Systems Design • Narrative • Technical Design

At Blizzard Entertainment, I worked on the systems team of the now-cancelled unannounced survival game. I spearheaded design for in-game systems including certain player verbs and crafting, and collaborated on systems for survival mechanics and player housing. In addition to my work on the systems design team, I also stepped in to assist in architecting developer tools as well as implement quest and narrative content. Working mainly in a state-based scripting language in Blizzard’s proprietary engine, I created data-driven systems, features, and reusable content, and crafted high quality core game mechanics and engine systems. I endeavored to create systems and tools to enthrall players, and worked with stakeholders and other disciplines to create features that would live up to the technical and quality bars expected from a Blizzard game.

crafting and world SYSTEMS

I led the design and implementation of multiple large-scale features and game systems, including player crafting and specializations. We wanted it to be a game that would appeal to all types of players — from hardcore PvP/PvE combat-focused players, to those looking for a more cozy survival-lite type of experience, or those more interested in exploration and discovery and everything in between — so the design team worked to create an experience that would not only accommodate various playstyles, but promote cooperation and connection between players. Various playstyles would rely on each other to support and enhance gameplay and progression, as well as promote connections between players. I owned design for player crafting, which was one of the most important factors in promoting this cooperative structure of gameplay. While all players would engage with the crafting systems, we wanted to give enough diversification in the mechanics and progression such that different types of players would be engaged and excited by crafting, and different specializations would not only result in different items and progression paths, but would also involve different gameplay mechanics designed around their focus and the type of player most likely to engage with that specialization. The majority of my time on the project was focused on the design of these crafting specializations, not only the theming and progression of each one, but how we could execute on fantasy fulfillment in the interactions of each in a way that would attract and engage different types of players.

I did extensive competitor research into a variety of games to support our designs for the crafting specialization interactions, verbs, and minigames. We wanted to create specializations that would support various playstyles — for example, a specialization that would synergize well with combat systems and a more action-focused playstyle, or a more cozy specialization intended for players who enjoyed games like Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, and the like that would afford a more laid-back experience, or a more adventure-focused specialization geared towards players who enjoyed the process of discovery and exploration in single-player survival games. My work on this was not solely pen-and-paper designs, I also implemented prototypes Blizzard’s proprietary state-based engine.

In addition to the general design and gameplay of these crafting mechanics, I was also responsible for progression and balance between the specializations. Like any Blizzard title, we needed to create a game with a long live-service lifetime in mind, and thus I needed to design systems that were not only engaging at the start, but had an interesting progression and would not become tedious as players went through them over months and years. While fantasy fulfillment and making the interactions or minigames exciting was a major focus, I also worked to design them in such a way that they were easy to learn but difficult to master, to keep players engaged over the long-term, and continually challenge and surprise them. Rather than merely relying upon crafting which would require progressively more rare ingredients to scale progression, I wanted to make the crafting interactions themselves something that would progress with player skill, and wouldn’t become rote when done repeatedly over the course of years. To that goal, I worked to build in skill progression to the interactions themselves, but also task automation as well as design for new mechanics to challenge the skills of advanced players.

technical development

In addition to design work, I implemented a large portion of the features on which I worked as a generalist technical developer, taking features end-to-end from design to playable prototype. I created content and scalable features in Blizzard’s proprietary state-based scripting engine, striving to create data-driven, dynamic systems and content which could be easily used by a variety of developers both technical and non-technical alike, and that would scale well with long-term development and large amounts of content.