Larry Mellon: Career Synopsis
At EA, I was one of the key leads in turning around their flagship
online game, The Sims Online (and later, The Sims 2.0) by shifting the game to
a stable, scalable architecture and by creating industry-leading automated test and measure tools to accelerate
production. The tools became a studio priority for all games. Prior to EA, I held leadership roles in other
types of large-scale virtual worlds, where I helped develop and spread ideas
across several industry groups. At Emergent Game Technologies, I was the
system architect and a key contributor to the business model, business
development and fundraising. My career began with OO design and programming for
distributed systems, parallel supercomputers and learning systems.
I quickly pick up new skills and
new fields; I have found and fixed critical path problems at the architecture,
implementation, management and executive levels. My broad background inside and
outside of technology is very useful in cross-team roles: skills in communication,
technology, creative work, leadership and business development provides a
bridge across both customer and company groups. As a System Architect, Team Lead, Software Lead or Technology Advocate,
I can absorb, coalesce and communicate ideas across all groups; creating a
unified vision, a technology path and an Agile process to get there. My
versatility allows me to take on new, complex problems, solve old, broken problems
or scale software and processes. I enjoy taking on new project roles, either to
fill gaps in a team or to tackle a new challenge. Previous experience:
·
Roles: System architect, developer,
team lead, business development, technology advocate, writer
· Fields: Games,
OO parallel & distributed simulation, Agile process, automated testing,
analytics, scale
I
have structured my career path to build the expertise for both pure technology
roles and complex, multifaceted roles, such as a Product Manager, Producer or Senior
Technologist. My
long-term objective is to be part of creating new types of online games,
especially story-driven games, where my role impacts the business model, the
general game requirements and the production/operations model. To get there, I
need to extend my skill set, targeting leadership and hands-on roles in all aspects
of production: from code to content. My current focus is creating rapid Measure/Change/Measure
cycles via analytics, automation and architecture: Iterative Innovation is a low cost, low risk model to find the fun
factor and to grow a customer base. A Sims 2.0 artist best articulated why
I work so hard on such tools and processes. We had never met, but he stopped me
in the hallway one day and said “I just wanted to thank you for making the pain
go away.”
June 2007 - present
I help design and build stable,
scalable online games via rapid, iterative development. I teach courses on automated
testing and analytics, focusing on accelerating Agile game development: user metrics
go to the designers, risk metrics to management and performance metrics to engineering.
Consulting provides me time to search for
the right opportunity and time to focus on my writing projects (science fiction
and software engineering). Joining a team with new challenges to tackle is
my goal, not consulting.
System
Architect, Technology Advocate, Business
Development
Emergent Game Technologies: January
2005 – June 2007
I was the technology lead at Emergent, a startup for the iterative
development and deployment of online games. I held business planning and system
architecture responsibilities, and was one of three leads in fundraising and
business development across the US, Korea and China, acquiring over $10 million
in VC funding. We grew from three people to over 80 people, with sales showing 100%
year-on-year growth. As Technology Advocate, I helped guide our industry to new
business and production models via writing white papers, co-authoring an MMO
textbook, presenting conference lectures, participating in working groups and
working with customers to highlight how our tools affected critical industry
problems.
Automation Corporation: July 2004 –
January 2005
Following the success of the
automated test and measure systems I created for EA/Maxis (described below), I
left to pursue a market opportunity: the entire industry was hitting production
scalability problems. I designed tools to allow rapid design iteration, in the Agile
development model, targeting large-scale, online games.
Electronic Arts, Maxis Studio: June
2001–July 2004
I was a key lead in replacing the
brittle system architecture of EA's flagship MMO title, The Sims Online, and in starting a massive re-factoring project to
increase development speed and stability. I rebuilt the simulation code for client/server
execution and helped structure the code-base for a large development team. I
then built a new team to field my automated testing designs, which used a
single, data-driven client to run many critical tests (pre-check-in, synchronized
multi-client, system load and content regression). Next, I designed a metrics
system that supported server debugging, realistic load testing and gameplay
analysis. These new techniques proved so
effective that TSO’s entire production focus shifted to revolve around
automated testing, taking several months off the schedule. Extending this work was
a top studio priority and proved to be a key tool in shipping The Sims 2.0.
Orcus 3D Inc.: August 2000 –
February 2001
Lead architect for an MMO engine
and hosting startup. I was responsible for system analysis and design, focusing
on scalability and load-balancing approaches within a cluster and across
networks. I also made significant contributions to marketing and management. Orcus fell in the .com crash.
SAIC: 1993 - 2000
I was a lead architect for DARPA’s Advanced Distributed Simulation project
(scaling and integrating virtual worlds). We helped define scalability techniques
such as interest management and predictive contracts, and how to integrate real-time
simulations and faster-than-real-time simulations with live range exercises. I
was also the system architect and technical writer for business development
projects, winning contracts such as the Synthetic
Theater of War (a $50M contract). I was one of the ‘plank-holder’ architects
for the HLA RTI 2.0, a network engine
which became the standard for integrating all military simulations. I was a PI in
DARPA’s Advanced Simulation Technology
Thrust (cluster computing for real-time, large-scale virtual worlds). As Technology
Advocate, I worked with groups to quickly learn their problem space and where
our technology would help; I wrote white papers, presented conference lectures
and attended or led industry focus groups.
Jade Simulations: 1988 - 1993
I designed and built transport
layers for a simulation engine across supercomputers and clustered workstations.
I built automated test and measure tools for QA and Production (a very early
use of Test Driven Development). I also worked with users to develop
specifications and build new systems, such as a distributed Blackboard and
checkpoint/restart tools for clustered workstations. I co-wrote and taught
training courses for object-oriented design, large-scale software development
and parallel processing techniques. As Technology Advocate, I quickly learned
client’s domains and their problems, then educated where our software would
help. I helped unify customer, business and engineering groups via online
forums, white papers, example programs, analysis tools and conference lectures.
University of Calgary and Alberta
Research Council groups: 1983 – 1987
I was an application programmer and
UI designer on UNIX and Multics. I co-wrote and taught Multics introductory
courses. I built extensions and did support work for the JADE distributed system
tools. I designed and built Macintosh group communication and knowledge
acquisition tools and UNIX distributed classrooms.
1989:
B.Sc. University of Calgary (Minors coursework in Ancient History, Modern Dance
& English Literature).
1990,
1994: Masters coursework in Parallel Simulation and Massively Parallel Computer
Architectures.
Interests
Writing
textbooks and science fiction; garden design; collecting art; leading community
projects; playing Go
Bibliography www.maggotranch.com/biblio.html
Over a dozen papers and lectures on
scaling game development, analytics, automated testing, system architecture, virtual
world training simulations and scalability techniques for parallel and distributed
systems.