Hey there! I'm Chance Ivey, a game design leader currently serving as Design Director at Epic Games.

I specialize in rapid, scrappy development and binding teams around a shared vision when both ambitions and ambiguities are equally high. My work evolves as a project demands - staying strategic when appropriate and going deep into implementation when necessary. Below you'll find highlights from my contributions to games and technology, as well as industry programs I've been part of.

Want to get in touch? Email me at chance@weatheredtome.com.

GAME AND TECHNOLOGY PROJECTS

LEGO FORTNITE ODYSSEY

Image: Epic Games, Inc

LEGO Fortnite Odyssey is the ultimate survival crafting LEGO adventure. It introduces vast, open worlds where the magic of LEGO building and Fortnite collide. Designed for people of all ages to enjoy together, the game encourages creativity, experimentation and collaboration through play.

As Associate Design Director, I led Gameplay Design on the project by guiding a team of Lead Designers and Technical Artists covering all aspects of gameplay including the player character, control, camera, items, survival progression, sandbox mode, building, and physics contraptions. Alongside other department directors, I helped define the future of LEGO Fortnite through planning upcoming content and feature updates.

Before my departure, I led the Mechanical Mayhem update that added vehicles and vehicular components to the game.

Find and Play LEGO Fortnite by downloading Fortnite from the Fortnite website.

THE MATRIX AWAKENS

Image: Epic Games, Inc

The Matrix Awakens is an Unreal Engine 5-powered game and cinematic experience for the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series S|X. It exemplifies many of UE5’s new frameworks including Lumen, Nanite, Open World tools, and more.

I was responsible for converting the car chase sequence to UE5’s new World Partition system, optimizing C++ gameplay code and Blueprint content for performance and memory, and building a shot-by-shot scalability framework to allow rendering programmers and visual artists to have complete control over rendering settings throughout the entire cinematic per platform.

Find out more about The Matrix Awakens on the Unreal Engine website.

UNREAL ENGINE 5

Image: Epic Games, Inc

Unreal Engine 5 is a next-generation collection of frameworks created and licensed by Epic Games for building interactive and linear content. It released in Early Access in May of 2021, accompanied by a comprehensive practical sample project, Valley of the Ancient.

I architected and drove the Early Access announcement and launch plans from executive pitch to public release. By collaborating with executive stakeholders, engineering, product, learning, and marketing, I coordinated organization-wide alignment around a singular vision to ensure the launch was strong, the offerings cohesive, and the support robust.

Watch the premier and release video on the Unreal Engine YouTube channel.

VALLEY OF THE ANCIENT

Image: Epic Games, Inc

Valley of the Ancient is the comprehensive demo project that accompanied the public launch of Unreal Engine 5 Early Access. It demonstrates a variety of brand new UE5 features that became available at the time of its release such as Lumen, Nanite, Open World tools, Metasounds, Quartz, Game Feature Plugins, Full-Body Inverse Kinematics, and Animation Motion Warping, among others.

I co-led development of the project by concepting the experience based on executive input, pitching to C-suite stakeholders for approval, and leading all design efforts until completion as part of the Unreal Engine 5 Early Access release.

Download Valley of the Ancient from the Unreal Engine Marketplace.

UNREAL EDITOR FOR FORTNITE

Image: Epic Games, Inc

Unreal Editor for Fortnite is a new way to design, develop, and publish content into Fortnite that takes advantage of the Unreal Editor's development workflows and proven PC-based toolset.

I co-authored the pitch for the tools and development paradigm with the Lead Technical Director of Unreal and led the initial development team in creating a cohesive, feature-rich internal demo. Afterwards, I presented the demo to C-suite and other executive stakeholders, earning the approval to move into full production.

Download the Unreal Editor for Fortnite beta on the Epic Games Store.

UNREAL ENGINE MOD SUPPORT

Image: Epic Games, Inc

The UGCExample Project is a collection of light-weight modding-related add-on features for Unreal Engine including editor and runtime C++ modules, custom Unreal Automation Tool scripts, and a simple example project demonstrating an end-to-end moddable game scenario. It has served as a jumping off point for numerous Unreal developers that have released mod kits for their games on the Epic Games Launcher.

I created the plugins and Unreal project as a simplified abstraction of the code I wrote for the Robo Recall Mod Kit a few years earlier to greatly facilitate the process of adding mod support to Unreal-powered games.

New: I've forked the project and refactored it to work with Unreal Engine 5. Like the UE4 version, you must have associated your Epic Games account with your GitHub account.

Find out more about the project on the Unreal Engine blog.

FORTNITE CREATIVE MODE

Image: Epic Games, Inc

Fortnite Creative Mode is a major game mode that allows creators to build all-new game and interactive experiences inside the Fortnite universe. In 2022, it was reported that games made in Creative accounted for around 50% of all playtime inside Fortnite.

I worked on the initial product design alongside the project lead and established technical design requirements through deep competitive research. I later paired up with engineering to build interfaces between content (including scripting) and underlying C++ frameworks to facilitate exploration and creation of future features in the Fortnite ecosystem.

Find out more about Fortnite Creative Mode on the Fortnite website.

UNREAL ENGINE XR SUPPORT

Image: Epic Games, Inc

Unreal Engine is the world's most open and advanced real-time 3D creation tool for photoreal visuals and immersive experiences. It is the technology behind hundreds of popular and successful AAA games, animated films, and enterprise visualization applications.

I helped form UE4's XR offerings to licensees by serving as our "first user," influencing API design and requirements while building editor templates and example content for Epic's XR hardware and software partners (Oculus, Steam, HTC, Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap, Apple, Google and OpenXR.)

Learn more about Unreal Engine's XR capabilities on the Unreal Engine website.

ROBO RECALL

Image: Epic Games, Inc

Robo Recall is a AAA virtual reality first-person shooter game developed and published by Epic Games for Meta's Oculus Rift. It demonstrated the high-end capabilities of the Rift hardware and helped establish design standards for locomotion in virtual reality.

I designed and drove the mod support capabilities of Robo Recall including the Unreal Editor tool extensions and templates, in-game mod selection interface, and the surface area of modifiable base game content. I also wrote the runtime gameplay code that handles mod discovery, activation, priority, and content overrides.

Find Robo Recall on the Oculus Store and modding info on Epic Games' website.