About Me

My name is Max Southerton and I first began playing video games when I was 7 on the PS1 with my older brother teaching me how to play Power Rangers and Star Wars. My love for games continued, moving to Xbox, PS3, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and eventually to PC gaming. Despite playing traditional sports throughout my youth, as I got older I began to focus on my passion for gaming and the ESports industry, and I decided to follow my dream and turn it into a career.

I then began my journey into the world of video game design when I carried out work experience at TT Games. Tasked with creating characters and abilities for a game and designing a level within SketchUp, I was inspired to pursue Game Design at Sheffield Hallam University. I then started my Journey at Cloud Imperium Games.

Proficient in:

3DS Max, Photoshop, Substance Designer and Painter, Unreal Engine 4, Lumberyard, Perforce, Dataforge

Experience

During the summer after my first year of university I applied for a QA Tester role at TT Games and was delighted to be taken on to work on the LEGO Ninjago Movie Game. Here I was taught how to report bugs using Jira, this was important to learn as all submitted bugs needed to be recorded to a high standard which was closely monitored. I was trusted with tasks which need to be completed quickly and effectively to maintain their high standards and meet strict deadlines. This was a fantastic experience as I witnessed first had the development of a AAA game from start to finish.

As of June 2019 I have been working as a QA Tester at Cloud Imperium Games. To have been able to work at such an amazing company in a role that I can develop my skills in so quickly after finishing my degree was a very rewarding process. I worked hard for a year and a half in the role and was then promoted to Embedded Live Design Tester, where I began working for the first time directly with a design team. I was quickly given the chance to become a Junior Designer and worked on the games biggest Live Event: Siege Of Orison which was received very well by players. I have since moved onto creating missions modularly, focusing on creating complex mission blueprints which can be reused across the project for a variety of means. It is this complex logic and problem solving which I love and being able to be creative designing new missions for players is all the more rewarding when it done correctly.