Get to know your Trendy dev

well dang I didn't expect this much detail in the response! thank you so much Josh, this is truly what I want to do and since I'm almost done with my degree (Bachelors in Communications with a minor is Psychology) I'd say that I am making progress. Gonna graduate May 2015, hope you are ready Josh :P

Also, come to think about it, I have been doing most of this without even considering it. I just thought that's what I should do to be a valued member of this fantastic community :)

well dang I didn't expect this much detail in the response! thank you so much Josh, this is truly what I want to do and since I'm almost done with my degree (Bachelors in Communications with a minor is Psychology) I'd say that I am making progress. Gonna graduate May 2015, hope you are ready Josh :P

Also, come to think about it, I have been doing most of this without even considering it. I just thought that's what I should do to be a valued member of this fantastic community :)

I noticed you are very outgoing and love talking with people, so I can tell you are going to be the best community manager ever (after Trendy's community managers of course) ;)

I noticed you are very outgoing and love talking with people, so I can tell you are going to be the best community manager ever (after Trendy's community managers of course) ;)

Thanks man :) you have been so helpful in this whole process and I hope you will continue to fight along side me. Thanks so much you really truly just made my day.

Thanks man :) you have been so helpful in this whole process and I hope you will continue to fight along side me.

Of course, I'm happy to help anyone and I'll gladly be your sidekick :P

Thanks so much you really truly just made my day.

Always nice to hear that ^^

Of course, I'm happy to help anyone and I'll gladly be your sidekick :P


Always nice to hear that ^^

Hey, not sidekick :P partner. You are the Han to my Luke...which makes Planadroit Chewie :P

Yay I'm Han, he's like the coolest non-jedi character :P

A random question that just crossed my mind for Josh and Laura: Do you guys ever get tired of reading ALL the comments on the forums?

Yay I'm Han, he's like the coolest non-jedi character :P

A random question that just crossed my mind for Josh and Laura: Do you guys ever get tired of reading ALL the comments on the forums?

This is actually a good question :)

I kinda doubt it since it's their job and they do this job because they like doing it.

I kinda doubt it since it's their job and they do this job because they like doing it.

That's true...I certainly enjoy reading the forum posts but it's possible that at some point it can just get to be a lot of info you know?

This thread is looking good, for my next summoning i shall call forth the Ice Trendys IT guy. What do Ice really do, i've never really known what his true job at Trendy is so please Ice come forth and answer my question.

Ohh boy my turn! I'm Trendy's IT Administrator/Department. While I do have backups in case of emergencies I am Trendy's entire IT department in a sense. But I do more than that! Lets give a quick overview of everything.

Because I'm an entire department I handle all the tasks and projects that would be handled by one. First off the helpdesk, yes I do simple tasks like helping installing software, installing print drivers, and deploying monitors but this is actually one of my rare tasks. I also help setup for events or special things like the live stream so those go as smooth as possible.

However more on the IT front, one of the first things I started doing when I came onsite was not only standardize stuff but resolve the root causes of problems for the office. Whether this was buying new hardware or creating new systems for developers to utilize! These projects on setting up new systems or processes are quite time consuming especially when you're a solo person in a sense. I need to figure out any issue and create solutions by myself. Which this leads into that I also handle the decision making of what to purchase for the office for something that will last us years not months. There have been some past poor decisions that have been made before I came onsite and we lost like 3 video cards of the same model in 2 months sort of deal. A costly lesson especially for a small company.

Now for the more fun stuff of my day that includes messing around with servers! We run a Windows Server 2008 environment with the majority of developers running on Windows 7. We of course for testing and other development purposes have Linux, Mac, Windows 8 and even two Windows XP machines. My server and networking fun includes maintaining backups (always important), setting up new hardware and services, and of course permissions! For servers we have a lot of our servers running on VMware's ESXi which is a technology I absolutely love. It not only saves on space and costs but gives you just so much control and reliability that makes server administration so much easier. Instead of building a new server all I need to do is a few clicks of a button and bam, new server. It's beautiful. Though we do have special servers for things like source code and file handling. On these I mainly spend my time giving out permissions and access to based on what a developer needs. Maintenance on the servers themselves and optimizing the network in general can be time consuming but in the gaming industry if something isn't working right or slower than it should be it can really hinder a departments performance. Lastly some other things are helping out with anything IT related in terms of our websites and or web servers if need be.

Technically that's my true job up there with a bunch of minor things left out but I do help with other things outside of that. Mainly for the community team side of things along with making sure I keep in touch what's going on with the actual community itself. I spend quite a bit of time reading people's posts and thoughts from all the forums we have here DD1 and DD2. Information gathering so I can understand how you guys see things and want things in your gaming experience. Internally includes helping community team figure out complex technical issues a player maybe having or just helping review on how something will sound before it goes out to the world. I try to keep myself available incase the community team needs another pair of eyes to look things over or to bounce thoughts and ideas off of outside of their team. Give insightful responses based on what I've seen and heard from you awesome players. Last but not least I am on the side a watcher of Ranked to make sure the bad players stay out. While this is now handled by the awesome community team instead of me I do like to keep my watchful eye on it from time to time.

Then of course I try to live stream when I can on the twitch channel but that's not part of the job, I just do that purely for fun. :)

Hopefully that answers your question though I was vague in parts of it and all over the place.

While I do have backups in case of emergencies I am Trendy's entire IT department in a sense. But I do more than that! Lets give a quick overview of everything.

Need another backup? ;)

That was a very indept explanation of what you do and really helped me see just how important your job truly is. I really appreciate this, thank you.

Short answer is to make games! Figure out what exactly you like doing and do it. Producing, programming, gameplay, art, sound, UX, back-end etc. There's a lot of specialties and tons of work to be done. I highly recommend focusing on a role to explore first. Here are some great game dev sites that should help you out:

http://www.steamdevdays.com/
http://gamasutra.com/
http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html
http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/

There is tons of content out there. Don't be afraid to purchase a book or read blogs. In fact, those are two things you should probably be doing frequently if game design is something you're interested in. Another thing you can do in your free time is play with some game engines:

https://unity3d.com/
https://www.unrealengine.com/news/february-2014-unreal-development-kit-udk-available-for-download

These are super fun to play with and extremely powerful. Both have free counterparts that you can tinker with. Building a good knowledge base before investing personal money is highly recommended.

Overall, game development is all about personality and attitude. You will work long hours. You will be stressed out sometimes. You will forget to eat. However, you will have fun. The result of a dev cycle is so rewarding it's hard to explain. Seeing the fans scatter about and cheer in excitement is enough to motivate anyone. You all make it worth it.

This helped so much, it seems like theres so much to it, it was hard to find a place to start but with this I'll be headed in the right direction. Thank you.

Yay I'm Han, he's like the coolest non-jedi character :P

A random question that just crossed my mind for Josh and Laura: Do you guys ever get tired of reading ALL the comments on the forums?

Like anyone, there are days where I don't want to work. All I want to do is play video games or absorb myself in a good book. I can't because I like having a job, and my family likes it when I have a job. Silly family.

On those days, it does get a little tiresome to read everything. But it's important to note that it's only tiresome because I'm feeling lazy or uninspired that day, not because the content of the post is low quality.

Thankfully, those days are very rare. Forums are relaxing for me. Being on a forum is what I do in my spare time. I love that I get paid to read and interact on forums. That's only a very small part of the job, but it's one of my favorite things about being a CM. (I also love charting community growth numbers. I like being able to see tangible results. It's a great feeling.)

Sidenote: Ice is an amazing asset to the community team. I'm incredibly thankful for his help.

I know he streams, but what else does Ice do to help you guys?

Does Ice make sure your drinks are cold? HAHAHAHHA +1

does ice make sure your drinks are cold? Hahahahha +1

boooooooooooooooooooooo :p

Does Ice make sure your drinks are cold? HAHAHAHHA +1

No, but he did install this really cool retractable cup holder on my desktop tower.

Ice wins the biggest post in the world contest. 눈_눈

No, but he did install this really cool retractable cup holder on my desktop tower.

well that's pretty cool :)

Ice wins the biggest post in the world contest. 눈_눈

ya that was quite long winded and probably as in depth as he could be :) he did a great job describing exactly what he does

well that's pretty cool :)

Not sure you got the joke.

Not sure you got the joke.

No I did not :P Thank you for the clarification draco

Big post

And that is why your my favorite.
Don't tell the others though

So I have another interesting question...how do you guys communicate throughout the office? Do you guys instant message using Skype? Do you send emails back and forth?