Hello, I'm Shane Breedveld - Games Producer
I’m 29 years old and currently employed at Massive Entertainment – A Ubisoft Studio as a Project Coordinator specialized in Features, working on Star Wars: Outlaws.
My toolset includes but is not limited to Project Management using Agile, Waterfall and Kanban, Scrum, JIRA, and more. For more information regarding my skillset make sure to check the section ”Skills” at the bottom of the page.
Project Showcase
Experience the first-ever open world Star Wars™ game, set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Explore distinct planets across the galaxy, both iconic and new. Risk it all as Kay Vess, a scoundrel seeking freedom and the means to start a new life, along with her companion Nix. Fight, steal, and outwit your way through the galaxy’s crime syndicates as you join the galaxy’s most wanted.
NDA
More details on my participation coming post release
Project Responsibilities
Main Role: Project Coordinator - Features
- Being responsible for the production efforts on a number of features and their milestone associated deliveries.
- Organizing Sprint processes for the Feature teams to support and ensure the iterative development of the features.
- Utilizing JIRA effectively as a tool to manage, plan and prioritize milestone and backlog work.
- Managing interdisciplinary dependencies to flag needs and communicate deliveries to other teams.
- Collaborating with Leads and Directors to review the features, generating feedback to iterate and adjust on feature implementation.
Alien Removal Division is a fast-paced, action-packed first-person shooter, set in a military research facility during the 1950s. The base has been overrun by aliens and you find yourself, as the only survivor, at the center of the invasion.
The game also features high mobility platform and interactive enemy dismemberment empowering the player to maneuver through the base whilst tearing apart any creature they encounter. This project is currently in development as part of my studies at the BUAS.
Team Size
25
Project Duration
32 Weeks
Awards
The Rookies – Finalist
Project Responsibilities
Main Roles: Producer, Product Manager
- Making a High-Level Planning with a roadmap and dependency overview.
- Creating a team structure and appointing Leads to clarify responsibilities and spread the management workload.
- Onboarding the team to use JIRA effectively as a tool to manage, plan and allocate our work in.
- Creating a Resource Management overview and setting up Feature teams.
- Perform Vision holder duties such as creating documents that supported alignment as well as doing team exercises on alignment.
- Managing communications with Outsource and incorporating their schedule within our planning to minimize dependencies.
- Setting up a structure for on-location brainstorming allowing sub-teams to come with concept proposals.
Sugar Blast is a wave-based Third Person Shooter with lively and interactive combat arena’s. This was a project that I worked on during my studies at the BUAS in The Netherlands.
This project has taught me a lot of valuable lessons regarding wrapping up a full production cycle.
Team Size
23
Project Duration
24 Weeks
Awards
Best Design
Project Responsibilities
Main Role: Producer
- Monitoring and managing project risks by maintaining a Risk Log.
- In collaboration with leads set deadlines and key deliverables and monitor velocity towards these.
- Spearheading the Agile Process, Sprint Retrospectives and Plannings.
- Teaching the team JIRA and using it for our project management.
- Managing project scope and feasibililty adjusting it where needed.
Secondary Role: Level Designer
- Creating the HUB Level which functioned as an interactive menu.
- Making the tutorial experience and environment.
- Hosting playtests and gathering data to iteratively develop the levels.
- Collaborating with artists to steer onboarding asset creation.
Night Shift is a sandbox horror game in which you are tasked with the protection of a town against the horrors of the night. You have to restore the light protecting the town while avoiding these dangerous monsters yourself. This was a project that I worked on during my studies at the BUAS in The Netherlands.
This project mostly taught me the importance of scope and the impact of reaching milestones to push development.
Team Size
9
Project Duration
8 Weeks
Awards
Best Design
Project Responsibilities
Main Role: Level Designer
- Design the gameplay experience and game loop, both core and additional.
- Iteratively design the sandbox environment of the City of Wuldenholm
- Create and assist with scripted events and tailor them to function depending based on player’s approach direction.
Secondary Role: Producer
- Structure Risk Management by maintaining a Risk Log.
- Doing 1-on-1’s with the entire team multiple times throughout the project.
- Facilitate the Art and Audio departments with asset lists so that we can prioritize work and avoid dependencies.
- Onboard the team on using Trello and manage the backlog.
- Host Sprint Plannings and Retrospectives to fit with our agile approach.
Gob A Tale of Greed is a Roguelite game with RPG elements, in this game you play as Gob on his task to gain enough wealth and artifacts to overthrow the oppressive Trade Lord. With combat allowing you to use magic, ranged ,or melee attacks or choosing to combine together impressive combo’s.
Gob A Tale of Greed is a side project that I’ve put together a team for with the main goal to all improve our skills as we create a game from scratch.
Team Size
10
(5 Hrs per Week)
Project Duration
1,5 Years
Project Responsibilities
Main Roles: Producer, Product Manager
- Making a Project Initiation Document including initial scope, project organization, budget, reporting, and controls.
- Creating a High-Level Planning and using that as a foundation to structure our weekly plannings.
- Risk management through the usage of a Risk Log.
- Tracking velocity and progress by providing team members with work logs.
- Setting up a Community Management structure and planning.
- Setting Deadlines and Key deliverables and tracking progression on those.
- Managing scope and decision-making on cutting content.
Secondary Roles: Creative Director and Vision Holder
- Write the story for the game, backstory, and lore of each of the zones.
- Concept the zones and their characters as well as their function.
- Collaborate with artists to guide them on visualizing the environments and characters providing creative feedback in the iterative process.
- Establishing an Art Style Guide and researching similar games and methods that make this style achievable.
Skills
Leadership & Ambition
As I personally strive to improve a little bit every day I also try to apply this consistent improvement to the teams I am part of. Being a firm believer in facilitating and supporting the team to grow and improve throughout the course of a project, be it through 1-on-1 sessions with team members or retrospectives and postmortems. This allows for a reflective process that results in individual growth which in turn benefits the team as a whole.
Creativity
As much as I am a producer I am also a game designer and understand the creative aspects of making games. I try to bring that creativity into the role of producer by not only being bound to a toolset or proven method but if the situation asks for it coming up with a creative and hand-tailored solution to a challenge within a project. It is exactly this reason why I strive to keep learning more and more, this way I can create a good balance between applying proven knowledge or a more personal touch.
Production Skills
- Risk Identification and Management
- JIRA
- Scrum and Agile Methodologies
- Kanban
- Waterfall
- KPI’s and tracking progress
- Sprint Planning & Retrospectives
- Scope and Budget Breakdowns
- Resource Planning
- Setting Deadlines and Milestones
- Tracking Project and Individual Velocity
- Representing a Project or Team
- Creating and Performing Presentations
- Outsource Management
- High-Level Planning and Dependency Management
- Monitoring Project Scope
- Community Management
- Integrating Marketing into Projects
Design Skills
- Level Design from Sketches to Final with extensive documentation supporting design decisions
- Integrating Design work with Programming and Art
- Competitor Analysis
- UE4 Blueprinting
- Basic C# Knowledge
- Writing Narrative and Story
Languages
Dutch: Native
English: Fluent
Swedish: Fluent
Software & Additional Skills
- Confluence
- P4V
- GitHub
- UE4
- Unity
- Photoshop CC
- Adobe Illustrator
- Microsoft Office Suite
- Microsoft Teams
- Setting up NDA’s
- Using Steamworks