Leaving Microsoft to join DigiPen

I left Microsoft at the end of June, and started at DigiPen one month later. My last day at Microsoft was the same as Bill Gates' last day. Here is the goodbye message I sent, with updated email addresses at the end.

From: Rachel Rutherford [mailto:rachelr@microsoft.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 1:20 PM
To: Rachel Rutherford
Subject: Moving on

Hi all –

I am leaving Microsoft to join DigiPen Institute of Technology as a full-time professor in their Game Design & Production department. This Friday is my last day. Stop by Millennium E cafeteria this Friday at 4:00 for an informal send-off for me, Hakim, Shun, and Bill (couldn’t resist that last one). BYOWhatever. Also, please send me your contact information at: realrachel@aol.com.

This is my third time leaving Microsoft. I left once to direct theatre for four years. Once to direct theatre in Europe for a year. While living at the Odin theatre in Denmark, I went into town every Saturday to play games at the internet café. I was such a regular that one night when the café was locked, and dark, and full of gamers (for reasons I never knew, not speaking Danish), they wordlessly unlocked the door and waved me in to the cave.

This time I am leaving to join DigiPen, which is more like a small theatre company than one might think. I have taught there for over a year, and the caliber of their game developers must be experienced to be believed. DigiPen is the top game college in the world, and largely unaware of it. Dingy, hot, small, unprepossessing, crammed into half of a Nintendo warehouse, full of computers, haggard luminous programmers, glorious emergent games, a monastic single-mindedness, and a bone-deep fatigue. Over 6,000 apply, 200 get in, 60 graduate. It is a conservatory training, a special forces one – elite, grueling, punishing, virtuosic, and culminating in a graduate-level math/physics/computer science education with four year-long, 3-to-5-devs/team, completed games.

I believe that inside this training, inside game development itself, a new kind of artist is being born; a new kind of art. I am the kind of pan-craft artist/scientist/player I am educating and creating.

Games demand so much. Artistry – visuals, music, space, interaction. Thought – physics, math, code. Abstraction – the ability to build cathedral-engines of code. Engineering – the ability to build functional structures which ship on time. Goodness – spirit, feelings, delight, play. Teams – presence, integrity, conflict, passion, phase-shifts. Games – the angels-on-the-head-of-the-pin asymptote of fun and play, of laughter, of desire. “Games are software theatre,” says Benjamin Ellinger. “An architect looks at a system and thinks, “What can we remove?” says Chris Peters. “A team is not enough; you need a conscious team, one with the tools to bootstrap itself, which knows how to increase the rate of its own iteration and joy,” says Rachel Rutherford. “Your brain will unfold it all, just give it time to do its work,” says Jason Mai. “Videogame development is the most dense and diverse creation medium currently available and that's why I do it,” says Sean Gubelman.

If your idea is not recursive, you are not working at the level of maximum efficiency.

Back to how I joined Microsoft. I had worked at Xerox PARC, and at Apple; had played on a men’s ice hockey team for 8 years, had my own game company, and co-designed a high-end realtime video-editing system. In March 1994 we sold our house in the cinnamon sun-grass of California, and moved home to the rain. I had offers from Microsoft Research, Kids ITV, and Kids. I chose Kids, got given kids adventure games, and have been in games ever since.

I have worked on Kids Adventure Games prototypes, Goosebumps: HorrorLand, Goosebumps: Say Cheese And Die, Dreamworks Interactive, Mustang, Reach for the Stars II, NBA Inside Drive 2003, NHL Rivals 2004, Mythbots, You Know It! Trivia, Solitaire In Motion, More Solitaire, Hop It!, Firefly, and Fable 2 Pub Games. I am grateful to have known the people of Kids, Microsoft Australia/Games, Sports Games, Action, Arcade & Strategy Games, Casual Games, Carbonated Games, and all the artists – mmm, the artists – developers, testers, program managers, user researchers, managers, marketers, financiers, and hardworking good-hearted smart people of Microsoft.

I would like to thank Microsoft veterans and alumni Jim McCarthy and Michele McCarthy, for having led the turn-around of the Visual C++ group, which development environment makes these games possible; for founding McCarthy Technologies, the 10-year team lab in which the Core Protocols system for high-performant teams evolved; for training me to be an Associate Core Director of that system; for enabling me to give two Software Development Bootcamps at Microsoft, Team Zero and Quality Without A Name; and for showing what it means to walk the path of integrity and limitless thinking.

See you tomorrow in MillE caf at 4:00. Bring me flowers. Bring really loud music. If you can’t make it, send me a link to your favorite music and if possible, a YouTube video of it.

rachel

Rachel Rutherford
realrachel@gmail.com
rachelr@digipen.edu