About Me:
Hello, my name is Christian Evan Erali, and I am a Game Content Designer for Amazon Games. I started out my academic career wanting to be a history teacher. Though I did turn away from that goal, I found a new direction through Dungeons and Dragons. After extended research, writing, and of course gaming, I realized that what I really wanted was to make people laugh, smile, and enjoy an amazing and fun experience. That is when I knew I wanted to be a level designer. Following this new path, I turned to Champlain College for my first masters degree in Fine Art in Emergent Media. While those two years at Champlain were very constructive, helping with my writing and teaching me the basics of games design, they also served to outline exactly how much more I needed to learn. With the first masters completed, I quickly moved down to Texas to start my second at the SMU Guildhall.
Here are some Fun Facts about me:
My first masters thesis focuses on the gap that can occur between a game's gameplay and narrative. I eventually developed my own taxonomy of dissonance and various solutions for each type.
My second masters thesis focuses on the process and creation of my own Dynamic Difficulty system using Cryengine 3.
I play a variety of different games all from different genres: First-Person-Shooters, Third-Person Action Adventure, Card Games, Turn-Based Strategy, and many more.
One of my all time favorite past time is card games as I currently play five different card games: Hearthstone, Magic the Gathering, and Legends of Runeterra.
I am a huge fan of board games. Some of my all time favorites are Infiltration, Epic Spell Wars, Settlers of Catan, and Ticket to Ride.
I have many hobbies outside of gaming such as cooking, acting, and singing.
I am an amateur voice actor and have done work for plenty of student and professional projects.
Through the SMU Guildhall I have learned many lessons from both my fellow students and my professors. From the actual core skills of being a level and game designer: scope, whiteboxing, prototyping, documentation, to more human skills such as communication, understanding another's mindset, and how to work as a team. Through various personal and team projects, I have had many opportunities to put these skills to use, to observe, and grow. Now with the Guildhall behind me, I cannot wait to step into the gaming industry and help make the next great game.
References:
Below are a few recommendations from several different people I have worked with. These are their own words, unedited from my Linkedin recommendation section. You can find these same recommendations on my Linkedin page which you can go to by Clicking Here.
Jon Grande - Head of Product Management at Amazon Games
We hired Christian to help with game design/implementation, initially as a contractor and then converted to full-time. I was consistently impressed with the quality of Christian's design work and attention to detail. When we ended our mobile project Christian made a seamless transition to become a level designer for a new PC & console project that is early in the Pre-Production process. I can wholeheartedly recommend Christian for high-quality design work, completed both thoughtfully and diligently.
Matt Wolf - Senior Design Producer at Amazon Games
Christian demonstrates an understanding of game development and design that is beyond their years in the industry. They are thoughtful about the design process from concept to production and work well as a team member by providing both intuitive and data driven feedback. They demonstrate a Growth Mindset and are quick to pick up new design philosophies, processes, and tools. I would 10 out of 10 work with Christian again.
Jose Villegas - Technical Designer at Trendy Entertainment
I worked alongside Christian while he was a Design Intern at Trendy. Over the course of time he stayed here he proved himself as a very solid designer with an extremely strong work ethic. No matter the task he was placed to worked on, I had the certainty he will see it to completion as he was always willing to seek advice on design and implementation. Whenever I had the chance to participate with him on design tasks his insight was always spot-on and appreciated. It’s easy for me to recommend Christian for any design position, and I would gladly work with him again.
Jason Yu - Associate Producer at Trendy Entertainment
It is my pleasure to recommend Christian Erali as he seeks employment in the games industry. Christian joined us as a design intern for the Summer of ’17. As one of Christian’s direct supervisors, I’ve worked with him daily to implement important pieces of several features which we have released, and he’s done a stellar job in all respects.
Christian is detail-oriented, creative, and eager-to-learn designer who displays a strong sense of ownership. One of Christians first tasks was to organize a massive list of all our Shards, and he thoroughly detailed each of their functionality, organized them so that they are searchable in the editor, and separated them into easily identifiable groups so end users could easily identify them based on their iconography. He eagerly tackled this task by designing the groups, prototyping icons, and doing the final implementation of the assets. Additionally, he took on the important task of designing and implementing several major parts of a hero, including abilities, shards, talents, and balance. These tasks touched upon several unique systems that he had to learn quickly, while under time pressure, to hit an expected quality bar which he did while exuding an incredible amount of enthusiasm.
Without hesitation, I recommend Christian for any junior design position, as I fully expect him to continue growing at a rapid rate, and he easily has the potential to become a household name in the not-so-distant future.