Hello World!

I wonder how many blogs start with a post titled "Hello World!". I'm nothing if not original I suppose. Of course, the title "Hello World!" is supremely suitable for someone in the computer programming field, so that's my excuse.

For my next trick, I will now introduce myself and tell you a little about me.

I am Chris Shrigley. I am 42 years old and I am a video game programmer. I have been programming since I was 13 years old, and I had my first game published at the tender age of 16. That was a really, really long time ago. Over the years, I have worked on close to 50 published games, worked for a handful of companies, both in England and the US, and even started a couple of games companies just for the hell of it. I am a grizzled, old, seasoned (like a good wok), veteran, that has seen and done just about everything there is to see and do in the video games business.

I am quite good at what I do.

I currently work for The Walt Disney Company, in their Interactive Media Group, working on low level server technology and architecture for the MMOGs we do here. My days are filled with sockets and protocols and figuring out how to optimize 100,000s of simultaneous connections. Oh, and putting out fires and fixing stuff that goes wrong. I also do a fair bit of pure R&D, and get to play with all sorts of cool stuff.

Okay, so that's a little about me and what I do to pay the bills. There is much more of course, and I'm fairly sure I'll tell you more in good time. Meanwhile, the big question is; What is this blog about? Well, it's about me, my experiences as a games developer, both by day and by night as an indie developer, and my views and opinions on just about everything else that crosses my addled old mind.

So stay tuned. Yay!