A director’s perspective

“Brian is a rare and versatile design talent and an incredible leader.

Brian worked as a Lead System Designer on our Unannounced Survival Project, and in his time with us had a large and positive impact on the practical play of our game and the healthy collaborative dynamics of our team. He brings an incredible energy and enthusiasm to discussions, is equipped with a wide range of practice systems design tools and methodology, and proved effective and adaptive to a wide variety of new challenges. He's one of a rare tier of designers who can crack open new problem spaces himself, devise strategies for how to approach them, and see them through all the way through practical action. He can handle high complexity. He also takes critical feedback extremely well and grows quickly.

He's also an incredibly empathetic leader who puts in the time and attention to get to know his people, help mentor them and guide their careers, and grow them into stronger contributing members of the team. While he's operated in a Lead role for much of his time here, I see Brian as being a very successful director quite soon in his career, given the right opportunity.

Brian is one of the strongest success cases for remote work I've experienced. Regardless of the phase of the project, the clarity or obscurity of objectives, he brought drive, rigor, and professionalism to his work and never wavered.

If you're building a team where you value someone with this level of drive and energy, I cannot recommend Brian enough. A++. Would hire again.”

January 2024, Craig Amai, Game Director, Blizzard Entertainment

A direct report’s perspective

“I worked with Brian for just under a year during my time at Blizzard, and can honestly say he was the best manager I've ever worked with both in and outside of the games industry. He did an amazing job at making sure all his reports had support, mentoring people, and pushing them to learn and grow. In the few times that conflicts arose, I knew that Brian would do his best to resolve them, and was always pushing to make our team and project better -- both in terms of the work as well as the working environment. I have no doubts that if a major issue ever happened that Brian would handle it fairly and with empathy. The systems team on our project at Blizzard had such a good dynamic and clicked so well, and I believe this was primarily due to Brian's leadership.

He is also an incredibly sharp designer and I learned so much in our short time working together. His insights really helped me elevate my designs, and his critiques were always presented in constructive ways. He was always pushing me and the others on our team to learn and grow. He also seems uniquely talented at seeing where people will be most effective and finding things they'll latch onto. With his insight and leadership skills Brian would be a boon to any team. I hope we get to work together again in the future.”

January 2024, Madeleine Shopoff, Senior Systems Designer, Blizzard Entertainment

A teammate’s perspective

“I think the first thing I'd want to say is that I've worked with a lot of different people that have varying levels of passion for the games they make, and Brian is absolutely on the top in regards to his passion and care for the experience he delivers to players. He cares; he really, really cares. A lot of designers also seem to think about design as something you're either naturally good at or you're not, but Brian is one of the rare few that views it as a genuine craft that you can keep getting better at, that you can keep learning more about, and that can benefit from the ideas and experiences of those around him. Brian is great about really learning lessons from his past experiences and thinking philosophically about design, while also balancing that philosophy with the practical concerns of development.

I think even more important that Brian's passionate and mature approach to design is his willingness and desire to collaborate. Brian is no gatekeeper, and I think that is tremendously important in our industry. He is always seeking input from others and is trying to take into consideration other people's concerns and ideas, regardless of whether or not they are designers themselves. He knows we're all in this industry because we love games, and so he never tries to exclude anyone from the process. The last time I had a chance to work on a team with Brian we were working on a prototype that he was leading the team for, and it was probably one of the, if not THE, best development experiences of my career. Brian always listened to his team's concerns, collaborated with us on trying to solve problems, and was constantly reevaluating how we were working to continually improve the process. It was the only time in my life when I was consistently getting out of bed before my alarm clock went off, because I was so excited to go to work, and that was largely due to how Brian ran the team; no joke.”

July 2022, Eric Anderson, Associate Product Director, Undead Labs