Meet Co-Founder & Front End Lead: Ryan Lay
Ryan’s story originated with a passion for games and technology during college. Now, he is responsible for finding growth opportunities for BetaJester, as well as leading the Visuals and UX for BetaJester clients across the country. Take a look at his journey so far.
How did your passion for games and technology start?
I took some time off from college to research the fundamentals needed to build the games, Fallout New Vegas or Oblivion.
This spiralled into a big interest in tech during that time, lots of podcasts and getting to grips with the fundamentals of development on Linux. By the time I went back to college to undertake a Nation Diploma as an IT Practitioner, I was heavily invested in wanting to build games and immersive experiences.
Where did the idea of starting BetaJester come from?
Game Jams! BetaJester as a team has been working together since our first year of University (around 9 years ago!). Over time we released we had a skill for rapid prototyping and worked well together.
During our final year, we were fortunate to be in a position to get ourselves some free office space courtesy of the University and that gave us the time we needed to get out feet off the ground and build our initial network of clients and collaborators.
What are your responsibilities in the company?
I'm one of the founders of the company and as such, a large part of my focus is finding new opportunities for BetaJester, as well as helping to drive the vision and direction towards BetaJester’s continued growth.
My role involves lots of writing code and lots of front end UI/UX and level design/implementation. I tend to lead the development of the visuals and UX of the products we develop whilst also building the software connections between that front-end and the functional back end.
“AR/VR is an ever growing market, being ready to capitalize on that puts you ahead of the curve”
Would you consider yourself an expert and why?
I’d say this at least, I have 10+ years experience over my education and professional career building immersive and engaging experiences on top of solid reusable codebases. I’m at a point where I can do that efficiently, quickly, and avoid most of the standard pitfalls. If that makes me an “expert” then I’ll gladly take the title!
Why is immersive and gamification the future for businesses?
You can pretty much do everything via your phone/laptop that you need for day to day life.
With that being the case, businesses having ways to interact with their B2B or B2C clients is futureproof. Immersive and gamification adds engagement over extended periods, and benefits directly from the way people interact with technology on a day-to-day business.
Anything that lowers the barrier of entry and keeps your clients engaged is something a business needs to consider if they don't want to become stagnant. Immersive tech like AR/VR is an ever growing market, yet still hasn't reached maturity. Being ready to capitalize on that huge market puts you ahead of the curve.
What do you want to achieve with BetaJester?
Like anyone who owns a business, we want continued growth. Eventually, I’d like BetaJester to be more focused on creating and selling our own IP (games and software solutions). We’re masking several strides in that direction right now, actually, and with any luck one of our several games-in-waiting will be ready to release soon and our Immersive training platform will be ready for customers.