Crying at Work

Indeed, these are emotional times; I find myself Crying CONSTANTLY while working these days! I just can't help it!!! After all... I do work for Crytek now. :-) And in fact, these ARE emotional times, but in a good way. I am very happy with my new job, my new associates, my new company, my new products... it's all good. Crytek is the European developer behind the successful and stunningly beautiful game franchises Far Cry and Crysis. They are headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany and have studios in Budapest, Kiev, and Seoul. They have approximately 300 employees from close to 30 countries, and ironically, the primary language in their Frankfurt headquarters is English.

Their award-winning CryENGINE game engine is, in my opinion as well as that of most developers I've spoken to, the best game development technology in the industry. To date Crytek has not had a real aggressive engine licensing business; however, in spite of that they have been fairly prominent in that space. We are becoming quite aggressive in the business, though, for reasons that I cannot yet announce because an official announcement will be made just before the Game Developers Conference in March.

I am joining the company as Director of Asia Pacific Licensing, and will be responsible for the engine licensing business in North America and Asia. I will be working closely with their Seoul studio, and I will be establishing operations for them in Shanghai, Tokyo, and in North America. I am crazily putting together business plans for each region and preparing to hire more than a dozen staff members in three countries for my team. All the sort of stuff I just love! The tougher part of the gig will be all of my travel. Last year I spent a total of more than four months overseas during six different trips (plus domestic travel); this year looks to be no different

I had some memorable experiences as General Manager of Asia Operations for Emergent Game Technologies and they had some compelling products. Since parting ways with them in October, I've really been enjoying spending so much time with my family; on my fifth day of this current business trip to Frankfurt, I'm feeling quite homesick already! But to have a job in today's tough environment is a blessing; to have such an awesome job is just amazing! :-)

Michelle insists that I have more e-mail addresses than anyone she knows, but you can now also contact me at jgoodale@crytek.com or jgoodale@crytek.de.