Dev Blog 11: Nyan Heroes Team Expansion!
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By Tore Blystad, Creative Director
WIP Render of in-game model of the Tank Guardian
Hi everyone,
Today we wanted to share a bit about the expansion of our team at Nyan Heroes.
One of the biggest challenges of creating a game is assembling a great team that can pull it off.
Being a fully remote and global startup brings with it some unique challenges and benefits. As with any new company, there is the challenge of building trust and demonstrating potential towards prospective candidates. A key part of our strategy is the flexibility of being truly remote, in any country and allowing team members to choose their hours. Also, the promise of working on exciting new technologies attracts talent that want to be on the cutting edge of game development. But the one factor that surprised me the most? Our focus on cats plays such an important part in getting so many new team members interested in joining us. The main characters of our game are cats (Nyans) piloting mechs, and as a studio, we are donating proceeds to help real life cats around the world. This has definitely resonated with many game developers.
Lots of incredibly talented individuals have joined us over the last months, but there are a few key hires I would like to bring up in particular:
Joe Stevens has joined Nyan Heroes as Engineering Director!
Joe has decades of experience building games (and engines), running his own tech studios, and architecting virtual worlds which is just an amazing gift for us.
The Engineering Director in my experience, is the “wise old wizard” of the team, the sound of reason, and the one to see the project from 50,000 feet. They are the person that listens to the art team to solve pipeline challenges, makes considered decisions on middleware and technology strategy, possesses the ability to predict the upcoming challenges that comes with scaling the project and teams, and ensures that we don’t paint ourselves into a corner.
Joe has more than lived up to the expectations. As Nyan Heroes is going to be a live game with lots of moving parts all needing to work together flawlessly, Joe has risen up to solve our most pressing challenges.
Next up is Jaime Waters!
Jay is an award-winning Audio Director with lots of big titles under his belt. His latest game, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, should be known to any gamer, especially for its rich and high-profile audio focus.
Jay has extensive knowledge working on high-profile Audio projects using a combination of game score, original compositions, and licensed music. This bodes well with our ambitions for Nyan Heroes since we think an eclectic approach would best suit our game. Even though Jay only started weeks ago, we have already started to dive into brainstorming sessions about what we are most excited about.
Jay’s ambitions for fidelity, quality, and creating believable worlds is going to be central for us in defining the audio direction of Nyan Heroes. His thoughts on how the mechs will sound and how to give each character its own signature sound is already getting me excited, and I can’t wait for him to get his hands dirty in engine!
Jay has vast experience in all areas of game audio production and is even a composer himself, something that comes in handy when you get into the thick of production where a lot of stuff has to be done at the same time and you’re relying on the team’s experience and muscle memory to move at top speed.
(Also, if you’re fan of classic British game IP, Jay has worked on legendary titles such as Lemmings, Worms and Alien Breed :D)
Last but not least, Huy Truong has joined us as Marketing Director!
I can’t believe I just got introduced to Huy 2 weeks ago, it feels like we have worked together for months already. 😊 Huy’s last gig was at Cloud Imperium Games where he was Director of Marketing on the Star Citizen project, probably the most high-profile crowdsourced game in history. He has vast knowledge of community building and organic marketing having worked closely with the internal development teams to create one of the most prolific online communities in the gaming space.
I have always been of the belief that the game development and its marketing efforts need to be in perfect harmony for a project to be successful and couldn’t be happier with the opportunity to work with Huy.
(Also, when we discovered that we had both worked with (and big fans of) legendary voice actor Dave Fennoy, we knew we were totally on the same wavelength!)
We will have more announcements about new hires as we continue to expand — each new talent joining our forces will enable us to do more for all of you. We’re on an exciting journey together, thank you for following along and for your interest in our game and team.
Until next time,
Tore
About Nyan Heroes
Nyan Heroes is a free-to-play hero shooter that combines fast-paced, competitive gameplay with a real-world impact. Developed by a remote team of seasoned game developers and powered by Unreal Engine 5 and blockchain technology, Nyan Heroes pays homage to cats and offers a AAA multiplayer experience with epic mech character classes, thrilling cat-like movements, and unique gameplay abilities.
Learn More: nyanheroes.com
