Hey, y’all!
I want to start this by saying hello to everyone. My name is Oscar and I’ve been working as a programmer on Killmonday for about half a year now. My work has been entirely on the new project, which I don’t think has been announced yet so I can’t tell you much about it. But it is going to be amazing of course, you have fun things to look forward to.
Working with games is something that I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. I’ve always loved playing games and getting immersed in adventures and I used to have lots of ideas of how games I could create when I grew up. But as it often happens when we grow up, dreams and passions fade. When I got to the point in life where I had to choose a career path I didn’t consider game development as a realistic option. At that time I thought it sounded too much like a dream job, I didn’t know anything about how to make games, coding, or anything of the sort, I also assumed there were few job openings. Instead, I started studying something called System Science, which had a little bit of programming but was mostly focused on companies and business. I liked the classes that had programming, but I felt completely uninterested in everything related to business. I’ve come to realize that I’m a very motivation-dependent person: if I find something fun or interesting I have an easy time learning about it, but if I don’t feel any interest in something I find it very hard to force myself to learn. My lack of motivation led to my grades getting bad and I eventually decided that I had to drop out. At that time I was possibly at the lowest point of my life. I really hate giving up and I’ve always been very hard on myself when I don’t meet my own or others’ expectations. I felt like a complete failure and didn’t have much hope of achieving anything.
One day I got a call from my sister. She had found an education focused solely on Game Development and thought it might interest me. I knew that game development was the thing I really wanted to do, so I forced myself to give it a try. I decided to put my focus into programming because it’s a lot about problem-solving and that has always stimulated me. Jumping into this education I pretty much expected to fail again (I was a very pessimistic person back then), but 3 years later I got my bachelor’s degree in game programming and a year after that I landed a job for an amazing little company called Killmonday Games.
The moral of the story; follow your own interests and desires when you decide what you want to do with your life. Inner motivation is a very powerful force, which can make you achieve things your brain didn’t think you could. Also, don’t be too afraid of failing. Failure is an important part of life, like it or not. It can sting, sometimes really bad, but it also teaches you things.
The more you fail, the more you learn.
The more you learn, the smarter you get.
The smarter you get, the more you will succeed.
Failing repeatedly is the road to success.
/ OSCAR
Random Fact:
Been in KMG since: 2020
Title: Game programmer
Favorite game: Super difficult question, but I think I will go with Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. That game just has everything for me: a big open world with lots of things to do, interesting characters that feel like real persons, lots of monsters to slay.
Favorite program to work in: Unity. To be honest I haven’t really worked much in any other game engine yet.
Favorite movie: The Lord of the rings trilogy.
Favorite food: Tacos
Favorite music genre: Power/Symphonic metal. Music is probably my biggest interest apart from video games, I really miss going to concerts (due to covid).
Favorite book: A Song of Ice and Fire series. I’m hoping Winds of Winter will be finished this decade.
Working right now on: The new game! 🦊

What is a GAME PROGRAMMER?
A game programmer is someone who primarily develops codebases for video games. A video game may include advanced physics, artificial intelligence, 3D graphics, digitized sound, complex strategy, and much more. And each aspect of the game can consume all of one programmer’s time and, in many cases, there is a need for several programmers to work on one game.
Game programming has many different subcategories like Game engine, UI, AI, and Sound. All of which fall under the term “Game programmer”. Programmers may specialize in one area of those subcategories. For smaller companies like Killmonday Games where there is not a lot of game programmers, you as a programmer often have mixed tasks and are working in all of the subcategories. You do not become as specialized in a specific area as if you worked in a larger company with more programmers.
A game programmer should not be confused with a game designer, who works on game design.