Ben Naulls

Programmer - Game Designer -Producer - Teacher - Compulsive Prototyper

Me

​Hello folks!

My name is Ben. I'm a game programmer, developer, tutor, mentor, and sometimes artist residing in Melbourne Australia.
I have worked on a wide variety of games across different genres and have also spent many years teaching game design and development fundamentals as a tutor and mentor.
​I have a strong love for user experience within games, education through play, and procedural world generation.

Please have a look around and don't forget to check out my portfolio afterwards.

Programing

I love creating tools to aid in design, creating worlds through code, and solving problems no one else has faced before.
Programming for a job is like facing a new puzzle every day, sometimes with a hundred ways to solve it, sometimes only one. But It's my job to work it out.
 
C# is my main language of choice, but as a programmer you can't avoid having to learn a dozen others to get a job done.

Design & Production

All the parts of making a game that aren't the actual making of the game!
Design docs, spread sheets and Jira boards. I love a plan put into motion.

While a game never comes out exactly how you plan,  planning and designing the game properly is one of the most overlooked parts of the game development process.

​

Art

While it's not my main game development skill, I know my way around the world of art and design. Adobe suite, Procreate, Maya and Blender, and the much missed Flash. 

I also love playing with shaders, particles and lighting when a project requires it.

I speak fluent artist, so I work very well with the art folk.

Learning-Focused Play

A big passion of mine is learning through play.
With the right game design and learning design, it is possible to make a game that teaches a player without them even noticing, this goes doubly if your audience is children.

Teacher & Tutor

I have 4 years+ experience teaching game design, production management, programming, and mentoring at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) in Melbourne Australia.

After leaving AIE, I continued to tutor students online as a way to continue finding joy in watching others experiance the wonder of learning how to tell their own story through games.

But instead of me telling you about me as a teacher , here are some quotes from some of my students.
​

As a teacher, he really pushes you to one up yourself, and if you get praise you deserved it
@leafy_breeze​

If Ben taught me one thing, it's to burn my babies. Best advice I ever got.
@MarioDoesDesign

Ben teaches his students good habits and how to solve problems without needing to rely on him or other people so that we learn how to teach ourselves or where to get the information to teach from.
His very passionate about things that interest him and always tries to make those things better, not by just putting a band aid on it but  from the ground up.
He really wants his students to better themselves by giving them the foundations to create amazing things.
@DTotoski

Ben gives great feedback and has a knack for figuring out how to improve a game.
​@AskTrentSwanson

Totally unfair, i didn't do any of the work and he failed me!
​@theNickBarnett

Gives the best life advice - "Stare at more squirrel butts"
@danstuddert

Ben was one of the best teachers I've had, went above and beyond to help students and is generally a great human being, 10/10
James Jesic

Hard But Fair, Critical But Caring.

Ben pulls no punches, and he can be counted on to tell you how it is. If you're doing something that's wrong or will not fly in the industry he will tell you and for god's sake please listen to him. There will be times that you will hate him. He will also push you harder and further than any other teacher will, and he does that because he cares about seeing you make mistakes and learn from them so you can improve as a designer.

You probably will never get another teacher as committed to helping you improve, so talk to him and ask him as many questions as you can while you have the chance because you will miss him once he's gone.
@Lachlanrm

Prototyper

I spend a lot of my free time working on ideas simply to see if I can do them. Most fall into a pile for future reference. Some turn into lessons for my students and others are great learning tools to see how games are made or to get an idea out of my head.

​Here is a random selection of things I have worked on over the past 12 months.

Have you checked out my Portfolio yet?

Portfolio