Hello Hitman community!
I want you all to know that my time is up and I’ve decided to leave IOI this month.
For the past 4,543 days I’ve been working on Hitman and trying to bridge the gap between the studio and its players. I want to thank you all for making that time as enjoyable as it has been for me.
When I joined IOI back in 2011, I was their youngest employee. Not so much anymore. And now I leave as the 24th longest-serving employee. Throughout my time, I was part of the team for Sniper Challenge, Absolution, HITMAN 1, HITMAN 2, Hit Mango, Sniper 1+2, and of course, HITMAN 3.
Ultimately, I leave IOI feeling proud about what I have achieved here, and of the community that the game now has. I have come to learn that this game means a lot to many of you, for very different reasons, and I have huge respect for the amount of energy, creativity and patience that you have for it.
Over the years, the Hitman franchise has come to mean so much to me too, also for many different reasons. I hope that was apparent to all of you. My employee number at IOI even ends with those two famous numbers that are not a name. Maybe it was a sign.
From accidentally leaking the Sapienza trailer, starting the IOI Monthly/Insider stream through a PS4, spending 47 minutes on stage with David Bateson at Eurogamer Expo and shouting random words because Sven and I secretly knew that the forum was playing a bingo-card drinking game, denying the existence of the HITMAN 2 door, pumping the patch notes full of references for my own amusement (which one time led to them being the top post on the Destiny subreddit – proud moment!), tweeting about anything that ever mentioned the words ‘Season 2’ - I now have thousands of moments and memories from this game and its fans. I could try and list them all, but you know how I feel about anything longer than four pages…
I can’t say a final goodbye without mentioning my beloved patch notes one more time. I had such a blast writing them all. I’m fairly certain that I wrote each and every one from the very first internal-only closed Alpha (where I specifically remember Diana was added) all the way through to the August patch notes of last year, which officially go down as my final ones. (There’s even a small ‘easter egg’ hidden in those specific patch notes, that I don’t remember seeing mentioned anywhere. Looking at it now, it’s actually quite fitting.) The only major patch notes I missed, was for the Bangkok episode in Season One. Ironically enough, that was the episode where my breakthrough performance as ‘Newscaster’ allowed me to share a digital stage with Jane Perry and David Bateson. That was pretty damn cool!
I think that’s it. Over and out