Dominic Cerquetti onstage with his band, Rare Candy, at Tigercon 2009 on Sept. 26 at Towson University. When not rocking out to video game tunes, Cerquetti works as a programmer for Firaxis, a Hunt Valley-based game developer. (Photo by the Baltinerd)
Dominic Cerquetti thought he was just goofing around with high school friends on the computer, making computer-generated objects in 3D Studio Max. But when an artist from local video game developer Firaxis came to a career day at his high school, he realized his hobby could lead to a job.
“He was like ‘Hey, want me to show you some 3D stuff?’ And he popped out some models from ‘Sim Golf’ and showed us these incredible houses and people they had modeled and golf courses and all this crazy stuff,” Cerquetti said.
Cerquetti realized he could never stack up as an artist, so he decided instead to go into programming. Cerquetti graduated from Loyola University Maryland in 2006 with a degree in computer science. He then got a job as a programmer for Firaxis, the Hunt Valley team known as much for its flagship series, “Civilization,” as its lead creative mind, Sid Meier.
