A Confession, and an Introduction

Hello! My name is Dusty Monk, and for the past several years I've participated in and contributed to the Garage Games community under the moniker Devon Winter. The alias was taken because, at the time, I was also working professionally as a game developer for Ensemble Studios, a division of Microsoft. Even though everything I did with the Torque engine was strictly at a hobbyiest level, and my participation in the community was purely personal interest, and had no bearing on my professional activities, in the interest of professionalism, it is often best to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

Back in September, we at Ensemble were informed we were being shut down, and upon the completion of Halo Wars, our employment would be terminated. At that time I ceased all participation in the community, and honestly I had no further time for hobbies anyway, as we were all crunching very hard to complete that game.

As of today I take my real name back, and would like to unofficially announce the creation of a new independant Studios -- Windstorm Studios. An official announcement and associated PR will go out after the first of April, but in preparation for GDC, the website is up live now. I invite you all to stop by and take a peak.

windstormstudios.com

I would also just like to say I now expect to be returning to the GG community in a much more visible fashion. We are banking heavily on TGEA technologies, and are awaiting and watching Torque 3D with great anticipation. I have always been impressed with the committment and level of competence from the Torque team and this community, and this technology is going to play a signficant role in our plans.

Additionally, besides updating this blog on a regular basis with material of a technical nature, I also continue to update my MMO design blog over at Of Course I'll Play It. Feel free if to drop by if you're interested in chatting about things of an MMO-ish nature. I know I know many of you will only visit one blog.. but I really do feel these blogs serve separate purposes, so I most likely won't be cross posting.

And finally, one last comment, and this is with regard to Twitter. Twitter has become a part of my daily routine, and as an independant developer, provides a great avenue for both commentary and information. I keep a channel open for #tgea, but I rarely see Torque folks chatting or referring to it. I would love to see more GG community people and developers making use of this social networking tool. If you're already on twitter, please reply and I'll definitely follow you. Or, you can follow me at www.twitter.com/dlangar and I will follow you back. Let's keep channels open and throw out our frustrations and success while using TGEA and AFX over the twittersphere!

Thanks for listening, and I look forward to interacting with you all!

Dusty Monk
Windstorm Studios