Alex Weatherston

Motionsports Adrenaline

Motionsports Adrenaline is an action sports game where the player uses the Kinect or Playstation Move to control their character in one of several extreme sporting events. The goal of the game was to improve on the first game and create sports with more danger and excitement. .

During early production on the game I was responsible for prototyping the X-Ski activity. I worked closely with a dedicated engineer and a level designer to rapidly prototype the gameplay and level layout for the event. The event was then handed off to our outsourcing partner for further development.

Later on in the project I was tasked with designing a way to use the Kinect's quicktime event system on the PS3 move. With a small team we were able to create a system that estimated the player's body position similar to the tracking style used on the Kinect. This saved nearly 6 man-months of time over the initially proposed system.

Responsibilities

• Worked closely with a level designer and SE to prototype the X-Ski event
• Rapidly iterated and tuned the X-Ski design based on feedback from Design & Studio directors
• Responsible for keeping the PS3 SKU’s quality at par with Kinect SKU.
• Adapted the QTE system used on Kinect to work with the Playstation Move

Driver: San Francisco

Driver: San Francisco is a sandbox-style action driving video game where you play as detective John Tanner chasing his arch-nemesis Charles Jericho. Tanner is hit by a truck in the beginning of the game and falls into a coma where the player is introduced to Driver: San Francisco's ingenious new "shifting" mechanic. "

During development I had two major tasks - creating fun and exciting co-op missions and designing the front end flow. After creating outlines for more than a dozen mission types, the best ideas were chosen and developed into full co-op missions for online and split-screen.

On the front end side, I was tasked with expanding on the initial front end flow design and making sure the large amount of information was presented to the player in an attractive and effective manner. Communication with Newcastle - the lead studio - was key and frequent teleconference calls helped with collaboration between our two studios.

Towards the end of development I was tasked with running weekly focus groups where members of the public came in to test the game and provide feedback. I compiled all of the feedback given and provided it to the mission designers to help improve their missions.

Responsibilities

• Designed and implemented several multiplayer co-op and split-screen missions
• Communicated frequently with lead studio in UK during development phase to suggest and incorporate design changed
• Ran weekly local public focus groups to obtain feedback and improve on mission designs
• Designed and laid out entire front end menu flow (excluding single-player modes)
• Rapidly iterated on menu layout and design to streamline matchmaking and ease of navigation
• Worked closely with engineers and artists to ensure layout of FE was cohesive and intuitive

Smurfs Dance Party

The Smurfs Dance Party is a dance game developed for the Wii to launch before the remake of the Smurfs movie. The player can dance along with their favourite smurfs from the movie by themselves or with up to four players.

This project required a designer to condense the entire movie script down to a logical story to be narrated by papa smurf between the dances given to the player in the story mode. The script was several hundred pages long and entire scenes had to be summarized in one to two sentences.

Due to the fact that the movie was still in production during development of the game, daily updates to the script would quickly change the order and length of scenes in the film. The sudden changed required quick turnaround times so approval could be given by the the San Francisco studio and Sony in Los Angeles.

Responsibilities

• Adapted Hollywood movie script to fit a logical story progression
• Worked under tight deadlines with multiple 3rd party sign-offs required on all changes
• Reacted to multiple script changes that required immediate turn-around on revisions.

Academy of Champions

Academy of Champions is a soccer video game where the player attends a magical soccer academy where the legendary Pele is headmaster. The player must recruit teammates and strengthen their skills during their 4 terms at the school. Players complete daily classes to earn experience and credits to level their teammates up and buy useful soccer gear and fun outfits.

One of my roles during development was to oversee the prototyping of the mini-games. Working within the limits of the playing field I helped to create the key mini-games the player would encounter frequently while progressing through the school year. The mini-games also had to correctly scale in difficulty throughout the game.

In addition to the mini-games I helped plan and write the story for the game, including the biographies for every player and team in the game. I was also in charge of balancing the skills and attributes of the characters and teams and create different formations for the AI to execute during gameplay.

Responsibilities

• Designed, prototyped and balanced all the mini-games along with several engineers.
• Balanced and refined character statistics for every playable character in the game.
• Developed AI patterns for each team and balanced them with experienced footballers.
• Wrote biographies for all 130+ characters and 8+ teams.
• Worked closely with senior designers to help craft the flow of the campaign story.