Christopher Gaffney

About Christopher Gaffney

I’m a Game Designer / Level Designer / Technical Designer / QA Engineer with just about 20 years in the trenches, contributing to titles like Halo 2, Halo: Campaign Evolved, Fortnite, Slimecore, The Grand Tour Game, Bloodlines 2, Condemned 2, Minecraft, 1 vs 100, and more. I am passionately dedicated to building memorable experiences through interesting, engaging environments and innovative \"can\'t-put-it-down\" gameplay. I have spent my entire career trying to make players keep yelling over and over again.I sit at the crossroads of design and quality assurance. My design brain says “What have we learned, and what’s the coolest thing we can do with that knowledge?” while my QA brain says “What did we do, how did we get here, and how do we learn from it?” Put those together and you get someone who can pitch, prototype, break, and polish the same feature without losing sight of the team goal.Regarding tools and tech, I’m very comfortable working directly in Unreal Engine 4 and 5, not only building entire games on my own, but also developing levels, scripting encounters, implementing mechanics, and iterating quickly with artists, engineers, and production in a studio environment. I also have experience with a wide variety of other engines such as Blam, Source, and Lumberyard. I have experience with Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, and graphics tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and GIMP. I also have extensive experience developing and shipping titles on platforms including Xbox, PlayStation, PC, and mobile.I take my work and career very seriously. On a personal level, I try to keep things light-hearted and jovial. We are here to build products that bring joy, after all. I understand the balance between having fun at work and being organized, professional, dependable, team-goal oriented, and ready to go heads-down into \"let\'s ship this\" mode when needed, even if it means extra hours or unusual adaptation. I am a highly committed team player, focused on being the person others can rely on when things get unpredictable near milestones, especially on high-profile projects.In the end, I desire to use my experience, uniquely diverse skill set, old-school roots, and love of collaborating with others to produce memories that people cherish forever. I want to work with studios that share that vision and are just as proud to put their name on those experiences. If that sounds like a personality you could see yourself creating something worth writing home about with, drop me a line!U, U, D, D, L, R, L, R, B, A, Start

Experience

1. Technical Level Designer

   Abstraction

   May 2025 — Present · Seattle, WA, US

   Level Design and Technical Design for the currently unreleased title \"Halo: Campaign Evolved\"• Designing and developing campaign missions from concept to greybox/block-out to polish• Designing and implementing encounters and other scripted events with particular attention paid to core values that are immeasurably important to the legacy fan base• Combat and gameplay economy balance/re-tuning to account for updated mechanics/features on levels that were not originally designed around said features (sprint, 4-player co-op, etc.)• Acting liaison between overseas partners and US-based studios (Virtuos/Abstraction and Halo Studios/Microsoft), enduring rapid and frequent schedule fluctuations to meet the needs of the project and teams involved

Education

• DeVry University

  Associate’s Degree, Computer and Information Sciences, Graphic Design and Animation

  2004 — 2006

Skills

• Xbox
• Perforce
• Game Design
• Level Design
• Graphic Arts
• Software Quality Assurance
• Jira
• Test Automation
• Game Development
• Environment Art
• Software Development
• Scrum
• Video Games
• Test Planning
• Music
• Testing
• Agile Methodologies
• Xbox 360
• Quality Assurance
• Music Production