Quest Design

I designed the game’s first side quest encountered by players, ensuring it adequately introduced the early rules of the world and tutorialized important interaction options. Through simple dialogue, the player was taught about key game play elements, such as when the walker horde will appear. Additionally, in this VR title players can directly hand objects to NPCs and get different reactions depending on the item. It was important to show the player this rule as well as where different item types are stored in their inventory. I designed this introductory fetch quest to require the use of those elements.

Systems Design

I designed, pitched, and documented the initial player survival system. Wanting to capture the core of the envisioned player experience, I collected the various disparate mechanics planned by other designers and created a system that effectively balanced those elements in a first-pass design. This design was ultimately pared down and refined through iteration, but the original concept of centering the system around stamina and hunger, rather than solely health, was preserved in the final design.

AI Design and Scripting

I conceptualized the human vs. walker NPC encounter design. I used AI concepts from sports games to simulate more reliable and realistic zombie mobbing behavior when attacking human NPCs. Although the final design needed iteration from senior designers and programmers, it advanced the conversation from “How are we going to do this?” to “How can we refine this?”

NPC Bark System

I owned the NPC bark system, which required coordinating with many teams including production, writing, engineering, talent management, etc. The task required identifying NPC behaviors needing barks, creating and updating the authoring and tracking sheet, sitting in on recording sessions, and implementing over 10,000 barks across 15 voice actors through to final polish. This was initially planned to be a small-scoped flavor element, but after a successful initial trial, more detailed and varied barks were added to assist with world-building and highlight consequences to player choices.

Additional Design Work

Design was asked to create some concepts for additional content, specifically a fun mode that wouldn’t require a significant amount of new assets to create. I knew players had been asking for more sandbox-style walker combat and I thought it would be fun to mix gritty melee with some dark comedic elements like chopping up walkers with your bare hands. Thus, “Sinner Mode” came to be.