WIP, come back later please
Splash Damage - Technical Game Designer
Splash Damage 11/2019 - present
Senior Technical Game Designer- On a shelved and a TBA project
Splash Damage 11/2017 - 11/2019
Technical Game Designer- On Gears Tactics and a number of shelved or TBA projects
Senior Technical Game Designer- On a shelved and a TBA project
- Did exploration, research, design and prototyping of shelved project in digital and paper formats
- Conducted interviews, set hiring standards and approved hires for Tech Design Discipline
- Evangelised the discipline within the studio and outside
- Manage and train other members in the discipline
- Own broad areas of the design on an unannounced project
Splash Damage 11/2017 - 11/2019
Technical Game Designer- On Gears Tactics and a number of shelved or TBA projects
- Owned Mission and Boss design and implementation on Gears Tactics
- Owned and was responsible for AI Design in shelved project
- Created entire prototype for unannounced project over six months from scratch
- Created back-end and tools to allow quick iteration by other designers for unannounced project
- Mission design and mission and boss scripting for unannounced project
- Defined core pillars and sub-discipline role at Splash, ensures alignment on a studio and project level
- Manages and trains junior Tech Designers
- Gameplay and pickup designs on Outcasters
Where to start with Splash Damage?
To this point I've worked there for three years - two of them as a Technical Game Designer and in November 2019 was promoted to Senior Technical Game Designer.
It's worth explaining what exactly being a Technical Game Designer (or a Tech Designer or TD for short) at Splash Damage means, as it can change pretty drastically from studio to studio. At Splash, myself and some of the other TD's established pillars for our discipline which we still follow today. They are:
To this point I've worked there for three years - two of them as a Technical Game Designer and in November 2019 was promoted to Senior Technical Game Designer.
It's worth explaining what exactly being a Technical Game Designer (or a Tech Designer or TD for short) at Splash Damage means, as it can change pretty drastically from studio to studio. At Splash, myself and some of the other TD's established pillars for our discipline which we still follow today. They are:
- Explore Design through Technology
- Tech Designers prototype in-engine to answer design question
- Tech Designers can design and prototype challenging features
- Tech Designers take an empirical approach to Game Design
- Be the Bridge between Code and Design
- Tech Designers understand the mindset and terminology used by both designers and coders
- Tech Designers ensure the functionality of a system satisfies the 'whys' of Game Design
- Tech Designers provide Tech Insight to Game Designers and help bulwark feature creep
- Pursue Mastery through Flexibility
- Tech Designers pursue mastery through improving both design and technical skills
- Tech Designers have the flexibility to work at any stage of development
- Tech Designers can tackle and prefer even to have a wide variety of tasks
Professional Overview
Professionally, it's hard to put a pin on the work that I've done. I've worn many different hats while there and if I tried to detail it all out here, it would be a novel.
As a list, I could claim I've been a Feature Owner, I've designed and implemented AI, gameplay and core loop design and prototyping, combat mechanics, pickups, I've done (a very small amount of) voice work, boss design, level logic scripting, scripting for VO, content pipeline implementation, a million different prototypes... I've sold the discipline and projects to stakeholders, developed alongside stakeholders, led teams, set the discipline's hiring standards, conducted interviews, encouraged disciplinary communication and knowledge sharing, worked with analytics, developed both prototype and shipping features in Blueprints and C++, done mission design, and have encouraged positive mental health practices across the studio.
That said for details on any one of these you'll have to reach out to me and I'll be happy to expand on it... so long as it doesn't break my NDA! Much of the work I've done for Splash has unfortunately never seen the light of day; but I'm proud to say that two projects I've worked on: Gears Tactics and Outcasters have been either announced or released as of writing this! Hopefully, soon I'll be able to expand the list with one (or two if I'm lucky) other(s).
As a list, I could claim I've been a Feature Owner, I've designed and implemented AI, gameplay and core loop design and prototyping, combat mechanics, pickups, I've done (a very small amount of) voice work, boss design, level logic scripting, scripting for VO, content pipeline implementation, a million different prototypes... I've sold the discipline and projects to stakeholders, developed alongside stakeholders, led teams, set the discipline's hiring standards, conducted interviews, encouraged disciplinary communication and knowledge sharing, worked with analytics, developed both prototype and shipping features in Blueprints and C++, done mission design, and have encouraged positive mental health practices across the studio.
That said for details on any one of these you'll have to reach out to me and I'll be happy to expand on it... so long as it doesn't break my NDA! Much of the work I've done for Splash has unfortunately never seen the light of day; but I'm proud to say that two projects I've worked on: Gears Tactics and Outcasters have been either announced or released as of writing this! Hopefully, soon I'll be able to expand the list with one (or two if I'm lucky) other(s).
Gears Tactics
Gears Tactics is hands down the biggest project I've ever worked on.
Every Tech Designer in the studio was called in to work on it, and it's not hard to see why. Not only was it a hugely demanding project, but years of personnel shifts within the studio and sudden, major changes in design direction had eroded trust and made communication between teams quite bad. We had our work cut out for us.
One of the first things we had to do was smooth over issues within the team. A big part of our early days on the project was getting Tech Design involved in the Game Design team (As we always say in the studio, we're Game Designers first) and getting to understand the code base. From there it was a matter of ensuring that people talk to each other - crazy I know. We quickly became a point of contact between several different disciplines such as Game Design, Tech Art, Gameplay and AI, Audio, and Level Design. Some days I felt more like a human phone book than anything.
When we actually got to work in the project itself our jobs were largely around doing mission scripting logic as well as boss encounters. The Corpser was my boy, and while I can't claim to have had total ownership over him I still hold him close to my heart for the role I did get to play. We also had to implement some of the core systems of the game - we worked on Save Game, mission SVO, redesigned the encounter spawning system, and helped the Game Designers come up with a better pipeline for creating and balancing encounter sets. Additionally we did some prototyping late into development - such as the side objectives and meta game that you can see in the game today.
Finally, they called me in to do a little voice work for one of the cutscenes as I was the closest to a huge american dude at the studio they could think of. I'm the guy that gets choked out by Ukkon right before you fight the Brumak. That was an... experience.
Overall Gears Tactics was an incredible adventure and I'm proud to have my name on it. Everyone on the team worked super hard to make it a reality and I'm glad to have had the chance to be a part of it.
Every Tech Designer in the studio was called in to work on it, and it's not hard to see why. Not only was it a hugely demanding project, but years of personnel shifts within the studio and sudden, major changes in design direction had eroded trust and made communication between teams quite bad. We had our work cut out for us.
One of the first things we had to do was smooth over issues within the team. A big part of our early days on the project was getting Tech Design involved in the Game Design team (As we always say in the studio, we're Game Designers first) and getting to understand the code base. From there it was a matter of ensuring that people talk to each other - crazy I know. We quickly became a point of contact between several different disciplines such as Game Design, Tech Art, Gameplay and AI, Audio, and Level Design. Some days I felt more like a human phone book than anything.
When we actually got to work in the project itself our jobs were largely around doing mission scripting logic as well as boss encounters. The Corpser was my boy, and while I can't claim to have had total ownership over him I still hold him close to my heart for the role I did get to play. We also had to implement some of the core systems of the game - we worked on Save Game, mission SVO, redesigned the encounter spawning system, and helped the Game Designers come up with a better pipeline for creating and balancing encounter sets. Additionally we did some prototyping late into development - such as the side objectives and meta game that you can see in the game today.
Finally, they called me in to do a little voice work for one of the cutscenes as I was the closest to a huge american dude at the studio they could think of. I'm the guy that gets choked out by Ukkon right before you fight the Brumak. That was an... experience.
Overall Gears Tactics was an incredible adventure and I'm proud to have my name on it. Everyone on the team worked super hard to make it a reality and I'm glad to have had the chance to be a part of it.
Outcasters
There are a great deal of things I love Splash for. One of them is that they refuse to lay people off - they always find work for you in the end. Outcasters is the direct result of that dedication to their employees - it started off as a Game Jam between projects that became so much more.
I was one such employee between projects at the time and while Outcasters was not my idea (unfortunately) when the VPs saw it had potential they wanted a full prototype built they could pitch. It was one of my first experiences working in UE4 and as one of only a handful of designers on the team some of the pickups you'll find in the game today came from yours truly. Granted, they've been tweaked here and there since my time on the project - I haven't worked on it since it's earliest days, I ultimately got pulled off to work on another project I'm hoping will be announced this year - but the game still maintains some of the ideas myself and the original team put into it. Having watched it come up from nothing, I'd never claim it's really 'my' project - but I did work on it and I'm proud of how far it's come since our time together.
The team working on it now ought to be proud - I've seen how much blood, sweat and tears have gone into making Outcasters a reality. As of writing this it's not due to release quite yet, but I'll be watching it closely and wishing it all the best.
I was one such employee between projects at the time and while Outcasters was not my idea (unfortunately) when the VPs saw it had potential they wanted a full prototype built they could pitch. It was one of my first experiences working in UE4 and as one of only a handful of designers on the team some of the pickups you'll find in the game today came from yours truly. Granted, they've been tweaked here and there since my time on the project - I haven't worked on it since it's earliest days, I ultimately got pulled off to work on another project I'm hoping will be announced this year - but the game still maintains some of the ideas myself and the original team put into it. Having watched it come up from nothing, I'd never claim it's really 'my' project - but I did work on it and I'm proud of how far it's come since our time together.
The team working on it now ought to be proud - I've seen how much blood, sweat and tears have gone into making Outcasters a reality. As of writing this it's not due to release quite yet, but I'll be watching it closely and wishing it all the best.