Mike Jones is Vice President of Corporate & Publishing Technology at Cloud Imperium Games.[1]
Works at CIG
He always enjoyed MMOs but what really brought him to CIG was a video of Chris Roberts at the first CitizenCon introducing his team and talking about what they were doing, which blew Mike away, how it can be so transparent and so different from everything he had learned in his career so far, but the livestream started cutting out as they were having bandwith problems. Two days later John Erskine called Mike which started his work at CIG[1]
His responsabilities cover the hardware, networking and the infrastucture side of things.[1][2]
All his previous work felt like it was on rails, whereas at CIG he can do something nobody else would try, where he needs to solve problems other companies don't have, this creativity is candyland to him.[1]
Other Works
He played video games, but it never occured to him what it takes to make a game. He got an opportunity to tour the legendary video game developper Sierra Online and at the end of the tour he was blown away by how cool this was. He was told they had openeings for customer service and quality assurance, so he asked which one pays better, was told customer service starts out better but is hard, and Mike asked "how do i get your job?" to was told that to get into a leadership position he needed to start in QA, so he did.[1]
He ran QA teams and found that he had a talent and interest in technology so he kept focusing on that and learning as much as he could.[1]
Quotes
"For the most part, our systems are all custom designed specifically for our needs, and the reason for that of course is, this is a very unique game, and we have very unique needs." -Mike Jones[2]
Trivia
- The first infrastucture at CIG were two tower servers in a Harry Potter style under the staircase closet that also served as John's office, with a black contractor tarp over the top of the servers to protect them, but not John, from any leaks from the above sewer pipes. He was instrumental in moving to the new offices including using his own truck.[1]