Guardian of the Week — Edition #17 Meet ‘Jeerow’
Welcome to Edition #17 of the ‘Guardian of The Week’ series!
This initiative serves as a tribute to the dedication, passion, and effort each of you has poured into the Guild of Guardians community. We are grateful for everyone’s contributions and aim to provide a glimpse into the lives of the remarkable individuals who make this community truly special! 🖤
This week, we’re shining the spotlight on a dedicated Guardian who’s been tirelessly serving the community — Jeerow! The mastermind behind the widely used and beloved website and database, gogheroes.com.
Let’s start by introducing yourself to the community…
Hi! My name is Angelo, but my nickname is Jeerow. I was born in the Philippines, but for the past 10 years, I have been living and working in the United States, Minnesota, together with my wife. I’m a Product Owner/Software Engineer at one of the biggest IT and Consulting firms in the world, and our client here in Minnesota is one of the biggest retail/online stores in the United States.
I graduated in Information Technology and started working right after graduation. I’m passionate about creativity, games, technology, and sports. So even after working 9–5 [I indulge in them], if I still have the energy and time.
I like to spend my spare time in the creative arts, playing mobile games (MMORPG), or practising web development. In terms of games, I enjoy strategy and MMORPG. While I grew up on PS1 games, my brother introduced me to the MMROPG and strategy genres, and I got hooked on Starcraft, Warcraft 3, DOTA 1 and DOTA 2. I also enjoy basketball fantasy (currently in middle standing, hehe).
My medium of drawing is digital and watercolour. In terms of web development and technology, I like to research, and I’m more into the old school. I still use HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and SQL. I also love watching anime; I believe I have watched almost all of the top 500 lists on MyAnimeList. Currently, I am enjoying the Chainsaw Man series. I even got my wife hooked on watching anime and GoT/HoTD.
What got you into web development, and how long have you been in the field?
In terms of technology and software product development, I have over eight years of experience, but in web development, I have very minimal experience. Everything I built on gogheroes.com is from stock knowledge that I learned during college along with Google. GOG Heroes was my first time building and hosting a fully dynamic website. It helps, I guess, that my current job is related to product development and UI/UX, where I build my own automation tools for tasks that are tedious and repetitive. I’m passionate about building tools that make things easier!
One challenge in web development is ensuring compatibility across all browsers and making sites as mobile-friendly as possible. Back in college, websites were mainly rendered on desktop computers, but now every mobile device can access the internet, making responsive design crucial. Despite this challenge, I find it enjoyable, and it boosts my productivity.
If I had the time to learn a new programming language, I would love to learn full-stack web development, especially Python and JavaScript. However, my current schedule in real life keeps me very busy.
What inspired GOG Heroes? Was it your first time building in web3?
Yes, this is my first time building and hosting something like gogheroes.com. The idea came when I was browsing the heroes’ details in Tokentrove. I noticed there were limited descriptions for the different NFTs, and realised there are players like me that would want more details before buying. It was the great GOG community that inspired me to build the website and to spread the news of how awesome Guild of Guardians is for future players.
I also researched and read more about Guild of Guardians and fell in love with the social gameplay, the Play-and-Earn aspect and the fact that it’s a web3 mobile game. Also, the idea that you can have your own community/guild, and friends within the GOG universe was enough for me to get hooked. I believe building the gogheroes.com is enough testament to show how deeply I believe in Guild of Guardians and how much I love the GOG community.
You’ve previously spoken about adding additional functionality to GOG Heroes. Do you have plans to continue to add to the site?
Yes, definitely! I plan on adding more tools and pages once further details about the official gameplay have been released. But in the meantime, I am focusing on maintaining and improving the guilds page. The plan is to allow guild leaders to log in and add to their inventory of Heroes, energy boosters and tokens. Along with a guild registry to add guild member information and tracking in a dashboard that summarises all the items.
They’ll also be able to flex their inventory on the recruitment guild page so that when a player is looking for a guild, they’ll be able to make an effective assessment. You can currently do this manually, but I’m hoping in the future, GOG will release a public API to pull guild information for easy guild verification. So far, we have over 70 guilds registered, which is a lot considering the game is yet to be released. Just imagine when the game comes out — there will be a large influx of new members wanting to join a guild.
While I will continue to build the site, hosting a website is costly, so I’m looking to experiment with ads and donations to continue, and am open to community/guild sponsorship. One example I built over the weekend is the gogheroes.com/stake page. It’s a staking tool for tracking and reminding the community of when to stake, while we wait for the official staking UI.
What elements of Guild of Guardians are you the most excited about? What do you want to learn more about?
There are a lot of things I am excited about in Guild of Guardians, but I will list the features that I am currently looking forward to
- Gameplay with the different combos, levelling up, merging and the attributes required to strategise, which adds complexity.
- Conquering different dungeons, defeating bosses, and I heard there would be world bosses.
- Guilds, raids, and crafting are features I’m excited about. Collaborating with guildmates or friends in raids and strategic crafting, as well as competing on guild leaderboards. These are all aspects I’m eager to experience. Additionally, crafting items to sell in the marketplace presents another engaging opportunity.
- GOG being playable on mobile. Imagine being able to play anytime on your mobile device.
I could list many different elements of GOG, but it will take us a while! I believe Guild of Guardians has the potential to be the next big web3 game on mobile. The esports aspect is also kind of interesting to me, in the sense of how the GOG team integrate esports into GOG gameplay. I know it will be big since they have partnered with the biggest esports teams in the world. The future of web3 gaming is looking very bright.
What have you learned throughout this crypto winter?
If there is one thing I have learned about bear markets, it’s that they help identify games and web3 companies capable of persevering and thriving during a crypto winter, by building despite the market conditions.
If I remember, during the bull cycle, there were so many web3 games and NFT guilds that pop up left and right, promising different agendas and earning potential. But look at them now, most are inactive or have been rugged by the development team.
We now know which web3 games can survive after the bear market, though we don’t know how long this will last before a bull market. For me, I am trying to accumulate as much as I can and execute my plan so that I avoid FOMOing again during the Bull. Invest only what you can afford to lose. Plan your trade, trade your plan. NFA.
The amazing thing about Guild Of Guardians is that they continue building, and they are still HERE! Also, the GOG Fam, the Guild of Guardians community like you, Bayrd, Firebolt and other GOG OGs make it amazing. It inspires me to continue to build and add value to the GOG community.
Speaking of other projects, are you involved in other web3 projects or communities? How do you find the crypto space right now?
I’ve joined other web3 games in Discord to check them out, but I’ve never been active. The only project I am fully active in is Guild of Guardians. Considering how busy I am IRL, I want to focus fully on GOG for now, as it’s hard to juggle and play different games at the same time. I just want to be ready for when GOG launches. I keep track of my $GOG and am working towards that staking streak. I believe $GOG will be very important in crafting, merging and other utilities.
So, apart from programming and being an active member of our Discord community, what do you do for fun?
I just recently became a father to our first daughter last week. Her name is Hiraya. But, when I still have energy and time, I play Mobile Legends on mobile with my colleagues or check crypto/sports news, it’s my stress reliever after work. I also compete in NBA basketball fantasy or binge anime with my wife. Over the weekends, we spend time with friends watching movies, eating, and playing board games. We are into different games, including UNO, sequence, Avalon etc. But there’s only so much we can do right now here because it’s winter here in Minnesota.
Congrats on the birth of your daughter! What’s your favourite anime?
Thanks! Oh, there is a lot of anime that I like! If it’s entertaining, and the art and storyline are good, I will binge it. Some of the anime I highly recommended are Attack on Titan, FMA, Demon Slayer, One Piece, Jujutsu, CSM, basically, the top 100 on the MyAnimeList are all good and any Makoto Shinkai and Studio Ghibli film.
Is there anything more you would care to add?
Yeah, I would like to thank the GOG community for supporting GOG Heroes and the tools I have created. I appreciate all the feedback and comments. I’m dedicated to enhancing and refining the site. I’m in the process of migrating parts of the guild dashboard and registry to the guild page on gogheroes.com, while also contemplating other tools that could add value to the community. If you have any questions, feedback, or collaboration ideas, please don’t hesitate to send me a direct message.
Jeerow can be reached on Discord at Jeerow | AxN#4109.
