ruminations on a strange two year period
I left Riot officially yesterday, the day of my two year anniversary. I was let go.
Suffice it to say I feel like I’ve walked out of a dark room and am standing, blinking, at the sunlight of the outside world.
Riot was basically my life for the past two years. I spent ten hours a day at work and ate every single meal there. Weekends, if I wasn’t working, I would sleep until two, lay on the couch exhausted, maybe see a movie, and get ready to head back again. Most of the outside media I consumed was Riot products – Riot games, Riot videos, Riot esports, Riot twitch streams.
I did some of the best work of my life at the company. I was the lead engineer on the reworked champion Akali, and wrote a physics engine specifically for her smoke shroud to behave realistically. I contributed pretty big features to League of Legends, which was (pre-Fortnite) probably the most popular single video game in history.
It’s the only thing I ever wanted to do, since I was about 13 years old. It’s why I went to college, it’s why I even gave a shit about programming in the first place. I played Halo 2, saw the credits and thought “fuck, I want to be one of those people.” And for a while, improbably, unbelievably, I actually got the chance to be. That’s pretty fucking incredible. Most people talk about how old they were when they gave up on their dreams, not how they actually got to do them.
But I was let go yesterday, and I feel completely lost and adrift right now. I’m sure I’ll come back to earth soon, but I truly don’t know what to do with my life at this moment. I mean, sorry to be cliche and all but, what do you do when you work your ass off to get your dream job and then it’s not actually that great, and then you lose it? Where do you go from there?
I want to write my thoughts about the company and the past two years here.
ellievsbear
2087
prguitarman
theartofmadeline
tangentwithtanner
gracieabrams
origamiaround
