I am a Midwest (US) based Level Designer with 15+ years of experience and 8 shipped titles. I’ve worked on a wide range of genres and styles, from third person action brawlers to first person shooters to open world sandbox games, both licensed and original IPs.

Most recently, I was the Lead Level Designer at Volition Inc.

I started in the industry in 2006 as a QA tester at EA, but have been making levels as a hobby since the days of Wolf3D & Quake. While enrolled in The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University, I landed a formative design internship at Arkane Studios prototyping gameplay, getting to observe the pitch process and early IP development on The Crossing.

After graduating with a Masters in Interactive Technology, I joined Raven Software as a Level Designer working on X-men Origins: Wolverine, Singularity, and support for Call of Duty: Black Ops.

In 2011 I joined Volition where I grew from level design, to mission design, to world design on Agents of Mayhem and one Unannounced Title. I was Lead Level Designer on Saints Row. I’ve designed everything: small open world activities, characters, open world cities for three different games. Highlights: I designed Professor Genki’s Super Ethical Reality Climax on Saints Row 3, the Opening mission of Saints Row IV, and the Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole. I designed a futuristic take on the city of Seoul in Agents of Mayhem and the Southwest U.S. city of Santo Ileso for Saints Row.

One of the things I discovered after becoming a Lead was that I enjoyed helping my team grow and refine their skills as developers. To that end, I’ve created in-house training courses and design exercises to develop skill sets and orient the team. I helped lead studio-wide initiatives in training and documentation practices.

What do I like to play? A few my all-time favorite games: Deus Ex, Super Metroid, Celeste, and Stalker Call of Pripyat. What I like about these games is a strong sense of place and mood, mechanics and echoing emotions. Purposeful worlds where the story and player’s agency intertwine.