Splash Damage - Technical Game Designer

After graduating university I was recommended for a Design position at Splash Damage where I began my AAA game development journey. Throughout my time at Splash I had various responsibilities and areas or ownership, below you can find these listed out.

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Responsibilities

Game Design:

• Developed game design proposals for various systems and features.

• Created high and low level combat game design documentation for our GDD and TDD.

• Owned features from proposal stages through to implementation and beyond.

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Prototyping and Balance:

• Prototyped characters, abilities, and weapons to validate/derisk concepts and identify enjoyable gameplay.

• Balanced game areas including ranged weapons, abilities, vehicles, and 3Cs through numerical analysis, theoretical evaluation, and playtesting.

• Conducted playtests, analysed data, and implemented changes based on results to ensure balanced gameplay.

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Coordination and Communication:

• Oversaw holistic game balance as 'Balance Master', coordinating with various teams.

• Coordinated with different disciplines to meet milestone commitments and support bug fixes during milestone hardening.

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Playtesting and Data Analysis:

• Organized team and project playtests to collect quantitative and qualitative data.

• Tracked playtest observations, engaged in discussions with stakeholders, and implemented corrective actions.

• Produced design teardowns for reference, studying competitors' approaches to similar problems.

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Areas of Ownership

Game Balance:

• Defined game balance vision, metrics, and entity balance interactions.

• Orchestrated holistic balance through playtests, discussions, and task management with feature owners and stakeholders.

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Ranged Weapon Combat:

• Oversaw design, implementation, and balance of ranged weapons, ensuring high quality gunplay and feel.

• Defined our ranged weapon combat ranges through combat metrics.

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Vehicle Handling and Driving Models:

• Oversaw the design of handling and driving models, ensuring goals, metrics, and game feel.

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Player 3C's (Character, Controls, Camera):

• Responsible for defining and maintaining player experience through character feel, controls, and camera.

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General Combat and System Design:

• Contributed to the broader aspects of combat and overall game system design.