Logline:
Role & Responsibilities: Production/Management: - Attended weekly team lead meetings to give feedback with considered playtest data and remaining scope.
Usability:- Coordinated 3-6 external playtests each week to discover discrepancies between player experience and intended design.
- Compiled notes from 3-6 playtests each week to into a comprehensive usability report with design solution propositions.
- Met weekly with a team of 3 other usability team members to convey best practices and break down playtest results.
Design: - Considered design intent, scope, and timeline alongside player experience to come up with potential design solutions to consistent sources of player tension.
- Connected with playtesters about likes and dislikes to understand their goals and better anticipate how players will feel about certain artistic choices.
QA: - Rapidly playtested new builds as the game was reaching USC Games Expo.
- Consistently played builds to recreate and test bugs for documentation.
- Recorded playtests for the engineering team to assist in debugging and polish.
Lessons Learned:Hard Skills: Google Suite, Zoom Meeting
Soft Skills: Game Design and Mechanic Communication
- As Nickey’s first long-term game project, he learned a lot from watching how a variety of players thought and engaged with the same set of mechanics.
- The usability reports Nickey wrote provided space for him to consider how he would tackle issues that arose for players while keeping the overall experience goal in mind.
- Additionally, watching other players playtest STARWEAVE allowed Nickey a wider breadth of understanding as to how players engage with games which later informed his own design decisions and feedback on other projects.
- Through running playtests and compiling data in conjunction with hearing the needs of various teams, Nickey learned very quickly how to consider remaining scope and optimizing player experience in feedback he gave to the director and the other team leads.
Team:
Creative Director
Lead Game Systems Designer
UI/UX Designer
Concept Artist
UI/UX Artist
Allena “Ena” Zhu
Art Lead
Concept Artist
Texture Artist
Environmental Designer
Unity Art Implementation
Lars Dabalsa
Concept Artist
3D Modeler
Texture Artist
Kairui Pichard
Concept Artist
Leni Le
Character Artist
Character Illustration
Alex Tan
Concept Artist
Thomas “Cenzo” Collins
3D Modeler
Rin Guo
3D Advisor
Nickey Olson
Usability Lead
QA Tester
Jessica Lam
QA Manager
Usability
Brian Bouzari
Usability
Lion Li
Usability
Thesis Chair
Ashley Kim
Executive Producer
Sandy Zhang
UI/UX Artist
Social Media Manager
Shruti Bhat
3D Modeler
Texture Artist
Millie “Sky” Lu
Concept Artist
2D Animator
Texture Artist
UI/UX Artist
Sophie Chu
UI/UX Artist
Texture Artist
Ziare Rene
3D Modeler
Texture Artist
SylverStar
2D Animator
Theodore Gale Sullivan
Lead Narrative Designer
Reid Weston
Writer
Angela Fish Song
Writer
Matthew Miller
Writer
Chris Merola
Writer
Maynard Hearns
Writing Advisor
Thesis Advisor
John Mross
Producer
Lukas Yang
Concept Artist
Character Artist
Character Illustration
Sakura Perry
VFX Artist
Erin Atluri
3D Modeler
Texture Artist
Marcus Gordon
3D Modeler
Texture Artist
Gracen Geng
UI/UX Artist
Texture Artist
HEARTMUSH
Character Artist
Character Illustration
Caroline “Taro” Zhou
Design Lead
Level Designer
Environmental Designer
Unity Art Implementation
Jonan Pho
Level Designer
Combat Designer
Zhengren “Zen” Lin
Level Designer
Combat Designer
Unity Art Implementation
Weston Bell-Geddes
Marketing
Publishing
External Advisor
Sammy Chuang
Engineering Lead
David He
Prototype Lead
2D Rigger / Tech Artist
Combat Engineer
Unity Art Implementation
Tools Engineer
Justin Hudgins
Narrative Engineer
Nitesh Sridhar
Narrative Engineer
Richard Ortega-Amezcua
Combat Engineer
Tools Engineer
Ian Ouellette
Narrative Engineer
Kevin Ray
Narrative Engineer
Unity Implementation Engineer
UI/UX Engineer
Ruizhe Shen
Unity Implementation Engineer
Violet Fairy
Unity Implementation Engineer
Richard Flores
Prototype Engineer
Stephanie Cheng
Prototype Engineer
Mauricio Miranda
Prototype Engineer
Steph Ng
Prototype Engineer
Audio Lead
Sound Designer
Technical Sound Designer
Bobby Raps
Sound Designer / Composer
Austin Burkett
Sound Designer / Composer
Russell Lim
Sound Designer
William Bourassa Bennett
Composer
Tony Hsueh
Composer
Anna Iris Hill
Composer
Cal Tillman
Composer
Katianna Sarkissian
Voice Over Director / Producer
Emily Sun
Casting Director
Voice Over Producer
Assistant Voice Over Director
Heather Gonzalez
Dreamer (Voice)
Anjali Kunapaneni
Blackguard (Voice)
Marissa Lenti
Lighthouse (Voice)
Brian Anderson
Troubador (Voice)
Emi Ray
Bird (Voice)