Today we’re speaking with Roman Perezogin, a former indie developer who we recruited from our community to join the CRYENGINE team!

Roman Perezogin moved from being part of the CRYENGINE community to working with our engine every day to serve the CRYENGINE community. Roman is one of our tutorial hosts, and in today’s interview, we learn about his journey and how his experience of being part of the community helps him in his current role as Junior Technical Designer.

Hey Roman! Can you tell us a bit about your background and your history with CRYENGINE?

Hey! Well, I am from Germany, and now living here in Frankfurt. I started out as a graphic designer, but it turned out the job was not a good fit for me. Since I loved playing games, I kind of wanted to create my own worlds and my own stories. So I started to learn a few things about game development. I began with Unreal in my first steps with game development but I couldn't get my head around it. So I tried other engines and when I discovered CRYENGINE, I immediately felt like home because I was able to understand the basics of the engine really quickly. This was about five or six years ago.

How did you get to join Crytek and get into your current role?

I was working on my solo project, an open world horror game with CRYENGINE and I received huge support from Crytek and the community team. I was invited to the studio, they took me with them to conventions, so I was able to present my game, and it was amazing! However, I actually grew tired of developing a game on my own for almost four years. I wanted to join the people I loved to work with and who supported me, so when I got the opportunity to join Crytek, I jumped at it. Shout out to Gabriel here!

What is your main focus at the moment?

To be honest, I want to work out my Grandma’s amazing vanilla cake recipe! It’s been bugging me for months now, and she won’t tell me her secret. But besides that, my main focus is to develop myself and learn as much as I can. Even though I had built up great experience working with CRYENGINE as an indie developer, a AAA workflow is quite different. Not only that but with so many amazingly talented people around the studio, you just want to suck up as much of their wisdom as possible. So you try to learn all the amazing and interesting things you can and try to adapt. I love it. There is always, always something new to learn every day at Crytek, and then I get to use the knowledge to improve the quality of the experience for people using our engine.

How does it feel to make the switch from being part of the community to working on CRYENGINE for the community?

Joining Crytek was really enlightening. With the experience of an indie dev and no background in AAA game development, it was only when I joined Crytek that I actually learned what all the really complex systems “behind the curtain” actually do. The experience of working with CRYENGINE previously gave me the perspective of an indie dev and a connection to the community. It's helping me to target the needs of our community and use that knowledge to guide the future of tutorials and improvements for the engine.

What’s been your most satisfying moment working with CRYENGINE at Crytek?

That's a tough question! There are a lot of great moments, but getting to interact with our community at all the different conferences is something I really enjoy.

How does a regular day at work look like for you?

To begin with, it involves a lot of coffee! Then checking my mails and our official discord channel, which you should definitely join, and then getting to work, opening a new build of the engine, and thinking about more coffee while the engine starts up. And then I get to work, develop amazing stuff, learn and create!

What does it take to do your job well?

Passion and commitment. You have to be ready to absorb a lot of knowledge from the incredibly talented artists and programmers here and understand what they are trying to teach you, and then use that knowledge to create something great. I think it takes a fascination for the industry too. My passion is all about breathtaking technology and its possibilities, and to learn from the amazing minds here. You need to be committed to learning, then covert that knowledge into skill, and then convey that knowledge to the community.

Have you got any tips for anyone aspiring to work in your field?

To quote a phrase, just do it! One of the most important tips I have, though, is to really understand what you are doing. Understand what you are trying to achieve. Learn about the basics and the foundations of your task. You want to create animations and play them in the engine, for example? Then learn and understand what animations are and what they do, the low level basics, and take baby steps. Understand how the engine handles animations, and what happens in the background. This will give you amazing analytical skills, and you will be able to debug whatever troubles you encounter.

What are you most looking forward to coming to the engine?

Visual Scripting, of course. I absolutely love working with our new visual scripting tool.

What are you playing at the moment?

Breath of the Wild, which is an amazing and relaxing game. I also play a lot of party games with friends. I’m really looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077 and, of course, loving our very own Hunt: Showdown.

Cheers, Roman!

Join Roman over on our official CRYENGINE Discord channel. Our team is always collating your feedback on our channels, so if you have suggestions about the engine or future tutorials, do let us know on the forum, or via Facebook and Twitter. If you find a bug in the engine, please report it directly on GitHub, which helps us to process the issue quickly and efficiently.

Would you like to follow Roman’s path from the community to working on our team? We actively encourage people from all kinds of backgrounds and experience levels to apply to our open positions, so join us over at LinkedIn and check out our careers page.