Core Team
Developers listed on this page have accepted the commitment to hold a leadership position, or have demonstrated their commitment to the team through 6 months or more persistent work on game development and are still active. Other developers who hold shorter terms are not listed here. Our development team is staffed entirely by volunteers who have a strong professional work ethic, and are invested in seeing the project to completion.
Laurene Wells
Owner and CEO of Heaven’s Blessings Tiny Zoo
Laurene resides in Oregon with her husband Ron Wells and their 4 children, all of whom have been homeschooled. Laurene has carried leadership roles in an online game environment in three MMORPG titles, and worked as a volunteer for Sony Online Entertainment for more than 2.5 years. Laurene first registered Heaven’s Blessings Tiny Zoo in the state of Oregon in 2003, enlisted her first volunteer in 2004 and has continued to grow the company through her team of volunteers. She has a natural talent with pencil drawings, especially animals, and has taught herself 3D art for game development. VISIONS is her company’s flagship project, a Christian MMORPG set in the 2nd century holy land, currently in development. The Visions public Alpha is currently available to financial contributors. A secondary project which spawned out of the VISIONS development cycle is CHARIOTS, a Christian racing game set loosely in ancient history which was released in July 2008. In July 2009 Laurene released her card game, MESSIAH through online distributor TGC. In July 2010 she participated in an on-site game contest at the Christian Game Developers Conference and won an award for her board game, Treasures In Heaven which she went on to improve and release as a Print-n-Play board game later that same year. During the 2010-2011 school her she and her children developed an educational app Pedich Edhellen which introduces the player to speak Elvish.
Ron Wells
CTO and Director of IT
Ron enjoys a quiet life in Oregon with his wife and 4 children. His primary role on the project involves managing the test servers for the game project, and keeping the local computers functional and online. He brings to the team a lifetime of experience repairing, maintaining, and networking computer technology. Ron has earned a B.S. degree in Automated Manufacturing Engineering, an A.A.S. degree in Electronics Engineering Technology, and certified as an MCP through Microsoft. He worked for 9 years in the high tech silicon industry and has worked for more than 7 years as a Network Administrator for other companies. He is continually studying to improve and add to his skill set, including the addition of Python programming to help with scripting on the project.
Eric Brady
Programming team leader
Eric joined our team in October 2009 filling in the void Mark left behind. He lives in California with his family, and works a day job to provide for his family while building his programming skills and leadership skills on our development team. He brings a variety of programming skills to the team, C++, Python, PHP, and MySQL are the primary skills he has used on the Visions project. He carries the work load of several developers all by himself, and continually rises to the challenges we place before him. We are thankful to have Eric’s natural talent for troubleshooting and game programming to further advance the Visions MMORPG project.
Tim Wright
Marketing Director
Tim lives in Virginia with his wife and three children. He is a strong advocate for christian and family friendly gaming, stretching his time and talents between several Christian game development organizations. Tim joined the Heaven’s Blessings Tiny Zoo in December of 2007 to help with the forums, and having proven his dedication to the team and the project now manages the entire marketing operations of the company.
Brian McCoy
Art Director
Brian hails from the state of New York. He is a self-taught artist who has learned to use multiple 3D art software programs, and then taken that knowledge to the next level by creating tutorial videos to share his skill with other artists seeking to follow the same path. Brian has worked in a variety of fields demonstrating his versatility and diligence to do whatever it takes to get the job done. The benefit of his creative ideas extend beyond the art team to enhance the experience of the entire development team as a whole.
Jon Gladwill
Art Team Leader
Jon joined us in February of 2010 as a 3D artist and was promoted to Art Team Leader in the Spring of 2013. He brings to the team a natural gift for 3D art using Blender as his tool of choice. He also has experience working in youth ministry through his church. He works a job outside of his industry to support his family while working on Visions in the evenings and on some weekends. He lives in California with his wife.
Matthew Jenkins
Worldbuilding Team Director
Matthew joined us in May of 2012 at a critical time of development in the new Bigworld engine. He brings to the team a robust array of artistic and writing skills, Python scripting skills, as well as hands on experience in online games. His creative instincts have been a great benefit to the team, adding a more realistic flare to the game world, and his scripting skills have helped us make significant advances in programming as well. He lives in Georgia with his cat Cici, and helps take care of his parents who live nearby. He is the author of four fiction novels available on Amazon Kindle and on the Messengers of Yesh website. Matt is also a painter and has created many beautiful paintings of animals and other natural scenes. He often serves as interim Administrative Assistant also, picking up some of the tasks that the Project Leader runs out of time to accomplish during the week and offering moral support and serving as a prayer warrior to the team.
Benjamin Moore
Worldbuilder
Benjamin joined us in July of 2012 as an apprentice developer, excited to learn how to make games. He has been faithful in his work every week, learning the worldbuilding tools in Bigworld. Much of the terrain painting and building placement in the first few zones have been done by him. He has overcome scheduling challenges related to his time zone and consistently gets his hours done every week. He is a homeschool graduate living in England with his family.
Erin Floyd
Quest Team Director
Erin joined our team in late 2009 and worked with us for a number of months on quest design and back story, much of the current Profession skill structure is thanks to Erin’s advice and improvements. She took a medical leave of absence for a few years, but has returned to us in August of 2013 to serve as the Director of GM Events and will be available intermittently for Quest Team advice as well. She makes her home in the South with her husband. She has many years experience as a leader, particularly in online environments, including several years experience in a leadership with Sony Online Entertainment. Erin has been cultivating her writing skills in an online role playing game environment where she creates, implements and conducts live quests for a player audience. She also has a passion for using her skills and talents for Jesus and was enthusiastic about joining the Visions game development team at a time in her life when she was seeking the path God wanted her to follow. Between her extensive quest and writing experience, and her devoted faith in Christ, Erin’s contribution to the Visions Quest Team has been priceless.
Honorary Members:
Mark Dynna
Programming Director
Mark was leader the programming efforts for both the Chariots and Visions projects for more than 3 years. He joined us from Canada in April of 2006 and quickly proved his worth as a core member of the team. A family tragedy took him away from us in 2009, and we miss his presence on the team. He still lives with his family in Canada. He brought to the table a degree in Electronic Systems Engineering, and several years programming experience in a professional software development studio. One week after accepting the Lead Programmer position on our team, his paying job also promoted him to Programming Team Lead. The Lord has blessed his faithfulness to this ministry even through difficult times, and he continues to seek the Lord’s will for his life. Mark has also served as an instructor with Torqueschool.com where he taught students how to create games in TGEA. He has worked as a programmer on the Fantasci project as well, and has plans for developing some of his own game ideas with his wife in the future.
George Garman
Senior Programmer
George lives with his wife and children in Pennsylvania, and works for an esteemed organization as a programmer by day and volunteered his time in the evenings to the game development. He joined the development team in December of 2006 and was a major contributor to both the Visions and Chariots game development projects. There were many weeks George worked 40 hours a week at his day job and another 30+ hours on Chariots. We are ever grateful for his contributions. When he isn’t doing programming for work or for fun George also manages his honeybees and cultivates his garden. He is really looking forward to the day when Visions launches and players can experience the fruit of all his labor.
Ross Leland
Programming Team Leader
Ross is a self-taught C++ Programmer, Torque Scripter and 3D artist from Oregon. His work on the team has varied from troubleshooting, to scripting, to level design, to 3D model creation, to wiki editing. Ross joined the Visions team in 2005, and attended the Christian Game Developer’s Conference with the Visions team in 2006 in Portland Oregon. After a Leave of Absence he returned to the development team in March 2008 and remained active on the team through 2012 when his twins were born and pulled him away from development once again.
Branden Snowberger
Game Developer
Branden is a self-taught 3D artist and level designer. Branden works on his own game development project during the day, helps his mother with her home business in the evenings, and has volunteered on our projects intermittently since 2007, though for many months now he has had no extra time to volunteer. He brings to the company experience in 3D art, level design in the world editor, and scripting. Branden enjoys the experience of working with the volunteer team here and looks forward to celebrating our success when Visions launches.
Alicia Oliver
Executive Assistant
Alicia first joined the team in August of 2007 to help Laurene with the overload of administrative tasks. Following a temporary medical leave of absence she rejoined the team in May 2009 and helped us for another year when family medical crisis pulled her away from our volunteer team once again. She performed all manner of administrative and managerial tasks, served as an advisor, and promoted a positive team morale. Her absence is sorely felt. Alicia lives in Texas with her husband and two children, participates in the parent groups at her children’s school, cares for her aging mother nearby, and remains active in the Lions as her health allows. She is excited about the coming launch of Visions and hopes it will spark a new wave of spiritual revival around the world.
Phoebe Ng
Quest Writer and Wiki Manager
Phoebe joined the Visions team during 2010, one of the team’s most difficult years in regards to development related trials. She was instrumental in organizing our quest structure on our team wiki, in helping to structure the Professions and Scripture quests, in converting old quest submissions to a more quest-friendly format, and in writing new creative and engaging quests for the first stage beta of the game that we have been working on. Phoebe is constantly looking for ways to serve God with her gifts and talents. She studied English at the University of California, Los Angeles and graduated in March 2011. She actively serves and leads worship at her church in the San Fernando Valley and is looking forward to publishing her own book one day.
Christine Hwang
2D Graphic Artist
Christine also joined us in 2010 and attends college in California. Christine created many of the icons for the Profession Skills for Visions. We are very grateful for her contribution to the Visions project. She too is diligent in her effort to seek the Lord’s will for her life and to serve the Lord with her gifts and talents in all areas of her life.