Kevin Saunders

Kevin D. Saunders is an American video game designer and producer, best known for his roles in developing Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer (Producer and Lead Designer), Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir (Producer), and Torment: Tides of Numenera (Project Director).

Early life and education Kevin Saunders created his first game at just six years old, building a ZX81 version of the Intellivision title Astrosmash. His enthusiasm for programming carried into his college years, where he focused on building AI systems for natural‑language processing. His graduate work in environmental engineering involved multi‑day lab experiments that required round‑the‑clock monitoring, giving him long stretches of downtime that he used to explore online games. He went on to work as a designer at Westwood Studios as part of Electronic Arts (on Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour and Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth), before becoming a senior designer and producer at Obsidian Entertainment (on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords, He next joined inXile Entertainment, where he served in a production role on Wasteland 2 before helping Torment: Tides of Numenera become, at the time, the most successful Kickstarter ever. He then returned to Nexon, where he served as Head of Studio on the company's Nebula project.

In addition to this work, Saunders served as Creative Director at Alelo, where he led the development of an award-winning language-learning RPG. Saunders also authored a college text on game interface design (Game Development Essentials: Game Interface Design). He served as the principal NLP designer at Embodied, the company behind the children's social robot Moxie. In 2019, he co‑founded Digimancy Entertainment, an independent studio dedicated to narrative‑driven RPGs and hybrid RPG titles