About Me

If you are looking for my resume, you can view it on LinkedIn:

• http://www.linkedin.com/in/ashentemper

My name is Sean Dahlberg, although some of you may know me by my online moniker “Ashen Temper”. I live in Austin, Texas. I’ve been officialy in the game development industry for almost 11 years now but I’ve been playing computer games since I was in elementary school on my next door neighbors computer (back when computers weren’t very common… Hey, I’m in my 30s!). For over the last decade, I’ve worked in various fields in the game industry but mainly in Community Management and Game Systems Design. Currently I’m working as a Community Manager at Spiceworks, so while not in the gaming industry, I am still furthering my career at an amazing company with some fantastic people.

I’m originally from Illinois but I’ve lived in quite a few places; various cities in Texas, Hawaii, California, American Samoa, and even Raiatea (one of the French Polynesia islands). I graduated from Fredericksburg High School in 1992 and shortly joined the U.S. Marine Corps where I served with Combat Service Support Group-1 until I was honorably discharged in 1998 (yes, I was one of those weird people who signed up for 6 years instead of four). I stayed in California for a few more years after being discharged where I worked for a company called Catalyst Development.

During that time, I was playing an online game called Ultima Online on the Pacific Shard. I played it for a little over three years where I did a short stint in a guild called The Knights of Glory and Beer and then led my own guild called the Spirits of Vengeance (SOV) and even ran my own shard “newspaper” called the Pacific Shard Times. About the last year of playing UO, I also was Ldy Death and created a “nation” called the Town of the Endless Graveyard (TEG) and played as ImaBumpkin from Tryon’s ImaNewbie Does Britannia (I wanted to be ImaPK but… *shrugs*).

I then started to play Everquest when it first came out on the Rallos Zek server and joined the roleplaying community there called Rallos Zek Chronicles. I began as Anduril Valar and created the original Elven Guard guild but later also created Kallystra who was the “Daughter of Hate” in the Straylight Saga series.

About six months into Everquest, I heard about a game called Carnage.net which later changed to Shadowbane. The game wasn’t out (and wouldn’t be for some time) but what we did know about it made us want it. I was working at the Vault Network at the time and became a Site Manager for the Shadowbane Vault. Then during E3 2000, I was asked a weird question by Todd “Warden” Coleman who was the VP of Marketing at Wolfpack Studios (the team making Shadowbane): Would I be interested in applying for their Internet Relations Manager position?

Truth be told, up until that question, I really never thought of working in the game development industry. What I did with all the different communities in UO, EQ, and SB was my hobby. But the idea definitely piqued my interest when the question was raised and come June 1st, 2000, I was the first Internet Relations Manager for Wolfpack Studios. I moved from Yucca Valley, CA to Austin, TX and on my first day there, I got to buy myself a computer (an E-Machine of all systems, haha!) and had a pool table and couch as my working area.

While at Wolfpack, I went from the IRM to the Live Event Team Lead and then to the Community Manager when Ubisoft aquired the company in March 2004. Later on, I also became a Game System Designer. Most of those years were spent on Shadowbane; I saw it through its development process, launch, two expansion packs (Rise of Chaos and Throne of Oblivion), and when it changed from a subscription-based to a free-to-play business model. I also worked on a few other projects that never made it to official announcements until the day Ubisoft announced it was closing down Wolfpack Studios in May 2006.

In June 2006, I helped form a new company from the ashes of Wolfpack called Stray Bullet Games. I still worked on Shadowbane and an untitled MMO but this time I was as the Lead Designer. I made a lot of changes to Shadowbane, some that people loved… some that they hated. Then in February 2008, I announced that I would be leaving Stray Bullet Games. I loved the company, had a lot of great friends there, believed in the project we were working on (as well as Shadowbane), but I got an offer I just couldn’t turn down. I was offered the position of Community Manager for BioWare’s upcoming MMO (at the time, the title wasn’t officially announced.).

I mean, it’s BioWare. The makers of a some of my favorite games: Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Knights of the Old Republic. And, on top of that, its the Star Wars IP. And while I love game design, I have to admit that I missed doing community management. Furthermore, the company was in my backyard… here in Austin (and I have to admit, I love this city); I wouldn’t have to move for it. So, yeah, I would of been a fool had I let the opportunity pass me up.

And that is where I stayed for about the next two and a half years. Star Wars: The Old Republic was (and I am sure still is) an amazing project, made some good friends, and learned a lot while working on it. I had the priviledge to hand pick my team and had a large role in building the pre-launch community. And I got to work alongside some of the most talented people in the industry… there wasn’t a single section that didn’t do an amazing job; artists, writers, designers, qa, IS/IT, Audio, web, marketing, and while I am very biased, the community department. But as we all experience in life, it was time for a change.

Recently, I started as a Senior Game Systems Designer at UTV True Games on a project called Faxion Online (currently still in development). It is a free-to-play MMO that takes the focus off of leveling and puts it on fast-paced skirmish (PvP) gameplay. The game takes place in a fantasy war-torn world called Limbo where the forces of Heaven and Hell are engaged in a battle for dominance. Players join the war by battling over control of the realms and denizens of the Seven Deadly Sins. While Faxion Online is a traditional MMO, it puts emphasis on customizable (multi-)class advancement, tactical and strategic combat, territorial control, having fun, and getting to know the community you’re participating in.

Unfortunately, my time at UTV Ignition (which was True Games) came to and end. The studio was closed down and the downtime gave me a chance to really re-evaluate what it is I wanted to do with not just my career but my life. For personal reasons, I really wanted to stay in Austin (although there was one company that could of seriously made me reconsider that) and, while I loved my time in design, I really wanted to get back into the community field. I lucked out and found exactly what I was looking for when I was offered the position of Community Manager at Spiceworks, Inc. While I was no longer in the gaming industry, I get to further my career in the profession I want. On top of that, Spiceworks is an amazing company and was recently touted by Forbes as the “Future of Media“. This gives me a chance to learn community management from another view and also lets me be just a regular gamer for a while!

I joined Spiceworks back in 2011. Let’s fast forward to 2017 when we unveiled our new logo. Why the new logo? While helping IT professionals was still the primary goal, we’ve evolved over the years as the IT landscape has evolved so we can help as many IT pros as possible. Internally, we generally refer to the “chapters ” of the Spiceworks story:

• Chapter 1 – Ad-Supported IT Software. In 2006 (before I started at Spiceworks here), Spiceworks started with a free, ad-supported app to scan networks. Over time Spiceworks added the Help Desk and more features. Hundreds of thousands of IT pros trusted us to run that behind a firewall in exchange for relevant IT ads and emails.

• Chapter 2 – The Rise of the Community. While the community started to form shortly after our first release it really took off in 2011 (Note, I also started in 2011) and over the next four years grew tremendously to over 4 million visitors every month. This meant more people were getting value every month from the community than the applications. The company also grew significantly and candidly got too big with over 400 employees.

• Chapter 3 – Make It More About Your Business. In early 2016 we realized that for all we had done we could do so much more if we made Spiceworks more about the organizations in which you work – but to do so we would need to invest a lot in how we handle and process data. We also realized we needed to be a leaner and more efficient company if we wanted to best serve the more than 7 million IT pros that were coming to Spiceworks every month!

And this is about when we transitioned to our new logo. As the company started to turn from a software and advertising company to an internet company, we wanted to update our brand identity, too (you can read more about that here).

Much like Spiceworks changed, so did I. My original focus at Spiceworks was to foster the brand representation program. Over the years, I was promoted to Senior Community Manager where lead the Community Management Team and then later was promoted to Director of Community as my responsibilities grew to encompass more (much of this you can see on my LinkedIn profile so I won’t go dive too much into that).

Recently, things changed again. First, we started (and restarted) Chapter 4 of Spiceworks:

• Chapter 4 – The IT Marketplace. This is what we started to cover at SpiceWorld 2018. In short, we have become the largest IT “marketplace” of IT on the planet and we can now do a lot more to better enable direct connections between buyers and sellers, driven by the insights and intelligence we have on what problems people are trying to solve. That has already shown up in features such as Fast Answers and our intent segments (companies that are in market for various technologies).

During this time, my role expanded a bit more as I also undertook management of our Scrum Masters (we opted to call them Agile Team Coaches (ATC) since we were doing more of “ScrumBut” and then some teams worked better under a Kanban methodology so the Agile Coach title made more sense.

Then came August 2019 where Spiceworks was acquired by Ziff Davis B2B. As with most acquisitions, it did cause some change in personnel and my teams were effected by it, but not all of it negative. I maintained my position of Director of Community but I also took on some new team members from the Toolbox community management team. In addition, it brought some new challenges (and we Community people, we do love good challenges)… Under Ziff Davis B2B are multiple properties that serve various segments of businesses such as Toolbox, MarTech Advisor, and HRTechnologist. While they all have their own verticals they appeal to (and thus, their own culture), it brings up the idea of unifying them under one network in more than title (but in a way where they each keep their own unique identity).

Speaking of brand identity, recently,  we’ve had another change. While Spiceworks the property still (and will) remains, the company has morphed into Spiceworks Ziff Davis (SWZD) in March 2020. While I know many are afraid of change (it can be a bit chaotic), this has been more of a gradual change. We’ve slowly been working with our counterparts in the various ZD B2B companies and merging into one. For me, it’s been helpful because it’s opened up resources and technology we didn’t have access to previously. And some of those resources are people, people who are equally as passionate about what they do. Due to this, we felt the organization needed a brand and identity of it’s own. Which is where Spiceworks Ziff Davis comes in.

And, that brings us up-to-date, at least for now!