Michael May

Background

About Michael May

I'm a passionate game designer with a pension for problem solving and rapid, aggressive iteration. From entering the gaming industry as a Junior designer with a decade of game modding experience behind me in 2013, I led the charge on the Character Design team on Marvel Heroes, wrapping up as a Senior Game Designer at the end of my employ. As a team lead during 2016, all playable characters, allied AI characters (Team-Ups), enemies, bosses, and many systems components were under my purview. A majority of these I designed personally, and those that are not I still provided iteration and finalized the shipping feature. On a regular basis, I worked with the art, production, and engineering departments to successfully collaborate on projects, as well as take part in high-level production planning meetings to assist in determining the next cycle of work. During iteration cycles, I oversaw the processing of player feedback into actionable items. Additionally, as a designer I often interfaced with the public, speaking directly to players on our forums in regards to game mechanics, systems, and character design - either answering questions, asking for additional feedback, or commenting on the design direction of a certain feature. Upon request, I regularly co-streamed on the official Marvel Heroes twitch.tv channel, previewing a new character and generating hype for the next update. After 4 years on the Marvel Heroes team, I joined up with a small team within Gazillion to form new projects. While in this position, I formed new ideas, wrote game pitches, arranged for and produced both contracted and internal concept art, wrote design documentation, and worked within Unreal Engine 4 to create playable prototypes.