Dev Spotlight: Erik

Introduce yourself, and what do you do in the team! Hello, my name is Erik, and I am currently a Product Owner on Moonlight Peaks. I started at Little Chicken roughly 12 years ago in 2011 as a programming intern. Over the years, I worked on different projects within the company and ended up this year in a Product Owner role for Moonlight Peaks.

How did you get into the games industry? I always wanted to end up in the games industry from the start. In the beginning, I wasn’t quite sure which side I wanted to pursue—either art or programming. But after making my first little hobby projects, it quickly became clear that my affinity leaned more toward programming.

So, I enrolled in a broad education program with a specialization in games called Mediatechnologie at the Hogeschool Utrecht. This program not only taught programming but also included courses in sound editing, modeling, animation, and a bunch of other non-game-related topics.

In my second-to-last year, I landed an internship at the game company WeirdBeard, and the following year, at Little Chicken. During my internships, I worked on various games like Trivialis and KLM Aviation Empire. It was during this time that I truly realized how much I loved making games, and I’ve been fortunate enough to stay in the industry ever since.

Where do you draw inspiration from? From all over the place, but mostly from other smaller developers. We have all seen the big players re-releasing the same mechanics over and over again. But it’s the smaller developers that truly come up with some cool mechanically sound games. Also, what helps a lot is sitting with a bunch of other talented developers/artists. Sometimes just little conversations around the office trigger a whole new game idea. It may sound cliché, but surround yourself with like-minded people and truly cool things can happen.

What are some of your favorite games, and why? I’ve played a lot of games over the years, but there is always one game that keeps pulling me back to it. It’s Path of Exile made by Grinding Gear Games. Apart from having a bunch of content added since its release in 2013, I really like the way this developer is making its game. It’s clear that they really play the game themselves and listen to feedback from the community to improve. They don’t always agree with the feedback, but they will communicate about it in an open way.

Also, honorable mention to Dungeons and Dragons, which I’ve played since I was still in elementary school. The simple rules plus the framework for the setting allow people to create their own stories and adventures. It’s a great way to let your creativity flow and solve problems. I also started being a dungeon master myself recently for a group consisting of my co-workers. It's a great way to get to know them better and even funnier to see them come up with creative solutions for the situations that I create.

Dungeon and Dragons session at the Chicken offices

What is your favorite thing to work on for Moonlight Peaks? Tough question. I think the thing that gives me the most satisfaction is seeing it all come together—the game designer brainstorming over how the features/mechanics should work together, the artists making the concept art to the final 3D object in-game, the programmers tweaking the values to make it just feel right. It’s great to manage this all to make sure that no department is bottlenecked by another and figuring out what needs to be done so everybody can work optimally.

Your farm in Moonlight Peaks during winter

What are you most excited to work on for Moonlight Peaks? The thing I'm most excited to work on is getting Moonlight Peaks into the hands of the first players outside the office and seeing what feedback they have and ways to improve the game. There is only so much we can think of beforehand, but doing that final push to make it truly great is the most exciting part.

Is there a specific piece of artwork or game element that you're particularly proud of? I'm a bit biased because I'm a programmer, but the visual scripting tool (More about it in this article from our Lead Dev) we created in order to make all the quests, NPC routines, and dialogues. The flexibility of the system and how it gets a bunch of new features and functionality every month is just very cool to me.

Your farm in Moonlight Peaks during Summer

Briefly, what does a typical day look like for you as on this project? A typical day for me generally starts with trying to implement the latest art assets into the game. Then getting interrupted by a bunch of questions from different departments that either require answers or problems that need to be resolved. This is followed by talking to different people to figure out what the best solution is or to clear up any confusion in order to make sure everything continues to run smoothly. Furthermore, I need to make sure there is enough work ready, prioritized, and organized in the backlog so the team knows what to do for the next sprint.

What advice would you give to new developers in the industry? For new devs trying to get into the industry, the tips are surprisingly easy yet hard to execute: just make games. Anything you have in mind—try to make it, but keep it small and finish what you started. This, in my opinion, is the best way to learn the different aspects of game development. Think of a project, scale it down so it is doable for you, and then finish it from beginning to end. It does not have to be good on the first try or even the tenth—just make stuff and learn with each new project. ---