Phillip Wellheuser

Card Game Simulator - OSU student project

Programmer

As part of my Computer Science degree from Oregon State University, I participated in a team capstone project with two other students wherein we designed and developed a basic browser-based card game simulator over the course of 10 weeks. I helped develop the core game systems and used my game development experiences to organize our documentation and communication.

My main contributions to the project were in the card stacking/drawing systems, networked multiplayer cursors, the database-driven updating lobby menu, and the card shuffling system. The project utilizes the Phaser3 game development library (javascript), socket.io for networking, PostgreSQL for databases, EJS for javascript injection into html, and Node.js/express.

Days Gone - Sony Playstation, Bend Studio

QA ANAlyst: Design Liaison

As one of the earliest members of the QA team, I worked closely with all branches of development when they needed more hands-on coverage, and trained the rest of the QA team as we grew. I played a strong role in the standardization of our bug reporting and improving the efficiency of the QA team itself as well as our coordination with the rest of the development team as the studio nearly doubled in size.

While at Bend Studio I wrote test plans for external teams, ran and took notes on studio play sessions for the design team, performed extended tests for narrative discontinuity, maintained a daily status report on mission stability, demonstrated new mechanics at studio meetings, helped test and balance weapons, tested mission difficulty and progression, and tested build stability daily.

My experiences at Bend Studio were a powerful introduction to the AAA industry, showing me how important communication is, keeping pride in check, and how large studios can seem to be lumbering clumsy beasts when resources are not well managed.

I was also fortunate enough to be able to work with some of the development team to put together a small demo which I call “Ain’t No Grave” in the game’s modified version of Unreal Engine 4, which was praised by much of the team and can be watched here.

Pizza! Fast! - Seven Layer Studios (indie)

Senior Designer, Junior Artist, assistant producer, Company Co-founder

Out of college, I formed a small studio with some of my friends from school to see what we could do as an indie studio, our team ranging from 5 to 9 throughout development.

I learned a lot about coordinating a team with varying levels of investment in a project, and managing product scope. But my major responsibilities on the game itself were balancing of levels and player abilities, player engagement, topping implementation, and scope management. Since this experience, I’ve been comfortable having hard conversations with my peers and co-workers, while being direct and realistic about tough decisions, content cuts, and working effectively as a team.

The game was successful in that players would play for hours if it was put in their hands, but the reality of mobile development is that without going viral or sufficient backing for advertisement, it was a drop of water in an ocean of apps. There’s a lot to be said for standing out but not too much in game development.

Wisp - Champlain College Student Project

Lead designer, Associate Producer

At Champlain College, senior teams start small with prototypes and vie for larger teams in their second semester for their capstone projects.

Wisp is a networked cooperative multiplayer game which utilizes exploratory resource gathering in a competitive setting. My team made it through with our game growing from 4 to 13 team members. The final product of Wisp had 3 playable game types and 4 levels based around the same collection mechanic.

I was responsible for documentation, balancing the game types, original level designs, and coordinating QA testing/test plans. The local Girl Scouts troop loved it. The biggest challenges with Wisp were convincing the professors we had a viable player base and playing to the strengths of our team’s limitations, as much of our team consisted of our weaker peers from dissolved teams. I learned a lot about researching my audience, testing iterations, and playing to the strengths of my team members from this experience.