I swear it had not been intentionally planned this way, but it turns out it’s been exactly a year since I last posted about the unfortunate and untimely demise of Gamblit, so it seems like it’s the perfect time for an update.
After Gamblit’s shutdown I was still determined to salvage as much of the very talented team and IP as I could. I relatively quickly managed to advance things to an extremely promising discussion with a major European operator, who was actively looking to extend its portfolio with novel, interactive gaming content.
Things seemed to be on the right track, the deal generated a lot of enthusiasm, but eventually a combination of internal turf politics and impenetrable technological siloing ground momentum to a halt.
This was yet another setback that underscored why the gambling industry has historically been so ill-equipped to foster and integrate innovation and react to emerging trends, even with the best of intentions.
At this point I had spent 7 months trying to make lemonade out of lemons, and it was clearly time to move on. After one hell of a wild and glorious roller-coaster ride I left the domain of regulated gaming.
I landed at Aimlabs (formerly Statespace), the leading esports training and coaching platform supported by a massive community of 25 million players.
Aimlab harnesses cognitive science, analytics, and AI to quantify and elevate gamer performance, from beginners to pros alike. Also, their signature visual brand element is the iconic and practically mascot-like “teal sphere”, referring to the teal balls used as targets during training (hence the title).
These days I’m working with an awesome team on a wide variety of projects, including things like:
- Leading product design and UI/UX for the brand new Valorant Aimlabs+ subscription offering, one of the biggest releases in the company’s history (Aimlabs is partly owned by Riot Games, and it’s the official training platform of Valorant esports).
- Product design and UI rework on mission-critical features across the PC and mobile clients, including an all-new Shop system, modular Results screens, Leaderboards, Lobby, and Profile pages.
- Game design and technical art on Mr.Aimlab’s Nightmare, a quirky, odd, and super fun project, one of a handful of launch titles for TikTok’s new gaming initiative.
- Design, UI, and monetization advisory on Aimblox, the company’s Roblox title.
Check out some visual material I created or contributed to all these projects (and more) below:
…as well as some videos: