Producer & Project Manager
Hi, my name’s Kelby Martin. I also go by Aina. I’m a Producer / Project / Program Manager with over 6 years of experience in the video game industry working on a diverse variety of different projects. I bring a strong attention to detail and a tinkering background to implement process, tools, and changes to keep teams well-oiled machines. My journey first began at the University of Florida, where I worked on Tyto Online, an educational MMORPG. Since then, I’ve worn a variety of hats in game development.
After freelancing with a team of professional artists on a 3D Animated webseries and an internship at Deep Silver Volition working on the next Saints Row, I got my Master’s of Science in Interactive Entertainment from the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy at the University of Central Florida. There, while working on Flicker of Hope, a brooding game starring a tiny candle, I learned all about leadership, strategic thinking, and what defines process - as well as how to improve it.
After FIEA, I worked on Tap Sports Fishing, my first foray into mobile, with a team of veteran developers. There, I learned a ton about what it was like to work in a multi-studio environment and to mentor others. Since 2021, I’ve been at Activision, first at Raven Software working on Call of Duty Warzone, then at Solid State working on Warzone Mobile, where I’ve been growing and levelling up every day into a better producer and person.
Productions
Effective project management values transparency, compromise, and foresight - but most of all: The Team.
Omni Federal
[subsidiary/department/team] | [project title]
[Role description]
[subsidiary/department/team] | [project title]
[Role description]
Activision
Solid State | Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile
Live Ops Production Coordinator on Warzone Pacific, Chapter 3 of the wildly popular Battle Royale shooter, Call of Duty Warzone.
Raven Software | Call of Duty: Warzone - pacific
Live Ops Production Coordinator on Warzone Pacific, Chapter 3 of the wildly popular Battle Royale shooter, Call of Duty Warzone.
Electronic Arts
Glu Mobile | Tap Sports Fishing (2020)
I joined the team at Glu right out of grad school (FIEA). My period of time here as Production Intern ranged from August 2020 (weeks after we shipped Wick!) to the present.
At Glu, I specifically worked at GluFactory, a brand-new team located in Orlando, FL that was created out of a group of industry veterans, who worked at EA, Zynga, Disney Interactive, and so on. It was the smallest team at Glu, and we frequently punched far above our own weight in terms of polish and presentation.
Working on Tap Sports Fishing was a very challenging, but rewarding experience; FIEA is highly focused on AAA development, not mobile, so it was a great experience to jump into this world. From day one, I was a sponge, absorbing tons of brand-new information each day as development sped along.
While working on the project, I was a production intern — but was given a vast amount of duties in and outside of the typical producer role. One critical component of my role on the team was remedying the communication difficulties between the dev team - located in Orlando, FL - and the QA team - located in Hyderabad, India. I served as primary liaison of both teams, and also middlemanned as-needed for legal, UX Research, and Customer Support teams.
My work on the team was instrumental in getting the team on a more structured release cadence; as the team is a small, close-knit group of senior developers, I had to find subtle process and tool improvements that would not ruin the “indie” culture of the team. By completely redesigning their Jira database and pushing for a more documented means of defining and planning releases, the team went from struggling with last-minute commits and out-of-loop testers to a far more regular pace. Once the wheels were turning, we launched first in the Philippines — and then to New Zealand, Canada, and finally the USA and beyond.
DEep silver volition
Combat systems team | Saints Row (2022)
Gamescom 2021 Awards WINNER: Best Trailer, Best Announcement
I worked as an intern within the Combat Systems team from May to August 2019 on the next game in the highly acclaimed Saints Row franchise. Having been a fan of the series since I was younger, I was ecstatic be apart of the return of the Saints, following their long hiatus.
During my time there, I applied many of my soft and hard skills to a AAA environment. I worked closely with combat systems designers and programmers, ensuring they had actionable tasks in Hansoft following their weekly review meetings. In addition, I leveraged my previous QA experience to propose and implement a new template for creating and executing testplans in Excel, and kept a close eye on bugs from testers as they came in, ensuring they were being prioritized and worked on.
I also had a hand in middleware and environment art outsourcing, serving as a point-of-contact for both. During these three months, I received direct mentoring from veteran producers and participated in planning meetings, giving me a front-row seat to the day-to-day conversations that drive a massive project such as Saints Row.
Development Director | Flicker of Hope (2020)
Flicker of Hope is a stealth horror game where you play as a candle who traverses a ruined cathedral to restore it to its former glory. It was developed in Unreal Engine 4 with a 18 person team over 8 months at the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy.
I was the Development Director on Flicker of Hope. I owned Jira - generating tasks, creating custom dashboards, filters, workflows, permissions, automation schemas, etc. I also consistently checked-in with members of the team periodically, ensuring any blockers were known and being taken care of. Myself and the other leads successfully transitioned the team to a remote workflow in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic with little impact to our production schedule.
Aside from Jira and team health, I also constantly was monitoring team data - how long certain things took, most active days, etc., and used Excel and Google sheets to compile and visualize that data, allowing our estimate accuracy to steadily increase as we advanced in the project.
Outside of my usual production duties, I also served as social media manager for the team, creating a Google Sheets-powered social media calendar and then scheduling content to be posted consistently throughout the week on Hootsuite. On one occasion, our game received a shoutout from the official Unreal Engine Twitter account.