Unannounced Football Game

Project Context

I was brought onto the project as the only day-to-day internal designer to work alongside its pioneering creator, delivering design work at regular milestones.

Detailed Contribution

Core Gameplay Features & Content Planning

• Handling player status' as it relates to real-world rules and behaviours. This includes probabilities related to injuries, effects of high fatigue, a morale system, and yellow and red card rulings

• Additional camera options to reflect the different perspectives offered in competitor football titles

• Career Mode rework to reflect the vast play options (play match, sim, watch match) transfer options (transfer list players, bid arrived, counter bids, approach player to loan etc.) move clubs (as manager) end-season logic (teams move up and down divisions, out-of-contract players moved to transfer list, objectives met/not met logic) and other real-world activities

• Customisable competitions including bespoke rules for each round (where possible) 

• World competitions including synergy with a new trophy system, awarding users with star ratings based on the difficulty on winning a given trophy with a high/low rated team, and synergy with career mode in unlocking a player in career mode relating to the competition (e.g being granted a highly rated British player by completing an English League tournament with a low-rated team)

• Edit mode with customizable player (name and abbreviation), team (name and abbreviation) and badge edits

• Accessibility and colourblind design, guided by documentation provided by Netflix Games. This includes changes to colours (fonts, kits, grass, pitch markings, player stamina rings and player selection rings) and UI (sizing and shapes) to ensure our game is as accessible and colourblind-friendly as possible

FTUE & Onboarding

• 3 dedicated FTUE & onboarding experiences based on the controller input, player behaviours and level of information needed to communicate for PC, mobile and console audiences. Specific considerations include the option to 'skip all' on PC and console, but restrict mobile users to play a small portion to understand the most basic input systems (which are somewhat unintuitive on mobile).

UX Design

• Full menu mockups and wireframed user flow for menu screens, button shortcuts and difficulty quick-select

• Pre-match starting line-up, subs bench and formation display akin to a Sky Sports line-up graphic 

• Mobile settings UX including settings content (UI toggles, control remapping, sider options) and settings user flow

• Live-ops design planning and implementation including bi-weekly objectives and XP rewards on rotation. This included CMS interface design, allowing internal and external users to deliver a pipeline of live-ops challenges directly into the game. I provided a visual flow that allowed for scheduling content drop dates, challenge lookup, assigning challenges to specific teams, and defining the variables of the challenge, including whether or not the challenge is tied to individual players (or the entire team) and times needed to perform to complete the challenge

Results

Development has grown from a half-studio cohort to a 15+ person team across the country, meaning I've gained valuable skills in developing with internal and external teams. As an avid football fan, working with developers of varying degrees of interest in football has broadened my design perspective, vital for a mobile game as we expect to reach audiences beyond hardcore football fans, due to the free nature of the product.

What Hasn't Gone So Well

Our studio operated with a designer-led direction for each game. This project flips that, with all design directions beginning with the game's creator. It's my responsibility to unpack content from the creator's mind and streamline it, turning it into cohesive and understandable dev-friendly documentation. Being the bridge between a vision holder and our dev teams is a significant challenge on a big, fast-moving project.

What I'll Do Better Going Forward

I need to be a makeshift product owner as well as a game designer, with both a low and high-level understanding of the product. Combined by working closer with the game's creator, we will be at the stage where I'll be better able to unpack that creative direction from the vision holder quicker because I have the context of the game's long-term vision and the broader business objectives due to my newfound ability as a makeshift product owner as well as designer.