Open World
Cyberpunk 2077, Shadow of Mordor
games
Games
A working list of games I've designed, studied, shipped, or kept coming back to. Selective, not exhaustive.
now
Doing
Current work and public channels.
- Co-founder at Sonzai Labs
- Metaversus: a Substack with 1.5K+ subscribers on game design, frontier tech, and games
- Gaming-focused Twitter: 50K+ followers
work
Did
Game design, research, talks, and shipped things.
- Game Designer @ Limit Break, a Paradigm-backed games company ($200M raised)
- Gaming Citadel Delphi Digital, research and investment in blockchain game companies (Tatsumeeko, Spectarium, Jungle)
- Wrote game economy and design research (Sustainable Web3 Game Economies Is a Cursed Problem, Rise of Kingdoms: What Does It Feel Like To Be King?, STEPN Sprinting Away, Star Atlas – The Most Ambitious Blockchain Game, The Future of (Crypto) Gaming, not exhaustive)
- Built voice games (Karaoke Quiz, @ Volley, YCW18, QuizLah at Hack&Roll 2021)
- Trained speech-to-text wake-word detection models, using convolutional neural nets on spectrogram data, at GovTech Singapore
- Spoke at games and web3 conferences, on building web3 game economies and moving from web2 to web3 (Binance Blockchain Week, Google x Deconstructor of Fun Istanbul Gaming Event, Gam3r Forum @ UC Berkeley, 3XP @ Pasadena)
- Won multiple prizes at an ETHGlobal hackathon, for building an on-chain cyberpunk game (Best Gaming, Best Hack on Polygon, etc)
- Economy design, web3 strategy & game design consulting & advising, for game studios exploring web3
- Articles on game design (Among Us – A Game Designer's Perspective, Cat and Mouse Games: A Genre (Game Design))
- Cyberpunk Twine Game Paranoid Android
- Games in Unity (aPOPcalypse) Unity Certified (Unity Certified Game Developer)
- Gitcoin Quests: Come to Consensus
courses
Participated
Programs and communities.
recent
Playing
Current games and research loops.
- Too many games for Sonzai research :)
- Digimon World 2 PSX mods
- Starcraft II
- Rimworld
- DotA 2
- Diablo Immortal
library
Played
Genre buckets from a longer list.
Card Games
Hearthstone, Duel Masters, Gods Unchained
Sandbox, Sims
Minecraft, Rimworld, Game Dev Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, The Sims (mobile, etc)
RTS
Starcraft II (peak: Master's League Terran/Protoss/Random in SEA and US server, current Master's 2v2), Starcraft: Brood War (Protoss, Terran), Age of Empires (and expansions), Command and Conquer, C&C Rivals, Stormgate, Deadlock
Tactics
XCOM 2, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Fire Emblem, XCOM: Chimera Squad, Into the Breach
Shooters
CS: GO, Valorant, Splitgate, Halo series, Call of Duty series, Helldivers 2
VR
Beat Saber, Pavlov, MotherGunShip, Population: One
4X and Grand Strategy
Stellaris, Crusader Kings II, Crusader Kings III, Civilization II, III, IV, V, VI, Old World
Not-so-grand Strategy
Chess, Checkers, Go
Action RPG
Diablo III, II (Path of Diablo), Diablo II: Resurrected, Diablo Immortal, Path of Exile
MMORPGs
MapleStory, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands (Mage), World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (led 25 man raids, GDKP and on) (Mage), Cataclysm (led 25 man raids) – (Hunter), Battle for Azeroth (Hunter), Monster & Me, Cabal Online, Guild Wars 2, Water Margin Online
Roguelites
FTL, Into the Breach, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Dead Cells, SNKRX, Hades, Slay the Spire, Vampire Survivors
Tower Defense
Element Tower Defense, Sunken Defense, Desktop Tower Defense… etc (played hundreds of variations), Wintermaul TD, Legion TD, Heroic Origins Galaxy TD (most recently), and many more
Idle Games
Tap Titans, Swarm Sim
Mobile
Clash of Clans, Boom Beach, Clash Royale, Mobile Legends, Archero, Everdale, Command and Conquer: Rivals, Rise of Kingdoms, Game of War, a lot of other games (for research @ Limit Break that I won't list :-)
Pet Raising
Digimon World, Digimon World 2, Insaniquarium series, Monster Rancher 1 & 2, Axie Infinity
Pokemon
Red, Yellow, Blue, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Fire Red, Leaf Green, Diamond, Pearl, Black, White, Sword, Mystery Dungeon series, Go, Unite, various ROM hacks
Countless more.