Train2Game Radio interviewed Matthew Greenwood, the developer for Road Hog Games. He tells us his coding experience and how he got together with Road Hog Games.
You can follow Road Hog Games on Facebook here or on twitter @roadhoggames
You can listen to the interview here: http://audioboo.fm/boos/1118876-train2game-student-matthew-greenwood-talks-to-mark-t2g-radio
Or read the transcript below:
Hey I’m Matthew Greenwood, I’m from Surrey and I’m doing the Developer course with Train2Game.
Hello Matthew, how you doing?
I’m not to bad
So tell me what’s your story? What are the past experiences that have shaped your life?
Right well from a very young age I have kind of been forced, as it were, in to programming. When most people were getting their first CD’s, I got my very first Spectrum +2, 48k BASIC and if ever I wanted to do anything I have always had to write it myself. Pretty much had to grow up and effectively write my own things since I was about 8 years old and of course at that age, games. Everyone else was playing Super Mario Brothers and I was playing my own version of it.
So you have always been making games then and have always been interested in that?
Yeah, I started off at a young age playing games and making my own versions of them. I kind of got more in to developing websites and doing all the background server programming stuff for various different companies. I’ve pretty much been solely into programming really since a very young age.
What is it you do for a living now?
I’m actually a software engineer for a brand management company. We do an online brand management system for the likes of various big companies.
Do you think that helps your game development at all or is it a completely different sort of thing that you have to keep swapping between?
Programming wise, most of it is very similar. The work that I do in the actual Train2Game course has actually helped me greatly with a lot of new stuff that I have had to take on at work. It’s kinda helped both ways
What is the most dramatic and/or exciting thing you have done in your life?
I think the biggest thing so far is attending the Game Jam with Train2Game.
Is that the most recent one, the one with Microsoft?
Yeah that was the World Record attempt.
Yeah, how did you find that?
That was an absolute nightmare! It was brilliant fun, I met lots of great people but I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I was pretty much behind that computer non stop. For the few times I did leave the computer I had a few people staring at me because my eyes were just getting redder and redder over the weekend.
So was it at the Game Jam you met the other people of Road Hog or was that a different way you got together?
Yeah, Terry and Gareth were both part of the same team for the Game Jam, Team 46, and we came up with a game called Monumental but we never actually had an artist at all during the Game Jam, so we spent most of the time getting photos off Google I think it was and various other places. We became really good friends and now we are off to do this and I think either Gareth or Terry found Amy, who is now our resident artist and it’s helped us greatly in lots of ways for the new game.
Excellent. So finally, what is your greatest ambition for your career. Where do you want to go with it?
That’s a big one. I think I would actually like to be able to work for myself and to be able to pick and choose what sorts of projects I want to work on rather than having to work on everything because you need the money in the door.
Excellent! Well thank you very much for your time Matthew!
Thank you very much.
Gaming charity SpecialEffect are gathering members of the UK games industry to enter the British 10K charity run, and inviting Train2Game students to join in.
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