About

My journey of discovery.

“We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding; later quoted by Robert McNamara in The Fog of War.

I first heard McNamara quote it in The Fog of War during Kelly Keogh's International Relations class at Normal Community High School in 2005. It stuck because McNamara is difficult to put down cleanly: a WWII U.S. Army Air Forces analyst, a statistics-minded auto executive, and the longest-serving U.S. Secretary of Defense, from 1961 to 1968. I revere him despite his faults, and because of them.

Me as a person, I'm a lot of things. First and foremost, I'm a father, husband, dog father, nature lover, and data enthusiast. I'm originally from Normal Illinois. As a younger lad, I did my fair share of traveling and living abroad, and enjoyed it immensely. However, I first visited Vancouver Island when I was 17 and fell in love with the scenery, the abundance of nature, and a host of other things as well. It was a dream to settle here, and back in 2011 I made it a reality by attending the University of Victoria for graduate studies. I currently live in Victoria, but I do occasionally b ounce myself back and forth from Vancouver and Seattle. Victoria, always brings me back (it's beer is hard to beat), but Seattle will always have a special place in my heart.

Besides work, I lived up to my goals of coming out here to fish, rock climb, hike, surf, and drink good craft beer. In Victoria, you might be able to spot me at an event being held in Techtoria, a talk with the Victoria Data Society, Heckler's Comedy Club, or at the Board Game Cafe. I'm also that guy you might see riding a bike or a scooter alongside a a Husky on the Galloping Goose.

When it comes to data and analytics, I would characterize myself as a utility player, in the baseball sense. I started off as a Data Analyst with an academic background in Economics and Math, and naturally fell into Data Science roles. In the course of doing Data Science projects involving live ops, you tend to become a Product Manager for your own data products. Also, given that I have largely worked for video game companies most of my professional life, I've had to pick up the programming and usual data engineering skills on the go. Data teams are a luxury for most studios. If they have them, it is usually just one or two people per title, with a few devs doing some part time data engineering work across all titles. That means the analysts have to build much of the data foundation that works for their needs, which I have on numerous occasions. Practically speaking, you have to comfortable working independently most of the, time, and you need to be able to unblock yourself.

On this website, I'll take you down the rabbit hole of my own eclectic data journey. It will showcase much of what I've done, what I am currently working on, and things that I'm guinely interested in. It will cover a lot around Video Game Analytics, an industry that I have considerable roots in, but it certainly won't be limited to that. It will also include analysis and research into other areas that I've long been interested in - Sabermetrics, U.S. Elections, Board Games, AI, and Economics. My github page will be merely supporting it.

This is seperate from the work I do for Savepoint Analytics. There is overlap, however. I will on occasion cross-publish articles both here and on Savepoint Analytics. The ladder, however, is for a very specific audience. This is my personal website. I'm essentially treating it as my own personal blog, and it has no specific target audience.

And as you, the reader, go through this blog, know this:this isn't just some vain desire to showcase my experience to potential employers 😉.

This is my own little corner where I can be genuine. On a resume, and in an interview, I strive to be professional. With AI available to everyone, so is everyone else. It's hard to trust the version of someone you read on paper when so many people are simply trying to put their best foot forward as quickly as possible. When everyone is doing this in the same exact manner, it becomes difficult to tell what was authentically authored or AI generated.

So this is my way to overcome that and to have a little bit of fun. You will read these articles and know that they are all hand-crafted by me. AI would probably be reluctant to write in the same style using the same prose, and the same level of passion. I will be honest about my opinions and AI has always been adamament about them being opinions...even though my opinions are pretty spot on. Take, for example, the craft beer comment. That might sound crass to some, but I grew up in a land where Budweiser is king. Have you ever tasted a warm Budweiser Select on a hot and humid day in the Midwest? Until you do, don't judge me. 😝

The economist's habit

I hold an M.A. in Economics — auctions, game theory, and experimental and behavioural economics — and my published Master's research went on to inform timber-lot auction design in Quebec. That training is the reason I read games as systems of incentives: economies, matchmaking, progression, and social structures, rather than a stack of funnels wearing dashboards.

Ponyo — unofficial head of morale.

A word on Ponyo

My Siberian husky, and a fairly accurate character reference. She is loving, tireless, athletic, and takes her work — patrolling the yard, supervising walks — with complete seriousness. She also sleeps in positions that defy both anatomy and dignity. On the balance of evidence, we're the same animal.

What I'm looking for

I do my best work when I'm learning something new, inside a team building something I actually care about. Games are where I've spent my career and where I'd most like to stay. The industry is turbulent at the moment, and I'm clear-eyed that the right role might sit adjacent to it rather than squarely within — but either way I'm drawn to hard, novel problems and to teams that would rather get the answer right than merely get it quickly.

On titles

They matter to me less than the work and the people. I once moved from a Data Scientist title to a Product Analyst one on purpose, because the Product Analyst seat was where the interesting science actually lived and the team delivered exactly what they'd promised. I'd make that trade again. I optimize for impact and craft, not a line on an org chart.

What I've learned about fit

Ten years in has taught me the difference between the environments where I thrive and the ones where I flounder. I thrive where measurement is tied to real decisions, where the last stubborn 20% of the work is respected when accuracy genuinely matters, and where analysts are trusted to say plainly what the data does and does not support. So I apply selectively; when I reach out to a studio, it's because I value the game or the team, not because a listing happened to be open.

About Savepoint

Alongside full-time work I run Savepoint Analytics, a game-analytics platform and consultancy I've built from scratch. It is, honestly, how I stay hands-on with the craft between and around studio roles — a way to keep the tooling sharp, show how I work, and help small studios who can't yet justify a full data team. I'd like to grow it, and I'm equally aware there are only so many new studios each year and no shortage of good competition. So it isn't an exit plan; it's a foothold in a field I love. If I join your team, Savepoint takes a back seat, and I'm glad to keep that boundary clean and in writing.

Email me See the work