



Earlier in the year, we shared with you the story of Alexander Velicky. The young man created a massive mod for Bethesda's Skyrim called Falskaar, in the hopes of landing a job with the developer. While Velicky might not have ended up where he expected, he is now gainfully employed with a high caliber developer.



After a year of working on Falskaar as if it were a full-time job, Velicky is now an assistant designer at Bungie. Velicky took to the Bethesda forums to thank the community for its support.



"Modding has been ~90% of my life for over four years now, and all throughout you were there to support me," he writes. "I know this will sound weird since this is an open community composed largely of random anonymous people from 'The Internet', but you're kind of like my second family. From the bottom of my heart I want to thank every person who ever provided feedback on a mod, support, help, or something as simple as a 'Cant wait!' (sic) or 'Great job.' Every single one of you made this possible. From driving me to work throughout development, to providing astounding amounts of feedback and support to help learn and improve after releases. I owe it to all of you."



He also shares a thought about what others can take away from his success. "Never be afraid to try," Velicky writes. And if you're a Skyrim fan, you can try Velicky's "application," Falskaar, by downloading it from the Skyrim Nexus.



[Source: Bethesda Forums via Joystiq]





Our Take

These are the kind of feel-good stories that I love to report on. I've recently (finally) acquired Skyrim for PC. My holiday project will include doing some serious mod makeover work to make it look as wonderful as it can. I'm looking forward to trying Falskaar.



Velicky's success is just as much in the planning and coordination of the mod development as it is in the final project. Organization and planning skills like that are huge assets, and the kind of thing that takes time to teach. Bringing on a new employee that already has the fundamentals in place is a smart move for Bungie.