I am a video games developer and programmer/programeusse currently living in Arizona in the United States. I spent a lot of years in the early 2000s as a systems and network administrator and "online content engineer", making software to make blogs and marketing sites work smoothly without needing daily hand-spun updates and packages to stay afloat. After finishing a Computer Science degree at Columbia University, where I had originally intended to get a degree in comics and comparative literature, I branched out into the more "serious" side of network computing, focusing on distributed systems, overlay networking, and anonymity in overlay networks. My path into technical computing was not a typical one; I actually went to University to stop working on websites and server farms, not to get better at it.
Since then I have worked at some big corporations that everyone has heard of, most notably at Google Network R&D (I was part of the BigLab team which helped create testing tools and processes for automatic verification of next-generation software-defined networking stacks and also worked on analysis and collection of Linux kernel telemetry for TCP/IP networking. Sorry about TCP BBRv1.), and also at game studios both big (Irrational Games/2K Boston for BioShock Infinite or Jagex for the voxlap-based Ace of Spades) and small (like Dynamighty, which made CounterSpy and the iOS/Android downloadable game Fingers of Fury and my own studio Punch Elvis Games).
In video games studios I tend to work more on the technical side of games, either as an online/networking expert or applying some of my art background to technical art/animation and the associated pipeline tools. In larger organizations I like to advocate for automated testing, reduction of error-prone manual labor, and for growing teams in sustainable ways across longer-term projects to avoid the costs associated with both toil/crunch and team churn. I am also an advocate for accessibility and inclusion within tech teams broadly and games specifically. In 2022 I was named a Women in Games Individual Ambassador for my work in advancing the careers of other women and women-identifiying queer developers.
As a queer (I'm non-binary, rather asexual, but also bisexual/panromantic) developer with disabilities (I have ADHD and autism but am also hard of hearing/largely deaf in my left side) I like to contribute to free and open access publications and games projects, including free/open source software and tools. Some of these things turn into games in their own right, like Ace of Spades, Tappy Terror for Hackers on Planet Earth, or my 6000/graduate-level games design student project Recess.
This space is for articles on tech, games, queerness, and other things that interest me but require longer form thought rather than a quick social media post. If you're interested in the social media thoughts, you can find places to find me on my contact page. In my spare time I play a lot of games, both electronic and especially board/tabletop and LARP, read, run, bike, and pretend to be a fox on the Internet.