contact:

John “RebelMoogle” McLaughlin

Goethestr. 42,
39108 Magdburg
phone: (+49) 178 676 10 25
email: John.McLaughlin@yojimbo.de

Objective:

To Take over the Game Development World and change it forever!
And to Lead an innovative and well-balanced game development team, learning new skills and gaining new experiences on the way.

Education:

• Engineer for Computational Visualistics, Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany, August 2010
• German equivalent to Major in Art and English, Minors in Geography and Biology, Neues Gymnasium, Oldenburg, Germany in 2004

Relevant coursework:
• Mesh Processing, Prof. Theisel (Institute for Simulation & Graphics)
• Non-Photo-realistic Rendering, Prof. Schlechtweg
• Interactive Drama, Prof. Hartmann
• Idea Engineering, Prof. Horton
• Serious game project using Squeak / Small Talk, Prof. Masuch
• Spielekultur – Analyzing subculture of different Online-games
• Industrial design, Prof. Gatzky, Prof. Zwick (University of applied sciences Magdeburg-Stendal)
• basic psychology, philosophy, education

Positions / Jobs held

Graphics Programming Intern, Reality Twist GmbH, Munich (2009 – 2010)

• Development of a realistic atmospheric rendering system and integration into an interactive real-time environment, “RealitySky”, at the game development studio Reality Twist.
• Part of the released project Infocopter as the main terrain and object lighting as well as realistic atmospheric rendering system including hazing
• Developed using C++ / HLSL, integrated into the Vision engine, Trinigy
• Bachelor-level thesis
• Creation of Game Design Concept “War Within” for the company game concept submission to the FilmFernsehFond Bavaria

Tutor at Institute for Simulation and Graphics (2008 – 2010)

• Hot Topics in Entertainment Software Development, weekly bachelor / master course, 2008-2009
• Rapid Prototyping in Game Development, weekly bachelor course, 2008-2009
• Advanced Game Development, weekly master course / team project, 2010

President of the local IGDA Student Game Developer Club Acagamics (2007 – 2009)

• Organized club activities and trained new club board members
• Planned and Organized 5 regular workshops / Projects with 10-20 Students each
• Lead 4 weekly projects, 3 of them official courses since late 2008
• Art team member on the clubs Nintedo DS Homebrew Project, Kung-Jum-Ping
• Programming team member on the clubs Game Development Project, Radical Scorcher (mainly Physx programming)

President of the Acagamics club is an unpaid, voluntary position which I have held from 2007 – 2009.

During this time I have rebuilt the club from 3 Members and no regular workshops/seminars to 3 regular game development projects and 2 Seminars with about 10-20 students each. As of fall 2008 5 of these have been made official Universtiy Courses with the help of Prof. Theisel at the Institute for Simulation and Graphics.

I have also gained great experience in teamwork, organization of large groups and projects, game design and leadership.

Main Accomplishments were the first working prototype developed by the club and being able to start official University courses with the help of Prof. Theisel. This way students actually are able to get credits for their hard work in the club and I will be able to gain experience as a tutor.

System Administrator at the Institute for Politics, University Magdeburg

• Network Administration
• Setup and Repair (Hardware & Software)
• Software Help (mostly Office Suites, Internet&Mail and general OS problems)

Self-Employed Webdesigner (2006 – 2008)

• Programming PHP, SQL, Javascript, XHTML
• Graphic Design using Photoshop, Illustrator and Wacom Tablet

Skills and Tools

• Programming Languages: C#, C++, Java, Flash, PHP, Lisp, Scheme, OpenGL, Processing
• Engines: Ageia PhysX Engine, Vision Engine (Trinigy), Source Engine
• Development Environments: Visual Studio 2005/2008, Eclipse, Squeak
• Hardware: Arduino Microcontroller, Wacom Tablet
• Software: Photoshop, Illustrator, MS Office, OpenOffice, iWork, and countless other Software.
• Operating Systems: Windows 3.1 – Vista, Mac OS 9.2 – 10.5 and several Linux Distributions
• Languages: Bilingual native speaker (german and english), French

My fascination with Computers started when I played Space Invaders for the first time on an old green&black screen. Ever since I have not only played and analyzed games, I have always tried to push the Computers (including calculators ) available to their limits, with all means, starting out with basic.
Since then I was able not only to analyze games and create my own concepts, I have also realized some of them, gaining important experience in game design and development.

My goal with game development is not primarily to create great games, but to understand the workings and (abstract) concepts behind them and also to combine every aspect to create a consequent virtual gaming environment.