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Rob Ballantyne — Chief Technology Officer
Rob Ballantyne is the Co-Founder and CTO of Sackbird Studios, where he focuses on the technical direction of the studio and on building the systems and gameplay features that designers insist aren't scope creep.
Before Sackbird, Rob spent around 15 years in AAA development at places like ZeniMax Online and Ruffian Games. Most recently, he worked on The Elder Scrolls Online, building systems for things like dragon flight and companions that try their best to be your buddy while hating you eating cheese.
He has also worked across a mix of projects including Halo titles and Kinect games (Have you ever tried debugging a bug while doing a pushup or swinging a lightsaber!?)
Outside of game dev, he also enjoys baseball as much as you can as a Baltimore Orioles fan.
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Doug Carroll — Chief Creative Officer
Doug Carroll is a Co-Founder and the Chief Creative Officer of Sackbird Studios, as well as the Creative Director on its debut title. A systems designer by trade, he spent over a decade at ZeniMax Online Studios working on The Elder Scrolls Online and serving as Lead Engagement Designer on Project Blackbird before co-founding Sackbird to build the kind of games he's always wanted to make. The lawyers are still reviewing whether that was a good idea.
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Adam Hafez — Chief Executive Officer
Adam Hafez is the CEO of Sackbird Studios, and a recovering AAA tools-and-pipelines obsessive. He's spent the last eight-plus years on the unglamorous question of how games actually get made.
He started out as a software engineer in healthcare IT, then followed the work he couldn't stop thinking about into games, where he rose to Technical Director at ZeniMax Online Studios. There he led a team of 30-plus engineers and built the content pipelines and tooling that keep live-service MMOs shipping — the kind of work that is often overlooked until it breaks.
He came to Sackbird on a simple mission: make the games he and his team want to make, and help the people they care about do the same, at a studio where creative independence isn't negotiable.
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Joe Lopatta — Art Director
Joe Lopatta is the Art Director at Sackbird Studios. With 14 years experience in the games industry he got his start at Bethesda Softworks in Quality Assurance working on titles such as Rage, Dishonored and Doom 3: BFG Edition.
He then began his art career at Zenimax Online Studios as a Character Artist working on The Elder Scrolls Online. For a short while he stepped away from AAA games working on smaller projects in the mobile, horse racing, and robotics simulation spaces.
He grew his talents over the years and started an art leadership role at Oxide Games helping pave the vision for Ara: History Untold and Ashes of the Singularity 2. Now he is excited to work with his dream team at Sackbird Studios!
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Agent Smith — Systems Architect of Auditory Compliance
Exists everywhere — his sound is profound. (Nobody mentions him in the reviews.)
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Emily Turner — Senior Game Designer
Emily is a designer at Sackbird who sucks at writing in the third person. She's previously worked at some other companies and now she works here (and here has been very lovely for what it's worth). She's decided that three sentences is enough for a bio so this one will be her last. ✌️
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Nate Van Wyngarden — Principal 3D Artist
Nathan VanWyngarden is a father, husband, son, and Principal Artist with 18 years of experience in game development. He's always had a love for creating, from his early years sculpting with clay, owning a landscaping company, and pursuing a career in digital arts, to the ever-ongoing refinement of his home. Working with his hands and being a part of nature are some of his favorite things.
Before Sackbird and after Olive Garden, Planet Fitness, bagging groceries, crafting pizzas, and working the golf course, Nathan pursued his passion at Zenimax Online Studios, taking on several roles over his tenure: Principal World Builder, Level Designer, Asset Creator, and Media Artist. Along the way, he had the opportunity to learn from the best, and couldn't be prouder to be a part of such a fun, compassionate, talented group of people.
Sackbird is a culmination of many years of working hard, playing hard, and soaking up every experience.
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David Worley — Chief Operating Officer
David Worley is a Co-Founder and the Chief Operating Officer of Sackbird Studios, where — like everyone here — he wears more hats than the org chart admits. On any given day that's operations, strategy, the corporate-legal grind, and the systems, tools, and gameplay engineering behind the actual game development.
He occasionally refers to himself internally as Big Sack Dave and has automated himself out of at least three of his own jobs (then immediately took on four more).
Before games, David built the brains for autonomous Navy warships — unmanned boats that read the open ocean, chose their own targets, and put Hellfire missiles through them. When a human wanted to drive, the override was an Xbox controller. Somewhere in there he decided he'd rather shoot at things that respawn, so he traded it all for video games.
Now he's living his dream job: making whatever he wants — usually something unhinged — with his friends at Sackbird.
