My name is Chris Koelndorfer.  I am a passionate and driven person with a desire to make a difference in the world.  I joined the Air Force straight out of high school in August of 2007 and married my high school sweetheart a year later.  In February of 2009, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (cancer). Nine months later, after intensive and regulated treatment, I was declared "in remission".  However, the stress of dealing with my cancer, as well as the added stresses that come with being a military spouse, had taken a toll on my wife and our relationship.  A few months later, we separated and eventually divorced.  In the aftermath, however, I began to discover my true passions in gaming, as well as my creative interests.  After 8 years serving my country, I decided to move my German Shepherd, Chief, and I to Orlando in order to pursue my goal of becoming a successful Game Designer in July of 2015.

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I'm glad that I decided to take my courses on-campus rather than online while I worked as I had originally planned.  While I can easily figure out how to run programs, team building, intense work schedule, and  interactions with my instructors would have been much harder to accomplish in the comfort of my own home. As Game Designers, we were taught how to write program scripts in C# after a very challenging Discrete Mathematics course, which would have been extremely challenging for me to become proficient at off-campus.

 

During the Game Design Bachelors program, I learned and gained experience in gameplay balancing, game mechanics, player interactions, player engagement/immersion, level design, documentation, and the game development cycle as a whole just to name a few.  After I finished the Bachelors program, I started the Game Design Masters program the week after.  While going through the program, I refined and improved skills I had learned in the Bachelors program like production, level design, asset management, and so on. I also learned new skills and processes, such as qualitative and quantitative data collection/analysis and quality assurance. 

 

Throughout the program, I focused primarily on user experience working in Full Sail's UX Lab.  Here, I gained much of my hands-on experience with user experience testing on real-world games and products from various companies and developers.  Skills I acquired here include test/survey development (cradle to grave), eye-tracking data collection and analysis, and interpreting data into visual form for multi-level reports.  In March of 2018, I graduated from the Masters program with skills and hands-on real-world experience I wouldn't have gotten elsewhere.  As one military doctor put it, I have already lived a lifetime within my 28 years.

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I believe in producing high-quality work not only for my own personal reasons, but also for the consumer.  Being a gamer myself, I know how frustrating it is to have expectations dashed upon the rocks as I encounter errors or issues within a game.  I am well aware that my work is a direct reflection upon myself and those I work with.  I take pride in my work and put all my effort into whatever I am doing. Having spent time in the military, I know how important being an effective team member is.  I view every group interaction, right down to roommates and relationships, to being a team effort.  My future team mates can expect me to grind whatever grist the mill requires of me.