Design for Choice

Player choice is the beating heart of most games. From deciding what stats to increase in an RPG to the color and texture of the drapes in your sim's house, choices can challenge and engage players is countless different ways. As a designer, I believe that my job is to build the right kind of choices into the content I build, so that it enhances the experience as a whole.

I learned this tenet from working on multiple types of content for The Walking Dead: Empires. While building skill trees, for example, I focused on giving players the ability to choose their playstyle. I tempered this, however, with the tension of opportunity cost, as I limited what skills players could access through their costs and placement on the tree. 

In contrast, creating combat encounters revolved around the moment-to-moment decisions and risk-reward calculations that players perform. This again considers playstyle, but now from the angle of how players approach enemies, where they prefer to position their character, and what enemy types they prefer. Additionally, I created encounters with a variety of challenge and risk-reward propositions throughout the open world. Some encounters might yield lots of loot, but occur on more dubious terrain and against harder enemies, asking players to consider if the resource cost of combat and the risk of death is worth the rewards.

Design for Resonance

"Resonance" is when a game feature or system evokes the feeling of something else, usually aspects of the game's narrative or real-world experiences. Some fun examples of resonance include the Greatsword of Artorias from Dark Souls, and the card "Run Away Together" from Magic the Gathering: Throne of Eldraine. 

I've made resonance a core part of my approach to game design because it works double-duty. It not only brings fantasy to life through gameplay, but it also makes game systems and worldbuilding easier for players to understand. As a Game Designer on The Walking Dead: Empires, I've had the amazing opportunity to create content for a world that is already rich with iconic characters and narrative moments. From the environment to combat encounters to player abilities, I've strived to build resonance into all parts of the project that I've worked on. 

Design for Mastery