Will Masek

Meet Will Masek

Programmer at Firesprite
Will Masek

About Will

About Will

Mentor of Game Programming

Having grown up on Role Playing Games and 4X Empire Builders, Will’s life has been steeped in games for as long as he can remember. An avid gamer himself, he also spent his teenage years working in the local game stores selling the latest in next generation consoles and AAA titles. Having studied two degrees in game development, Will was lucky enough to land his first job in the games industry working for Rebellion Developments on the Sniper Elite series.

After spending some time as a University lecturer teaching games programming to undergrads, Will returned to development to work on the Horizon franchise for Firesprite, a Playstation Studio. Since then Will has started his own company and works with other studios on a number of exciting projects.

  

Will's games

Credits include Horizon: Call of the Mountain, Sniper Elite III: Afrika and Sniper Elite IV: Italia, Illuvium

SniperElite3
SniperElite4
Horizon Call of the Mountain

Q&A with Will

Which city are you currently based in?

Cheltenham, UK

What did your pathway into the industry look like?
I was hired initially as a UI Programmer and worked closely with designers and artists to build user-facing systems for Sniper Elite III: Afrika. My talent for building tactile, player-focused systems helped me move from User Interface to Artificial Intelligence, where I spent the next installment of the Sniper Elite series, Sniper Elite IV: Italia, working on specialist behaviours for the enemy AI soldiers.
What has been the best experience of your career so far?
There's nothing like releasing your first published title and watching the (thankfully positive) reviews roll in, to see the public appreciation for a project that you have spent so many hours and put so much of your heart and soul into is an incredible feeling.
What’s your advice for students?

Learning to code can feel incredibly overwhelming at times. Starting out, almost everyone has a crisis of confidence as to whether they actually have what it takes to learn to code. When this happens, take a deep breath, break the problem you're facing down into its component parts and try to find one place in your code that you know you understand well and work from there. Stay calm, stay confident and, bit by bit, things will start to fall into place.

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What do you enjoy most about being a CG Spectrum mentor?
The opportunity to teach small classes of aspiring game developers is a huge source of motivation to me, their enthusiasm and drive to enter the industry helps me to never forget how lucky I am to be part of it.
How do you stay creative outside of work?
I'm a big music fan and spend whatever time I'm not programming writing and performing songs with my band, Lazerbrain. Check us out on Spotify!
What excites you most about the future of game programming?
The potential for virtual reality is really exciting, both in terms of game development and its broader applications in all kinds of fields.

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