University of the Philippines High School

5/29/2003

Dear UP High Cebu Batch of ’92,

I am forever grateful for all things that I learned in my high school years. I learned a lot and I believe that one of the best lessons I learned while at UP is to not be afraid to think out loud. I apply that lesson everyday and so far this is what I have been part of these past ten years. Thank you all for inspiring me.

For my college education, I pursued a degree in Computer Science at the University of Washington in Seattle. This is where I learned what I only had a glimpse of at Mr. Castillo’s computer classes over the weekends during my senior year in High School. This is also where I learned that I liked to make video games! As if by fate, the department offered the very first Capstone Software Engineering course, which focused on Game Development on my last quarter as a college student. It does not happen very often that things make any sense. For me, working on that ten-week game project with a team of my peers was like being in heaven. No one expected any team will make it but life is full of surprises. So every year after that experience, I try go back to school every year to help inspire the next games class. Here is a record of that aspect of my life:

http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/481/

After college, I got myself involved with the games industry in Seattle. It’s amazing to work on something that involves people from so many different fields: game design, art, programming, music, etc… Here are the projects that I have been part of and the respective companies that I worked for.

Zombie Studios

http://www.zombie.com

Junior Programmer

SpecOps and SpecOps 2

Craveyard Entertainment

Software Engineer

Shadow Madness for PlayStation

Lithtech Inc, now called Touchdown Entertainment

http://www.touchdownentertainment.com/

Senior Software Engineer

Lithtech Game Development System used by

NOLF, NOLF 2, The Matrix MMP, etc…

The Whole Experience

http://www.wxp3d.com/

Game Designer

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring for Xbox

WildTangent, Inc.

http://www.wildtangent.com

Senior Software Engineer

WebDriver Platform and Xbox Music Mixer

Nightlight Studios

http://www.nightlightstudios.com

Design Lead

As you all can tell, I moved around a lot. The game industry is very young compared even to the computer industry itself and that has a level of instability not usually associated with a lot of careers. But a job is such a big part of life that I have chosen to work in a field that I do love. This path has led me to some really cool experiences, most recently, Snoop Dog saw the demo of the Xbox Music Mixer and he loved it! Bill Gates also saw the five-week demo of the same product last year. Right now, I’m working with the creator of Magic: The Gathering trading cards as well as a very famous fantasy artist named Brom. This very same path also led me to question whether I am affecting society in a positive way and that made me work for GreaterGood.com. While I was there, I was able to help them acquire http://www.thehungersite.com, which in turn inspired the following websites:

http://www.thebreastcancersite.com,

http://www.thechildhealthsite.com,

http://www.therainforestsite.com and

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com.

But that stint was short. My calling was for video games and I’m in the process of developing games that will potentially have some form social relevance. That is my dream and I like to dream out loud. A snapshot of my other dreams can be found at http://www.bytewave.net.

Personally, I have fallen in love, drowned by it, hurt by it and survived. That’s all I have to say about love for now…

Now, I have my own place in downtown Seattle, WA. Feel free to let me know if you want to visit. If I’m still here, you are all welcome to visit. Most importantly, my family is doing great. I have a brother that’s finishing his Industrial Design degree from the University of Washington also. One of my sisters just graduated with a Masters Degree in Genetic Counseling and my other sister is about to start going to college at the University of Washington also. My parents are very happy how we all turned out.

I still play my guitar and write my thoughts once in a while and hopefully you all won’t mind if I send them for you all to read. Just remember, we are all so lucky to be alive. We are so lucky.

Take care,

-Joseph | [email protected]

ps. You guys should try teaching, after ten-weeks of teaching this class,

http://www.bytewave.net/wiki/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/GraphicsEngineClass

it made me really appreciate our teachers.

pps. Ok, ok, here are some pictures: