Monday 1 June 2009

Personal Profile

With 6 years of industry experience working all the way up from QA, through Level Design and into my current role as Managing Director and Game Designer, I have developed a wide range of skills and confidence in my role and been awarded a BAFTA for my skills.

Key Skills

- Excellent team leader and team player – confident, affable and communicative.

- Extensive game and level design experience - layout, flow, key interactions, core mechanics.

- Talented at crafting and communicating location-based and implied storytelling.

- Writing back-story, dialog and all in-game text – tutorials, story and functional descriptions.

- Defining pace and complexity of gameplay, directing user reaction and interpretation.

- Skilled in building consistent and fun worlds, levels and gameplay - internal or 3rd party tools.

- Dressing locations for aesthetic effect, with precedence to play- and read-ability.

- Successfully managing and driving outsourcing in Art, Sound and Game Design.

- Practical ability to learn software quickly and productively – be they internal or 3rd party tools.

- Adaptable and practical, delivering consistently excellent results to changing specs.

- Testing and evaluating all elements and aspects of a game, during iteration and QA phases.

- Proficient in Photoshop, Word, Visio, PowerPoint, Excel, Devtrack, Perforce.

- Experience in Softimage XSI, 3DS Max, UnrealEd, Hammer, Hansoft, Illustrator, SketchUp, MS Project, Bugzilla.

Key Experience

Spilt Milk Studios Ltd, Managing Director - unannounced projects

From April 8th 2010 to the present day I am the Managing Director of Spilt Milk Studios Ltd, an independent games developer and games design consultancy/outsourcer.

Proper Games Ltd, Designer – Flock!, Final Fight: Double Impact, unannounced 3rd title

Between June 2006 and April 2010 day I was the Designer at Proper Games, directing and handling the development, pitching and concepting of all our games. I oversaw art and audio outsourcing as well as a small team of internal and external Level Designers. FLOCK! was awarded a BAFTA for best game in 2009. I also was the sole Designer on final Fight: Double Impact, released to critical acclaim. I was in charge of the team and drove the attention to detail and respectful attitude which resulted in it being held up by many as the best-in-class for emulated games.

Realtime Worlds, Level Designer - APB

In 2006 I was the only Level and Environment Designer, dedicated to building the game’s city. My particular areas of focus were the social district design and the combat district design, primarily using a combination of Unreal Ed 3 and Adobe Illustrator.

Visual Science, Level Designer – Octane/Velocity (unreleased)

Between 2005 and 2006 I started as a Junior Level Designer and worked my way to a promotion as Level Designer. I was mainly responsible for track design across multiple game modes, though after my promotion I was put in charge of overall city design and race layouts for the ‘Tokyo’ location.

VIS Entertainment, QA Tester – State of Emergency 2, Brave

In 2005 I worked as a QA Tester for Vis in Edinburgh. This – my first full time employment in the game industry – was very eye opening and I managed to learn a lot both about my career desires as well as my professional attitudes and expectations.

Dare to be Digital 2004, Designer and Team Leader - Blue Moon Rising

During the summer of 2004 I led a team of 5 students in Dare To Be Digital, creating a 4 player co-operative zombie game. From my own design, over the course of the competition we managed to implement almost every feature we set out to, as well as comprehensive promotional materials. We also won the award for Best Audio.

Friday 6 February 2009

References

The people I've worked with are what count the most in my career; how they perceive me and my work is the truest reflection of my ability. The industry we work in is truly tightly knit, and the words of a respected member of the professional community hold a lot of importance to me.

With that said, here's a couple of portions from references that you can find more detail on at my LinkedIn profile.


“Andrew is one of the most committed, driven and resourceful guys I've had the pleasure of working with." - Patrick Sinclair, CEO Proper Games Ltd


“Smiffy (Andrew) is a designer apart from the rest... ...His creativity for devising new concepts is staggering and entertaining as he does not seem to be bound up in the usual conventions associated with games design but all of his ideas are truly original and commercially viable as games." - John Harris, CEO Redhound Studios


Speaking of LinkedIn, please feel free to click through to my full-detail profile here, to see more recommendations and references, as well as all the usual good stuff you find (like who you know that knows me!).