um, currently, I'm a lead programmer at W B games Avalanche studio in Salt Lake City. Um, you know, I've been working in video games for almost 20 years now, Um, are pretty plus years now, and, you know, so it all started well, way back when I was in India, in in high school and playing video games. Um, on Then after that, you know, got into computer science, uh, came up here to the U S. To do my masters in computer science at Utah State University. Uh, since then, I've been mostly working in video games. Uh, my first couple of years, I've worked for a defense contractor, but, uh, that, uh, that lasted a very short and got into games which I had always wanted to, and I've been doing that for a long time now, eso that's That's sort of the the broad story I've worked in, uh, companies from Microsoft to see a game are, uh, take two games and country, you know, with one brother games earlier. I was also with Walt Disney. So I've worked with some of the most creative minds in the world. So it's been an amazing journey. Um You know, the interesting thing to note with the video games industry is that it is a very volatile, hit based industry. And, you know, studios come and go very quickly. Are the tender transition a lot? So even with this studio that I'm with right now, we've been with two employers. My previous studio was also the same way we got. You know, it was a independent studio. I bought up by one company, sold to another company, then shut down. So, uh, you know, this is this'll is the way it works. So, uh, those are the sort of highlights off my story.

So, as lead software engineer, you know, you work on and specifically in games, you know, different software industries have different needs from programmers for us. Uh, in the video games industry, you work not just on software, but also on on design. You also worked with ah, lot of artists. Uh, basically, as a programmer, you have two rules. One is to actually write some software, and the other is as a service provider for artists so that they can do their jobs. And you provide tools you provide, you know, tech support sometimes. Um, so that's the gamut of the work. Um, with designers, you work through through ideas that they have trying to translate those into, uh, sound technical, uh, concepts. And sometimes you have to do a little push and pull on the design team. Make sure that you know things that they're proposing are actually doable and reasonable. And, you know, uh, time frames are always a big, uh, big aspect in video games, because when the deadline is is here, it's here. You have to ship a game. So, uh, you know, uh, have been mostly involved in making systems. Uh, I have worked with AI systems and camera systems and multiplayer game systems. Um, you know, some of the other things that have done are also systems and tools. There are people who work on on animation, etcetera. So there's there's lots off. There's a wide variety of work that you do work hours. Um, generally, the industry is known for ah, lot of work hours, you know, depending on how well the studios managed, uh, sometimes where covers are insane. I've worked, uh, you know, over time, from eight. In the morning to three in the morning, Uh, for six months in a row at one studio, Uh, you know where I practically never saw my family other than when they were asleep to, You know, in this in my kind of job where, you know, we're but much better manage studio we've done. We've done long hours at times, but never to that intensity and degree. So, you know, typically, what happens is we have, uh, off about six weeks prints. We try to get things done towards the end of that. You know, sometimes you end up doing some extra hours to keep on track on. Then then it comes to shipping time where, you know, we really have to get things done. And at that point, sometimes hours get pretty crazy. You know, you end up working well into the night, sometimes through the night. But all in all, you know, it's a very rewarding industry toe working because you're doing very creative stuff you're working with, you know, very creative minds on, and you're always at the forefront of technology. So it's it's an interesting It's an interesting industry to work for. Um, most off the industry, there's not very much travel other than some conferences. You know, most people, you know work at work, you know, with the pandemic, uh, adopted to working from home. It's been a little bit of ah, um uphill climb. But, you know, things have settled and we're working quite well from home now, so

So, really, the challenges in the game industry are trying to, uh, fit everything into the box, you know, and that statement is very broad in terms off, you know, just simply getting the right amount of performance out of your software so that it can run in a good frame rate. You know, nobody likes games that struggle to keep up frame rate are, you know, have long load times are, you know, things like that s oh, that's that's one aspect of it. Three other aspect of it is trying to fit three expectations off the end user into a box. You know, uh, you're getting players want everything under the stars, right? But you can't. You can't do that in a time frame, uh, and also ship a product Similarly game designers want, uh, you know, they have lots of aspirations for the game. We should do this. We should do that right. And trying to figure out what is what is possible. Also, what is possible in the time frame. What is reasonable in terms off getting something toe work with a certain amount of performance and then other, uh, other challenges include just sometimes you have to finding solutions, you know, if they want, uh, um area with 100,000 people in it, right? And you want that toe render at frame rate. Sometimes you have to find creative solutions to make it work, because that's the only thing that that will work, right? So there's also that aspect off. How how do we create a engineer solutions that that give the the end user the designer what they want but still make it work. So those air those of the, you know, key challenges really is trying to fit all our expectations in a box.