10 Oct Meet Pierce McBride, Developer at Futurus

Pierce has been working tirelessly on client work since day 1 at Futurus. I finally got a chance to sit down with him to ask him the hard-hitting questions. 

What did you want to be when you grew up? 

I bounced back and forth between film director and game designer. I wanted to be a director for most of my elementary and middle school years, but once I was in high school I started to pay more attention to video games. I was playing video games for most of my childhood, but I only started to consider being a video game designer when I started to program and became familiar with specific game designers like Will Wright and Peter Molyneux. 

What is your favorite part about working at Futurus, aside from working next to Chan? 

I like that I’m never bored at work. The size of the team means that I’ve never got a shortage of things I can be working on and the problems are varied. Some days I’m working entirely in Photoshop/Illustrator, other days I’m all in on programming. Add to that the fact that we work with future technologies and I’m learning and doing new things almost every day. 

What would you consider your favorite AR/VR headset to use? Do you have a favorite game? 

I’m going to be a bit of a maverick and say the Oculus, basically because the controllers are much more comfortable and easier to use than the Vive’s. I can’t get over how difficult the grip button on the Vive, while the Oculus has easily distinguishable buttons through touch alone. That’s important when you’re functionally wearing a blindfold. As for games, I’d say my favorite game is SUPERHOT. It’s part of a small handful of games that were ported to VR and I think became better games for it.

What is something valuable you’ve learned while working at Futurus? 

I’ve gotten a much better sense of how actual client work proceeds with real-time restrictions and expectations. Most of the work I’ve done in the past has been internal or I’ve been on the client side. Being on this side I’ve learned how to design and develop for clients who may or may not have much knowledge in the technology we’re building and need guidance on how to describe what they’re expecting from it or what it can do. 

You have an eye for cool shirts – where do you find them? 

Thank you! To be honest plenty of places do sell interesting patterns, but usually only a few at a time. Some are from H&M, others Uniqlo or consignment shops like Buffalo Exchange and Rag-o-Rama. My favorite place though is an online store called ASOS. 

Tell us about your hidden talents. 

I’m not quite sure this counts as a talent, but I used to play college dodgeball in Chicago. I played on a school team that would travel to other Midwest schools for tournaments a couple times a term. Rephrasing that as a talent though, I can probably still throw a rubber kickball ~40mph.