Welcome!
The name’s Brian. I’m a game designer.
I’ve been making games, levels, and various game content since I was 14 or so, at DigiPen Institute of Technology until hired the summer of junior year, and professionally since June of 2010.
I’m currently employed at The Amazing Society, a short trip outside Seattle, WA, working on Marvel Super Hero Squad Online.
Now that introductions are out of the way, here’s an overview of my career thus far.
Marvel Super Hero Squad Online
A browser based Light MMO for ages 6 – 12. I’ve built 250+ encounters, and 20+ level layouts on MSHSO.
[Play Marvel Super Hero Squad Online Here]
Skull and Void
My pride and joy on MSHSO, Skull and Void features some of the most intricate and polished encounters, environments and scripting setups I’ve shipped to date.
LOGIN 2011 Lecture: Content Design for 6 – 12
This presentation was given at the 2011 LOGIN Conference, after a year’s worth of work on content for MSHSO.
Helios
My last great creation at DigiPen, this game made it clear how powerful good tools (a sweet Lua library) and ferocious iteration (weekly focus tests) could be.
This began as a multiplayer, physics-based puzzle platformer. Fortunately, we learned a lot about scope.
The Planet Cutter – Boss Encounter on Planet Xen
My grandest foray into FPS scripting and the Source engine, this boss encounter was built largely out of components probably meant for Half-Life 2 puzzles.
I learned a lot here about the possibilities implied by combining and extending multiple simple systems, but also found out just how much work can be generated by bugfixing and polishing content implemented by way of reused technology.
Poly
There’s something special about 2D platformers.
Precise physics and non-grid collision, perhaps less so, but you couldn’t convince 19-year-old-me that it wasn’t worth doing.
While working on this project, I chose to learn and use C#, in order to build an editor with which to build the game’s levels.
Consequently, I have extraordinary respect and love for tools programmers and anyone whose job empowers designers to build interesting content.
This project was my first time as a (technical) designer, dancing across the fine line past which work is best left to programmers.
