after working on an unreleased "lord of the rings"-based title for electronic arts in the early '90s, hedlund interviewed with condor software (the future blizzard north), then working on "justice league". according to hedlund the game concept "wasn't very appealing to me", leading to his instead going to work for the sega technical institute in 1994, where, as an artist and game designer, he worked on titles like "comix zone", "the ooze" and "sonic x-treme". hedlund has stated that in addition to his gaming experience, his experience "living and working in japan" was another reason he was hired on at sti, since sti collaborated and integrated more game professionals from japan than any of sega’s other studios.