Working at ArenaNet was a dream for me. I was a huge fan of the game before I got a job there. I raided, zerged, fractaled and fashion war'd every night, so having the opportunity of working with everyone there was the coolest thing ever.
The company is really great and goes out of there way to take care of their devs, all the benefits were awesome.
I remember when Covid started, thinking working from home was the greatest thing ever, but now after like 2 years of working from home I think I'm ready to go back into an office again... Just not every day 9-5.
I'm just thinking of all the great people there, and all the old faces that left already, a lot of people I miss I guess, lol. I guess one of the downsides of self employment during global outbreak.
Hmmm Anecdotes? Well we had this concept of 10% time at ArenaNet, where your supposed to be able to do anything you want 10% of the time. I'm pretty sure I abused that to the max, and was ALWAYS doing things that I wasn't really supposed to be doing. That's how Gamepad support was born. In fact, I think there's like 10+ other really cool features that I finished that just never got their time in a release schedule. Can't say what though!
Edit Bonus Anecdotes: During my interview when I was getting hired, somehow I got started talking about WvW, and when I got into it, I can talk for a while about all the different keeps/towers and strategies and whatnot (to the creators of it), I think I spent so much time talking about it (Even though I was applying for a programming position), that they forgot to ask me any programming questions. Suckers, easy interview! :-)
PS: I miss the grilled cheese truck too.
devtrackers.gg