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Interview with mobile development wizard Ben

By Tuesday November 22nd, 2011January 5th, 2021No Comments

It was an impossible mission, but we finally overcame the challenge and got our mobile developer wizard Ben to talk to us. Behind his 27-inches iMac, Ben is another busy bee at Gbanga. Our regular Gbangoo of the Month keeps on rocking the Gbanga development with awesome side-projects and surgical Gbanga client improvements.

Ben is the mobile development wizard at Gbanga- beyond dispute!

(Gbanga) How did you get to know Gbanga?

(Ben) You have to know that I actually never wanted to get hired by a company as an employee, because I always preferred to work as a freelancer. But then I discovered a newly made website with a cool design, where you can describe you skills in the development area. Matthias found me on that page. We exchange some emails and I was invited to visit Gbanga’s HQ where I met our skilled team. I ended up joining the Gbanga team on the following week.

What do you like at Gbanga?

I like that Gbanga is a start-up where we all are involved in everything. This is quite different from a big company where developers get tasks from a project manager and have no idea about what the customer wants. At Gbanga the coolest thing is that we participate in whole process. I love it and I hope it stays like that.

You have been working on some really cool side-projects. Can you tell us a bit about is and which tools you use?

I use XCode to devleop in Objective-C for the iPhone and in Eclipse for the Android development. In the side-project Pilotfant we used OpenGL and other libraries as for example for the physics and Facebook connectivity. For the mobile phone app IKEA View we looked into augmented reality. Camera images were augmented with graphics and animated movies. Another interesting project was IKEA PAX Packer. For this project we turned a regular iPhone into a motion-controller app with which a website on a desktop computer can be controlled with the mobile phone similar to the setup of game consoles like Nintendo Wii.

Can you tell where does your inspiration comes from?

I reference a lot of my work to Facebook, surfing randomly the web and watching TV/Movies or just chatting to others. On the hand there is something called the “Zeitgest”. It’s related to the influence of your environment on you. I believe that an idea comes from many people at the same time. Discussions, brainstorming and constant revisions make sure that these ideas happen.

What is your favorite game?

StarCraft 2!

Nice choice, Ben!

Would you like to join the innovative Gbanga Team? Check out the current jobs available: gbanga.com/havingfun

Mixed-reality game studio Gbanga was founded in 2007. Since then, its innovative games and gamified apps for clients such as ABB, BMW, IKEA, Mercedes-Benz and Pro Juventute have been recognized with awards around the world. Gbanga is currently developing several mixed-reality games for clients in parallel with their announced mixed-reality title Advocates of Light, a game based on tower defense mechanics and real maps.

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We are the serious games agency Gbanga. As a specialist for gamification games and playful experiences, Gbanga implements games for contract customers. We would love to work with you on your next game!