30 Years Shipping Games.
Now I Assess Whether Teams Can Ship.
From Ratchet & Clank and Resistance at Insomniac to Call of Duty at Activision and the Emmy-nominated Vader Immortal at Lucasfilm, I've spent a career inside publisher-funded teams. Today I run a games co-development division and assess studios for partners deciding whether to sign, fund, or continue.
Years Shipping Games
Revenue Contributed
Titles Shipped
Concurrent Projects Led
Why 30 Years of Execution Matters
I didn't start as an assessor. I started shipping games, and then spent a decade on every side of the publisher relationship.
Running Co-Development And Ex-Development With Major Publishers
Inworld AI (Dec 2023 to present): GM of the Games and Entertainment division, working under milestone contracts with partners including Xbox, Netflix, Meta, Sony, Nvidia, Disney, Hasbro, and Pokemon. My teams embed with partner productions, attend their standups, review their builds, and ship alongside them. At peak the division has run ten concurrent productions across six countries. I built a studio assessment methodology deployed across roughly a dozen partner studios with 93% accuracy.
Key Learning
I sit on both sides of milestone reviews. I know what studios show publishers and what they don't.
Running a Service Studio
Lila Inc. (2021 to 2023): Co-founded and ran an eight-person outsourcing and production studio: client acquisition, scoping, delivery, budgeting, and cash management. I know what it looks like when a healthy partner studio is being killed by circumstances, and when the reverse is true.
Key Learning
Service-side operators learn to read a client's real intentions early. That reading works in both directions.
Shipping Under Publisher Structures
Krafton, Lucasfilm, Activision Blizzard (2009 to 2021): Design Director on The Callisto Protocol inside Krafton's international publishing operation. Design Director at ILMxLAB on Vader Immortal, where the IP owner, the funder, and the franchise steward were three organizations with veto power over different dimensions of the work, and all three episodes shipped on time and on budget. Lead Designer on three Call of Duty titles inside the largest annual-release franchise machine in games.
Key Learning
Multi-party productions fail at the seams between organizations. I've shipped through those seams.
Foundations
LucasArts to Insomniac Games (1997 to 2008): Lead Designer at Insomniac, including Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3 Game of the Year) and Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal (Platformer of the Year).
Key Learning
Teams that ship have clear priorities, real decision rights, and the discipline to cut.
30 years of watching teams succeed and fail teaches you to spot the difference in days.
Why Teams Tell Me What They Won't Tell You
When you evaluate a studio, you get the polished pitch. Confident timelines. Resolved conflicts. Everything “on track.”
When I embed with a team, I'm not the money. I'm a fellow developer who's survived the same problems they're facing. I sit in their standups. I review their pipelines. I conduct confidential one-on-ones.
Teams don't perform for me. They confide in me.
I hear the real velocity gaps. The leadership conflicts no one mentions in board meetings. The team members quietly looking for exits. The creative director who can't make cuts. The technical lead building impressive demos that won't scale.
The through line across these roles is a set of five structural patterns that predict whether a team will deliver. The full breakdown, with warning signs and costs, is on the Studio Assessment page.
What I Believe
The best teams aren't necessarily the loudest or the most ambitious, they're the ones with clarity, alignment, and momentum.
I value:
- Clear priorities over crowded roadmaps
- Decision rights and accountability over status theater
- Operating cadence that surfaces risk early over optimistic projections
- Ground truth over rehearsed presentations
When I assess a team, I'm not looking for perfection. I'm looking for the structural foundations that let good people do good work consistently.
Ground Truth Before the Next Commitment
If you're close to signing a studio, a greenlight gate is approaching, or a milestone plan feels too optimistic, an assessment delivers a clear recommendation in 1-4 weeks.
Confidential consultations with no obligation. All engagement details treated as confidential. NDA available upon request.