Soft launched
State of work
32
Team size
October 2021
Date
Contribution
As a game designer for Football Elite, I developed the game’s mechanics and user interface features, played a key role in conducting user playtests and balancing the game. I’ve led the ideation process by collaborating with the development team in the course of dogfooding organized after each major change. I also contributed on an AI system that filled up the teams that were missing human players.
Thorough research helped us identify the target audience’s preferences, which guided our ideation phase. We then created prototypes and tested them with playtesters to refine the design. Finally, I worked with the team to ensure the game was polished and ready for release.
Underneath I present a selected cases of my contribution.
Objective #1
Create a feature that provides the players with relevant information about their team to achieve a feeling of accomplishment based on acquired achievements
Solution
One of the features that I’ve been working at was team history. The team history was introduced in order to provide the player with meaningful information about his team as well as a result of another design decision, trophy system that provided players with cups for finishing season as 1 of the top 3 teams.
During the design of that feature I took inspiration from fitness apps that often feature a tile based design on their homescreen. Information is communicated in easy visual way, utilizing graphs and iconography to present the data.
Summary
Using the data that we already had been gathering on our servers, to prevent additional development, we’ve came up with following data to show: Received trophies, last 5 games win / loose overview, total amount of yards ( tota reward from slots ), success rate in decision making phase, total amount of touchdown, season MVP with specific player avatar and additional info
Objective #2
Develop a features that will assist players in selecting their first team
Solution
As soon as we’ve started playtesting it became apparent that people need a simple yet effective in result, way of deciding on the team that they’re going to sign themselves to. The game was relaying heavily on its social aspect and player engagement, both during the matches and between them on the group chat. Those interactions where creating a very distinctive vibe in other similar productions that we were actively researching.
I’ve decided that the best way to communicate this to the player will be by adding the activity meter that will measure both chat activity and attendance to the matches. In favor of sticking to the previously implemented Team History feature, I’ve went with heartbeat graph styled icon that would present the whole set of data in simple yet effective way
Solution
The thing I really liked about that feature was that the players was presented with simple and eye catching information that would help him to choose the team, while as a game designer I could impact the model behind it to AB test different configuration of chat activity and game attendance to find a best mix that would affect the retention of players that selected the high activity team
I’ve decided that the best way to communicate this to the player will be by adding the activity meter that will measure both chat activity and attendance to the matches. In favor of sticking to the previously implemented Team History feature, I’ve went with heartbeat graph styled icon that would present the whole set of data in simple yet effective way
Next one?
I was responsible for designing and overseeing weekly events. Additionally, I organized playtests and surveys to gather feedback.