Dan Fessler
Senior Software Engineer / Creative Director (Games)
Executive Summary
I’m a senior software engineer and creative leader with 20 years in games, spanning creative executive leadership, product-quality UI/UX, and hands-on frontend engineering.
I build polished, user-centered tools and experiences, often at the intersection of creative workflows and scalable web systems. I’m equally comfortable leading cross-discipline teams or shipping complex features end-to-end.
My edge is bridging the gap between technical and creative domains: translating vision into concrete systems, iterating quickly, and raising quality through craft, pragmatism, and collaboration.
Highlights
- 20 years industry experience in game development (creative + technical)
- 10+ years in creative executive leadership roles
- Frontend engineering: HTML/CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, React (10 years)
- Full-stack experience: Node, Express, Socket.IO, Firebase, MongoDB, PostgreSQL
- Shipped games, tools, web services, and open-source software
Experience
Senior Software Engineer
RobloxAug 2025 - present
Senior Software Engineer on Roblox's Expression team, building avatar expression features that power player-facing Avatar experiences.
Highlights
- Built and shipped expression features for Avatar experiences in collaboration with product, design, and partner engineering teams
- Developed UI and systems that improve avatar expressiveness, performance, and reliability at scale
- Contributed to team-wide engineering quality through design reviews, code reviews, and pragmatic iteration
Co-founder (Engineering + Creative Leadership)
Incite Interactive2023 - 2025
Co-founded Incite Interactive to build AI-first games and agentic UGC technology. We launched the world's first Agentic UGC platform (Incite Worlds) and began building the next-generation life sim, Auravale.
I led across engineering, product, and creative, bridging design, systems, and execution while shipping user-facing web experiences and internal tools.
Highlights
- Funded by a16z's Speedrun Accelerator
- Raised pre-seed and led cross-discipline teams across branding, marketing, design, and engineering
- Developed and open-sourced a React UI library for dockable tabbed window management (React/TypeScript)
- Designed and developed an AI-native visual programming language for Incite Worlds (React)
- Built and shipped product experiences across InciteWorlds.com (React/Remix) and company web presence (Svelte)
- Directed and developed character cosmetics + animation pipeline for Auravale (Unity/C#) and authored custom shaders/materials (HLSL/ShaderGraph)
Projects
Chief Visual Officer (Founding Team)
Manticore Games2017 - 2023
Joined Manticore as employee #1 to build the next-generation UGC platform, Core. As Chief Visual Officer, I reported to the CEO and oversaw UI/UX, Web, Tools, Marketing, Brand Partnerships, First Party experiences, and Character Cosmetics.
Alongside leadership, I remained hands-on, shipping web experiences, interactive tooling, and technical systems that supported creators and production.
Highlights
- Directly managed and scaled teams of 30+ across multiple creative departments
- Designed and developed Manticore's corporate website (React/SSG)
- Designed and developed a web-based interactive world map (Canvas2D/JS)
- Developed a visual programming language that compiles to Lua for Core (React/JS)
- Authored custom shaders/materials including a "smart" triplanar system and 3D 9-slice materials (HLSL/Blueprint)
Projects
Art Directing the Metaverse
How do you art direct the infinite? An article about art direction challenges in UGC platforms.
View Project →
Art Director (R&D + Production)
Zynga2012 - 2016
Art Director on shipped titles including Solstice Arena, Empires and Allies, Mountain Goat Mountain, and Farmville. Later joined the R&D division prototyping forward-looking concepts including VR and experimental social games.
Highlights
- Shipped and supported multiple live titles across mobile and social platforms
- Wrote vehicle physics for a Rocket League-inspired VR prototype (Unity/C#)
- Designed and prototyped UI/UX for experimental social game concepts (Unity/C#)
- Built character asset pipeline tools (HTML/PHP) and authored shaders/materials (HLSL/ShaderGraph)
Projects
Lead Artist (Founding Team)
A Bit Lucky2010 - 2012
Founding member of the art department at A Bit Lucky, helping define style, pipelines, and production quality for social games on Facebook. Bridged art + engineering by building tooling and UI to accelerate iteration and consistency.
Highlights
- Developed animation tools for Lucky Train and Lucky Space (HTML/JS/PHP)
- Designed and developed store-front UI for Lucky Space (HTML/JS)
- Wrote 3ds Max render scripts and Photoshop scripts for internal art pipelines
- Streamlined pipelines to maintain consistent quality and fast turnaround
- Managed, directed, and tasked in-house and outsourced art teams
Projects
Senior Artist
Glu Mobile2008 - 2009
Senior Artist on Family Guy Uncensored and other mobile titles.
Highlights
- Lead Artist on "Family Guy: Uncensored" for mobile and iPhone
- Specialized in animation for in-game sprites
- Ported art assets for various devices and screen resolutions
Junior 2D Artist
Gameloft2007 - 2008
Pixel artist on New York Nights and other mobile titles.
Highlights
- Specialized in tiled backgrounds/scenes for "New York Nights 2"
- Created polished game mock-ups to pitch prospective titles
- Developed in-game, concept, and UI art content
Freelance Artist
Self-Employed2005 - 2006
Contract artwork for MGA/Mattel on various electronic toys.
Highlights
- Created pixel art for various electronic toys and games
- Worked with major toy manufacturers including MGA and Mattel
- Developed art assets for multiple platforms and devices
Miscellaneous Projects
React-Dockable
A React library to create beautiful dockable tabbed interfaces for tools, editors, and more. Used by InciteWorlds.com
View Project →React-PanelGroup
An Open Source react component for resizable panel layouts, used by Meta. Over 80k downloads on NPM. Also leveraged by React Dockable
View Project →Index Painter
A pixel art editor written in React/TypeScript which natively implements HD Index Painting and uses WebGL for graphics accelerated drawing
View Project →ctx game engine
A web-first game engine with a unity-like editor and component system with a canvas2D renderer. Leverages React-Dockable for its UI
View Project →Huddle Voice Chat
A virtual office voice-chat application which uses the concept of proximity-based "huddles" to connect users.
View Project →Routinify
A productivity app to encourage and maintain personal routines without scheduling
View Project →Core Visual Programming
A prototype developed for Core Games to allow for visual scripting in editor. At runtime, the graph compiles to LUA using Core's API. Written in React
View Project →Incite Visual Programming
A prototype developed for Incite Worlds to allow for visual scripting of Agentic scenarios using LLM-powered "language gates"
View Project →Parsnip
A simple yet powerful parser generator for JavaScript allowing you to write custom domain specific languages using an object-based grammar schema. Used for my own custom DSL projects.
View Project →BASIN
A lightweight AST (abstract syntax tree) interpreter & runtime built in javascript.
View Project →