Introduction to the Devs

[Visions]

Thanks for taking the time to step in, and say hello. It is much appreciated.

Now gank your PvP team, and make them submit to posting.

[Pharone]

Hey all,

My name is Andrew and I'm a game designer working on the systems that help make the rifts in Rift do their rifty thing.

I previously worked on Vanguard (known there as 'Avarem') where I designed and implemented some of the progression content before moving on to drive the design for our eventual endgame, including Ancient Port Warehouse and the systems which supported it.

After that I took a break from MMOs and designed a number of systems (including the 'Dynamic Combat Mission' system) for the FPS Section 8 before moving back here to the west coast and back to MMOs to work on Rift.

Right now many of the things I'm working on are still under wraps, but I look forward to being more active here in the community and interacting directly with you all as we start talking more about what's cool under the hood with regards to this whole 'rifts opening all over Telara' thing.

Nice to see ya here Avarem! Ps. Just say no to Silius

[Arithion]

It's great to see so much dev interaction around. We truly do appreciate it and all the hard work you're doing.

A good idea to put it all in one spot too. Might want to sticky this?

[Lothair]

Thanks for dropping in and talking to the community! I love the dev team here, they are awesome!

[Tachi]

Wow!! It's a dev invasion!! I see you come in peace bearing friendly tidings though so, whew! Had me worried for a sec!

Thank you for taking the time to stop in and introduce yourselves. Your game really looks great thus far so thanks for all the hard work!

[Krassus]

Hey all,

My name is Andrew and I'm a game designer working on the systems that help make the rifts in Rift do their rifty thing.

I previously worked on Vanguard (known there as 'Avarem') where I designed and implemented some of the progression content before moving on to drive the design for our eventual endgame, including Ancient Port Warehouse and the systems which supported it.

After that I took a break from MMOs and designed a number of systems (including the 'Dynamic Combat Mission' system) for the FPS Section 8 before moving back here to the west coast and back to MMOs to work on Rift.

Right now many of the things I'm working on are still under wraps, but I look forward to being more active here in the community and interacting directly with you all as we start talking more about what's cool under the hood with regards to this whole 'rifts opening all over Telara' thing.

Avarem =))))

Whats up !!!!

[Draegan]

Cool thread.

Hello devs.

[schoolyd]

very nice to see avarem working on this game. i thought he did absolutely amazing things with vanguard with limited resources

[Thekk_Kheelan]

Good to meet you guys.

[maRaider]

Good day, all! I have posted a couple of times, but I'll introduce myself here. I am the Design Producer for Rift. Part of my day is spent working with the Pod Leads and upper management to make sure that the Design teams' schedules encompass all of the work that is needed, but does so in a humane way. Another big chunk of the day is spent monitoring the details of the design implementation and (on my best days) preventing log-jams before they occur.

(If you are familiar with the live-theater position called "Stage Manager." then you know exactly what I do. It's a great job because I get to see how it all fits together, including the non-design components at they are created. I came over to Production shipping after several games as a Designer, so I still get to participate in the design, as well.)

At night I play our game. Really important side note: This is not mandatory. It's fun! I have cancelled my other MMO accounts because I was just not spending enough time there.

With what time is left, I come up with tremendously bad analogies. Just ask any of the Designers. I've coined some real stinkers.

maRaider

[Draegan]

How many members/employees of the Rift Team are there in each studio location?

[SteveChamberlin]

Hi folks, I’m the Development Director for engineering on Rift, which means I manage the technical development of the game, and occasionally still find time to do a little bit of programming myself. I got my start playing and creating content for some MUDs during college. I’ve been more a fan of strategy games like Sid Meier’s, but I did find time to get desperately hooked on WoW in 2006-2007, about the same time Trion got started.

My real start in gaming was waaaaaay back on the Atari 800, creating my own games in BASIC and saving them to that awesome cassette tape drive. I was a huge fan of the Infocom text adventures, and wrote my own text parser and adventure game, full of inside jokes funny to no one but me and a few friends. That game completely filled the Atari’s 48K of RAM. Error 2: Insufficient memory, game over.

In college I had some success with a Macintosh tetris clone (Tetris Max) that was very popular for several years. Later I got involved in making “edutainment” software (remember that?), before joining Electronic Arts and leading development of the Tiger Woods Golf franchise. I joined up with Trion back when it was just a few guys in a temp office space with a quick-and-dirty demo, and it’s been amazing to experience the growth since then.

In my “other life” I’m an electronics hacker interested in CPU design. A few years ago I built a custom designed, hand-made CPU called “Big Mess o’ Wires” that was an internet favorite for a week in 2009. I was in Wired magazine (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/05/homebrewed-cpu/), and had a great time meeting and speaking with all sorts of incredibly interesting people before my 15 minutes of fame ran out.

It’s great to meet everyone here. I’m looking forward to the launch of Rift!

[Arithion]

*gets some popcorn and sits down to watch the dev stories roll in*

This thread is rather made of awesome

[Maxxy]

Hello Andrew,

Thanks for coming by, and introducing yourself to all of us. Very happy that you guys are doing this. Looking forward to battling the Rift, when it comes out!

[Meson]

wow more devs? and blimey that CPU took a bit of work.