Raphael Van Lierop Email & Phone Number

Victoria, Bc, Ca

Vancouver, British Columbia, Ca

Harnessing the combined power of art & technology to create the future of entertainment. Leading and supporting the best team in games. Creating thoughtful places. Building worlds that last forever.Creator, Writer, Director — THE LONG DARKwww.hinterlandgames.comwww.thelongdark.com

Łódź, Łódzkie, Pl

Benchmark every platform, track every game sold, build a better studio. IndieBI is a first-of-its-kind data aggregation and analytics platform for PC and Console video games. It provides games studios with a suite of tools - web and desktop apps, data visuals, insight reports - to help understand their sales and marketing information, to analyze it for valuable trends and patterns, and to provide them with actionable advice to optimize their sales and revenue. It helps studios and publishers run smarter businesses. It helps them sell more games. And it's never been done before.

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

Astrid is a new entertainment venture creating the future of premium IP, immersive worldbuilding, and interactive experiences. I advise CEO Sharon Tal Yguado on creative and production matters relating to game development at this exciting new startup.

Guest speaker at a variety of industry and academic events and conferences. [2024] Writer's Guild of Alberta, Panel Discussion. "Writing for New Media"[2023] University of Winnipeg, Dept. of Creative Writing | "The Long Dark as Canadian Science Fiction"[2022] University of Victoria, Dept. of Creative Writing | "Storytelling in The Long Dark"[2021] The Future With Rovio (Podcast) | Interactive Narrative & Cross-Platform IP Creation[2021] Harvard University, Graduate School of Design | The Long Dark & Creating Virtual Spaces[2021] USC - School of Cinematic Arts, John C. Hench Division of Animation + Digital Arts[2020] Canadian Crafts Federation | (Keynote) 10-Digit Technology: Understanding Virtual & Material Realities[2019] Reboot Develop Red | Fireside Chat re: The Long Dark & Hinterland’s future[2018] GDC 2018 | Blending Authored and Player Narrative[2015] GDC 2015 | Early Access Development[2015] GameOn Ventures | Canadian Industry[2015] Vancouver Island University | Speaker, Digital Media Symposium[2014] University of Victoria | Department of Creative Writing[2014] PAX Dev 2014 | Is Game Storytelling Coming of Age?[2013] Canadian Video Game Awards | Presenter[2012] Montreal International Game Summit 2012 | Transmedia IP Development[2012] GDC Online 2012 | Writing for Video Games[2011] Montreal International Game Summit 2011 | Future of Midcore, “Smaller Big Games”[2011] Vancouver Film School | Leading Creative Teams...

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Creative Advisor & Mentor for Game Startups at Execution Labs, the first-of-its kind, hybrid game incubator and go-to-market accelerator based in Montreal.

HELM Studio is a creative and production consultancy for video games and entertainment IP development. More details at: http://www.helm-studio.comSome previous clients include:* CITY INTERACTIVE // ENEMY FRONT* GAMEFORGE // MULTIPLE GAMES* CONFETTI FX // TOP SECRET* BIGPOINT // GAME OF THRONES, MERC ELITE* EDGE OF REALITY // LOADOUT* WORLDTRIBE MEDIA // COUNTERSTORY* ACTIVISION // TOP SECRET* PRIMA GAMES // MASS EFFECT 3, HALO 4 * BLACKLIGHT TRANSMEDIA // TOP SECRET* MUNICHRE // TOP SECRET

Blacklight is one of Hollywood's premiere players in the transmedia entertainment space. Blacklight has a strategic partnership with WME, the premiere agency for film and television talent (writers, actors, etc.), and has special relationships with all the major studio entities in Hollywood.I advise the CEO of Blacklight on all matters pertaining to the creation of transmedia entertainment properties, with a particular emphasis on the interactive components (i.e. games). I also co-create original transmedia IP with Blacklight's executive team.

Vancouver, British Columbia, Ca

Relic's first Game Director. I held the Game Director role on Relic's first multi-platform 3rd-person action game -- the action-blockbuster Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (Xbox 360, PS3, PC). Provided overall creative direction for the project and a team of 120+ developers. I directed a team of discipline leads in art, design, animation, and audio -- and their teams -- to deliver the richest, most compelling adrenaline-fueled action blockbuster experience possible.In my role, I paid particular attention to core gameplay, the realization of the world and characters, direction of the narrative and campaign, the relationship with Games Workshop, and relationship with both the studio and publisher executive team.

Saint-Mandé, Île-De-France, Fr

I held the Narrative Director position on Far Cry 3 at Ubisoft Montreal, from the concept development through prototyping phases. In this role I established the high-level narrative flow of the game, the characters and setting, tone and treatment, and transmedia strategy for exploitation beyond games.My primary responsibility was to drive all story-related content creation and development efforts on a new triple-A action game at Ubisoft's award-winning Montreal studio.This included the creation of all elements of the game's fiction as a transmedia entertainment property, leadership of the narrative design team, management of external consultant relationships, and representing these interests (for our project) to the company's top management in Paris. As a member of the 'core team', I worked with the other discipline directors to ensure our game had the highest potential to deliver memorable characters and strong storytelling through directed and embedded narrative.I had the opportunity to work with some incredibly passionate, talented people on an amazingly cool project, and was sad to leave the studio. Montreal proved to not be the best fit for my family and so we chose to return out West.

Scottsdale, Az, Us

Executive Creative Director & Co-Founder of Radar Group Responsibilities:* providing high-level creative direction for multiple original IP projects built from the ground up to have transmedia potential; this work included establishing all key gameplay and fiction pillars in collaboration with the external dev teams* providing high-level production guidance for the successful planning, scheduling, team organization and management, and project leadership for multiple externally developed titles* building and leading a team of CDs who would provide front-line management for the multiple original IP projects co-developed by Radar.I also co-founded Radar with several industry veterans, and supported the startup efforts of Recoil Games. Focus on: Creative Direction, Brand building, Character and World Creation, Gameplay Prototyping, Production ManagementProjects: Earth No More, Prey 2, Incarnate, multiple unannouced original IP.

Vancouver, British Columbia, Ca

Held production management roles (AP to Producer) on: * Company of Heroes (94% metacritic; highest rated RTS of all time)* Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (86% metacritic; multiple million units sold) * Dawn of War: Winter Assault (85% metacritic; Expansion Pack of the Year 2005)At the peak of my career at Relic, I was directly responsible for leading a team of over 75 developers in the creation of triple-A RTS games. At Relic, I learned a ton about game production, team leadership, and creating high quality entertainment.

Key Projects:* Fatal Frame* Fatal Frame 2* Steel Battalion* ZBoard* Unannounced Blue Shift/Namco Project* Gameloft Community PortalProvided game writing and design services for clients in the interactive entertainment development industries. Key clients included Gameloft, Capcom, Microsoft Games Studios, Kaydara [Alias], Blue Shift Games, Bauhaus Software, Ideazon, Sherpa Games, and Sherpa Games. Key projects I contributed to during this time include: Fatal Frame, Fatal Frame 2, Steel Battalion, Z-Board, and several design and story proposals for game projects that never saw the light of day. Working as a freelancer allowed me to experience a wide variety of projects with a broad spectrum of companies, and helped refine a strong work ethic based on self-motivation, professionalism, and clear communication.

Marketing & Technology writer for two major players in the 3D hardware and software industries -- Matrox Graphics, and Kaydara. At Matrox, I worked on the G400, G450, and G800 product launches. At Kaydara, I worked on FiLMBOX and Motionbuilder. The company later went on to be purchased by Alias. I wrote extensive technical and marketing documents for both of these companies, including Advertising, Manuals, Packaging Copy, etc. Working for these companies exposed me to many projects in the Entertainment industry (film and video games) which fueled my passion for those fields.

Along with Chris Bateman, I co-founded the IGDA's Special Interest Group on Game Writing. This was in recognition of the fact that game writing was evolving into a distinct discipline, separate (but related to) game design, and deserving of its own representation. Today, this SIG has membership in the thousands.As an active member in the IGDA forums from 1999-2002, I helped moderate the Game Writing and Game Design forum community (several thousand members strong), and also carry the somewhat dubious distinction of being the first IGDA forum member to publish 1,000 forum posts. To commemorate this monumental achievement, the IGDA created forum designations to denote membership and contribution to the forum community -- a "Full-Raph" member being someone who contributed 1,000 posts, and a "Half-Raph" member, 500.What can I say! I was learning about the industry and voraciously picked up every bit of knowledge I could find. The IGDA forums were a great place to meet like-minded aspiring developers, and rub shoulders with some people in the industry. Because of this experience, I always do my best to take the time to help aspiring developers learn about the industry and figure out how to break in and follow their dreams of becoming professional game developers.

Ba (Hons), English Literature, History, Classics

Story Design, Writing