Experience

I'm Ben Zeigler and I have 12 years of experience in the gaming industry, primarily in AAA game development. I have gained extensive experience in developing games using Unreal Engine 4 during my last 7 years working at Epic Games. At Epic I was the lead gameplay programmer on Fortnite and a senior engine programmer on the Gameplay Framework team. I have touched most of the engine and my knowledge is split between low level features like memory allocation/data serialization, and high level features like blueprints. I am now primarily focused on indie game development but I still actively work with the team at Epic to improve the engine. Prior to that, I programmed MMOs for 7 years at Cryptic Studios so I also have experience in designing and implementing complicated online systems including some back end database work.

Specialties

  • Blueprints

  • Gameplay ability system

  • General gameplay programming

  • Engine workflow for programmers and game designers

  • Data loading and cooking

  • Performance and memory optimization

  • Complicated data-driven games

  • Multiplayer and Online systems

Opportunities

I am looking to work with companies or individual developers to help them better take advantage of UE4 or otherwise use my technical experience. I am interested in short term contracts primarily, either in person or remote.

I am very interested in:

  • Helping an experienced team transition to using UE4 for the first time

  • Working with small indie developers to take advantage of the engine

  • Working with gameplay programmers to architect systems that use blueprints efficiently

  • Fixing complicated bugs that interact with deep engine systems like serialization

  • Optimizing CPU performance and memory usage late in a project's development

  • Architecting multiplayer and online games

  • Something else!

If you're interested, please contact me at ben@doublebuffered.com and we can work something out.