Hello! I’m Heartonomy’s new co-founder, Rudd. Sometimes seen on the web as ruddzw (say hi on twitter!) or on Xbox Live as carbonsnow. In this post, I’d like to tell you a bit about myself. I’ll be working on our to-be-announced first game in the role of engineer, futhering the game implementation and building out online infrastructure, and taking up responsibility for our online presence. There’s a lot to do in a small company like this, so I’m going to keep this post short and sweet.

I’m an engineer by training and a gamer at heart. I graduated from Cornell in 2009 with a degree in Computer Science and two internships under my belt. Most recently, I was a software developer and tech lead for a NYC-based educational tech company, building web applications. I haven’t worked professionally on any games, but I’ve been tinkering with a few hobby iOS games as projects, learning about how to build games.

But like I said, I’m a gamer at heart. I’ve been playing games since my parents would let me have them, which ended up being a Super Nintendo system, where I fell in love with games like the Zelda and Super Mario series. On the SNES, my tastes were pretty simple and I stuck to mostly first-party titles. I worked my way up from there, through RPGs and first-person shooters, until high school when I started playing far too much Quake 3.

In college, in order to make sure I didn’t get too distracted, I forced myself to stop playing games, as they had taken up a significant portion of my life, in an unhealthy manner. But I still loved games. A while after the Wii came out, I decided it was time to slowly get back into games, so that I could enjoy them casually. I braved a blizzard to make it to a Best Buy early in the morning, where the snow had discouraged enough people from coming that I could actually get one of the Wiis in the shipment. I was back!

The next year, I was with my now-fiancée’s family for spring break, where her step-brother introduced me to Call of Duty. I think it was the World at War installment. It came surprisingly naturally to me. So soon after, I got an Xbox 360 and a Call of Duty of my own. By that time, it was Modern Warfare 2. Since then, I’ve played a lot of CoD. This time, in a more healthy manner.

I’m now hooked on Black Ops 2, just now ranked in the Platinum Division for the competitive Champions Series, and really interested to see Call of Duty‘s glorious return to eSports after MW3 messed it up a bunch. Call of Duty got me into the world of competitive gaming, with a mixture that I find really appealing: emphasis on twitch and hand-eye coordination, with an element of strategy where you can’t win by gun skill alone.

So why am I here? I’m here because I think Heartonomy can contribute a lot to the world of gaming. I see a distinct lack of good games on mobile platforms, and the ones that are good are almost all casual. I think it’s time to change that, and when we announce our first game, I hope you’ll agree.