David Williams
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Nanaimo, BC, Canada
Toptal member since February 17, 2021
David has worked in the games industry since 2007, mostly in design leadership and production. He has extensive experience shipping projects from the prototype phase to launch (full lifecycle), post-launch, and LiveOps, including content updates and re-monetization on free-to-play titles. David has led design, cross-profession, and full product teams and directly contributed to design and content creation. He also has expertise in design and product consulting.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Excel VBA
- Game Design
- Leadership
- Procedural Generation
- Product Management
- System Design
- Unity
- Video Games
Work Experience
Consultant
Self-employed
- Served as lead producer for Still Alive Studios and as a head of bus simulator franchise with one mobile and three PC titles.
- Consulted for Nvizzio Creations, a third-party agency, and created pitches to obtain contracts for the agency for outsourced game development.
- Consulted as a third party for Atari on development for Roller Coaster Tycoon World.
- Served as the third-party consultant for Darewise Entertainment on development for Rokh.
- Consulted as a third party for Star Stable Entertainment AB for design analysis of Star Stable Online.
Creative Director | Founder
Jellyfish Games
- Designed and programmed emotional AI agents generating nonlinear procedural narratives by making decisions based on how they feel and mathematical psychology.
- Built a development studio from scratch and brought the product from ideation phase, funding, and release to market.
- Planned all major features and USPs of the product, communicating the designs and prototypes to the implementation team while managing the progress in a feedback loop. Personally implemented the procedural generation and other systems in C# in Unity.
- Managed 3rd-party contractors for audio and sound design.
Principal System Designer
Life Beyond Studios
- Authored all game systems for Life Beyond, a Web3 MMO fulfilling the “living breathing world.” Designed the construction system, mining, agriculture, system driven biomes, creatures, etc.
- Collaborated with the creative director to shape overall product direction, as a member of a working group that included the CTO, head of marketing, and other key stakeholders.
- Integrated the Web3 strategy into all aspects of gameplay behaviors.
Lead Producer
Stillalive Studios
- Served as the lead producer on the Bus Simulator franchise, simultaneously releasing the flagship title for Stillalive Studos, development for five DLCs, a mobile title, support for the previous installment, and planning the next one.
- Mediated relationship with the publisher, identified issues, and facilitated obtaining a publisher that was a better fit for the company.
- Guided the company and products through the growth phase and diversification of the portfolio.
Producer
Funcom
- Re-monetized a live free-to-play MMO product, Anarchy Online, and increased revenue by using analytics to drive pricing in the virtual item shop. Transformed into the most efficiently profitable product at organization per dollar spent.
- Solved major team dysfunction surrounding a "death march" feature with substantial overruns by scaling back the requirements and redistributing the team resources, resulting in a successful release to the users.
- Created a new template for reporting financials to executive stakeholders that received praise and was upheld as the new standard for other business units.
- Managed content creation in the LiveOps environment for Anarchy Online, releasing frequent updates to users as well as larger planned releases, such as a product-wide graphical upgrade and new user experience.
Lead Systems Designer
Funcom
- Formed, organized, and led a cross-functional systems team to develop the game systems for all Funcom's AAA MMO products.
- Planned and delivered major features for the Age of Conan expansion to the pre-existing live product, on time and within the budget. These features were widely praised by the users.
- Overhauled the internal toolset for systems designers to bring together various tools using different technologies and data formats into a single unified framework across all product lines.
- Managed content creation in LiveOps environment for Age of Conan, releasing frequent game updates alongside larger rolling initiatives and a full-blown paid expansion as a separate product requiring the base game.
- Managed remote content teams for Age of Conan and The Secret World in a collaborative and cross-functional environment.
Project History
Age of Conan
http://www.ageofconan.com/Formed, organized, and led a cross-functional systems team to develop the game systems for all of Funcom's big-budget MMO products.
Bus Simulator
https://www.bussimulator.com/en/Led the production teams for the award-winning bus simulator franchise, including two PC games and one mobile game. Developed roadmaps, planned features, and met milestones to satisfy the publisher, license holders, and ultimately our players.
The Secret World
https://www.secretworldlegends.com/Took charge of the game systems team of a product that had been in "development hell" for five years, and created and implemented the necessary reforms at a product and company level to successfully launch the game.
Astrobase Command
Created emotional AI agents generating nonlinear procedural narratives by making decisions based on how they feel. Applied and received funding from the Quebec fund for technological innovation.
Anarchy Online
http://www.anarchyonline.comRe-monetized a live free-to-play MMO product, Anarchy Online, and increased revenue by using analytics to drive pricing in the virtual item shop. Transformed into the most efficiently profitable product at organization per dollar spent.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in English
University of Maryland - College Park, MD, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
University of Maryland - College Park, MD, USA
Skills
Tools
Slack, Jira, Zoom, Subversion (SVN)
Platforms
ProductPlan
Other
Excel 2013, Unity, Excel VBA, Microsoft PowerPoint, Game Design, Leadership, Product Management, Business Development, Project Management, Monetization, Procedural Generation, Video Games, Feature Roadmaps, Game Design Documentation, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Conceptualization, Ideation, Scope of Work (SOW), Games, Product Roadmaps, Technical Product Management, Distributed Team Management, Unity3D, User Experience (UX), MVP Design, Roadmaps, Discord, C#, Computer Science, Networks, Algorithms, Software, Hardware, Mathematics, 3D Graphics, Java, C++, Binary Search Trees, Poetry, Fiction Literature, Software Engineering, ANSI C, Pitch Decks, Marketing, Reporting, Analytics, SaaS, Free-to-Play, Documentation, Team Management, Consulting, System Design, Production, Writing & Editing, Market Strategy and Research Product Manager, Competition Research, Business, Creativity, Design Systems, Web3
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