Introducing...by popular demand...the long story of ice9! In FAQ format.
Who is ice9?My name is Larry. I am an independent developer in Austin, Texas who works on a variety of web development and database projects. I am a proud graduate of University of Texas-Austin (go Horns!), where I completed degrees in electrical engineering and philosophy in 2004. Rather than becoming a wealthy electrical engineer or a lowly philosopher-waiter, I became a web developer. I started a small consulting business with my friend 5 years ago and kept going ever since. I met my future wife during my last year at the university and we have now been married for 2 years. She has been very supportive of everything and is probably going to read this later
.
How did I get started with Battle Dex?So I had been working out of coffee shops and my house for about 3 years, and decided to try out getting an office. There was a post on a mailing list that some people were going to share an office in downtown Austin and needed a couple of people to split the cost. I thought it was an awesome location since it was right by the popular music venues and bars here, so it was easy to walk to get some beers or see a concert after work (or during!). It also had a cool coffee shop built in to the building.
Perfect. I jumped on it and began going to work there. Then one of my new office mates shows up and we introduce ourselves and talk about what we are working on. My office mate is dagnor, and he is working on a game called "Iron Condor", which is in alpha (pre-beta). He said it is an online strategy game that has cards that you use, and there are different units, and I think well that's pretty cool since I used to play a lot of Warcraft 2 and Starcraft with my friends. At this point of development, many things were unbalanced, there was no such thing as a team game or coop mission, there was no such thing as a deck, there is no trading, no way to charge customers, forum has almost zero posts, and tournaments are the devs vs. dagnor's brother most of the time
. So it turns out they ended up needing a "web guy" and asked if I could lend a hand on something. Then all of a sudden I am working on this game for a year now, have played the game a thousand times, it has taken over my life and thoughts, I got to go to E3 (thanks!), have met some cool people, and have had a lot of fun
. And here we are today still going.
What would you say ya do here?I am responsible for many things you see on the web, anything related to the "economy" (subscriptions, bundles, distribution of cards, packs, and points, trading, affiliate program, billing/credit card processing), various admin tools, some database work, and occasionally I am able to commit some code to the server-side game code without breaking it.
I also try to be active in the community, so I am often available for a random game, play in tournaments to stop Witcher, and talk shit to Schlumpfi in my spare time.
What are your favorite things about Battle Dex?There are many things:
- Even though we want it to get big, there is something nice about having a small niche community where many players know each other and play regularly.
- I have always been excited about the early stages of businesses, so it has been cool to watch it develop and grow and be involved in many of the challenges.
- I love playing 2v2 team games, even though I am 0-6 in teams since release and I haven't had enough opportunities to play them.
- I like that you can always improve with practice. I am proud that I was the "worst player in Battle Dex" for a while (literally last on the leaderboard), but now have defeated the #1 player in back to back tournaments
- Coop missions are so fun and I love playing them. It is funny because I initially thought this part of the game would not be compelling and there would be no time to develop it, but chrism's ability to design missions has been amazing.
