My name is Kevin Alan Smith, and I'm a Game Producer and Designer. I work to improve project workflows and team dynamics to make sure my projects successfully execute on their vision and are a joy to work on for everyone involved, while my passion for playing and making games in a wide variety of genres gives me a broad, creative approach to systems design. In my career so far, I have built schedules and team workflows, driven process improvements, and worked closely with multidisciplinary teams to facilitate their success in complex projects.
My most recent position was Associate Producer at Epic Games, working on the Fortnite UX/UI team for over 3 years. This gave me the opportunity to produce diverse initiatives, including seasonal Battle Royale HUD, shop and monetization features, Discovery, and UEFN/Creative mode, across 14 seasons of Fortnite. I worked with multidisciplinary teams including UX designers, UI artists, engineers, and tech designers, as well as external stakeholders like product managers and design leadership, to develop and implement efficient processes.
In a fast-paced live service environment at Epic, I evaluated my processes based on data, leadership requirements, and dev feedback, which led to improved documentation, tools, and automation. In all my roles, I bring significant knowledge of games (particularly live service games, shooters, and RPGs), the game industry, player trends, various production methodologies, and common development workflows like Unreal and Unity. As a result, I consistently gain the trust and confidence of my teammates and drive increased productivity on my projects.
On Fortnite, I also coordinated the item shop. This involved maintaining and reviewing the calendar of offers, hotfix and encryption timing for patch releases, and live incident ownership and mitigation. During my tenure at Epic, I owned many such live incidents, working with team members and stakeholders to deliver solutions in a reasonable time frame and within the technical boundaries of Fortnite as a live product.
In 2019, I completed an internship at EA Tiburon, working as an Associate Producer on the NBA Live HD team. Through this experience, I discovered that my combination of design acumen and analytical focus on process is a beneficial combination for designing features that fit within scope and cover relevant edge cases, while also being able to effectively communicate with designers on my teams as a project manager.
In addition to my experience with production, I also have a strong understanding of game development fundamentals, particularly game and technical design. I have working competency in common game development tools like Unreal Engine, Blueprint scripting, Unity, Perforce Version Control, and Visual Studio, which often aids in identifying risk factors and reducing dev workload on my team’s features. In my experience, I can design smoother pipelines and facilitate more effective communication the more knowledge and experience I have with these workflows, so I nurture my curiosity regarding all aspects of game development.
I majored in Digital Media at the University of Central Florida, in the Game Design track, and dual minored in Computer Science and Creative Writing. I graduated from Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy with my MS in Interactive Entertainment in the Producer track. In these programs, I pursued technical competency in the most popular game engines, like Unity and Unreal, while also studying and improving my writing skills in the areas of script and prose.
My student projects introduced me to game production planning and execution, while also giving me the opportunity to work in a team. I have worked in the capacity of Programmer, using C# and Blueprint to create player controllers, interactivity, and progression, as well as Project Lead, guiding the vision of the game from concept to finished product, in aesthetic, design, and narrative. I worked on a graduate level student project as Development Director, where I was responsible for forming a project schedule, generating tasks, configuring our Jira instance, organizing meetings, facilitating communication between disciplines to ensure a smooth asset pipeline, and implementing agile methodologies adapted to team requirements (Scrum, Prototyping), including stand-ups, sprints, asset check-in, and the iteration process.