Heyo, friends of the pants!
It’s Murmel again, live from the Black Pants HQ.
I recently visited Rotopolpress. They are a publishing house based in Kassel and they are the ones who publish Leschek’s Flug by our very own Stamm. Currently Leschek is available in German to pick up at Rotopolpress, or online if you prefer that or aren’t from around Kassel. If you are in the area though, I recommend visiting them, it’s a nice store with friendly people. The English translation “Leschek’s Flight” is in the works by yours truly and will be out as an ebook, hopefully later this year. As always, I will keep you updated.
Stamm also did an interview with Splashcomics (German). You can read it here, along with a review of the comic here.
Daniel and Philipp have finished Symmetrain and handed it in with Apple, we are now waiting for it to be released on the App Store. Currently Daniel is finishing up the trailer. You can see a teaser in this vine.
Here at Black Pants we are a pretty small team, but from time to time a new face shows up. That is the case with me and coincidentally around the same time another cool guy started working here. His name is Rico, he works in the Berlin office and I managed to steal some of his time for short interview. Take the stage, Rico!
Who are you, and why are you here?
My name is Rico and I found my way to Black Pants more or less by accident. I was working for another Gamecompany before and we finished a game we where working on called “Pudding Panic Reloaded” which will be released on the iOS app store soon. I finished my job and I was looking for something new. We transformed our office to some kind of coworking space and hosted several companies in our rooms and Black Pants was one of this companies. So I just went to the door, knocked and asked for a job. We sealed the deal over a beer.
What do you do at Black Pants?
I am a Programmer and working right now on things like cutscene scripting, 2D Camera and gamestate serialization. Basically I work on all the high level stuff so our engine guru can think about more important things 🙂
Tell me about you and video games. How long have you been playing? What is your favorite game or genre?
I got a NES when I was 6 years old. My parents where in dire need of an electronic baby sitter. My favorite game of that time was Mega Man 4!
Nowadays I prefer more serious games or games which have a slight phychological component, like Silent Hill or Killer7.
What are your plans for the future?
Quite frankly I can’t imagine to ever go back programming office software. Working with games is to much fun! I am very happy to be able to learn from people who have much more experience with game development and so I will stick around and learn from the others. I also would like to make my own games in the future.
A catchy statement for my readers please!
Never underestimate your abilities!
Thanks to Rico for his time! I will annoy other team members in the future, to get them to tell us more about them. Believe me, we have some interesting people working here.
As for me: My studies at Uni Kassel have started and I met my fellow students and visited some lectures and went to one or two parties. Kassel is not the world’s hugest city, but you can find some fun. My roommates Stefan (not Black Pants Stefan) and Tobi (not Black Pants Tobi), are really cool and relaxed guys and I can see myself living with them for the next years here in Kassel. You guys rock! Shout-out to my unofficial roommate Eleni, who lives one floor up, and brightens my days with dropping by for breakfast. You rock!
That’s it for today. As always: I am glad for feedback and you are welcome to ask questions. Maybe you want to know something I can ask in my upcoming interviews with members of Black Pants.
So long,
Murmel