Michael Clarke Games

No Man’s Sky is a game about exploration and survival in an infinite procedurally generated galaxy.

• Developed a new network replication system used to synchronize the game’s universe for the new fully functional co-op multiplayer mode.
• Feature owner for the player character and new third person mode. Responsible for working closely with animation to get the best result possible under tight deadlines.

• Responsible for creating and taking ownership of new gameplay systems to help to differentiate our game.
• Volunteered for and championed the integration of a suite of immediate-mode debug UI and tools.
• Helped to drive the switch over to the new engine of choice and building a new gameplay codebase from scratch.
• Co-founder of studio’s new coding guidelines and keeping these up-to-date whilst ensuring they are adhered to in code reviews.

Homefront: The Revolution is an open-world guerrilla warfare first-person shooter for the PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

• Wholly responsible for the front-end character visualizer and equipment selection for co-op.
• Go-to gameplay programmer for level streaming and start & end flow of game sessions.
• Made significant rework to AI synchronisation to provide a more pleasing and smoother feel.

Forza Horizon 2 is a sequel to the open-world racing spin-off from the Xbox 360 brought to the current generation. I returned to Playground Games as a contract engineer for their project and had plenty of new challenges to face.

• Responsible for the ‘Live Map’ feature to show online friends on the map and connect you quickly to them. For this I had to dive deep into the (at the time very new) Xbox One API and research all the ins and outs to get it up and running.
• Tasked with all the weather and livery synchronization for all online game modes.
• Implemented several UI screens, including one of the more complicated ones in the game.

The Rally Expansion was a rally-themed DLC pack available for Horizon, consisting of both new single-player and multiplayer content.

• Responsible for the entire online portion of the rally pack, as well as important patches for the main game.
• Championed the way in which we handled the new multi-stage events for all of the DLC.

Forza Horizon is an open-world racing game for the Xbox 360 and my first AAA project I’ve worked on. I was an Online Engineer, although my time there was not restricted to just multiplayer content.

• Created and managed the majority of the online lobby mechanics to work with our open-world game and new game modes.
• Managing many of the game entry/exit game flows, such as the 3-2-1 sync.
• Principle role in the online gameplay, in particular for the playground game modes (tag, king etc.) and online free roam.

I’m an avid programmer at heart and specialize in gameplay, with a lot of my experience concerning online synchronization. I’m really passionate about player experience and their enjoyment in a game, and like to get stuck in to the design where possible. I believe that crafting mechanics that interact naturally provides the best possible player experience.

From a technical point of view, systems architecture is an area of fascination for me – I spend a lot of thought on how building code can provide reusability and the best possible outcome for creating varied experiences.