Two decades of game dev is a lot of history. I started keeping this blog to have a record of my development, from day one to the present. You can walk through my career and, in turn, a lot of my life.
2006 - 2007
The first time I played the N64 I knew what my passion was. Games weren't just images, or audio, or writing. Games were stepping into someone else's dream. With my age in the single digits, I was already desperate to express myself through that medium.
I was 12 years old in 2006, when I began my journey into game development with FPS Creator, Gamemaker, Milkshape and eventually the 3Ds max demo version.
Learning 3D Art
At 12 I got ahold of a now archaic 3D art package called Milkshape. I was instantly flooded with ideas for models and desprite to spend every waking moment making them.
Not long after I discovered the free 3Ds Max Demo and set off learning the software I still use to this day.
Incursio
Role : Duo Developer
At 13 years old I teamed up to make my first full game with a stranger named Winter, who would go on to be one of my closest friends and a frequent development partner.
It certainly had many flaws, but Incursio was jam-packed with charm and a remarkable amount of content.
This was the beginning of my journey as a game designer.
2008 - 2012
By my freshmen year of highschool, I was getting steady freelance work. I decided to do my next three years of school online so I could take on full-time gigs.
Looking back, it was strange to have forgone the whole high school experience that seems so formative for so many. But, I was lucky to have some good friends outside of school and ultimately I wouldn't change a thing. Obsessing over my career when I was a teenager allowed me a lot of freedoms later down the line.
Untitled Freelance Gig
Role : Character Artist
This project never got released but was one of my first long terms contracts. It had a big part in developing the painterly style seen in much of my personal work over the next decade.
Kolor
Role : Art/Design
Bearing a striking resemblance to a certain hit game that came out many years after we developed the concept, Kolor was an over-ambitious but genuinely fun MOBA about painting the majority of the multiplayer map in your team's color before the clock runs out.
My incredibly cringy Kickstarter video received a whopping $600 of our $8000 goal. While we did not get funded, the video serves as an enduring reminder that 16-year-olds have bad hair.
Practicing 3D
As a teenager without bills or expenses, I could afford the time to just practice art and focus on developing my skills. In hindsight, this was an incredible experience of personal freedom and progress. I had no idea how money/work-centric all my art would become later down the line.
The Dead Linger
Role : 3D Artist
Before DayZ, The Dead Linger was funded on Kickstarter as one of the first mmo zombie survival games. While the limited budget and green development team never managed to bring it to fruition, this was the first actual professional work environment I was a part of.
Public Transit Simulation
Role : 3D Artist
When I was 17 years old I had the opportunity to work with the Norwegian government on a public transit simulation.
All the communication was handled online, so they were completely unaware of my age. I fondly recall them asking me to relocate to Norway, to which I responded "I don't think my dad will let me."
2013 - 2015
At 18 I moved out of my parents home in small town Wisconsin all the way to Florida to work at Trendy Entertainment. This was a monumental period in my life. I was no longer dreaming of becoming a real game developer, I finally considered myself one! I had the opportunity to be mentored by some of the best artists in the industry and had the resources to hire a few friends to help develop my personal project, See No Evil.
It was a challenge to transition from exclusively hanging out with teenagers in a small town, to working with professionals in their late twenties and thirties. Far from home and out of my element, I didn't have many people I felt I could relate to. Struggling to find my barrings without a safety net resulted in rapid growth in both my art skills and personality.
Dungeon Defenders
Role : 3D Artist
Working at Trendy entertainment I was taken under the wing of some of the best artists in the industry. It was very strange and often uncomfortable to share a studio work environment with adults as an 18-year-old kid. Fortunately, I made a few very patient friends who helped me develop both my skill and myself.
See No Evil
Role : Creative Director
My good buddy Winter, who built Incursio with me all those years ago, joined me to co-developer See No Evil. I was finally making a real indie game to market and sell.
I was a teenager with my own place so out of some sense of youthful obligation I had a lot of parties. However, I would often spend the greater half of them at my desk working on SNE.
2015 - 2016
At 19 years old I formed a company with a friend. We were given the opportunity to stay in a cabin in the rocky mountains for free while we established our indie game studio. This seemed like my dream come true but turned into one of the most brutal eras in both my career and life.
I had recently been diagnosed with depression and put on anti-depressants. A few years from this point I learned that I was in fact bipolar, the anti-depressants I was given pushed me to a constant state of extreme mania. In my case, that meant impulsive decisions making, chronic insomnia, the development of an eating disorder, and a complete disregard for my physical and mental well-being. All of that was compounded by being isolated in a remote cabin in the Rockies.
We worked tirelessly, but with no clear direction. Drastic impulsive changes were being made constantly that kept the game perpetually stuck in the prototype phase. We both worked literally all the time but, poor mental health and organization kept us from making structured progress.
Ultimately Noetic was dissolved. This was the first time I really felt I failed in my career which took a brutal toll on my confidence that lasted years. However, this failure taught me an invaluable lesson I carry with me today; hard work is not the only variable in success. It is possible to work very hard and still fail.
Blue Sheep
Role : Artist
2016 - 2017
Following the draining experience of Sheep and mental recovering there after, I fell into a bit of a slump. I began working on freelance gigs my heart wasnt in for far less money than I was worth.
Though fairly uninspired, this was a time of healing and therapy that helped me explore my identity outside of my work. I learned my depression was a misdiagnosis and that I was actually dealing with bipolar disorder. This discovery and subsequent medication helped me mentally stabilize in a way I never had before. By the tail end of 2017 I was finally ready to start chasing my dreams again.
Iron Belly
Role : Senior Artist
Ironbelly is an outsource studio, an enviroment my proclivity for remote work seemed to
Icon Oven
Role : Duo Developer
Teaming up with Winter for the third time, we briefly set out to explore the HTML5 game market. Though we found it less profitable than we had hoped, we ended up making some fun arcade games.
Today you can find game carts around the Oddity Nook website including some of the games we made here.
2018 - 2019
By 2018, the same itch that had inspired me to make See No Evil came back with a vengeance. I refocused everything on developing my own small games on my own terms. I learned to program so I could make games solo. Though unfinished, these projects reignited my obsession with creativity and connected me with a huge community of developers.
Beckon Forth
Role : Solo Developer
Beckon Forth was my first focused attempt to program my own game. The silly if not mildly frustrating puzzle game used an art style I developed while making a series of web-comics years prior.
Roblox
Role : 3D Artist
While building my own little prototypes I got by on some freelance gigs with Roblox. I built assets for their Official Star Wars and Incredibles cross overs.
Waju
Role : Solo Developer
I came up with the idea for Waju while developing Blue Sheep and it never left my mind. The two things I love most in game design are intuitive gameplay and interesting movement, Waju is all about those two concepts working in tandem.
5 meetings with an interested publisher developed a plan to fully fund my development of the game and its launch on all counsels in multiple languages. On the 6th meeting, I was under the impression we were planning a flight to meet and sign contracts but learned they had taken one last vote and decided not to fund Waju.
This was a huge bummer at the time but freed me up to some other opportunities I will cherish forever...
2019 - 2025
I was hired by Bolder Games in 2019. In 2023 Bolder began contracting my new studio Oddity Nook instead. I got the chance to work in lead roles on IP's I grew up loving with directors I grew up admiring. I got to develop my leadership skills from co-creating with a few friends to managing teams of 20+ artist on major IPs. Working on these huge experiences opened up my imagination to larger-scale personal projects.
Xbox Elite Controller Series S
Role : Creative Director
One of my first projects with Bolder Interactive, I was contracted as the creative director for the Xbox Elite Controller Series 2 Demo.
Star Wars Hotel - D3
Role : Creative Director
I worked with Imagineering and Lucas Arts in a lead role on an experience for the Star Wars Galactic Star Cruiser Hotel.
Through this project I was able to meet artists I grew up appreciating. I was even given the opportunity to give a lecture at Imagineering on modern real time art workflows!
7 Projects I cant talk about
Role : Creative Director
Since Bolder was an out sourced studio, Most of my years there were spent developing things I'm not allowed to talk about. Our projects usually laid the ground work for other teams to build a product. I rarely got the gratification of releasing things into the world or the ability to publicly say:
"Hey! I made that!"
Tough on moral and the ol' resume. But, it did give me experience working on a wide range of teams and development structures.
2026
My experiences leading larger teams didn't do away with my passion for indie development, it simply scaled up. I gained a much more nuanced understand of the game industry as a business. I have a little less interest in things like solo projects and a lot more excitement about coordinating with larger teams.
OddityNook.com
Role : Artist
Jesse and I spent a little over two weeks using threejs to build a 3D interactive website: www.odditynook.com. you can find hidden games and interactions all around the website!
Children of Power
Role : Co-Author
Years back, while brain storming game narratives, my friend Sam and I came up with a story that just made more sense as a book. We picked away at it in our free time and, In 2026, we released Children of Power!
I'm not really interested in leaving game dev for a life of novel writing, but it was a wonderful challenge to put something so complex together in a medium I casually enjoy.
