By Aimee “Ashlanne” Rekoske

Summer is here and we have more SOE Employees to meet! We want you to get to know folks in Platform, Human Resources, Development, Legal, Quality Assurance, Office Operations, Customer Service, Administration and Marketing, just to name a few.

Each month the Community Team will highlight one of SOE’s many diverse employees. Please meet Josh Kriegshauser, Technical Director for a super secret project at SOE! Take a moment to find out about what a typical day in the office is like for him, what his favorite SOE game is, and other fun tidbits. As a special bonus, we include a screenshot from his favorite SOE game!





Tell us about yourself! What’s your name and what do you do at SOE? How long have you been working here?

I’m Joshua “Autenil” Kriegshauser and I’ve been at SOE for nearly seven years now. Currently I’m the Technical Director on a super sekret hush-hush project. Previously I’ve been the Technical Director on Clone Wars Adventures and EverQuest II. And before that… well, we’ll just stop there.

How did you get into the industry?

I haxx0red my way into the industry. Yup, that’s right. I was playing a non-SOE MMO and they launched an expansion that was really buggy. The biggest problem was that people were getting disconnected in populated areas. I used my leet [reverse] engineering skills to figure out the problem and managed to land an interview. I told them that if they hired me I’d have the problem fixed (without ever seeing the official code) in two weeks or less. You can read more about it on my blog at http://blog.joshuakriegshauser.com/. I actually had it fixed in about two days. It ended up being a one-line code change. You’d be surprised how often that happens.

Tell us what a typical workday is like for you.

7:00am – My kids wake me up
8:30am – Arrive at work, preferably via bicycle
10:15am-11:00am – Review the previous day’s awesomeness with the team in Scrum Stand Ups
11:00am-12:00pm – Meetings, discussions
12:00am-1:30pm – LUNCH! Sometimes it involves a nice long bike ride to the beach and back
1:30pm-6:30pm+ – Code like the dickens to have awesome stuff to brag about tomorrow
10:00pm – occasionally log back in because I thought about a really cool way to do something different.
2:00am – Go to bed. Maybe.

Let’s talk favorites… What is your favorite SOE game title? What is your favorite thing about that game?

EverQuest II hands down. I’ve spent so much time in that world (and code) that it feels like home. Everything from the lush green acres of Antonica to the packet processing of EntityServer.cpp brings a smile to my face.

I’ve really loved some of the content that we’ve added over the years. I think the Brew Day festivities and cow-tipping antics with Prew Drowers leave a lasting impression on me because good ol’ Prew was named for an actual developer with a penchant for homebrew. It’s fun to put little funny things like that in the game.

If you could be any fictional character, who would you be?

Chuck Norris. The fictional one.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

It would be pretty awesome to fly. But if I had the engineering prowess of Tony Stark I could do that and more, right? And have awesome technology to boot.

If you could go on vacation and money wasn’t an object what would you do?

I’m interested in historical things, so seeing castles of old in Europe to the pyramids in Egypt, to the wonders of the holy land and the mountains of New Zealand.

Aw heck, let’s go to Pripyat and see how close we can get to Chernobyl!

Do you have hobby? What’s last book you read? Last movie you saw? What do you do to unwind after a busy day?

Hobbies. Hrm… Well, I like bicycling, programming and video games. Amazingly enough I actually enjoy public speaking too. Talking to visiting students from nearby colleges and seeing their programming projects makes me smile. Also I love LEGOs. LOVE them.

Last book(s) were the Hunger Games trilogy. Highly recommended. And may the odds be ever in your favor.

Last movie I saw in the theater was The Avengers (and I’m going to have to see it again!), but I’m also re-watching the Alien quadrology in preparation for Prometheus.

The bicycle certainly helps to unwind, as do video games and hanging out with my family. And LEGOs.



Enjoy this screenshot from the EverQuest II, Josh’s favorite SOE Game!



We hope you enjoyed meeting Josh and will join us next month for another SOE Employee Spotlight.

Employee Spotlight Archives






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