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Chuckp2 has been geniusing up Gaia’s Flash development for more than four years now, starting from old-school features like Cinemas (RIP) and Rally. The latest feather in his programming cap is Monster Galaxy, Gaia’s addictive new monster-battling game. We harassed him for answers, and he was courteous enough to oblige:
- You've been with Gaia a while now. How'd you wind up here? What attracted you about the job?
I have been here for 4.5 years, which is a really long time in our line of work. I joined the team as a Flash Developer and immediately started working on some pretty fun projects. I had a background in gaming (porting casino games to the web and building avatar systems for dating sites). That experience has been invaluable in my work here at Gaia. In my interview, I got a preview of the upcoming Gaia Cinemas feature and right away I knew I wanted to work with this group of creative and talented group. So my first project was adding the emotes (popcorn, brain freeze, laser etc) into the Gaia Cinemas which seems like a really long time ago when I think about it!
Prior to Monster Galaxy, what were some of the major Gaia features you worked on?
The major features I've worked on at Gaia were the Cinemas projects, Rally and the Gaia Aquarium. It was always so much fun building for the Gaia audience. The passionate user base drives better products and forces you as a developer to really try and deliver a high quality experience. We definitely missed the mark sometimes but thanks to the reliably honest feedback in forums, we always knew EXACTLY what we got wrong and why.
What's been the biggest challenge you've faced while working on Monster Galaxy?
The biggest challenge we've had on Monster Galaxy has been trying to keep up with the rich and compelling list of ideas and features we want to implement. We have a huge vision for Monster Galaxy and I wish we could just do everything at once. But we have to be practical in terms of the resources we have and the amount of time it takes to build new features.
Years of free lunches have taken their toll on chuckp2's physique.
What are you most proud of about the game? Anything just turn out way better than you expected?
I would say that I'm most proud of our ability as developers to provide a nice "canvas" for our artists/writers. Make no mistake; this game is fun, entertaining and addictive because of our creative team. Our goal on the technical side was to simply provide the container for their imagination. I really hope that we were able to achieve that.
The people must know: do you have a personal favorite Moga? What did you name it?
I do have a favorite and it's Burger. I named mine RoyaleWithCheese.
