Mike Kasprzak Email & Phone Number

London, Ontario, Canada

Software development company focused on events, entertainment, and education products. Supports the popular Ludum Dare online game jam event.

Founded in April of 2002, Ludum Dare is the largest online game jam event in the world. The event attracts many thousands of developers and challenges them to make a game from scratch in aweekend. Find us at https://ldjam.comI’m part of the team that founded the event. Originally a hobby project we ran together, today I am the sole person responsible for the event. I handle scheduling, running the event, managing the servers, custom software development, and promotion of it and its social media accounts.Since summer 2015: After growing far beyond expectation, and with our 15th anniversary on the horizon, I put my my small business on hold to focus on building a brand new event website for Ludum Dare. The new website is capable of scaling to support thousands of concurrent users, and runs on low cost VPS servers. Buzzwords: Developed a custom multi-user social network entirely from scratch with a PHP 7 and a MariaDB backend, transpiled ES6 JavaScript code for the frontend (using Preact), a sophisticated compiler toolchain stapled together with GNU Make, and a local virtual machine testing environment powered by Vagrant and Virtualbox. Open Source.

London, Canada Area

Reworked an online multiplayer mobile game to scale. I lead the effort to re-engineer the game to run entirely server side on low cost VPS Linux servers. The game server was rewritten in C++, and it streamed updates over UDP to hundreds of game clients. I also deployed and managing the 40+ servers around the world that supported the game.In addition, I helped develop and deploy the backend API servers. These supported the game by storing all persistent player information, purchases, matchmaking, and providing us with realtime game metrics and sales data. Written in PHP 7, and deployed to a cluster of redundant frontend (PHP+NGINX), database (MariaDB), and datastore (Redis) servers. Arena Stars launched on Android, iOS, and Steam in April 2019, but sadly shutdown in October 2019.Currently finishing netcode for a game coming to PC and consoles.

London, Ontario, Canada

My small award winning independent game studio. I often worked alone and with contractors, though for over a year it had 1 other employee. Sykhronics’ (sighcron-icks) goal was to create original games for a variety of platforms, but I occasionally did contract work for other companies. Sykhronics was put on hiatus in 2015, but was eventually closed in 2017. I continue to sell software under my own name.Sykhronics Entertainment was a licensed Sony PSP, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Wii U, Steam, Apple, and Android developer. Sykhronics also developed and published software for Amazon Kindle, Symbian, Nokia Maemo, Palm webOS, Intel AppUp, Intel MeeGo/Moblin, GameTree.TV, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Microsoft Windows Phone, Blackberry, Tizen, Samsung Bada, Linux, and Microsoft Windows.

Calgary, Ab

Spent my summer at Shaw Engineering doing something technical and fancy. Project was completed end of August.

I provided a chapter on "game portability" for this collection of iPhone game development "gems". Published by Apress.

I was a contributing member of a panel for a regular monthly feature called the "Indie Game Monthly Round-Up". We wrote short 1-2 paragraph mini reviews of indie and casual games. During my time on the panel, I reviewed over 100 games.

London, Ontario, Canada

During my time here I acted as the Technical Director. I assisted in management related duties such as interviewing new employees. The majority of my job was a combination of leading and supporting projects in development at our studio. I was involved in numerous mobile games, occasionally writing and assisting in pitches, porting, and the development of an original IP. In addition, I acted as the engine programmer on Atomic Betty (GBA).

London, Ontario, Canada

Sandbox was purchased by Digital Illusions. I continued my role as a technical/lead programmer on various smaller budget and shelved projects. Released titles included Jump*Start: Dino Adventure (GBC), DivaStarz (GBC), Secret Agent Barbie (GBA), Polly Pocket: Super Splash Island (GBA), and Barbie: Gotta Have Games (PS1).

London, Ontario, Canada

Hired on as a handheld game programmer (Gameboy Color). Worked on some shelved projects, but 2 released titles. Hoyle Card Games (GBC), and The Emperor's New Groove (GBC).

London, Ontario, Canada

A computer wholesaler and parent company of Computers Canada Inc. After some internal reshuffling, I was moved to the parent company's office. Between my duties as a computer technician (occasionally at Canada Computers but also at Microcad whenever they had large bulk orders), I assisted the owner doing graphic design for promotions, business cards, signs, and the website. I also did some programming, notably building the RMA system (Visual Basic with a Microsoft Access database).

London, Ontario, Canada

A local computer store. After finishing my high school co-op, I was hired to continue working as a computer technician. My primary role was building, upgrading, and diagnosing computer problems. Occasionally I helped customers "out-front", or did graphic design for promotions.