Team

Meet Our Team

Who We Are

With the formation of Deck Nine, we are bringing together our two passions; meaningful storytelling and rich gameplay. We love believable characters, living in rich worlds, tackling emotionally challenging themes and responsive stories that embrace player’s choices in meaningful ways. We have attracted world-class storytellers, artists, and game developers from around the world to help us craft our vision. The studio is home to talented individuals with extensive backgrounds in film, television and award-winning games.

They are drawing on their experiences on games like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and TV shows like Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders to help us bring rich and nuanced storytelling to our games. Our studio is equipped with everything needed to conceive, write, produce and deliver award-winning games. Complete with our own proprietary technology, in-house motion capture, and audio recording facilities, we control the full content pipeline to guarantee the best games possible.

Meet The Deck Nine Team

Mark Lyons

CEO / Founder

Mark is an innovative technology expert who has been delivering successful games for the last 25+ years on multiple generations of platforms. In 1997 he founded Idol Minds and built it on the premise that innovative technology is the best enabler for creativity.

Lucie Lyons

Treasurer

Prior to getting involved with Deck Nine Games, Lucie worked as an engineer in aerospace, designing thrust reverser parts for commercial jet aircraft. Now, she works with numbers in a different way. Lucie has been with Idol Minds/Deck Nine from the beginning serving many different roles, now as our Treasurer.

Jeff Litchford

Chief Operating Officer

For 30 years, Jeff has used his experience in art, design and production to lead teams to build memorable, fun and engaging games.

Stephan Frost

Game Director

With a fifteen year career in games and a background in design, writing, and production, Frost works with the Deck Nine team to deliver engaging story and gameplay experiences on the Expanse project. Creative development with teams and strong iteration process during development has been the focus for Frost at Deck Nine.

Todd Bolinger

Technology Director

Todd uses his considerable experience and skillset to direct the technical elements of our studio, empowering our talented team of developers to push the boundaries of narrative games. Having shipped multiple titles from technical leadership positions, he always has an eye on how we make games better, faster, and to the highest quality. He also builds some pretty cool things.

Andrew Weatherl

Art Director

Andrew is our studio art director. He is a multi-talented artist who combines the rare skills of artistry and technical ability. 10+ years ago he started in the game industry as a 3D character artist and over the years expanded into concept art, vfx, animation and leadership. Under his direction, Deck Nine is producing artwork that will inspire and excite generations of fans.

Felice Kuan

Narrative Director

Felice Kuan leads a talented team of Deck Nine writers and narrative designers. She was a staff writer on Life is Strange: Before the Storm and a senior staff writer on Life is Strange: True Colors and is a member of The Game Awards Future Class 2021. Felice has an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU and brings her love of theatre and LARPing to the creation of dynamic and unforgettable narrative experiences

Jonathan Zimmerman

Narrative Director

Jonathan Zimmerman is the Narrative Director on Expanse: A Telltale Project. He served the same role on Life is Strange: True Colors and was a Staff Writer on Life is Strange: Before the Storm. Before joining Deck Nine, Jon received his MFA from USC School of Cinematic Arts and taught creative writing and interactive fiction. Although he grew up dreaming of being a ticket taker at the circus who is also a giant, he’s pretty sure this is the best job in the world.

Jonathan Stauder

Game Director

Stauder has spent nearly a decade in the games industry. Coming from WB and Telltale Games, Jonathan brings his years of experience leading marquee narrative titles - including Tales from the Borderlands and Batman: The Telltale Series - to new ambitions at Deck Nine.

A View from the Inside:

"I love the work-life balance here thanks to the pressure free culture around working late. This allows me to maintain a fulfilling personal life and pursue my hobbies, such as making music and spending time with my family."

"My career in video games started here at Deck Nine. When I began, I could measure my progress by how many words I recognized in a meeting, as I absorbed the nuances of a novel industry. Eventually, recognition evolved into understanding and innovation, which continues to be how I grow daily - adapting strategies to new projects, people, and goals."

"As part of the Tech Art Department at Deck Nine, we connect Mocap, Modelling, Animation, and other bits together for the game. One kind of daily challenge is how to best handle fixes/improvements for each department, making sure that what will benefit one department working on the game doesn't negatively affect another, preferably helps them too!"