Portfolio
Who I am as A Lead Designer
Who I am: I’m a Lead Game Designer specializing in systems, combat, and live-op driven progression on mid-core free-to-play titles. I’ve spent the last decade owning combat and collectibles ecosystems, balance frameworks, and content workflows on licensed and original IP, most recently leading the Combat & Collectibles pod on DC Worlds Collide.
How I Design: I see good design as two equally important halves: Process and Creative. Process is how the work gets done: clear specs, productive reviews, well-run meetings, and designs that can actually be implemented on schedule. Creative is the heart and soul: player fantasy, modern F2P instincts, and a feel for what keeps players coming back.
My job as a lead is to balance both of these concepts. Holding the game’s vision, setting standards the team can follow, while shipping work that is reliable, measurable, and still feels alive!
Games in order of most recently worked on
DC Worlds Collide
DCWC - September 2023 - Current
Here I lead the Combat and Collectibles team on Warner Bros.’ mobile game DC: Worlds Collide. I own all character proposals, kits, collectibles, combat systems, balance frameworks, and the workflows that ship them.
I partner directly with rights-holder executives, including DC’s Creative Director and film teams. I explain the “why” behind proposals, align on brand and canon, and keep approvals moving at a sustainable pace.
KPI Corner
Examples of key design decisions I’ve made as Design Lead, and the outcomes from those decisions.
Low-cost boss mode rework
Problem: Our daily boss-fight mode, Evil Falls, had a stale meta: players brought essentially the same team to every boss, and low-investment characters were being ignored.
Low-Cost Proposal: We grant new powerful bonuses to the player if they bring specific "Team Synergies"* to each boss.
*A 'Team Synergy' is a mechanic that grants bonuses to allies if they share similar traits.
How was this Low-Cost?: All we needed to do, was find one or two exsisting Team Synergies that rougely-worked against each boss. Then we added powerful stat increases when you use the correct synergy. And gave even stronger increases when that Character/Synergy-Holder was invested in. Add a cheap splash of UI to show off the Team Synergy holders, and the spec was fully-implemented in a single sprint.
Result: We massivly-increased usege and investment-rates for many of our lowest invested characters, and positively changed player and content creater perception of 'who was meta'.
Underperforming character, reblanced into top seller
Problem: Players expected DCU Superman to be 'the most powerful character in the game.'
In a sense, he was the most powerful character. He conditionally did the highest single target damage in the game, was highly survivable, and helped weaken enemy defenses so that he (along with his team) would hit even harder. But the community saw things differently. Let's analyze the issues, my rework solution, and the results!
Issue 1: "Comparison is the death of joy" At the time, the current "best OP hero" was Wonder Woman. She works fundamentally different from Superman, in that she deals a different damage type, and is primarily an AoE hero, spreading her damage across the whole enemy team. Superman is a single target hero. Additionally, he lowers enemy defenses so that his damage type can hit even harder. At launch, players were comparing WW's AoE damage totals to Superman's Single-target Damage totals, and using that to prove that Superman was weak. Additionally, since Superman debuffs enemies, it would make his allies hit harder as well. And, players would share screenshots showing that their older-AOE characters that he was intended to work well with, were doing higher damage than Superman.
Issue 2: Superman was OP already. At his launch, Superman DCU was in fact very powerful, especially with his intended top team. So much so, that we feared buffing him would unstabilize to the meta. However, he wasn't as drag & drop/broadly useful as Wonder Woman.
Solution: Identify areas of Superman's Kit that could be safely buffed without bringing instability, and turn those dials to 11! I didn't just increase some stats by a few percentages. We honed in on his least-impactful abilities, and made 'jaw dropping changes' to them. I also improved the wording on his abilities to help players understand his kit better.
For example, I updated his basic attack which dealt 35% extra damage to Tanks, into dealing tripple damage to Tanks. That sounds crazy, but it didn't move the needle much on his actual performance. We also clarified how the Burn mehcnaic worked to better show off the impact Superman had for his team.
Result: Superman's reception turned around completely. Sales and Investment increased almost twofold. Winrates remained stable. Superman DCU became out most popular Legendary character in DCWC. I am disallowed from sharing specific sales data. But I can share that an average of 9.83% of owners would invest in him up to Rank 10 (our soft cap.) Whereas, our second highest invested Legendary was Aquaman, with only 6.27% of owners reaching Rank 10.
Of key importance, after his update SUperman DCU did not significantly increase in winrate. He remained properly balanced and fun to use with many teams, while still keeping his upper limits of power in check.
Warner Bros. - Central Project Managment
Sr. Game Systems Designer - December 2021 - September 2023
I worked within Warner Bro’s Central Project Management team as their sole systems designer. There, I was responsible for evaluating incoming game proposals from third party studios from a system-design perspective. I would then collaborate with Product Managers and Data Scientists to determine if those proposals were worth investing in.
Star Trek: Fleet Command
STFC - August 2020 - November 2021
On STFC I oversaw the massive semi-annual (every two years) expansion. This included the initial design and responding to pivots and change requests issued by stakeholders, as well as constant collaboration with the Narrative, Art, and Engineering teams to ensure a cohesive vision for the expansion.
During the expansion’s development, I took on the additional responsibilities of owning all aspects of combat after our previous combat-lead left. I was additionally tasked with ‘being the creative spark for a Design team that is quiet & reserved.’ I often ran ideation meetings, design syncs, one-on-ones, and extra-curricular team activities for the Star Trek: Fleet Command Design team.
Dominations
Dominations - January 2018 - February 2020
Dominations a history-based war game in a similar style to Clash of Clans.
My responsibilities included making new content, balancing combat and economy, launching two ages (The Space Age and the Digital Age), and creating and managing new features from spec to ship. I also took on occasional additional duties of appearing on livestreams to discuss new content and features, and I am known as ‘the guy’ that you go to when you have too much work and need help, as I regularly took on additional work for designers who became overloaded with work. Never once in my time at BHG did I abdicate any work. Our lead has often said I am “the implementation guru.”
War of Nations
Designer from December 2016 - May 2017
War of Nations, similar to Kingdoms of Camelot, is a MMO mid-core strategy game. When RockYou (ex employer) purchased War of Nations from GREE. I was the sole game designer in charge of all design knowledge transfer from the GREE team to us, and then later on from us to our India team. I managed all design work for WoN and was in charge of training two new designers, creating new expansions/content/units, and approving all new content from India.
Kingdoms of Camelot
Designer from September 2015 - March 2017
A mid-core MMO facebook game. I started at Rock You as a Monetization Manager. When the previous designer moved onto another game within Rock You, I took over all Design responsibilities which included designing new features, new in-game items / troops / equipment, and was included in all leadership and sprint planning meetings. I oversaw training two new designers when we transitioned Kingdoms of Camelot to another India studio.
During my time as the lead designer of KoC I instituted several large changes to the game in addition to the standard content and new unit creation. One major change was to regularly speak to our players in our forums and hold regular conversation and discussion. Here I would start bi-weekly forum threads discussing upcoming features, and ask players what things we should focus on. This change (among many others) led to much of the community hailing me as "the savior of KoC". Another change was the implementation of a combat balance change to many troops/units, which was the first time this had been done in the 7 year history of KoC. This change was well received and generated almost an entire months worth of revenue at a time when we were running short on new content after company lay offs.
Run or Die
Level Designer from July 2014 - December 2014
I created every challenge level, designed new level chunks for the endless mode, and did testing for Run or Die.
Cash Panic Heroes
Current ‘for fun’ project
Cash Panic Heroes is a money matching puzzle combat game inspired by games like Money Puzzle Exchanger and Soliterica.
Match coins into higher denominations to clear the board and gain money to buy upgrades and special items. Matching colored energy coins gives you energy to use your heroes unique abilities.
Selecting different heroes gives you access to new abilities to use in a round, while the items in the shop remain the same for every hero. The first hero to knock out the other wins!
All artwork is temporary while I work the gameplay out. That's totally not Alucard from SotN.
College & game jams
Candy Shot 2
Candy Shot two is a puzzle game with a rotating bow/arrow that shoots puzzle pieces onto the playfield. This was a commissioned sequel to an old Flash game Candy Shot. Partway into the development, the company that hired our team broke their contract and cancelled the title.
Pumpin' 'n Jumpin'
A 48 hour game jam game. A runner style game with a rhythm game health regeneration system. You play as an ambulance driver who crashed his car. You have to deliver a heart to a dying kid. As you take damage, you can regenerate health by pumping the Spacebar in time with the EKG meter at the bottom of the screen. At the end of the event every attendee voted in a number of categories. We won Most interesting use of the theme, most fun, and voters choice.
entity
A 2D stealth game. A 48 hour game jam game. You play as the "entity", a snake-ish looking being that is damaged by light. You have to slink around the shadows and each the exit of the facility you are trapped in.
Student games
Sail the Random Seas
A small planet generator. Pressing "r" will generate several separate chunks of a planet. You can then sail around the planet's ocean(s), even looping around the planet. This simple college game was part of a course to teach scripting in javascript. The goal was just to make a "toy" game to mess around with, not a game with goals or win conditions.
Concatenation
A puzzle game where you control a red and blue player at the same time, where moving one character in a direction will move the other in the opposite direction. Each color player has a goal they must reach. Every time you move you increase a move-counter. Each level has par times and your goal is to reach the goal under par in each level.
till the fog
A text based adventure mystery. You read through a story and make choices throughout the game. To find the true ending, you must explore the branching story paths, and piece the clues together from multiple failed endings.
