Bio

What I Do

I’m a game systems, narrative and technical designer with an emphasis on implementation and development. I have AAA experience in design, development, design, engineering, and screenwriting in Unreal 4, Unity, and the Halo, Call of Duty, Mafia, World of Tanks, and Driver game engines. I have worked in the industry since 2008 and have contributed to projects and pitches for Lucasarts, Sony, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Activision, Nintendo, 2K, Wargaming, Disney, and EA.

I currently work as Lead Narrative Technical Designer on the Star Wars team at Respawn Entertainment in Los Angeles.

How I Started

After getting into online multiplayer text games in my early teens, I first learnt to program on a MUCK/MUD game I ran on a home server. This hooked me on world creation, scripting, and ultimately game development. I learned programming languages based on LISP and Forth, and over several years I build a player base of 2300 players while writing 18,000 lines of code.

In my late teens, I taught myself web development with the LAMP stack via online tutorials. At 20 I founded a boutique web development company, eventually developing a Content Management System in PHP for the Member of Parliament for Cambridge while attending the university. I learned C++ using C++ How To Program by Deitel & Deitel, in order to figure out how to start making games using the open-source OGRE3D rendering engine. After college, I joined Free Radical Design as a Designer on the cutscenes team.

Career

  • Free Radical Design – Game Designer for Cutscenes on Star Wars: Battlefront III
  • Ubisoft – Narrative Designer on Driver: San Francisco
  • Chillingo – Freelance Writer for their mobile marketing, including games like Angry Birds and Predators
  • Zindagi Games and Sony – Writer for Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest (PS3)
  • Rotor Games – Freelance Narrative Designer for Final Run (iOS)
  • AppNormals – Consultant Game Designer for Super Barista (iOS)
  • Murka Games – Lead Writer for a prototype mobile title
  • Zindagi Games – Lead Writer on an AAA prototype and for game pitches to a major publisher
  • Certain Affinity– Design roles on projects including Halo 4, Halo 4: Bullseye Pack DLC (Ricochet Game Mode)Age of Booty: Tactics, Halo: Master Chief Collection, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, Mafia III, World of Tanks, Call of Duty 2: Modern Warfare Remastered, Unannounced prototypes and projects

Current Position

  • Respawn Entertainment – Lead Narrative Technical Designer on the Star Wars team that released Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. I lead a team of technically-minded Narrative Designers who own and develop narrative-related game systems and content, and I develop and maintain a technical portfolio of narrative-related pipelines, tools, and game systems across Blueprint, C++, Python, and web languages.

Interests

My current technical interests at home include working with node.js, running and working with AWS servers, and programming in C# and Python.

My non-work interests include running, surfing, cooking, poker, my cats, and making music.

Links

I tweet at Dave_Midgley. I’m on LinkedIn: David Midgley.