Joe Houston Email & Phone Number

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

Working on an R&D (incubator) project.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Collaborated remotely on technical design, strategy, and tasking for games on Discord's “Activities” platform, a feature I helped to create. Within 5 years I guided a small team to ship a dozen different games, prototypes, and projects. Mentoring and encouraging engineers to later lead their own initiatives was vital to this strategy, as was writing reusable code and being willing to pitch in at any level at a moment's notice.To achieve these goals I tested and researched different engines and technologies, spending extensive time optimizing Unity at the library and bytecode level for WebGL. This work culminated in the release of 6 Unity based games for mobile and desktop devices, with best in class loading performance for the engine and the platform. Also wrote high performance multiplayer code for Unreal Engine prototypes, including networked physics objects, for native platforms outside of Discord.Worked as the lead gameplay engineer or occasionally “product owner” (provides design and project leadership) on some of our released games. However, I was pleased to contribute and advise on other projects where more junior engineers were given their own chance to lead.Games Completed at Discord: * Bobble Bash (WebGL) – Engineering Lead * Bobble League (WebGL) – Engineering * Blazing 8s (WebGL) – Engineering Lead * Checkers in the Park (WebGL) – Engineering * Chess in the Park (WebGL) – Product Owner, Engineering Lead * Poker Night (WebGL) – Engineering

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Was the first remote member of a team exploring running games inside Discord. Used prototypes to help guide the platform team toward the requirements and design language that would make games in the app successful, frequently bootstrapping features like were not yet ready to be natively supported by the platform.This work, particularly an early version of the game that would later be released as “Poker Night,” led directly to the release of Discord's “Activities” feature, used globally by millions of players and now open to all developers.

Created engine, tools, and gameplay code for acclaimed remakes and remasters of classic games, plus co-development on “Titanfall,” a release title for the Azure Compute platform. Had the unique opportunity to help Bluepoint's own internal engine and tool set grow (shared between projects), while also working within the original, legacy engines of some of the best known games in the industry.Created Bluepoint Engine's original UI system, first used in “Shadow of the Colossus,” and converted Bluepoint's legacy font system to use signed distance fields. Wrote many general purposes tools, including an automation system that would go on to power farms of PS4's running nightly tasks, doing everything from cinematic rendering to lighting generation. Also worked closely with QA and the rest of the team to create a bug generation tool that allowed bug reports to be gathered automatically from in-game data and published directly to Jira.Besides my engine and tools work I was one of the go-to members of the team for gameplay enhancements to classic games. Whether that meant adding a new difficulty level to “Uncharted” or modernizing the control scheme in “Shadow of the Colossus.”Credits at Bluepoint Games * Demon's Souls (PS5), November 2020 – Engineering * Shadow of the Colossus (PS4), February 2018 – Engineering * Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection (PS4), October 2015 – Engineering * Titanfall (X360), April 2014 – Engineering

Pasadena, Ca, Us

Created the UI system for the retro gaming console the Polymega. The UI showcases fast, near seamless streaming and handling of a retro games database containing thousands of entries.http://polymega.com/

An independent game company formed to "make games for nerds".Worked on "Unwritten Passage", a randomly generated strategy game for PC. The game is currently on hiatus due to personal issues.

Lyon, Fr

As a founding member of the Dishonored team I worked on gameplay systems, tools, and engine modifications within the Unreal Engine. Created many player systems for the game, including movement, control, inventory, melee combat, procedural camera movement, and more. Iterating on these systems was the heart of the fun finding process for the game, and my work was key to Dishonored's signature feel.Also created custom development tools within Unreal, such as the NPC conversation system. This system had accompanying tools that followed the dialog process from writing to scripting, implementation, voice recording, localization, and patches and updates. It was used successfully to create a AAA level of production quality with hundreds of barks and conversations, and dynamic branching/contextual dialog.Credits at Arkane Studios * Dishonored DLC "The Knife of Dunwall" (X360, PS3, PC), April 2013 – Senior Software Engineer * Dishonored (X360, PS3, PC), October 2012 – Senior Software Engineer

A company devoted to making iPhone games I maintained in my spare time. A change in my employment contract required that I stop tinkering with it.Credits at Panda Mittens SoftwareGravity Shmavity, March 2009Platforms: iPhone/iPod-TouchDesign, Programming, Art, Sound Effects

Edmonton, Alberta, Ca

Worked at the Austin studio on "The Old Republic", a Star Wars licensed MMO. While there I re-factored and improved client side movement and other gameplay systems.

Us

Worked on tools, game systems, and engine modifications using Unreal for an original IP. Work on this project was terminated when Midway went through bankruptcy and shuttered Midway Austin. Began a methodology of tools orientated iteration and development that would continue at Arkane and beyond.

Worked as lead programmer on a few franchises, some of which saw the axe before release. In a unique opportunity, I also worked as both lead programmer and designer on an unreleased, original XBLA game.Credits at Sensory Sweep * Unannounced [Canceled] (Xbox Live Arcade) - Lead Programmer, Lead Designer * Tales of Desperaux (PC, Wii, PS2, X360) - Tools/Engine Programmer * Major League Eating (Wii Ware) - Tools/Engine Programmer * Alvin and the Chipmunks (PC, Wii, PS2) - Tools/Engine Programmer * Dirty Harry [Canceled] (PS2, Wii, PC) - Lead Programmer * Da Vinci Code [Canceled] (PSP) - Lead Programmer * Puzzle World (PSP) - Additional Programming * Need For Speed Most Wanted (DS) - Programmer

Ba, English

As, Computer Science