Happy Friday, RoboCo Enthusiasts!
It’s no secret that game development is a team-effort. Games like Fortnite and Pokémon have hundreds of developers, each focused on unique aspects of the game. RoboCo’s team is a bit on the smaller side, but we’re no less mighty!
Some of these names you may recognize from previous Dev Blogs or Inside RoboCo Episodes. Others you may have never heard before. Regardless, RoboCo wouldn’t be where it is today without their contributions and exceptional hard work, so make sure you give them a (virtual) round of applause.
So, without further ado, here’s our development team!
CURRENT DEVELOPMENT TEAM
Kenny Green – Producer
Ever the competitor, Kenny doesn’t back down from a challenge. He enjoys learning from each project and sharing those lessons with new teams. You might even catch him occasionally wearing his varsity e-sports jersey while leading a standup.
Luke Jayapalan – Lead Game Designer
Once upon a time, Luke, a game designer, Joe, a UX/UI designer, Jon, a game engineer, and Lynden, a 3-D artist, were assembled and asked to pitch and prototype an ambitious STEM learning game in VR that could appeal to both EDU and general game-playing audiences. This became RoboCo. It’s been a wild ride ever since, full of new and interesting design challenges every day. Luke has been blessed to have so many skilled people come together to build the little robot sandbox game that could.
Joe Horan – UX/UI and Challenge Designer
Joe makes games.
Alan Martin – Challenge Designer
Driven by the lasting impression that games can leave on players, Alan loves collaborating across roles to craft engaging experiences. If not designing games, he can be found under a blanket or at a heavy metal concert.
Carter Williams – Game Engineer
Carter enjoys making simple games. He thinks learning is fun and that multiplayer and coop games have incredible potential as an art form. In his spare time, Carter likes being bad at hard video games.
Nick Curto – Game Engineer
Nick is passionate about games and the good they can do. He likes group bike rides, reading non-fiction, and rhythm games. Nick is a golf enthusiast but wishes the sport was more action-packed.
Luis Garcia Remes – Game Engineer
Luis is an avid gamer and game engineer. He enjoys working on gameplay and AI. He also enjoys playing and designing board games/card games.
Demetri Sofides – 3D Artist
Demetri wants to use video games to make complex topics engaging and accessible. He worked at a VR studio before coming to Filament, and spends his free time sketching concept art and poring over word etymologies.
Josh Bartels – Audio and Video Director
What does photosynthesis sound like? What music should accompany virtual reality robots? These are the kind of questions Josh creatively answers as Sound Designer and Music Composer. From 1920’s ragtime, to futuristic space, he provides all the acoustic color! He also produces RoboCo’s trailers!
Austin Smythe – QA Lead
Austin is a UW-Stout graduate that comes to Filament from Activision Blizzard. As a quality assurance analyst, Austin has the privilege to play games and type a lot!
Georgia Adkins – QA Analyst
Georgia developed a keen interest in education while teaching English overseas before ultimately venturing into the field of educational games. She assists in testing various projects and values the joy and challenge in attempting to break things.
Brian Czech – QA Analyst
Brian has been doing software QA since 2007. He tested Epic’s CVIS for 5 years before making the switch to Filament in 2013. In his free time he enjoys biking, canoeing, travelling, reading, trying new beers, and relaxing with his wife, son, and dog.
FORMER ROBOCO DEVELOPERS
We’ve been working on RoboCo for a while! Although the folks below are not working on RoboCo right now, having moved to other cool projects at the studio or other studios, we want to recognize their awesome contributions as part of RoboCo’s long history!
Liam Craffey – Producer
Jon Kieffer – Game Engineer
Autumn Beauchesne – Game Engineer
Mark Savage – Additional Engineering
Megan Tyler – 3D Artist
Flora Yu – 3D Artist
Meghan Connor – 3D Artist
Lynden Fenske – Additional 3D Art
Alex Yaeger – 2D Artist
Roma Jensen – Additional 2D Art
Nell Farrell – QA Analyst
Abraham Linsenmayer – QA Analyst
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
Great games aren’t solely the product of great developers. To make a game of this scope, you also need a team of professional marketers, sales reps, executives, managers and more. Every member of Filament Games has contributed to RoboCo’s development, whether it’s helping secure sponsorships, drafting content for social media, budgeting, maintaining our offices and computers, assisting in production or engineering, or playtesting.
RoboCo is the biggest game Filament has ever produced, and the only reason we were able to get this far is because everyone in our studio lent a helping (robotic) hand.
To learn more about the world-class staff of Filament Games, check out our staff page: Meet the Team | Filament Games.
And that’s this week’s DevBlog! We hope you enjoyed learning more about RoboCo’s development team and Filament Games as a whole. Tune in next time for a special update from our very own Luke Jayapalan, who has some exciting RoboCo updates to talk about!
Also, make sure to check out fgrc21.roboco.co to learn more about the FIRST Global RoboCo Challenge! We just finished our qualifier rounds today, so make sure to follow RoboCo’s Twitch and YouTube channels to see if your country will advance to the playoffs!
For the latest news on RoboCo, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok! You can also connect with other community members and us by joining our official Discord and Reddit!
Don’t forget to add RoboCo to your Steam Wishlist!