How The Game Is Played

One door most close for another to open.

Its been a great nine+ years at Sun, but I am afraid I must announce that I am moving on. This is both a sad and a joyous time for me. Sad because I leave behind a great many wonderful colleagues. joyous because I am taking a big and exciting step for my career.

If Sun has one really remarkable asset, in my opinion it is the quality of the talent we have attracted. Not only are some of the best and smartest engineers I have ever worked with here at Sun, but we also have some terrific marketing and management folks. because Sun marketing often takes a lot of flack, I'd like to specifically mention a few specific people. There are equally great people in engineering, such as Seth Proctor, Jim Waldo and the entire Darkstar team. And great managers such as my first manager at Sun Steve Wilson, Vicki Abe and Karl Haberl. But marketing seldom gets mentioned positively around Sun so...

My recent work on Darkstar marketing with Jennifer Kotzen has been wonderful. True collaboration I have learned a great deal from her and, I hope, her from me. A brilliant lady, I hope she continues on handling the public face of Darkstar for a long time to come. Sun ia about to debut a wonderful new Project Darkstar community site. Know that she really drove that effort. I think the community will love the results.

Chris Melissinos. Compadre. Partner. Amazing speaker and communicator with a gift for quickly grasping technology, and the most amazing nose for where popular culture is going that I have ever seen. Also one of the few ,men I've ever met who really fits the italian term "sympatico." Sympatico has no english translation that is quite right but I can try to define it by way of describing Chris. Chris has the most open heart I know of. He genuinely wants to like everyone and find the good in everyone. You CAN get on his shit-list, but only by earning it.

Really, I cannot say enough good about this man. When I would call Chris and get his wife, she'd tell him "your other spouse is on the phone" and mine much the same. The journey inside of Sun that led first to javagaming.org and the technologies it spawned, and now to Project Darkstar has been a long and sometimes arduous one. Without Chris there to bolster me when it all got to much, and I to do the same for him, I don't think either of us would be where we are today. I just bought the sports car Ive always wanted/dreamed of. There are two people I will let drive it other then me. My blood-brother Joe, and Chris who is just as much a blood brother, just in a different way.

So, with that said, let me get on to what I am sure you are really interested in. First and foremost this is by no way shape or form the end of Project Darkstar. Two and a half years ago, my leaving the project probably would have been. But project Darkstar has grown far laregr then just my notion. It has a superb and dedicated technical team behind it in Jim Waldo's group. I have no doubt that they will continue to evolve the technology to levels of sophistication far beyond what I ever could have done alone.

I am also not leaving the team without a visionary. if I thought that was true, i wouldn't be able to leave. But Seth Proctor has really stepped up and into that role. He fully groks the original vision and has made it bigger and better in making it his own. ('Grok' is an old sci fi term, meaning to completely understand on both an intellectual and gut level.) I am confident that there are no finer hands I could leave that in.

Karl Haberl, Sun Labs director, is a fine adoptive parent for my baby. He has fully committed to and believes in Project Darkstar, putting an not insignificant amount of his own corporate capital into its success. he has also led the project places I probably would not have chosen to go, was dubious about, and was ultimately proved totally wrong about.

I was, and am still, skeptical about the latest buzz in "Virtual Worlds". I still remember the LAST time this went around. ("desktop VR" anyone?) But what I cannot deny is how it has grabbed the imagination of corporate America. Project Wonderland, Sun's VR toolkit on top of Project Darkstar and a project Karl made happen, has been nothing but terrific for the external impressions of Project Darkstar. It also has proved extremely valuable in driving internal development. In short, I am very confident that Karl will continue to make the right decisions to move Project Darkstar forward as a major and important technology both inside and outside of Sun.

For myself, an opportunity I have been wanting for a long time opened up and I couldn't afford not to take it. I am moving on to be the Chief Technology Officer (Chief Technical Monkey ) at Rebel Monkey software. The point of creating Project Darkstar for me was always that i wanted to use it to create games. At Rebel Monkey I will have that chance. Rebel Monkey is still in run silent-run deep mode so I can't share everything we are doing, but I can say that we are developing something in the casual/social space and that Project Darkstar is an important technology to us. In that regard, I promise I will stay a very active member of the Project Darkstar community, just as a user rather then a developer.

If I have one thing to conclude on, its this: I don't want anyone to think my leaving has anything to do with my belief either in Sun or the future of Project Darkstar. I have quite a lot of Sun stock I accumulated in my 9+ years and I am holding on to all of it because I firmly believe that "the Sun also rises." Sun continues to be a great collection of fantastic talent and Jonnathan is positioning Sun to be a major player in a future that runs largely on open source software. I am proud to be a Sun alumn and don't rule out my returning some day.

Similarly I think project Darkstar is poised on the edge of massive success. The last 2 years have been Jim and his crew laying the groundwork and figuring out the lay of the land. What will come out of the group in the next year I think is going to turn the online game development world on its ear. I am betting my and Rebel Monkey's future in part on Jim's team's work because I am that confident in their drive and capabilities.

if there is one thing I have learned in my Project Darkstar experience, is that it truly does take a village to raise a child. Sun labs is that village and I have no doubt that I am leaving my baby in hands better then if I had continued on with it all by myself.

Leaving Sun means I also will lose the ability to add to this blog, though Sun will be nice enough to keep the existing posts up. For my future blog entries I have created a new blog on blogspot. I encourage you all to join me there:

http://cto-rebelmonkey.blogspot.com

Posted at 11:00AM Jul 21, 2008 by gameguy in General  |  Comments[1]