Eric Pope · @MrPope
18th Dec 2015 from TwitLonger
BIG LIFE NEWS: this is my last day at Harmonix.
(copied from facebook so dear god don't read this again if you already have!)
I'm gonna talk at you for a second about this place and what it's meant to me. This is long but I'm not sorry.
In 2007 I was super unhappy and bored with my corporate job in the Financial industry and kept hearing about this crazy rock and roll game developer in Cambridge who had made a crazy game called Guitar Hero. (My friend Mike Fortier Jr brought GH1 to my apartment shortly after it came out and was like "YOU NEED TO SEE THIS THING." like it was some awesome secret game.) I remember seeing a picture of the leather-clad, dreadlocked Keith Smith in some Boston newspaper and was like I WANT TO BE THERE.
Growing up, I'd dreamed of working in video games some day, but when I tried being a programmer in college I failed miserably. So I sort of gave up on that and joined the Workforce of Norms after college. I can't recommend it.
But then I met Sean Baptiste at a party. He worked at Harmonix and I knew he worked at Harmonix and so I spent the party lurking around him like a creep. And also he's the world's nicest (and funniest) guy and offered to show my resume around the office. I eventually got called in for an interview in the QA department. My interview was actually the same week RB1 came out. So I bought it the day before my interview and spent the entire night (i didn't sleep) playing all the way through it to prepare. The first Assassin's Creed had also just come out and tbh I wanted to keep playing through that but hey life is hard. There were questions about how I would write a test plan for a new sticky grenade in Halo. I kept being like "is this real life??"
I apparently did well enough in the interview but in fashion typical to Harmonix at the time, I wasn't actually hired for another few months, but was told they wanted me there. I emailed every single week for updates. I can't believe they didn't tell me to F Off.
What a nightmare person.
So they hired me, and my first day people were logging bugs with Rickrolls (remember that old goof, god I feel old) embedded in gameplay videos. It was amazing. I new instantly I'd not only found a good job, but it felt like home. Or rather it felt like college, but only the good parts of college. People were young, massively creative, there were tons of cool musicians I looked up to (INCLUDING Jason Kendall and Benjamin Carr WHO I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE ARE MY FRIENDS?) and everyone hung out after hours watching movies, drinking, playing music, drinking, playing games, drinking. I told you it was like college.
Work wasn't work, it was a dream. Music and video games. The Beatles: Rock Band in particular was a dream, and I got to spend two days in Studio 2 of Abbey Road Studios doing press stuff, playing the game which had studio banter in its loading screens. Hearing studio banter between John, Paul, Ringo and George, in the room where it was recorded, was spooky and will always stick with me.
At this point I had made my way to the Community Team, which Sean was running. Here I spent tons of time on the road and established lifelong, tight friendships with Sean, John Drake, Aaron Trites, Alex Navarro, Annette Gonzalez, Jessa Brezinski , Christine Kayser , Alli Thresher, Eric Chon, Kat Bondi, Stephanie Myers. We spent so much damn time together, we had to either become a family or literally murder each other to death. Once you've survived a Gamescom together, you have seen SOME SHIT that binds you forever. I love each of these people and would take a bullet for them.
Working in Community Management was never something I envisioned as a career beforehand. But it's really something special if you take to it, and if you're as lucky as we were to have such an awesome community of people. Only a small portion of them are total buttheads which on the INTERNET OF THINGS is rare as hell.
This is stupid long. I gotta wrap it up. Ok so like any successful game studio we saw highs and lows. Worked for one of the biggest corporations in the world, then went completely indie. Started making Dance Games? And they were awesome? What? I got to write the story on one of those games, which is another highlight of my time here. It was not a big deal really, but it was to me, and highlights how special Harmonix is, and how they let people try new things. Throughout all my time here, this has served as an amazing place and because of its people. There are literally hundreds of other people I could tag on this post that I feel are my extended family. That includes the people outside of the company I've been lucky enough to meet over the years from across our industry.
So it's with no shortage of bittersweet pangs in my heart that I leave. But I've been offered a position at a place that's exciting for me professionally. And it's in a new city, in a new country, with a new language to learn. I'm joining Ubisoft and moving to Montreal, Quebec CANADA. It feels like an actual honest-to-goodness adventure. One that I can take with Hannah Jones Pope and Des at my side. The future is all just so exciting. Also scary, I'm not going to pretend it's not. But sometimes you need to do scary things to really grow.
I remain a huge fan of Harmonix, and I can't wait for folks in the world to see and experience some of the things these people have been working on. From the very beginning Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy created a beautiful, creative, loving place that I've been so proud to be a part of these last almost-8 years. Thanks for everything, guys.