Shining Critical Path

Kudos to Critical Path Software for getting gobbled up by eBay.

A dozen years ago, back when I had an office across from the then-under-construction Westin Hotel, Critical Path was in an adjacent building on the northwest corner of SW Broadway & Alder. My office partners, graphic designer Brad Hicks and Flash developer/animator Peter Sylwester collaborated on a web site for the Critical Path, with Brad designing the fish skeleton logo that they’ve used ever since and Peter helping to get the whole thing into shape.

A couple of times, Critical Path asked me to collaborate on bids when the projects they’d been asked to take on included Director content—most of their work at the time was Mac ports of software, from hardware drivers to CD-ROMs—but it wasn’t until they brought me the first of the UbiSoft CSI games (which included some Shockwave 3D content) to port to the mac that I actually was able to do anything for them. I managed to help out on a couple of other projects in the years since.

A number of the folks I play poker with have worked for (or are working once again for) Critical Path, and every time I’ve talked to CEO Steve Romero I’ve told him I need to invite him out to pay him back for having us over a party. That’s probably going to be a harder date to make now that he’s a vice president at eBay!