Hey, I'm Alex, a Senior Software Engineer specializing in UI and gameplay systems, currently employed at Skydance Interactive in Santa Monica. I have 6+ years of AAA experience shipping titles across PC, PS5, Meta Quest, and PSVR, working in Unreal Engine for my entire professional career.
I got into game development the way others did, through a game that grabbed me and wouldn't let go. For me that was Hearthstone. Watching Ben Brode talk about his team made me realize for the first time that people actually make these things, and that I could be one of those people. I took a C++ class, wrote my first Hello World, and never looked back.
What I love most about this field is the intersection of technical craft and player experience. Whether I'm architecting a system that gives designers room to iterate, building a diegetic VR interaction that makes a player feel like they're really in the world, or writing a tool that saves a designer hours of work, the goal is always the same: make something that feels great to use.
I was President of the Video Game Development Association at CSULB and Outreach Officer of the Student Game Developers Alliance, and teaching people to make games remains one of the most rewarding things I've done. Seeing someone light up when they make a character jump for the first time never gets old.
Games bring people together in a way not much else does. That's why I make them.