Take a closer look at the people that are flaregames
We work in a cool office-loft, located in the center of Karlsruhe. We are creative, chaotic, sometimes loud, but always communicative, very transparent und approachable.
Andreas started creating games when he was 9 months old. He studied sandbox games, plastic bricks, dolls and other useful subjects such as emergency rescue, firefighting and engineering. He finally totally lost touch with the real world when he started to make his living by playing.
Due to his fear of dolls, he also began making puppets. When he is not arguing game design ideas with his homemade Muppets, you can find him on an ocean sailing with his family.
Description text will follow soonish.
Cem discovered his affinity to computers when his parents, with great foresight, presented him with a C64 at the age of 8, thus setting him on his career path. A few years later he graduated in computer science and he started doing location based games at Orbster in Karlsruhe. Also he discovered his soft spot for programming Graphic-Demos on game consoles, but that story is too long to be told here.
At flaregames he mostly works on the studio’s own graphics and animation engine.
Georg was born in Lower Saxony, but decided early to move to southern Germany to turn the whole entertainment industry upside down. After marketing some medieval castles on the “romantic road” and promoting dubious beavers playing a shell game on TV he found his destiny in developing business ideas for the real game industry.
Unfortunately, playing bad games then caused him to lose all his hair. Having realized that only business development for really great games could reverse this trend, Georg, now super optimistic at flaregames, has sworn not to stop promoting games until he has dreadlocks. So there’s a chance that he, too, will become a real games veteran…
Gunnar is possibly slightly older than 39 but has managed to keep a youthful stubbornness. In fact, he wakes up every morning with his middle finger erect. He’s usually in bad temper about the inadequacies of software, the fallacies of parenting and the frailness of the human body, especially when said body has slightly more than 39 years of age. In his rare calm phases he can be quite constructive and charming.
He can be considered a games industry veteran, if only because of his survival so far. Most people know him for being a games journalist, but that’s water under the bridge.
Heike is a born and bred Karlsruhe girl and, frankly, not really interested in videogames. Which is a good thing, because it helps when she, in her role as accountant, has to shoot down requests for yet another game console plus home cinema plus everything. Her main task is to create a secure and efficiently run office for all those creative nerds to work and breathe in.
She even helps with recruitment: Her oldest son is a part-time games tester now.
Jan has been doing art for videogames for about 20 years now. He, as a graduate of the “Akademie für Kindermedien” (Academy for Kids Media), likes family friendly products, so, with more than 60 games under his belt, he has only done one zombie shooter so far.
One the side he regularly does illustrations for magazines and works on feature films for kids. He preferred customers are his own children, who even sometimes help him with his work.
Jan learned to play the violin at the age of four and has made music ever since. These days he runs a recording studio in Bochum, writes songs and creates music and sound for many purposes. He’s responsible for everything you hear in flaregames’ games. Full stop. Let’s look at the other half of his brain: He learned programming as a child and has coded ever since. These days he’s active in the demoscene, creating demos, videos and small games.
And he does short films, when the fancy takes him.
Klaas spent his first two years at University avoiding courses and playing video games full time. He was especially infatuated with Alpha Centauri where he was the world’s best player of his time. From Alpha Centauri he moved to programming his own strategy game, the browser-based “Wogen des Schicksals” (still live under the name Andaloria). To operate the game he needed a legal body, so he founded Gameforge, which grew to become a world-leading browsergames and MMO company.
Now he’s fulfilling a personal dream with flaregames.
When Marian turned 12 years old, his parents finally gave in to his pleads for his own computer “to do his homework on”. Yeah, you can imagine how this turned out.
As a student of Media Informatics he started developing his own browser-based MMO. His passion for online-games finally led him to quit his “serious” development job and move to Karlsruhe to work for Gameforge. After several great years of creating fun in the browser, it was time to expand and apply his knowledge to mobile games.
In his spare time, Marian prepares for the inevitable upcoming zombie apocalypse. (This is a real threat, seriously! Stop reading this and start preparing yourself now!)
Marlene handles quality assurance and testing, so if you find don’t find bugs in your game, feel free to send her chocolate. She is a former teacher but couldn’t bring it over herself to ban nerf guns from the class room, so she made the logical switch to a more nerf gun-friendly environment.
Marlene is a passionate video gamer since Doom; her sharp feedback is feared by designers and programmers alike. When she’s not working or playing games, she likes to hone her skills with guitar, piano or accordion.
Martin came to Flaregames from Gameforge, where he worked on stuff ranging from games to tera-scale databases. Like most nerds he basically finds everything interesting and has many hobbies involving electronics, 3D printing and armed killer robots.
His path was laid at the age of 6 when he received his first soldering iron and promptly used it to add additional 1024 bytes more RAM to his sister’s ZX81. After being forced to repair television sets he escaped from the harsh underground labour camps on mars and studied computer sience to realize his quest to become evil overlord of the milky way.
Or Earth, at least.
This is Matthias: Saw a C64 at friend’s house when he was ten. Considers this a life-changing event. Started programming at 12, completed his first commercial game (in Assembler) in his first year at university. Received a diploma in Computer Sciences in 1997, has worked on more than 50 games since. Also started a few companies.
In his free time, he creates even more computer games, as indie projects or during competitions like Ludum Dare. In his real free time, he runs marathon races, cooks and geeks out about his home cinema.
Born in a cold and windy stable on the potato-plains of Denmark, around the height of the Vietnam War, Peter Larsen was dragged up and beaten down on the streets of a totally decrepit council estate in a non-descript British town. Forging a bus-pass, he gained access to Plymouth Polytechnic, the Aldi of English universities, where he improved his fine motor skills no end. Working undercover in the evil empire known as Electronic Arts, he emerged with considerable damage after 18 years in the claws of Kane. Religion: Dudism, Schalke 04.
Not everyone he meets is entirely certain that he always tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But he is in marketing.
Rafael was born in the wilds of Canada and immediately began to program games. He survived the harsh winters and a math degree only to be ejected from the country for his inability to fell trees or play hockey; luckily, he was granted asylum in Germany as part of the “Sofortprogramm zur Deckung des IT-Fachkräftebedarfs”, a.k.a. Save the Nerds. Once here, he dragged himself out of the tarpit of IBM and leapt nimbly across the crumbling platforms of various game development studios to reach the gold star of flaregames. Can you hear the victory theme?
Ralf is a full-time illustrator and Art Director since the early 90ies. He worked in animation studios and advertising agencies but his main love are games. And comics, but that’s a different story to be told at another time. He contributed to blockbuster games like Gothic, Risen (where he was Art Director) and The Settlers 7.
And he was one of the guys who brought the Moorhuhn to life, Germany’s biggest casual games export.
Born and raised by a comic, computer and gaming crazy family in the beautiful state of Bavaria, Becky’s future path to the amazing world of electronic entertainment was laid out rather early in her life. Following her heart´s desire to become a full blown professional game developer, she enrolled for toy- and gaming studies at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle and finished 2009. Ever since, she has been working in the gaming industry before finally ending up at Flaregames in August 2011.
Ended up? Make that leveled up!
This is Steve: Born in the middle of nowhere. Touched his first videogame at three to help fighting off an invasion of the Vorticons. Went to school, played games, became an “IT specialist in systems integration”. Left his IT career behind to study Game Design at the Games Academy. Made a game for the Windows Phone 7, of all things. Was hired by flaregames. More to follow.
