James Laird Email and Phone Number

Strategy leader for prototype projects* Revised company-wide internal greenlight process* Design & Production leader on ~6 internal prototype projects* Strategy advisor for prototype team leads* Formal company-wide mentor for prototype pitch writersDesign & Production leader for multiple projects cross-company* Tours of duty on top-grossing games Episode and War Dragons* Own feature design, process, roadmapping & prioritization, analysis for cross-functional pods of 6-15* Detected & resolved technical issues w/ Episode stories & updated release process to prevent the recurrence going forward* Led team to revise battle UX, build onboarding & PvE campaign for mobile RTS Wild Beyond, leading to improvements in new user retention* Led team to build & launch hidden object game Hidden Agendas, including post-launch LiveOps

Worked with doctors at Stanford to develop and ship a series of educational medical gamesShipped 4 games in different subject areas, working with 4 different doctors/groupsRecruited and managed remote freelance team of artists, engineers, QAManaged communication process with doctors (none of whom had gamedev experience)--gathered requirements, collaborated on game design, prioritized asks, set expectations

Developed and launched first version of IMVU Mobile app.Full stack developer on IMVU's website, web backend, PC client, mobile app.Served as scrum-master & producer.

Led team of ~15 to build and ship "Journey of Jesus" on Facebook

Shipped Champions Online, Vibora Bay expansion, and internal prototypes of two other MMOs.Designed and implemented mission flow for zones, endgame dungeon, 5-man boss fights, and PvP content.Primary builder and debugger for world events with complex logic in a multiplayer environment

Built Cryptic Engine systems for quests/questgivers, enemy placement & spawn logic, design scripting, cutscenes, PvP game logic, PvP queues.

Developed features for the HDF5 scientific data format in C.Developed and maintained automated build system to build in three languages across all supported platforms, including massively parallel systems.