Trent Polack

Founder and CEO of Joy Machine where we're making Steel Hunters!

I’m Trent Polack (@mittense on twitter). As you may have noticed above, I am also the Founder and CEO of Joy Machine, where we're working on the third-person co-op action/shooter (with procedurally generated loot and enormous enemy behemoths): Steel Hunters. We maintain an active Development Log about the game, the development of the game, game design theory and practice, graphics programming, engine development, and more!

In the past, I've helped to save the world as a Lead Experience Developer at planet3 from East Lansing, MI (and Washington, DC, and Austin, TX). Before that, I was as a Senior VFX Artist and Technical Artist working on Crowfall.

And even before that, I was Creative Director and Executive Producer at Team Chaos, working on games like SUPERCHROMA, Rooster Teeth vs. Zombiens, Loot Raiders, SPACE COLORS, Dragon Raiders, Cat vs. Aliens, Dragon Academy, and Elements: Broken Lands.

And even before that, I worked as a Senior Designer on various projects at LightBox Interactive as well as spending years on Starhawk and the initial design/development of Plundernauts.

In the past, I was a game developer at Stardock Entertainment where I worked on Galactic Civilizations 2: Twilight of the Arnor, Sins of a Solar Empire, The Political Machine 2008, and Demigod. I’ve also worked as a programmer working on satellite monitoring programs, a game journalist, an author, a door-to-door salesman, a PR dude, and a grocery bag boy. That last one is really the highlight of my career, I think.

I have a degree in English (with a focus on Creative Writing, Computer Science, and Secondary Education) from the University of Michigan.

I write a whole bunch about bunches of things. In the past, I have been known to write entire books such as Focus on 3D Terrain Programming. I also coauthored Graphics Programming Methods and Game Programming: Tricks of the Trade.