About Nick


Nick is an engineer-turned-designer who has worked on games enjoyed by over 10% of the planet, including Call of Duty and PUBG.

Most recently at ZeniMax Online Studios (ZOS), Nick was the Accessibility Team Lead and Principal Technical Designer.

At ZOS, Nick was responsible for overseeing all features related to accessibility for an unreleased AAA MMORPG built with a new ECS-based engine from the ground up. This role brought Nick into tight collaboration with various teams, internal and external. Coordinating, designing, and diving into code all made up a typical day for him.

Prior to this role's creation, Nick's primary focus at ZOS was on Technical Design, where he established many best practices, processes, and procedures. Nick's implementation efforts were focused on scaling up various systems to withstand the needs of live-service, including technical feature ownership of narrative systems and pipelines as well as helping stand-up a new script environment similar to Blueprints.

Prior to ZOS, Nick was a Gameplay Engineer at Raven Software and PUBG Corp., where the games he worked on were often featured on bags of Doritos. His claim-to-fame was advocating for and implementing the ping system used in Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Warzone.

Fortunate to be making games throughout his life, Nick's passion for game development stems from a love of creation, collaboration, and empowering teams to do their best work.

Outside of games, Nick is passionate about Language, Lego, and Learning new things. He also adores spending time with his various pets: The cats, Jiggle Billy and Goob, as well as Leonard the bearded dragon.


Currently Playing: Fantasy Life i, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Unnamed Space Idle

All Time Favs: Dark Cloud, Katamari, Fallout 3/NV, Pokemon Snap, Timesplitters, Edith Finch, Harvest Moon, SOMA, Red Dead Redemption (1), and Conker's Bad Fur Day.

Yours truly! Certified by AbleGamers! My PlayStation Trophies!

Selected Games I've Worked On (More...)


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ZeniMax Online MMORPG

Helped push a new IP from prototype to production. A lot of prototyping, polishing, and planning. It was really sick.

Highlights: Founded Accessibility Team, Owned Foundational Narrative Systems, and Helped Establish Tech Design Department.

Tech: New Custom ECS Engine w/ C++ and Bespoke Blueprint-like Visual Script

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PUBG: BattleGrounds

Helped Tech Director start a new engineering team at PUBG.

Highlights: New Vehicle and Gamemode variant.

Tech: Unreal Engine 4

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Call of Duty: Warzone

Owned large systems in shared engine.

Highlights: Ping System, BR Gamemode, and Data Analytics Instrumentation

Tech: Custom Engine w/ C++ and Text Script

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Call of Duty: Cold War

Early Engineering Owner of Player Movement.

Highlights: Swimming Traversal

Tech: Custom Engine w/ C++ and Text Script

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare [2019]

Helped maintain parity between SP, MP, and Co-op in shared engine.

Highlights: Quest Objective System

Tech: Custom Engine w/ C++ and Text Script

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Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII

Worked on original co-op gameplay concepts.

Highlights: Equipment System and Sensor Dart

Tech: Custom Engine w/ C++ and Text Script

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Call of Duty: Online [China]

Made and maintained 10+ gamemodes, integrated modern engine features, and had a ton of fun.

Highlights: CoD's First BR Mode, Flying Monkeys, Crab Zombies, Reducing Live Service Server Errors by Tenfold

Tech: Custom Engine w/ C++ and Text Script

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Monologue

Game made on a train from Chicago to SF!

Highlights: >100,000 plays. Featured at GDC, Gamejolt, and Offworld.

Tech: HTML5 Canvas and JS

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Race The Sun tvOS

Helped port a prototype of popular indie title Race The Sun to tvOS/AppleTV.

Highlights: Working with tvOS' gyroscopic remote

Tech: Unity3D, tvOS SDK

Selected Community Involvement


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MDEV '24 & '25 Speaker

Speaker at Midwest's largest game development conference.

2025: More Than Pretty Buttons: Learn The Language Of UI/UX

2024: Leveling Up Player Engagement: Crucial UI/UX Strategies

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Mentor for Senior Capstone Game @ UC Irvine

Mentor and advise teams of students creating their senior capstone game project.

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Mentor for Game Program @ UW-Stout

Mentor and advise students on portfolios and game development.

Selected, Older, Non-Game Projects I've Worked On


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Horton The Plant

Brought a plant to life at hackMIT 2013. Tweets how he's feeling based on weather.

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Interactive Dance Envir.

Translate real life dance to Python code. Awarded 2nd place at BoilerMake2014