Koen Witters @deWiTTERS

Here is a little background on my computer history. It all started with my uncle who owned a Commodore, so almost every day I went there to play some games. One day my father came home with an XT. So then I could mess around on my own. But I still didn't know that much about computers. Then one computer followed the other, and I wanted to make games of my own (haven't we all started like this?). So I started to read a book about GW-BASIC. I was about 14 years old. Then I learned Quick-basic. But this language had to many limits, so I started to learn C, then C++. I wrote a lot of small games, but the ideas in my head where from a size of Westwood-Blizzard. So together with my cousin Erik we formed a game developing team: ThunderCousins. We started to write a game called Deep, but as you might guess we never finished it. I still have a floppy that contains the last version of it.

After this I went to the university of Antwerp for a Master degree in Computer Science. During my studies I discovered GNU/Linux, and since then it became my favorite OS. Back then I kind of forgot all about game development, and wanted to start working as a consultant. But when I got my Master degree in 2002, the IT market had totally collapsed, and even consultants couldn't find a consultancy job.

But thanks to this burst of the dot-com bubble, my childhood dream finally became reality; I started my career as a game programmer at AIM Productions, and rediscovered my old love for creating games. And man it was great!

After working a few years at AIM Productions, I felt like I had more in me. I wanted to learn more, see new things, gain more experience. So I did two things; I started my own game development company called Koonsolo (you might say it's the ultimate childhood dream). And at the same time I started a new challenging career as a enterprise software developer.