AstroBob Posted August 28 Share Posted August 28 (edited) Can you believe it? LaunchBox is turning 11 years old this month! From humble beginnings to a thriving and passionate community, the team has grown from a single visionary to a collaborative team of over 10 people in various full-time and part-time capacities. Since this week is a time of celebration for us, we want to shine a light on some of the amazing folks who are helping to shape the future of LaunchBox and make it what it is today. While we won’t be able to feature everyone on the team, and there are also multiple contributors both within and outside the community, we hope these posts offer some insight into some of the people working behind the scenes at LaunchBox who you might not know. This will give you a glimpse into their roles and history with the project. We're continuing our series of team members with Brian a.k.a @faeran Please introduce yourself and describe your role on the team Hi, my name is Brian and I’m the Product Manager on the team. I oversee everything related to LaunchBox, from the Windows and Android apps to the websites, support channels, videos, theming, and more. If you’ve seen it or used it, chances are I’ve had a hand in it in some way. What is your history with LaunchBox? Like everyone else here, I started as a fan of LaunchBox. I fell in love with it back in 2016 when I built my first setup. The nostalgia was incredible, and I wanted a Big Box theme that captured the feeling I had as a kid blowing into my NES cartridges. I never imagined my passion for retro gaming would turn into a career, but I’m grateful every day that I get to wake up and work on the next big thing for our amazing community. A tiny snapshot of my collection highlighting some of favorite games of all time! What's the most challenging aspect of your role? Time. Our list of features we'd like to get to is very large and is always growing. It feels like each time we check something off the list another 5 items get added. Because of this, we have to do a good job of balancing which features we work on. Some features may seem like quick wins but turn into development nightmares, while others that seem complex end up being easier than expected. It’s always surprising to see which is which! What has been your proudest moment while working on LaunchBox? The Game Discovery Center. We had lofty ambitions when building that out, and while a number of things got left on the cutting room floor, the majority of what we set out to do made it into the feature. We had a lot of questions going into that project, especially on the technical side, where we had to make sure we could even create an ever-changing and endless list of lists without ruining the user experience. We had to set our expectations on how we wanted our theming engine to work with it and make sure that it accommodated a dream theme someone might end up creating in the future. I find myself getting lost for hours in the Game Discovery Centre (in a good way 🤩) What do you think is the most underrated LaunchBox feature? It’s always the little things that most people wouldn’t really notice. For example, most people wouldn’t realize just how complex our image priority system is when downloading images from the LaunchBox Games Database. Previously, we had about a 5-6-step process to identify the best image to download based on a myriad of scenarios. Without going too deep into the weeds, over time, certain changes to the LaunchBox Games Database broke the image download priority process, causing incorrect images to be downloaded for games. We had to dig deep to figure out what had changed, and then build a brand-new image priority process that accounted for those changes. It’s one of those processes that, when it works, most users wouldn’t even notice. The LaunchBox Games Database is full of rich vibrant media for enhancing your collection What is your favorite game of all time and why? How does someone choose just one? I have a soft spot for Sierra Online. My memories of loading up Space Quest 3, King’s Quest 6, Conquests of Camelot, and many others pull at my nostalgic heartstrings. These games shaped the ones I gravitate toward even today. I was mesmerized the first time I loaded Circle of Blood (aka Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars) and watched the opening sequence, or followed the murder mystery in Blade Runner. This led me to games like Outcast with its breathtaking open-world adventure, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic with its crazy plot twist, and Jade Empire with its equally surprising twists. By now, you can probably see that I’m heavily drawn to story-centric games and am always on the lookout for the next one to play. A good ol' era of gaming 😏 Stay tuned for more "Meet The Team" posts coming throughout the week! 🎉 Edited August 28 by AstroBob 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sbaby Posted August 28 Share Posted August 28 Excellent job and congratulations! Long live LaunchBox! ☺️ 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phanamatic Posted August 28 Share Posted August 28 The game discovery center is awesome! Congrats! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
5thWolf Posted August 28 Share Posted August 28 Oooo. Great job keeping LB an amazing, evolving, and active software!!! And making the community matter!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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