So, you want to know what life is like for a YoWorld Co-op Developer? Well, the Viking World is full of smart, talented, and passionate individuals who are ready to dive into whatever task is thrown at them. Lucky enough we’re able to find some pretty awesome Co-op students who did just that! As you keep reading you’ll be able to gain some insights from Hannes, who will speak about exactly what it was like to be a Co-op Developer for YoWorld, and trust us things can get pretty interesting!
From the very beginning, I could tell that this wasn’t going to be the average Co-op. My time at Big Viking Games has been the most fun work experience that I’ve ever had and I really hope to be able to come back next year. I’ve had the fortune of working on an awesome game called YoWorld, essentially helping the YoFans find a new home.
Working here has been hilarious, heartwarming, and exhilarating. Within my first week, we were fighting an army of script kiddies, blasting every bug that dared show itself, and scrambling for servers for the famous May 12th Re-Launch! I was caught in a whirlwind of old code, new standards, and completely new systems and languages to learn, so ‘training’ wasn’t really on the schedule.
Despite every roadblock, the game went up and continues to grow every day. Since then, I’ve helped develop bug fixes and features and re-created a suite of tools that the Player Happiness Engineers use to support the player community. Between fixing bugs, creating features, and working as fast as we can to fix the profanity filter, there was never a dull moment!
I’ve had so much fun rebuilding YoWorld, which isn’t hard with a team like this. Let me share one of my favourite moments: we all put on fake mullets, moustaches, and sunglasses and relaunched the game to the song “You Touch My Tralala” By Gunther, very late at night (as you may be able to tell, we hadn’t slept much). There was dancing, celebration, and plenty of moustaches to go around.
Another fun fact: when we started adding new content into the game, we wanted it to be very obvious for testing, so we designed the most ridiculous piece we could think of, and this is how Gary’s Shiny Pants were born. Moments like these were special to me and show that although we worked very hard on this game, we played pretty hard too, and I hope that everyone who plays YoWorld has just as much fun playing it as we had making it.
It’s been a touching experience to see the interactions between the players in the game. While we invested plenty of time cracking down on hackers and cheaters, there are so many wonderful players who are friendly, accepting, and generous beyond compare. There are so many things that inspired me during my time working on YoWorld. YoFans are incredible – I have seen such amazing generosity, I have heard so many heartwarming stories, and have been absolutely blown away by how passionate YoFans are. I cannot describe how rewarding it is to work with a community like that.
Now all I have to do is get used to people saying ‘yo’ in everyday life!
– Hannes