GREG INTERVIEW! WOOT!

Hey guys! I'll post now my interview with Greg, that happened lots of days ago. It's originally posted (portuguese translated) at KongBR blog (http://kongbr.com.br). It's a Brazilian blog about Kong. You guys should take a look someday, even if you don't understand a thing! Cause we are really really cool. Comment there please. B)

Ok, no more chit-chat. Here we go! Greg interview! Woot!

1) How long have you worked at Kongregate?
Kongregate is a full-time job for me, so I work at least 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I started working at Kongregate back in August 2006 as the first full-time employee.

2) What is your job at Kongregate, exactly?
I do lots of stuff at Kongregate, and sometimes it fluctuates a bit from month to month. I probably spend the largest chunk of my time reviewing potential game sponsorships, then working out the arrangements for the ones I like. I also spend a pretty significant amount of time working on new achievements (and the weekly challenge). Whatever time I have left over goes to keeping up with community issues and appointing new moderators.

3) Did you expect that Kongregate would be so big and popular?
Modestly aside, well, yes. I spent a couple of months working for NHN USA ( www.ijji.com ) straight out of college, and I left to join the Kongregate team. Working for NHN was pretty great, and I would not have left if I didn't believe that Kongregate would grow to be incredibly popular. I certainly have no regrets about my decision and it's tremendously exciting to see how much the site has grown, but we still have a long road ahead of us if the site is to be truly successful.

4) What is the criteria for choosing a game to recieve a badge/card?
User ratings! I can't emphasize this enough. Developers contact me all the time asking for badges in their games, and they usually have less than 3 stars. When I go to add new badges, I sort all the games on the site by rating, and pick the top ones first. Games that are quick and easy may get badges sooner than incredibly long RPGs, though, just because I play games as much as I think is necessary before deciding what the badge should be. Putting badges in Anika's Odyssey and Balance Balls 2 took about 10 minutes, while designing/implementing the badges in Monsters' Den and Protector took about 2 days. Even for the Monsters' Den badges, I wish I would've spent a third day on it, just because the impossible badge turned out to be a little easier than I intended. In retrospect, I probably should've made it a hard badge at 20 levels. Oh well.

5) What is your opinion about "Corporative games"?
I think they're all right. Flash developers can earn a lot of money from them, and I know for a fact that some developers on Kongregate have developed games for corporations in the past as a way to pay the bills. What's a little sad, though, is that most Flash developers are essentially forced to either "sell out" and create advertisement games or start doing "real" programming if they want to make a living in the game development industry. There are a few exceptions to this (Hero Interactive, for example, is making a living primarily off of sponsorships with his consistently terrific creations), but for the most part, it's really hard to make a living developing games in Flash unless you're doing it to sell a product. Sponsorships have become more lucrative lately, though, and Kongregate's premium games program is offering a lot of money to independent Flash game developers, so hopefully this won't always be the case!

6) What do you think about the Kongregate/Newgrounds comparisons?
I think they're a little silly, honestly. Newgrounds deserves a ton of respect for paving the way for Flash portals in general, and I visit the site pretty frequently myself. I can understand that some Newgrounds fans are a little annoyed with Kongregate being called the "YouTube of games," since Newgrounds has essentially been the same thing for the past decade. "YouTube of games" is used to describe Kongregate for people who know nothing about the Flash world. For people who DO know about Kongregate and Newgrounds, though, they understand that Kongregate offers a lot more than a standard YouTube model -- we have chat, achievements, challenges, etc. Most of the content on Newgrounds is in the form of movies anyway, and their standards for acceptable content are a bit more extreme than Kongregate's. Just the fact that both sites host user-uploaded Flash games is pretty much the only similarity. I certainly don't think Newgrounds needs to worry about Kongregate, also -- Newgrounds will always be around regardless of Kongregate's success.

7) How hard is it to manage this great Kongregate community?
Incredibly hard. Impossible, even. I wouldn't be able to do it without the help of both Damijin and the entire team of terrific volunteer moderators across the site. But unfortunately, the whole system of "Greg appoints every moderator on the site" is horribly outdated for the amount of traffic that Kongregate has worked its way up to, and it's no secret that the community is a bit of a mess right now. Lately I've been working on the plans for a system of moderation on the site that involves normal users voting out trolls and spammers, and this should see some development once our programmers aren't so busy finishing up the card game.

8) What is your impression about the Brazilian community?
I unfortunately don't have a strong impression of the Brazilian community on Kongregate, since I can't speak Portuguese. This language barrier makes it incredibly difficult to moderate Brazilian rooms and to appoint Brazilian moderators. I know that the Brazilian room has had a lot of problems with trolling/spamming in the past, but I don't think this is representative of the Brazilian community on Kongregate -- the English rooms would probably be the exact same way if they didn't have any attention from moderators.

9) Have you already visited Brazil? If not, do you plan to visit someday?
I haven't visited Brazil. I would definitely like to, but the thought of traveling in a foreign country without being able to speak the native language is a bit intimidating. It's stressful enough just traveling within the United States! I went to Europe once with my dad when I was 15, and it was pretty stressful just watching him trying to communicate with everyone around us. If I ever did go to Brazil, it would probably be with a group or something.

10) How do you feel about being the "Kong sex symbol"?
Haha, I don't think this is true at all. You sure you're not thinking of arcaneCoder?

11) And what does Alison think about it?
Thankfully, I don't think Alison believes this is true either -- she probably wouldn't be too happy about it.

12) Well, can you give us a short description about yourself?
Let's see... I worked at GameStop for 3 years in high school, and I graduated from college about 2 years ago. I majored in psychology and human development, though I spent most of my time working at the student newspaper doing copy editing and reviewing video games. After I graduated, I worked for NHN a bit, then moved on to Kongregate. So video games have been a huge part of my life, both for entertainment purposes and regarding my employment. Other than having a lucky streak of cool jobs, I can't say there's anything about me that's too exciting. I will say that I'm a huge nerd when it comes to grammar, though, and I spent a ton of time playing World of Warcraft. What were you saying about "Kong sex symbol" again?

13) How long have you been together?
Alison and I have been together for about 5 years now. We met while we were both working at GameStop -- she was actually my boss at the time.

14) How is your relationship with the other people from the Staff? And the mods?
Everyone in the Kongregate staff gets along really well, at least as far as I know. I've never really worked in a "normal" office environment, but Alison has commented about how refreshing it is to work at a place that doesn't have any office drama being gossiped about behind people's backs. Jim even loaned me his Audi when I wrecked my car on the freeway (a truck in front of me decided to drop a ladder), and Alison and I have looked after his dog, Nikki, a few times. I get along great with most of the mods, or at least they act nice when I'm around! I really wish I had more time to get to know a lot of them better, though. Most new moderators are appointed more by recommendation than by my personal experience with them.

15) Is it true that Kongregate pays a trip to a resort for you every year?
No, I'm not sure how this rumor started! Alison and I recently came back from a trip to Hawaii, but that wiped out my savings account pretty thoroughly. The Kongregate staff had an off-site trip to Ashland a few months ago, but we spent the whole time working.

16) What is your: Favorite food? Favorite movie? Favorite music style? Favorite book? Favorite site?
My favorite food is sushi. I mean real sushi, not California rolls. Most Americans who say they like sushi really mean that they like fake crab with avocado and mayonnaise wrapped with rice, and I'm sure the Japanese are laughing about it behind our backs. I'm not sure what my favorite movie is. Probably Jurassic Park, Heat, or Sideways. For music, I'm really not sure. I'm part of the .00001% of the human population that's just not really into music that much. There are a few songs I like, but I can't say I've ever been really excited by a particular group or style. My favorite book is probably "The Color of Magic" by Terry Pratchett, or Jurassic Park (seeing the movie when I was 10, then reading the book really got me into literature at a young age). My favorite website (besides Kongregate of course!) is probably YTMND.com.

17) Do you have any message to the Brazilian community?
Yes, I do! Tremendous thanks to Willian for helping out with moderating Orgulho, but I know that the room can still be a bit messy at times. Hopefully user moderation will especially help out the foreign-language rooms, where it's more difficult for the Kongregate staff to have a direct influence.

Wizzy edit: OMG! WIN! 2 KONG STAFF INTERVIEWED! NOW FOR DAMIJIN >:)