Vanguard: Introducing the programmers

From the development bigwigs in charge of making this game to the actual features we’re expecting when it launches, we’ve been covering a lot of high-profile angles on Sigil’s Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. But for now, let’s take a moment, and shift our attention to the unsung heroes that keep games like these running smoothly – the humble programmer.

The Vanguard main site is featuring an employee spotlight, and the dude of the moment is programmer Brian Mazza. In the interview, Brian chews the yarn on how he first started out in Sigil, and about the daily grind of working as a programmer for this growing company. As Brian mentioned on his interview:

I’d always wanted to be a game developer, so I went to the Fanguard in Las Vegas to see the game and test my luck at getting hired. I was the only person there wearing a suit, and after standing in the 103 million degree heat for about 30 seconds, I knew why. But my interview went a lot smoother – I very quickly proved to Ryan Elam I had no idea what I was talking about, but he hired me anyways. I think the suit paid off!

As the interview went on, Brian talks about the work atmosphere, one on the lighthearted side of the dev business, with co-workers prone to gags like posting pictures of a sinking Titanic, along with a note that says “Try not to screw up so much,” to remind the dudes in dev to be careful.

Co-worker “Pep Talk” aside, Brian’s enjoying the work atmosphere, and aside from the frustrating problem of fixing game bugs (they’re a headache anywhere you go), his work does have some cool highlights:

ItÂ’s hard to pick a favoriteÂ… pretty much anything that has a noticeable impact on the game makes me proud of my work. First-person character rendering, for example, turned out to be fun and rewarding. But things as simple as bug fixes, or optimizations that make the game run a little faster, are just as much of a pay-off, in my book.

Brian also says he wants to play one of the shorter classes in-game when Vanguard launches – Halfling, Gnome or Goblin – and on that note, we conclude this glimpse into the life a typical game programmer – the grunts that keep MMO’s running the way they should. Thanks, guys.

Via Vanguard Soh

From the development bigwigs in charge of making this game to the actual features we’re expecting when it launches, we’ve been covering a lot of high-profile angles on Sigil’s Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. But for now, let’s take a moment, and shift our attention to the unsung heroes that keep games like these running smoothly – the humble programmer.

The Vanguard main site is featuring an employee spotlight, and the dude of the moment is programmer Brian Mazza. In the interview, Brian chews the yarn on how he first started out in Sigil, and about the daily grind of working as a programmer for this growing company. As Brian mentioned on his interview:

I’d always wanted to be a game developer, so I went to the Fanguard in Las Vegas to see the game and test my luck at getting hired. I was the only person there wearing a suit, and after standing in the 103 million degree heat for about 30 seconds, I knew why. But my interview went a lot smoother – I very quickly proved to Ryan Elam I had no idea what I was talking about, but he hired me anyways. I think the suit paid off!

As the interview went on, Brian talks about the work atmosphere, one on the lighthearted side of the dev business, with co-workers prone to gags like posting pictures of a sinking Titanic, along with a note that says “Try not to screw up so much,” to remind the dudes in dev to be careful.

Co-worker “Pep Talk” aside, Brian’s enjoying the work atmosphere, and aside from the frustrating problem of fixing game bugs (they’re a headache anywhere you go), his work does have some cool highlights:

ItÂ’s hard to pick a favoriteÂ… pretty much anything that has a noticeable impact on the game makes me proud of my work. First-person character rendering, for example, turned out to be fun and rewarding. But things as simple as bug fixes, or optimizations that make the game run a little faster, are just as much of a pay-off, in my book.

Brian also says he wants to play one of the shorter classes in-game when Vanguard launches – Halfling, Gnome or Goblin – and on that note, we conclude this glimpse into the life a typical game programmer – the grunts that keep MMO’s running the way they should. Thanks, guys.

Via Vanguard Soh