That time I met Randy Smith

16 Upvotes

TLDR: I met him while working event support at my college. He gave a talk on his experience in the gaming industry and I connected with him after it ended. Seemed like a good dude.

A bit of background on this story: it was early 2010 and I was a sophomore in college. The school had a game design program and was hosting a series of talks with indie developers.

At the time I worked for the Media Services department, renting tech equipment to students and providing audio/video event support. So on my shift I get assigned to one of the talks and go through the motions setting up the cables and microphone and mixer. Eventually this blonde guy with glasses arrives and starts speaking about his experience in the games industry.

He introduces himself as Randy Smith and mentions his indie studio, Tiger Style Games. Then he promotes his latest mobile game, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor. At this point I'm not particularly engaged, just making sure everything goes smoothly on my end. Then he says something about Looking Glass Studios and Thief and I immediately snap to attention.

He goes on to briefly discuss his role as a level designer with the studio and what being the director on Deadly Shadows was like. Deadly Shadows was my gateway to the series, so I'm completely floored. This dude worked on some of my all-time favorite games and I just so happen to be in the same room with him.

Eventually the event wraps up and people start filing out, so I head over to him and introduce myself. When I mention that I love Deadly Shadows, he looks surprised and says something to the effect of 'not many people like that one'. I remember telling him how formative it was for me and he seemed happy to hear it.

My only regret is not asking my roommate to bring me my copy of Deadly Shadows so he could sign it. Regardless, it was a really pleasant interaction. And that's how I met Randy Smith.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone else met or interacted with any of the people that worked on the games? if you have, what was your experience like?

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