Hello!
My name is Tom Darby. I'm a development director with extensive experience leading teams of artists, designers and programmers. I'm an independent game developer who is deeply familiar with the many facets of making videogames. As Remedy Entertainment's Development Director, I would bring a unique perspective based on years of diverse professional experience, a lifelong passion for game development, and the ability to translate vision to teamwork.
For starters, I'm an accomplished development director. My time as Director of Multimedia Development for Pearson Online and Blended Learning was spent planning and directing multiple groups of developers, artists, designers, and testers through challenging projects and uncharted territory. One aspect of my job was to oversee day-to-day production efforts, managing scores of simultaneous projects to ensure their smooth completion. Whether I was having a stand-up meeting with a developer who encountered a challenging issue, presenting a progress update to key senior management, or elbows-deep in Jira and MS Project analysis, I was always aware of where each project stood, what was running smoothly, and what needed attention. It was my job to analyze our performance, identify and communicate risks before they became problems, and mitigate issues as quickly and effectively as possible. As our work was aligned to an academic calendar and had to be ready for the beginning of the school year, deadlines were hard and fast. Risks had to be identified quickly, shared with stakeholders, and mitigated effectively. Under my guidance, my teams became the most reliable and efficacious teams in the entire organization. Peers and superiors across the company knew that our consistently high-quality work would be completed on budget, on time, and free of surprises.
In addition to overseeing daily operations, I was responsible for the ongoing growth and improvement of my groups. In the early 2010s, I was tasked with transitioning my team's products from Flash to multi-platform, browser-independent HTML5. This was no small task, as our rich media products made full use of Flash's advanced features and were highly interactive. At the time, real-world support for HTML5 was in its experimental stages: browser support was buggy, documentation was sparse, and third-party tools were virtually nonexistent. Under my leadership and with careful planning, my design, development, and testing teams created an extensible, robust, cross-platform multimedia development and presentation system. As this system grew and matured, it first matched, then far exceeded, our Flash production abilities. Thanks to a creative, forward-looking design, we were able to integrate major third-party tools as they came onto the market. Additional internally-developed tools were designed, built, and integrated into this system as they were needed. Ultimately, we were able to create a powerful, flexible, and fully-fledged content development, management, and publication system. Thanks in large part to this system, I was able to rapidly scale my teams and streamline our processes. By the time of my departure, the number of people in the groups that I led had grown tenfold, our per-person production capacity increased several times over, and the quality of our work was immeasurably improved.
Today, I'm the independent game developer behind Magic Chopstick Games, a one-person game studio. I've developed and released several titles, including the robotic word-combat game Obliteracy and the popular, award-winning Jardinains! series. As an indie game developer, I'm intimately familiar with the unique challenges and rewards involved in conceiving, designing, developing and releasing a video game. Whether it's balancing a game mechanic, tweaking artwork, composing a soundtrack, integrating with payment platforms, tracking and triaging bug reports, building the infrastructure to support online multiplayer competition, or any of the countless other challenges that comes with building a game, I've done it.
Everything I've learned about Remedy Entertainment has convinced me that we'd be an outstanding match for each other. Between having been born and raised in the frozen expanse of the American Upper Midwest and having embraced a previous adventure living and working overseas, I find the idea of moving to Finland exciting. I take my work seriously, and I'm always up for a fresh challenge. I care deeply about the health and happiness of my teams, and I know that there's no better path to quality than a close-knit team that knows that their director has their back, every single step of the way. In return, Remedy Entertainment would gain a Development Director with the skills, background, and talent you need to help ensure that your games launch on time, on budget, and onto everyone's wish list.
I'm Tom Darby, and I'd love to join your team. I look forward to speaking with you soon.
Kiitos!
Tom Darby