Careers.CSE

Here is a news article from the State on a local company, founded by a USC grad, who is making games for the Xbox Live:

Forgive Drew Card if he looks bleary-eyed today.

He’s been up all night waiting on the release of his company’s new video game, “Poker Smash.”

At 4 a.m. today, “Poker Smash” became available on Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE Arcade, and Card soon will know if his gamble of founding a video game company in Lexington has paid off.

“I’m so nervous,” Card said Tuesday. “I keep searching the Web to see what people are saying on message boards. I’ve turned into an obsessive-compulsive searcher of the Internet.”

Void Star is an independent company trying to kick in the doors of the $17 billion U.S. video game industry. And “Poker Smash,” a puzzle game that mixes “Tetris” and poker, is the result of a big risk, a little luck and countless hours on computers.

Drew Card, who graduated from USC with his wife, tells Void Star’s history in a frenzy of someone buzzing with excitement.

The son of Andrew Card, the former White House chief of staff, turns red over being a computer geek when he gives a lengthy, technical explanation of the name Void Star. The phrase comes from the C++ computer programming language.

“It also sounds cool,” he said.