Fortunes of the Brave

Role: Producer, Project Manager, Lead Designer
Date: October 2015 - August 2017
Publisher: Chill Gaming/Wymac Gaming Solutions
Platform: PC/custom hardware

Project overview:
Fortunes of the Brave is a 3rd person fantasy combat arena game that exists within a competitive monetised environment. Players face fantasy style enemy creatures in a time limited battle at the end of which a monetary award is given based on score.

Responsibilities: 

• Direction and leadership of the development team (35+)

• Hiring of key staff from project outset to late-stage development

• Project co-ordination and development

• Investor pitches and stakeholder updating at key milestones

• Project scoping alongside CTO and CEO to fit investor briefing

• Hardware manufacturer liaison alongside CTO

• External contractor management and communication

• Initial design of game concept in response to board member briefing

• Design and implementation of gameplay systems

• Design and implementation of user interface systems

• Testing procedure design and analysis

Info:
I was brought in to Wymac as the initial hire in order to develop the concept around a new product type, working alongside the CEO, CTO and external investment partners. Initially my goal was to establish a conceptual design that would break into a new game space that had not yet been broached at the scale or quality we were targeting. During the initial stages of the project I was responsible for sourcing developers, artists and designers from my network with skills and sensibilities that would compliment the project and existing team. As the project picked up steam and scale I began leading art, design and code teams towards the creation of a cohesive video game experience, while evaluating its performance on custom hardware in a hybrid game type space. Naturally as the project grew it became part of our focus to establish additional department lead roles, finding individuals that could fill those roles and help me develop a framework in which the larger team could function optimally. At this point my role shifted to larger creative direction and design department leadership, while transitioning some of my previous responsibilities to art and code leads with further experience and capabilities than I in those spaces.

During the mid-late stages of the project I worked with my design team and external testing partners to evaluate the product we had developed to date. It was at this time that we integrated a dedicated project manager into the team so that I could focus on user experience, economy design and producer responsibilities while fostering our growing design team which now had two juniors, a senior designer, myself and extra-departmental designers working on a number of titles at once. At this time I also began looking forward and conceptualising the next titles that would come into development as the flagship game began to enter testing and evaluation before release.