About Me

Michael Wahba at Maxis (Electronic Arts)

Writer, designer, and software engineer working across indie games, triple-A studios, and the USC MFA program.

I build across disciplines. At Maxis (Electronic Arts) I engineer the developer toolchain for The Sims. As designer and director on Egregore I led a 20-person team through USC's Advanced Games Program. As Lead Writer on Atrio: The Dark Wild I designed and wrote the narrative, lore, and dialogue for a commercially shipped Steam release. As XR Technical Lead on The Immersive Archive, the project won Best in Show at AWE 2024.

A background in synthetic biology, computer science, and creative writing gives me an unusual angle: I think in systems, write with precision, and design for the humans using what I build.

Skills & Disciplines

Design & Direction

  • Systems Design
  • Creative Direction
  • Production Leadership
  • Technical Design
  • UX & Player Experience

Engineering & Tools

  • Tools Engineering (C#/.NET/WPF)
  • XR Development (Unity/OpenXR)
  • Unreal Engine 5 (C++/Blueprints)
  • Python, React/TypeScript
  • Godot

Writing & Narrative

  • Narrative Design
  • Worldbuilding & Lore
  • Dialogue Systems
  • Story Structure
  • Creative Writing

Other Projects & Experiments

Additional work, prototypes, and game jam entries.