# Dan Fessler

> Senior Software Engineer

Location: San Mateo, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/danfessler

I am a Creative Director and Executive for games with over 15 years of industry experience in mobile, social, AI, and UGC platforms and have released over 20 commercial titles over that time. Having started as a production artist, I bring a visual-perspective to my approach as a creative leader with an emphasis on quality and user experience.

In addition to my professional experience, I am a self-taught engineer which gives me a unique ability to bridge the gap between highly technical and visual domains to solve critical cross-discipline problems and communicate ideas across departments. I've shipped open source software used by companies like Facebook with ~100k downloads/year, frameworks for tool UI in React, and designed/implemented visual programming languages.

I am very hands-on and capable of doing all the jobs necessary that I direct, and excel at growing teams from the ground up, and mentoring them to become leaders themselves.

## Work Experience
### Senior Software Engineer @ Roblox
Jan 2025 – Present
Senior Software Engineer on Roblox's Expression team, building front-end features that power player-facing Avatar experiences.

### Co-Founder / Chief Creative Officer @ Incite Interactive
Jan 2023 – Present | United States
Co-founded and operate an AI-first games studio on a mission to incite the best stories in games, Funded by a16z's SPEEDRUN. We're busy building the next generation Life Sim with living AI agents built on top of the world's first Agentic Game Engine, InciteWorlds.com.

At Incite, I grew and directly manage a team of over 15 artists/designers/engineers, and oversee all creative efforts including Corporate Branding, Marketing, Game Design, Bis-Dev, First Party Games/Experiences, UGC Tooling, and more.

### Chief Visual Officer @ Manticore Games Inc.
Jan 2017 – Jan 2023 | San Mateo, California
As Chief Visual Officer, I reported directly to the CEO and CCO and collaborated on executive-level planning/strategy for the company. I was responsible for overseeing all things visual for our AAA UGC platform, Core, including all Environment, Character, UI, Marketing, Brand Partnerships, Outsourcing, and First-Party Development.

As employee #1 and the founding member of the art department, I've helped scale the company to over 100 employees and directly oversaw a team of over 30 artists, designers, and contractors.

I oversaw and directed the production of props, VFX, environment assets, and hundreds of avatars/cosmetics to fulfill our mission to deliver rich self-expression and identity in the Metaverse.

I also worked closely with product managers on the design and implementation of creator tools/features to empower an ecosystem of on-platform UGC creators, which included voxel terrain editing, kit-bash modeling, smart-material system, character customization and general UI/UX for the editor. I also directly prototyped an experimental visual programming language written with modern web technologies that compiled to Lua.

### Art Director @ Zynga
Jan 2012 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco Bay Area
I was brought into Zynga with the acquisition of A Bit Lucky in 2012 as part of their New IP division. 

At Zynga I art directed various titles including Solstice Arena, Empires and Allies, Mountain Goat Mountain, and an unreleased iteration of Farmville Next.

Later I joined the R&D division which prototyped forward-thinking concepts including VR and experimental social games.

### Lead Artist @ A Bit Lucky, Inc.
Jan 2010 – Jan 2012
Founding member of the art department
    Created in-game, concept, and UI art content
    Aided the hiring of new art talent
    Managed, directed, and tasked the art team; in-house and outsourced
    Defined the visual style for all games
    Developed / streamlined the art pipeline to maintain consistent quality and fast turn-around.
        Wrote 3ds Max render scripts and Photoshop scripts
    Designed and prototyped proprietary art and animation tools to improve work-flow and aid future games development

### Senior Artist @ Glu Mobile
Jan 2008 – Jan 2009
Created in-game, concept, and UI art content
       Lead Artist on "Family Guy: Uncensored" for mobile and iPhone
       Supporting Artist on "Space Monkey" for iPhone
       Specialized in animation for in-game sprites.
       Ported all art assets for a wide range of devices and screen resolutions.
       worked closely with IP owners for licensed game content to maintain consistent quality.
       Defined visual style of games as Lead.

### Junior 2D Artist @ Gameloft
Jan 2007 – Jan 2008
Created in-game, concept, and UI art content
       Specialized in tiled backgrounds/scenes for "New York Nights 2"
       Created polished game mock-ups to pitch prospective titles


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/danfessler
- Website: http://www.DanFessler.com
- Website: http://www.DanFessler.com/Blog

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Source: https://flows.cv/danfessler
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/danfessler/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-01