You often hear philosophy used as an example of a college major that will not land you a job. That's not been the case for Bennett Foddy, who studied philosophy through the postdoc level and considered it his profession. But success in other areas kept pulling him as well.
He had a chance to become a rock star when the band Cut Copy took him on as a bass player in 2003. But Foddy decided that wasn't the life he wanted.
Foddy designed video games as a hobby. He kept his hobby a secret, because "Philosophers, as a rule, don't play video games." That proved to be impossible after he designed his second game in 2008. That was QWOP, which became a viral hit. By 2010, he decided game design was the direction he wanted to go professionally. Now a professor at the Game Center at NYU, Foddy is teaching the next generation of video game designers.
The story of how Foddy found success in so many different lines of work makes a cool story at Polygon.
Just the other day I was wondering whether it's still possible to be a polymath, given the massive amount of information available in each specialty and the fact that a whole lifetime can be spent on one very narrow area of a subject and still mastery is elusive. I'm not suggesting this guy is but it makes for an interesting story.
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