Thanks everybody for the well-wishes and good lucks.

@Kroms - "I've always looked forward to your episodes" reminds me of my years in the psych ward. Good times.

@Richard - I can think of several stories/groups of characters/etc it'd be fun to make a game out of, but I can't think of any existing game worlds I'd have much interest in continuing. (Not that I'd turn down the opportunity. And a good storyteller can come up with good material from just about any starting point). Maybe that's why it's a good time for a career course correction: I've run out of sequels to work on.

@J-Rod - I took a job and lucked into getting to work with the best composer working in videogames today. There's no way in hell I'm letting you avoid working with me again.

@Matthew - I guess I've been outed. The main reason I'm going freelance is so I can finally finish playing Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Some people would call that foolish; I say they just need to re-evaluate their priorities.

@Chris - Yeah, leaving EA was my first exposure to explosive decompression, except there I got the double-whammy because I'd spent so many years telling friends I didn't have time to hang out that everybody just kind of stopped asking. This is different — it's not the hours but being so focused on one thing to the expense of everything else.

@Lena - Thanks, and of course the company's got several great designers, and choreographers, and environment artists, and animators, and... so the concept of story- and character-driven games is in the company, not in any one person. You've been to enough playtests to see how much better the games get after the whole team's had a crack at it; it's not as if any of these things spring forth fully-formed from the mind of one person. i'm looking forward to seeing how they continue on that philosophy because like I (and you) said, I think it's something that's crucial to games that nobody else is paying as much attention to. Good luck with your own stuff, and I'll probably see you around at the playtests.