Craig Stevenson - Portfolio

About Me

I'm a game designer and producer who finds the order in the chaos. Over the last 16 years I've shipped games across mobile, PC, and VR, for players from preschoolers to seasoned professionals, and I do my best work on exactly the challenges other people call too complicated. I care about games that do something real, whether that's connecting people, making them feel, or helping them grow. I lead teams from the first idea through launch and live operations, I listen first and fold in feedback fast, and I treat every new problem as the fun part. I am a Digital Chef, and I'm still hungry.

Skills

Design

Game Design
Systems Design
Level & Encounter Design
Content & Narrative Design
Rapid Prototyping
Game Design Documentation

Production & Leadership

Production & Roadmapping
Resource Management
Live Operations
Risk & Dependency Management
Team Leadership
Cross-Functional Delivery
User Research & Playtesting
A/B Testing & Experimentation

Tools & Tech

Unity & C#
Figma
Visual Scripting
Adobe Creative Cloud
Autodesk Maya
Mixpanel
BigQuery
Claude (AI-Assisted Analytics)
Jira / Confluence / Miro

Case Studies

First Time User Exp Design

PAW Patrol: The Game

How a non-reading 2-5 year old gets guided into a preschool game through audio, animation, and staged camera framing alone, and the two testing-driven fixes that took FTUE completion from a 60% target to 97% at soft launch.

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Scoping Under a Deadline

Alex's Treehouse, PAW Academy

How a scrapped, ambitious pitch built around a fan-favorite pup got redesigned into a leaner SEL activity that shipped fast, reused existing systems, and still out-performed four established characters on the main menu.

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Solving Two Problems At Once

Intellipet Adventures, Adventure Academy

How a years-long request for a simple jump opened the door to pull education out of an isolated kiosk and into the core game loop, wrapped in the studio's first real narrative and a Pokemon-inspired pet battler.

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Childhood Education

Medical Games And Sims

Prototypes And Personal Projects

Recent Work

2022-Present

Senior Game Designer / Producer - Originator, Inc.

Producer and Design lead on PAW Patrol: The Game, the official playset app of PAW Patrol.

Designed a pure entertainment app for the PAW Patrol franchise from paper to release
Led a 30 person team handling product roadmap, major feature design, internal marketing, live ops, and analytics assessment
Successfully led a soft launch effort in two territories and exceeded every KPI metric
Built a custom analytics tool with Claude that pulled Mixpanel data through BigQuery into automated daily and weekly deep-dive reports for the team
Led the kid testing efforts by designing playtests, analyzing feedback and communicated results to project stakeholders
Project launched on time and assisted with securing features on Apple and Google

Design lead on PAW Patrol Academy, Google's Best App of 2023 Award-Winner.

Responsible for leading the design on an internationally recognized IP mobile game for kids aged 2-5
Develop the product roadmap that includes feature updates, live ops, and seasonal content on a monthly release schedule
Led a team of 12, comprised of engineers, artists, QA, and external contractors
Design entertaining and educational activities that pair pre-school fundamentals with the world of PAW Patrol
Deployed to Android and iOS using the Unity game engine

2018-2022

Principal Game Designer - Age of Learning

Design 2D/3D games for Adventure Academy, the world's first fully educational MMO.

Responsible for leading the creative vision on educational games for kids in grades 3-8
Experience mentoring junior designers
Work within teams of 4-6, comprised of engineers, artists, and qa
Design and pitch game concepts, mechanics, and experiences that increase user retention
Deployed software to PC, Mac, Android and iOS using the Unity game engine

2010-2018

Lead Game Designer - MedStar SiTEL

Design 2D/3D online educational training and simulation games for the healthcare industry.

Responsible for strategy, planning, and design of game mechanics and assessments of complex topics
Managed a team of 10 programmers and artists along with a project producer
Prototype game features, create design documents, write testing plans and usability labs
Develop training solutions using Unity3D, Unreal4, Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Pro, XML, and Microsoft Office
Deployed software to the web (HTML5), mobile (iOS/Android), PC/MAC, and VR platforms (GearVR, Oculus, SteamVR)