What I Do
I’m a Game Developer, I studied filmmaking, and I have put many years into performing and teaching improv comedy. This website is dedicated to what I’m up to, how I do it, and sometimes why.
My job titles have always been some variation on Programmer or Engineer. Today I’m a Lead Game Programmer at Savage Game Studios in Berlin, Germany. I take programming seriously, but the truth is, game dev came first for me and coding second. But I find that talking about a thing never manages to articulate one’s love for it. I find that my meaning comes through more clearly if I speak about something else entirely. Bear in mind, however, that for me, they’re all the same.
It was hard not to love movies if you grew up in the 90’s. Like games, they go back to my childhood, but filmmaking is also a place where art and technology, dreams and science, creativity and logic are not contradictions. These are elements of a single process and it is not a sin to recognize that process is also a business. Both filmmaking and game development are almost by definition collaborative and often large scale. That collaboration incentivizes simple, practical, and unromantic procedures and terminology. It is mass media. It is efficient. It is pop culture. It is beautiful. And often, it is profound.
I did not expect to improvise any longer than the two months of my first course at the UCB Theatre in LA, but I got hooked. I should have guessed as much. I was only trying improv because my Dad did it when I was a kid, he loved it, and he always had great stories to tell. He read books on comedy writing and wrote jokes for fun in piles of notebooks. We consumed movies, TV shows, and tons of stand-up together and talked about what worked and what didn’t. So of course, I loved improv. But I also loved the humility I found among improvisers I truly revered, the adrenaline of the stage, the clarity of UCB’s lessons, and the effectiveness and sincerity behind everything I learned from Miles Stroth. Miles was like a boxing couch for comedy, but on stage, it’s not about who wins or loses. Everyone wins or loses a fight together. That’s a big part of how I’ve come to see creative challenges, interesting challenges, and most real world challenges. By now, I have many years of improv under my belt.
I think that more or less sums me up. I intend to use this website to discuss my projects and my processes. Talking things out is a big part of how I come to understand them better, but it would please me to know that anyone else found value in the conversation.
