Journey
Thirty years in software, from Gremlin Interactive and Deep Red Games through twelve years running Games Faction to contract engineering at Hidden Bridge.
Back to game development
After an Unreal cook pipeline engagement early in the year, committed properly to the next game — Cinder for rendering, Pulse for multiplayer.
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Engine R&D: Cinder begins
A year given largely to independent R&D: prototyping renderer architecture in C99 against Vulkan 1.3, and working out what the next game actually needed from its technology before committing to build it.
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Distributed analytics on DuckDB and NATS
Event ingestion, ad-hoc analytical queries and feature-flag evaluation behind one pipeline: durable JetStream streams into embedded DuckDB, with no warehouse cluster to operate.
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UGC campaign platform: returning to PlayerState
Third engagement for PlayerState across four years. A Golang and Svelte platform letting brands run creative competitions inside their own Discord communities, with moderation and judging built around reviewer attention rather than raw throughput.
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Second collectibles venture
A second Ethereum-based digital art project. The engineering held up; the market for it did not, and the wider collectibles space contracted sharply through the year.
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Procedural fashion renderer and authoring tool
A browser WebGL renderer for procedurally generated trainers, doubling as the authoring tool creators used to design them, over a Golang, Rust and Vue collectibles platform.
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Cross-platform Vulkan screen sharing
Native Mac and Windows desktop apps with embedded WebRTC, built as remote working became the default. One C++17 core with Vulkan rendering and a Golang session backend, rather than an Electron wrapper.
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First Hidden Bridge engagements
Consultancy's first year of delivery: early platform work for PlayerState, and a refactor of 10+ Objective-C and Swift apps for a mobile telemetry company. Set the pattern for the years after: one client at a time, end-to-end ownership.
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Founded Hidden Bridge: independent consultancy
Left Fig.co and set up Hidden Bridge Limited as sole engineer and director. Contract delivery end to end, architecture through implementation, across games, graphics, backends and distributed SaaS.
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Principal Engineer at Fig.co
Joined the San Francisco crowd-funding platform for games (acquired Ownage Limited in 2018). Built Golang backend and React frontend, Ethereum engagement platform, Unity/Unreal C++ SDK, and Flutter wallet apps.
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Storm the Train: 50M+ downloads
Co-designed and shipped Storm the Train on iOS and Android using Games Faction's proprietary OpenGL/C++ engine. One of the studio's biggest commercial hits.
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Founded Games Faction: twelve years as studio owner
Started an independent games studio in Sheffield. Built proprietary DirectX and OpenGL engines, an async C++ backend runtime, co-developed five games, and delivered 20+ client apps for brands including DIAGEO and adidas. Ran recruitment, finance, legal, publishing and fundraising.
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Lead Programmer on Monopoly Tycoon
Shipped Deep Red's real-time competitive tycoon sim for PC: city building, rival businesses, and Monopoly mechanics combined. Crediting on MobyGames as Lead Programmer.
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Technical Director at Deep Red Games
Joined Milton Keynes simulation studio as Lead Programmer, later Technical Director. Lead programmer on Monopoly Tycoon; built engine and simulation systems for Tycoon City: New York and other titles. Led a core-tech team of eight and coordinated roughly thirty engineers studio-wide.
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First games industry role at Gremlin Interactive
Started as a programmer at Sheffield-based Gremlin Interactive on PC and PlayStation 1 titles, including Actua Soccer 2 & 3 and Actua Tennis. C and C++98 on console and desktop.
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BSc Computer Science, University of Sheffield
Graduated with honours in Computer Science before joining Gremlin Interactive the following month.
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