Hi, I’m Dylan.

I am a game designer with experience leading and inspiring teams to excellence.

I have set and upheld design standards, tailored processes to the needs of specific teams, mentored junior designers, and evangelized interdisciplinary communication and collaboration. As a designer, I maintain the versatility of a generalist while retaining the passionate curiousity of a lifelong student, working to adopt any specialist expertise I encounter.

I have particular experience with social systems and multiplayer dynamics, live-service games, content design, and the design of and for emergent systems. I am also a father and educator - important foundations of my belief in leading with empathy, raising up your collaborators, and contributing without ego.

Core Philosophy

Every project has a unique set of problems to solve and constraints within which to solve them. As a result, the approach and values of a designer must adapt accordingly. Despite this, however, there are constants that must remain true in order to facilitate the best games a team can produce. Here are a few of the values I evangelize everywhere I go.

Good teams make good games

You can have the best designers, programmers, and artists, but if they can’t collaborate or communicate effectively they won’t make anything of value. Keeping people aligned and passionate, ensuring that they feel valued even at junior levels, celebrating the small wins together while examining and discussing (without judgement) the failures - these are the hallmarks of a great team and solid leadership.

Games change their audience

At their heart, games are incentive structures where designers manipulate players into overcoming unnecessary artificial obstacles in order to achieve similarly artificial accomplishments. We are dopamine hackers, system teachers, and habit creators - and those are very powerful positions to influence player behavior and perception about the world. It is easy to say things like toxicity are the result of baggage players bring with them, but it is important that we recognize our own hand in the behaviors of our players and work to understand how to create the players we wish to serve.

Player Experience above all

Elegant systems are wonderful, and perfect balance seductive. That idea in your head sounds really cool and fun. However, if the player is not enjoying themselves or otherwise deriving from the game the intended experience, none of that matters. Designers have to understand their players and meet them where they are. They must validate expectations, playtest often, and be willing to sacrifice everything about their design in order to create their intended experience. Any earned success without these things is down to luck — and luck is fickle.