Star Wars Galaxies: New Team Comments!

Hey gang. My name is Matt Kwid and this week you are about to learn a little bit about myself and how I started out in this industry as many of you in the community seemed to be very fascinated about the process of gaining employment for a video game development company.
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First of all, my love for video games stems back to grade school when my neighbors introduced me to the world of Lode Runner, Conan and Zork. Those games completely dazzled me even on those old green monochrome monitors. A few years later, my grandparents purchased an Atari for my brother and me. They probably should have known that it would contribute to a lot of misbehaving and crying. It took some time but my parents finally saw a need to have a computer in our home and they decided to purchase an Apple IIgs that was personally signed by Mr. Wozniak (this is where you are supposed to ooh and ahh). My Mother decided that she needed to remove me from the computer, on occasion, as she was afraid that I would wear it out with my extended gaming sessions (which only resulted in more misbehaving). Quite a few years later, and after I "tied the knot", my father-in-law introduced me to the world of Ultima. He had written some tools/cheats for a couple of the games and was amused when I had told him that I would have Ultima 7 solved and returned to him in a week or two.
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This is where I become humbled.
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Four to five months later and after restarting the game numerous times because I made lame decisions early on, I finally completed the game. The Ultima series demonstrated to me how intricate and detailed a game could be made and will forever be on my all time greats list.
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My career in the gaming industry really started when I contacted the 3DO company for a game testing position. This was not a paid position to start but offered free pre-release games and a development machine to play them on. However, the new job was short lived as there were many problems running the on the machine provided. I think it is interesting to note that at this point in time Kevin O'Hara (Q-3PO) was employed by that same company and probably would have been my manager if I had become an employee.
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Good thing the games didn't work. ;)
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A few years later, and after completing a bunch of "techie" courses, I moved here to Southern California to attend San Diego State University. I had a month or so to find a job (ie: spare time to do some serious uninterrupted gaming) so I decided to build a resume web site and apply to as many places as I could to get my foot in the door and get a chance to exercise some of my new skills. Verant was the first company to call me for an interview and I was eventually hired full-time on their technical support team. They immediately set me up with a game account (/whisper because I had not played the game before the interview) and I began doing research (all night game sessions and LAN parties filled with glorious fountains of soda and an endless supply of pizza) on the product that I would be supporting.
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I finally understood the appeal of online games and I was hooked.
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I recall that one of my co-workers liked to play the game so much that after his 8-9 hour shift, he would stay at work and play the game until the following morning, get in a short nap before his shift started, and start the cycle over again. I am expecting a similar reaction for SWG. After working my tail off in tech support for about 8 months, I was promoted onto the community team just before the launch of our website and here I am.
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I remember that prior to being employed for this company, I had thought that a Star Wars MMORPG had potential to be the greatest game ever created. I remember seeing the sign within my offices that read "Star Wars Online" and realizing that this company was quite possibly building a very incredible game. I feel fortunate to have gotten the chance to be on the development team and experience first hand all of the work that goes on behind the scenes to get a project like this off the ground. My hat goes off to all the members on the team that are putting in long overtime hours to get the project completed. I suggest that you prepare for the release of this game by studying all of the information that we have in our "FAQ" section and "Recent Dev Post" sections as you will all soon be playing it and understanding what a testament to the intricate and creative Star Wars universe this game has become.
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Name: Matthew Kwid
Age: 27
Hobbies: guitar, record collecting, programming, and playing video games
SWG Community Representative