The Playable
Worlds team

Raph Koster

CEO

Raph Koster is a veteran game designer who has been professionally credited in almost every area of the game industry. He’s been the lead designer and director of massive titles such as Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies; a venture-backed entrepreneur heading his own studio (Metaplace, sold to Disney Playdom); and he’s contributed design work, writing, art, soundtrack music, and programming to many more titles ranging from mobile and Facebook games to single-player games for handheld consoles. His book A Theory of Fun for Game Design is one of the undisputed classics in the games field and was recently revised for a 10th anniversary edition. In 2012, he was named an Online Game Legend at the Game Developers Conference Online.

Eric Goldberg

Co-Founder

Eric has been a pioneering online game designer (including MadMaze, the first online game to draw 1MM players), a game company executive, and a founder of multiple start-ups. He's recently an advisor and board member chiefly in consumer-facing technology sectors, including games, mobile, consumer Internet, virtual worlds, edtech, social media, and monetization. Notable recent affiliations include Art+Craft, EA, Goldman Sachs, Pixelberry, Playdom, PlaySpan, StoryToys, and three US venture capital firms.

Dorian Ouer

CTO

Dorian Ouer has two decades of experience working in online games and massively scalable services, from the level of individual content development and game server engineering, to senior leadership roles building and leading multi-disciplinary organizations of 100+ engineers, product and project managers, quality assurance testers, and technical leaders. His teams have experience developing everything from online desktop and mobile games, to machine learning-based fraud and abuse evaluation systems, autonomous interactive robots, direct-to-consumer video streaming, and VR cave systems for real-world theme park layout design.

Mat Broome

Studio Art Director

Mat Broome has created art and visual technical pipelines in games, television and film, working as an Art and Visual Director. He has shipped cross platform co-op and multiplayer games in genres that include MMO’s, RPG’s and Battle Royales. He has shown leadership during challenging productions, and worked on successful games such as DC Universe, H1Z1 and Planetside 2, as well as in media production, including Amazing Spider-Man, film projects with Legendary Film Studio, and Marvel Entertainment. In addition as a professional illustrator Mat drew over 100 titles for Marvel, DC and other publishers and has been a Wizards top 10 creator on multiple occasions.

Jessica Hartung

Senior Producer

Jessica has over a decade of experience in games, software, and consumer products as well as a deep personal passion for gaming. She's worked for companies like Disney, MetaPlace, and Playdom in a variety of roles, as well as spending time working with The Op to create tabletop games featuring some of the most beloved brands and IPs in the world. In addition to her professional experience in the games industry, she is also deeply involved in several tabletop and live action RPG communities and has helped facilitate events for groups ranging from three to three-thousand participants.

Brian Crowder

Lead Server Engineer

Brian Crowder is an industry veteran with experience shipping and leading live-operations for web, console and mobile games scaling into multiple millions of daily-users. He also spent several years at Mozilla extending and improving the JavaScript engine in the Firefox web browser, and working on mobile ports of the browser itself.

Greg Costikyan

Lead Designer

Greg Costikyan has designed more than 30 published games. His tabletop games (including Paranoia and the original Star Wars tabletop RPG) have won 5 Origins Awards, and he is the recipient of the GDC Maverick Award for "tireless promotion of indie videogames." He designed the first online game to attract more than 1m players. Things he has written are used in game studies courses across the globe. In recent years, he has been working in F2P mobile games, and is challenged and delighted to be involved in this new venture.

Stacey McMahon

Director of Business Operations & HR

Stacey McMahon is a strategic business partner offering twenty years of progressive, wide-ranging experience throughout the computer gaming industry. She’s a leader who understands how to integrate HR strategy with operations to drive change, build organizational alignment, further leadership goals, and improve the employee experience.

(Pronouns: she/her/hers)

Michael Seare

Lead Client Engineer

Michael Seare is an industry veteran with over 17 years experience developing interactive entertainment technologies and products. He developed and shipped many successful mobile and console games for Disney, Sony, THQ, and Namco Bandai. He also created several products for Walt Disney Imagineering, including an award winning alternate reality experience based on The Haunted Mansion.

Patrick Ferland

Lead Gameplay Engineer

Patrick Ferland is a 20-year software veteran, having developed software ranging from industrial AI to e-learning to online games. He has worked at companies including Metaplace, Playdom, and Disney in roles that varied from software engineering to product management to game design and scripting. Recent notable contributions have included Club Penguin, Disney Infinity, and the Marvel Playmation toy series.

Ian Shadden

Lead Technical Artist

Ian has 12 years experience working in multiple facets of the industry, be it production focused technical art and animation or developer relations providing support and documentation to thousands of developer teams, he has a singular focus of being a force multiplier. He's supported both internal and external developers at Epic Games, Emergent Game Technologies, Magic Leap, and Kung Fu Factory.

Brian Elias

Senior Gameplay Engineer

Brian Elias is an excited and highly motivated software engineer. His previous roles covered a breadth of technical responsibilities from web design, game development, design, and scripting, internal tool development, and automation testing. While gaming is his go to pastime, he doesn't just "play" the games. He deconstructs them until he is confident in understanding their inner workings and design. Now he is eager to contribute his professional skills and personal "field research" to deliver a truly spectacular experience.

Robert Ortega

Senior Concept Artist

Robert is a skilled concept artist with over six years of experience creating immersive and narrative driven character art for pc, mobile, and tabletop games. Notable contributions have included character concept art for studios such as Riot Games, PocketGems, and Level-5. He has also had the opportunity to share his passion and technical skill teaching at Laguna College of Art and Design his alma mater.

Light Bates

Prototyper

Light is an enthusiastic game designer with a versatile, technical skill set who's previous work includes several published games and a virtual graduation experience developed for their master's cohort. Nothing excites them more than a creative problem in need of an even more creative solution, and they love crafting those solutions into engaging systems and memorable player experiences.

Allen Danklefsen

Senior Server Engineer

Allen has been in games and the gaming industry for over 15 years at companies such as LEGO, Warner Brothers, and Hard Rock. A versatile engineer and technical leader, he's been involved in many aspects of development including open source engine creation, game play for MOBAS, tools and database work for the hospitality and gaming industry, and live operations for the mobile and MMO space. An accomplishment he's most proud of is helping to lead the live efforts for LEGO Universe and desires to bring the best experience to players!