DPS Games - Lead Systems Designer
DPS Games 8/2023 - present
Lead Systems Game Designer- On Steel Hunters
Lead Systems Game Designer- On Steel Hunters
- Lead designer of the Systems stream, covering 3C’s, UI, and core gameplay
- Lead a studio-wide initiative to refactor the project’s tech debt and build robust internal pipelines that allow for the rapid iteration and delivery of content for a live-service game, as well as provide quicker onboarding and reduced bespoke working practices within the studio
- Manages a team of designers, responsible for leading workshops across the entire design
department, and champions new development methodologies within the studio - Creates and implements design for core features such as gun feel, 3Cs, in-battle progression
and UI
I came into DPS August of 2023 as the Lead Systems Designer of, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Systems stream. DPS was organised in a pod structure, operating with several independent but ultimately co-dependent 'streams' that each were responsible for a specific area of the game; EG the Hunters stream (the playable characters), the mode stream, the meta stream, etc. Out of all the streams, Systems was the slightly unique one insofar that we sat at the intersection between every other stream. We handled shared features, and some that could be argued to belong in any or no camp. In-match progression, re-join in progress, all of the 3Cs work, our nascent elemental system, melee mechanics and bullet simulation, UI and HUD work; Systems was involved in a wide swath of types of work involving disciplines from across game development. As such it was doubly important that we knew how to work within and around the needs of other streams.
As the lead there, my roles were pretty typical of what you might expect. I served as a line manager and a mentor, holding several tutoring sessions on game design theory. I helped manage priorities, task allocation, and defined 'done'. I ran far too many playtests to count, and I worked closely with Creative Direction for bringing their vision to life within the confines of a set of goals and I did a number of features and prototypes. It's always important to keep getting your hands dirty; the unfortunate thing about a leadership position is it uses an entirely different skillset than the one that got you into the leadership position to start with, so if you don't make time to keep your hard skills up you risk losing them.
There are a few notable accomplishments from my time at DPS I'd like to call out:
As the lead there, my roles were pretty typical of what you might expect. I served as a line manager and a mentor, holding several tutoring sessions on game design theory. I helped manage priorities, task allocation, and defined 'done'. I ran far too many playtests to count, and I worked closely with Creative Direction for bringing their vision to life within the confines of a set of goals and I did a number of features and prototypes. It's always important to keep getting your hands dirty; the unfortunate thing about a leadership position is it uses an entirely different skillset than the one that got you into the leadership position to start with, so if you don't make time to keep your hard skills up you risk losing them.
There are a few notable accomplishments from my time at DPS I'd like to call out:
- Ours was the first stream to define its design pipeline, and the framework I established was ultimately repurposed by every stream
- My stream was always pathfinding better ways of working at DPS - we were always pushing the envelope. Given its unique structure, I led a handful of initiatives to switch to a more feature-team focused structure, and spearheaded a couple of 'strike teams' (feature teams in all but name) to deliver targeted features that required support from many disciplines. The initiative was successful enough that in the studios final days it was adopted by every stream.
- I led a large initiative to address our massive tech debt. At my time of joining, it took a new designer about 7 months on average to learn how to make a Hunter given the entirely unique tech stack. Only three people in the company really knew how anything worked. I've been on a few projects that have failed due to issues in the development pipeline so it's something of a bugbear of mine and while the project shut down before the initiative could finish, it massively improved our designers power and flexibility while also decoupling their dependency on code support.
- I was involved in a handful of UX tests, as well as defining the kinds of feedback we were looking to collect from our supertesters
- I f0und a mentor, which might seem like a pretty small thing but I believe mentorship is important for everyone. We can all learn something from somebody - in my case, it was a much more experienced lead designer with over 40 years of experience in the industry. I'm very grateful for his help.
I loved DPS, but I can't honestly say it didn't have its problems. The stream structure - while unique - made it difficult to coordinate on some features. For example, if we added in a new ability it would go through the design and prototyping phase, then be shipped off to a separate stream for VFX. They'd get to it whenever they got to it, do the work, and we'd only see it after it was 'done' - which could be months later and of course led to problems where work had to be re-done many times because it didn't meet the need. Then the cycle would repeat. It didn't help that studio leadership seemed intent on building walls between streams instead of tearing them down. There was very little communication between WG leadership and the team, which led to constant goal shifting and changes in our target audience and who the game was for. Not least of all was the tech stack. SH used entirely unique solutions for... everything. Almost nothing was UE default. This made the project UE in name, but not in nature and so experienced devs couldn't roll into the project and start being immediately productive.
But problems aside, I regret SH was shut down and the team was made redundant. There were a lot of really good people working on Steel Hunters, and I genuinely believed in the vision for the game. To this day I still think it was targeting a niche that remains unanswered by the market and I'm proud of what we were able to do and the experiences we were able to give our players, even if only briefly.
But problems aside, I regret SH was shut down and the team was made redundant. There were a lot of really good people working on Steel Hunters, and I genuinely believed in the vision for the game. To this day I still think it was targeting a niche that remains unanswered by the market and I'm proud of what we were able to do and the experiences we were able to give our players, even if only briefly.