A lifetime of
building
play.

Helped Nilo build momentum through a16z speedrun in Q1 2025 and secure $4M in seed funding. Shaped product strategy and helped hire for key roles while working hands-on every day to design and prototype an AI-assisted 3D creation platform. My work spanned creator workflows, product and systems design, 3D editor interactions, AI creation and agent UX, gameplay tools, asset pipelines, playtesting, visual debugging, and collaboration. I helped bring agentic game creation to the browser, and I’m excited to see Nilo pursue a Series A in 2027 and discover what the team builds next.

Consulting period after the career break, including the Bigscreen product design consult and contract work with Epic Games.

Worked with the team on the Software Side to review and map their product from funnel to launch. Created a comprehensive roadmap and detailed user journey map for the product. Helped design, code and prototype ideas to potentially add to the software platform for users. May do some more advisory work in the future.

Time for travel, independent projects, and exploring new tools and ideas. Continued learning through hands-on experiments in AI, games, apps, music technology, and physical making. After many years in development with few breaks, I was fortunate to take about a year to explore the world and pursue my own projects. I could see the possibilities emerging around AI and wanted time to dive deeper, experiment, and build as the technology matured.

Helped grow VRChat from an early community of around 40 users to millions, and from a small founding team into a globally recognized social platform. Helped launch VRChat on Steam in February 2017 and secure over $100M in Series A–D funding. Played a foundational role in its community and creator ecosystem, shaping creative direction, creator tools, hiring, company strategy, and business development. Helped expand beyond PC and PC VR to Quest and lay the groundwork for mobile.

Combined game design, scripting, dialogue, voice direction, spatial sound, and music on HALP!, an Oculus-funded Touch demo for Oculus Connect 2. Built and maintained the team’s daily task tracker. On Apophis 2029, worked on player flow, progression planning, and mobile audio review. This period also included spatial audio for Oculus Story Studio’s Lost and collaboration with Camouflaj on République.

Collaborated with John Gaeta, Peter Oberdorfer, and a multidisciplinary team on research, design, and development for Kinect, AR, and VR projects. Worked alongside specialists in visual effects and game development to create prototypes and interactive experiences that gave people new ways to engage with brands.

Lead Designer on Black & White 2 and its expansion, Battle of the Gods, and a consultant on Fable. Co-designed a god game in which player choices shaped creatures, communities, and the world itself. The game’s hand-based interaction informed my later work in VR and spatial interfaces.

I started in 1991 as an Artist and Animator back when the company was called Silicon & Synapse. Back when it was just Allen Adham, Mike Morhaime, Frank Pearce, Patt Wyatt and Joey Ray Hall. Mostly worked on helping port game assets from early game systems to other platforms. Later on I continued to work on art and animation but also started working on the design of the games. I came up with the original idea for The Lost Vikings and worked on other titles such as Rock n Roll Racing and Blackthorne where I was the lead designer. As the years progressed I became the Chief Designer for Blizzard and all game design for the company. I ended up working with the team on WarCraft 1, WarCraft 2 plus it's expansion packs. I helped shape Diablo’s shift from turn-based to real-time gameplay, improve its UX, and introduce mechanics including item durability. Before leaving Blizzard I was the Lead Designer of StarCraft. I designed all of the original mechanics, the isometric layout, each of the races and how they all had original styles of play. Something I had wanted to originally do in Warcraft 2. I learned a great deal from my experience at Blizzard and consider them my formative years in the game industry.