Special Teams

Jeff Lander (Technical Director, Lead Engineer). Jeff has been programming since 1992 for games, television, and film. He has worked on many interactive 3D projects for a variety of clients including nVidia, Rhythm & Hues Studios, Sony, Ion Storm, Exakt Entertainment, EA, Luxoflux, and Activision. Jeff has developed game engines designed for first person shooters, third person character driven action titles, outdoor based terrain systems, and continuously streaming open world game engines. He has specialized in advanced graphic engines emphasizing real-time character animation, physics and dynamic simulation, as well as custom tools for audio and video processing. He also wrote the monthly Graphic Content column for Game Developer Magazine from 1998-2001, co-founded the Game Technology Seminars, and has edited several game programmer books.

 

John Melchior (Lead Writer). John has over 14 years of experience in the interactive entertainment industry. He has successfully managed and led 10 development teams and his games have sold over 20 million units. John started his career at Electronic Arts where he was an associate producer for over two years. He then went on to become a Producer at Interplay and a Senior Producer at Fox, where he worked on the Simpsons Road Rage, which sold over 4 million units. At Vivendi Universal Games he was the executive producer on titles such as Simpsons Hit & Run (6.8 million units sold), Scarface and Eragon. Following his accomplishments at Vivendi, John became the executive producer at Sierra Games where he was instrumental in the success of Ghostbusters: The Video Game.

 

Brian McInerny (Lead Designer) Brian has nearly 20 years of experience in the game development. Over his career, Brian has successfully shipped a dozen games covering multiple genres and demographics. He got his start at Interplay Productions back in 1994 working on the design of multiple internal projects as well as assisting in the production of various titles being developed externally and published by Interplay. Brian then went on to work at Namco as a game designer on both Pac-Man World 2 and Dead To Rights. From there, he moved on to Activision-owned Luxoflux to work on the True Crime franchise before being given his first lead opportunity as the Lead Level Designer on Silent Hill: Homecoming being developed by The Collective for Konami. Since then Brian has maintained leadership roles on multiple shipped titles at both Incinerator and Heavy Iron Studios under the THQ umbrella where when Heavy Iron went independent was promoted to Creative Director, responsible for directing the design and vision of multiple games in development in addition to creating pitches for future projects.

 

James Justin (Sr Programmer) James is an industry veteran with a career spanning 20 years. He taught himself programming by working on his own games when he was a child and he became a professional game programmer after getting his BS in computer science at University of California at Riverside in 1996. He started at Interplay Productions working on Starfleet Academy and has since worked on over a dozen games, including several successful AAA titles. His primary focus is gameplay and AI programming.

 

Adam Yeager (Lead Environment Artist) With over 11 years of game development under his belt, Adam has lead environment art teams across an array of platforms, art styles, and gameplay types. Most recently serving as Lead Environment Artist at High Impact Games, and at Luxoflux before that, Adam has a deep and multi-disciplined understanding of what goes into creating exciting interactive environments. He has also instructed 3D modeling at the Art Institute, Santa Monica, and is rounded out by a traditional art background.

 

John Pearson (Sr Environment Artist) John has close to 16 years as an industry professional, with experience in all areas of art production including management and scheduling, has proven execution in concept and visual development for console and online products. He has shipped fourteen titles under tight deadlines without sacrificing visual quality. Demonstrated ability to lead and inspire creative teams to deliver quality work.

 

Victor Murillo (Sr. Environment Artist) Victor has over 11 years’ experience in video game art production and design beginning at Insomniac Games in 2003 on the PlayStation 2 title; Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando. He then helped produce eight more titles for Sony Computer Entertainment America before briefly working out of the Pacific Northwest. There, he worked on various freelance contracts for interactive projects ranging from web to mobile development. He is a ’02 BFA graduate in illustration from ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena CA.

 

Eric Iwasaki(Lead Technical Artist). A 19 year veteran of game development, Eric joined Naughty Dog, Inc. as employee number 8 during production of Crash 2. He was instrumental in building ND’s art pipeline through all hardware transitions in the past 12 years. He is a creative and technical artist with an insatiable passion for pushing the boundaries of real-time computer graphics. His skills in modeling, texturing, character rigging, animating, lighting, rendering, scripting (melScript, HTML, JavaScript), shader authoring (Cg) make him the ideal core team artist.

 

Richard Robledo (Senior Producer). With over 17 years of experience in Production and Game Design, Richard has worked with many of the top Publishers and IPs in the industry. After releasing early titles on the PS2, Richard became a Lead Designer on multiple titles for Disney Interactive and Cartoon Network, building a relationship that would lead to several projects being signed. As he gained experience in leading and managing teams, Richard took on the role of development producer and ultimately became Executive Producer for Game Machine Studios, and is now proudly Senior Producer for Big Red Button Entertainment.