I had the very good fortune to work as project manager and product head with Declan in two live games teams at Bigpoint. During this time, I was also able to witness his seamless transition from Community Manager to Game Designer. It can be tough to find a game designer with the innate talent to dissect and understand a game's components; deeply understand the player experience; and provide inventive/outside-the-box solutions rapidly. Luckily Declan was right under our noses at precisely the right time. I could always rely on him to provide immensely useful insights, which help shaped the product roadmap and product strategy for the space MMO DarkOrbit. He was an invaluable interface between the different specialities within the team (Art, Developers, Quality Assurance, and Community Management) and was always keen on picking up new tools to add to his skillset. Even though I'm sad to see Declan leave Bigpoint, I'm even more excited to see what the future holds for him. My prediction: many awesome things. He's absolutely bursting with talent and I'd work with him again in a heartbeat.

Working with Declan was a pleasure, despite the job at Bigpoint was his first one as a Game Designer he displayed quickly the full set of soft skills needed to be an excellent game designer, and which one can't give for granted even at senior positions: truly listening to feedback from other team members and departments, working on iterations based on the input received, excellent and detailed documentation, very good verbal presentation skills and humble. It happened quite quickly that I could delegate any kind of task to him while knowing it was in good hands and in practically all cases he nailed the game design task to meet the needs and requirements given by our Product Manager for the specific feature. One thing I really admire from him is his natural ability to breakdown a game and spot what elements make it good and how they interact. I wish we would have got a chance to work on a new game from scratch, I am sure the result would have been awesome. Looking forward to have the chance to work together again in the future.

I had the very good fortune to work as project manager and product head with Declan in two live games teams at Bigpoint. During this time, I was also able to witness his seamless transition from Community Manager to Game Designer. It can be tough to find a game designer with the innate talent to dissect and understand a game's components; deeply understand the player experience; and provide inventive/outside-the-box solutions rapidly. Luckily Declan was right under our noses at precisely the right time. I could always rely on him to provide immensely useful insights, which help shaped the product roadmap and product strategy for the space MMO DarkOrbit. He was an invaluable interface between the different specialities within the team (Art, Developers, Quality Assurance, and Community Management) and was always keen on picking up new tools to add to his skillset. Even though I'm sad to see Declan leave Bigpoint, I'm even more excited to see what the future holds for him. My prediction: many awesome things. He's absolutely bursting with talent and I'd work with him again in a heartbeat.

Working with Declan was a pleasure, despite the job at Bigpoint was his first one as a Game Designer he displayed quickly the full set of soft skills needed to be an excellent game designer, and which one can't give for granted even at senior positions: truly listening to feedback from other team members and departments, working on iterations based on the input received, excellent and detailed documentation, very good verbal presentation skills and humble. It happened quite quickly that I could delegate any kind of task to him while knowing it was in good hands and in practically all cases he nailed the game design task to meet the needs and requirements given by our Product Manager for the specific feature. One thing I really admire from him is his natural ability to breakdown a game and spot what elements make it good and how they interact. I wish we would have got a chance to work on a new game from scratch, I am sure the result would have been awesome. Looking forward to have the chance to work together again in the future.

I had the very good fortune to work as project manager and product head with Declan in two live games teams at Bigpoint. During this time, I was also able to witness his seamless transition from Community Manager to Game Designer. It can be tough to find a game designer with the innate talent to dissect and understand a game's components; deeply understand the player experience; and provide inventive/outside-the-box solutions rapidly. Luckily Declan was right under our noses at precisely the right time. I could always rely on him to provide immensely useful insights, which help shaped the product roadmap and product strategy for the space MMO DarkOrbit. He was an invaluable interface between the different specialities within the team (Art, Developers, Quality Assurance, and Community Management) and was always keen on picking up new tools to add to his skillset. Even though I'm sad to see Declan leave Bigpoint, I'm even more excited to see what the future holds for him. My prediction: many awesome things. He's absolutely bursting with talent and I'd work with him again in a heartbeat.

Working with Declan was a pleasure, despite the job at Bigpoint was his first one as a Game Designer he displayed quickly the full set of soft skills needed to be an excellent game designer, and which one can't give for granted even at senior positions: truly listening to feedback from other team members and departments, working on iterations based on the input received, excellent and detailed documentation, very good verbal presentation skills and humble. It happened quite quickly that I could delegate any kind of task to him while knowing it was in good hands and in practically all cases he nailed the game design task to meet the needs and requirements given by our Product Manager for the specific feature. One thing I really admire from him is his natural ability to breakdown a game and spot what elements make it good and how they interact. I wish we would have got a chance to work on a new game from scratch, I am sure the result would have been awesome. Looking forward to have the chance to work together again in the future.