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Resume

Anthony Alvarez

Card game designer · Creative Director
Los Angeles, CA · a.s.alvarez0001@gmail.com · asa-games.com
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Summary

Card game designer with a shipped-QA background. Creator and Creative Director of Masterworks of Horror, designed as both a real-time digital TCG and a printed tabletop set. Seventeen-plus years as a competitive TCG player, including multiple World Championship appearances, with AAA quality assurance on titles such as The Last of Us Part II Remastered.

Experience

Creator & Creative Director · Masterworks of Horror, USC Advanced Games Program
Feb 2025 to May 2026
  • Pitched the concept and won the #1 slot out of 90+ pitches, then led a team of 60 from ideation to a near release-candidate beta.
  • Designed every card and all systems of a real-time PvP TCG: the keyword system, three-act structure, zone-and-lane board, and resource economy, and owned final balance.
  • Wrote and iterated the full physical tabletop ruleset and built the card templates and spot-foil print masks the set is built on.
  • Drove physical production with printers overseas and in the US to deliver real, sealed booster packs.
  • Designed a collaboration set with twelve other USC game teams, distributed at the USC Games Expo, and integrated the cards into the digital build with engineering.
  • Authored documentation across every department and managed scheduling for the team.
Quality Assurance Tester · Nexon America, MapleStory
Mar 2024 to Aug 2024
  • Credited on MapleStory patch releases; monitored the live environment and ran ad-hoc and new-build testing on a twenty year old live-ops game.
  • Wrote clear, concise bug reports that communicated across a language barrier to the development team in Korea, and delivered daily progress reports to production.
  • Helped manage Confluence, TestRail, and Kanban, and streamlined the reporting pipeline.
Game Test Analyst (QA) · Sony Interactive Entertainment, via DZ ConneX
Oct 2022 to Mar 2024
  • Credited on The Last of Us Part II Remastered as the primary Focus Build functional tester, experiencing the full cycle of shipping a AAA title.
  • Logged and tracked issues in bug databases, authored TestRail cases for other testers, and tested PC and PS5 builds; also served as Development QA on an unreleased title.

Competitive TCG

  • 17+ years of competitive play across Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dragon Ball Super, TEPPEN, Battle Spirits Saga, and Star Wars: Unlimited.
  • Five-time TEPPEN World Championship competitor.
  • Top 16 at the Battle Spirits Saga World Championship, with 15 Top 16 or better finishes at BSS Grand Opens and Pro Tours.

Education

M.S., Game Design and Development · University of Southern California
2024 to 2026
B.A., Art & Design: Games and Playable Media · UC Santa Cruz
2020 to 2022

Skills

Design: Card and systems design, game balancing, rules writing, paper and digital prototyping, cross-department documentation.

Production & Tools: Photoshop and print production (templates, spot-foil masks), Unity, Unreal, Godot (intermediate), Jira, Confluence, TestRail, OBS, Adobe Suite, Microsoft Office.

Contact

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