Happy Monday, pizzas!
We’ve got another Meet the Devs post for you! Our newest pizza, Shawn, sits down and gives us some much-needed information on the rebel base.
Question: How did you end up getting into game development?
Shawn: I was looking for a summer job while I was saving up money to try and go to film school and my buddy sent me a link to apply for a testing job on the Madden Football team at EA. I ended up working (a lot) that summer and saw that the games industry had a lot of similarities to the film industry and some of my Producers at the time encouraged me to stick it out in games. After a couple years at EA in the QA department I finally got a chance to join Production at Konami in the early 2000s. It’s been quite the ride :).
Question: When did you start working on mobile games?
Shawn: I got into mobile in 2011 as a long time EP/Mentor of mine had an opening at Glu Mobile he wanted to bring me in for. I got to work with a super talented Glu team based out of Moscow and started doing Live Ops for a game called “Bug Village” (one of the first 3D casual builder games) and was the Lead Producer for the “Frontline Commando” franchise. I’ve worked on a number of titles since then but some of the highlights are joining a smaller mobile team at Konami building “Swords and Poker Adventures” and then working on “Criminal Empire” with a bunch of the Pizza Club Games team at Iron Tiger Studios.
Question: What is your all-time favorite mobile game?
Shawn: I have played the most Marvel Strike Force but it’s purely out of my love of the MCU and a few good friends/coworkers that kept me playing. In terms of more traditional gameplay, probably Clash Royale. At one of my companies we went as far as to print stickers up that you’d earn whenever you took out a Sparky deck (back when Sparky was borderline cheese). I’ve played a ton of Candy Crush over the years too, especially on long flights as they always had decent offline support. So probably a 3-way tie between those. (Looks over shoulder at the Pizza Founders) and of course Raid Boss is the greatest game of all time in any format, ever! Sorry Tic Tac Toe, Monopoly, and Hide and Seek your time is up!
Question: What is your all-time favorite video game (non-mobile)?
Shawn: This is tough, I’ve definitely played the most World of Warcraft and I respect it’s longevity and how it’s adapted over the years. Honorable mention would go to Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (my favorite game from that old school era) and the NBA 2K Franchise (specifically the MyPlayer mode as I’m a huge NBA fan and like their attempts to make an interesting single player narrative). Most recently the Spiderman series on PlayStation has been a delight for me (the only games I’ve platinumed on the system). I was also a huge fan of the original Bioshock on Xbox 360. I refuse to name just one because the more time I spend thinking about this the more I want to add in. Final honorable mentions Final Fantasy Tactics, Rock Band series, Animal Crossing series and Tecmo Super Bowl for the NES :).
Question: What is the next thing you’re most looking forward to for Raid Boss?
Shawn: As a coworker/dev, helping the team out in whatever ways I can, I’ve worked with a bunch of the team in previous jobs and companies and they are all amazing people. As a player, getting into more Alliance content (working my way deeper into the campaign). As a Producer/Product Manager, working with design to think of features and improvements to build more Event content for players!
Thanks for taking the time to let us get to know you a bit better, Shawn! And thanks to all you pizzas out there for following our journey and playing Raid Boss!
Stay cheesy pepperoni!