Software Developer at GamePress

My first full-time job - and a crash course in doing a bit of everything.

GamePress started as a scrappy three-person team (we were all fresh out of college - our CEO was still in college) building a site to help mobile gamers make informed decisions. We launched with coverage of Pokémon GO during its 2016 boom, then expanded to games like Fire Emblem Heroes and Fate/Grand Order, eventually growing into a trusted resource with millions of daily pageviews.

My primary focus was front-end development: theming pages, setting up content types and taxonomies, and - my favorite part - building interactive tools in JavaScript. One of the most popular tools I created was the summon simulator, which mimicked the gacha systems found in many mobile games. It showed users what they "pulled," tracked stats like total rolls and simulated cost, and gave players a risk-free way to experience the odds before spending real (or in-game) currency.

Because our team was small, I also pitched in wherever needed - from backend work and mobile app development to Discord bots and plain old data entry. It was a fast-paced, scrappy environment that taught me how to work across the stack, solve problems independently, and build things people actually used.

The site in its current state can be viewed here. This current version only partially reflects the work I contributed. Many of the original tools, features, and even sites were lost during a rushed transition away from Drupal after Acquia dropped PHP 7.4 support. While I helped lead three separate modernization efforts during my time there. each was ultimately shelved due to sudden direction changes. The current version was pushed live after I left and dev support faded away shortly after.