I’ve built my 20-year game dev career in design leadership, technical design, and gameplay engineering. I have experience in C/C++, C#, Lua, Javascript, and Python, and I’ve shipped games on both Unity and Unreal.
Introduction
I’m looking for short-term contracts or full-time employment in the games industry as a design lead, technical designer, or gameplay engineer.
Rates are negotiable based on job type and duration, but will need to be competitive with Seattle-area norms. Lower rates may be available on a limited basis for indies and projects with a marked public benefit.
Remote work is a requirement; very occasional on-site presence and/or travel are negotiable, but full-time on-site is a non-starter at this time due to child care requirements.
Interested? Email me or find me on LinkedIn!
Skills
Engines: Unity
Unreal
Languages: C++
C#
Javascript
Lua
Typescript
Disciplines: Design Leadership
Game Design
Technical Design
Game Writing
Gameplay Engineering
Web Design
Music Composition
Other: Markdown
HTML
Git
Perforce
Confluence
Jira
Notion
Community Organizing
Event Planning
Work experience
Highlights:
- I’ve led multiple design teams, including creative direction, hiring, mentoring, and performance reviews
- I’ve run a game dev business and understand creative/financial tradeoffs
- I’ve developed frameworks and best practices for large cross-functional organizations
- I’ve gained extensive experience with Unity and C#, and shipped in Unreal and VR
- I’ve built Unreal from source, and contributed a pull request to address a network timing issue
I excel at:
- Force-multiplying design teams with goal-oriented and empathy-driven leadership
- Building effective, sustainable development frameworks and best practices
- Tenacity against difficult problems, both design and technical
- Developer advocacy including technical writing, presentations, tutorials, etc.
- Pushing boundaries and exploring new design spaces
Bungie
Design Lead • January 2020-June 2024 • Destiny 2
- Led a technical design team that drove organization-level design consistency and technical standards for Destiny 2
Design Leadership
Technical Design
- Built tools and wrote reference docs to support those standards studio-wide
C++
C#
- Led a cross-functional team that designed and built the Banes system that launched with the Destiny 2: Revenant expansion
Design Leadership
Read more: Destiny 2
RED Games
Senior Engineer • April 2017-November 2019 • LEGO Brawls, The Raft
TheGamer.com said: “Thanks to its superb touchscreen controls, LEGO Brawls is currently one of Apple Arcade’s best games for playing on-the-go.”
- Primary design and technical contributor on LEGO Brawls
Design Leadership
Unity
C#
- Integrated determinsitic rollback networking strategy leveraging Photon Quantum
C#
- Designed and implemented best-in-class touch controls
Gameplay Engineering
Technical Design
Read more: LEGO Brawls
- Primary design and technical contributor on The Raft
Design Leadership
Unreal
C++
Blueprint
- Solved technical and logistical challenges for placing four players in VR into the same physical space (Oculus/Vive)
Gameplay Engineering
Technical Design
- Implemented sophisticated VR avatar animation extrapolation from limited player inputs
Technical Design
Read more: The Raft
castAR
Lead Design & Tech • July 2016-April 2017
- Led a cross-function team prototyping games for the castAR platform
Design Leadership
Unity
C#
- De-risked technical challenges due to building for in-development hardware
Gameplay Engineering
Technical Design
- Established conventions for user interaction on a brand new AR platform
Game Design
Utah Games Guild
Co-founder & Primary Coordinator • May 2014-March 2018
- Co-founded the Utah Games Guild, a community organization dedicated to growing and energizing the Utah independent video game development scene
Community Organizing
- Organized several indie game showcases at major expos including Salt Lake Comic Con and Salt Lake Gaming Con
Event Planning
- Managed a partnership with Youth Tech Hub and the city of Eagle Mountain to present an event designed to introduce kids and teens to game development
Event Planning
- Coordinated quarterly Game Nights at The Leonardo
Event Planning
Read more: Utah Games Guild
Kickbomb Entertainment
Founder • March 2013-April 2018 • Legacy of the Elder Star
GamerPros.co said: “Legacy of the Elder Star knocks it out of the park, retaining the retro charm of the genre without shackling itself to the past.”
- Founded an indie micro-studio and built Legacy of the Elder Star
Unity
C#
- Did all the design, programming, writing, music, and marketing
Game Design
Technical Design
Web Design
Game Writing
Music Composition
- Hired an artist for all the art and animation
- Currently available on Steam and itch.io for PC, Mac, and Linux
Read more: Legacy of the Elder Star
LightBox Interactive
Lead Game Designer • January 2009-March 2013 • Starhawk, PlunderNauts
G4TV awarded Starhawk Best Multiplayer of E3 in 2011
- Took Playstation 3 hit Starhawk from concept to completion as lead designer
Design Leadership
- Hired and managed an eight-person design team
Design Leadership
- Directed level design, combat design, and mission design
Design Leadership
- Developed technical standards and tools for mission and game mode development
C++
Lua
Technical Design
- Worked closely with Sony to develop the soundtrack’s unique Western flavor
Design Leadership
- Contributed to story development, cinematics, and in-game dialogue writing
Design Leadership
Game Writing
- Gave multiple press interviews and appearances to promote the game
Read more: Starhawk
- Worked with studio leadership to establish the concept, design, and business model for PlunderNauts
Design Leadership
Read more: PlunderNauts
Incognito Entertainment
Game Designer • January 2006-December 2008 • Warhawk + DLC
Gaming Target named Warhawk its PS3-Exclusive Game of the Year
- Shipped award-winning PS3 hit Warhawk
- Built complex behaviors and in-game tools using a proprietary C-like scripting language
Technical Design
- Tuned and balanced game controls, weapons, and general mechanics
Game Design
- Wrote flavor text for all in-game elements
Game Writing
- Assumed a lead design role for the game’s three DLC expansions
Design Leadership
- Contributed to expansion concept and product design
Design Leadership
- Whiteboxed expansion map layouts
Game Design
Read more: Warhawk
Additional experience
While I don’t yet have commercial/paid web development experience, my website is built on a custom static site generator that I wrote from scratch as a project to build my knowledge in the web space.
- Leverages vanilla Javascript and Node with minimal dependencies as a goal
Javascript
Node
- Translates Markdown source to standards-compliant static HTML output
Markdown
HTML
- Supports shortcodes for content automation and painless multimedia embeds
- Automatically generates and updates an Atom feed
- Validates input to catch issues like broken links, missing alt text, etc. before publication
- Integrated differential deployment
Publications
I’ve written several articles about game development, informed by both my commercial and indie experiences.
- Accurately Syncing Unreal’s Network Clock
- Doing Thumbstick Dead Zones Right
- How We Ran Our Booth at MAGFest for 74 Hours Straight
- Patching an NPM Dependency
Soundtracks
I’ve written digital music since 2004. I primarily use Reason with an Arturia KeyLab 88 MkII.
Legacy of the Elder Star:
- 🎵 Legacy of the Elder Star
- 🎵 The Perimeter
- 🎵 The Infinite Legion
- 🎵 The Garden
- 🎵 The Fragments
- 🎵 The Spires
- 🎵 The Fleet
- 🎵 Finale
- 🎵 The Elder Star
Bloxx:
- 🎵 Title
- 🎵 Home
- 🎵 Starfield
- 🎵 Full Moon
- 🎵 Lonely Wormhole
- 🎵 Gaseous Cloud
- 🎵 Dead Planet
- 🎵 Nebula
- 🎵 Supernova
- 🎵 Anomaly
Other pieces:
- 🎵 Micro.Bit
- 🎵 Soul Burn
- 🎵 Tear It Down
- 🎵 TRI
- 🎵 TRI Again
Free games
I’ve made a bunch of small hobby games, game jams, and experiments, collected here for posterity: