Tuesday, December 23, 2008

An interview with Damijin!

Do we know him?
Of course we do.
He's Mike, who has been an admin before.
Today, he is a moderator and a developer.


Damijin

Juze: Okay, well first of all, thanks for having your time for KCG.

damijin: Happy to be involved :)

Juze: You were an admin before. What made you to quit it?

damijin: Ultimately, my passion has always been with game development. I was really happy to work with Kong for a year and a half, and I'm still really cool with Jim, Emily, and everyone else -- but I wanted to make games, and I couldn't do that as a community manager.

Juze: So you really do like to create games?

damijin: Yep, I love the creative process in it. I like having something that I made. Something that other people can play and enjoy. Oh Buoy actually took almost a year to develop. It was my first game, and it was a good learning experience. I didn't really understand what flash gamers wanted. Even though a lot of people enjoy it, I think I can do a lot better at reaching masses. My second game, Pyro, will be released sometime in the next 12 hours I hope! Oh Buoy took so long to make because my programmer was in school, and could only work on it when he was home. I was working, so my time was bad too. That experience is why I wanted to work full time on games, and leave my job. My new programmer, Arkatufus, is also working full time. He's also really great at what he does :)

Note by Juze: Oh Buoy! can be played here!

Juze: Wow, that's alot of text. Tell me about your new upcoming game, Pyro.

damijin: So, Pyro is a puzzle game, but a different type. It's based heavily on physics, and has a really awesome fire effect thats generated procedurally by code. In each level, there's several unlit torches, and you grab and throw a fireball at them to light enough to pass on to the next level. You have to a lot of tricky shots and it can get really hard.

Juze: Did you became first a moderator on Kong, or were you promoted directly as an admin?

damijin: I was a moderator first for several months.

Juze: Why did you/Kong wanted you to become as an admin?

damijin: I never expected that to happen, and never asked for it actually. Kongregate needed to hire someone for a relatively simple job. They needed someone who could work when everyone else was at home, so, nights and weekends. My job was mostly to make sure the site didnt crash, and also a little bit of quality assurance testing. Greg IMed me on day and just said "So we went out to lunch, and we'd like to offer you a job." Jim called me on the phone, we worked out the specifics, and I started in a few days. Once I was in, I worked myself into a strong role in community and support. They eventually extended me from a part time employee to full time, and then salaried with benefits and all that.

Juze: Do you have anything else you might wanna say?

damijin: Thanks for the interview Juze, I hope Pyro does well! Otherwise I might have to beg Jim and Emily for my job back :-P.

Juze: Haha, thanks for your time Dami. See you later! :)

Juze: (to: damijin): Oh, and merry xmas!

3 comments:

hipcheck said...

That is a really great interview Juze. and I am still sad to see mike leave. But he is still around.

Anonymous said...

Oh, thanks!

GHXpert59 said...

yeah, good job!