

NATHAN CHANDLER GIBSON

TECHNICAL GAME DESIGNER


Speedrunner / Competitive Racer | PC | 2024 | UE5
A hardcore competitive bipedal arcade racer, where fame is measured only by your clone's ability to survive grazing deadly hazards at neck-breaking speed.
Contributions

Concept Incubator Team (Mechanic Tests)
Building from mid-development Hood: Outlaw assets in 2019, I lead a prototyping trio in building a series of tuneable gameplay mechanics to explore future projects for the studio, and working directly with studio directors to create and pitch decks from this kit externally.
​
Collectively packaged as a "survival knock-out gauntlet of rotating action game modes" (coincidentally just before Fall Guys announced!), the replication-ready mechanics prototyped included - but not limited to - the following;
​
-
Locomotion System (e.g., Wall Running, Grinding)
-
PvP and PvE Combat (e.g., Range Weapons, Teammate Revive, raid-style Boss Fight finale)
-
Rougelike Loadout and Progression (e.g., gear-tied Abilities, loot drop charts, online ranking)​​

Additionally, as Playtest champion, I distributed UGS builds, steam branches, and managed servers through Amazon Web Services (AWS).
​​
​
​The explorations of this kit and market research formed the foundations of multiple team projects across the studio, one of which become Deathsprint 66: focusing on the learnings from our online locomotion tests.

Racing Abilities Support
Supporting Deathsprint 66 team at varying points throughout dev, I would work alongside junior and intermediate staff to aid with their feature proposals through either design doc or blueprint guidance. Features such as:
​
-
Various arcade/kart racer weapon pickups (e.g., homing projectiles)
-
Nitro / Boost systems (e.g., resource management and balance)
-
Alternative locomotion and risk-reward input skill checks (e.g., charge jumps, air tricks, perfect-landing, ...)
Additionally, I provided support to the 3Cs team with designs for finetuning the movement system, and aiding the Progression team with recommended micro/macro loop and economy documentation.


LD Tools
I used visual scripting to make various dev tools and editor widgets, reducing track dev time and making the process more accessible. Examples of dev tools added:
​​
-
Spline Tools (e.g., path-based pickups, rail type picker, common spline transform shortcuts, …)
​
-
Tile-based Track Maker
​
-
Character launch path simulator