The year 2000 marked the beginning of my professional career in the games industry, because I started to earn money from the games I was developing. “Space in Motion: FutureTrade” found its way into some stores in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in May. It was not a lot of money that was flowing back to me but I was proud that my first product was professionally finished and could be bought by consumers.
Some time later a fellow student at the University gave me a tip. He said something like this: “There is a company, which is developing a ‘Diablo‘ clone, in Leipzig”. So I presented myself to that ‘company’. It was not a complete company but a graphics studio, which held an exclusive partnership with a developer in Berlin called “Silver Style Entertainment“. So the partner in Leipzig got the name “Silver Style Studio”. And they were not really developing a hack and slay game like “Diablo” but a real RPG called “Gorasul: The Legacy of the Dragon“. I introduced myself as a potential programmer because that talent was and is better then my artistic one. Because the studio was ‘only’ producing graphics and some web sites they could not hire me instantly. That situation last until spring 2001. At that time I had got two opportunities: First I could went to Austria to develop the AI of “1503 A.D.“, which was the the successor of the best-selling game in Germany, or I could stay, become self-employed and work as a freelancing graphics programmer at the project “BomberFun” for the new company “Lightbrain” from Hamburg. I decided to do the second one because 3D programming was much more interesting than AI for me and I could work from home. The manager of “Silver Style Studio” quited the partnership with “Silver Style Entertainment” and founded an own studio, which was completely responsible for the graphics in “BomberFun”. As graphics programmer we had to operate closely in conjunction and so our solidarity was increasing.
That led to a game, which we produced independently from “LightBrain”, at the end of 2001. It was called “Winterspiele 2002” and was a winter game, which had only been published in German speaking countries.
“BomberFun” reached its final state in summer 2002 and received an award from gamershell.com. Unfortunately the game was much more played than sold.
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