Christopher Buecheler - Portfolio

Crispy Gamer

In late 2007 several former GameSpy members formed Crispy Gamer, a new gaming journalism site that seeks to provide its content without taking any advertising from developers or publishers, so as to remain impartial. Interested, I agreed to come on board as a contractor for thirty hours a week. Almost immediately those thirty hours a week became sixty-plus, as we rushed to hit our beta launch target of February 1st, 2008 with only myself and a single engineer on the development staff.

After we successfully launched the site I came on board full-time, and since then have been working on constant improvements and refinements to both its appearance and its backend. In May of 2009, we successfully planned and executed a full redesign of the website in just eight weeks, still with only myself and one engineer. The redesign made the site faster, better-looking, and significantly more usable. It also made further improvements much faster and easier to execute. 100% of the Design, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript on the site is mine (other than the JQuery framework).

Links

• http://www.crispygamer.com

GameSpy/IGN

If I tried to sum up my experience at GameSpy adequately, I would end up using dozens of paragraphs. I was hired initially in March of 1999, the twelfth full-time employee, to "run a news site" for the company which, at the time, was still mainly known for their server browsing software, and their Planet network of gaming sites (particularly PlanetQuake and PlanetHalfLife). Shortly after I arrived, they decided that GameSpy.com would relaunch not as a news site but as a full content site. At twenty-one, I was given the task of working with Walter "|2|" Costinak's designs and Dave "Fargo" Kosak's creative direction to build, launch, and run the site. Dave and I successfully launched GameSpy.com in October 1999, and for the next five months I slept very little.

Tasked not only with continuing to build new pieces of the site, but also the daily management of freelancers and the content schedule, there was a lot to do and not much time to do it. Within a few months I had built up a freelance staff of about fifteen writers, of which we promptly hired several full-time. Fortunately, John Keefer was brought on to manage the GameSpy's content, which allowed me to give my full attention to web design and development. I also wrote many articles for GameSpy.com under the handle "shaithis," most notably the "Resident Cynic" column in which I took a critical look at the gaming industry and its products.

From there, I spent the next four years working on virtually every web project that GameSpy Industries put forth. FilePlanet, ForumPlanet, the various PlanetGameName websites, the software SDKs, GameSpy Arcade ... if it had a web component, I was involved in some way, and more often than not my opinions were sought during brain-storming sessions even on products which never involved the web. By the time GameSpy had grown to a company of 120 people, I had become recognized as the person to come to when one needed a web project completed quickly, efficiently, and with little oversight.

When GameSpy was purchased by an investment group in March of 2003, the company and I parted ways. While it was difficult to leave the company with which I had spent my last five years, I was incredibly proud that the work I had done had helped to lead to an acqusition in the tens of millions of dollars. Even after ceasing full-time work with GameSpy, I continued to contract for IGN/GameSpy for several more years, contributing design, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and more to sites like FilePlanet, GameSpy Arena, and GameSpy.com.

Links

• GameSpy
• FilePlanet
• GameSpy Arena
• PlanetHalfLife

Epic Games

I began working with Cliff Bleszinski during my time at GameSpy. He needed someone to redesign his "Ownage" website, a sub-site of PlanetUnreal upon which he highlighted exceptional Unreal Tournament maps, so that it would be ready to handle the upcoming release of Unreal Tournament 2003. Connected by a mutual friend, we worked together to redesign both that site and, eventually, his personal website (for which I remained the webmaster until 2006).

This work eventually led to the opportunity to contract with Epic Games directly, working on UI design and graphics for the Unreal Tournament 2003 movie-recording controls, re-skinning the UT2K3 capture the flag team skins for improved visibility, creating two dozen new team icons for UT2K3 multiplayer, and contributing texture and skin work to Unreal Tournament 2004. Additionally, I was contracted to design and develop an internal intranet site for use by the team working on what would eventually become Gears of War, including a login system, news system, file management system, and spinning up a PHP forum.

Links

• Download Unreal Tournament 2004 Textures
• Download Other Epic Work Examples
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• Epic Games

Dart Publishing

While I frequently spend well more than forty hours of my time per week on professional pursuits, I nonetheless find time to work on a variety of personal projects. Not all of these are hobbies, exactly; I've formed a legal company with my good friend (and Crispy Gamer's lead engineer), Dart Publishing Ltd. Dart's goal is to produce small, simple websites which can be run without a lot of effort on the founders' parts. Currently, we're working on our first release: BlogShouts.com - an aggregator for independent blogs of all sorts. We also have several planned future sites.

In addition to Dart, I've completed a variety of relevant personal projects: I ran a free texture site for many years, hosted by PlanetHalfLife and called The Texture Studio. I've finished one game map - an Unreal Tournament Capture the Flag map - and have experimented with Half-Life 2 mapping in Hammer. I've worked on a few independent PC games, one of which - Warren Marshall's Bubble Bomb - was completed and put up for sale in the mid-2000's. I taught myself to use 3D Studio Max. I have finished three novels, one of which is available online (see "The Blood That Bonds"), and I've published short fiction with GUD Magazine.

Links

• Dart Publishing Ltd.
• GUD Magazine
• The Texture Studio
• Bubble Bomb at Binary Sun
• The Blast Pit (UT Map)

ology·group

A boutique marketing firm in Westchester, New York, ology·group was suffering with a website created by a cut-rate, "pick a template and we'll change some colors" web design which was poorly constructed, not SEO-friendly, and difficult to navigate. I worked with the client to provide a complete redesign in standards-compliant XHTML/CSS which would better communicate both their message, and their sense of fun.

Links

• http://www.ologygroup.com

OkCupid.com

I spent two years as the Senior Web Designer at OkCupid, during which time I took the site from something cobbled together by a group of engineers (none of whom really cared about the site's front-end) to a standards-compliant, SEO-friendly, modern site. Highlights include working with an outside designer to completely overhaul the visual and structural aspects of the site, working with a team of talented C++ engineers to conceive and execute new features, and meeting the woman who I would eventually marry!

Unfortunately (for this portfolio), OkCupid has just rolled out their version 3.0 design, so very little of the work that I did for the company remains on the web. Certain pieces of the HTML can be found through archive.org, however.

Links:

• http://www.okcupid.com
• OkCupid (archive.org)

Cerebral Debris

Cerebral Debris is my personal blog, where I keep not only my daily (or weekly) ramblings, but also an archive of all of the fiction I've released on the web over the past decade. While it runs on the WordPress blogging system, all of the design, container XHTML, and CSS is my own.

Links

• http://www.cerebraldebris.com

Alexander Interactive

After working with one of their designers on OkCupid.com, I was contacted by AI to see if I would be interested in picking up some contract work. I ended up accepting, and spent time on several of their projects, including two major content management system overhauls for a company called Opt-Intelligence, and the well-known online events broadcaster Flavorpill.com. These duties required me to provide extensive XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript work, while manipulating existing JSP and Ruby-On-Rails pages. Unfortunately, as these are proprietary systems, the work is not available to the general internet.

Comcast.net

I was hired by Comcast to work in their main office in Philadelphia as a member of their web portal team. During my brief stay with the company before I decided to take the OkCupid opportunity, I worked on several parts of the site, including collaborating extensively with their Information Architect to dramatically overhaul their proprietary webmail system. During my time with Comcast I worked with XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and JSP.

Links

• http://www.comcast.net/

The Blood That Bonds

In late 2009 I decided to release one of my novels online as a free eBook, to see what kind of interest it might draw. I built a website to help publicize the book, working with a freelance illustrator on character and accent illustrations. 100% of the design, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP are mine. In just a few short months the book has been downloaded more than 2400 times, and has received praise from numerous readers!

Links

• http://www.thebloodthatbonds.com/

CB Translate

My wife is originally from France, and often picks up translation work in her spare time. I am currently in the process of designing and building her a website which will help her promote these services. In addition the design, XHTML, CSS and JavaScript I would normally contribute, I am also building a system in PHP that will allow the site to operate in both French and English, keeping the content separate in easily editable files. The site is expected to launch in Q2, 2010.