ELLISA BARR

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellisa-barr-6965b43/ | ellisa@nocturne.org

SUMMARY

Experienced producer with 14 years at forefront companies including Electronic Arts and NCSoft. Proven success aligning teams with studio goals and schedules and delivering top-rated AAA games. Expertise in managing internal and external teams & partnerships, championing live/launch schedules and resolving roadblocks before they become issues. Looking for my next team to call home.

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PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

**Producer, Unannounced Social Sandbox RPG,** May 2023 - April 2024

Possibility Space, Remote

Responsible for production of a 12-person fully distributed team on an unannounced AAA RPG for Steam and XBox. Worked closely with the Engineering Director to define long-term goals and incremental steps needed to accomplish them. We made estimates and decided who would be best suited for different tasks, and then I owned the schedule, removing roadblocks from the team and keeping them focused.
Duties included short and long-term planning, bug/task triage and tracking in JIRA, patch notes, risk mitigation, performance reporting, coordinating playtests, feature reviews, milestone kick-offs and postmortems, weekly studio show & tells.
Championed cooperation with QA, holding the team accountable for delivering against agreed upon Acceptance Criteria, encouraged JIRA pipeline improvements, facilitated communication between devs and testers, and improved coordination and hand-offs.
Updated risk reports and escalated issues and mitigation proposals to project leadership.
Coordinated shared resources such as Tech Art, UX/UI, Design and Engineering for several cross work-stream initiatives with high pressure timelines that fundamentally improved the game.
Created studio-wide production processes that improved efficiency and brought consistency across work-streams to the way we communicated milestone progress.

narrative lead, Unannounced Fantasy CCG, April 2022 - March 2023

Hit Factor, Remote

Collaborated with artists and project management to develop fantasy IP for a CCG, with direct responsibility for composing storylines for all elements of world design. Then created 30 unique hero characters to be made into collectible cards. Developed quirky flavor text, quotes and stand-alone descriptive vignettes to personify heroes for marketing.
Managed schedules, ensuring timely content delivery on two unrelated projects.

PRODUCER, City of heroes: Freedom, May 2010 – Dec 2013

Paragon Studios: an NCSoft Studio, Mountain View, CA

Was the producer for our full in-house art team including concept, environment, character, animation, and VFX artists. Worked with tech art to improve art pipeline efficiency. Tracked progress and setbacks, made process adjustments, and communicated often with leadership.
Was simultaneously the Assistant Producer for the overall project and implemented new milestone processes for a 50+ person dev team resulting in the on-time shipment of our conversion from a subscription model to free-to-play.
Responsible for creation and communication of goals and priorities, daily stand-ups, milestone post-mortems, and show-and-tells for increased visibility and accountability.

Mythic Entertainment: an EA Studio, Fairfax, VA, September 2001 – July 2009

PRODUCER / CONTENT MANAGER, Warhammer Online: age of reckoning

Managed schedules and deadlines for a team of writers for Warhammer Online and expanded existing IP to develop rich storylines for game areas.
Transitioned to implementation role to address concerns over encounter playability and build quality prior to launch. Championed an elite strike team to assess priority game areas, implement adjustments, and coordinate improvement of art, code, and production initiatives.
Led trouble-shooting, tracking, and resolution scheduling of live-game emergencies and other high profile issues.

quest design lead, unannounced sci-fi MMORPG

Collaborated in the creative process to build backstory for a new (unreleased) game world and identified key story & gameplay opportunities, coordinating art priorities.
Developed and implemented new game systems and processes.
Designed and executed content utilizing proprietary scripting and world building tools.

quest designer, dark age of camelot

Authored and edited quest content including dialogue, narrative, location descriptions, etc.
Worked alongside quest leads to develop overarching story lines for game expansions maintaining the vision of the game.
Implemented these quests as playable encounters, including creation of monsters, items/treasure, experience tables and scripted events.

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EDUCATION, ACCOMPLISHMENTS & INTERESTS

BS Elementary Education, 1997, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.
Author of three published novels: Outage, Voyage, and Sabotage.
2017-2019 President of Deseret Homeschoolers, a 501(3c) org with 200+ families.
Community service, Watercolor, Table-top RPGs, Multi-player video games, Camping and Survival skills, Road-tripping, Cooking, Youth mentor, Piano, Conversational Spanish.