Block Copy Coders

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