Riley Dix
Following my passion for creating games, I'm currently a masters student at the University of Utah's game design program. As a game producer and designer with several years of internship and project experience, I'm looking for new opportunities to bring my skills and energy into the game industry.
Recent Projects
Echoes of the Nameless
Echoes of the Nameless was a student project made in the University of Utah's game design masters program. This project was made over the course of four weeks in Unreal for VR devices.I handled production tasks for this project alongside my co-producer. We split responsibilities where I focused on managing the design and engineering teams, while he oversaw art and tech art. We worked together to set the scope of the game, keep our respective teams on track, and ensure there was good communication happening between the two halves of the team.
This was my first time co-producing a project since I began my production journey during my undergrad. I was able to put everything I have learned since that project into practice here. We scoped this project really well. We made full use of our time to implement some really cool mechanics and high quality art, while still giving the team time to spend with their family over Thanksgiving. We even had time to polish the project due to finishing ahead of schedule (which is worth mentioning, since the class was about creating prototypes on short schedules, not full polished games).
The only thing I would change from this project would be to do more of our testing on built versions of the game. We did most of our playtesting in-engine to save time for our programmers. This resulted in a net time loss however, due to us uncovering a load of build issues and technical debt we had to rush and solve towards the end of the project cycle.
Doubloon Dash
Doubloon Dash is an infinite runner mobile game that we made over the course of several months, and recently released onto the iOS app store. I was the producer for a small team, and also assisted with game design, UI design, and QA for the project.On the production side, I set the scope and timeline for the project, created the development pipelines for our different disciplines, and generally handled management tasks for the project. Unique to this project however was creating an onboarding process for the art team, which gained new members twice over the course of the project. I was able to create a simple system that integrated them into the pipeline and had them creating new assets for us within a week of them joining.
From my bird's eye view of the project as the producer, I was able to learn a lot about the added challenges in each discipline that arise from working on a mobile game. This project also gave me an opportunity to learn the ins and outs of mobile game publishing, and what goes into putting a game onto the app store of different devices.
Next time for a project like this, I would look to see if I could procure a few cheap and old iOS/android devices for my teammates to use as testing platforms, so we wouldn't be so dependent on finding external playtesters who specifically had the device we needed to test.
Subspace Shootout
Subspace Shootout was a game made in three weeks for the Big Mode Game Jam 2023. We made top 15 out of nearly 500 submissions by winning a Judge's Choice Award. I was the Producer and QA manager for the project, and also helped design the game.Using what I learned working on previous projects, I implemented a system for version control that led to us having nearly zero merge conflicts during the entire project between our three programmers.
From my bird's eye view of the project as the producer, I was able to learn a lot about the added challenges in each discipline that arise from working on a mobile game. This project also gave me an opportunity to learn the ins and outs of mobile game publishing, and what goes into putting a game onto the app store of different devices.
Next time for a project like this, I would look to see if I could procure a few cheap and old iOS/android devices for my teammates to use as testing platforms, so we wouldn't be so dependent on finding external playtesters who specifically had the device we needed to test.
Cursed Crops
Cursed Crops was a UCSC game design program capstone project that I served as the lead producer for, managing a team of ten. The game had a one year development cycle, and by the end of it, we published our game on Itch.io and Steam.I managed scrum for the team, planned sprints, and aided in communication between our departments. I also oversaw the QA process for the game, scheduling playtest sessions, and relaying feedback while providing potential solutions to the relevant teams.
This was a very short project cycle at less than 3 weeks long, so while I handled production tasks for the team, I had to wear other hats to pull my weight for the team. I took this opportunity to try leaning even harder into agile methodologies for setting the team's schedule than usual.
I set four dates over the course of the nineteen days we had to have something playable by each of those dates. I then lined up a set of external playtesters for each of these days, and we were able to polish and refine our design direction several times during the project. I believe this aggressive testing and iteration schedule is what led to our game receiving a judge's choice award despite the high level of competition on this game jam.
My skills include:
- Task tracking software such as Trello, Jira, and ClickUp.
- Strong interpersonal skills, from communication to conflict resolving.
- Writing skills, both creative and technical.
- Knowledge of both agile and waterfall development methodologies.
- Design skills from documentation to creative problem solving.
- Digital media tools such as Photoshop, InDesign, and Premiere Pro.I have been able to integrate all of these skills and experiences into my production work in order to become a more well-rounded team member. If these skills would be useful to add to your team, I hope to work with you soon!