Here we go.
On August 17th, 2017, I disappeared. I hit the road for Shalimar, Florida. I was offered a rare spot in an internship program designed to bring younger faces and critical talent into the US government civilian workforce. It was simultaneously the greatest and the worst thing that had ever happened to me. The job has been great, all things considered. I've been satisfied enough with it for a long time. It was what I needed to do. I had a future to create, not just for myself but for the people that I loved the most. I couldn't afford to be unstable, and this job offered a safe shelter from the storm of poverty while allowing me to do what I do best. So I disappeared. I went as far south as one can go without face-planting into the Gulf of Mexico and spent three quiet years keeping my nose to the grindstone. A step forward for my career, but a far cry from the promise of all my prior efforts. Good work, decent pay, and an unspoken sense of profound disappointment.
To explain that a little more, let's take things back a few steps. I graduated in the Spring of 2016 with a degree in Digital Simulation and Gaming Engineering Technologies from Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio. In fewer words, I had a degree in Computer Science. And in more accurate words, I had a degree in video games. The art, the physics, the 3D mathematics, some of the business and the professional engagement, all of that.
You could specialize in either the technology or the art side of the gaming-focused program offered at Shawnee State. When I was faced with that life-defining matter of figuring out my life after high school, I found out about Shawnee and I picked the tech side of the degree. At first, it was for almost no reason other than it would be hard. Anyone who knew me before then (or heck, anyone who knows me now) wouldn't be surprised.
I was that kid in high school who would do things, like practically chug hot sauce or actually attempt the notoriously stupid "cinnamon challenge", because the dopamine rush of getting to the other side of a painful experience was what I lived for. It took me a long time to warm up to other people, but no time at all to embrace moderate insanity. I'd carry obscenely heavy things on my back and run circuits through creeks and forests like some wanna-be Jedi. I tried to teach myself parkour, which went about as well as you'd expect. I even took on a season of wrestling as a high school senior, with the bare minimum of prior training or preparation. My teeth are still messed up from that, but at least I got a cool Letterman jacket out of the deal.
In keeping with this pattern, during my junior and senior high school years, I took on a class in Web Programming and Design and dove into the deep-end of robotics programming as a part of the course. Yes, those two things are pretty much unrelated. And no, I didn't care. They had us working with PBASIC boards, simple motors, and a daunting directive: create an autonomous sumo-wrestling robot on four wheels to compete in the National Robotics Challenge hosted in Marion, Ohio.
I helped create a robotic abomination to compete in the Sumo Wrestling competition at the NRC. It was a great experience, in spite of the astonishing failure that was the result of myself and my teammate, Sean, misunderstanding the size limitations of the mechanical combatants. We believed that we had roughly half of what were the actual size limits for robotic designs. As a result, our little robot had to try and take on machines double its size, and only won a single match. That one win came as a result of our machine's front axle breaking. Our tiny fighter stuck into the ground, resulting in our opponent technically doing worse than we did as their machine tried everything in its power to move us.
The legendary efforts of what Sean and I dubbed the "Failbot" gave me an appetite for technical challenge. It was a great feeling. All of the thrill from my previous reckless behavior with none of the almost-dying. So I went all-in for a Computer Science degree at Shawnee State... and soon discovered a lifelong love for technical and creative endeavors in the wild world of video games.
Video games have gone from a niche, some might say "childish" hobby to a cornerstone of our national entertainment culture over the course of my lifetime. One could easily argue that they're the biggest thing in show-biz today. Especially when it comes to the literal oceans of money that they rake in, which is both a blessing and a curse. Games themselves, the enjoyment of them, the discussions around them, fan culture, the let's plays and Twitch streams--what you can see from the outside is only the tip of the iceberg. But those who pay attention to the space know that there's much more to it. The dirty laundry bin of the games industry is there to be seen by those who aren't trying to ignore it. I feel obliged to say it: thank God for you, Jim Sterling.
Me at GDC, posing next to a list of scheduled talks. I remember being almost too hyped about the Inverse Kinematics presentation -- I was big into animation programming at the time.
So imagine me, a young college student, getting a look at this for the first time. Imagine me looking like an overwhelmed cat while I tried to make sense of the true nature of the business of making my favorite digital entertainment products. Imagine me, learning about struggles regarding diversity, sexual harassment, worker-management relations, abuse, and before you can even touch any of that, the mind-boggling paradox of entry expectations for students coming out of college. You might be able to start off in quality assurance, but even breaking into that felt impossible at times. All the while, I needed to keep up with college courses and take care of myself. It was a lot.
And I loved it-- not all of that negativity regarding the state of the industry, no, but the challenge that finding my way in that space offered. It was an opportunity to sail the rough seas and to think that I could be a part of the change that the industry so desperately needed, to work with and amplify the voices of creative people who may not have been heard otherwise. It was a challenge. It was an adventure. It was a chance to be something different, and each of the memories that I gathered along the way could be the beginning of awe-inspiring stories by themselves.
The years of going to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, often as an organization volunteer or a Conference Associate. The hostels I stayed in, all the game jams I took part in as a kid just trying to learn the tools of his craft. The meet-and-greets, the developer parties, the business cards, the conversations, the inspiration. Late nights, pizza boxes stacked ceiling-high, passionate arguments about technical challenges and game design ideas, that one time I brought down an entire section of my campus' internet service (and a Minecraft server) trying to learn network programming.
All of the amazing people, fellow students and dreamers whose talent and effort gave me not only my career, but the most exhilarating and joyful years of my life. It was amazing, all of it, from the greatest triumphs to the nights spent huddled up in the Advanced Technology Center with my classmates just trying to pass a class. I wouldn't trade my years in college for anything in the world. Looking back at all of it now, where my life ended up just feels... wrong.
I was one of the luckiest people alive in my field, coming out of college in 2016. I made it through my whole program with my friends and had a job at a place called Yost Labs making things in Unity. I had the opportunity to write game demo software for some cool new piece of virtual reality technology called the PrioVR suit. All of it was being produced right smack-dab in my college town. After the business hit a rough patch, there was an opening for a young game developer to come in and finish what it took a team of five developers to start. It wasn't always the best of times for me. Startups that aim high like that can have their extreme ups and downs. We made it happen in the end, though, and I couldn't have asked for a greater learning experience.
In real life, I was wearing a prototype PrioVR suit. In Virtual Reality, I was kicking zombie butt.
But, of course, the position I had was an at-will contract gig. They didn't keep me on for a second year when the chips were down, not after I'd already done what I was brought on to do. I was proud of what I got to accomplish there, but I knew that I was a luxury for them. I didn't feel like holding on there anyway, as I'd put in my work to help them with their product release and didn't want to be stuck in my college town.
But for a while, I was stuck there nonetheless. I put myself out there as a freelancer, picked up a few small projects via UpWork developing small bits and pieces of an unnamed independent game in Unreal Engine 4 for someone known to myself and one other developer as "Mother Goose". He had a real name, of course, but I won't spill that here. Not sure if that project ever really went anywhere. It was more or less someone's never-ending dream game, and the overall design was somewhat unclear to me. But Goose treated us well and paid us well when there were things to be done. I couldn't complain, but I needed something a bit more steady.
After that, I was picked up by a company called Zebu Compliance Solutions in for a few months, where I had the opportunity to write Python scripts and be a part of an ambitious project to write better difference-checking code for gigantic files than any available on the market. I worked on that project with one other new developer and a senior-level mentor. By the end of my time there, I feel that we had achieved our goals. But that was still in Portsmouth, and it seemed like I was going nowhere fast.
At that point, I was at a crossroads. I was in a relationship. I was living my own life, paying bills, all of that adulting nonsense. And I was scared. I didn't want to be stuck in my college town anymore, so I knew that I would soon be leaving my job at Zebu. There was a path to my left and a path to my right. To the left: go west. Get myself out somewhere near Silicon Valley, network furiously, promote myself, work some exhausting job for a bit and maybe have a bed if I was lucky. Live the hard life for the love of all things video games. Probably end up being exploited more than once for my passion. More than likely, drive my romance into the ground. She wasn't going to follow me out there, or anywhere outside of southern Ohio for that matter. She loved her home, and I couldn't fault her for that.
To the right: pick up practical employment that was immediately available to me. Normal jobs, stable ones. Practicality. If I were only living for myself, I'd have gone left. But I wasn't. I wanted to get married, and I wanted the people who loved me, family and friends, to not suffer for my own disastrous decision-making. I couldn't be that high school kid anymore. If I took idiotic risks at that point, it wouldn't only be at my own expense. I received an offer to work with the United States Air Force as a Computer Scientist. Government work. Mobility and stability, all in one package. It was a saving grace out of freakin' nowhere. So I took the job. I went right.
On August 17th, 2017, I disappeared. I hit the road for Shalimar. I went south when many of my old friends scattered to other directions. Some of them went down that leftward path. Some of them went west. A few of them made it out there. They earned it.
I, meanwhile, set forth rightward to seek glorious stability! Only to let go of my ill-fated romantic relationship after a little more than a year on the job. Those who know the feelings that I've been sharing here probably saw that coming like oncoming train lights in the night. There's only so much of who one is that one can give up before love just falls apart. No one can fully enjoy romance and passion for others if they cannot first love themselves. You have to know what you need, and be honest with yourself. Had to learn that the hard way.
I kept going, in spite of this. I held on to a government job with the Department of Defense during some of the strangest and most tumultuous years in the Department's entire history. I once joked with a coworker that while what I do isn't my dream job, at least the U.S. Government isn't going out of business!
Then the pandemic happened. The capital riots happened. I watched the panic and the confusion from both sides of the curtain that divides government and civilian life for what felt like a lifetime. I think I'll avoid making that joke again. Ever.
This is (vaguely) the kind of thing I'd see over my office every day for three years.
I've been working for the Air Force for three years as of the time of this writing. First as a Computer Scientist, then as an IT Specialist. It would be better all around for me to not talk about what I do, but it has been a great experience in professional software development. With the Air Force, I took a product from concept to alpha and beta testing, all the way through to release. On top of that, I've still made the time to keep myself involved in the game developer space with no small amount of help from my friends.
I've been picking up new skills, too, such as my Unity OpenXR work during the 2021 Global Game Jam and in the indie project that I'm currently involved in, Magnetops. I'm picking up things like Blender and Unity's ShaderGraph, art-side things that I had shied away from for a long time. I can't say that I'm entirely displeased. This just isn't where I imagined that I would end up back when I used to go to GDC. Back when I would bask in the inspiring glow of hopeful people who loved video games. It's not exactly why I put in all that time and effort before I had a degree to my name. It's not all doom and gloom, I'm just tired of running from the big dreams. Tired of playing it safe. I'm tired of feeling lost, and it's clear to me now that I've been going in the wrong direction for a long time.
So I'm taking the long road home. If not literally back to Ohio, then at least back to my goals, dreams, and ambitions. I'm going to try my hand at this whole game industry thing again. Because if I never try, I'm just going to spend my whole life wondering what might have been.
So this one goes out to the old friends who inspired me so many years ago, whether or not we're still in touch. This one goes out to everyone who has been there for me these past few years, who kept me going and brought me back to myself. This one goes out to the crazy dreams that I left behind, the ones that I'm chasing once again. This one goes out to that thrill-seeking kid that I used to be.
This one goes out to me.
I'm not sure if I was doing a lazy dab, or if I was throwing a chair out of my VR play space.
My name is Donald Keith Loughry II. Friends call me Don in person, and Dolan on the internet. Welcome to my portfolio website! The other posts will be a significantly more lighthearted than this, I promise. Just wanted to take a moment to be real with you. We only get one chance to make a first impression, so I wanted to go all-out. Whatever brought you here, thank you so much for reading all of this. I hope that you're doing alright out there. Here's to a brighter future where we can all live up to our values, to our happiest lifestyles, and to our potential. Let's get to work.
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