Apart from being an excellent programmer, Mats is an undisputed savant in another area. Mats knows the internet – nock and friggin’ cranny. Regardless of what you do or what you say, Mats has the uncanny ability to immediately post some kind of weird YouTube-clip or bizarre .gif-animation relating to it in some arbitrary, digital forum.

This phenomenon has not yet been scientifically explained, but the general consensus is that Mats one night simply delved too deep in the vast sea of information that is the internet. He saw things. Things that could not be unseen.

He grew up on an island, far from civilization. That might explain a thing or two.

Niklas is a programmer here at Hello There. He works like all programmers do: he sits and stares – somewhat forlorn – on his screen, which is filled with a raging myriad of different numbers, values and short, incomprehensiblie words. Occasionally he scrolls down a little, sighs hopelessly, and scrolls back up. Once in a while he tabs to another window with roughly the same content, but usually tabs back rapidly.

And a few days later, shit just works.

Niklas can work seemingly forever. He has the constitution of a tank. Speculation circulates around the possibility that he may be a robot.

Axel works at Hello There as a producer. He is the dark hipster that heads certain projects and makes sure that we do what we’re supposed to, and also that we do it on time. He keeps us calm when we’re about to freak out, and he steers us when we’re drifting. His style is soothing and fatherly.

In his spare time Axel sings in a rock band. When he sings, he sounds really angry and upset. This clash with his office behaviour has led to speculation regarding some kind of Fight Club-esque personality disorder.

Come to think of it… We’ve never seen him sleep…

Michel is one of our skilled 3D artists. He spend his office hours building characters and props for our games, making sure that the quality is up-to-date and top-notch. Mostly he sits at his desk, staring intently on his screen; fingers flying over the keyboard and WACOM-pen scribbling frenetically. Occasionally – to let us know he is alive – he shouts something incomprehensible and strange, like a chorus from some obscure pop song or maybe just a high-pitched word of minor torment.

Michel is a happy and joyous person. Until he starts playing ping-pong. Apparently ping-pong is grave business – serious like a heart attack.

Erik is our interaction designer. We haven’t really established what interaction design is, but Erik waltzes into meetings, points at things, sketches weird figures and refers to some obscure field study about Pournelle’s Law of Whatnot, The Rule of Three Little Piggies or maybe a reference to some guy called Ockham who apparently liked to shave. Afterward we all just nod in confused agreement and things turn out well.

Erik is a ludophile, which means board game geek. He plays anything he can get his hands on, trying it out and generally soaking up every design choice he comes across.

He frequently orders mysterious trinkets via internet. Maybe he’s preparing for the zombie crisis, or maybe he’s an aspiring super-villain. Time will tell.

We don’t speak of Douglas. Not since the incident.

Michael is our only official 2D-artist. He’s darn good at it too! He’s not the only one who does it, though. There are plenty of people in the office who sketch and doodle with proficiency. It’s just that Michael is tad more experienced then the rest of us… In all fairness, he’s actually the best… …by far.

Ah, who am I kidding?! He kicks our collective butt.

Michael is really into comic books, and he looks it. Years and years of pencil-holding, sharpener-twisting and eraser-rubbing has pumped his muscles to epic proportions. He has a jawbone straight and massive enough to make an entire construction team envious. He does not wear a cape, but he only changes clothes in phone booths.

Lina is our prime administrator, head of office and also a producer. Apparently, she’s collecting all the cool titles. Lina plans our weekly tasks, tracks our working hours and administrates the office. How she manages all these things is currently unclear. Cloning is the latest, hottest theory.

Lina is the perfect red herring. But not in the sense that she’s a magenta-coloured fish – that would be silly. Seriously. No, it’s because when surrounded with such a rugged crowd of manly men (we cling desperately to this illusion), it’s hard to believe that she is in fact the cunning mastermind and clandestine schemer behind the whole operation.

Trying to nail a title to Bob is quite frankly a fool’s errand. In the eyes of a game developer, Bob is the Alpha and the Omega. He was never there. He was always there. He is it. Bob animates 2D-graphics, writes texts, programs things… pretty much the whole shebang.

Occasionally he travels away in order to attend something called the Demo Scene. It’s some kind of underground movement that works with doing cool stuff with lousy computers, or something.

Returning from these adventures Bob always spams our mailboxes with strange videoclips of geometrical figures doing somersaults to odd music. We don’t get it, but it brings tears of joy to Bob’s eyes. That is reward enough for all of us.

Arshak is our multi-class game designer and producer. One might find him sitting in front of his PC (that’s right, he’s using one of those) tweaking settings and distances on a level, trying vigorously to find an excuse to add the venerable double-jump feature into the gameplay. One might also find him stomping around on his heels, pointing at unfinished task and usher people around like a production driving juggernaut.

Arshak has a legendary skill. He is Hymnborn. This gives him the skill hum diabolically annoying songs, which sticks to our minds like groupies to a rock star, and haunts us for weeks and weeks.