I became interested in developing games probably around the time I first played Ultima IV and Bard''s Tale II at an early age. I grew up on a farm in rural northern Ontario. My brother, who was in 4H, traded his cow for a Commodore 64. Shortly after, I got interested in pencil and paper RPGs. I became the DM for my gaming group, and also began absorbing a lot of science fiction and fantasy novels. Fortunately for me, my interest in games is coupled somewhat with ability. I have strong technical and mathematical aptitude, and I spent a lot of time tinkering with my computer, and eventually put myself through university and have a degree in mathematics and computer science (Go University of Waterloo!). After completing school in 1996, I worked professionally for a year in Canada. I also spent some time working with pencil and paper gaming conventions, writing and running events, as well as running a number of RPG campaigns. Then I moved to San Jose just for a different life experience more than anything. This was around the time that Ultima Online was launched. I got into the public beta with a CD from someone in my gaming group at the time. In the game, I met at least two people who are in the game development industry, one of whom told me about the game development conference. I bought myself a classic pass (not cheap!) and went to check it out because I was thinking of creating a massively multiplayer game with some of the players I hung around with. Shortly after, and completely unrelated to this, I met a business development manager from a games portal where I took a job working with game developers and companies in a business capacity. This led me to have some contacts into the games industry that I turned into paying contracts. The first of which was to create some simple touch screen games for coin-op devices. Having paying contracts let me get incorporated, do some team building, and create game assets for my own large projects. In the meantime, I have also been building a word of mouth reputation as a quick, versatile software developer. I have taken on some relatively unsavory software porting projects that I have turned into successes for some companies. I have a few games launched on mobile phones in the US through wireless publishers, and also have nearly completed some works I intend to self publish. I received my first royalty statement on a published game a few weeks ago, and even though there is an advance that it gets put against, the feeling I had while holding that letter was pretty ecstatic. This is a fairly brief and rosy version of the story. There are some bruised knees and skinned elbows in there too. I am sure that most of you know how unprofessional the game development marketplace can be at times. Anyone else care to share their story?