I started working in AAA games in 2021, and I’ve worked on a number of projects since then. At time of writing they all remain unreleased and under NDA, so I can’t really talk about them. In general terms my work revolved around my live game experience – eg. collaborating with core gameplay designers to improve retention and monetisation features, and with engineers to develop more powerful live data pipelines.
Personal highlights:
- I developed a sick technique to balance progression curves using normalised effort values
- I wrote an incredible spreadsheet tool to manage rotating shop inventories
- I wrote and delivered a presentation on economy design for some work experience teens which was, in my opinion, extremely funny
It was an educational experience to see how the dynamics of the publisher/developer relationship model affect the production process – it’s only now that I can look back and understand what a difference it made to be working on self-published projects in the past.