When I was a kid, no one in my family worked with computers, but both my father and grandfather were early adopters. I’ve had a PC at home for as long as I can remember. My father encouraged me to explore it as a hobby, and together we learned how to fix it, reinstall the OS, and troubleshoot issues.
If I had to pinpoint what sparked my love for video games, it would be the set of 4 floppy disks containing a pirate version of The Secret of Monkey Island that somehow ended up in my home. As a kid who loved to read, the concept of an interactive story captivated me far more than the action-packed games I had briefly and badly played up to that point.
During those early days, I was drawn to games with strong narratives. I preferred the more “serious” adventure games from Sierra, such as Laura Bow, Police Quest, and Gabriel Knight, over the comical masterpieces from LucasArts (though Loom and Fate of Atlantis are among my all-time favorites). On the console side, my genre of choice was Japanese action RPGs, which came to Spain in impressive editions: Illusion of Time, Secret of Evermore, and Terranigma.
In high school I discovered the world of pen and paper role-playing games and I drifted a bit away of video games for a while, spending my free time at home reading rule books, creating character backstories or preparing adventures to GM.
I was quite sure that I wanted to study something to do with computers. I studied Engineering in Computer Science at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. I have very fond memories of that time, and was quite an active member of the PLUG (our Linux User Group). However, I always kept a Windows boot at hand, in order to play PC games.
In my second year, I discovered a game that reignited my passion for video games and played a significant role in my desire to pursue a career in game development: Star Wars Galaxies. As a role player, the concept of inhabiting a virtual world was incredibly compelling and I found myself building a quite profitable armorsmithing business in the FarStar-EU server. Since then, the economy of virtual worlds has fascinated me, likely contributing to my strong interest in free-to-play games.
After Galaxies, I delved in most of the big games on the booming MMO genre: Dark Age of Camelot, EverQuest 2, City of Heroes, EVE Online, Guild Wars and, of course, World of Warcraft (although I didn’t get hooked until some years later, with the release of Wrath of the Lich King).
During my final year of the degree, I befriended the guys that were doing a rather funny video game show in the local radio station, Game Over. Eventually, I became a collaborator on the show for three years.
The video game scene in Spain had started to resurface by then. Pyro Studios was very successful and my university launched a Masters Degree a couple of years earlier. I decided to give it a shot and see if I could get a job programming video games. After completing the masters I landed a position at Digital Legends, I suspect because of my Linux and Python knowledge, but I am not ashamed of it.
I learned a lot in my time at Digital Legends working first with Nokia and N-Gage and then being exposed to a lot of platforms during the mobile explosion. Many disappear quickly, but I had the opportunity to see the rise of the iPhone (and my company was featured on a Keynote) and Android.
After 7 years at Digital Legends I felt the need for something new and I wanted to work abroad. Remedy was testing the waters in iOS, and they offered me the chance to come and work in Finland with a team of very experienced mobile developers.
I worked on two unreleased mobile projects at Remedy. While it was a great place to work, my time there was shorter than I expected because they shifted focus away from mobile development. Instead of jumping to AAA, I applied to Supercell who, at that point, were seeking for a programmer with Android experience for the Hay Day team.
To be continued…