Welp, if you didn't already hear the news (which is about a month old by now) Gaia has let a couple people go, along with a few others who decided to leave on their own. Gaia wasn't doing so hot since all the social gaming companies were also starting getting into the virtual goods market. Probably why you're seeing more ads on the site, I suppose no company is immune to competition smile
In any event, I've taken up residence in a new city and found a new job creating games. A lot of things recently changed for me so these new surroundings should be fun and terrifying at the same time :p One thing I do know, I will miss Gaia. I appreciate everything the company has done for me along with all the great experience I was able to acquire during my employment. I think I was able to go from the title of Magician's Assistant to Legendary Dark Mage in about 3 years ;p
I'm keeping this brief, but I hope things do in fact turn out well for Gaia. I know l0cke, CP, and Lanzer have some great ideas about moving forward and I hope to see their vision come to life online smile Later everyone heart heart heart
And some highlights of my career at Gaia:
+ Being terrified during my first week.
+ Having Eazzy help me set up my first sponsorship and quest smile
+ Creating the Contest framework
+ Asking everyone questions about everything :p
+ IRC #dev and #gaia chatrooms... so many inappropriate quotes from me ahahhaha.
+ Bee Movie flag (must have used this for 3 different campaigns) :p
+ Sponsorships exploding when first released.
+ Events exploding when first release :p
+ Sending out emails from other people's machines while they left their computers unlocked :p
+ Copy audits
+ Korean Karaoke Krew
+ The marketing wheel
+ The box monster!!!
+ Ikea couches!!!
+ Paul Blart: Mallcop sponsorship. Ling even did some fan art for this one. I believe it's Paul Blart in an f-14 tomcat shooting up the place.
+ Late nights working with Fleep on Events smile neutral sad
+ Lunch with the crew and just chatting
+ Mario Kart!!!
+ Chessing with the writers.
+ Random chats with people in the office smile
+ Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball
+ I'd say transitioning from working on sponsorships to site events was exciting, painful, and extremely stressful. However, it helped me develop some essential skills that I can build upon later in my career.
+ Ping pong & partying smile
+ Working late nights and bumping the stereo.
+ And who could forget the Gaian's gone Mild ahahahah, such a great team you guys were the best smile
+ I was also fortunate enough to work on projects where I needed to interact with just about every person in the office.
+ Realizing you can solve any problem by breaking it down into very small manageable problems smile
These all sound like fun, but there were also bad times. I'm not going to mention them in this post, but note that working at Gaia is a job where you work. It's not always fun, it's a job. Some days your job is awesome and you love it. Other days it's painful and you want to just stay in bed and hope everything works itself out, but we all that never works in our favor. So, we get out of our comfortable bed, head over to work, and do our job to the best of our ability regardless of whether or not we're have a good/bad day. Why? Because hell, we actually enjoy the challenge at times.
--Nick
ramoneguru Community Member 
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