I have been interested in working in the games industry since my teens when I attended Digipen’s Summer Coding classes to learn the fundamentals of how games are made. I determined this was my calling and passion and upon graduation from high school I applied for and was admitted to Champlain College’s highly regarded Game Design program. While at Champlain College, I had the opportunity to work on a variety of game projects, from a multiplayer online battle arena game called Ain’t No Heroes, to a physics-based puzzle adventure game called [o], which received awards for Game of the Year and Excellence in Design. During college I also focused upon enhancing my game design skills through my employment. Starting in 2012, I had the opportunity to work as an associate game designer at Nintendo Software Technology during the summer. I learned the basics of large-scale project management and design workflow, and moved to the quality assurance department after the project I was working on was completed. I gained insight into the routine but vital realm of game testing and bug squashing which enhanced my appreciation for resolving technical issues but also the importance of time in game development. I continued to work in quality assurance at Nintendo of America during my summers off of college until I graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Game Design in 2014.

After graduating from Champlain College, I spent the summer traveling abroad in Europe. When I returned, I began working at Glu Mobile as a Game Designer. The first game I worked on was the mobile game Deer Hunter 2014, where I was in charge of mission and event design. I was given creative freedom to create level layouts, choose what creatures were found in the world, and what story was associated with these missions. Every week I presented my missions to a large group of quality assurance testers, artists, and fellow designers, and received immediate feedback on any bugs as well as design comments that related to making the end product a commercial success. My previous experience working as a quality assurance tester at Nintendo helped the group-testing sessions run smoothly and efficiently. After creating missions through the rest of Deer Hunter 2014’s life cycle, I moved onto the mobile game Sniper X, and continued mission development there using the same process. I was originally hired by Glu for a 6 month contract and based upon my performance the contract was extended for another 6 months.

After my contract ended in late 2015 I took one of the greatest trips of my life; heading down to New Zealand for extensive hiking and wandering. Upon my return, I began moving into the realm of indie game development and consultation. In February 2016, I joined a recently Kickstarted card game called Skiptrace as a producer and game design consultant. The focus of the game was to create a Cards Against Humanity-style card game where the objective was to enable the players to tell stories. The game creators who had developed the prototype were sorely in need of someone to join the team who was organized and focused and who had previous design experience. I used this opportunity to introduce them to a scrum-oriented work style, and helped refine their game to have clear and concise mechanics, while still giving ample room for the players to be creative.

Contemporaneously with my work on Skiptrace, I began prototyping game mechanics in Unity3D for indie game development. I was also very interested in the idea of developing my own game, and the recent growth of Virtual Reality devices led me to experiment in both traditional and VR game mechanics. (as to the latter using the DK1) Eventually, I ended up focusing on a physics-based multiplayer platformer game codenamed Blaero, challenging my creative and mechanical skills, and working through the game development process on my own. The game is still in development.

While working on Blaero, I also created an array of virtual reality prototypes to try and see what movement system felt best to someone strapped into the headset. These included a basic racing car mechanic, a flying/bird-oriented mechanic, and a zero-g space movement mechanic. While in the process of prototyping these mechanics and working on Blaero I was offered a position with Datum Tech Solutions, which specializes in BIM and 3D Laser Scanning technology. My previous experience of working in game development and virtual reality translated well over to this field, where the manipulation of real world objects in a virtual space requires a knowledge of intricate software and design processes. I am currently in charge of scanning buildings and monuments around the country, creating models of these scans, which can be used by: architects and interactive 3D developers, as well as used in education and game-oriented fields. In addition, I am working as the company technical outreach point person and researcher, where among other things I am learning about and applying up and coming virtual and augmented reality headsets to work with laser scanned 3D models.

Favorite Games:

Overwatch
Mount and Blade
Halo
Gauntlet Legends
Katamari Damacy
Warcraft III: Frozen Throne
MegaMan 2
BattleTanx
League of Legends