Story

I'm Willem. Hi.

It's pronounced the same as Villain, only with an 'm' instead of an 'n'. This has no bearing on my character alignment..

I grew up in Breërivier in the Western Cape of South Africa, in an area known to tourists as the wine route; ~50 miles of vineyards and grapes. Grapes aren't very social; as a child I failed to appreciate the isolation and quiet beauty of the place. I spent much of my free time (in between chores and more studies than I could care for) playing with the dog, swinging sticks around like a ninja, or mountain-biking all over the place.. but most of my time was consumed by my indulgence in computer games.

Studies after school naturally leaned towards the field of computing. Software Engineering seemed the most obvious challenge to take on, and also the most direct path to making games. Once two years of studies were done and dusted, I realised that the state of the game development industry in SA left a lot to the imagination. This and a late-teen rebellion at the age of 20 saw me board a plane to the UK in search of greener pastures.

After the initial two years of saving up, I enrolled for BSc studies. During my first year at UeL, I pestered one of the best lecturers I've ever had for more challenging problems to solve, as the assignments we were assigned (given my previous studies) were not. The pestering somehow led to an introduction to Slider Studio where I found myself working as a Software Engineer for 5 years.

Slider Studio was a small architectural practice looking to push adoption of modern-day computing techniques and technologies in the field of architecture. During my time with Slider, I was tasked with assisting ENOISE in the development of a PHP framework which we then used for in-house development of web-applications.

When my focus shifted back to studies on the MSc course, there was a mutual agreement between Slider and ENOISE that my availability would better match the working environment ENOISE could offer, and I joined the ranks of ENOISE. I worked remotely in between lectures and coursework assignments from wherever my laptop and I happened to be at the time; it was glorious.

Aim

The aim is simple: spend some years making computer games. I can see myself working on gameplay scripting and AI more than anything else. I enjoy playing with rendering and shaders. I get some gratification from hours (if not days) of research and refactoring code to get that extra x% of performance out of it. I also enjoy building entire "eco-systems" from scratch and watch lots of intricate bits of code play nice together. That said, AI and gameplay remain the main attraction. I am intrigued by human-computer interaction, and also the effect it has on the human psyche. Escapism is something I have first-hand experience with; this and simply how humans think fascinate me. I hope to explore this field further someday, but first .. game making.

Getting There

I can see the immense value in working as part of a team for an established game development studio. An internship where I can learn and experience game development first-hand would be ideal. I also believe that I would be very valuable to anyone willing to offer me such a position. It seems to be the logical follow-on from the MSc studies.

While studying, I'm also working part-time for ENOISE, a web host and developer. ENOISE pushes the envelope on web development and has adopted JavaScript, both server-side and client-side as primary medium. We rely heavily on automation, test-driven development (to largely automate QA) and automated build systems. We follow best practice (when not defining it) and code for performance. We're accustomed to coding to the PERL coding standard when we need to .. a pain to get used to, but results in very high quality code. All this means that I have much to learn here, and am in a position to explore and push the boundaries of JS which shows more and more potential the better you get to know it. When you take a step back and look at the shift towards mobile gaming this is perhaps a perfect place for me to be right now. There is also the remote working perk; incredibly hard to beat as I intend to travel in the not so distant future..

Hobbies & Interests

In between full-time studies and working part-time (which doesn't leave much over), I enjoy bouldering/rock-climbing for working off the excess physical energy which doesn't seem to go anywhere while coding. I recently stopped dancing salsa, which there is thankfully no footage of.. this one of a few regular attempts to push boundaries beyond my own comfort-zone. Ice-skating went better..

I also attend some meetups which relate closely to my coding interests and then some others, like the MCM (Movie Comic Media) Expo, which don't .. but there I get to be a hero for a weekend every 6 months or so. ..or a villain; I don't fear the dark side.. they usually have some games on pre-release demo there as well.

Up until now, whenever I got a break and financial demands allowed it, I holiday time in South Africa with family and friends.. and sun and animals and open spaces. ..and sun.
Going forward, I'll likely start travelling the world and start ticking places off my bucket-list iteniary.

Ever since my first through-the-night session with NES games, I've been traversing the gaming scene throughout the years, mostly getting stuck on RTS, FPS and RPG titles. I'm an avid PC gamer, and leave consoles for racing and beat-em-up titles (simply can't aim with thumbs, sorry). Most recently, Fallout 4 claimed almost 3 weeks of my life. War .. war never changes.