Benjamin Durbin

As Lead Designer for Pirate 101, Wizard 101, and other unreleased projects, I maintained all of my responsibilities with respect to Systems Design, in addition to the added management role as Lead Designer. As Lead, I participate in executive-level design and strategy meetings, communicate those goals to the Design team, and report progress towards our goals back up the chain of command. This requires close collaboration with Engineering and Art Leads as well as with our Production team. I manage several Designers from all levels of experience, and perform their yearly goal-setting and performance evaluations. I am responsible for the face-to-face review of those evaluations with each Designer. In 2015 I stepped away from Pirate 101 in order to act as Lead for an unannounced Mobile games project. In addition to my responsibilities as Lead Designer on this new project, I was also responsible for principal systems design and documentation of all underlying systems. I continued to provide systems design and oversight "as needed" for Pirate 101. From 2015 to 2019 I served as one of the most senior systems designers at KingsIsle, working on multiple mobile game titles. I was regularly tasked by senior management to mentor new designers and help shape the overall vision of Design within the studio. In early 2019 I returned to my role as Lead Design for our MMO games (Wizard and Pirate). My primary task on rejoining the team was to share key learning from my time on mobile games, including how to measure and respond to key performance indicators. I am also responsible for overhauling existing game systems and adapting them for many more years of future growth.