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  Wednesday, April 01, 2009

RIP Guiding Light

Guiding Light is Going Dark

And therein lies a tale. Around the turn of the century (about eight years ago), I was one of the co-founders of an Internet startup working on a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game. Our big hope was centered on our ability to generate storylines on the fly for players and non-player-characters, and on the advanced AI of the automated characters. We were making good progress, and had demos working.

We had an agreement with Guiding Light, the soap opera, to create an online virtual world where fans of the show could create a character and "live" in the world of Guiding Light.

On the eleventh day of September, that all changed. The news of September 11 pre-empted Guiding Light for a week or so. They lost a lot of money, and cancelled our agreement. Between that and the dotcom crash, we were unable to raise more funds, and our company was no more.

It used to be, when I lost a job, that I'd take a break and then find another job, or it would find me. It was never a problem. But with the market flooded by out-of-work programmers, and more and more programming jobs going overseas, it took me over a year to find another job.

My life was momentarily derailed by the odd confluence of a struggling soap opera, high-tech outsourcing and a douchebag scheming in an Afghan cave. But our current situation is wonderful, we love our friends and family and busy lives, and who knows where we'd be if that hadn't happened?

I'm sad to see Guiding Light going dark. We almost had a nice thing going. But I've never watched it.

Posted by Dave    Blog Tag: Chatter
Comments

9 Comments:

At 4/01/2009 4:07 PM, Blogger Candace said...

What an unusual story. I didn't know these details until today. Talk about a domino effect.

 
At 4/01/2009 8:06 PM, Blogger Bal Simon said...

You can sure weave a tale, Dave. But I always thought that Connie was your Guiding Light. :)

 
At 4/01/2009 8:15 PM, Blogger Barney Lerten said...

What a great slice of life tale, Dave. And succinctly told;-)

 
At 4/01/2009 11:18 PM, Blogger dkgoodman said...

You knew most of it, Candace. But the part about Guiding Light was confidential.

Thanks, Bal. You're so right about Connie.

Every once in a while I like to blog about bits from my past rather than current events. Like my story about the USS Indianapolis. I'm glad you liked this one, Barney. It means a lot to me, coming from you.

 
At 4/02/2009 10:15 AM, Blogger Connie said...

I beam in your general direction:)

 
At 4/02/2009 11:53 AM, Blogger Candace said...

Connie, you GLOW, and you always have! :)

::hugs::

 
At 4/13/2009 8:54 AM, Blogger gemmak said...

Awwww.....thank you for the banner thing, I'm having a bad time atm and it really cheered me up :o)

 
At 4/22/2009 3:35 PM, Blogger SidDawgone said...

Man, first my sister disappears, Dale from Mimico decides to disappear, Gemmak goes quiet for a while (but thankfully comes back from the brink of disappearance) and now YOU! Hope its a much needed hiatus and we will all be e'mused again when you're good and ready!

 
At 4/22/2009 3:39 PM, Blogger dkgoodman said...

LOL

Sorry about that. Too many things on my plate at the moment. One of them is a performance this weekend that the band I'm in has been practicing heavily for. Things should be better next week. I hope. ;)

 

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