About Me

When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a firetruck. Not a firefighter - a truck.

Then, dad came home from some overseas work trip and gave me a GameBoy Colour (Pokémon Yellow Version Edition) with Pokémon Yellow.

I began with music in highschool - playing a variety of instruments and learning music composition. It was cool, but it didn't feel like "the" way for me.

Later in highschool, I tried graphic design. I even got some freelance graphic design work after graduating highschool - it was a doable profession! I wanted to take that even further.

During my studies at AIT, I started to find a knack for teaching as well.

I had joined their marketing & events team while being a student, running workshops during school holidays, carrying out corporate training courses at local games studios, and helping with games & film industry events (though admittedly, I was basically a doorman for the first ~6 months of that work).

I couldn't legally teach the university courses, as you need a qualification related to and higher than whatever you're teaching - and I didn't have that yet. So, after I graduated from AIT, I went and tried a few things simultaneously...

After leaving Red Cartel, I began some post-graduate studies at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE). Another 3-letter technology school - this time, with a business incubator! This was great - a bunch of breezy business education, and great mentorship to build my own game and business.

So, as BigfootDS, I was developing a virtual reality game named Planet Protector VR, and using that to get a leg up in the incubator and start putting things out there into the videogame industry. I released Planet Protector VR at the end of that one-year course, while other teams in the incubator (yes, teams vs lil solo me) were still bouncing around ideas.

Being in New South Wales, games funding wasn't great at that time, and the AIE Incubator was no exception. AIT was offering me more and more work, becoming a permanent employee - and the incubator was barely offering enough funding for me to take one day per week away from AIT, with the expectation that I'd work on a new game full-time and find additional funding during that process.

I had to turn AIE down, and focus on work with AIT.

Since I had achieved a post-graduate qualification through AIE, subjects and classes in bachelor's degrees and diplomas were something I could now teach!

Coder Factory rebranded into Coder Factory Academy, and then later into Coder Academy. They continued to have increasing demand, and I was continuing to ask for more and more work - I wanted to lock in that full-time role so I could slowly chip away on my own projects outside of work. And that scenario was finally sliding into place.

That process took several years, and I was able to learn numerous new technologies and languages through that process. It also helped expand my own capabilities in ways that most others wouldn't think of: like how the combination of gamedev and webdev creates live-ops, an increasingly-in-demand part of all software to manage features like subscriptions and ecommerce.

I've been able to do speaking engagements at various meetups, conferences, schools, and businesses about different types of software projects. My unique combination of development skill across different types of games, as well as different hardware (remember, VR and AR is a niche thing!) helped to exchange knowledge and ideas with other developers around Australia.