My remit
At Vanguard Software, my Head of Creative & Product Direction / Lead Creative Director remit covered brand identity, original IP, portfolio planning and cross-functional delivery. I led a 20+ person multinational team across Singapore and Vietnam, including China-based members, directing work through creative and technical leads. I shaped recommendations and secured management approval; final portfolio and commercial decisions were shared with product management and senior leadership.
A portfolio with a reason to exist
Give an unfamiliar studio brand an identity and a lineup worth remembering. Working with my creative lead and team, I shaped a distinctive bull mascot and a connected product world spanning games, operator pitches and marketing materials. Depending on the opportunity and constraints, the creative route could be a fresh treatment of an existing foundation, a complementary series or a contrasting new direction within the brand family.
Naming the product experience
I coined Spectator Play and Active Resolution as part of Superbull’s product and brand language. Spectator Play describes characters participating in the visible action; Active Resolution describes outcomes presented through movement, timing and feedback. These names connect creative direction with a clear story for the team and operator partners. The presentation follows the game’s rules and outcome model.
Character contrast as product direction
For Zappin Zeus, I pushed beyond a uniformly stern god: a playful character celebrates with the player, then becomes a fierce, lightning-charged presence in the bonus presentation. Lucky Panda Chef uses a different contrast—a tattooed former gangster who has retired into cooking. Personality informs animation, presentation and the way each game is remembered.
Making a mechanic feel like a world
For the released Money Tree title, I connected the tree’s changing appearance with scenery, sound, coin effects and win celebrations. My focus was the relationship between the game rules and the experience players could see and hear. The growing tree was visual presentation, not a measure of an approaching bonus or a change in the probability of winning. This was a creative and product-direction contribution developed with the team.
Range within the brand
Super Nima uses cheeky cross-cultural humour and a street-to-superstar DJ progression. Chaos Runner brought a post-apocalyptic direction into the lineup. Latin America and Turkey were among the intended audiences. Contemporary games and film informed the different kinds of appeal we wanted to explore.
From concept to cross-functional delivery
I shaped and rewrote concepts, assessed their fit in the lineup, and presented recommendations for approval. I then translated approved directions into priorities for creative leads, programmers and Vietnam-based delivery teams. My work included stakeholder presentations, production alignment and resolving cross-team friction, alongside selected hands-on execution.
Using live evidence to propose the next step
I reviewed internal title reports alongside partner-catalogue and competitor information, then advocated variants of established titles that already had an audience. Working with the PM and creative lead, I built support and directed advance preparation of website and social assets. Some variants, including a Zeus variant, launched before I left. I did not review their subsequent commercial results.
What reached players
Across the three-year ALIZE-to-Superbull period, the first year focused on prototyping. In year three, the team released 23 Superbull titles before my departure. The live Superbull catalogue includes Zappin Zeus, Super Nima, Lucky Panda Chef and Chaos Runner. Public demo captures on this site show the character direction in running game states. A documented Zeus repeat-play case study also connected our work to live product review. My role covered brand and portfolio direction through leads and the team; commercial reporting remains private.
Building a team that can sustain delivery
I helped hire and develop the team, working through leads while staying close to delivery. My planning goal was to avoid dependence on routine overtime: anticipate scope and capacity, resolve problems early and give people opportunities to grow into responsibility.
From character direction to the running games
Scope shown · Character identity, brand and product direction