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Cristian Marquez interview
Cristian Marquez, and his game ‘Pinguin salva la Navidad‘, won the second prize of the ‘Create your local Christmas game‘ we launched on December 2014. We make him some questions to know more about this game developer, his relationship with games and his opinion about WiMi5 as a game development platform. This is the interview.
WiMi5: What’s your name?
Cristian: My name is Cristian Daniel Marquez Barrios. I’m Colombian, an electronic engineer by trade, a passionate web programmer, and a skateboarder at heart.
W: Why do you make video games?
C: I think the main reason I make video games is because I’m a product of the industry. That is, my first video game console was given to me by my parents when I was 5 years old (a Nintendo NES with gun and everything) and since that day I have never stopped playing. Even today, at 25, I’m still playing (World of Warcraft, Heroes of Newerth, Starcraft II, and even Pokemon!). That’s why I can say that several facets of my personality and worldview I owe to the hours and hours dedicated to overcoming the challenges written into lines of code in the ’90s.
W: What did you study and where have you worked?
C: I haven’t stopped studying since I was six. I graduated from high school, and then I got my degree in Electronic Engineering at the National University of Colombia, and I went on to get a post-graduate master’s in Engineering and Industrial Automation. After that, I started studying along web programming lines, and in a few days, I’m going to take the first two exams to get my certification in Java programming.
C: As for work, I’ve been a freelance web programmer, and I develop projects in the Information and Communication Technologies sector in Colombia in conjunction with the National University of Colombia.
W: What kind of relationship with video games would you like to have in the future?
C: I’ve been asking myself that very question a lot over the past year. What I really want is to be able to be a part of the industry, not just as a consumer of its products, but to be able to create great games that fulfill the expectations of the new generations of gamers.
W: How did you hear about WiMi5?
C: My first encounter with WiMi5 was at a workshop led by Raúl Otaolea in Colombia, at the ViveLab.Bogotá.
W: How many hours did it take you to create your first game with WiMi5?
C: The first game I made with WiMi5 was a shooter I created during the workshop sessions at ViveLab; with the assets ready, and only focusing on the game logic, it took me about 4 hours to finish it. However, the game I made for the Christmas Contest was the first one I really designed from scratch; that is, I myself drew the assets, programmed the logic, and selected the music. That last project took me five days from starting the project to the version I submitted to the contest.
W: What is the simplest part of WiMi5 to learn? And the hardest?
C: Starting to interact with WiMi5 is simply easy — you can organize the code and design the game’s basic rules very easily. However, I think there needs to be more documentation so that more complicated games can be made, especially ones that have to do with artificial intelligence. The most complicated is the scene editor, given that for the moment, it doesn’t have a grid system, which means that organizing the objects in complex scenes can take a long time.
W: What is your overall impression of WiMi5?
C: Making games with WiMi5 was a lot of fun for me. I recommend it to get started and to get involved in the video game industry.
W: Many thanks, Cristian. I hope you’ll continue enjoying and making games with WiMi5.
22/01/2015 / Hafo / 0
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