Joining Unity Labs; moving to San Francisco!

Hello, Friends! Time for a big life announcement: I’ve taken a job with Unity, where I’ll be working on their VR editor! This is a huge step for me professionally, and also a huge personal shift, since it means I’ll be moving to San Francisco in a couple weeks, after 17 years in the Boston area.

Professionally, this is a dream job: it’s a team of rockstars, building the tools that will define how virtual worlds are built, not just by professional developers, but by anyone. We all see virtual and augmented reality as the ultimate medium for creativity (and future of everything), both because of its limitless nature, and because of how natural the creative process is when it’s not being jammed onto a screen and mouse.
Here’s the latest video and demo they’ve put out on the Labs projects.

unity-vr-editor

I’ve been working on Archean, my “make VR inside VR” project, over the course of the last 18 months, which is what led directly to this opportunity. My plan is to release Archean on Steam essentially as-is, and to continue development on the side, specifically through a series of game jams, as I described in my last post. I’m looking forward to approaching it more as a designer than as a programmer, and focusing on the “what you do with it” question more than the “what the tools are” side I’ve been so steeped in.

Personally, of course, moving to San Francisco is a huge shift. I’ve been in Boston for almost my entire life, and my Mom, many of my closest friends, and most of my professional life are all here. Boston will always feel like home, and I bet I’ll end up here in the long term. But I’m not too worried about staying in touch — I know that everyone is just a phone call / video hangout / holographic cyberspace chill away. And, in the next couple weeks till I actually leave Boston, let’s chill 🙂

I don’t want to say too much on her behalf, but if you’re wondering: my better half is coming too! We’ve been eagerly looking forward to moving in and starting the next chapter together, especially for the last year since she came back from Japan. Finally, the right opportunity has come up, and we’re so happy to be taking it together.

I’m insanely excited to be taking this step (all these steps), and I can’t wait to get started. The future’s gonna be a wild, fast ride, and we haven’t seen anything yet 🙂

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