Meet Tere!

We have SO MANY wonderful team members at Teravision Games and we’d love for you to get to meet them! This month, we’d love to introduce you to Tere!

What’s your role at Teravision Games?

I’m a Product Manager, but I’ve been in QA, Project Management, and briefly in Programming.

In fact, I started coding 7 years ago, and we all realized quickly that it wasn’t my forte.

I used to think that my passion was Game Design, so I ‘aimed’ my career towards that direction, and realized somewhere along the way that I like shaping products and brands based on real user data.

So that’s what I do.

It’s one of the many wonderful things about working in Teravision Games, everyone in the team has helped me craft my own path and find the place where I fit best by giving me opportunities to grow and learn along the way.

What was the first game you ever played?

My mom and dad were hardcore video game fans when I was a little girl, and when my mom was pregnant with me she spent countless hours playing Super Mario Bros and Dr. Mario on our NES.

So I guess I was playing NES before I was born!

The first game I do remember playing though was Dr. Mario for NES.

My mom, my dad, and I would take turns playing, and we had to pass the controller whenever one of us lost.

To this day I like to remind my parents that they only let me play like 5 seconds before I lost and they spent hours playing (while I anxiously waited) because they were pros at it. I think this is some kind of child punishment.

But we still have Dr. Mario and Super Mario Bros tournaments at home, and now the tables have turned!

And, just between us, now that I’m a mom, I’m kind of using their technique and letting my son play 5 seconds before losing and having to give me the controller.

It’s very effective!

And I hope that the first game he remembers playing is either Splatoon 2 or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

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

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Hands down. (Kind of a spoiler from the previous question)

A few years ago I would have said The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but Breath of the Wild has gone above and beyond to improve upon its predecessor.

I like a lot of games, but mostly, I like games that treat gamers as capable players, you know, old school style.

Long FTUX where they explain every single detail bore me to my core, I’m more of a “jump to the action and learn by doing” kind of player.

And that is one of the many, many, many, many wonderful things Breath of The Wild has: an impeccable First Time User Experience.

It also constantly surprises new and returning players with new experiences, you know, like riding the freaking God of the Mountain!

Every puzzle has multiple solutions, and whenever you solve something you feel like a genius!

Really, the feeling of self-accomplishment by beating this game is at a whole new level! And I still get it every new time I’ve beaten it.

I just can’t get enough of it… and I’ve been playing it over and over again for 3 years and counting!

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

Ha! If you could get a peek at my Spotify playlist it’s a messy combination of kids music, weird music my son plays, and podcasts, so I’m just not going to say what song is the most played there (ahem… Baby Shark… ahem)

But, when I’m working I usually listen to one of two things:

-Video game or marketing podcasts, my favorite usually changes from one week to the next, but “What’s Good Games” and “Start With Why” are the ones I keep coming back to the most.

-The Risk of Rain OST whenever I need to mega concentrate. I’m not a particular fan of Risk of Rain, although I don’t dislike it, I’ve played it several times don’t get me wrong. But the soundtrack has this Indie game music vibe that your brain syncs with immediately and gets into super focus mode.

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

-Google Docs: I know it’s basic, but I use it for everything, from Diagram Flows to designs to data analysis.

-Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator: I’m not an artist but I do a lot of comps and wireframes. A lot, a lot! And I’ve tried many wireframe tools, but of course nothing is as flexible as having a blank canvas and the right elements to give you full freedom!

-Trello: I organize my life in Trello, and my work as well. I even take meeting notes in Trello!

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

I won’t tell you one of the best. I’ll tell you the absolute best.

We were developing a sandbox open-world multiplayer game, in which the player had some freedom, the avatars could fly, plant garden, build houses, and get into a car.

It was really cool.

To ride the car, you had to go into these special highways, and the mobility in the car was very limited.

I was QA lead at the time, so my job was to find bugs, and this game was especially fun to test most of the time.

Anyway, I was riding these cars and I got a bug in which I got it out of the highway, and into the sky!

So, I was flying… in a car… throughout the whole game!

When it comes to bugs, it can’t get more fun than that!

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

In my previous job I had to design, code, and produce a game with no experience, so it was kind of a whirlwind of stress and poorly built and designed games.

Most of the technical skills I got from that job I had to relearn at Teravision Games.

Before that, I used to work in the Oil and Gas industry, and it was the best thing that could happen to me because it cemented my want for a different way to work and to live.

It taught me that I’m not cut for a typical 9 to 5, where you punch your card, work with little passion, and head back home to do it all again tomorrow.

I’m not saying that no one in the Oil and Gas industry has no passion as both of my parents loved their jobs in that industry and were pretty happy with it, but you do get many sad faces and many people who don’t want to grow beyond their paycheck.

That experience helped me understand that the place I want to work with is full of passionate people who love what they do and who work as a team to get it done.

I firmly believe that if I hadn’t learned that about myself at the time, I wouldn’t have found the unique and amazing studio that Teravision Games is.