Hi, I'm Steffen 🙂

I worked for giants like EA, IBM, Siemens, Apogee, Apress on desktop, handheld, mobile games and multimedia experiences.

For over three decades I am programming, designing, operating and managing realtime 3D projects, teams, and infrastructure.

I specialize exclusively in Unity development since 2014.

“I want to make games!”

That was me, committing to a career choice, in early summer 1994.

It was one of those nights hanging out with friends, getting drunk and stoned. As I got home early in the morning, I made a fateful decision: no more alcohol! Fortunately I was still drunk enough to do the scariest thing ever: sign up for Compuserve (CIS).

Back then, CIS was the Internet and it was super-expensive! Not only did you pay monthly for access, you also paid for time within each “forum” and on top, you paid for the landline phone connection to the nearest dial-in point.

After sleeping in, later the same day I went online. I found the “Action Games Forum” where DooM was all the rave. I was just about to leave as I spotted a new entry in the list of online members.

The username was jcarmack.

It was not unusual for users to (badly) impersonate known figures – but the usernames were unique. So if you knew what John Carmack’s CIS username was, and I knew it well, you knew it was really him!

Thus I jumped on the chance and opened a chat window …

DooMAddict: is it really you?

Two seconds later I received the reply:

jcarmack: yes

And I was like:

DooMAddict: cool!

And he responded:

jcarmack: 🙂

That was the whole conversation! It was that moment, being in direct conversation with someone you look up to, that I decided my career would be making games!

Not much later I got paid by Apogee / 3D Realms to be a SysOp, an online support assistant, on their CIS forum. I wrote support documents and manuals and got to beta-test games like Shadow Warrior and Balls of Steel. For the latter I held the #1 spot on the online Leaderboard for half a year until the board got hacked.

Though I was always looking up to FPS game makers in the US, eventually I made the more reasonable decision to apply for a job at a close-by game studio. Even though that meant making games for a “child’s toy” – the GameBoy Color.

It did give me an invaluable opportunity to work on no less than 9 games in 3 years! Only one got cancelled.

Since then I have been a Game Designer, Gameplay, Tools and Database Programmer, a Freelancer, Book Author and Blogger, Manager and Leader. I worked for myself, startups, and “industry four point ooooh” clients. I picked up a lot about ideation, collaboration, marketing, PR, and BS along the way.

There’s but one thing that is a constant throughout my career: my eagerness to learn and enthusiasm to share.

Steffen’s CV

Complete CV with employment certificates. Short summary:

since 2022 – Freelance Unity Expert
2021 – Hiatus after suffering from Autistic Burnout
2018 – Unity Team Leader for respected Digital Media Agency
2015 – Lead Unity Developer for renowned Visual FX Company
2013 – Freelance Consultant for VC Startup Apportable
2010 – Freelance Developer & Book Author (Cocos2d, Unity)
2009 – Co-Founder of Unity Mobile Games Startup
2002 – Software Engineer for Electronic Arts Phenomic
1999 – GameBoy Game Designer for german Game Studio
1998 – IT Service for public sector IT Specialist
1996 – Support, Testing, Authoring for Apogee / 3D Realms
1990 – IT Service for local PC shop (part-time)
1988 – Amiga 500: first game modding experiences
1985 – C64: first programming adventures

_{^{Disclaimer: I do not work for and am not affiliated with Unity Technologies.}}

Unity Project Highlights

I’ve had the pleasure to work on interactive realtime 3D applications made with Unity and challenging technologies – enhanced realities, industrial sensors, robotics, projection, etc.

^{_{Note: Videos start at a time where the app I worked on is seen for a few seconds at least.}}

SEW Eurodrive: X.e

^{_{Interactive touchscreen realtime 3D Unity app with high resolution simulation data visualization}}

Siemens: Inspiro Train Configurator

_{^{Unity app precisely replicating engineering calculations with Oculus Rift and Leap Motion interaction modes}}

IBM Watson: Client Experience Zone

^{_{Multithreaded, network synchronized Unity apps: 10x Kinect realtime object detection, 6x projector output}}

National Geographic: Ocean Odyssey

_{^{Several Unity interactive experiences using ToF sensors, realtime rendering and CGI video sequences}}

Games & Books

Prior to focusing on Unity I worked on mobile, PC and GameBoy games with various game engines. I used to program in C, C++, C#, Objective-C, Swift and Lua, Python, SQL, PHP, Basic, Pascal.