Matthew Fairfax

About Matthew Fairfax

I am a seasoned Game Designer with extensive experience in building and running large…

Experience

1. Game Designer

   Popcap Games

   Jul 2012 — Present

   Pivotal in every aspect of the designing and shipping Plants vs Zombies 3 – concepting, prototyping, pitching, pre-production, detailed design documentation, configuration, tutorialization, and leading full feature production. Part of the core team that steered the transformation from a casual puzzle game to a rich mobile RPG with deep investment loops while carefully maintaining the accessibility needed to capitalize on the enormous draw inherent in the brand. • In house expert on guiding players through the critical inflection points of their social journey from casual curiosity all the way to the deeply reliant relationships that are the lifeblood of long-lasting IPs • Developed user stories and managed backlog in collaboration with other team leads to organize and plan sprints • Led development pod to deliver consistently on complex, high risk features in the face of rapidly changing requirements and late breaking re-prioritizations from stakeholders. Collaborated closely with teammates to ensure shared understanding of the goals and to enable them to maximally leverage their own expertise in the pursuit of those goals. • Designed tutorial systems, oversaw implementation, organized and trained other designers and was the person primarily responsible for both script writing and hardening against unexpected player behavior. Actively engaged in user research and analytics to identify and address problem areas – resulting in dramatic increases in player comprehension and corresponding decreases in churn. • Drove cross-discipline efforts to build out powerful, flexible, and easy to use configuration pipelines with stringent data validation mechanisms enabling rapid, large scale and complex data changes with minimal risk • Led level design and puzzle mechanics prototyping for Peggle Blast while guiding the other level designers in understanding the player behaviors and mechanics utilized in a pinch monetization puzzle game

Skills

• Opengl
• Game Development
• Game Programming
• Scripting
• Xbox
• Level Design
• Casual Games
• Artificial Intelligence
• Gameplay
• Computer Games
• Unity3d
• Web Development
• Xbox 360
• Game Engines
• Mobile Games
• Programming
• Directx
• C#
• Ios Development
• Social Games
• Game Mechanics
• Actionscript
• Xna
• Shaders
• Perforce
• Video Games
• Software Development
• Agile Methodologies
• Game Design