Scott
Crisostomo

I started in games when you had to fight for every frame of animation and every kilobyte of memory. That constraint-first mentality never left. I prototype fast, cut ideas early, and push hard on whatever survives.

At Namco, I designed the cover-and-blind-fire system in Kill Switch — mechanics that shaped how third-person shooters felt for a generation. At Luxoflux, I led a six-person strike team that rebuilt a late-stage title's combat system in under six months.

At Ubisoft, fifteen years across licensed IP, cancelled titles, 3rd-party publishing, and finally the largest live-service launch the company had ever done. On XDefiant, I prototyped the core FPS mechanics in Snowdrop personally — around 80% complete — before handing off to engineering. I wanted to know exactly what I was asking the team to build.

The cancelled titles matter too. Rainbow Six: Patriots got a vertical slice to executive greenlight under my design lead. Hei$t — a 1969 San Francisco open-world heist game at inXile — is cult-obscure enough to be on the Lost Media Wiki. Making things that almost shipped teaches you just as much as making things that did.

I manage and mentor designers, not just direct their output. I've built growth plans, run 1:1s, shaped hiring pipelines, and written documentation standards that teams actually used. The bar I hold for craft is the same one I hold for myself.

I've been playing D&D since the early '80s, primarily as Dungeon Master across 2nd, 3rd, 3.5, and 5th edition — including five years of campaigns for the Ubisoft San Francisco studio. I used tabletop prototyping methods professionally to validate the South Park combat system before committing to production. Rule systems that feel purposeful rather than arbitrary: that's the job, whatever form it takes.

Outside the industry, I'm currently Operations Manager and acting General Manager at King's Swim Academy in San Mateo — running daily facility operations, vendor relationships, budgets, and staff development for a high-traffic aquatics facility.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Open to senior design leadership, creative direction, and operations roles — remote, hybrid, or on-site.