Season of Passage was a challenging endeavor: expand Sky’s “Festival Tech” (match-make with and display thousands of players on-screen simultaneously) which had been initially developed for Season of Aurora into a more robust and collaborative game-play experience. As precedent for this was nearly non-existent, there were a lot of “open ocean” problem in design, art, narrative, and engineering that we needed to overcome.
How do you design and execute a single game that is engaging and replayable for a solo player, 4 players, 40 players, 400 players, and 4000+ players?
I worked with a (stunningly) talented team to create a story about unruly adolescents who first learn to collaborate, then ultimately form community with each other. With an emphasis on collaborative mass-multiplayer quest activities using the aforementioned Festival Tech, this season was an exploration of how far we could expand the sense of scale and togetherness in Sky’s wholesome landscape.
My responsibilities this season included:
Design and development of the Season’s concept, gameplay, cinematics, interactions, and experience as lead designer
Design and development (C++) of new Festival Tech multiplayer activities
Unite and lead a team of superheroes
This season, I was also given the responsibility and honor of onboarding 2 stellar new designers. Much of my time was spent facilitating their experience for their first TGC launch.
Fanart
(click-through links to sources)