Hedlund began his career at Japanese publisher
Koei in 1990, which had established a North American subsidiary, Koei Corporation, in California two years earlier. Working at Koei both in Northern California and Japan, he either created or was the lead designer for a number of games including
Liberty or Death,
Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye,
Gemfire and
Saiyuki: Journey West. In 1995, shortly after Hedlund left the company, the subsidiary ceased its game development efforts. After working on an unreleased
Lord of the Ringsbased title for
Electronic Arts in the early ’90s, Hedlund began working for the
Sega Technical Institute (STI) in 1994, where, as an artist and game designer, he worked on titles like
Comix Zone,
The Ooze and
Sonic X-treme. He also worked on
Die Hard Arcade, collaborating with members of Sega’s AM1 division. In 1996, three years after he first interviewed with the company, Hedlund ran into the three founders of Condor. He was impressed by the potential of their latest game,
Diablo, and immediately joined the team taking on the lead design role. Three months before the release of
Diablo,
Blizzard acquired Condor and renamed the company Blizzard North.
Diablo would go on to become one of the most highly rated games of 1996. In the wake of
Diablo’s success, Hedlund designed
Diablo II which performed well (For more details, visit
Diablo II Awards and Sales). While at Blizzard, he also participated in the design of both
StarCraft and the
Diablo II: Lord of Destruction expansion pack. StarCraft was the best-selling PC game of 1998 and received numerous Game of the Year awards.
Diablo II: LOD was released in 2001, and helped to “reinforce the staying power of an already legendary RPG”. It too received numerous awards, including several for Best Expansion Pack of the Year, and tied with
Baldur’s Gate II for Best RPG of the Year. On April 17, 2000, Hedlund announced that he would be leaving Blizzard North “as soon as his responsibilities for
Diablo II (had) been fulfilled” in order to start a new game-development firm called Full-On Amusement Company with business partners, programmers, and artists from
Virgin Interactive,
Sega,
Sony Computer Entertainment,
Electronic Arts, and
Maxis. During this time, Hedlund collaborated with director
David Lynch on his unreleased
Woodcutters from Fiery Ships game project. Later in 2000, Hedlund joined
Konami as the company’s Creative Director and worked on titles such as the
Frogger and
Contra series. In 2002, he went to work as Creative Director for
Ubisoft/
Red Storm Entertainment on games such as
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon 2 and
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Lockdown, as well as contributing to
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. He also spent some time with
Oddworld Inhabitants doing foundational work for
Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath. Beginning in August 2004, Hedlund signed on with
Perpetual Entertainment as design director for
Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, officially announced in March 2005. The game was shown at
E3 2006 and received several “Best of Show” awards, with particular notice being paid to its innovative “minion” system. Although it was well into “content complete”
beta testing by September 2007, the technology behind the game could not be stabilized, and after numerous delays and several rounds of layoffs the game was “indefinitely suspended” in mid-October 2007 even as further stability testing was underway. The game was published in June 2011. After Perpetual closed in 2008, Hedlund continued his career in game development across both independent studios and large commercial publishers. Seeing the growing mass-market potential of
free-to-play and
social games, Hedlund founded Turpitude, a design consultancy that worked with clients including
Disney,
Zynga, and
Playdom on monetization systems and social gameplay design. He also presented talks on game design during this period, including
Sticky from the Start at the 2008
Game Developers Conference, which examined player retention and engagement in social games. In 2010, Turpitude secured seed funding and pivoted to social game development, releasing
Wedding Street in partnership with
The Knot magazine. During this period, Hedlund also worked with Mad Otter Games as a designer on the MMORPG
Villagers & Heroes, which was released in 2011. Later in 2011, Hedlund joined San Francisco–based studio nWay Games, where he served as Vice President of Creative on the action role-playing game
ChronoBlade. Developed for web and mobile platforms, the game was released internationally through regional publishing partnerships. In South Korea,
ChronoBlade was published by
Netmarble, with nWay expanding its development operations to include a studio in
Seoul during the game’s global rollout. In 2015, nWay announced a partnership with NetEase to publish
ChronoBlade (
simplified Chinese: 时空之刃,
shíkōng zhī rèn pinyin, “Blade of Time and Space”) in mainland China, following its unveiling at a
NetEase press event in
Beijing. Hedlund worked extensively with development and publishing teams in Seoul and
Hangzhou during this period. Following his tenure at nWay, Hedlund held senior creative and design leadership roles at Zynga and its
London-based subsidiary Gram Games, where he served as Vice President of Creative. During this period, he contributed to the development and live operation of mobile titles including
Merge Dragons!, which became one of Gram Games’ most commercially successful releases and a significant part of Zynga’s mobile portfolio following its acquisition of the studio. While living in London, Hedlund was recruited as Vice President of Design for
King’s New Games division. Following
Microsoft’s acquisition of
Activision Blizzard, King leadership indicated that the company shifted focus toward maintaining and evolving existing titles rather than launching new games globally. In a 2024 interview, King’s president stated that several test projects remained under evaluation and that development on
Rebel Riders had been paused to prioritize other initiatives. In 2023, Hedlund was appointed Vice President of Design at UK-based fitness gaming company Quell for its debut title
Shardfall, following a $10 million Series A funding round led by
Tencent. Press coverage highlighted the game’s blend of fitness and gameplay, with reviewers noting its engaging mix of combat and cardio while also citing technical issues such as performance inconsistencies. In 2024, Quell announced it would discontinue active development of the Impact hardware platform, citing financial sustainability concerns. The company transitioned
Shardfall to a perpetual offline version following the discontinuation of live services. ==Recognition and awards==