My first job out of film school was for a Seattle-based startup called Escape Factory. I was hired to be their "story guy" with the hope that I could also be trained up as a game designer. Thanks to a lifetime of playing games since the days of Atari and Coleco, the game design stuff game naturally. Within six months, they made me Lead Designer.

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At first, the studio was being incubated by Valve as we worked on a two-player cooperative platformer in the vein of Mario 64 (a favorite of Gabe's). After that, we set out on our own, pitching our game to various publishers. None were willing to take a chance on a largely unproven studio with new IP, but a few were open to us developing a game based on their own IPs. In the end, we signed a deal with Sierra to create a reboot of their Space Quest franchsie for consoles. The document below is the preliminary game design document I wrote to help secure the deal.

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Unfortunately, the game was ultimately cancelled as part of Sierra's restructuring and eventual demise.