KONGSTAFFINTERVIEW ON... matt!

I was lucky enough today to finally interview a Kongstaffmember! And he was matt! w00t! Anyway, here's the interview. Enjoy, it's rather long.. He had too many topics to cover. :p

The1Wizky
ello

matt
ello ello

The1Wizky
Ok, soo...

The1Wizky
When did you sign up to Kong, and why?

matt
november 06, damijin/mike found it on a gaming blog and we came to check it out. the only people in chat (there was only one room) were like, emily, greg and jim. So we stuck around and talked to them because they seemed neat.

The1Wizky
Haha. And do you remember your first friends on Kong? (apart from them, obviously)

matt
a few! some people from the first bunch of members have my screen name and we talk occasionally.

The1Wizky
Cool - And do you have any particular "best friends" out of them?

matt
I would like to call mrcredsalex my best friend but I’ve lost contact with him.

The1Wizky
: (

The1Wizky
And how long do you spend on Kong every day?

matt
probably around 6 to 8 hours, but I work for them so that might skew things!

The1Wizky
Niiice

The1Wizky
And, what's your favourite room on Kong?

matt
clearly The Van, rocking out since April or something.. We lose track of time.

The1Wizky
w00t. 3 Vannites. X)

The1Wizky
And what's your favourite game on Kong?

matt
hovercrafty

The1Wizky
Hehe.

The1Wizky
What's your favourite Kongregate feature?

matt
unequivocally, chat!

The1Wizky
Yay. Any new up-coming features you're looking forward to? :premium games, etc..

matt
the premium games should be pretty neat, i want to see more multiplayer games and see how the community or sub-communities develop around them. I’m mostly interested in watching how things develop as the site grows, that's kind of ambiguous.

The1Wizky
Yeah.. It's cool to see it go from 4k to 10k in a few weeks :p

matt
it's even cooler seeing it do it in a few days ;p

The1Wizky
K, last one in the Kongregate section..

The1Wizky
How awesome is Kongai? : D

matt
totally. I’m undefeated in it, atm. Just thought I’d let you know.

The1Wizky
:O Show-off

The1Wizky
Ok, Game questions now

The1Wizky
Do you play a lot of :non-Flash games?

matt
i suppose, not quite as much as i used to.

The1Wizky
What's your favourite gaming console?

matt
i can't decide between the wii and the virtual boy. to be honest, i prefer pc games to consoles though.

The1Wizky
Yea! And which consoles do you own?

matt
eeh, Atari 2600, nes, snes, genesis, Sega cd, ps, ps2, n64, Xbox, Wii. Some various stages of the gameboy and I had a DS somewhere but i can't find it, if you're counting handhelds.

The1Wizky
Whoa.. Haha.

matt
they all work!

The1Wizky
=O

The1Wizky
(if you can remember at all), when did you start playing console games?

matt
not really sure, pretty young though, like 6 or 7, or earlier. Though I’m not sure how much you can consider someone to be playing a game when they're spastic and little and pressing buttons randomly

The1Wizky
Lmao

The1Wizky
Ok, next topic. What do you do when you're not Kongregating?

matt
argue with people over trivial things, college, hang out with friends.

The1Wizky
Haha.

The1Wizky
Aaand, do you have any particular hobbies?

matt
I play guitar and sing angelically. slowly learning some actionscript in my spare time. Flipping through Wikipedia pages until I wind up somewhere and don't know how i got there.

The1Wizky
Sounds fun. :P

The1Wizky
Seeing as you work at Kongregate, do you have any set hours?

matt
not at the moment.

The1Wizky
Alrighty, new topic. Especially for you, Kongstaff <3

The1Wizky
How long have you been working at Kongregate?

matt
only about a month

The1Wizky
o_O I thought you worked here waayy longer. ;D

matt
no, my awesome demeanour just gives people the impression that i've had long-standing authority.

The1Wizky
Rofl

The1Wizky
Anyway. How did you feel on being, uh, hired? (surprised, happy, etc)

matt
surprised and happy.

The1Wizky
K, cool. Any mod recommendations?

matt
I’m not sure what you mean, recommendations for mods?

The1Wizky: Yep

matt
leniency is better than oppression!

The1Wizky
And, hm.. Any people who you have seen who you think should be a mod?

matt
i decline to comment!

The1Wizky
:O

The1Wizky
K, last in the topic - Any advice to anyone who would like to become a moderator?

matt
try not to do anything that would get you banned, since that tends to reflect poorly on you. though people can get better over time. just be active in chat, friendly, helpful, all those wonderful magical things. try not to overreact to everything. in general, try to stay respectable.

The1Wizky
Yay :D Okies, 2 more questions.

The1Wizky
What area of Flash developing do you work in, Design, Programming or both?

matt
i've worked with damijin and some of our friends, helping to design some games, and i've made some music. we've nearly completed one that should eventually be up on the site. like i said earlier, i'm working on learning some actionscript as well. i've got one sterling example of my progress that you can find on my profile on Kongregate. it's pretty incredible, i don't understand why it doesn't have a 5-star rating.

The1Wizky
Haha. Nice.

The1Wizky
How hard/easy is it, in your opinion, to make a Flash game?

matt
it obviously depends on your experience with programming. Most of the people i know have taken comp sci classes or learned programming concepts on their own before. the newer version of actionscript seems like it would have a steeper learning curve than previous version, but i would recommend anyone new to Flash game making to try to learn AS3 eventually if not first, because it's more object-oriented and has a similar structure and syntax to the common programming languages you'd be working with if you were going to make non-Flash games. if you've got any degree of math or logic ability you should be able to learn how to program. it might take some effort at first, but once you learn the concepts you can apply them to pretty much every programming language, so it's worth it. of course, if you've already got a programmer or some programming ability, then you have

to come up with the idea for the game itself, which can sometimes be the most difficult part

matt
needs more longwinded answers.
The1Wizky
Yeah. :P

The1Wizky
Anyway, that's the end of the interview.

The1Wizky
Thanks for participating! And, thanks for being the first mod/staff to be interviewed :D

matt
that was longer than 10 minutes btw, you liar

The1Wizky
I know I know - But I didnt think you would have such long answers! =P

matt
:-[

The1Wizky
And because you're a developer AND mod it took longer. =P

matt
i obviously do too much for you people.