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Résumé

If you aren’t quite ready to connect yet, but you want to take a brief look at my professional history, you’ve come to the right place.

This is a condensed version of my CV; it omits personal contacts, references, and specific skill lists handled in other sections. It serves strictly as a career history guide. For a complete background, please use the main contact form or tap the button below for a shortcut. Note: I also have my most recent four professional performance reviews available for your review upon your request.

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Mike "Z" Gotshall

SENIOR UI TECHNICAL DESIGNER / UI TECHNICAL ARTIST

Profile

Senior UI technical designer and UI technical artist with 12+ years of experience spanning game UI, live-service features, rapid prototyping, and multidisciplinary production design. I bridge UX, visual design, implementation, documentation, and content pipelines to transform ambiguous feature goals into functional, shippable player-facing UI.

 

Key Achievements (Bungie)

  • Shipped UI feature work across four major Destiny 2 expansions and supported Eververse commerce, timeline, and event-facing features.

    • Contributed to a complex refactoring of the Reward Pass to permit additional reward track progression with more rewards.​

      • Added the "Act Structure" for the final shape to allow the season progression to be more immersed in the events of the major expansion narrative.

      • Introduced a system that allowed players to continue to earn beyond the end of a season in the form of Engram accrual that, once earned, would grant rewards from a pool.

    • Expanded the Timeline screen to permit continued growth, especially beyond The Final Shape as Destiny 2 continued to explore more releases.

      • Continued exploration in how we present the expansion nodes to the players for greater understand of the timeline, review of vaulted content markers, and higher fidelity visual representation.​

  • Led technical design for Destiny Announcements, a long-awaited player messaging feature.

    • Was able to bring Destiny Announcements, and inbox-style message center that was a long requested feature by players.  ​

    • This feature is able to lower the friction by placing messages, that would normally be closed quickly, into a message center for later review.​

    • It also reduced friction by, at times, greatly reducing the amount of pop-up messages that were received when launching into the game so players could get right into the action.

  • Wrote and maintained documentation that exposed UI inconsistencies and helped drive more cohesive player-facing features.

    • Created a comprehensive case study of the Marathon front-end UI and documented all cases of UX diversion or inconsistency following the debut launch.​

      • Used this study to inform bug tracking, feature revision, and in some cases systemic refactors.

  • Reduced bottlenecks by moving comfortably between UX, art, data, scripting, bug triage, and implementation.

    • I am able to wear many hats with backgrounds that include:​

      • 2D UI art design and optimization in Illustrator and Photoshop.​

      • Reviewing C++ code to inform a system or component functionality. (Disclaimer - I am not a coder/engineer but I can often discern important factors in code).

      • When it was needed, I was able to step in and assist with the actual UX framing and wireframes to expedite or pivot on designs when it was critical to do so.

Experience

Senior Technical UI Designer - Bungie / Sony Interactive Entertainment

2022 - 2026

  • Led UI technical design for Destiny Announcements from feature request and art/data intake through implementation, iteration, and deployment.

  • Partnered with UX, engineering, art, production, and design to translate concepts into game-ready screens and systems for Destiny 2.

  • Supported multiple major expansions, Season Pass and Timeline work, live events including Eververse, and future-facing UI feature updates.

  • Provided senior-level scoping support, UX oversight, implementation planning, and documentation for complex feature work.

  • Supported the Marathon team with rapid bug fixing, new feature stand-up, and large UI update support for future seasonal content.

 

Senior Technical UI Designer - Wargaming Chicago

2018 - 2022

  • Owned rapid prototyping for the UI team, helping prove out new-project UI direction quickly inside the engine.

  • Served as sole UI technical designer for new-project prototypes, consolidating multidisciplinary ideas into functional implementation.

  • Managed and onboarded UI designers while helping standardize implementation practices and reduce team friction.

  • Collaborated across design, engineering, and art to convert concepts into playable front-end and HUD experiences.

  • Maintained many elements of the Flash/Scaleform based UI elements throughout World of Tanks Console.

  • Helped rebuild and refactor much of the front-end and HUD UI for the introduction of the Cold War and eventually Modern Armor additions.

 

UI/UX Designer - Wargaming Chicago

2014 - 2018

  • Designed and implemented front-end and HUD systems for World of Tanks Console Edition.

  • Maintained UI style guides and documentation to preserve consistency across screens and game systems.

  • Triaged, investigated, and resolved UI bugs across live game features.

 

QA - Wargaming Chicago2013 - 2014

  • Tested and evaluated front-end UI usability, player flow, and interaction quality.

  • Logged, reproduced, and reported bugs with clear context for design and engineering teams.

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