lafarren.com

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About

Personal

Hi, my name is Darren Lafreniere, but friends call me Lafarren. That's pretty much all there is to me.

Professional

I moved to the Boston area in 1998 for my first programming job. I was lucky enough to be hired by Looking Glass Studios, a now-defunct game company in Cambridge, known for developing critically acclaimed games that garnered cult followings yet failed to sell big numbers. Many brilliant people worked there, and I learned a great deal from them. After Looking Glass closed in 2000, I joined a startup company called Buzzpad, which was founded by a few ex-Looking Glass employees. The company applied networking techniques from multiplayer gaming to the business world, in the form of a peer-to-peer platform. In 2002, a potential buy-out bid fell through, and the company folded.

I then joined Irrational Games, a talented game development studio that also grew from the roots of Looking Glass. While enjoying the local flavor of Southie, I had the opportunity to work on several systems for the game SWAT 4, such as animation, AI behaviors and collision avoidance, and some multiplayer code. On BioShock I made quaternions do my bidding while implementing the game's animation system, and the game was released to critical and financial success. In 2008 I left Irrational for a couple of years to freelance and diversify my skill set, doing a bit of web development and indie game work. In early 2010 I returned to Irrational Games to work on BioShock Infinite. I'm now at oneZero Financial Systems working on tech that moves data within the forex market.