About Me
Who I am
My name is Kristopher Gay, I was born and raised on Prince Edward Island (the smallest province in Canada).
I went to university on Prince Edward Island at UPEI and earned a Bachelor of Science degree with a Major in Computer Science and dual minors in Mathematics and Philosophy.
During my degree I was a part of UPEI’s co-op program which gave me some very unique opportunities to try working at several different places including as a research assistant for UPEI’s digital lab and at the Canadian Space Agency in Longueuil, Quebec, just outside of Montreal.
During my final year I was the technical leader on a team that won the Big Pitch contest. The result was Quipin, a mobile loyalty card app that got used by several local businesses and the local transit commission in Charlottetown.
After leaving Timeless and Quipin I participated in a University exchange program to UPEI’s sister university Dankook University in South Korea, teaching English in their English Village program, an optional course for students looking to do exchanges to universities in English speaking countries.
Return to PEI I ended up taking part in an incubator program called Game Garage that was my first exposure to Unity and game programming in general. During the program we created a pretty bad tower defense game that integrated the rules for Scrabble as part of it’s point scoring system. Since then I have been hooked on game creating.
Shortly after the conclusion of the incubator program I got a job at XMG Studio in Toronto. It was at XMG that I released my first commercial mobile games (Fashion Star Designer, Gastrobots, Project Giants, Fashion Star Life) and also moved from intermediate to senior to studio lead developer.
XMG was purchased by Highmark Interactive and I continued there as the studio lead developer working the EQ health system for diagnosing and treating concussions by using microgames based on medical tests.
After launch of EQ I left Highmark to return to mobile games with PopReach Incorporated again as the studio lead developer, being promoted to Development Director once we acquired other studios in Halifax, Canada and Bangalore, India.
What I do
I’m a programmer.
What I mean by that is I have a background in Computer Science which helps and informs my game development processes. Learning to program, and learning the fundamentals of computability and computational theory is incredibly valuable in my day to day.
I have worked on everything from full stack (front and back end) web work to med tech native PC applications. However my specialty is currently Unity mobile game development.
Most of my career has been spent creating mobile games for both iOS and Android platforms, generally targeting as wide a range of devices as possible to increase the possible customer base as much as possible.
I also really enjoy general gameplay programming and specifically implementing effects and shaders. I’m quite literate in both older style Unity CG shader programming and the more modern HLSL/GLSL options.
As a development leader my major concern is build reliability and then code integrity. The main way that I have developed to enforce both of these things is a system of peer based code reviews that have worked extremely well at increasing adherence to coding standards, readability and most importantly cut build issues from semi-daily events to extremely rare occurrences.
Why I’m rad
Outside of programming I have a swath of other interests but the three that people would talk about if you asked about me are Cycling, Hockey and Beer.
Cycling, I would imagine is obvious from my banner image. It was created by Nikola Odic as a present for my birthday while I was on a cycling tour of Ontario during the summer of 2020. I build and maintain my own bicycles and, as is standard I have slightly too many for my available storage.
Hockey, I play in the GTHLA a really excellent community of players and organizers many of whom are artists or involved in creative careers or endeavors. I grew up playing hockey in Tyne Valley, PEI and unfortunately gave it up once I aged out of the minor hockey age range. I only picked it up again after moving to Toronto and I am extremely glad that I have.
Beer, I love beer and the craft beer explosion in the city in recent years has been nothing but a good thing. However my main focus on it now is through brewing my own beer at home. I find it really meditative (similar to baking) and the ability to brew and drink options that are generally not available commercially.
My repeat brews include a really simple but delicious Grisette that uses a wild Toronto yeast blend, a west coast style APA and a smooth and delicious English Bitter.