Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Zeppy64. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Zeppy64, thank you so much for joining us today and appreciate you talking about a sensitive topic. It’s unfortunately relevant to so many in the community as layoffs have been on the rise recently, and so we’d appreciate hearing your story and how you overcame being let go?
I used to be a coder, both on the front-end and back-end of projects of a brand agency. My layoff was something devastating, cause it’s something I always liked to do and have the passion to do the best things, but one of the reasons was that the Agency found a cheaper alternative, it was free, it would get the job done even if it was not optimized or cause extra issues, so that added that I felt useless.
After I got laid off there was that feeling of emptiness, that what I did was wrong, that I commited many mistakes, that I couldn’t provide help to my family.
My family was very understanding from the beginning, but then I decided to shift focus, try something new, I remember around that time I met a content creator on Twitch that was doing okay.
When I pursued this path I was met with rejection from my family, and while that remains, I have met a lot more people, some that really look up to me, some that have given me purpose as I would be live and read their messages of support like “Watching you brings a smile to my face” and independantly of people being hating on your choices there will be more that will try to help you and make things better.
I remember saying things like “I will never code again” and it feels really silly nowadays as I found a new passion when making experiences inside the videogame Fortnite that felt super welcoming.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I make content on the internet, from compilations to live streams. I like to check whatever games I find interesting to my audience on Twitch, hang around in Discord as well.
Whenever I’m not making that I am usually found working on videogame development, I like making things inside the Unreal Editor for Fortnite.
I am hoping for one day to reach and tackle Unreal Engine directly and make my first game, in the meantime me and my team are currently working on an update for our Fortnite Zombie Survival Experience to bring a larger player count, cosmetics and fixes.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
For this three qualities I’d go with:
-Learning: Something I always found a passion was on keep learning, figure out what can I learn, I was able to learn and understand more things and use them in my favor, like Graphic design or video editing, as a coder I also felt like learning more and even managing to explore into game languages. For sure I am not an expert but it has helped me quite a lot!
-Problem solving: Nothing brings more insight than to think of what’s happening outside the box, I didn’t want to code again, but was able to learn and even do some Graphic Design for some clients, trying to think of alternatives as I believe that problems have more than one solution
-Be nice: Being humble and treat people with respect will only bring that back around to you, treating people nicely feels like a given but you’d be surprised of the amount of people that forget about this, this has opened multiple doors to me, but also don’t forget to treat yourself nicely as well, we can’t really be nice to others if we aren’t nice to ourselves.
Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?
I feel a lot of people have been able to help me, fostering a community with like minded individuals has been quite nice to have, people who have felt in similar circumstances that just want to get away from their problems even for a little bit. We accept anyone who wants to be part of the community, like artists, other content creators and gamers.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://twitch.tv/Zeppy64
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zeppy64/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Zeppy64
- Youtube: https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UC6BOIdKTTd3XdG-yWazbr4g
- Other: https://discord.gg/5622aP7
