Hiya folks!

I’m Travis Baldree, and I’m one of the Engineers at Runic, as well as the President/Project Director and one of the cofounders. I was the Project Director/Lead Engineer for Mythos as well, and the Designer/Programmer/Producer for Fate. I appear to have too many titles. In olden days, I made lots of casual and advertising games you’ve never heard of – most of which were racing games. I squeezed two forgettable space-sims, a Tony Hawk 2 port, and a Need for Speed browser game in there as well. Day to day, I do a little bit of this, that, and the other – the bulk of my time is spent programming or developing content for Torchlight, with another significant portion going to making sure that everyone is coordinated and knows what’s upcoming, and solving day to day problems that help things keep trucking along. I get to sign checks too, which isn’t as exciting as it sounds. Occasionally I dip my toes back into art and do a bit of rigging, a lot of particle work, some asset exporting, and anything the art team lets me slip in under the radar. Don’t worry – they’ll probably revise it later and bring it up to code!

I am incapable of using modern note-taking or scheduling devices, which means I have little piles of paper all over my desk covered in nonsensical squigglies and doodles. My meeting notes look like a toddler’s refrigerator art.

Runic Games is home of the best team I’ve ever worked with, period. They are all amazing and I’m lucky to be here with them, and I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing. When Torchlight ships, if you like it, it is all due to the incredibly devoted and hardworking guys and gals here.

We’ve just completed our show at PAX, and are all exhausted and invigorated at the same time. It was great fun watching people play the game, gathering feedback, and getting a chance to show what we’ve been up to.

We hope to see you in our alpha and beta tests when our MMO gets further down the line – and we hope you have a blast playing Torchlight not too long from now!

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