Tag Archives: game design

Poker Heroes

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phRole: Lead Game Designer
Genre: Strategy/RPG
Platform: Unity engine for iOS/Android
Launched: Sep 2015

Designed and launched a F2P poker card battling RPG on iOS/Android; Designed and tuned game play mechanics, battle content, card and enemy unit stats, PvP, and social systems in response to live game metrics and playtesting feedback

Our team was acquired by SGN in Dec 2015 and refocused on casual mobile games. I was approached by Virtually Live to join their VR startup as a designer for a new Seattle studio and left SGN shortly thereafter.

 

Unity Development

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unity-logo

Mobile Game Design/Scripting using Unity/C#
Role: Game Design
Genre: unannounced
Platform: Kindle
Launched: in development

 

As part of Amazon Game Studios mobile game development team, my goal was to design, champion, and craft mobile game concepts, and my work included game system designs, content development, game tuning, and C# scripting in Unity 3D.

Jumala

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Game Construction Game, Tools, & Community

Jumala was a game, community, and tools for budding game creators. The service is now closed but here is an article.

I helped develop and launch Jumala.com beta while acting as Producer, Scrum Master, Content Designer, and Outsource Art Manager.

  • Evangelized and facilitated all Agile/Scrum processes within the studio, leading to faster feature iteration and hitting launch goals.
  • Directed art content and coordinated asset production with outsourcing team in China, collaborating internally on content reviews.
  • Assumed stakeholder responsibilities for game design prior to closed beta to launch new game systems, items, and client features.
  • Designed and collaborated on the creation of our internal game item warehouse and catalog management tool.

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Star Wars: Galaxies

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Star Wars MMORPG

We started with a crew of two designers that quickly grew to over ten. Most of the design team collaborated on feature and system design, from concept to implementation.

I helped design the game structure and game mechanics for the massively multi-player online RPG Star Wars: Galaxies. Wrote technical design docs and prototyped server-side game systems in Java. Researched the entire, expanded Star Wars universe and produced detailed asset lists for NPCs, droids, commodities, and more. Designed game systems including Chat, Emotes, Resources, Harvesting, creature AI, and dynamic points-of-interest. I left the project near the end and moved back to Seattle to work at PopCap.

  • Improved designer productivity by developing Java classes to teach common programming tasks, establishing programming guidelines, and developing a suite of test scripts to evaluate daily builds and report issues.
  • Received MVP award for significant progress on AI design and systems scripting.

Here is a community blog post from Lucasarts’ Haden Blackman on Creature AI work that I collaborated on – developing AI behaviors in Java.

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Shadow Madness (PS1)

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Shadow Madness was a turn-based RPG for PS1

Links: Shadow Madness (Wikipedia)

At Crave, my title was Design Director and I was slated to head up the creation of a premiere PS2 title. Several teams hit crunch mode and I offered to dive in and help them ship. Weeks after our release candidate was ready, Crave HQ moved to close the studio.

Note: Ted Woolsey is now Senior Director, Digital Publishing at Microsoft Studios)
Contact: ted_woolsey@hotmail.com

Here is what my boss Ted had to say about my work…

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to introduce Nick Newhard to you. Nick was hired in late Fall, 1998, to be the Director of Design for a new RPG video game product at Crave Entertainment. When he came on board, the production team was busy integrating game assets and scripting Crave’s PlayStation RPG, Shadow Madness, which is shipping on May 29, 1999.

The team was in urgent need of design/scripting talent when Nick joined Crave, so we asked him to learn the complicated scripting language we developed to support the title. Without a complaint or comment, he took to the task and began building screens per the design documents. Nick soon became one of our most creative scripters. He worked well with our engineers and artists, and was able to offer suggestions and redesign scenes to make them more interesting for the player.

After the team completed the integration/scripting of Shadow Madness, another team, at work on Caesar’s Palace for the N64, needed engineering support. Again, and in spite of his Director of Design job description, Nick quickly came up to speed on this project, and began helping to write code and analyze and improve the design. As was the case on Shadow Madness, his peers regarded him as a reliable, creative individual with a strong work ethic.

The management at Crave was impressed with the manner in which Nick approached his tasks. He always had a positive attitude and was an employee in good standing at all times. Unfortunately for Nick and the other employees at Crave in Seattle, Crave has reassessed its strategy regarding internal development, and is divesting itself of its studio in Seattle. We were sorry to see Nick and the other developers, designers and artists leave before their first game even shipped.

At any rate, I can enthusiastically recommend Nick to you, and hope he is give the opportunity to put his skills and creative vision to good use for your company.

Best wishes,

Ted Woolsey

VP Internal Development

Crave Entertainment, Inc.

Spec Ops: Rangers Lead the Way

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Tactical Shooter for the PC

Mark Long from Zombie contacted Monolith for design help, which I provided during a break between projects.

At Zombie, I worked with Javier Garavito and we pitched an array of game play and control scheme changes, some of which became part of the game.

I had a great time with the Zombie folks and was proud of my work there.

Blood Plasma Pak

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Horror-themed first person shooter. Blood: Plasma Pak was our first expansion and included new levels, weapons, enemies, and game play.

  • Metascore: 82
  • User score: 9.2 Universal Acclaim

Links: Q Studios, Metacritic Profile

Reviews: GiantBomb, GOG

Interviews: Over the years, I’ve given a few interviews but this one is my favorite.

As owner and co-founder of Q Studios, I contacted Apogee/3DRealms, negotiated our development contract and advances, and ran the studio’s day-to-day operations.

On Blood, I was the Lead Designer but much of our great content grew organically from our passionate, humorous, and diverse team. Towards the end of the project, I took over programming responsibilities and also negotiated the merger/acquisition with Monolith. We repurchased the publishing rights to Blood and released the game on our own terms, garnering great reviews even to this day.

I championed and communicated the product vision at all levels, led play-balancing of game systems, weapons, enemy AI, level design and difficulty, and multiplayer functionality. I corralled feedback from the core team, QA department, play-testers, and executive team. I collaborated with internal and external Project Managers to keep various projects on track. I also instituted a formal game pitch submission process to review and assess new concept proposals.

  • Negotiated the merger of Q Studios and Monolith Productions
  • Assumed Lead Programmer role from alpha through release for both Blood and the Blood: Plasma Pak add-on.
  • Successfully completed last-minute change requests to add competitive game features, such as CTF play.

 

Blood

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Horror-themed first person shooter.

  • Metascore: 82
  • User score: 9.2 Universal Acclaim

Links: Q Studios, Metacritic Profile

Reviews: GiantBomb, GOG

Interviews: Over the years, I’ve given a few interviews but this one is my favorite.

As owner and co-founder of Q Studios, I contacted Apogee/3DRealms, negotiated our development contract and advances, and ran the studio’s day-to-day operations.

On Blood, I was the Lead Designer but much of our great content grew organically from our passionate, humorous, and diverse team. Towards the end of the project, I took over programming responsibilities and also negotiated the merger/acquisition with Monolith. We repurchased the publishing rights to Blood and released the game on our own terms, garnering great reviews even to this day.

I championed and communicated the product vision at all levels, led play-balancing of game systems, weapons, enemy AI, level design and difficulty, and multiplayer functionality. I corralled feedback from the core team, QA department, play-testers, and executive team. I collaborated with internal and external Project Managers to keep various projects on track. I also instituted a formal game pitch submission process to review and assess new concept proposals.

  • Negotiated the merger of Q Studios and Monolith Productions
  • Assumed Lead Programmer role from alpha through release for both Blood and the Blood: Plasma Pak add-on.
  • Successfully completed last-minute change requests to add competitive game features, such as CTF play.

 

Cancellations

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Alas, some games are not meant to be. I’ve worked on a few cancelled projects. The most painful was the demise of the Privateer Online MMORPG, cancelled a mere two weeks after our GDD, TDD, and biz plan were approved (and funded!) by EA.

Here is a list of cancelled projects I worked on:

Unannounced Azada-series Game & Puzzle Design, Lua Scripting, Writing
Azure / Game Community Producer / Game Designer
PopCap “Solitaire” and others Game Programming / Game Play Design
Privateer Online / MMORPG Senior Game Designer – Systems
Renegade Legion / CRPG Engine & Tools Programmer

Links related to Privateer Online for the morbidly curious: