This month's Get to Know a Dev is all about Producer Thom "Phathom" Terrazas!
I don't think of myself as a good writer so I wondered, "How can you get to know me?" in the context of this article. Most of the time people get to know each other by face-to-face interactions, but it is too easy to hide behind the big internet-mask when you only interact with people online. For the sake of getting to know me in this industry, I thought you might want to know how I got here. Well, maybe not, but here it goes anyway!
Back in 1989, after a short education in computer programming, I moved to the big city of Los Angeles to go to school and to work at a botanical nursery. Yeah, I'm sure most of you thought I was going to say, to become an actor or to put my name in lights - naturally due to my good looks - HAH! Okay, we all know that is not the case, so back to the truth here. I went to school in Los Angeles, worked for Boething Treeland Farms and lived on the top side of Malibu Canyon in Calabasas. Los Angeles was such a great experience in my late teens and early 20s. There was always something to do no matter what your hobbies were and of course living near Tinseltown, you would frequently see famous people from TV or in the movies. Even at work, I saw stars such as Sylvester Stallone, Robert Wagner, and Ed McMahon. It was pretty cool back then for an impressionable young man, who had never experienced that sort of environment before.
I found myself really enjoying my work more than continuing my education, so I started to wean myself off of school work unless it was job oriented so that I could become well-rounded in my plant knowledge. The family and co-workers that I worked with there were some of the most extraordinary, dedicated, and generous people that I have ever met. At the time, I was driving a crappy (not scrappy) silver 1976 Camaro with one of the doors a different color than the rest of the car. The one blue door was from my 1973 Camaro which was about 95% restored was totaled by a drunk driver on Christmas Eve the year before, while parked in front of my parent's house. This replacement car stood out more than our Firiona Vie actresses at Fan Faire, but not in a good way. Its finer days were so far gone that I needed to buy something more reliable. So I went out to buy a new truck. After spending four painful hours at the dealership, I bought a bright and shiny new Toyota truck, but the finance officer wouldn't guarantee that I would be financed through their banks. I was young and had no credit to my name. Not bad credit… just no credit (bad credit would come later in life, but that is a different story). Oh well, what did I know? I figured things would take care of themselves but inevitably, I was turned down and had to take the truck back. I got the call from the finance manager while I was at work, and I sadly informed my manager that I had to leave in order to take care of this problem. Before I could lock up my desk and get to the bright and shiny new truck, one of the family members called me over to one of the offices. I walked in and found out that the owner of the company was talking to the president of the local Bank of America. He was essentially vouching for me with a verbal "co-sign" on the loan. WOW! I was beside myself. I drove down the street to meet the bank manager and my paperwork was virtually done by the time I walked in the door. Of course, the bank beat the crap out of me on the percentage rate they gave me, but that's not the point! The Boething family helped me out when they didn't need to and I'll never forget that.
A few years later, I found myself missing my home town of San Diego and started to reconnect with friends from that area. I met my wife, soon got married and moved back home. I had the obligatory 2.3 kids, 3 ½ cats, and a varying number of dogs that generally drove me crazy. On a completely unrelated topic, does anyone want a ½ Australian Shepherd – ½ Rat Terrier? Yeah, that's right. An Australian Shepherd and a Rat Terrier mated successfully. Don't ask me how, but they did. "Rocket" was given to me by my brother and he thinks there was a step stool involved. I'll just take his word for it. On a side note, how is it that every piece of clothing I own now has to be rolled with a lint/hair roller? It doesn't matter where in the house I put my clothes; I could put them in the freezer or in the oven, but I know without any doubt that there will be cat hair on it. I'll pull out the ironing board to get the wrinkles out of some black pants and step away for only two seconds but when I return, there is a cat on top of my pants, rubbing its hairy body all over the place as if to say, "Oh, I just love you soooo - soooo much that I have to show you with the many white hair balls I have stuffed under my chin. Please enjoy this hair ball for the rest of the day but if you miss me too much, rest assured, I have put a few more in the pockets that will work their way out later, which may resemble small, pale tarantulas and will stand out nicely on these black pants. Thank you master! Now get me some food from the kitchen!!!" Grrrrrrrr… add a few cats looking for a good home with "Rocket" the doggy.
So I moved back to San Diego, still working for the nursery, trying to sell plant material to landscape contractors in a time where construction was drying up along with the droughts that plagued the southern California area. When my mobile salesmanship ended with the nursery, I found a customer service job working for a nursery supply company where the owner knew the owner of the nursery I had worked for. As with the gaming industry, everyone knew everyone else in the business. After holding various job titles at that company and even moving out to Texas to open a new branch for the company, I moved back to California.
While working there, the gaming itch started growing within me. I had a PlayStation One and on days when there was nothing to do, a few other people at work and I would link up two TVs and PlayStations and consume every minute of our lunch and breaks with games. I think this where it all started…
I spent about 11 years in the horticulture field to this point. Some of you are probably wondering now, "How in heck did you get the chance to make games?" or possibly, "Get to the point! This is really dragging on now!" (Actually, I should ask someone to put a tag right here to skip all that previous story-telling before this. It's probably reminding you of the movie Airplane, where everyone is trying to commit suicide the longer Ted Striker goes on about his boring stories.) While I was playing games and *cough* working of course, I met two guys at the nursery supply company. One of them, Charles, just happened to be the brother of the President at 989 Sports. He subsequently moved over to 989 Sports and worked in the Testing/Customer Service Department. He soon recruited my other friend, Victor. After about three months of doing side jobs (lampshade table dancing), Victor told me about how the testing department was ramping up and this was a very good time to get my foot in the door if I wanted to give up my dancing gigs. He made no promises of job advancement but pretty much said I can write my own ticket depending how well I performed.
The first game I ever tested was Cyber Strike 2. To this point, computer gaming was very new to me as I mainly played console games as much as possible. The PlayStation was my current drug of choice but I was new to the computer gaming world. Many of you may have way more computer street cred when it comes to gaming but I caught on quickly. I helped test every game possible and volunteered to take extra shifts when other games were being tested. Cyber Strike 2 led to Game Breaker 99, Twisted Metal, MLB 2000, and a couple of other games I can't even remember around that time.
Just as Victor informed me, if I worked hard and did a good job, I would be noticed and hired on as a full time employee. During the holiday before EverQuest shipped, I volunteered to do some customer service work on GameDay 99, Tanarus, and the EverQuest Beta. The excitement at the office was off the charts as the company was within three months of launching EQ. Everyone was watching the number of players that were playing our games, specifically in beta on EQ. I picked up the customer service help line one time and it was John Smedley calling in to find out how many people were in EQ and if the servers were stable. You could just feel the energy growing every day at work. EverQuest was going to be something special.
Nevertheless, I went back across the hallway and continued to test sports games. That is what I wanted to do in the first place, or at least that is what I thought. All the while testing sports games, I kept seeing EverQuest every day. At first I rolled my eyes at the thought of an online Dungeons and Dragons game. I tried playing D&D a couple times through middle school and high school but it didn't stick. I couldn't grasp the imagination of some of the people and thought it was somewhat irrational. However, the more I saw EverQuest, the more I wanted to try it out. While testing other sports games, I got into Beta and played it through launch and even got my sports-minded brother to play as well. After MLB 2000 launched, testing work dried up on sports games. I went across the hallway and met my old buddies Charles and Victor, who set me up with a meet and greet with Jeff, who gave me a job as a Game Master on the Tunare Server. I spent the first month in the Tech Support Help Chat Rooms in the front end of the game when EverQuest launched. I wasn't very technically inclined but like every other post I held onto, I adapted and got better and better each day.
After that, I was hired on as a full-fledged Verant Employee (soon to be purchased by Sony). I then began working as the Tech Support Manager in charge of accounts, billing, and technical support. Later on, I became the Tech Support and In-Game Manager. Some of you might remember me as Head-GM, Aikbach. After six great years in Customer Service culminating with the Director of Customer Service title, I moved into a Project Manager role within the Development Studio. I worked on a lot of projects and eventually became a Producer on PlanetSide, Vanguard, and finally on EverQuest. Three years later, I'm still here and enjoying every minute of it.
Each step I've taken along the way at SOE has been a learning experience and a joy. Whenever I move to a new team, I always feel that I'm working with the best team in the industry. I think that is a testament to the industry and the passion of people that we have working on games. So for now, I'm just going to keep on working on the best team in the industry.
Thom "Phathom" Terrazas
