Tools
Visual Studio, Qt Creator
Asana, Trello
JIRA
Slack, Discord
Git, GitHub
Why games?
There has never been a moment in my life where I wasn’t obsessed with video games. Growing up, my siblings and I were only allowed to touch the consoles on Saturdays. But as soon as my father uttered the words “Don’t play too late you guys!”, I’d dive to our bulky Sony CRT TV before anyone else could. I’d spend hours on Super Mario 64 roaming Peach’s castle, or nuking my cousins with the rocket launcher in Halo 2. This, along with my passion for challenges, will always be the reason I became a game designer.
My first immersive RPG game was Fallout 3, where I was instantly captivated by the open-world environment and visually rich gameplay. What especially stuck with me was how the world responded to my character’s karma and quest outcomes, where I had options to make good, bad, and even horrifically evil decisions. I was amazed how the main story would adapt and change based on the combination of choices I made, even when failing missions or killing essential characters. I have since been compelled towards games with a strong narrative design and high replay value.
In high school I came across modding for Doom 2 – one of my top favorite games. The moment I finished homework, I’d stay up learning coding basics, reading documentation, and watching tutorials. In less than a month, I built my first 3 fully playable levels. In my free time when I wasn’t gaming, I was modding Doom 2 nonstop. Within a few years, I had made hundreds of new guns and gameplay features, over a hundred gigantic levels, almost a thousand 2D art assets, and even recreated Metal Gear Solid and Nazi Zombies. It was from then on I knew my lifelong love for games would become my professional talents, and I had discovered my dream job.
In 2020 I earned my B.S. in Computer Science: Game Design at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Since then I have been pursuing bigger game projects and responsibilities: I am working on my Project Manager certification and am leading my own team studio to ship an Unreal Engine 5 game to the market. As I work on new, ambitious projects I have been acquiring new skills in development, and actively constructing more engaging styles of gameplay.
What I enjoy about designing games is coming up with many ideas on paper and figuring out to transfer it into the game exactly as imagined. I have always been a huge fan of the old-school classics, and seeing how Metal Gear Solid, Doom, and Super Mario Bros. could accomplish such quality greatness with technology over 20 years ago just goes to show that nothing’s impossible today - anyone with creativity and passion can make a great game.
