Tobias Janicke
Lead Combat Designer for an unannounced project at FISHLABS GmbH- Claim this Profile
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Deutsch Native or bilingual proficiency
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Englisch Professional working proficiency
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Bio
Al Yang
I had the pleasure to work with Tobias as his lead for nearly 3 years during our time together on Merc Elite and Shards of War. Besides being an creative, extremely thorough, and technically skilled designer, Tobias was the definition to me of a team player. He was able to work effectively with the entire team simply because of his excellent communication skills. In all situations, Tobias was always very clear about what he needed and the vision of his feature, but was always very careful to respect and nurture creative freedom from the other departments. However, the thing that impressed me the most about Tobias was something that few designers seem to have. The ability to actually step back and objectively look at a problem and be able to separate what he liked personally from what was best for the project. Tobias would be able to effectively communicate the situation to the rest of the team and if needed, was never beyond asking for help or respectfully pointing out a problem he thought was in the game. So many improvements both major and minor in Shards of War came from Tobias just walking over to me and saying "Hey, I think this is a problem, would it be possible to discuss it sometime? I've talked with the other team members involved and here are our thoughts.". Because of this, during the course of development, Tobias naturally came to take the lead on the realtime game design in Shards of War by steadily taking over more and more responsibilties, proving his expertise in each of them. I was extremely proud of Tobias's growth and also extremely grateful for having him make my day so much easier. Witnessing the way he worked with the team on these tasks, I also believe that he would make a fine lead. I would not hesitate to work with Tobias again, and I absolutely believe that his professionalism and expertise would be invaluable to whatever project he would be on.
Al Yang
I had the pleasure to work with Tobias as his lead for nearly 3 years during our time together on Merc Elite and Shards of War. Besides being an creative, extremely thorough, and technically skilled designer, Tobias was the definition to me of a team player. He was able to work effectively with the entire team simply because of his excellent communication skills. In all situations, Tobias was always very clear about what he needed and the vision of his feature, but was always very careful to respect and nurture creative freedom from the other departments. However, the thing that impressed me the most about Tobias was something that few designers seem to have. The ability to actually step back and objectively look at a problem and be able to separate what he liked personally from what was best for the project. Tobias would be able to effectively communicate the situation to the rest of the team and if needed, was never beyond asking for help or respectfully pointing out a problem he thought was in the game. So many improvements both major and minor in Shards of War came from Tobias just walking over to me and saying "Hey, I think this is a problem, would it be possible to discuss it sometime? I've talked with the other team members involved and here are our thoughts.". Because of this, during the course of development, Tobias naturally came to take the lead on the realtime game design in Shards of War by steadily taking over more and more responsibilties, proving his expertise in each of them. I was extremely proud of Tobias's growth and also extremely grateful for having him make my day so much easier. Witnessing the way he worked with the team on these tasks, I also believe that he would make a fine lead. I would not hesitate to work with Tobias again, and I absolutely believe that his professionalism and expertise would be invaluable to whatever project he would be on.
Al Yang
I had the pleasure to work with Tobias as his lead for nearly 3 years during our time together on Merc Elite and Shards of War. Besides being an creative, extremely thorough, and technically skilled designer, Tobias was the definition to me of a team player. He was able to work effectively with the entire team simply because of his excellent communication skills. In all situations, Tobias was always very clear about what he needed and the vision of his feature, but was always very careful to respect and nurture creative freedom from the other departments. However, the thing that impressed me the most about Tobias was something that few designers seem to have. The ability to actually step back and objectively look at a problem and be able to separate what he liked personally from what was best for the project. Tobias would be able to effectively communicate the situation to the rest of the team and if needed, was never beyond asking for help or respectfully pointing out a problem he thought was in the game. So many improvements both major and minor in Shards of War came from Tobias just walking over to me and saying "Hey, I think this is a problem, would it be possible to discuss it sometime? I've talked with the other team members involved and here are our thoughts.". Because of this, during the course of development, Tobias naturally came to take the lead on the realtime game design in Shards of War by steadily taking over more and more responsibilties, proving his expertise in each of them. I was extremely proud of Tobias's growth and also extremely grateful for having him make my day so much easier. Witnessing the way he worked with the team on these tasks, I also believe that he would make a fine lead. I would not hesitate to work with Tobias again, and I absolutely believe that his professionalism and expertise would be invaluable to whatever project he would be on.
Al Yang
I had the pleasure to work with Tobias as his lead for nearly 3 years during our time together on Merc Elite and Shards of War. Besides being an creative, extremely thorough, and technically skilled designer, Tobias was the definition to me of a team player. He was able to work effectively with the entire team simply because of his excellent communication skills. In all situations, Tobias was always very clear about what he needed and the vision of his feature, but was always very careful to respect and nurture creative freedom from the other departments. However, the thing that impressed me the most about Tobias was something that few designers seem to have. The ability to actually step back and objectively look at a problem and be able to separate what he liked personally from what was best for the project. Tobias would be able to effectively communicate the situation to the rest of the team and if needed, was never beyond asking for help or respectfully pointing out a problem he thought was in the game. So many improvements both major and minor in Shards of War came from Tobias just walking over to me and saying "Hey, I think this is a problem, would it be possible to discuss it sometime? I've talked with the other team members involved and here are our thoughts.". Because of this, during the course of development, Tobias naturally came to take the lead on the realtime game design in Shards of War by steadily taking over more and more responsibilties, proving his expertise in each of them. I was extremely proud of Tobias's growth and also extremely grateful for having him make my day so much easier. Witnessing the way he worked with the team on these tasks, I also believe that he would make a fine lead. I would not hesitate to work with Tobias again, and I absolutely believe that his professionalism and expertise would be invaluable to whatever project he would be on.
Experience
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FISHLABS GmbH
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Germany
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Computer Games
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1 - 100 Employee
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Lead Combat Designer for an unannounced project
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Oct 2021 - Present
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Lead Combat Designer for Chorus
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Oct 2019 - Sep 2021
CHORUS / 3rd-Person Space Shooter / Consoles, PC• Led a cross-functional combat team to develop a fast-paced action sci-fi experience praised by the press as a standout aspect of the game.• Created the combat vision and defined action gameplay principles to guide the team. Putting a strong focus on the flow and feel of combat, emphasizing direct and highly responsible controls, as well as horizontal enemy and player tool design.• Close collaboration with project management to ensure alignment with overarching project plans. Set priorities in alignment with stakeholders and removed road-blocks for the team.• Established enemy and encounter design strategy and guidelines, designed and implemented enemies hands-on, optimized aim assist, and crafted combat systems along with moment-to-moment gameplay mechanics.• Designed and set up camera and ship movement to create an extremely smooth feel, paired with razor-sharp controls, ensuring that controlling the ship, as the most common interaction, is highly engaging and fun even in the absence of combat. Show less
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Game Designer
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Aug 2018 - Oct 2019
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Bigpoint GmbH
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Germany
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Computer Games
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100 - 200 Employee
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Game Designer
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Jan 2016 - Jul 2018
IDEATION & PROTOTYPING / New games department / Mobile• Developed new ideas and pitches based on business and market needs, and aligned with stakeholders across the company on which to invest.• Designed and prototyped several game ideas for action RPGs and strategy games (asynchronous/asymmetric and synchronous) to quickly identify their potential.• Conducted and analyzed play tests with external testers to improve mechanics, strengthen the gameplay experience and validate the overall game visions. Show less
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Game Designer
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Jul 2014 - Jan 2016
SHARDS OF WAR / Sci-Fi top down Shooter - MOBA / Browser, PC• Pitched, oversaw development, and iterated over WASD controls as the differentiator from other MOBA games present in the market at that time. This mechanic gave the game a strong USP, and players saw it as unique rather than a copycat.• Leading the combat design team of two game designers and a level designer. Provided guidance, mentoring and contributed to project planning.• Responsible for core action gameplay, character development, and balancing.• Refined character pipeline for live game development, streamlining content creation and shortening release schedules. Show less
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Junior Game Designer
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Nov 2011 - Jun 2014
MERC ELITE / Arena based military top down Shooter - MOBA / Browser• Designed and implemented characters of different classes, focusing on feel, diversity, synergies, and counterplay, to create varied gameplay experiences and epic moments for long term playability.• Pitched and oversaw the development of a tool to streamline character and ability development. The tool enabled designers to independently prototype, create, balance, and maintain game content, reducing reliance on developers and significantly expediting the content development process.• Defined the balancing strategy and set up balancing tools, creating a basis across the design team to split balancing tasks between multiple designers while keeping the overall balance in check. That prevented us from having a single point of failure in regard to balancing.SKYRAMA / Casual Airport Simulation / Browser Show less
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Junior Developer
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Sep 2010 - Nov 2011
TOON RACER / Online Arcade-Racer / Cross platform (Browser, Facebook, iPad)
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Education
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2007 - 2010
Mediadesign - Hochschule für Design und Informatik
Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Game Design
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