We are the Bit Barons - an Introduction

Welcome back to the blog! Before we’ll start talking about the game in detail, please allow us to introduce ourselves. The five guys you can see in the image above comprise the Bit Barons. From left to right you can see Sebastian Dorda, Alexander Zacherl, Sergej Klementinovski, Alexander Widl and Michael Weigl. We’ll also introduce Filippo Beck Peccoz, our resident game audio composer, who sadly didn’t make it into the picture.

The account of how we as a team got together and what we experienced along the way has been told in detail a few times (but never in English) and we’ll definitely get to it to a later point. To cut a long story short: Back in 2009, three of us just finished their studies, one worked at a big browser game company and one of us was still in school. We all decided that we wanted to make our own games and make them NOW! - so today, we’re all working full-time on Tridek. Here’s more about the individuals in the team:

From left to right:

Sebastian Dorda was the last to join the team in 2012. He received his degree in computer science from Munich’s big university LMU, then went to work at our local browser game giant Travian Games. There he stayed for a few years until we could sway him to live the indie life with us. Sebi is into all things code, open source, geek shirts, kendo & he’s the organizer of our local GameDevMuc get-together as well as a regular participant in our game jams. He’ll be the driving force behind Tridek’s gameplay, networking and AI code.

Alexander Zacherl didn’t know he wanted to make games until after he had gotten his Bachelor’s Degree in Media Management. But he always knew that he’d one day form his own company - or at least go freelance. As a game designer he’s responsible for making Tridek balanced and fun. He’s also acting as Managing Director of the Bit Barons and thusly has to keep an eye on schedule and budgeting. After work he organizes local game dev events such as the GameCamp Munich, the Global Game Jam in Munich and the Game Audio Forum. His big - but oh so unrealistic - dream is to one day make his “awesome, bloody sandbox MMORPG”(tm).

Sergej Klementinovski is the studio’s “old man”. He’s an experienced 3D artist (going back to the good ol’ days before the internet bubble burst) who then decided to become a game programmer. He’s received his degree in Game Design (with a focus on programming) in 2009 and has single-handedly coded our previous game, Astroslugs. He’ll focuse on creating the beautiful and snappy interface for Tridek and he’s definitely going to talk to you about his choice of middleware for this. Maybe he’ll also tell you about why he’s recently become a quasi-vegetarian …

Alexander Widl is the one guy to blame for the existence of Tridek. He came up with the idea for the game back in the early 2000s after playing lots of YuGiOh and asian console RPGs. He sporadically worked on the game over the next years and then finally made it into his Bachelor’s thesis for his degree in Game Design (getting an A+ of course). Alex is also going to be the sole artist to design & draw all creatures in Tridek. His (rare) free time is usually invested in creating electronic music - maybe he’ll write about this on a later date.

Michael Weigl is the only intern the Bit Barons ever had (and probably will have). He’s been a friend of Alex Widl for years and has been involved in the creation of the game - especially in the creation of the last prototype of the game. On Tridek he’ll assist with game design (ask him about ambits and block slots) and work on the GUI elements of the game. He’s currently studying to receive his degree in digital media design. The current logo of the game is his creation.

Filippo Beck Peccoz is missing on the snap shot above. But you can find a picture of him (and his dog Link) on his personal web site. If you go there, you’ll find out that he graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Film Scoring and the burning desire to create interactive music for games. He focused on that pretty early in his studies, creating the video game music club and playing in the video game orchestra in Berklee. (Edit: He didn’t play in the orchestra.) Filippo created the music for all of our games - and quite a bunch of game jam games, too. He’s also sharing the office with us which kind of makes him a family member.

This concludes this blog post. You do now know the most important things about who is going to create Tridek for you. With our next blog posts we should start focusing on what Tridek is really about - right?