PROJECTS
- Tinkertock
Product: - in progress -
Date: Summer 2013 - present
Description: A current passion project. Tinkertock is a tower defense game about a clockwork gardener battling to keep mechanical insects from destroying her garden. The game is being made in Unity3D, and the team consists of myself and an artist. All design work and programming is being handled by me.
- Superfugu
Product: Superfugu
Date: Summer 2012 - Summer 2013
Description: Superfugu is a third-person action-adventure game for iPad featuring a plucky young pufferfish trying to save his friends from the machinations of an evil octopus. Maneuver your way through a variety of colorful underwater environments to save your friends, all while dodging sharks, eels, and spiny urchins. Created by WemoMedia/WemoLab. I was one of two main designers on this project from beginning to end, involved in all stages of its development. The project includes experience with mechanics design and level design, among many other skills.
- The Blu
Product: The Blu
Date: Summer 2011 - Summer 2012
Description: And interactive screensaver that combines the pleasure of a digital aquarium with casual social game mechanics to create an educational underwater experience that not only teaches users about ocean life, but also works in conjunction with charities to help save the oceans. Created by WemoMedia/WemoLab. My roles included general design, visual design, writing, and research.
- Interactive Media Thesis Project
Product: Intimation
Date: Fall 2011 - Spring 2012
Description: A game that explores the power of first-person perspective in games to give players a sense of characterization and of "self." Takes place on an alien world and allows the player to master a series of animals one by one, learning to live from their perspective. This project is entirely self-directed and mostly self-created.
- Advanced Games Project: Quicksilver
Product: Quicksilver
Date: Fall 2010 - Spring 2011
Description: A unique game featuring a procedural narrative engine, a television-show-style format, and a band of plucky young heroes that must come together to save the world! Coming soon from Scribe Interactive. My roles here include: general design, technical artist, writer, and combat design lead.
- 2011 Global Game Jam
Product: Hoop & Stick (linked to UHM)
Date: February, 2011
Description: For the 2011 Global Game Jam, the theme was "extinction." Our team responded by creating a game in which you play as a young child in a dystopian future. In this future, no new games are allowed to begin - luckily, you were in the midst of a game of Hoop and Stick when this rule was put in place, so as long as you can keep it going, you can prevent games from disappearing forever! My primary roles on this team were design, level/object art, and splash screens.
- Intermediate Games Project: Spacewolves
Product: Spacewolves (linked to UHM)
Date: Spring, 2010
Description: For the Intermediate Game Design class at USC, my partner Mike Sennott and I created a game about the myriad dangers of wolves in space. The game is a co-operative tower defense/action game where one player controls the keyboard, and the other controls the mouse. My roles on this game include: mechanics design, level design, UI design, writing, art, & some programming.
- 2010 Global Game Jam
Product: Uniscorn (linked to UHM)
Date: January, 2010
Description: For the 2010 Global Game Jam, our team produced a touching game about social anxiety and a donkey pretending to be a unicorn. My primary functions on this team were general game design, writing, and flash animation.
- Gamma 4 One Button Game Competition
Product: Dear Moon (linked to UHM)
Date: January, 2010
Description: For the Gamma 4 One Button Game contest, several friends and I developed a wind-down game called "Dear Moon," wherein you play as the moon, coming to the aid of some tree sprites as they use starlight to defend their tree. My contributions to this game were mainly in the areas of ideation, game design, 2D art, and QA/playtesting/balancing.
- Hamilton College Senior Fellowship
Product: Playing A Story
Description: A book I wrote as a year-long research project in my senior year at Hamilton College. I devoted my entire senior year to studying and analyzing video game narratives, and video games as a narrative form. |
EXPERIENCE
Work Experience
- TechSmart Kids, Programming Teacher
Position: game programming teacher for students ages 7 - 15
Duration: Fall 2014 - Present
Description: I currently work for TechSmart Kids, a private organization offering after-school classes to elementary and middle school students in the greater Seattle area, teaching the basic fundamentals of game coding. I teach classes in Scratch, Processing, and Python to students ranging in age from 7 - 15. I also help develop games for the curriculum.
- Wyzant, Private Tutoring
Position: game design, programming, and writing tutor
Duration: Summer 2014 - Fall 2014
Description: Between working for Wemo, I freelanced as a private tutor through the service Wyzant. My tutoring subjects included general programming (Java and C++/C#), game design, and writing. The ages of those I tutored ranged from 12 to adults.
- WemoLab, The Blu & Superfugu
Position: designer
Duration: Summer 2011 - Summer 2014
Description: Wemo is a startup in Venice Beach, Los Angeles where I worked as a summer intern during my time at USC and then stayed on afterwards as a consultant designer. My work included mechanics design, interface design, level design, research, and more. We shipped two products: interactive screensaver theBlu and the underwater iPad adventure game Superfugu. The latter I worked on from inception to completion.
- USC IM Department, Walden Game Project
Position: researcher/naturalist/game developer
Duration: Fall 2009 - Spring 2012
Description: Part of the game design team for a game based on Thoreau's "Walden," with specific focus on natural research
- USC IM Department, Sesame Workshop R&D Project
Position: researcher/game designer/technical writer
Duration: Summer 2010
Description: An untitled R&D project in conjunction with Sesame Workshop, exploring alternative hardware & software for an educational game aimed at young children
- Hamilton College Computer Science Department
Position: teaching assistant
Duration: Spring 2006 - Spring 2009
Description: Performed duties as a teaching assistant for the computer science department that involved assisting classes, supervising labs, grading, and holding lab/study hours.
- Rome Air Force Research Laboratory
Position: computer science intern
Duration: summer 2006, 2007, 2008
Description: Interned with the STEP program doing computer science research and application at the Air Force Research Lab in Rome, NY. Topics covered over the three summers were Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) policy programming, daemon programming, and natural language processing software.
- Hamilton College Alumni Review Magazine
Position: unpaid contributor
Duration: 1 contribution
Description: Wrote a series of short blurbs about "technology in the modern teaching environment" to accompany a longer article by Phil Hoying. Published in the Fall/Winter 2007 edition of the Alumni Review.
- Wayne County Weekly Almanac
Position: columnist
Duration: 2004 - 2005 school year
Description: Wrote a weekly column for a local paper during my senior year of high school, detailing high school events.
- PuppetArt
Position: sales and demonstration
Duration: roughly 20 - 30 events, 1997 - 2005
Description: Demonstrated, displayed, and sold marionettes and other puppets at professional-level craft shows for a number of years, accompanying the artist.
Education
- Graduate School: University of Southern California
Degree: MFA
Area of Study: Interactive Media
Graduated: May, 2012
Awards/Honors: 2009 Penny Arcade Scholarship, 2010-2011 Sony Electronics Grant, 2011-2012 Microsoft Scholarship
- Undergraduate: Hamilton College
Degree: BA
Area of Study:
Major: Computer Science
Minor: Creative Writing
Senior Fellowship: Game Narrative
Graduated: May, 2009
Awards/Honors: Schambach Scholarship, Senior Fellowship
- High School: Honesdale High School
Graduated: June, 2005
Awards/Honors: Clara Gillow Clark Creative Writing Award, ...
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SKILLS
Design
- Mechanics
- Level Design
- User Interface Design
- Tutorial Design
- Balancing
- Narrative Design
- Others
Writing
- Fiction/Prose
- Characters/Dialogue
- Technical Writing (design docs, etc.)
- Academic Writing
Programming
- C/C#/C++
- Java
- Python
- Actionscript
- Others
Software
- Unity3D
- Photoshop
- Flash
- Premiere
- Excel
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