#MeetIronGalaxy – Benjamin Person

Iron Galaxy is known for being a hub of top-notch programmers, ready to set up any project for success. We love helping our partners make great games. To make sure we stand ready to assist, we’re always on the hunt for new teammates. Learn more about one of the newer faces on the team, Benjamin Person. 

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Iron Galaxy: Hey Benjamin. Tell us who you are and what you do at Iron Galaxy? 

Benjamin Person: I am Benjamin Person, usually just going by Ben, and I am a Software Engineer at Iron Galaxy. I tackle various tech and programming challenges across a wide variety of projects. That can involve anything from implementing user interface elements for game menus to development of gameplay mechanics or even lower-level tech work to get different titles working on newer platforms. Recently, I was involved with UI work in the Warzone mode for Call of Duty.‍

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IG: Exciting work! How did you get your start?

BP: I started the road toward programming sometime late in high school as an elective I took entirely on a lark after my mother told me I needed to start “thinking about what I want to do.” She meant it as a gentle hint to start looking at colleges. I took it as an existential alarm bell.

Luckily, choosing a programming elective combined with knowing to some degree that video games were of intense interest to me set me on the right road early on. From there, I ended up attending Michigan State where I dual-majored in Computer Science and User Experience Design with a minor in Game Design and Development. Now I combine software architecture and user interface design knowledge to implement gameplay mechanics and accessibility features into all sorts of game.

IG: Thanks for the nudge, Mom. What’s the one skill you learned growing up that you use the most in your role?

BP: Collaboration. In particular, collaboration across different skill sets that one does not necessarily possess. Growing up, I was the kid on group projects who wanted to have his hands in everything, especially when I wasn’t sure how it worked. This was less perfectionism as much as a strange mental perception that if I didn’t do the thing from minute one then it wasn’t “valid.” It remained ethereal in a way that would jeopardize the final grade. Other people could help, obviously, but I had to be there in some capacity to lend my vital input. The macaroni art simply wouldn’t come together otherwise, you see?

This became less intense as I got older, though echoes of it stuck around in the form of constant befuddlement at how large projects always seemed to come together in the end. School never had “Production” teams, and I was at a loss as to how the art side of projects would slot seamlessly into the technical nuts and bolts. Classmates of mine would just make images that looked good? Utterly baffling.

By the time I was taking my programming electives in high school and moving onto games as a real career option in college, I began to understand that I was bringing a lot of tech knowledge to the table. Oour art people were stumped by in equal measure, especially in the UI department. Those discussions paved the way for me to be a better communicator and teammate. They also spawned an interest in being the go between for disparate sections of larger projects by learning about pipelines that were not necessarily my responsibility, opening areas of discussion to allow people with those skill sets to dive into problems in tandem rather than in isolation.

IG: Since collaboration is your most used skill, can you share how collaborative are you with the different teams you interact with at Iron Galaxy?

BP: I think the best way to break this down is to split it into two camps. The first is my active work on  client projects. The second is community explorations, meetings, and side projects that include Iron Galaxy’s artists, designers, and programmers.

In both cases, there is a high degree of collaboration between disciplines (art, programming, design) and between sub-teams (UI, Gameplay, Networking). In an active work project, you could be working with anywhere from a handful of programmers within your own discipline to a wide-ranging team with numerous dedicated artists, designers, and producers. In these cases, collaboration is focused on collective problem solving to catch long term development issues early and to ensure no one is getting blocked by issues that other team members have the knowledge to overcome.

To build that kind of tribal knowledge, we map out time in between active project work to build our skills outside of our core disciplines. In my case, I regularly meet with various artists, designers, and programmers who all share an interest in expanding Iron Galaxy’s accessibility and UX design capabilities. Not only does this expand my vocabulary to better communicate with members of other disciplines, it also lets us stay up to date on where the industry is moving to build better solutions for players.

IG: We’re forever growing as a studio. You highlighted the complexities of what working on different games is like, thanks! Aside from playing video games, what is a favorite hobby of yours?

BP: I weightlifted throughout college, which was an outgrowth of various martial arts classes I had been taking since I was very young. Shortly after getting hired to Iron Galaxy, I had to take a hiatus due to an injury that has taken a long time to get diagnosed and addressed. As of a few weeks ago, I have finally gotten back into the gym, easing myself back into a heavy-duty strength program to return to my favorite lifts.

While I am still limited in terms of what I can do (I miss you deadlifts, my beloved) it has been fantastic getting back onto a bench and pushing heavy barbells up and down. Short term goal: reacclimate. Long term goal: Hit 1000 lbs total between the Bench Press, Squat, and Deadlift (I was hovering around 780 when I had to stop the first time round).

IG: You’ve got some thought-out steps. Hopefully deadlifting will achievable, safely, in your near future. What’s something you have always wanted to create?

BP: I am a sucker for a good sword fight. I used to fence saber when I had access to a fencing class but haven’t found a place in Chicago that fits my needs since moving from Michigan. Games, luckily, have no shortage of medieval action to lean on. To that end, I have long thought that there is room for a more elaborate sword fighting system for an RPG.

Lots of games in the last few years have started creating increasingly realistic or mechanically challenging martial systems. Ghost of Tsushima had a stance system that elevated its open world gameplay immensely. Fromsoft’s Sekiro respects the concept of parrying in a way no other game has prior. I want to take that a step further and extend it beyond a single type of weapon to full arsenals in a similar manner to Chivalry: Medieval Combat, but with RPG relationship elements stacked on top, allowing a player to build a reputation within a game world based on how they fight. If they focus on dexterity and acrobatics, they might acquire a reputation for being an entertaining dervish that wanders in and out of towns on a whim. Build a traditionally chivalrous knight and you might end up getting called stuck up. Leave no one to tell stories afterward and you might not have a reputation at all. There are so many fascinating ways to inject character drama and social dynamics into RPGs that we haven’t fully woven into gameplay yet!

 Needless to say, I have a lot of hitbox debugging in my future...

IG: Great answer! What’s one food you could eat for the rest of your life?

BP: Any permutation of seafood pasta.

Countless bottles of ink have been spilled postulating new recipes, cooking methods, and modes of serving. It is my fervent (and mildly sarcastic) belief that these efforts, while noble, are ultimately misguided. Half of my family, on my father’s side, are from the deep south, many around New Orleans. I have an inbuilt directive in my DNA for Cajun seasoning, Italian food, and shellfish. The pinnacle of these dishes is Crawfish Monica, rotini noodles with crawfish in a cream sauce.

We did it everyone. It’s done. Food has been perfected. Go with God. Be with your family. Put a pot of pasta on the stove and free your mind for more pressing philosophical wonders.

IG: You’re a scholar. Appreciating the best while hoping for new. A fellow co-worker told us on top being an excellent engineer, you are also a writer. If you’re open to sharing, may we ask about what you’re currently working on?

BP: I started writing somewhere towards the end of college. I had an epiphany that I didn’t just enjoy video games on the software side, but also as a mode of storytelling. This led to the secondary revelation that, similar to knowing how software worked, I enjoyed seeing what made a good story work. After a few conversations with my older sister, a digital artist also working with video games in mind, and I started trying to write regularly.

Currently, I am working on writing a fantasy novel focused on the idea of what it means to be remembered by history and whether anyone really gets a say in that process. It has grown into a full novel, after starting as a collection of short stories that I thought were mostly going to be thrown away afterwards. None of them were meant to be anything wild, just a way to teach myself creative writing since I had never had a formal education in that arena before. Low stakes and small scale. As with most fantasy projects, the scale ballooned. Almost three years after penning the first word, I am editing the first draft of the full book and have scoped out at least 4 other novels in the same setting as well as an indeterminate number of direct sequels to this book, interconnected to differing degrees. All with a secondary wiki filled with information that constantly needs reorganizing.

I am not sure when it will be done, but I am certain that it will be in the next couple years. If all goes according to plan, my sister will provide illustrations, and my mother will bind a few special copies in her book binding studio.

I’m in the process of building out my Substack for updates on my writing if anyone would like to follow along.

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‍‍‍IG: That’s scope creep in the best way. It’s cool to hear you have such an awesome support system. What authors serve as inspirations for the way you write?

BP: I actually had to pin that down recently while working with some people that have been helping me nail down the tone of the book and the setting. I am part of a mentorship program run by an artist named Chris Oatley who has a history working with Disney, Dreamworks, and a few other big studios in various art and story roles. I highly recommend the podcast he runs, You’re a Better Artist than you Think, for anyone trying to square creative process questions in their head. When the subject came up, I settled on five writing inspirations for myself and five art inspirations, which I passed on to my sister for illustration drafts.

On the writing side: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R.Tolkien, Glen Cook’s The Black Company, Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher, Warhammer Fantasy, and Vince Gilligan’s Better Call Saul.

On the art side: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, World of Warcraft, Dishonored, Sierra Entertainment’s The Hobbit, and the treasure trove of Lord of the Rings art done by John Howe.‍‍

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All of these together make for an eclectic Venn Diagram to wrangle. The best way I can put it at the moment is: The optimism of foundational fantasy crossed with the grounded absurdity of what human beings actually seem to do from day to day. I am still nailing down how I write if I am being honest, but I know it is somewhere in this dogpile.

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IG: Hopefully we can have you on the blog again in a few years after completing your work with your sister and mom. What movies best highlight the kinds of stories you tend to enjoy?

BP: Enjoying the mechanisms of stories sometimes more than the stories themselves makes it difficult to answer questions like this since any genre can hit beats that I enjoy. I have come to realize that I will always be in the mood for a swashbuckling adventure story, globetrotting or otherwise. Three that come to mind right off the bat are Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Indiana Jones (The Last Crusade in particular), and The Mask of Zorro. Give me witty protagonists put up against bad odds that can be overcome through exciting set piece fight choreography, and I will sit with rapt attention no matter what.

I don’t know if National Treasure also makes the cut, but if the Nicholas Cage fans are looking to confirm me as one of them, there is that as well.

IG: “I think what makes people fascinating is conflict, it's drama, it's the human condition. Nobody wants to watch perfection.” What’s one genre of games that you think is underrated?

BP: Real time strategy games had a long phase where they seemed to go dormant outside some of the big hitters like Starcraft 2. Over the last few years, it appears unique RTS games are pouring in from all corners and I couldn’t be happier. In particular, survival RTS games seem to be a popular new format, maximizing the number of entities on screen to try and overwhelm your carefully crafted base and army after a timer expires. For an RTS bunker turtle like myself, this has been a welcome development. And it only seems to be getting more diverse as more indie studios tackle the genre! I am currently running through one called Age of Darkness, which has been exceptionally good thus far. Aliens: Dark Descent seems to mix XCOM squad mechanics with horror themed RTS elements which is also phenomenal.

IG: More game recs we can look up. Thank you! Name a scene from a movie that makes you cry every time.

BP: I am a sucker for the “everyone comes together in the face of unbeatable odds” trope. Any variation of it will make me emotional. If I had to choose one, then it would be the Ride of the Rohirrim from the third Lord of the Rings movie, Return of the King. Seeing a whole society make the collective decision to ride to the aid of their friends with the full knowledge they are going to lose based on the numbers is good in and of itself. Then you add on the speech from Bernard Hill and then the editing cuts back and forth to show that their resilience in the face of hopelessness is about to turn the entire battle around and it’s elevated to the epic Tolkien aimed to write. I will always tear up.

My brother took a powerlifting friend of his to see it in a theatre, on the big screen, as one should. His reaction was to turn to my brother, flex his entire upper body, and say, “I need to lift something heavy. RIGHT. NOW!” So, your emotional mileage may vary.

IG: Your brother’s friend was crying, just from his muscles. What has been your favorite series to binge?

BP: For many years, I have been told to watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I finally did! I recommend it to anyone who has a love for deeply sophomoric humor, though probably in small bursts. Having gone through the experience of binging it, I don’t think that is the best way to enjoy it. You lose the feeling of growing an attachment to the characters like in a traditional sitcom due to the quantity of episodes during a binge. Binging this show does feel like what I imagine going slowly insane feels like. In a good way! So, if you’re also a fan of your binge sessions feeling like you’re in an unethical psychological experiment from the 60s, binge it.

IG: You get one wish. What do you wish for?

BP: I used to really struggle with this question because I would try to prioritize what problems in the world I might be able to solve with one wish. It quickly became an ethical quagmire where I was never satisfied with my own answer. There would always be someone left in the lurch and that’s awful. Nobody should be left out of a world altering decision like this. We should strive for solidarity even in our fictional hypotheticals.

Which is why I have decided to wish away the force of friction. I imagine this will have a similar effect to asking for “no more conflict,” but without the monkey paw risk of removing things like drama from our favorite shows. Also, the whole world will be like a slip-n-slide and that seems whimsical. I contemplated just removing the Electromagnetic force altogether, but that might mean solids can’t keep their shape. I want us all to have fun, not experience Ben Person’s The Thing.

IG: Fantastic answer. Someone studied philosophy. What fictional universe would you choose over our own? What if there was no coming back?

BP: There are two schools of thought to choosing a fictional world to live in: Practicality or Adventure. If I were being entirely pragmatic, I would argue that the best bet is a world close to our own, such as Star Trek or Mass Effect, where the worlds are mostly ours, save for the fact there is so much cool sci-fi tech lying around and aliens to talk with.

But, let’s be honest, I’m here for the adventure, so I think I would choose one that is foreign enough to surprise me, but not so dangerous I will get eaten by monsters straight away. To that end, I would say the fantasy world hinted at in the Hand of Fate games would be awesome to explore! And if there was ever a reason you needed to change your fate, perhaps because you were trapped and couldn’t get back home, then there is always a mysterious dealer you can negotiate with to work something out...

IG: A multi-answer we’ll happily accept. Which historical figure would you want to show the modern world? What do you think they’d say?

BP: Ever since I learned that Plato was not only a philosopher, but also a professional wrestler, the thought has crossed my mind of what it would be like to lift weights with him. Does he pontificate about the nature of being all the time? What’s his squat PR? Is he a good spotter? Which flavor of whey protein does he prefer? I have absolutely no idea, but I am reasonably certain that he would be thrilled at how far exercise technology has come and have interesting insights into modern lifting programs. If I could get Plato to say “bro” one time, I think I would have achieved a lot.

If Plato said “bro” I think it’s safe to say he would’ve been a great spotter. It’s been a pleasure reading your answers, Ben. Your knack for writing and story-telling shines brightly in your responses. You peeled back the curtain for those of us curious about what it’s like working as a Software Engineer at a company that tackles a variety of projects. Whether it’s an internal original project or an external partner project, it’s refreshing to know that there are thoughtful employees like yourself, always focused on improving and addressing long-term issues before they arise. Good luck on your personal projects heading into the future!