David Kuykendall Email and Phone Number

I am proud to work with a highly-skilled, multi-discipline development team of developers, artists, and designers at the Army Game Studio on Redstone Arsenal. We create and maintain training, simulation, and outreach products for the US Army utilizing Unreal and Unity gaming technologies across various platforms. With the arrival of Covid, our studio has moved to a full telework posture.I have contributed or led on several projects, including:*Presently oversee five concurrent projects developing applications in support of US army recruiting; these are in Unreal or Unity and include both VR and touchscreen mediums*Project manager for ESP (Early Synthetic Prototype) - a three-year virtual vehicle simulation and experimentation program for the US Army with an annual budget of $3.5 million*Project lead and lead designer for the latest America's Army game (https://www.americasarmy.com/) for the PC and PS4; it is a studio flagship product a maintains over 50,000 unique logins per week*Continue to oversee follow-on development for America's Army, including web updates, migration of servers to AWS, and development of data collection and analysis services*Led a development team for a yet-to-be-released VR land nav Army outreach product for the PS4 and Vive*Managed the on and offsite development of several interactive 3D soldier and vehicle presentation touchscreen apps*Managed or assisted on several small to medium products, including a Navy CROWS trainer, NBCRV training program, night vision, and thermal simulations, and an update to the Virtual Army Experience

I worked on the Sims 3 and Sims 3 Pets console (360/PS3) ports. On Sims 3, I led a ~20 person team of programmers, artists, and QA to port the existing HUD/UI from the PC to consoles. I was also tasked with interfacing with the customer (EA publishing) to ensure our work was to their Sims standards. This role was my first time in a leadership/management position and something I found I enjoyed immensely.The studio carried over the UI systems we developed to the Sims 3 Pets console game.

I joined Destineer as I desired to develop games other than MMO and to expand my skills beyond level design.Our first game was First to Fight: Close Combat, a third-person squad-based Marine shooter for the original XBox. I performed level and scripting work. Additionally, I designed and oversaw the development of the co-op and multiplayer systems. The game was best enjoyed with friends!Co-op gameplay had two essential goals: Allow players to join or exit a game on the fly, and preserve the single-player campaign experience. To meet these goals, we designed a system where the game's difficulty scaled dynamically through various means. We developed AI to step in as players came and went.On the competitive multiplayer side, the goal was to preserve the campaign's fire team feel, where each Marine had a specific role. To this end, we made the multiplayer class-based. This nothing new in the current gaming landscape, but it was relatively new for the console world at the time. Following Close Combat, we worked on two training tools, one for the USMC, the other for the CIA. I performed level and system design on both projects, working with Marines and CIA SMEs. These products were for internal government and military use.Afterward, development began on the Close Combat sequel, Six Days in Fallujah. It was to be an Xbox 360 title and the flagship product for the studio. I worked design on numerous systems, including AI, combat, and destruction.Unfortunately, the realities of making a game based on the Iraq war caught up to us. Our publisher decided that the potential controversy was not worth the risk and dropped the game, ending development and leading to the closure of the studio.

Sony acquired Verant and thus Sony Online Entertainment began, otherwise it was the same company and the same people.The studio began to diversify beyond Everquest and I was assigned to work on Planetside, the first FPSMMO and one of the first sci-fi MMOs as well. With a small team (for an MMO) I believe we did a fabulous job.I worked primarily on world and building design, though with a design team of five, we all had a hand in every part of the game. Planetside released and exceeded expectations. We went right to work on the expansion, Core Combat, doing primarily level design.

The division of 989 Studios I worked in broke off and became Verant Interactive, a separate studio from Sony. Our one and only project was Everquest.I arrived for the tail end of development. I did pretty much whatever was needed - mob placement, quest writing, fixing what bugs I could, and generally help test whenever and whatever. Everquest was released and it blew up, much more so than I think most anyone expected. I was assigned to work on the first expansion, The Ruins of Kunark. I was responsible for the creation of four zones, though only three made it into the game. The fourth was an underwater zone under the Lake of Ill Omen; it was scrapped due to technical difficulties and time constraints. I am told it was used in a later expansion years later.

I began my game design career as a level designer on the Spawn: The Eternal game for the PS1. It was *not* a good game - but it was my first and I learned tremendously from it. It was the project that taught me the KISS principle, something I carried forward in my career.Afterwards worked on several game concepts and got as far as prototyping a 1930s era crime fighting game.My main accomplishment on that effort was developing a proprietary scripting language for our in-house game editor. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was mostly reinventing the wheel.

Performed QA work on MLB 96 and several other PS1 sports games. It was a ton of work and my first exposure to the game industry. I have a lot for respect for testers and their work. Looking back on this I fundamentally understand why QA should be done early and often, as in those days the testing mostly waited until the end of the project, resulting in compressed timelines and a very high workload for the testers.