About
Hey, I'm Mike. I wrote my first program at 7 years old and I haven't stopped tinkering since.
I'm a software developer with over 20 years of professional experience, currently working as a Developer Experience Engineer at Convex, where I make videos, write technical posts, and build tools to help developers. Before that I co-founded a games company called Gangbusters where we built BattleTabs, a multiplayer game that reached millions of players across web and mobile.
This blog has been running since 2004, with 625+ posts covering everything from Flash games to AI to whatever has caught my attention that week. If you want to know more about me, you can always chat with Mikebot, my AI-powered chatbot who knows this blog better than I do.
I live in Western Australia with my wife and our five-year-old son. When I'm not working, I'm usually building something anyway.
The Longer Story
That first program was a "Guess my number" game written in BASIC. Less than 100 lines of code, but watching my friends play it for hours was all the motivation I needed to keep going.
not actual screenshot of my game
By 13 I was teaching myself HTML and JavaScript, building pages for my growing interest in online gaming. A couple of years later I landed my first paid gig building an intranet for a local law firm. That was the moment I realised this hobby could be a career.
I studied Computer Games Programming at the University of Huddersfield (2003-2007), spending those four years deep in C++, Java, DirectX, GPU programming, and Flash. My placement year was at Rockpool Games in Manchester, where I worked on mobile titles including Worms 2. I graduated with a First Class BSc (Hons) and the award for "Best Overall Performance" on the course.
After university I bounced through the Manchester games and tech scene, working at Rockpool again, then Dubit, GameJacket, and GamesChart. It was the late 2000s Flash era and I was right in the middle of it, building APIs, SDKs, and games. My Flash game IcySlicy racked up over 5 million plays.
In 2010 I became one of the founding members of Playdemic, a social games company that built Facebook games like Gourmet Ranch. We grew fast and were acquired by RockYou in 2011. My role shifted from game development to core tools and technologies, building the infrastructure that the game teams depended on. After 3 great years I left in 2013 to travel the world.
That trip changed everything. I met my wife, moved to Australia, and spent a couple of years as an indie developer, shipping games like Mr Nibbles Forever.
From 2015-2018 I worked in Perth, first as a Software Architect at Tap Slots building Unity-based games, then briefly as Head of Engineering at GenVis (computer vision / ML), and as lead engineer at Bamboo (blockchain / React Native).
In 2019 I co-founded Gangbusters (originally called Markd). We pivoted from a CRM into a games company and built BattleTabs, a real-time multiplayer strategy game that started as a Chrome extension and grew to millions of players. I spent 6 years as CTO, building the backend, the game engine, and growing the team. It was one of the most rewarding things I've done, but eventually the funding ran out and it was time to move on.
In late 2024 I joined Convex as a Developer Experience Engineer. I'd been a huge fan of the platform for years, writing about it and championing it well before I worked there. Now I get to make videos, write posts, and build tools to help other developers, which honestly feels like a dream job.
About
Hey, I'm Mike. I wrote my first program at 7 years old and I haven't stopped tinkering since.
I'm a software developer with over 20 years of professional experience, currently working as a Developer Experience Engineer at Convex, where I make videos, write technical posts, and build tools to help developers. Before that I co-founded a games company called Gangbusters where we built BattleTabs, a multiplayer game that reached millions of players across web and mobile.
This blog has been running since 2004, with 625+ posts covering everything from Flash games to AI to whatever has caught my attention that week. If you want to know more about me, you can always chat with Mikebot, my AI-powered chatbot who knows this blog better than I do.
I live in Western Australia with my wife and our five-year-old son. When I'm not working, I'm usually building something anyway.
The Longer Story
That first program was a "Guess my number" game written in BASIC. Less than 100 lines of code, but watching my friends play it for hours was all the motivation I needed to keep going.
not actual screenshot of my game
By 13 I was teaching myself HTML and JavaScript, building pages for my growing interest in online gaming. A couple of years later I landed my first paid gig building an intranet for a local law firm. That was the moment I realised this hobby could be a career.
I studied Computer Games Programming at the University of Huddersfield (2003-2007), spending those four years deep in C++, Java, DirectX, GPU programming, and Flash. My placement year was at Rockpool Games in Manchester, where I worked on mobile titles including Worms 2. I graduated with a First Class BSc (Hons) and the award for "Best Overall Performance" on the course.
After university I bounced through the Manchester games and tech scene, working at Rockpool again, then Dubit, GameJacket, and GamesChart. It was the late 2000s Flash era and I was right in the middle of it, building APIs, SDKs, and games. My Flash game IcySlicy racked up over 5 million plays.
In 2010 I became one of the founding members of Playdemic, a social games company that built Facebook games like Gourmet Ranch. We grew fast and were acquired by RockYou in 2011. My role shifted from game development to core tools and technologies, building the infrastructure that the game teams depended on. After 3 great years I left in 2013 to travel the world.
That trip changed everything. I met my wife, moved to Australia, and spent a couple of years as an indie developer, shipping games like Mr Nibbles Forever.
From 2015-2018 I worked in Perth, first as a Software Architect at Tap Slots building Unity-based games, then briefly as Head of Engineering at GenVis (computer vision / ML), and as lead engineer at Bamboo (blockchain / React Native).
In 2019 I co-founded Gangbusters (originally called Markd). We pivoted from a CRM into a games company and built BattleTabs, a real-time multiplayer strategy game that started as a Chrome extension and grew to millions of players. I spent 6 years as CTO, building the backend, the game engine, and growing the team. It was one of the most rewarding things I've done, but eventually the funding ran out and it was time to move on.
In late 2024 I joined Convex as a Developer Experience Engineer. I'd been a huge fan of the platform for years, writing about it and championing it well before I worked there. Now I get to make videos, write posts, and build tools to help other developers, which honestly feels like a dream job.
About
Hey, I'm Mike. I wrote my first program at 7 years old and I haven't stopped tinkering since.
I'm a software developer with over 20 years of professional experience, currently working as a Developer Experience Engineer at Convex, where I make videos, write technical posts, and build tools to help developers. Before that I co-founded a games company called Gangbusters where we built BattleTabs, a multiplayer game that reached millions of players across web and mobile.
This blog has been running since 2004, with 625+ posts covering everything from Flash games to AI to whatever has caught my attention that week. If you want to know more about me, you can always chat with Mikebot, my AI-powered chatbot who knows this blog better than I do.
I live in Western Australia with my wife and our five-year-old son. When I'm not working, I'm usually building something anyway.
The Longer Story
That first program was a "Guess my number" game written in BASIC. Less than 100 lines of code, but watching my friends play it for hours was all the motivation I needed to keep going.
not actual screenshot of my game
By 13 I was teaching myself HTML and JavaScript, building pages for my growing interest in online gaming. A couple of years later I landed my first paid gig building an intranet for a local law firm. That was the moment I realised this hobby could be a career.
I studied Computer Games Programming at the University of Huddersfield (2003-2007), spending those four years deep in C++, Java, DirectX, GPU programming, and Flash. My placement year was at Rockpool Games in Manchester, where I worked on mobile titles including Worms 2. I graduated with a First Class BSc (Hons) and the award for "Best Overall Performance" on the course.
After university I bounced through the Manchester games and tech scene, working at Rockpool again, then Dubit, GameJacket, and GamesChart. It was the late 2000s Flash era and I was right in the middle of it, building APIs, SDKs, and games. My Flash game IcySlicy racked up over 5 million plays.
In 2010 I became one of the founding members of Playdemic, a social games company that built Facebook games like Gourmet Ranch. We grew fast and were acquired by RockYou in 2011. My role shifted from game development to core tools and technologies, building the infrastructure that the game teams depended on. After 3 great years I left in 2013 to travel the world.
That trip changed everything. I met my wife, moved to Australia, and spent a couple of years as an indie developer, shipping games like Mr Nibbles Forever.
From 2015-2018 I worked in Perth, first as a Software Architect at Tap Slots building Unity-based games, then briefly as Head of Engineering at GenVis (computer vision / ML), and as lead engineer at Bamboo (blockchain / React Native).
In 2019 I co-founded Gangbusters (originally called Markd). We pivoted from a CRM into a games company and built BattleTabs, a real-time multiplayer strategy game that started as a Chrome extension and grew to millions of players. I spent 6 years as CTO, building the backend, the game engine, and growing the team. It was one of the most rewarding things I've done, but eventually the funding ran out and it was time to move on.
In late 2024 I joined Convex as a Developer Experience Engineer. I'd been a huge fan of the platform for years, writing about it and championing it well before I worked there. Now I get to make videos, write posts, and build tools to help other developers, which honestly feels like a dream job.