David Bethune

About David Bethune

Howdy! My name is David Bethune and I\'d be delighted to meet you. I\'m a software architect, game developer, and AI engineer with 30 years of experience in shipping innovative web applications at scale.CURRENT PROJECTSPresently, I focus on AI-based software development with Cursor and Claude Sonnet and on creating custom RAG applications with OpenAI, ElevenLabs, and Leonardo AI. Active projects include my Watson game engine for visual novels; the forthcoming game Watson & Holmes: A Murder on Nob Hill, built with the Watson engine; and my Slate framework and the applications built with it, such as Slate AI and iaTV. I\'d be honored if you visit my portfolio at https://davidbethune.com with these and other examples of my work.PREVIOUS EMPLOYMENTAt Plarium USA (Rumble Entertainment), I owned all of the company\'s customer-facing and internal web applications, which I architected and developed using JavaScript, Typescript, and custom reactive web components. Along with my art, design, and backend developer colleagues, I shipped the first digital game asset trading marketplace for the web, known as Tower Market. This was a complex, cross-platform, secure real money application serving a global, multilanguage player base on numerous web and desktop devices with multiple SSO support and 6 global deployment environments.Just prior to joining Rumble, I created a new card game called Hexxed, for both in-person and online play. The online version is fully multiplayer and built with Typescript and custom web components in Lit. You can play it online at https://hexxedgame.com.In 2018, I founded a software startup based on an invention of mine, a fact-checking and research tool called Mimix. While we were able to release an MVP SaaS application and an SDK, the product didn\'t acquire enough customers or funding to be sustained beyond 3 years.For more than 25 years, I ran an independent software development firm. In that capacity, I worked with over 500 SMB and enterprise clients to understand their requirements, design custom interfaces and code, and deliver and support custom web applications in JS/TS and a variety of frameworks and backends. I was originally trained as a mainframe programmer at IBM in the 1990\'s, where I learned techniques for improving software quality and accurately diagnosing bugs. Over the course of my career, I\'ve also filed three US patents, the first for a method of connecting APIs to UIs, and the most recent for the card game, Hexxed. I look forward to meeting you and learning about your projects, too- D

Experience

1. Founder

   Watson & Holmes Games

   Dec 2024 — Present · Houston, TX, US

   I\'m the founder, director, and developer at this indie studio that\'s developing Watson & Holmes: A Murder on Nob Hill and the Watson game engine. Visit the Official Site and learn more about how Watson is built at my dev blog.

Education

• Columbia College

  Art

• Broward College

  French

• Florida Keys Community College

  Vocal Performance

Skills

• Software Development
• Event Planning
• Graphic Design
• Event Management
• Social Media
• Photoshop
• Logo Design
• Marketing
• Customer Service
• Social Media Marketing
• Strategic Planning
• Web Design
• Web Development
• Graphics