Gala Games Welcomes: Chris Freeland
We would like to introduce the newest member of the Gala Games family, Chris Freeland!
Chris comes to Gala Games to help with some of the less-pretty nitty-gritty details upon which all games secretly depend. For Chris, it isn’t about a beautiful game aesthetic, but a clean software pipeline and robust code.
In his own words:
I fell in love with computers after playing around with nmap, netcat, and fighting malware on other computers. I started programming after highschool and began some education in networking. For the last five years or so, I’ve spent time in different slices of the software development lifecycle but cut my teeth by managing AWS infrastructure with various tools. While I do love clean software pipelines, I moved over to the development side of things to help deliver features while maintaining supporting infrastructure.
Like everyone on the Gala Games team, gaming is important to Chris.
I’ve made good friends while gaming and have experiences I won’t forget. Rad things happen on voice chat, on a couch, or at a table. Games are a great medium for novel experiences and they can be shared. I hope to contribute to that at Gala Games.
My favorite game as a kid was Super Smash Brothers Melee. I love its intensity and the players ability to bend what is possible. The struggle for victory and once secured, to then look at your friend as Exalted Champion. That’s the best.
Chris is joining Gala Games as part of the dedicated Gala Games Node Ecosystem team that is being built, which will work to add increased functionality, stability, and sustainability to the Gala Games Node Network. As the absolute backbone of the Gala Games Ecosystem, this work is of paramount importance. While it isn’t as flashy as some of the graphics, it is no less important and is a critical part of the long-term foundation upon which everything else rests. In his own words:
Our entire lives center around standardization of protocols and user interfaces. My focus as a developer is to support for an immersive and robust interface. When you play a game or work with a piece of software, and it breaks, it creates a jarring discontinuity. My specialty and passion is to remove these breaks in the user experience.
This passion for smooth interfaces stems from his experience with tabletop gaming. As a DM, he strives to give people a seamless experience that facilitates creativity without getting bogged down in protocol. As a player, he plays a neutral squirrely wizard with a focus on outsmarting his enemies.
Musically, Chris is a eclectic listener who is just as likely to spin up avant-garde black metal or screamo as anything else. Despite this darker bent to his musical tastes, a favorite album of his is “Freedom” by Akon. “I love things that are all encompassing, but to me “Freedom” is just fun and easy to listen to…it asks nothing of you and can just be a album you listen to for the sake of the music itself.” Finding the beauty in the chaos — the signal in the noise — is a hallmark of what makes Chris, Chris.
So, welcome him to the Gala Games team! If you are a Gala Game Node Operator, you will be very familiar with his work soon!
