Overture

It all started in February 2009. The event that I was expecting the whole winter finally happened.

I was laid off from EA Canada. For those who don't know - EA is Electronic Arts (с) - the biggest video games producer in the world.

Now I'm going to disappoint you. I'm not willing to tell you why I was kicked out. And I'm not willing to condemn EA. Or amaze the world with an "unpleasant truth" about them.

Basically there is nothing bad I can tell about the company. It is a great company to work for. I liked it there. Obviously I was disappointed by being resigned. Was it my fault? Am I not good enough? Was it just a bad luck? I don't know. I am not thinking about it too much. I believe, these thoughts are counterproductive. I was the weakest link. Bye-bye.

As you might expect, I got a pretty good severance package. They paid me for five months. In addition my wife Inna started earning much more than she did before. She owns a small but growing accounting company. Doesn't matter - this blog is not about it.

The essential thing was - I found myself free, well-off, and available for any new endeavors. And I asked myself - what do I want?

The first thing I wanted was a vacation. So I spent about a month idling. That was really good.

Then I started thinking - what is next? New job? My greediness told me - go and get a new one. But my other part rebelled. I thought it was a great chance to get out of this hamster wheel called "permanent job", so I decided to start my own project.

I had 3 ideas.
1. To make a game for iPhone called Amoeba. Players control amoeba by leaning the iPhone and capturing different objects. This is pretty similar to Katamari, but I thought amoeba is more fun than a simple ball - it's sticky, green and ugly. It can eat things with a champing sound.

I abandoned the idea because it's too small and simple. I feel that iPhone market is already taken. There are too many people developing and selling. No more wild money for small programs.

2. Another idea was a bigger game. A very simplified version of World of Warcraft. Teams of real people work together to achieve some missions. The fun part is that all group members are crazy. Seriously mentally sick. How? Very simple. The game shows them fake group members, fake monsters, displays fake chat messages. Sometimes puts them to wrong chats. I mean most of the group members, monsters and messages are real. But some of them are fake.

That makes everybody to behave slightly inadequately. The real challenge for players is to find out what is real and what is not. The higher is your level the more fake things you see.

I was never serious about this idea. I knew I couldn't make it. I'm not an artist. My skills as an animator are pretty weak. And even the programmer's work is too big for one person. But I liked the idea. This is the game I would want to play.

3. And the final idea was to keep doing what I was doing in EA. I liked the project very much. I didn't like my role in the team. I didn't like the way I was treated in the team. But the project itself was fun.

We did an animation engine called ANT. (It stands for Animation Tool). It was... Actually it is an internal EA tool for animators. EA is not selling or distributing it. I'll skip explaining details here. I'll describe Puppeteer in my future posts. It's pretty similar. So you'll get a good feeling of what it is in the nearest future.

Again the concern is: this project is too big for one person. Well.. This is free and open source pluginable software. I'm hoping to get help from the community.

But before that I have to create the core architecture. This is what I am doing right now.

In my next posts I will describe what the animation engine is, and the core architecture of Puppeteer.