Hello and welcome to the second entry in our weekly blog feature here at the Tumbleweed Interactive Developer’s Blog!

I thought it might be a good idea to have a weekly feature where we introduce each of our team’s members, one at a time. This week we’ll start with the captain of our OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics engine, Håvard Christensen.

He’s from Tromsø, a city in northern Norway where you can experience both perpetual light and darkness, depending on the season. During the winter you hardly see the sun, but during the summer months the sun never sets. This might explain his ability to work sleeplessly through the night during crunchtime.

At 22 years of age, Håvard is already a formidable graphics programmer, but what is most remarkable about him is his dedication to meeting deadlines and his ability to push himself to the limit when necessary. For a start-up company it is absolutely vital to have a team member such as him who is not afraid to push himself to the limit, and reminding us others to do the same.

In his spare time Håvard enjoys playing soccer and tennis, programming graphical applications called “demos” as part of the demoscene phenomena, and gaming on his X-box 360 and his recently acquired Playstation 3. When it comes to gaming I would call Håvard a slightly “casual” core gamer. He wants to get the most out of his time spent, and is always on the hunt for new experiences. This means he will rarely play a game through for a second time (on a different difficulty for example) if he has already finished it, and games that take more than 20 hours to complete will often end up unfinished. If you have any beef with my description, Håvard, feel free to leave a comment :).

A lot of people say they spend less time playing games in general when they start working in the games industry. I find it interesting that in the last generations of consoles, games could last 20-30 hours till completion, while it seems 10-15 hours is becoming the norm. The movie industry seems to be moving in a different direction. Ten or so years ago a movie that lasted more than 2 hours would have to be a real epic, while now it has become almost a standard. Are we moving closer to an ideal length for both media? Are games industry veterans tired of making games their peers don’t have the patience to complete?

Portal is a good example of a game that can be completed in the time it would take you to watch one or two parts of the Lord of the Rings movies, and it is a truly phenomenal experience. I believe shortening the length of games is healthy for the industry, and I hope it will lead to more “short and sweet” experiences such as Portal.

PS. Speaking of movies, the whole Tumbleweed Interactive crew went to see The Dark Knight tonight, and we pretty much agreed it is the best superhero movie ever. Highly recommended!

- Kris Jet