Winds of change

There has been lots of changes in my life within the last six months, and this blog has received very little attention from me. However, I try to put together what has been happened since my last update.

First of all, I started Game Specialist training program at Tampere University in the end of January. Total of 16 IT professionals were selected, and I was luckily one of them. The main target of the program was to grow participants' skills and knowledge in game design and development, gamification, social media, game industry ecosystem, business fundamentals. Also, hands-on game development projects were major part of the training. 

Training was proceeding at full speed in the beginning of March, when I surprisingly got a job offer from large Finnish telecommunications company: The customer of my previous employer was asking if I was interested to join their team and continue working with the tasks I had "always" been doing. So I was in the point where I had to choose between really interesting (but poorly paid) game industry, and familiar and safe semiconductor industry (with clearly better pay). How awkward situation!

After all, the choice was not so difficult, because the job offer was quite good and matching to my existing core competence. Also, I had to think about the economic side: I have wife and 5 kids to take care of, and someone has to pay the bills. So, after few painful minutes I threw my game career dreams to dustbin, and decided to return back to semiconductor industry. 

Working as an faceless engineer in large multi-national company makes me sometimes to feel that I am gradually fading to gray. But no worries: I like my job and have great co-workers. And most important of all, I have not forgotten game industry totally. I am still trying to spend few hours a week to game development activities as a hobby. And who knows what the future holds? Maybe I will enter game industry in the future, when you least expect that... :)

The Dream is Still Alive!

-Jussi

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