Ben is a senior programmer and game-systems designer at Kacci Lab, where he works on the development, testing and technical architecture of Crown & Hearth.
Highly intelligent and exceptionally skilled at programming, Ben understands the game at a level far beyond ordinary players. He is familiar not only with its visible mechanics—settlement growth, unit systems, resource management and age progression—but also with the underlying code, simulation tools, testing environments and technical systems that make the game function.
Ben has a sharp sense of humor and an easygoing personality, but beneath that he is deeply methodical. When something does not behave the way it should, he has a habit of continuing to investigate long after most people would have dismissed it as a minor bug. His player and developer handle, Hidden Bugs, reflects both his profession and his tendency to believe that the most important problems are often the ones that are hardest to see.
He and Mara are longtime friends as well as colleagues. They regularly work together, discuss Crown & Hearth systems and occasionally continue testing or playing the game after normal work hours. Their friendship is comfortable enough for teasing and casual arguments, but built on considerable trust.
Ben is also intensely loyal. When Mara’s activity inside Crown & Hearth begins behaving in ways that make no technical sense, his curiosity quickly becomes genuine concern. Rather than assuming the system is merely reporting bad data, he begins searching for an explanation.
His combination of technical expertise, persistence and personal loyalty makes him one of the few people in the outside world capable of recognizing that something inside Crown & Hearth may be happening far beyond the limits of an ordinary software failure.