SUMMARY
Flavor TExt
I joined Vidaly's remote startup team comprised of an EdTech entrepreneur, a software engineer, and a wellbeing education expert to help them make their first educational game.
I used my background as a games professor to teach them about how games work, how games are made, and how to support player choice.
I used my background in working on educational games to inform how we approached the delivery of educational content and assessments we gave the player in the game.
As the creative director, I wore the hats of
game designer, narrative designer and art director
on a daily basis to support our team's operations.
Over the course of development, we added 3 incredible contributors to our team: a UX designer, a technical artist, and a senior game programmer.
SUMMARY OF CONTRIBUTIONS
I was the designer responsible for __________. I built spaces, planned and scripted gameplay, told visual stories, and acted as ambassador of the player's experience in the level.
I inherited responsibility for AI system iteration and tuning part-way through the project.
I was the sole designer assigned to the PC port, where I worked to ensure our UI survived the transition to a new platform (and was improved!).
I built a press demo and played various demos live at press events and trade shows such as E3, a visit to the Game Informer offices with Ken Levine, and a presentation to media in New York.
I traveled alone to Tokyo to represent Irrational for the Japanese launch of the game.
GALLERY
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HIGHLIGHTS
Read on if you'd like to:
See highlights from Neptune's Bounty.
See more detail about my development process, with case studies.
Warning: text. Lots of it.
THE FIGHTING MCDONAGH TAVERN
A key location in Neptune's Bounty. I built the layout and crafted moment-to-moment gameplay.
This served as an exemplar of what good "spoke" (as in hub-and-spoke) spaces should feel like in BioShock in terms of:
Pacing and variety of play experience.
Amount of scripted moments vs. emergent and systems-driven gameplay.
Spatial scale.
Variety of space types and themes (eg. there's a bar area, wine cellar, basement office, and upstairs hotel rooms).
Amount of occlusion and thus "mystery" created by not being able to view an entire space from any single vantage point (the bar area is a great example of this: an open space with pillars and other vision blockers).
Amount of verticality (eg. the vertical element of a balcony overlooking the bar area).
Elements of the space were even retooled and re-used in BioShock 2, and there is a Fighting McDonagh's multiplayer map.
Moments such as a splicer wandering into the bar with a security camera in tow, or a Big Daddy showing up as you go to leave the bar feel like unscripted, systemic moments. They were however scripted. As much as possible I pushed for scripted moments to feel organic and natural. I wanted to blur the line between systemic and scripted moments so that it all feels the same to the player.
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SUMMARY OF CONTRIBUTIONS
I was the designer responsible for __________. I built spaces, planned and scripted gameplay, told visual stories, and acted as ambassador of the player's experience in the level.