Hello & Welcome

 Hi, I’m Chad Bordwell. I've been working in the game industry since 1997. I've shipped over 10 AAA titles, such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Jedi Knight: Outcast, Quake4, Assassin's Creed: Unity, and Farcry 5.

Primarily my roles in the industry have been in game design, level design, and mission scripting for single player and cooperative game play. The majority of my shipped titles have released on Playstation, Xbox, and PC.
 
In 2020 I started my own company Dark Arts Development to facilitate remote contract work with developers.  Currently I'm working as an Assoc. Design Director for Lost Boys Interactive and live in Toronto Canada.

If you're interested in my skill set for your company please contact me through LinkedIn or visit the contact page for my most current contact information.

Thanks for stopping by.

LinkedIn

Thanks

Chad

Squanch Games Reveals High On Life

 Hey everyone.  As you may know Squanch Games is a company lead by Rick & Morty creator Justin Roiland.  They finally revealed the title I was working on with them in 2020.  It's called High On Life about an alien cartel that is selling humans as drugs for aliens.  So you and some talking guns team up to take them down.  

Looking at the trailer I see some familiar things and also some great new stuff!  Hope they don't forget about me in the credits, but seriously Squanch was a fun group of people.  Glad to see the game is alive and doing well.  Can't wait to play it.  

Check out the trailer!

Farcry 6 Shipped Today!

Since I left the project before it finished I wasn't sure if they would credit me or not. It appears that I did make the credits however.

While I was there I was the game designer and my main focus was on the new Outpost system. I'm not familiar with the shipped version but the version I was working on was each Outpost had an objective which players could choose to got for or not for bonus rewards.  So if you wanted to get the objective you might need to sneak in stealthy or use only explosives, etc.  But if you wanted to do the old kill everyone to concur an outpost you could do that too.  But not sure what shipped.

Anyway, congratz to the team and I guess to myself.  haha

Making the Jump to Lead Designer

 

I have always steered clear of lead roles and after 25 years in the industry people start to look at you funny.  But to me a lead role is a different job, a people managing job.  I got into the game industry to make games, not manage people.  Most of the leads I knew barely knew how to open the editor the team used.  I didn't want to be that person.

However when I started at Lost Boys as a Senior Designer they immediately approached me about being the Design Lead of the project.  At first I was pretty reluctant but they said give it a try.  If it works out great, if not I'm still a Senior Designer.  So I thought what the hell, the industry expects this move out of people after a number of years and this was a great way to see if it would work for me.

After 5 months in the role I'm shocked to say I really enjoy it!  I'm in fact kicking myself that I didn't make the move sooner.  I've been a senior designer so long I didn't even realize I was in a rut.  Now with the new role and responsibilities work seems fresh and exciting again!  

I can't wait to share what I'm working on, but for now I'd really love to thank Chase at Lost Boys for offering this opportunity to me.  And for doing it in such a way that didn't intimidate me from taking it.  

- Chad

New Contract Signed

 Just signed a new contract with Lost Boys Interactive. As usual I can't talk about what we'll be working on but really looking forward to the project.  

Lost Boys is an independent developer with two locations, Austin Texas and my old Raven stomping grounds Madison Wisconsin. But I'll still be working remotely here in Toronto under my company Dark Arts Development.

Goodbye to Squanch Games

As we approach March my one year contract with Squanch Games comes to an end.  It's been a pleasure working with the team there.  As you'd expect from a company created by Justin Roiland it was a lot of laughs.  Squanch has such a unique team whom certainly work by the beat of their own drum.

Squanch was my first excursion into the indie game dev space after 20+ years of AAA which was quite an experience.  My contract was a remote one that began before COVID even hit, so I was working remote before it was cool.  There was plans to go to LA and meet the team, which unfortunately was not able to happen.  It would have been nice to see everyone face to face.

So goodbye Squanch, I wish them great luck with their title and look forward to its release.  

LinkedIn Company Page - CHECK

 Finally put together a company page for Dark Arts Development Inc over on LinkedIn.  After a year of contracting it looks like I'm going to continue so might as well make it official.  

https://www.linkedin.com/company/dark-arts-development/

And to go with this I began the creation of an official Dark Arts Development web page.  It's currently under construction but it's a start.

Dark Arts Development Inc.