You may have some questions, and I might have answers. If I do, you’ll be the first to know.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. “What are you currently working on / Where do you currently work?”
A. I am currently working from home as an independent game developer. The project I am hard at work on is a love letter to the arcade-style bullet hell shooters of the 90’s, like Raiden, U.N. Squadron, and others. It is still early in development, but you can find updates about the project at my portfolio page.
Q. “I found out that you are autistic – how does that affect the way you work?”
A. I’d like to imagine that it doesn’t, but I can get distracted very easily by noises, people/objects in motion, and smells. I find that I am at my best when I am isolated from sight lines to other people and have noise-cancelling headphones, so working from home has been very helpful.
On the plus side, I have excellent logical, mathematical, and spacial reasoning, with a keen eye for composition and visual balance. Speaking or reading in code like LUA or C# comes more naturally than talking or reading a book. Reading is painfully slow for me, so I often benefit from video tutorials and walkthroughs than I do with non-audible or non-visual instruction.
Q. “How does autism affect they way you communicate?”
A. I speak English extremely well, and a little Spanish too. However, I am more fluent in visual scripting and code – part of the reason being I am dyslexic, and also I tend to think about language in terms that are more mathematical and visual than I do logically or systemically. I am more likely to draw you a picture to communicate what I’m thinking instead of trying to describe it verbally. I also have executive dysfunction, which (among other things) makes it difficult sometimes for me to stay within context in a conversation – some of which is evident in my blogging.
Q. “How long have you been making video games?”
A. I started my professional game career as a junior designer at a small company called Gray Matter Studios in the summer of 2003. While I was there I worked on several Call of Duty games, before moving on to working at independent studios like Offset Software, Monolith Productions, The Workshop Entertainment, and others. In 2014 I went to work at Crystal Dynamics, where I worked on two Tomb Raider games, and pre-production on the Marvel project. In 2017 I left the studio due for health reasons, and in 2018 I started work on my first independent game.
MACHINE FEELINGS - A BLOG BY NIM 