Michael Bilodeau

About Michael Bilodeau

My impact is realized by interpreting product goals into a full-featured vision of the player experience. I focus on inspiring artists and engineers to build the foundations that allow design teams to weave new worlds into reality. Players are ultimately drawn to explore and commit to these worlds through compelling tools and challenges, resulting in meaningful personal accomplishment orchestrated by these designs.Most recently, I spent nearly a decade at Riot Games as a core contributor for three distinct R&D projects.In the early stages of a project, the Lead Designer’s role is that of a strategic anchor. I specialize in bridging the gap between high-level creative goals and technical execution, ensuring that gameplay is deeply sticky and replayable from the very first prototype. Whether I am building a design team from the ground up or formalizing a development pipeline in Unreal Engine 5, my focus is always on creating a collaborative culture with and within design.I lead by removing impediments towards clearly stated objectives. My goal is radical transparency, and I believe the best work comes from teams that feel empowered to iterate quickly, share feedback fearlessly, and fail safely on the road to innovation.I am currently looking for my next challenge as a Lead or Senior Game Designer where I can mentor talent and help a team ship games that players live in for thousands of hours.Core Expertise: Leadership: Mentorship, multi-discipline coordination, and studio design standards. Level and System Design: Creating high-retention competitive and cooperative loops. Technical Literacy: Prototyping and workflow optimization in Unreal (4/5), CryEngine, and Unity. Operations: Feature breakdowns, feedback integration, and agile pipeline development.

Experience

1. Senior Game Designer

   Riot Games

   Jul 2016 — Present · Los Angeles, CA, US

   Served as a core contributor and design lead across three distinct unannounced R&D projects, specializing in multiplayer online experiences from initial prototype through formal player-testing in pre-production.Feature Team Leadership: Spearheaded multi-disciplinary feature teams (Art, Design, Engineering) to hit milestone targets; regularly presented progress and vision to everyone across the project.Rapid Prototyping & Iteration: Developed core loops for Top-Down Action and FPS titles, focusing on game mode innovation and mechanics that favor content-efficient long-term replayability.World Building: Built out extensive playable spaces full of environmental storytelling, featuring complex collision and impactful interactive elements, then spiking the pace with high-intensity dramatic sequences.Systems Design: Designed dynamic content distribution systems, including encounter scaling, challenge variation, and loot distribution to drive player engagement.Player-Centric Development: Utilized regular lab testing with real players to refine mechanics and pivot design direction based on real data and feedback.

Education

• California Lutheran University

  BA, Multimedia

Skills

• Perforce
• Level Design
• Console
• Creativity
• Casual Games
• Leadership
• Environment Art
• Camera
• Multiplayer
• Game Mechanics
• Game Development
• Cinematics
• Game Balance
• Xbox 360
• Low Poly Modeling
• Game Design
• Wii
• Gameplay
• Maya
• Xbox
• Computer Games
• Ps3
• Unreal Engine 3
• Layout Verification
• Scripting
• Devtrack
• Video Games