Growing Pains

"Being there to tell a little bit of the truth," she answers.

Everyone exchanges business cards--a tireless Los Angeles ritual. The crowd has thinned out. It's late. Nobody stays out past 1:30 am in this city. It isn't Manhattan. After the women leave, the executive leans over to Jones and says, "Very nice. Call me next week. I'll find a job for you if you want it." Mission accomplished. Jones's options are open. Now he knows that going to Vancouver will be a free choice. He won't be pressured to move away. The move won't feel like a form of exile. Jones's confidence in himself has never been stronger.

"I've got every 15-year-old's dream job--aside from fireman, policeman, or rock star," Jones says. "Making games has to be it. But I want more. Would I like to be a VP? No. Would being an executive producer be a necessary evil? Maybe. I've resigned. Will this bother them? Do they want me? They've got a lot of time to do what they want with me." He pauses and then adds, "Someday, I'm going to be running one of these companies."/p>

If Krista wants to see him every weekend, that's her choice. Jones will move to Vancouver and finish what he started. Maybe it will get him promoted to executive producer when he returns. Maybe not. But it's the way that his world works now. So much room to grow. So many sacrifices, so little time.

"In Vancouver," he says, "I'll be the first one at work in the morning and the last one to leave every day. I'd rather be doing the art. But that's just the way it is. It took me five years to know what I know today. I can make sacrifices that others aren't willing to make. I can go without sleep. I can cut my hair. I can move away. I can put aside my craving to do the creative, artistic work myself."

Most of all, what he's sacrificing is the feeling that he used to have--the feeling that he was at home at THQ, that it was a place he understood completely. Now he will always be in a place that's a little bit mysterious, a little bit strange. Jones spots a man he knows who works on another floor at THQ.

"You see that guy at the end of the bar?" Jones asks. The man is middle-aged and dark-haired, and is nursing a drink. "He works at THQ," Jones says.When Jones is asked what the man's job is at THQ, he replies, "I have no idea." Then Jones starts to move across the room to shake the stranger's hand and to introduce himself, one more time, to a new way of life in a new kind of company.

Epilogue: Starting Over, Going Forward

It's two months later, and Gabe Jones is on the phone from Vancouver. "I've left THQ," he says. "I've decided to join h20. This way, I'm starting with a little company and building from the ground up. We employ maybe 30 people, but it's hard to tell how many people we have at any one time because so many are temps. Everything is changing. It's scary. Every move that you make here is very, very critical. They fought to keep me at THQ. I can't say they didn't. Jeff Lapin made the effort to keep me on board. Communications could have been better. There may have been some misunderstandings. That's what happens when a company grows that way. I misread some of his efforts to keep me on board, I think. It was a question of staying at THQ or taking the opportunities elsewhere." Now that he's made his decision, is Jones sorry that he left behind the life that he might have had at THQ?

"No. I gave five and a half years of my life to THQ," he says. "I have no problem with any of those people. They're nice people. It's just the way things work now. I made the right decision. We're rebuilding this little company. It's an opportunity to create a top-notch studio from the ground up, to do a total retooling of the place. Everything will change here--the office, the desks, maybe even the name."

Gabe is still walking across a crowded room and offering his name to people he doesn't know. He's still chasing that illusive drea--the same one that he had at THQ, but in a new setting. There's no turning back. He's quick to dispel any illusions about recovering the past. What about his hair? Now that he's starting over, reconnecting with a small, fast-growing outfit, will he regrow his hair? "No," he says. "It's gone for good."

David Dorsey (dedorsey@rochester.rr.com) is a best-selling business author and a novelist. You can contact gabriel jones by email (gabe@h20ent.com), or Visit THQ Inc. on the Web (www.thq.com).