Projects

I've been fortunate enough to work on some really cool creative projects over the years! Here are some highlights:

Rec Room (2016 - Present)

I am the CCO (chief creative officer) and a co-founder of Rec Room. Rec Room started life as a ground-breaking social VR app in 2016, and has blossomed into a multi-platform social UGC app which has been played by hundreds of millions of people from all around the world.

I have been heavily involved with many parts of Rec Room, including:

Co-founding the company
Setting the initial vision
Hiring and managing
Helping define and steward our company culture
Engaging deeply with the player community on Reddit, Discord, etc.
Stewarding many aspects of the design
Researching and integrating generative AI
You can get an idea of the breadth and depth of Rec Room by scrolling back through my (now inactive) Twitter profile!

Enter the Roomiverse...

HoloLens (2011 - 2016)

As part of the LXP team, I was a Creative Director on the HoloLens Experiences program. LXP was a unique group that handled very early experience prototyping for HoloLens (think glue guns and exposed wiring), then pivoted to building three of the HoloLens launch apps. Including:

ROBORAID

ROBORAID written in white block letters, over the ROBORAID logo - a scary looking robot face

ROBORAID was a ground-breaking mixed reality game that scanned and used your surroundings to dynamically generate levels and gameplay. The resulting game was fast, physical, and very fun. I shepherded ROBORAID from it's early days as "Project Xray" (a tech demo and internal reference designed to showcase the differentiated capabilities of the HoloLens device) all the way to shipping with the launch hardware.

Animated GIF of a stage demo of ROBORAID. An alien portal appears to burst through a wall. Flying robots emerge. The player fires laser beams at the robots, destroying them.

A fun fact: ROBORAID was included on a special "zero G capable" HoloLens which was sent to the International Space Station, where it was played by astronauts Tim Peake and Scott Kelly:

HoloStudio

HoloStudio was a beginner-friendly mixed reality creation app, born from the mantra "build 3D in 3D!" Like ROBORAID, HoloStudio was a tech demo and internal reference project before it was a product. HoloStudio explored how far we could push the rather limited input capabilities of the HoloLens (quite far, as it turned out!). HoloStudio was the first publicly-shown HoloLens app, when the device was announced in January 2015.

Animated GIF of virtual toolbox floating in space. A hand enters the frame and 'taps' on the toolbox, causing it to open. The virtual UI of HoloStudio emerges from the toolbox

Animated GIF a man in a room using HoloStudio. He leans forward, and we cut to a first person POV of the 3D truck he's building

Animated GIF a cartoonish virtual koala sitting on a real couch. A white dude (it's me!) sits next to the koala, and makes a peace sign behind the koala's head. A photo-taking UI appears, and a photo is taken that combines the virtual koala with the real couch and guy

Pandemic Studios (2001 - 2011)

I was a Creative Director at Los Angeles-based independent game developer Pandemic Studios. I directed the hit Mercenaries series, and also worked on Destroy All Humans.

Mercenaries

Mercenaries - Playground of Destruction was a ground-breaking and commercially successful video game for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles. While heavily-influenced by the seminal Grand Theft Auto III, Mercenaries brought numerous innovations to the open-world genre:

A fully dynamic destructible environment
The first implementation of "save anywhere" in an open-world console game
An innovative system for having various resources (e.g., vehicles and supplies) delivered to your location
A dynamic faction system tied to the game's story
A unique "verification" mechanic that allowed skilled players to complete the story without killing anyone!

Not to mention an incredible score by Michael Giacchino, and fantastic voice acting from Peter Stormare, Carl Weathers, and Jennifer Hale.

Developed in partnership with LucasArts, Mercenaries went on to become LucasArts biggest-selling non-Star Wars title, and one of the top-selling original IP games of 2005. A few years ago I discovered (via Reddit) that there is an active speed-running community on Discord that continues to play Mercenaries, fully 20 years later.

An animated GIF of Mercenaries third person action gameplay. The player character looks on as multiple buildings cinematically collapse in front of him

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames was the 2008 sequel for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Also a big seller, World in Flames moved the action to Venezuela, amped up the graphics and destruction, and added a co-op multiplayer mode.

An animated GIF of Mercenaries 2 third person action gameplay. The player character is running around a road flanked by palm trees. They fire a rocket, which chases debris to fly around dramatically

Destroy all Humans

I had a small but important role in shipping this classic PlayStation 2 game. Several months before ship, I was brought in as a "closer", helping the talented but struggling Pandemic Brisbane team focus and "land the plane". For me, this was a "live fire" exercise in management and communication under challenging circumstances. This included quickly understanding the state of the game and the team, negotiating with various stakeholders to secure necessary resources to complete the project, and working closely with the creative team to make key cuts/tweaks/adjustments while protecting the creative vision.

All credit for the insane creative genius of Destroy All Humans belongs to the amazing Pandemic Brisbane team, I lay no claim! But I am proud that I was able to help deliver this weird baby =]

Aussie Game Industry (1994 - 2001)

I got my start in the game industry as a tester at Beam Software / Melbourne House back in 1994. Melbourne House was a legendary Aussie game development shop that made some truly ground-breaking titles, such as:

1982's The Hobbit
1985's The Way of the Exploding Fist
1993's Shadowrun - the first game I was ever involved with in a professional capacity. I was an uncredited tester on the German SNES port - literally my first day at Beam Software!

As a tester (and later a producer), I was involved in shipping 30+ titles (on SNES, Genesis, Gameboy, etc.) at Beam. It was an incredible place to work, and a great place to "learn the ropes" of game development.

Here's a funny clip of me talking to the local news about testing Radical Rex, the first game I worked on through a full production cycle (from inception to ship). This is quite the nineties time capsule - I cannot believe my own insouciance here =]

The whole video is available on YouTube, and is worth watching in full if you want to see what console game dev was like in the mid-1990s.

More projects

If you'd like to see some of my extra-curricular creative projects, go here