PORTFOLIO

ABOUT ME

Hello! I’m Darrell Elston, also known as Gnaw is the gaming world. I am a passionate and experienced game developer with a blend of competitive gaming and technical expertise. With over 10 years of competitive and professional gaming experience, I’ve played at the highest levels across numerous titles.

For the past 8 years, I’ve specialized in game development, primarily using Unreal Engine to bring ideas to life. My deep understanding of gaming—from the player’s perspective to the development process—gives me an advantage in creating engaging, and interesting experiences.

Beyond development, I’ve been involved in the esports scene, managing and coaching competitive teams. My experience as a Twitch streamer for over 10 years has also given me invaluable insight into community building and live content creation. On top of that, I’ve been building computers for 20 years, making me highly adept at understanding and optimizing the hardware that powers gaming and development.

With a career shaped by both playing and creating games, I believe that I bring a combination of technical, creative, and strategic skills to everything I do. I’m always looking for new skills to learn and contribute to the ever-evolving industry of gaming and tech.

COMPETITIVE AND PRO GAMING

Throughout my entire life I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed gaming, specifically PC gaming. Counter-Strike was the first PC game to consume much of my free time when I was in high school. Between 2003 and 2007 I competed in many of the online Counter-Strike leagues. Then, in 2005, I went to my first LAN tournament that was a bring your own computer in Virginia Beach, VA. I graduated high school in 2007 and put competitive gaming on the backburner.

In 2013 I began competing in Counter-Strike again for a couple years until I decided to start playing SMITE. In 2015 I joined Team Dignitas to compete in the Season 1 SMITE Pro League. During the season I helped orchestrate the biggest comeback play in SMITE history. In 2016 the team decided to leave Team Dignitas and start our own organization named Team Eager. Soon after, I lost interest in SMITE but continued to help build the new brand and moved to a manager role.

In 2016 I gained closed beta access to Overwatch and quickly rose to one of the game’s top players. However, for some reason I just wasn’t too interested in the competitive scene of the game. I turned down two offers of tryouts to two different pro teams. I was also nominated by Blizzard to represent USA in the first Overwatch World Cup.

In 2018, during the Fortnite boom, I was signed to Method NA’s Fortnite division. I was the sole member and as the team captain, I was to recruit my 3 other teammates to represent Method. This didn’t last very long as interest in Fortnite fizzled out early.

Accolades & Accomplishments

  • Competed in numerous CAL-M+ Seasons in Counter-Strike 1.6
  • Attended my first LAN for Counter-Strike 1.6 in 2005 at Virginia Beach, VA (3rd Place)
  • 15-1 in CS:GO’s first ESEA-Open season. (Moved to Intermediate)
  • Won ESEA-Intermediate Season 2 for CS:GO (Moved to Invite) – Team picked up by Echo Fox
  • Rank #1 on the Ranked Leaderboard of Smite Season 1
  • Competed in SMITE’s Season 1 Pro League with Team Dignitas (3rd Seed)
  • Traveled to Atlanta for SMITE Season 1 Regional LAN (3rd Place)
  • Simultaneously held 3 Overwatch accounts in the top 100 NA (8th, 36th, and 82nd)
  • Nominated for Overwatch’s first World Cup by Blizzard to represent team USA
  • Signed with Method to build a team in Fortnite for their North American division

CONTENT CREATION ON TWITCH

Throughout my competitive gaming adventures, they have always coincided with streaming on Twitch. I started back in 2014 and built my community through high-level gameplay, and a charismatic personality. For years I considered streaming my full-time job and I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with people across the globe. Doing content on twitch helped me further develop my communication skills and have a larger insight of managing content. In 2015 I achieved Twitch Partner with lots of hard work and a very supportive community. To this day this will be one of my favorite events that have happened in my life.

SKILLS

  • Communication
  • Strong charismatic personality
  • Brand Development
  • Brand Marketing
  • Creativity
  • Engaging

GAME DEVELOPMENT

In roughly 2016 I began self-teaching myself Unreal Engine in my free time. After months of dabbling around I made a Horror VR game that was compatible with my HTC Vive at the time. In 2019 I released my first commercial game called Horror Hunt. Horror Hunt was originally supposed to be a project for a game jam that I wanted to participate in. Because my game idea was a little overly ambitious, I was not able to make the time frame required for the game jam. I had never done a multiplayer game before, so I had to do a lot of research on replication, and how server-client relationships actually work. After almost 6 months I finished the game and through testing with close friends and family, I was surprised that it actually worked! I tossed it on STEAM with no marketing and did a couple updates, then moved on to the next project.

For years after, I did numerous freelance works for many individuals and companies. For about 6 months in 2023 I worked on a personal passion project that had to be delayed for the unforeseeable future due to a sick family member. It is a single player horror game that blends hauntings in reality and in the past recordings that the main character has recorded. Although the game is categorized in the “Lost Tape / Found Footage” genre, it has a more modern twist as all the clues, evidence, and videos are on USB drives that are played from a computer. The game’s attention to detail of sounds and immersion is something I focused on the most. One of the most advanced developments on the project is the computer. The computer acts like a home PC would. The windows can be resized, closed, minimized, and maximized. The windows also contain contents to show images, read text files, and play videos. I intend on finishing the project hopefully in 2025.

In February 2024 a friend wanted me to re-create his Roblox game. Roblox uses the scripting language Lua for their games. Not really knowing Lua, I quickly got to work learning the language and all of Roblox’s natives. 5 months later, in July 2024, we successfully re-launched Auto Rap Battles and I still continue to develop its updates to this day. One of the biggest tasks was learning how to make data safe from exploitation. Roblox has a huge problem with exploiters and their infrastructure for developers is fairly weak. I am proud to say that all of the data for Auto Rap Battles are still secure.

UNREAL ENGINE 4/5 SKILLS

  • 8 years of experience in Unreal Engine 4/5
  • Deep understanding of Object-Oriented Programming
  • Extremely proficient in Blueprint Scripting
  • Clean and modular game designs
  • Understanding of replication and RPC
  • Basic knowledge of Animation Blueprints
  • Creating dynamic audio with Audio Cues or Metasounds
  • Experience with sound occlusion
  • UMG / UI Widgets in 2D or Worldspace
  • Creating full settings options (Video, Audio, General, Sensitivities, etc) and have them save
  • Saving and Loading games and their states
  • Weapon logic with linetrace, projectile, and melee
  • Optimized dynamic lighting
  • Level Streaming
  • Uses of Render Target and Capture 2D
  • Good understanding of Materials and their functions
  • Post-Processing materials for effects including stencils

ROBLOX SKILLS

  • Re-developed a popular game on Roblox
  • Core gameplay loops
  • UI Implementations with animations and sounds
  • Datastores
  • Leaderboards
  • Shop
  • Gamepasses
  • Microtransactions
  • Custom in-game currency
  • Lootboxes
  • AnalyticsService:LogEconomyEvent  for all in-game transactions
  • Custom Backpacks and Inventories
  • Raytraces and Projectiles
  • Playback of sounds both in world space and locally
  • Remote Functions and Remote Events

TEAM MANAGEMENT & COACHING

Shortly after Team Eager was formed, I moved into a management role to help grow the new brand. I ran the website, twitter, and clothing designs, while also managing the newly acquired SMITE Xbox Team and Paladins Team. In addition to managing the SMITE Xbox team, I also was their coach and would sit in to spectate scrims and then review them with the team afterwards.

For the website I mostly kept it up to date with any news the organization would have during the week. One of the most popular features that I would add were guides directly from our fans’ favorite players. The twitter I managed would grow to over 8,000 followers within a few months. I focused on interacting with our fans daily while doing giveaways weekly.

Managing and coaching the Xbox SMITE Team was by far my favorite thing I did while I was with Team Eager. Most of the guys I knew from the SMITE PC scene and played with and against them all the time in Ranked Matchmaking. I would help them have a successful career in the XBOX pro scene with multiple tournament winnings, with the big one being the victory of the SMITE Console World Championship of 2017.

SKILLS

  • Social Media Management
  • Website Development
  • Communication and interpersonal skills
  • Relationship Building
  • Organization and Project Management
  • Conflict Resolution
  • Time Management