The Journey
To My Success

Vitaliy Vlasevych: "Success is doing what you love and enjoying it”

My childhood was spent in an ordinary place in Ukraine. From an early age as a calm and quiet boy, I would easily get carried away.

I adored games since I was a child. Any type of games, literally. This is most likely why I started playing chess a lot, and when I wasn’t playing chess and wasn't at school, I would play video games, since I got a computer quite early.

"I have been playing video games actively since I was 7 years old and haven't stopped since"

I first started playing video games when I was 5 years old, but I've been playing actively since 7 and have never stopped since. At school, I did not really stand out in anything, besides having a penchant for mathematics and everything related to it. It was this trait that determined many choices in my life in the future.

When the right choice of the faculty appeared before me, I did not hesitate and decided I wanted to study Computer Science at Frederick University

At the age of 10 I realized that -given that I was always very close to technology, understanding my strengths and inclinations for mathematics and logic- I would somehow work in the IT field. At the age of 14, my father introduced me to programming, and that is when I finally decided in which area I needed to develop. Perhaps it was then, at 14, that I decided that I wanted to study Computer Science. That is why, when the right choice of the faculty appeared before me, I did not hesitate to go for it. 

I tried many different areas of development, starting with web development, development of desktop applications, mobile. But nothing could captivate me for a long time. Despite my long passion for video games, I kept avoiding a direct involvement with the development of video games. However, in 2018, I decided to try working with Unreal Engine during the holidays, and soon I got carried away so that I did not notice how it began to take up all my free time. Perhaps just when I saw how much this thing fascinated me, I finally decided that I wanted to improve myself and work in this area.

The feeling you get when people sincerely enjoy the game in which you put a lot of effort and part of your soul in, is invaluable

My brother was the person who introduced me to video games, and perhaps he was the only person who somehow influenced my path. After all, it was this early passion for games that greatly influenced my life path. The older I got, the more I became interested in how games are developed. I talked to a lot of people who were interested in the same thing and I was always amazed at how video games help people get away from their problems and how they help to think. I always draw a parallel between certain video games and books, because, in my opinion, they perform a similar function, forcing a person to think and rethink certain aspects of their life. For me, these are stories that give emotions and leave a mark on the soul of people. So, in terms of the events that influenced me a lot, it will be certain games that impressed me so much that I would like to be part of those who create these masterpieces.

During this time, I felt the atmosphere of this path to its very core. Teamwork between people of different nationalities, different mindsets with different ideas, but working for the same goal - to give people stories and emotions in the form of video games. I have participated in the development of games for different platforms, in teams of different sizes. The feeling you get when people sincerely enjoy the game in which you put a lot of effort and part of your soul in is invaluable.

Like any person on their life path, I had also faced a number of different difficulties. As a person, I love challenges, obstacles in general, because after I overcome them, I become stronger and more experienced. There were various obstacles that unsettled me - the loss of friends, relatives, loved ones, relationships, all this somehow stood in front of me and at times, I was required to make tough decisions. But in the end, all difficulties shape us as humans. With this mindset, I try to move only forward through life, and so far, it has been quite successful in my opinion. Of course, there were times when there seemed to be no way out, such as, a computer breakdown, which for me is almost synonymous to a heart attack. But there were always options of how to get out of situations, maybe not always very pleasant, but one way or another, everything was kept balanced. We just need to not wait for easy way outs from life, what we need to do is go and take the opportunities by ourselves.

Success is doing what you love and enjoying it. Only by constantly developing ourselves as personalities we can become better, both as humans and from a professional point of view

I always set myself high goals, because when I reach them I set even higher ones, which means there is no point in limiting myself to small goals. My immediate goal is to gain experience and participate in the development of larger projects, where I could fulfill my childhood dream by seeing myself in the credits. And in the slightly longer-term perspective, the development of pitches and concepts of my own ideas and their subsequent implementation with my own team into awesome games. As I said, my goals are always high! At the moment, I am working on an unannounced project, it will be a multiplayer game in the genre of survival. The project is still in the early stages of development and we hope to start sharing information about it soon, so stay tuned!

For me, success is doing what you love and enjoying it. Work is an integral part of our life, and when you really enjoy the process, life itself becomes brighter and more beautiful. Although it is very difficult to find what you want to do for a living, the exact moment when a person finds it and confidently moves towards it - I think this is what success is all about. Personally, seeing how people enjoy projects I am working on is always satisfying and this is what keeps me moving me forward. Constant progress, never staying still – that I consider success. Only by constantly developing ourselves as personalities we can become better, both as people and from a professional point of view to bring something new and cool to this world.