I got the pleasure of talking to Domm Young who is Icey Montys new developer. You can hear how Domm started coding and how he got involved with Icey Monty.

You can listen to the interview here: http://audioboo.fm/boos/1475212-train2game-radio-talks-to-student-domm-young

Or read the transcript below:

Hi I’m Domm Young, I live in Portsmouth and I’m on the Developer course with Train2Game.

Hiya Domm, how you doing mate?

I’m not bad thank you. Yourself?

I’m alright cheers bud. So tell me a bit about yourself then?

I came out of college when I was 19. I’ve always wanted to be a Developer. I worked on a lot of stuff during my college time. I did Visual Basic to start with, it’s not the language I had in mind but it’s the only one they taught there at the time. From then onwards I’ve just been doing jobs that I didn’t really want to do and in my own time I’ve just been working on my own thing, but about a year ago or so I decided to join the Train2Game course because I needed a little bit more structure and discipline in my learning and that’s basically what’s brought me to here, really.

What started off your want for coding and stuff like that?

It was basically all down to the fact that when I was younger and playing games and stuff, I always thought it would be cool to implement my own things and I always had an imaginative way of thinking. So when it come to the PC I started playing a game called Vice City at the time, I’m sure everyone knows that!

Indeed.

There was stuff you could do by changing some of the scripts like replacing some of the models in the game but you could also add predefined scripts that were already done, you could put them in to the game and see how they worked. I thought that was pretty cool. From then onwards it was just basically researching and seeing how that all worked.

So were you doing a lot of Game Mods and stuff like that during your college years?

A little bit. When I started learning Visual Basic I thought, I’m going to be learning Visual Basic through the three years I’m at college I might as well get comfortable with using that. Obviously it got constraints when it comes to making games like the fact you can’t, you know, it misses an API basically. I was playing around with that and making little games on screen. When I left college, I started learning C++ as a full time thing and then obviously I found out that the Train2Game course also teaches C++ so it works out really well.

Now you’re with Train2Game you said you were working on other projects. What are you working on now?

I joined a company called Icey Monty. I found Nick on the Train2Game forum and then through Nick I met John. Within that company we do a lot of client work, primarily, that’s mainly our focus. We put our clients first and then we work on our own thing during the evenings or at weekends. Most of the time it’s just ideas we throw about, we get together in a call, we write a few documents and then we see if we can implement it and then if it actually works out, we’ll go ahead and do it. If it seems like it’s going to be boring or it’s not going to work out we decide not to bother with it any more. We’ve got a few projects we are playing around with it at the moment, one being a sort of racing game where you start off and you’ve got to see how far you can get whilst being obstructed by various types of Zombies, it’s just an idea we are throwing out there but at the moment it’s all in the works.

Yeah. So is it a few time job for you now working with Icey Monty?

It is now, yeah. I worked in retail, prior and then I got the chance to join Icey Monty, doing something I really like doing and no one would turn that down.

That’s gotta be a bit of a relief hasn’t it!

Yeah exactly. I’ve been working in jobs I hate for most of my life, since I left college. I’ve worked in stuff like Warehouses and Call Centers and Retail and all that sort of stuff. As soon as I heard Icey Monty were interviewing, I inquired more about it and managed to get hooked up with an interview, that’s where I met John, and it happened straight away. He asked within a couple of days if I wanted to start and I handed in my notice at work.

Excellent. So what was it you think they liked about you so much then?

It was more the drive. I didn’t care how much it was more the fact I wanted to do what I like doing and that’s all I really cared about. As soon as Nick told me they were looking for someone to be a developer for them, he told me what they were using like Unity and C# and stuff. Straight away I started getting straight on to it, started learning Unity, obviously told him about it and both of them were quite shocked about the drive that I had. So I think that played a big part in the reason why I got the job.

Excellent so with this full time job then you can pay the bills alright then?

Yeah, it’s fine. I am happy as long as I can make ends meet and do what I love doing really.

You sound like you’ve got a real love of all things code.

Yeah, that’s right, yeah. Like I said, it’s the only thing I ever wanted to do and I’m sure it’s the only thing I’ll ever want to do.

Excellent. So what are your ambitions to move on to or go forward to in the future?

Icey Monty is my first ever game industry job, working with programmers full time so I hope to stick with those guys. Working with John and Nick is really laid back, you couldn’t ask for a better set of managers to be honest with you.

Excellent! So I think that’s all we’ve got time for today Domm. So thank you very much for your time.

Not a problem at all. Thanks for having me!

My pleasure.