Get To Know: Iluviel

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In addition to our modder spotlights and mod author interviews, we'll be starting a new series which we hope you'll all enjoy. As I mentioned in my introduction interview, we want to be more transparent and open with you all, and for you to get to know us all a little more. So we sat down and thought, what would be a great way to do this? To give a more personal insight into us as a company and the people who work here that make Nexus Mods what it is, whilst feeling more connected as a community.

There are a fair few people behind the scenes that you've maybe not heard from or about, so we wanted to start a new 'Get to Know Us' series, where you can learn more about members of our team on a more personal level, not only about our roles and what we're working on, but our interests and passions.
To kickstart this series, I sat down with Greg, our Product Team Lead. Many of you may know him as Iluviel and might have spoken with or seen him on Discord, or in our forums and comment sections.

We hope you enjoy getting to know Greg and stay tuned for more from the team!



Hey Greg, would you mind introducing yourself?

Yeah, sure, my name is Greg, also known as Iluviel. I’m the Product Team Lead at Nexus Mods. Previously, it was just me as Product Manager, but now we’ve hired an additional Product Manager, so I’m heading up that team. We’re also expanding our QA team, so I’ll be looking after them until we scale it up and find a dedicated QA Team Lead.


Can you tell us a bit about yourself? What things do you enjoy? Tell us your interests and hobbies.

Yeah, yeah, sure! I’m quite active, so I really like running, cycling, and swimming. I usually do that five times a week. I’m in a running club and I go running with them twice a week. I try to go cycling twice a week and try to swim once a week as well. I do a lot of open water swimming, mostly in the sea, and in the summer, the rivers as well. Cold water swimming over the winter months, stuff like that. I quite like doing races, half marathons, 10ks, 5ks. I did my first Olympic triathlon in May and I’m going to do another one in September.

I really like reading, I read a lot. I’ve got way too many books at home, so I do probably have a bit of a problem. Mainly sci-fi and fantasy, so yeah, if there’s a fantasy book, there’s a good chance I’ve read it! My favourite author is Robin Hobb, and my favourite trilogy is the Farseer Trilogy, I’d highly recommend that to anyone.

Other than that, in terms of interests and hobbies, obviously playing video games, I play a lot of video games. I also have a cat called Bee, like a bumblebee. She’s tiny and black and very cute! I like various types of music, I do listen to a lot of music, and my favourite band is Pearl Jam. I enjoy cooking, as well as making (and then drinking) cocktails. A Singapore Sling is my favourite. I also read Military History and Politics at university, so am quite interested in both topics. Yeah! That’s about me, to be honest.
 
 


What would you say a typical day at Nexus Mods looks like for you in your role?

BUSY. Very busy! My job as a Product Team Lead is chiefly to own the success of the product, and the success of the business, to make sure things are working. How we make that work with a small team, in a relatively small business, is you end up wearing a lot of hats, you end up doing a lot of different jobs. So it’s not strictly me just sitting here going, ‘Oh do this, do that!’ or ‘This would be great, this is what we need to do!’ A lot of the time, I’m helping the developers sort out their processes, getting the right processes in place, and solving their pain points. A lot of things that in a bigger business would belong to a different person or a different role. So my day-to-day generally can be pretty varied depending on what problems are presenting themselves.

At a really high level, my job is basically to look at all of the problems we have in the business, whether they be our problems, the developers' problems, the designers' problems, the community teams' problems. The problems of the users, and those users could be the mod authors, the people downloading mods, the collection curators, the tool makers, etc. Aggregating ALL those problems at a high level into a list and then prioritising them and feeding those problems through to the development teams, then getting those development teams to develop solutions that work for each of those problems.

Now, there are HUNDREDS of problems, hundreds of issues, and things that we have to do. Because we’re a small business, a small team, there’s too much to do and not enough capacity to do it all. Which is something users, you know, maybe they don’t see the whole scope of it. So when they’re passionate about one particular topic, it can be hard to communicate why we might not be working on it, and basically, I’m the person making the decisions with Dark0ne and MrMason about which of those things we’re actually going to work on and fix.

So essentially, I’m decision-making a lot of the time. I spend an awful lot of my time telling people ‘no’, which can result in some difficult conversations. I say ‘no’ a lot, to a lot of people, a lot of the time, because you can’t do everything.


What was it that drew you to this role when you first saw it?

My wife and I moved to Devon during COVID, because she got a job in Plymouth, and we took the opportunity to move. I was working remotely and I HATED it. So I wasn’t specifically looking for this job, but I was keeping an eye out for the right job. I wasn’t looking to urgently leave my old job, it was an okay job, but I hated being at home by myself, it’s not fun. So, when this job cropped up, it looked pretty perfect, and it is perfect. It’s the best job I’ve ever had, in every regard.


Off the back of that, how do you find working at Nexus Mods? Do you enjoy it?

There’s no micromanagement, if you want to take the lead on something you can take the lead on something. There’s tons of work to do and it’s good work, you’re solving real problems for people. You’re working in a great industry, the benefits are great, everything about the office and the staff, and the way Robin runs the business is amazing!


Have you always been into gaming and modding?

Always been into gaming, less so modding necessarily. The game I’ve sunk the most hours into over the years would be World of Warcraft. I don’t play the latest expansions, but for the past three years, I’ve been playing the classic expansions with the same bunch of friends I originally played with in 2007-2008. I’ve stepped away from it at the moment because they’ve moved on to the fourth expansion, which I don’t enjoy very much. But probably literal years of my life sunk into that, I definitely did worse at school because of it.

In terms of modding, there is some exposure, some kind of modding through World of Warcraft because you do use a lot of extensions, and you have things like WeakAuras where you write your Lua scripts and get things to run in the game and stuff like that. So I’ve definitely had a lot of exposure to that. I definitely don’t use the default UI in WoW, I can’t play it without installing ElvUI first.

My favourite game of all time would be Morrowind. I never modded it much because I could never afford, when I was younger, a PC that could run it, so I played it on Xbox. I’ve always played video games though, my first video game was on the SNES, it was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I absolutely loved it and I’ve been playing video games ever since!




Cool! You actually answered my next question for me, I was going to ask what your favourite game was!

Yeah Morrowind, I’ve got good memories from it…ahh to be fair, World of Warcraft is pretty good as well. Classic WoW. It’s probably a tie between the two I would say, classic vanilla Warcraft and Morrowind, purely for the good memories from those games. But it’s so hard to pick a favourite, there are a lot of other games I’ve sunk an outrageous amount of time into. Like Counter-Strike 1.6 or Counter-Strike: Source. Lately I’ve really enjoyed Elden Ring, it’s good, it’s so good, it’s probably one of my favourite modern games that has come out in the past couple of years.




Will you be playing the new Elden Ring expansion now it's out?

Yeah, I’ll be playing that too!


Is there anything you’re playing at the moment?

Oh I’m playing Mass Effect Legendary Edition, I’m playing through all three, I’m on the first one. Most of the way through the first game at the moment, and then I’m gonna do 2 and 3 as well after that. I played them when I was younger and I haven’t played them in a long time, so I’m going back through and having some fun with that.


Just to follow on from that, are there any games coming out you’re looking forward to playing? 

The new Doom, Doom: The Dark Ages, yeah that looks phenomenal. They’ve just announced it. The last two Doom reboots they’ve done from 2016 onwards have been just phenomenal games. 


Finally, is there anything you’d like to say to the community?

Yeah, we have the feedback board, forums and Discord where anyone can send us their  ideas and suggestions. I’d highly encourage people to engage with telling us what they want, or finding things and upvoting them. If they can’t find the right thing, don’t worry, we’ll merge it and sort it out. Keep giving us feedback, as much as you can, I promise you we read it all. Without validating what people want, we’re not going to deliver the right stuff, we’re not going to solve the right problems, so we just need to know what problems people are having. We don’t necessarily need everyone to give us the answers, so don’t let that put you off. Stay classy, Nexus Mods.



A big shout-out to Greg for being our first interviewee in the 'Get to Know Us' series. We hope you've enjoyed this first instalment and learning a little more about him. We’re excited to share more personal stories from our team with you in the future, and as always, your support means a lot to us. We look forward to bringing you closer to the people behind Nexus Mods.

See you in the next interview!

26 comments

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  1. dejunai
    dejunai
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    • 3 kudos
    Nice to meet you Greg... Thanks for taking the time to let us glimpse behind the scenes, and yes the cat looks fabulous.
  2. 5yn1k
    5yn1k
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    • 6 kudos
    Welcome to the madhouse - sorry, Nexus Community.

    Crikey, CS 1.6, there's a name from the past! Was that, early 2000s?

    Bee looks very cute. I'm getting Salem vibes from the Sabrina comedy
  3. deleted156886133
    deleted156886133
    • account closed
    • 7 kudos
    @Iluviel, I'm no triathlete but I do ride a fixed gear cycle exclusively at least 4 times a week. Nothing extended, just hour or so long spins around the city. And yes, I'm brakeless. I started with a front brake, about six years ago, but realized I was using it less and less after about a month or so and took it off. It's been so long without that if I ever went back to using a brake, I'd probably get myself killed. Isn't that ironic?

    Cheers
    1. Iluviel
      Iluviel
      • Product Manager
      • 14 kudos
      You're braver than me! I've thought about getting a fixie for my commute many times, but I've never brought myself to trying it. Perhaps I'll have to reconsider =)
    2. deleted156886133
      deleted156886133
      • account closed
      • 7 kudos
      If you compete in triathlons, you should definitely integrate some fixed gear training into your regimen. It not only trains muscles unused by freewheel cycling but also teaches more efficient cadence. You don't have to go brakeless. In fact, I've seen folks run a front and rear brake. I don't advise any hard rear braking because you run the risk of throwing it out of true. You should be doing most of the braking by applying back pressure on the pedals anyways. And in extreme cases, locking the rear wheel resulting in a skid. But I do advise either toe clips or clipless pedals and shoes so you can take full advantage of the crank's rotation. 

      Another thing fixed gear cycling teaches is better balance. Once you become comfortable enough riding, give track standing a try. When you're able to hold it and stay upright, you'll amaze your friends and folks at red lights.

      Have I gotten far enough off-topic? Probably so... Later.
  4. Mohammedjod
    Mohammedjod
    • supporter
    • 34 kudos
    Hello my friend, nice to meet you
  5. Evilsmurff603
    Evilsmurff603
    • member
    • 0 kudos
    hello y'all nice to meet you all.
    1. Iluviel
      Iluviel
      • Product Manager
      • 14 kudos
      Hi! Nice to meet you too!
  6. CrEaToXx
    CrEaToXx
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    Oh, a fellow Triathlet. I love that! I pay mad respect to anyone having found their way into the extremes of endurance sports. That's me on my 3rd Olympic in a row in prep for the first Iron Man, back in 2019.

    Spoiler:  
    Show


    Only thing I disliked on the follow up years was the way too expensive cost for official races, so I started doing all sorts of Ultra races cross country in Switzerland etc.(which was by far the hardest experience). At one point it got so extreme I only counted kilometers. My top year was Corona. 12.600km Bike, 4.800km running and round about 400km of swimming. I loved doing Bike Marathons 300km+...I hated swimming for competition, it always stressed me the freak out.

    Stopped all together about a year or so ago, after 7 continous years of madness...I miss it every day. But my mind isn't there right now. I've found my second passion again. Playing computer games...:D

    Edit: you can find my Strava profile on my Nexus profile, though I haven't payed for pro for months. Dunno if all the old records are still available. Polar user btw. because Garmin freaked me out as well at one point. Rose Carbon bike, and I swear on Salomon for cross country runs. Can't recommend them for city or asphalt runs though. You probably also want a Salomon drinking gear if you aim for the really long distances.

    I did a sprint distance bare foot one day(asphalt, not joking...my feet were solid cornea after 7 years), and climbed all four passes(aka all 4 roads going up that hill) of the highest local hill in less than 4 hours(5.700m vertical)...you know, those crazy kind of special records you're starting to chase if anything else was already achieved.

    Never stop doing it, because the hardest part is getting back to where you once were. Nowadays I can't even build up the discipline and consequence to keep my weight maintained.(1,88m 78kg btw.). Did I mention I miss it every day...
    1. Iluviel
      Iluviel
      • Product Manager
      • 14 kudos
      Sounds like you're far more experience than me, I'm only just starting my journey into Tri and am incredibly average in the world of athletics. Looking strong there, I see the legs of a cyclist!

      The cost of races is astronomical, it can be really punishing to pay out and I've even had races cancel without refunds (which is even worse). That being said, I've found that clubs reduce the cost of training massively and I've got a lot of value out of my running club for example. I know what you mean about the swimming, although I do a lot of open water swimming I was surprised how stressful racing in the water was.

      Playing computer games is an admirable replacement for Tri, I certainly struggle to find time for both! I'm still on an Aluminium frame bike for now, I can't justify a full carbon this early on but maybe later. Hoka's are my cross country/trail shoes of choice, although I've used Salomon's in the past (and still use them for hiking).

      Who knows, maybe we'll bump into each other at a race if you pick it up again!
  7. PenelopeJenga
    PenelopeJenga
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    • 11 kudos
    Nice to meet you Greg, thanks for making decisions and being chief "NO" sayer! Also, Bee is as cute as a button <3
    1. Iluviel
      Iluviel
      • Product Manager
      • 14 kudos
      Nice to meet you too!
  8. Audemus
    Audemus
    • Moderator
    • 330 kudos
    Nice to meet you Greg! Hope you're enjoying some juicy Mass Effect mods for your LE playthrough!
    1. Iluviel
      Iluviel
      • Product Manager
      • 14 kudos
      I'll definitely be using Audemus' Happy Ending Mod once I get to LE3! I was never satisfied with the original endings, so I'm looking forward to a new one this time round.
    2. JP193
      JP193
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      • 81 kudos
      The mark of fine taste.
  9. Dark0ne
    Dark0ne
    • Site Owner
    • 3,006 kudos
    <3

    Your money is in the mail, Greg!
    1. themagickoala
      themagickoala
      • Web Developer
      • 5 kudos
      We get paid for doing these? Sweet!
    2. Dark0ne
      Dark0ne
      • Site Owner
      • 3,006 kudos
      Technically you do ;D but Greg has really gone the extra mile here!
    3. SlugGirl
      SlugGirl
      • Content Manager
      • 55 kudos
      I'll pay you in kind words and gratitude!
    4. Pickysaurus
      Pickysaurus
      • Community Manager
      • 728 kudos
  10. FRIENDMYFRIEND
    FRIENDMYFRIEND
    • member
    • 79 kudos
    OK, I'M NOT VERY GOOD AT THIS BUT I WILL TRY.   HI.   :-)---