Walt Mitchell:
Creative Software Engineer

Contact/Links

• Resume
• Email
• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• Bluesky
• Twitter

Games

• Highlight: Hearthstone by Blizzard Entertainment

  The definitive digital CCG, featuring heroes of the Warcraft universe. Notable contributions:

  • Special event system for in-game events and holidays
  • Revamped new and returning player experience
  • "Multi-favorite" and randomization behavior for hero skins and card backs

• Dyebreaker by me

  Coming to arcades and PC in 2024, a local multiplayer "air hockey platformer" combining arcade precision and physical chaos, with visuals inspired by screen print posters and the GBC.

• Tuck and Rolo by me

  A spooky action platformer featuring high scores, repeatable NG+, rich pixel art, lots of secrets, and (under the hood) a fully-featured component system for the PICO-8.

• VOLLEYGON by ROBYSOFT

  The gravity-defying sport of polygon volleyball, built for the arcade and ported to PC and console. Contributions: UI development, player input management, Xbox login flows/compliance.

• Skirmish Society by Andy Wallace

  An asynchronous territory control game played via Discord and an interactive, in-browser game board. Contributions: webapp architecture, gameboard UI design and implementation, web design.

• 8-Bit Emperor by me

  A PICO-8 "de-make" of Black Emperor by Tomas Vicuna, a score attack racer inspired by 1970's Bōsōzoku motorcycle culture, featuring a procedurally generated course randomized on each game launch.

Selected Web Portfolio

• Highlight: WorldofWarcraft.com

  • Character Profiles 2.0 ("The Armory")
  • Shadowlands Announcment [mobile]
  • Guild Profiles
  • Mythic Raid Hall of Fame
• Spectrum: Autism Research News & Opinion
• Leigh Alexander (also designed)
• Comcast Corporate
• The BRAIN Initiative
• SFARI Gene
• Sarah Elmaleh (also designed)

Computer Languages, etc

• Unity/C# (brothers in arms)
• C++ (good buddies)
• Unreal (fast friends)
• JavaScript (divorced [on great terms])
• HTML/CSS (lifelong companions)
• Git/Perforce (finish each others' sentences)
• Lua (friendly neighbors)
• PHP (we go way back)
• Swift/Objective C (estranged)

Human Languages

• English (native speaker)
• German (fluent)
• French (un peu)
• Mandarin (unfortunately not)

Applicable Experience

• 1990 - Born
  <br> 10 pounds 5 ounces
  <br> "Hardy" nature
• 1992 - Developed propensity for eating waffles out of frisbees
• 1999 - Acquired first Pokémon card (Gastly)
• 2000 - Got heavily into Neopets
  <br> Opened digital storefront

  ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED:

  • Basic HTML tags
  • 90's-era CSS
  • NeoCash-based ecommerce

  <!-- TODO: add y2k-era gifs, webring, visitor counter etc -->
• 2001-2003 - Learned geometry and introduction to programming from one of Holmes Middle School's finest, Mr. Steele
• 2005 - Further mysteries of CSS revealed and mastered, thanks to "Thomas' Myspace Editor"
• 2007 - Went on exchange to Germany, made lifelong friends, expanded horizons, learned nothing about coding
• 2008 - Went to college, declared majors in English, German, not coding
• 2011 - Committed to self-teaching code
  <br> Bought books (???) about web development

  ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED:

  • Local development, how to build an app from scratch
  • More CSS, for example `border-radius`
  • Learning that you sometimes want to do a thing that is not the thing you are currently doing, vis-à-vis school
  • Webfonts

  <!-- TODO: cinemagraph of me reading o'reilly css book and ignoring homework -->
• 2012 - Graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a BA in English and German for some reason
• 2012 - First job slinging websites and social media consulting

  ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED:

  • Professional-grade HTML and CSS
  • SEO best practices
  • Social media strategy
  • Meaning of the word "crunch"

  <!-- TODO: clipart social media/SEO buzzword animation (two.js?) -->
• 2012 - Wrote some things about video games
• 2013 - Started freelance web development

  ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED:

  • Responsive web development
  • How to customize tools like a CMS to client specifications
  • Project and account management
  • Dabbles in design, Photoshop, Illustrator
  • jQuery?

  <!-- TODO: WordPress template hierarchy Breakout clone -->
• 2013 - moved to Berlin in the winter, did freelance webdev and German translation, was always cold
• 2014 - moved to NYC in the summer, was reintroduced to humidity, was always hot
• 2014 - Found work (via Craigslist) as a software engineer
  <br> Came into my own as a programmer at a creative agency

  ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED:

  • Coding reliable, complex applications for huge brands (aka "The Big Time")
  • Working with large teams of designers, producers, copywriters, account managers, and other crazy people
  • The principles and importance of UX
  • Interactive applications: datavis with D3, animation with paper.js, photo manipulation with math
  • Version control for teams, pull requests, release branching best practices
  • TWO MONITORS
  • Local development with VMs
  • React, Angular, Webpack, three.js, EJS, NPM, BEM, SASS, Less, etc you get it

  <!-- TODO: 2D Mad Men-style SVG animation, but with hipsters? -->
• 2014 - Experienced the wonders of the Brooklyn pickleback
• 2014 - Cursed the wonders of the Brooklyn pickleback
• 2015 - Taught myself some iOS development for independent project
  <br> "Discographie", an app for exploring your personal music history

  ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED:

  • MVC fundamentals
  • Objective C, Xcode, and a bit of Swift
  • Working with RESTful APIs (Spotify/Last.fm)
  • Coordinate-based drawing and animation
  • The Apple developer signing entity/certificate hellscape

  <!-- TODO: Flappy Swift -->
• 2016 - nothing much, you?
• 2016 - Began managing project-specific teams of developers

  ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED:

  • Agile methodology, leading standups and sprint reviews
  • Jira management
  • Balancing personal coding time with delegation
  • The art of code reviews
  • Avoiding the phrase "That'd be great"

  <!-- TODO: THREE.js rotating "1# Scrum Scum" mug -->
• 2017 - Attended a game development workshop, marking my first official foray into gamedev, resulting (eventually) in my debut PICO-8 game and setting into motion a tectonic shift in my professional and creative life. Thanks, Nick
• 2017 - Strengthened bonds with design discipline by asking an art director to marry me
• 2017 - Started applying React training to large-scale client projects

  ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED:

  • Tenets of declarative functional programming with small, modular components
  • Leveling up React apps with context API, higher order components, portals
  • Learning along the way: Redux, GraphQL, Electron, PM2, React Native
  • Inability to return to non-React personal projects without grumbling about state management to no one in particular

  <!-- TODO: rewrite all of this in React (Next?) -->
• 2018 - Moved to Texas with aforementioned art director, compromised by using Squarespace for our wedding website, got married
• 2018 - Joined the World of Warcraft web team, leveled Raandii the Warlock from 1 to 120 (for research)
• 2019 - Maintained massive in-house applications over long periods of time for highly visible property (WoW)

  ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED:

  • Coding and maintaining a cutting edge, bespoke, highly modular UI component system (React)
  • Documenting UI capabilities with interactive styleguides (Storybook)
  • Testing the efficacy of UI changes with A/B tests (Optimizely)
  • Monitoring app health and identifying error patterns (New Relic)
  • AWS configuration, Jenkins jobs, deploying Docker containers
  • Iteratively raising our accessibility compliance and making our site usable to the highest possible number of users
  • No jokes in this one

  <!-- TODO: a/b test this font choice -->
• 2019 - Launched the announcement of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands
• 2020 - Played a hell of a lot of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands
• 2020 - Began leading department-wide frontend knowledge shares

  ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED:

  • Fostering a open community of inclusion and knowledge sharing
  • Public speaking, but more better
  • How to distill complex topics into understandable, useful presentations
  • Transforming your impostor syndrome into an admiration for the unbelievably diverse talents of your peers

  <!-- TODO: figure out how to update an Outlook meeting without pinging hundreds of people -->
• 2020 - Doubled down on game development: personal projects, classes, hackathons
• 2021 - Pursued a career shift from web to games via multiple avenues, including remote interviews, in-person interviews, and imagined interviews while showering
• 2021 - First full-time game development role on the Hearthstone team

  ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED:

  • Keeping the pace of live service game development, aka "fixing the car while it's speeding down the highway"

  <!-- TODO: gotta stop putting all those bugs in the game -->
• 2021 - Became a dad
• 2022 - Did not sleep and do not remember
• 2022 - Led engineering efforts end-to-end for new features across Hearthstone

  ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED:

  • [REDACTED]

  <!-- TODO: build WebGL Hearthstone client, how hard could it be -->
• 2023 - Still not sleeping enough tbh
• Present - Buffering...

Get In Touch

I'm always keen to hear about interesting projects, so just email me.