About

Hi, I'm Toby. I'm a gameplay engineer at Blizzard, working on Overwatch. This is a place I write down things I'm thinking about — sometimes about software, sometimes not. It's a garden, which means most of what's here is in progress. Stick around if that sounds interesting.

Work

I've been at Blizzard for several years working on Overwatch's gameplay systems. Most of what I do lives in the space between physics, netcode, and the stuff that makes movement and combat feel right. I care a lot about getting the feel right — the part of games most people don't consciously notice but immediately feel when it's off.

Before that, I worked on [earlier role / studio — fill this in]. The through-line has always been real-time systems: things that have to work correctly, responsively, and at 60 frames per second.

Life outside work

Outside of work I play music — mostly guitar and some piano. I've been at it long enough to know I'll never be good, which turns out to make it more enjoyable.

I spend a lot of time outdoors when I can: running, hiking, the occasional bike ride. There's something about sustained physical effort that clears my head in a way nothing else does.

I also play games, which feels slightly recursive given my job. Mostly single-player these days — I find it easier to appreciate the craft when the outcome doesn't matter.

How to reach me

Email is the best way: toby@tobyv.me. I'm also on GitHub. I don't check social media reliably, but I'm on Bluesky occasionally.

Colophon

This site is built with Astro 5, styled with Tailwind CSS v4, and deployed on Cloudflare Pages. Typefaces are JetBrains Mono (chrome & UI) and Newsreader (prose), both self-hosted. Search is powered by Pagefind. The source is on GitHub.