Writing about myself always felt kinda awkward. Be prepared for some weirdness and a lot of “me” here. So…
I’m Bartosz Olszewski, I’m 25 y/o (92′). It feels like a lot for me but doesn’t look so on paper. I’m currently living in Poland, in one of the most beautiful and friendly cities here – Wroclaw. Full of students; full of life.
I’ve got a lot of distance to myself and to the world. I like to listen to people and trying new things of all kinds. I don’t feel ashamed when I don’t have an opinion or I don’t know something. I like to think that I’m very open-minded. I believe that I don’t need to be great in everything to feel successful and happy.
I work in The Knights of Unity company for about 2 years already. It’s a software house company that makes games, apps and tools in Unity for clients from all over the world. The variety of the projects is stunning. This is both great and bad from my perspective. I got versatile knowledge, and I’ve got very close contact with clients, but the projects aren’t always games (and I love games).
The biggest companies I have worked with were Techland (Dying Light: The Following) and Team17. They weren’t long-run adventures, but they taught me a lot. I know how big studios work, how to behave as a gear in a complex mechanism and how to deal with huge codebases.
But how all of this has started? Well…
First, let me tell you why I went to the Computer Science high school. This is a little embarrassing, but… It was because I loved to play games and I liked computers. Yeah, that’s it. I mean, it’s something, and that’s how things often are when you’re 16 and you have to make big decisions.
My next stop was The Wroclaw University of Technology. Electronics Department, Computer Science. Yeah, I still loved to play games, but with some insight on the programming. It was a time I cannot easily evaluate for now. The knowledge about programming I got there wasn’t deep enough. It was because of the department I have chosen, and a bit because of lecturers that couldn’t connect all of that physics and math with programming. And it was my fault too because I could try harder. I was competent enough to have a scholarship, though.
Now, I think it was a good time for a couple of reasons. I learned how to learn. I learned many things I wouldn’t learn on my own and having that comprehensive knowledge feels good. I met very ambitious and smart people I wouldn’t have a chance to meet another way. I could compare myself to the others from the same ‘niche’ and see how much I lack. I think could take a bigger advantage of that time, but it was big enough after all. I started to pursue something. I wanted to be good at something. I learned how to program, and soon enough I noticed that the programming means A LOT more than knowing some language’s syntax. I started to work as a developer during studies, became independent in life and felt responsible for my future.
I’ve got Bachelor’s Degree in February 2016 and haven’t started the Master’s Degree. I already knew how the world outside universities’ walls looked like and I didn’t feel like spending any more time there.
Now I’m here with a strong sense of purpose to help others finish their games as much as I can. I work full-time, create my personal project, the Games Architecture blog and somewhere in between I try to squeeze learning new things, gym, playing games and life. Damn difficult, but not impossible.