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Cell: (925) 876-4131
Address: 2416 Casa Way Walnut Creek,
CA 94597
Email: larry@maggotranch.com
For a PDF version of Larry's resume, click here
.
Career Summary:
Over nine years in massively multiplayer videogame development. An industry leader in
bringing a strong focus on process automation, metrics and scalable system architectures into
game development after my work in helping turn around EA’s flagship online game The Sims Online.
My previous work in the 80’s and 90’s was also a leadership role in large-scale virtual worlds,
where I created system architectures for military real-time, large-scale training simulations based
on a parallel and distributed supercomputing backbone. My last role was CTO for an online games startup,
Emergent Game Technologies, where I worked on market analysis, system architecture, business development
and fundraising.
Current work (Consulting and Training): June 2007 to present
I consult, write and sell training courses in automated testing and metrics-driven development, where player behavior metrics are fed back into the design team and progress metrics against measurable milestones are provided real-time to the production and upper management teams. I’m also working on my second engineering book for online games while I wait for a Bay Area opportunity that can utilize the different skills I bring to the table. I am comfortable working in a System Architect, Technical Director or Development Director role, and I am equally capable of executive team work, such as fundraising, business development and market analysis. My current research focus is faster, more predictable times to market combined with feeding measured player behavior into the design cycle. My ideal role right now would be to head a tools group to implement these concepts across a studio or publisher.
Emergent Game Technologies (CTO, System Architect): January 2005 – June 2007
While looking for a business lead to help commercialize my game production designs (discussed below), I met Geoffrey Selzer, who had just taken over Butterfly.net, a failed online game company. Geoff was the turnaround CEO and we teamed up to reform Butterfly: replacing the team, the technology and the business plan to create Emergent, a licensed software and managed services provider for the rapid creation and iterative deployment of online games. My work crossed several groups, working first to find the market opportunity, followed by designing the system architecture and helping build the new team. I was one of the three leads in business development and fund raising activity all across the US, Korea and China, bringing in over $16 million and growing the team to over 80 people. Our sales showed one hundred percent year-on-year growth and the brand is now well-known in the USA, Europe, Korea and China.
Automation Corporation (Architect, Biz Dev): January 2001 – June 2001, July 2004 – January 2005
The automated game production work done at Maxis (below), had a significant impact on the teams, and my subsequent GDC talks on the experiences revealed an industry-wide problem: game production processes were not scaling. I left EA to pursue this market opportunity, designing tools that combine metrics and automated testing for rapid design iteration in a scalable, stable production environment.
Electronic Arts [Maxis Studio] (Automation Lead, Simulation Lead): June 2001 – July 2004
I was brought into The Sims Online as part of the turnaround team: the original architecture and development processes were not able to deal with the scale and complexity of the game (one hundred thousand players at launch). My first work was to lead the team in replacing the brittle system architecture with a client-server model. I then built a new team to create an automated test and measure system for MMO games. The techniques proved so effective that TSO’s entire production focus was shifted to revolve around automated testing, taking several months off the schedule. Extending this work became one of the two top technology priorities for the Maxis studio, and we proved out the approach again on The Sims 2.0.
The system included pre-checkin, multi-client developer testing, system load testing, content testing and QA regression via a single, data-driven test client. We also built a metrics system to support server debugging, realistic load testing, and player behavior metrics for the game designers. High-level views of development progress, performance metrics, and test results per build were all automatically generated to a central Dashboard, providing views of player activity and development bottlenecks. We could sustain a dozen full build, test and deploy cycles of a MMO game per day.
Orcus 3D Inc (Senior Software Architect): August 2000 – February 2001
Lead architect for a MMO-focused ASP startup. I had overall system analysis/design responsibilities, focusing on scalability and load balancing approaches within the cluster itself and across broadband networks. I quickly became a significant contributor to the marketing and management aspects of the short-lived company, which was unable to raise full funding in the Q1’01 dot com meltdown.
SAIC (Senior Computer Scientist, Branch Manager): 1993 - 2000
Lead architect in DARPA’s Advanced Distributed Simulation project, targeting the scalability and integration of virtual worlds used in military training. Our program fed key concepts into the formation of the industry-wide HLA standard, defining scalability techniques such as interest management, predictive contracts and federations. I was a key member of several winning business development teams, acting as both the lead system designer and lead technical writer, and ran a small team of researchers as we grew the group from tens to hundreds of people. Our business group targeted R&D contracts typically valued in the ten to hundred million dollar range, creating different forms of simulation-driven virtual worlds used in training and analysis. I also designed a distributed operating system to support the Synthetic Theatre of War and was a key member of the winning team in the design competition for the HLA RTI 2.0: a second-generation network engine for scalable distributed virtual worlds, now IEEE 1516 and the standard for integrating all military training systems. That work led into a role as Principle Investigator for DARPA’s Advanced Simulation Technology Thrust: applied research into the use of tightly coupled cluster computing to host large-scale virtual worlds.
Jade Simulations (Systems Programmer and Everything Else): 1988 - 1993
I was the first employee at Jade, a startup fielding the first commercial, massively parallel and distributed simulation system, Sim++. I designed and built transport layers for the simulation engine across a wide set of parallel processors and UNIX systems, and created quality-assurance and production mechanisms for the company designed around automated testing (some of the first fielded applications of automated testing in software production). I worked with clients to produce specifications and designs for a series of new systems, such as a distributed blackboard and large-scale network protocols, and implemented key systems such as a checkpoint/restart mechanism for distributed processes and tools for the debugging and optimization of distributed systems. I wrote and taught our suite of training courses in object-oriented design, large-scale software development and parallel computation. Jade was a very exciting time for me as I transitioned from pure software development to diverse, customer facing roles: helping to write our sales literature, white papers, and business proposals.
University of Calgary and Alberta Research Council groups (System Programmer): 1983 – 1987
Application programming (Multics/UNIX). Wrote and taught introductory courses for Multics. Network programming for the Jade distributed system toolkit. Design and implementation of Macintosh-based distributed learning systems for communication (Cantata), knowledge acquisition (Pegasus) and language learning (Liber and Casu).
Education
1989: B.Sc. University of Calgary.
1990, 1994: Graduate Courses in Distributed Simulation and Massively Parallel Computer Architectures.
Writings & lectures (many are available here).
L. Mellon, D. Kazemi. Wake up and Smell the Metrics! A Rant on Metrics-Driven Development in Online Games (AGC, 2008)
L. Mellon, et al. Tuning the Money Funnel: Metrics in Online Games (ION conference, spring 2008)
Thor Alexander, L. Mellon, et al. Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2 (LM: chapters on metrics and automated testing)
L. Mellon, et al. Large-scale Engineering for Online and Offline Games [yearly tutorial lead] (GDC, 2005-6-7)
L. Mellon, N. Lazarro. Fun Meters for Games (AGC, 2005)
L. Mellon, S. Keller. Automated Testing: Better, Cheaper, Faster – For Everything (AGC 2004)
L. Mellon. Metrics in MMP Development and Operations: Lessons Learned from The Sims Online (GDC, 2004)
L. Mellon. Automated Testing in MMP Development: The Business Case (AGC, 2003)
L. Mellon. Research Opportunities in Game Development (ACM Multi-conference [PADS], 2003)
L. Mellon. Automated Testing of MMP Games: Lessons Learned from The Sims Online (GDC, 2003)
G. Kearney, L. Mellon, D. West. Scaling the Software Development Process: Lessons Learned from TSO (GDC, 2003)
L. Mellon, J. Aronson, D. West. Applying The Technology of Distributed Training Simulations to Internet Gaming (GDC, 1999)
L. Mellon. Cluster Computing Optimizations for Large-Scale Distributed Simulation (DARPA, Final Report,2001)
L. Mellon, D. Itkin. Cluster Computing in Large Scale Simulation (Proceedings, 1998 Fall SIW Conference)
S. Bachinsky, L. Mellon, et al. The RTI 2.0 Architecture (Proceedings, 1998 Spring SIW Conference)
L. Mellon. Intelligent Addressing and Routing of Data via the HLA RTI Filter Constructs (SIW Conference, Fall 1997)
J. Olszewski, L. Mellon. HLA Testbed Declaration Management Experiments (SIW Conference, Fall 1997)
L. Mellon. Hierarchical Filtering in the STOW MMP Distributed Simulation (Proceedings, DIS Workshop, 1996)
E. Powell, L. Mellon, et al. Shared State Coherency Using Interest Expression in a DIS Application (Simulation conference, 1996)
L. Mellon, D. West. Architectural Optimizations for Advanced Distributed Simulation (Proceedings of the WSC, 1995)
D. West, L. Mellon, et al. Simulation Infrastructure for Rapid Execution of Strike-Planning Systems (WSC, 1995)
L. Mellon, J. Dhingra. Scalability for Simulations Containing Mobile, Sensing Entities (Technical Report, 1994)
L. Mellon. Parallel Simulation in Support of Real-time Decision-Aid Tools (Decision-Aid Working Group, 1993)
L. Mellon, G. Lomow, S. Batsell. Parallel, Discrete-Event Simulation of Communication Networks Using Clustered Computing (Accepted for
Publication, Canadian Supercomputing Conference, 1993)
R. Kasperski, E. Chang, L. Mellon. Group Protocols in a Conferencing Environment (Inter. Conf. on Systems, Man, Cybernetics, 1986)
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