My Role on ARA: History Untold
Throughout the year (and change) I worked on ARA: History Untold (ARA) as Senior Game Designer/Design Lead, I had a range of responsibilities. At a glance, I:
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Balanced economy and combat for a more purposeful experience
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Created design documents for new features and major updates
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Coordinated teams of artists, developers, and designers
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Developed a roadmap with the Creative Director and Publishers
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Created maps and unique elements for scenario maps
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Updated and overhauled content to improve the player experience
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Designed and implemented new content for new features
Shipping 1.0
I was brought on to the team working on Ara about six months before launch to help address technical and design Issues. My primary role at the time was to triage high-priority bugs and address them. I also took it upon myself to become comfortable and skilled enough at the game to be one of the few capable of beating it at its higher difficulties. Being able to play the game efficiently helped me better understand which elements of the game felt rewarding and where the balance felt in opposition to the player.
I also helped implement and review the First Time User Experience (FTUE). I gave feedback to help better pace the information density given to players through the FTUE. I also advocated adding edge cases and additional triggers to be more responsive to the player and make the FTUE less rigid.
Update 1.1
Going from release to working on a live project, I stepped into a formal leadership role. I began working closely with the creative director and publishing team at Microsoft on putting together plans for updates. For the first two updates, 1.1 and 1.2, we focused mostly on addressing early player complaints, quality-of-life issues, and balance.
My work for 1.1 included such highlights as:
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Helping design and refine the National Economy Screen
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Mocking up the UX and Design for Unit Upgrades
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Designing and implementing the new Advisors system
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Polishing the design and implementation of John A. MacDonald
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Tons of bugs & minor balance fixes
The National Economy Screen
The National Economy Screen was the earliest attempt to improve clarity of the crafting pipeline and address some community complaints about ARA becoming too micro-managy. I helped design the UI and UX that communicated efficiently and let players directly change the settings of their various buildings.
Unit Upgrades
Unit Upgrading was an entirely new system we implemented to address the long-standing issues of players stockpiling useless units and struggling to keep their armies current. I designed the initial UI/UX and drafted the design documentation for engineering and UI artists. The documentation also included considerations for balance and requests for new variables in the data to control the costs of upgrading units.
Update 1.2
For Update 1.2, I continued to focus on addressing community feedback and improving the experience through balance and content updates. The engineering team focused on adding mod support. I supported adding mods as a subject matter expert on the game's data system and format, and I also provided feedback on the UI and UX.
The most noticeable content addition I made for 1.2 was designing and implementing the new leader Confucius.
Confucius
My goal was to design Confucius as a strong domestic leader with a focus on stability that reflected his historical impact. The initial version of Confucius leaned on providing players a safeguard for the Quality of Life stats in their Cities and by rewarding advancements in Research and creating opportunities to accelerate Research. Confucius ended up as a beginner-friendly leader with the focus on stability achieved.
Update 1.3
I was kept quite busy for update 1.3. The team tackled a major overhaul and update to the Diplomacy systems along with the addition of Nuclear Weapons, an impactful late-game feature. I drafted the design documents that set the initial development goals and worked closely with the team to guide delivery of the final version. I also implemented the data for all the disparate parts that would go into Nuclear Weapons.
Diplomacy Updates
I helmed the major Diplomacy Update, working closely with engineering (especially the AI Developers) to improve the AI and expand the Diplomacy gameplay. In all, we added:
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Bribe: an option to convince Nations to declare war on each other.
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Demand Tribute: a way for players to demand resources.
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Military Aid: the ability to send units to players to aid in warfare.
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Improved Clarity: by adding Advisor Insights and Diplomatic History, we helped players better understand and interact with AI players.
Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear Weapons were an intuitive extension of the Diplomacy upgrade. They were intended to give players an ultimate way to express their dominance over the game's expansion and economic systems. I wrote the original design document, including the gameplay, UI, and UX. I worked closely with developers and art to implement the final version.
Update 1.4 &
Untold Scenarios
1.4 and Untold Scenarios were released essentially together. While I addressed some bugs and provided feedback for some of the updates in 1.4, my primary focus was on Untold Scenarios. I worked with Engineering to put together the tools and hook up the data needed to make Scenarios functional.
Scenarios
I worked closely with the Creative Director to refine our choices of the historical and fictional settings we'd utilize. Once that was settled, I was responsible for the more detailed design and ensuring it was implemented. This also included using external tools and data to set up the maps we included with the scenarios, which were also available as premade maps in standard game modes.
Update 2.0
The 2.0 update for ARA introduced entirely new systems and major changes to existing content. I helmed the design and worked on much of the implementation for the new Influence system along with the associated Culture Traits. To address some longstanding issues with the design, I overhauled the Leaders to better differentiate them and used new systems to give each Nation unique units that were interesting to use and inspired by each Nation's history.
Influence & Culture Traits
Working off of the Creative Director's vision for the new Influence System, I came up with and implemented the Culture Traits. I focused on adding Culture Traits that complement focused playstyles, either by adding synergy to existing mechanics or making up for weaknesses. I also created Culture Traits that were desirable as a reward for doing well in the Influence system and create a sense of tension between players racing to buy up the rare and powerful Culture Traits.
Leader Overhaul
My goal when updating the Leaders was to ensure the traits that defined them were more emeshed in long-term play and gave leaders more distinctive identities. I used the major and minor traits to create synergies that encouraged and rewarded specific playstyles. I also did a ton of research into each leader and spent a lot of design time finding ways to honor the figure's legacy and impact on history.
Unique Units
A large part of 2.0 was adding support so that nations could be given more distinctions through additional content and mods. The initial use of the change was to give each Nation a unique unit. This required me to do a lot of research to identify a unit from each Nation in the game that also complemented the leaders of that Nation. In addition I had to create something interesting or unique about the unit that made it interesting and viable when available.