Experienced Game Designer

As far back as I can remember, I’ve always loved games. One of my first memories is playing Super Mario Bros for the NES my sister earned by memorizing every country and its capital. I remember attempting to navigate the menus in Red Alert without being able to read, trying to play the game I’d watched my father play dozens of times. I designed little games and modifications to board games my family and I played regularly. This love of games only grew until I graduated from UW-Madison with a degree in History, unsure of what to do but drawn to open positions at the local game companies.

I was eventually sought out by Scopely Inc to manage the meta and characters for Looney Tunes: World of Mayhem. There I not only designed what I had designed for years at that point but I also learned how to negotiate with major IP representatives and stake holders like product owners and art directors to get exciting character ideas across the finish line.

After the departure of our Design Director, I was handed the reins of the design department where I led the design team for the production of 2k25. I managed six designers, spearheaded our feature list in preproduction, and got the ball rolling on major initiatives to upgrade our content pipeline. By the end of 2024, I took another role as a Lead Designer at Playback Rewards, a company that built and maintains an app that rewards players for playing their favorite mobile games.

With this experience under my belt, I’m ready to continue my adventure. I want to work with passionate game developers who want to make something great.

This lead to my first job in the industry in February of 2016 at Perblue Entertainment. After my first week, surrounded by people who were as passionate about games as me, I decided I wanted to be a designer and it’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. By July 2019 and after a couple years of designing as a QA Analyst, I was fully transferred to the design department as a titled designer. It was here I learned the ins and outs of designing massive systems made up of smaller parts, designing heroes for Disney Heroes: Battle Mode and managing the meta. I also cut my teeth on features, designing the systems and economies for the Mega Virus mode and the Battle Badge system.

I made my switch to the AAA industry by taking a job as a Senior Systems Designer at Lost Boys Interactive where I worked on the WWE 2k series. For the first couple of years, I designed many of the major features from start to finish for MyGM mode in WWE 2k23 and 2k24. It was here I learned to collaborate with teams of artists, engineers, QA, and production to create exciting new systems with the high quality players of a AAA title expect.