Hey Everyone,
It's my pleasure to introduce you all to our newest member of the Community Team, Bo, also known as LeSelmer here on the forum. While he may be new to the Amplitude team, he's been taking care of space- and fantasy-game communities for a long time. Some of you may have even heard of him before under a different name, so find out more about him below.
Who are you and what is your job at Amplitude?
My name is Bo Selmer Hansen, I am 42 years old, and I hail from the kingdom of Denmark. (though I have been living in France for a long time).
I am a Senior Community Developer at Amplitude, which is a job where I get to wear many different hats – I get to be a part of Amplitudes marketing team, and I will work together with Rogan and Steph in particular on various projects involving social media, content creation, community management, goofing around when opportunities arise, and much, much more…
What were you doing before you joined the studio?
I have done a ton of different things over the years, too many to list here I think, but for the last 15 years I have been working for Blizzard Entertainment – I have been working with all of Blizzard’s titles at some point over the years, but most recently I was a Community Manager on the Overwatch Team.
Old-timers from the World of Warcraft and other battle.net forums might remember me as Vaneras.
What do you like the most at Amplitude?
There are a lot of things I like at Amplitude, but there is a sort of “pioneer spirit” here that I really like – There are a lot of truly different and wonderful people at Amplitude, and everybody here have something special to contribute with, which they are valued for.
The teams at Amplitude are quite diverse, yet everybody takes pride in coming together to build something great, and I think it is a wonderful thing when everyone gets to feel that their contributions matter.
What have you worked on that you're super proud of?
This is a hard one, I have worked on so many things that made me feel proud in some way, but I would say that I feel quite happy about having experienced the pioneer days of online Community Management in the early mid 2000’s and I feel both lucky and proud about having been part of the group of people that helped shape and define what this kind of job entails.
What are you currently working on?
I am still new at Amplitude, but I am already working on a bunch of different things, some of which being stuff that is still a little too early to talk about.
One thing I think is interesting to mention though, is that I am working on a few different projects and things to expand our collaborations with content creators (A content creator can be anyone who makes videos, streams, run fan sites, produce podcasts, makes guides, creates artwork, cosplays, bakes decorative cakes and pastries, etc.) about Amplitude games (and other games as well of course).
What's your favorite game of all time?
Ah this is a tough one. There are so many awesome games that I have played and immersed myself in over the years, and in so many different genres! But I will mention one of the first games that truly blew me away, and I believe this was also the first game that made my parents accuse me of “wasting” a summer, and that game is ‘UFO: Enemy Unknown’ (aka X-COM: UFO Defense)
What’s the game you dream of creating?
I would love to see a game (or a series of games) that blends the best of 4X grand strategy and simulation games, where these genres are combined in different and new ways that would allow for a more personal touch on the evolution and expansion of your empire over time.
Imagine a game like Humankind for an example, where instead of simply adding constructions in your build queue to grow and expand your cities, you could have a ‘mode’ where you yourself can jump in to build and develop your cities and regions infrastructure in much the same way as you do when playing games like ‘The Settlers’, ‘SimCity’, or ‘Stronghold’.
As time passes and new technologies become available, you can jump in and out of cities and regions to develop them further, and maybe you could even have the different ‘modes’ synergize in ways that some progress won’t happen until you are dealing with problems that are stretching your current technologies to the limit – as an example, when your empire is reaching the space age, imagine that your progress is impacted on how well you build and develop your space program, similarly in style as when playing games such as ‘Kerbal Space Program’ and ‘Surviving Mars’
I could talk about my thoughts on this sort of game for ages, I have many ideas for sure, but much smarter people than I would certainly be needed to actually make it happen, and more importantly, make it fun to play.
Is there anywhere on the Internet where I can see more of your stuff?
While I do like to draw and paint, and occasionally sculpt, I do not really have anything online to show. In my younger days, when I really wanted to make graphics for a living, I was part of a video game development team called Marble Eyes that was making games for the Amiga platform. We were just a handful of guys really, but we got a game released called Genetic Species published by Vulcan Software in 1998, a game which I helped make graphics for.
What's your favorite race or character in our games?
I really like the Vaulters! I love their lore, and I like that their story spans over several Amplitude games in very interesting and different ways depending on what game you play.
What are your hobbies in life?
I would like to say sailing, though it is not something I have been able to do for many years. I used to sail a lot in my youth, and I just love the sensation of being on the sea. It is certainly something I want to get into again later in life.
Otherwise I like to cook and bake, I like to draw and paint from time to time as well, and of course play games and consume awesome TV shows and movies like most of us here I assume.
What obscure movie would you recommend watching?
I love films that make a lot of use of practical effects in their world-building, and many of my favourite films of all times were made between the 70s and late 90s. There are so many amazing films and franchises that spawned out of that era that people still revere to this day, so much so that I feel that other fantastic films from that era have become somewhat forgotten. I don’t know how obscure these are, but three films I think deserve a rewatch more often are ‘Labyrinth’, ‘The Neverending Story’ and ‘Willow’.
What's the dish you cook to impress people?
I like to make Smørrebrød (højbelagt of course) as it both looks amazing and tastes fantastic.
That's it for Bo for now. He'll be joining me in managing and nurturing this awesome community, so I'm sure you'll see him around.