Robert Briscoe, the environment artist behind indie hit Dear Esther recently posted on the Little Lost Poly blog that he would be leaving the Dear Esther team to work at Valve. Briscoe explains that there are a number of reasons for this move but the key one appears to be wanting to move in a different direction. Briscoe writes of the sense of social and professional isolation he has recently felt and that he wants to 'take a break from the solitary life'.
He elaborates "I think I need to be around people for a while; A lot of my energy and enthusiasm comes from being in the presence of people, sharing different ideas, methods and techniques, different views, outlooks and inspirations, and mostly by just being out of my comfort zone (which I have very much slipped into)."
He then writes that his application for a US work Visa has been accepted and that he's expecting to move to Seattle to work at Valve Software as of March 20th. He stresses that he's not leaving the indie scene for good, that this is just a break, and that he may well return to work on indie projects alone or with The Chinese Room one day.
As for the Dear Esther Unity port, he writes, "The bulk of the port is done, with just some backend and scripting stuff remaining, so I should be easily able to finish things off in my spare time, plus I have the team of talented people at TCR to help me along the way if needed. So things will very much carry on as normal with that."
