Chris Fidalgo

Chris Fidalgo
Professional Game Designer

Hello! I'm Chris Fidalgo, a game designer with over 10 years of experience in video game design, predominantly in mobile F2P.I have a track record of delivering successful games and features, tackling LiveOps challenges in real time, and mentoring teams of designers.

• About Me
• Latest Role

Independent Works

LATEST: The Unseeing Depths
Explore a dark cave as a blind protagonist

• "The Unseeing Depths" on Itch.io

• indie

Principal Game Designer
@ Echtra Games & Zynga

Unannounced, AAA, action RPG
created in Unreal Engine 5

• LINK: Echtra's website

• Echtra

Director of Game Design
@ Gamefam

Oversaw a team of 12 designers at a 200 person company while acting as a principal individual contributor.

• LINK: Gamefam's website

• Gamefam

Lead Game Designer
@ RECUR Forever

Designed core product features and gameplay mechanics for multiple brands and IPs.

• LINK: RECUR sells $20M in NFTs in 24 Hours

• RECUR

Sr. Game Economy Designer @ WB Games Boston

Managed the cross section of Live Operations and the Game Economy for several years.

• Venture Beat: $750m in revenue, 20m downloads

• WB Games Boston

Lead Game Designer
@ The Tap Lab

Fulfilled multiple design, production, product mgmt, and QA duties for the company over 4 years.

• WB: The Tap Lab joins WB Games Boston

• The Tap Lab

Education

• Magna cum laude, Honors Student, Graduated with Distinction
• 2012 Winner of the Troy Moore Ethics Essay Competition for “Tempering of a Defense: Further Critiques against Error Theory in light of Russ Shafer-Landau’s Ethical Nonnaturalism”
• 2012 Presenter at the Georgia State University Undergraduate Research Conference
• 2012 Presenter at the North Georgia Student Philosophy Conference
• Work published in the inaugural edition of GSU's Discovery journal

Published Works

Art, Gaut, and Games:
The Case for Why Some Video Games Are ArtHonors thesis written over a year in collaboration with Dr. Jessica Berry at Georgia State University.

• Article

About Me

Hi, I'm Chris. I make games for a living.Like most people in the video game industry, I have historically worn many hats:
• Director & Manager
• High Level Design
• Systems Design
• Content & Scenario Design
• Economy Design
• Level Design
• Narrative Design
• Sound Design
• Producer
• Product Management
• Scrum Master
• QAI'm a holistic thinker and love to solve problems, both in production and outside of it. My main focus is in Systems and Economy design.

I'm a member of Amir Satvat's Mentor program. If you'd like to contact me for a 30m mentor call, please feel free to contact me via the methods below for career advice.Outside of game design, I'm a husband & father of 3 awesome kids. For hobbies, I dance, write jokes, create costumes, woodwork, play piano, and form my dreams into reality.My family is involved in the local community & government. I've been a member of the Fairhaven Finance Committee for several years, which acts as a recommending body for the management of town finances. Additionally, I served on the Financial Policy Review Ad Hoc Committee, which recommended financial bylaw changes to the town's Select Board.Spiritually, I'm an active member of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Fairhaven. I volunteer my time as a member of the Faith Formation team: the group dedicated to serving & building up the congregation. I helped the church build a website to find & hire a Director of Faith Formation. I serve on the Youth & Outreach Subcommittees as well.

Achievements:
• Lead Game Designer for global brands: WWE, Sonic, Hello Kitty, Nickelodeon
• Director, 200 person company, managing a team of 12 designers
• 5 Shipped Titles before 30
• First winner of the "Hope is Not A Strategy" RECUR award
• Winner of the Troy Moore Ethics Essay Contest, 2011 - 2012Favorites:
• Console/PC: Dark Souls, Red Dead Redemption, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Final Fantasy XIV
• Mobile: Threes, Genshin Impact, Brawl Stars, Spell Tower, Imbroglio

The Unseeing Depths

The Unseeing Depths was created for the Druid Mechanics 3rd Game Jam (link). The entire production cycle was done in 10 days from 0 → 1.The project was made in collaboration with my sister, Steph Fidalgo. We worked together on concepting, design, and sound. Steph provided the narrative & the presentation of it on her own. All engine / implementation work was done by me.Game Summary: You are Grey in a world of black and white. Use the power of sound to sense the world around you, find the stone, and make it back alive.Game Jam Stipulations:
• Made in Unreal Engine
• All assets must be freely available online or created for the jam
• No AI assets
• Judging based on Overall Quality, Theme Fit, Unique, and Fun.I started by prototyping different "echo location" mechanics, such as scanning the environment, similar to Arkham Asylum (link). I found this video (link) for a technique I enjoyed visually. This technique produces an actor in a post-processing volume, which means the applications are pretty scalable in Unreal.My sister and I discussed the bold beats for the player:
[PART 1]
─ (1) drop in & initial FTUE for controls,
─ (2) find the stone,
[PART 2]
─ (3) monster lead up,
─ (4) escape with the stone.From there, I started building out the central gameplay mechanics.
• Simple "clap" to produce sounds
• Footsteps making sounds, followed by different speeds for different movement options (crouch, walk, run)
• Jump produces a large sound ping
• Microphone integration
• Ball handling & creating sound events for AI

After this, I spent ~3 days off & on for the monster's AI. I had used behavior trees prior, but this was my first tree not following an explicit tutorial for what I wanted to accomplish. I found a fantastic video series (link) that showcased how to build scalable AI behaviors are AI perception data. This allowed me to create a more realistic monster I could build up.The level design was lifted from an Unreal sample Cave project. The cave's original orientation was used for part 1. The cave is then reversed for part 2, with the player stating from the opposite side of the map & exploring a new section.With all the pieces in place, I added a few supporting systems to help, such as the checkpoint in part 2 before the monster & the narrative integration into Unreal. I wanted my sister's story readable in engine, so she created pages I could flip through in a simple UI.

Outcome

The game jam is currently in the judging phase until August 31st.We've sold a few copies. The game has been streamed on Twitch (link).I plan to do a full post-mortem video soon™.I plan to expand on this experience into a 1 - 2 hour game.

Major learnings short list:
• Building & deployment
• Software flow
• AI & scalable behavior trees
• Level design
• Sound Design
• Horror game features (jump scares)
• UI/UX
• Publishing on Itch.io

Echtra & Zynga

In early 2024, I joined the team at Echtra Games, known for Torchlight & an amazing pedigree of game developers such as David Brevik, David Glenn, & Max Schaefer, among many others. My current title is Principal Economy Designer, reporting to David Brevik, on an unreleased title in development.Over the last 18 months, my role & responsibilities adapted to the needs of the project. My title highlighted where I focused my attention (understanding the flow of value between the game & the player), but my day-to-day work revolved around owning & aiding on several intersecting feature sets, such as itemization, progression, & mission structure.Alongside this work, I improved my technical skills by completing the Unreal Engine 5 Blueprints, Ultimate Developer Course, by Stephen Ulibarri. As a result of this, I took on the implementation of game content for the features I owned in engine. This growth was expedited by the amazing game developers I worked alongside, such as Michael May, Shawn Stone, Ivy Yup, & others, who helped me learn Unreal at a deeper level. Having the time to learn from them was the best part of this job for me.In short, I fulfilled my role as an expert steward of major features, and I gained extremely valuable insight & awareness for Unreal's capabilities.

Mastering the Metaverse: Gamefam & Roblox

As the Director of Game Design, my goal was to model two central behaviors:
1. Collaborative Spirit: We are one team working together to reach our goals
2. Growth Oriented Mindset: We hear feedback, listen for the truth within it, and apply ourselves towards improvementAs an individual contributor, I brought my talents to 3 of the company's most important projects: Military Tycoon, Sonic Speed Simulator: Reborn, and Spongebob Squarepants Simulator. Additionally, I helped designers across the entire portfolio, which included games such as Twilight Daycare, Super NFL Tycoon, TMNT Battle Tycoon!, Ultra Power Tycoon, Barbie DeamHouse Tycoon, and others.As a leader, I managed product pipelines, oversaw team morale & development, and acted as a standard bearer for how to treat colleagues, especially my direct reports. I still speak with many of the designers I met during that time, and I'm proud of how my leadership positively impacted their lives.

RECUR Forever

RECUR was an interesting prospect on paper. When I joined the company in 2021, I asked in my interview, "Why should I join?" and RECUR responded by saying, "Because we have an amazing rolodex of talent."To their credit, RECUR was correct. Champions like Chris Heatherly and Stephen Teglas showed themselves to be remarkable leaders with great insight and ties to traditional media companies due to their past histories.However, during my time at RECUR, I felt a shift between the company's direction and my personal, professional goals. Because of that, I stepped away from the company just shy of a year of employment to join Gamefam, which better aligned with my personal desires.However, RECUR Forever is not as...forever. Announced in August of 2023, the NFT platform has been discontinued. Despite no longer working at RECUR, I reached out to several team members to check-in on them--it seemed this was the right decision.

Process

During my time at RECUR, I was the primary architect for our Games-as-a-Service strategy. I worked closely with Michael Woods, an accomplished and amazing Director, to create reusable playbooks for various brands. At the time, we were working on several Paramount IPs in parallel, such as Nickelodeon, Star Trek, & TMNT, while also designing for our licensed collegiate sports NFTs and Hello Kitty NFTs. I oversaw the technical details and reviews of our plans for sound business and gameplay strategy.

Outcome

Despite our best efforts, RECUR has discontinued its platform. I believe that the game design department gave its best effort to create within the requirements. I'm still proud of the work we accomplished, and I grew tremendously as a systems designer and spreadsheet wizard because of it. Some of my RECUR colleagues are close friends. I'm happy I worked there and met them.

The Fight for the 4X Crown: Game of Thrones: Conquest

Over 4 years, I worked with the amazingly talented team at WB Games Boston on Game of Thrones: Conquest, a highly complex, mobile 4x strategy game. The game has been widely successful for Warner Bros., generating over a billion dollars in revenue.

Process

My work at WB focused on the intersection of Live Ops and Economy management. I started at the company as a mid-level designer who implemented the design details of the game's core Live Ops beats. As our content opportunities grew, I expanded with them by training other designers and collaborating with producers, engineers, and technical designers to deliver higher quality events at a faster pace. Every month, we shipped around 30 events, with about half comprised of original content. Additionally, I oversaw analytical data pertaining to the economy and events alongside senior design leadership and product management to ensure aligned growth strategies.

Outcome

As mentioned, GoT:C has generated over a billion in revenue, and I was present and played a major role in generating $750m of that revenue stream. We beat rising P&L tides for multiple years and eventually stabilized around $200m/year in revenue.During that time, I also grew as a designer and leader. The designer leadership, led by Derek Flippo and Matthew Zimmitti, instilled a great sense of ownership, stewardship, and a servant leader work ethic that the rest of the team embodied. I started at the company as a mid-level, but I left as a senior. I owe a great deal of appreciation to John Cataldo, my mentor at the company, who is one of the best designers I've ever worked alongside.I'm eternally grateful for my time at WB. I would not be the designer I am today without the wonderful staff that helped me grow.

From Bigfoot to the Big Show: The Tap Lab

The Tap Lab gave me my first opportunity at being a game designer. I originally joined the company on a short-term QA contract, but I quickly established myself as a passionate collaborator who was willing to learn any discipline for us to succeed.

Process

As a game designer, I started making content on Bigfoot Hunter, an augmented reality camera game akin to Pokémon Snap. For that project, I composed levels in JSON files, designed the economy and progression, and worked with our CEO, Dave Bisceglia, to establish the product's business plan.We then leveraged Bigfoot Hunter's game engine to create BMO Snaps, a paid Adventure Time game that used the same mechanics with Adventure Time content and new progression systems. For this project, I continued to work as a QA Lead and game designer, but I also oversaw our production timeline, due to a tight, 6-month contract. Our studio adapted an agile development strategy and delivered the project on time, at quality.By this time, it was 2016, and we wanted to make a game that would be a wink & nod to the contentious presidential election that year. However, we thought we'd use a casual approach, design a new type of game, and the end result was PolitiCats, an idle game based on cats running for office. For this game, I worked on systems, progression, and content, along with having a greater hand in FTUE and analytics.Finally, my last project at The Tap Lab was WWE: Tap Mania, a licensed WWE game that utilized our idle game engine work from PolitiCats. I was incredibly honored and humbled to work as the Lead Game Designer for this role. I acted as the Product Owner and oversaw all parts of development, ranging from the art style, gameplay systems, LiveOps planning, and presenting high level deliverables to executives at WWE and Sega, the game's publisher. I worked alongside Steve Sadin, a talented project manager, and Dave to deliver one of WWE's best performing ad-revenue games at the time.

Outcome

Our success on mobile eventually led to the company's acquisition by WB Games. The Tap Lab sold the rights to its games to Sega, who did operate the games for a period of time before sunsetting them.The Tap Lab provided one of the best learning experiences for game development in my career. As a small studio, I wore many hats within and outside of game design. I consider many of my past colleagues from the Tap Lab great friends. They are some of the most talented people I've worked alongside.