They Live to Destroy (Gear VR)
They Live to Destroy is a Gear VR Title I developed with High Voltage Software.
Leadership
I was the central point of communication for Design on the project and also led and mentored two other talented designers.
The first thing I did was identify their skillsets, then as their Lead, made it my goal to delegate appropriately and enable them to produce high quality results, ensuring their road was clear of impediments.
Before I came onto this project, the team was crunching every day and the game was falling behind schedule. After I joined, I was able to eliminate crunch, improve team morale and hit each deadline early to give us more time for polish.
I accomplished this by making a large spreadsheet of outstanding issues and then creating individual action items to address each one of them. Once the work ahead of us was formally defined, it became much easier to break it down. Given our tight deadline and budget, it was critical to trim the fat and ensure that we prioritized what we had to get done before moving onto what we wanted to get done.
I also maintained effective communication between the various departments. As we were working cross-studio, punctual long-distance communication was essential. Addressing the needs and questions of other developers was always my top priority, enabling the team to be as efficient and effective as possible.
In the end, we shipped a high quality product with dedicated fans, procured more work from our client and gave the team a title they could be proud of!
Economy
I was responsible for creating the economy on the project. In order to do so, I researched the economy of several similar competing products, took extensive notes and identified patterns to reveal the root cause of why those choices were made. I then listed off each required component of our economy and created high level statements to determine baseline metrics. For example:
- “This item should not be unlocked until the player has learned these concepts.”
- “Players should not be able to overcome this challenge until they have reached this power level.”
- “This upgrade should cost the player this percentage of their maximum amount of currency at this point in the game.”
I then used these high level statements to determine the design space for each variable and matched them up with numbers that met each statement’s criteria, assembling the entirety of the economy like a giant logic puzzle. As a result, I nailed the economy on almost the very first try, requiring very little iteration beyond its initial inception.
Campaign Level Design
To construct Campaign stages, I created a paper prototype and laid out each level by hand, testing them out in a simple time-efficient manner before moving forward to implement them with our tools in Unreal.
Each level was constructed with the following considerations in mind:
- How difficult should this level be? Where does it fall within the game’s progression?
- What makes this level memorable? What sets it apart in the player’s mind from other levels.
- The goal of our campaign is to teach players about new mechanics in a safe and fun environment. What is this level teaching the player?
This pre-production process enabled me to quickly create a series of compelling Campaign levels, requiring only minor playtest-influenced tweaks after their initial creation.
Dialogue
I wrote the majority of the dialogue for the title. Our primary speaker was a cheesy 50’s B-Movie announcer, a writing style that I was not familiar with at the time.
In order to write for this character, I had to first define his voice. I watched hours of 50’s B Movie trailers, manually wrote down every individual line of dialogue, and looked for speech patterns to create a character that felt authentic.
I then practiced speaking as this character, translating common phrases into his tone so that his voice became second nature. When it was time to construct his lines and direct the VO talent, it all came out easily.
Some lines include:
- “Globora, the foul sewage fiend! Mankind’s waste returns to waste mankind!”
- “Talmera, the turtle titan! Here to unleash shell on Earth!”
- “These monsters dial T for Terror! Ring ring humanity, this call is for you!”
