Cloud Imperium has been hiring and we’re excited to introduce you to the new members of the team! First up is John Erskine, CIG’s Director of Studio Services. John is an Origin vet with plenty of MMO experience under his belt. He’s already helping to oversee the new website launch, and if you’ve contacted billing support recently you may already have met him! Be sure to watch Wingman’s Hangar on Friday for an interview with John.
How did you get started in the game industry? I first started working in the game industry in 1998 on Ultima Online. I had many friends at Origin Systems and was very interested in the idea of people playing together online. At the time UO was very cutting edge and much bigger than other online games of the day, so I joined the team to help with the customer experience and live operations side of the project. What projects have you worked on? Have you worked with Chris Roberts before? My focus has always been online multiplayer gaming, and I’ve worked for Origin System, EA.com, NCsoft, and Portalarium. So over the past 15 years I’ve worked on a lot of different games in very different stages of development. My favorites have probably been Ultima Online, City of Heroes, and Guild Wars. It is hard to distill down the list though, because each game has its own unique personality and flair.
Although Chris and I have crossed paths a number of times over the years, this is our first time to work directly together, and I’m very excited about the future!
What will you be doing for Cloud Imperium? I’m helping to manage the development of the new website and e-commerce platform, I’m helping to streamline some of the customer support activities, and I’m helping with some business development activities. As we go forward I’ll also be helping with some of the testing and publishing activites associated with running a live game! What are you most excited to see in Star Citizen/Squadron 42? Although I’ve played games in some form or fashion my whole life, the aspect of gaming that interested me in making a career of it is the interaction between real people playing a game. I see Star Citizen as the next major evolution of that process where designer and developer and players are collaborating on many levels to design the best experience possible. So I’m most excited to see how that relationship of open development and community involvement continues to blossom and grow over time. What are you playing right now? I’m on the go a lot so I’ve been playing Clash of Clans on my iPad every day for a long time now. I’ve also been playing several different arena type games like World of Tanks and League of Legends since I can jump in and out with a reasonable amount of time. There are so many great games these days though, I’ve got a list of games to play that I just haven’t had a chance to get to in earnest yet.