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We have a ton of amazing people at Teravision Games and we’d love for you to get to meet them! This month, we’d love to introduce you to Nico!

What’s your role at Teravision Games?

Currently, I am a Lead Developer on one of our projects and one of the Lead Programmers in the studio here in Bogotá (Colombia).

What was the first game you ever played? 

The first game that I played was Circus Charlie (NES). When I was a kid, I spent tons of hours with my mom in front of the TV playing that game and trying to complete the Horse Stage. It was very difficult for a 5-year-old kid!

And what’s your favorite game, ever? Ever ever ever, you can only pick one.

I have a lot of favorite games, depending on their category such as: Original Soundtrack, Mechanics, Hours of playing, Narrative, etc. But there’s only one game that inspired me to be part of the video game industry as a developer: Metal Gear Solid (PlayStation). 

I played this game when I was thirteen years old, and when I had my encounter with Psycho Mantis breaking the fourth wall, I learned that a videogame is not just a piece of software to enable you to have fun, but it can also be a bridge to communicate emotions, tell you a magnificent story and it can connect all of that with the player. The player as an individual can be one of the main characters in any story.

What’s your favorite soundtrack to listen to while you’re working?

As a programmer, I love to hear music that reminds me “What games let me a personal mark to remember them?” That’s why I usually listen to game OSTs such as Child Of Light OST (by Coeur de Pirate), or Ori & The Blind Forest OST (by Gareth Coker). But in other situations, I like to hear music that challenges me to be fast and very productive, and rock & metal works great for that, such as Dragonforce, The Offspring or Tool.

What are three tools of the trade you couldn’t do your job without?

Visual Studio is mandatory in the programming area. Then, Unreal Engine 4 as our main Game Engine to develop our games. And finally, I like to use Discord to be in touch with any member of the team, when I need them or they need me.

What’s one of the best bugs you’ve ever seen in a game you helped make?

On my first job, I was the only programmer in the company, and I was helping to create a 2D Mobile Game where a monkey on an island had to survive a lot of piranha waves. There were a lot of piranha types, but one of them, when you hit it (by tapping on the enemy), it changed its speed to be faster than usual. Sometimes, when you tapped it, the piranha went out of the water boundaries, following a random direction or it collided with other enemies and went out of the screen. With all of that, I learned that any random behavior has to be controlled – game boundaries are very important to avoid that.

What’s something you learned at a previous job that’s helped you with making games at Teravision Games?

The most valuable thing that I learned in previous jobs was to know the importance of creating a great User Experience to make something fun, but most of all: the game has to be explained by itself. Tutorials are great, no doubt about it, but if your game can be explained by itself without any external person teaching you, and, if the player discovers the mechanics by themself, the game is communicating with you directly, letting you be part of it.