Hi there 👋🏼
I go by Tohn 🐬
Passionate Designer, Developer, Artist and Publisher.
A developer with a lifelong passion for games and everything about them!
I’m a results-driven professional with a keen eye for detail and an insatiable appetite for learning. My expertise spans game/web development, research, and public speaking, underpinned by strong leadership skills. I’m committed to punctual project delivery, empathetic collaboration, innovative problem-solving, and comprehensive top-down analysis. My exceptional technical proficiency allows me to stay at the forefront of emerging technologies while consistently delivering top-quality work.
My History:
I have been a nerd for as long as I can remember, and am quite happy to describe myself as such.
Was given my first video game console as a gift for my second Christmas, a Sega Genesis with a copy of Sonic The Hedgehog, and I have been in love with digital media ever since.
In my youth, I excelled with computers, reading/ comprehension, leadership and creativity.
Throughout my teens, new tools started to come out in the world of games in the form of scenario editors and level makers. The first that I became very familiar with was StarEdit, the official Starcraft map editor, and in that I found scripting. It was so much fun making your own custom, maps, stories, events and triggers. Plus, there was the allure of this new World Wide Web to share your creations with anyone, anywhere.
I have stayed interested in mods and map editors ever since, always keeping it as one of top priorities when deciding if a game was for me or not, the best games always came with tools to work on them and be part of a community, or had developers that supported third party tools, like ID with doom.
“the best games always came with tools to work on them and be part of a community“
Eventually, what really held my attention when it came to expressing myself in games, was the first version of GameMaker and RPGMaker2000. These really captivated me and my attention.
I worked on several projects quite seriously for some time, all of them coming to a sudden, painful and abrupt halt when my make shift Windows PCs at the time would eventually run into hard drive failure.
For many years, my computers were salvaged from the road sides of affluent neighborhoods in the area, usually patched up with parts from a bargain bin at my local PC repair shop. I would troubleshoot hardware by looking up information at school or at the library, and found success primarily by trial and error. This usually resulted in me losing my motivation to start a project over, for some time, while I worked on figuring out how to fix and replace the hard drive.
By the time I had a decent Windows PC again, second handed to me by my lifelong best friend, it was towards the end of my High School Years, and I was distracted as ever since my last project got corrupted into the void. I had my first job, was going steady with a girl, and spent most of my time doing extracurricular and being outside skating + surfing + hanging with friends.
Next thing you know it, I was grown up and had to make the choice of my direction in life.
I wanted to pursue game design in my heart of hearts, particularly level design, concept art and world building.
I also had a lifelong passion for learning about Science, particularly Psychology.
At the time when I was deciding what route to take in College, the idea of getting a formal education in Video Games was almost non-existent, there was this new place down in Florida called “Full Sail” that looked promising, but it was a new and untested idea. The school not having had time to prove itself with successful graduates meant my researching its viability wishy-washy at best, and the cost rivaled going to a traditional university, and I was in a state that had good affordable paths to some of the best State Universities in the County via my local Community Colleges Transfer Programs + some hard work.
Asking around on the internet and all the adults in my life seemed to point me away from that direction, there were hardly any real success stories about indie game development at the time. Most told me it looked like a scam, like so many of those other for profit schools that were starting to make headlines at the time.
“The whole topic of game design was bordering on mystical in terms of the amount of information and tools out there for aspiring game developers.”
The whole topic of game design was bordering on mystical in terms of the amount of information and tools out there for aspiring game developers. Some of it could be found in books, but little offered more than pure technical knowledge related to the subject. I read a book on how to code a game in BASIC, it was fine, but I found the process dull compared to tools like GameMaker.
I was captivated by the art and design more than the prospect of coding, even if I could grock code well enough.
Consequently, everything was pointing me towards studying Psychology, it was the safe bet in terms of making it out of the extreme financial hardship that I had become the norm in my youth.
So off I went into the adult world, and of course nothing turned out as I expected it to, lol.
A lot has happened since that I won’t ramble about because it was all formative and important. If you are well into your adult life, you are likely familiar with all the trappings of trying to figure life out.
In a nutshell, I spent a long time in various forms of management centered around working class labor. I enjoyed many aspects of what I was doing before but knew there was something better for me out there, so I decided to move onto greener pastures.
At this point in life, I am hoping to transition to a career in the tech industry, ideally in the field of games + project management.
The first step in this process for me, beyond having left my old industry for something with some flexibility, is building a portfolio of high quality player tested games and demos while learning the in/ outs of shipping an awesome experience to various web platforms and eventually Steam, once I have honed my craft well enough to complete a justify anyone even thinking about spending their hard-earned capitol on the joy I hope to bring them.
Above all else, my goal is to bring meaningful and enjoyable experiences that can help people take a break from life and reality.
User Experience is the leading edge of my design philosophy.
I am truly grateful to live in a time when I can so readily prepare and share something so super with you in the form of games and other experiences.
Together we can create a more positive space for everyone in the space of the digital world.