Game Design

Below are some of the games that I have worked on as a designer:

Transformers Reactivate - Lead Designer
At Splash Damage, I led a large design team for a massive AAA co-op action title. I spearheaded the procedural content generation systems to create limitless replayability as well as the overall player journey through the content. Announcement Video

Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid - Senior Designer
At nWay, I worked on a 3v3 team fighting game for several platforms. I worked with Kyle Higgins the writer of Shattered Grid to adapt the story for the fighting game, as well as wrote all of the non-Street Fighter arcade storylines. I designed the story system, matchmaking, season system, and worked on several other aspects. Announcement Video

Power Rangers: Legacy Wars - Senior Designer
At nWay, I worked on a mobile fighting game for iOS and Android. I balanced characters, wrote story, and designed several systems including the gem leagues, matchmaking, challenges, Casual Friday, calendar rewards, the corruption tower, and several other aspects. I also wrote and storyboarded Chun-Li Ranger's introduction to the game as well as designed her moveset. Announcement Video

Dragon Story 2 - Lead Designer
At Storm8, I led the design team for the sequel to one of the company's flagship titles. I spearheaded economy design and simulation for this title, as well as drove much of the creative direction. Dragon Story 2 was featured by Apple in 90% of the countries it was released in. Gameplay Video

Diamond Quest! - Senior Designer
For Diamond Quest!, I overhauled the balance of the characters, designed levels, created simulators to estimate player teams at any point in the game, and mentored designers on the team. Diamond Quest! reached top 40 on iOS. Game Page (iOS)

Dragon Age Legends - Lead Designer
At BioWare, I initially created content, but then took over as Lead Designer a few months later. I mentored our design team, drove content and features, completed the story in Dragon Age style, rewrote much of the early story to give players choices and personality to the NPCs, added an asynchronous cooperative endgame raid system for players to earn compelling rewards, rebalanced the entire power roster to encourage use of all abilities, and created five new power trees for each class with new unique abilities for each using only existing assets. Gameplay Video

City of Heroes - Designer
On City of Heroes, I built new mission maps using new and existing assets, helped guide the art team in creating new modular pieces for maps, designed new world zones, integrating new gameplay into zones (such as Mission Architect and seasonal events), set up Day Job volumes, created and placed NPCs and encounters for Praetoria, created new zone events, and new game tutorial for the Going Rogue expansion, tutored new designers on the world tools, and was a resource for other designers on how the tools and systems worked.

In the Going Rogue tutorial, Precinct Five [video], the dialogue choices allow players to express their character's personality and origin.

Going Rogue also featured several of my zone events:
The Protest [video]
Syndicate Takedown [video]
The Great Escape [video]
(Note that these events are meant for lower level characters and groups. This player is soloing them at maxxed out power levels.)

Igor: The Game - Lead Designer
At Santa Cruz Games, I wrote the Game Design Document for Igor, did level design, asset list creation, pitched the game to publishers and the owners of the IP, and kept this project within budget and under a strict deadline (5 months plus two weeks to write the GDD). When the release of the movie was changed to a month earlier, I excised several parts of the design while keeping the core fun. We shipped a stable product on time that met all of Nintendo's compliance testing requirements.

Golden Axe (Xbox 360) - Level Designer, Design Specialist
On Golden Axe, I drafted level designs in Word and Maya, defined many of the basic game systems such as subtle world interactions, mentored and trained entry-level designers on tools and design fundamentals, and designed a GUI for level management in Maya and a plain-English scripting language called GLEE. GLEE was also used in other titles including Iron Man and Iron Man 2.

Sarge's War (Gamecube) - Game Designer (3DO)
I came onto Sarge's War as the game was wrapping to script and design the boss battles (three Helicopter Boss battles as well as the final boss battle against Lord Malice).

Portal Runner (PS2) - Game Designer (3DO)
On this game, I designed and built all the multiplayer levels and a few single player levels and aided other designers. For my efforts on the project I was given the 3DO Star Performer reward.


Game Maps

Game Maps - Level Designer
These are a few level design maps I created for various projects:

A massive canyon city in ruins for the game Master of Elements.
A sample map concept for City of Heroes (part of the design test that got me hired).
A Spanish castle for a survival horror team-based assault game.
A Siberian Missile Silo for a survival horror team-based assault game.


Tabletop Game Design
Stone Tablet Games is an independent small games label for my personal projects. Following are several of them. img/misc_thumb_01.gif
Acceptable Losses - Lead Designer/Lead Artist/Director
Acceptable Losses is a 2-player strategy board game. The game explores the concept of escalation. For example, if a player uses the massive Big Boy Bomb on their opponent's pieces, they are likely to lose some of their own pieces and their opponent will have more access to similarly large attacks.
img/misc_thumb_01.gif
Art Thief - Lead Designer/Lead Artist/Director
Art Thief is a fast, cooperative strategy game about two thieves trying to steal paintings from a museum. Play it online for free on Board Game Arena!
img/misc_thumb_01.gif
Aspect - Lead Designer/Director/Lead Artist
Aspect is a tabletop roleplaying game where players define their combat roles by their stats. Aspect is designed from the ground up to have limitless options for character tweaking. The combat system uses the same basic mechanics for physical, mental, and social combat - allowing players to be a diplomat, sage, warrior, or anything they can dream of, while still contributing to the adventure in exciting ways. I wrote the 300+ page core rulebook, which includes over 20 player races, nearly 1000 unique powers, over 350 unique talents (used to define a character's 'class') and over 100 rituals, as well as 70 monsters, an indepth skill system, etc.
img/misc_thumb_01.gif
Aspect Beginner Game - Lead Designer/Director/Lead Artist
The Aspect Beginner Game is two adventures for players new to Aspect. I wrote the adventures and the 16 premade characters, drew art for 43 of the included standees, drew the maps for both adventure, designed the cover, ran playtests, and coordinated with the printing company. The adventures showcase the flexibility of the Aspect system with both physical and social encounters, multiple paths, skill challenges, companion creatures, and foes that each play differently.
img/misc_thumb_01.gif
Aspect Prime - Lead Designer/Director/Artist
Aspect Prime is a complete overhaul of the Aspect rules, with the goal of simplifying the character creation process. The aim was not just for the player's vision of their character be paramount, but to help guide the player to envision the character more fully. Character abilities are much more flexible. The game is now in beta.
img/misc_thumb_01.gif
Dark Lords - Lead Designer/Artist/Director
Dark Lords is a competitive strategy game about secretive Dark Masters competing for domination of the universe.
img/misc_thumb_01.gif
Dungeon Escape! - Lead Designer/Artist/Director
In Dungeon Escape!, the players create the dungeon as they play the game. It is a simple boardgame for 2 to 6 players.
img/misc_thumb_01.gif
Erratica - Lead Designer/Lead Artist/Director
In Erratica, players don't just bend or even break the rules. The players make them. During each game, players can contribute a set of hand picked cards or even create cards of their own. The game continually evolves each time it is played.
img/misc_thumb_01.gif