMAX receiver is an alright dual tuner PVR. The software is a little clunky but it works okay and doesn’t cost £40 a month or shorten my life expectancy through the raging fury induced by Sky customer service. The only loss is (chortle) Lost on Sky. I don’t like it much but Suzey does so we’ll be either buying that from iTunes or downloading it like a filthy pirate terrorist.
Again.
Fuck Sky!
Mum popped us this week for a visit. I’m under no illusion why she was here, babies are grandma crack. Great to have her visit and Suzie took a few nice iPhone piccies which you can see if you click through to my wordpress site
All going pretty well up here in the wilds of Scotland. It’s been a busy month dominated by work, in particular visits to and from our publisher. These are always pretty intense experiences when a project is starting and set the tone for the how things will progress. Luckily and despite any trepidation everything went swimmingly. I knew we had an exceptional team here at Stalag Ruffian but it’s been great to see the people we’re working with fully understand the vision of the game we’re making and also top drawer individuals. Aces!
Not much else to report to be honest. Our house in Southampton is still in the process of being dried out prior to the all the walls and ceilings being put back on. Hoping for it to be in a condition fit for renting sometime in April.
Had some fun with itinerant rubbish music project Telescöper recently after coming home one night and having a burning urge to make some music. It was really odd feeling that I’d never experienced before, very similar to when your body is strongly urging you to eat a particular type a food. Or want have a crap. You decide.
It’s called Telestoner and you can here it here -> http://www.myspace.com/telescper
It came out pretty nicely and owes a lot to the to an excellent production pass on it by Gareth
PHEW!
A lot has gone in since last posting here. First and foremost we’re living Scotland! Following the demands of work (as CEO of Ruffian Games) we now live in Monifieth on the outskirts of Dundee. We ended up in the house we thought we’d be beaten to (as detailed in the Full Infuriate post in December). Which is great except it took paying a good few months in advance and a bit of gazumping. Not nice but to be honest I’m glad it all worked out and we’re living where we are.
What hasn’t worked out so well in what happened to our house on Southampton. It was sitting empty about to be rented out when the header tank in the roof burst during the recent cold spell. The end results weren’t nice at all; Charlie’s room bore the brunt of it and there’s considerable water damage throughout the rest of the house. And the double whammy is we didn’t have buildings insurance.
My assumption that it’d auto-renew as part of our insurance was a stupid one. We had contents insurance but that will only help with replacing the carpets. Everything else we’re going to have to pay for ourselves and that’s going to be hard.
It’s put a bit of strain on us to be honest and that’s compounded by having to try and deal with everything by remote control from the other end of the country. Here’s what the ceiling of Charlie’s room currently looks like:
Oof.
Luckily Gareth’s put us in touch with an awesome builder who’s overseeing getting everything back up to spec. Will’s project managing it all and is doing a cracking job. It’s been a pretty rotten month on the personal front to be honest but at least the way through it is starting to come into view.
And last (and certainly not least) we’ve some extremely awesome friends; Michelle has helped far beyond what could reasonably be expected of anyone. She managed to rally a group of Soton friends to come round and help clear the worst of the initial prior to Will coming in. Special thanks to Michelle, Mich, Shelly, Mark, Sparky and Derek. How awesome is that?
So that’s the good and bad. And work. It’s awesome but unfortunately still in the domain of things that I can say very little about. What I can say is all out there on the web. Some info here:
