Ubisoft NEXT Game Design

Second Place Finalist 2023

Gigi_GoldenEagle_CreativeBrief.pdf

Phase I: Creative Brief

The competition's theme was to design a new companion character / AI for any Far Cry game. LinkedIn Post

Lessons Learned

Analyzing the Current Roster

The first step was determining what is missing in FarCry5. I noticed the companions are split into two categories: Fangs for Hire (animals), and Guns for Hire (humans). There are only 4 Fangs for hire in the game and they are all land animals, so I decided to design a companion that will fly and attack from above.

Gigi_GoldenEagle_Companion_DesignDocument.pdf

Pase II: Detailed Design Document

This next round was deticated to outlining a plan for my companion and to elaborate on my design decisions. LinkedIn post

Lessons Learned

Diagrams for Communication

Parti diagrams were used to visually explain how certain mechanics such as Gigi's abilities work. Simple images and lines convey the actions, with a legend explaining what each symbol represents.

GDD Research

I referenced many Game Design Documents online and extracted what I liked. I noticed many started by stating their design goals and what the design IS and IS NOT, which you can see me implement with Gigi to clarify my intent.

Re-Evaluating my Design

I made the difficult decision to remove certain abilities proposed in the creative brief as they directly conflicted with my design goals. I can now understand the saying "Don't be afraid to kill your babies". Even though our designs are precious, if it doesn't work to accomplish your goals then remove them!

Gigi the Golden Eagle Presentation.pdf

Phase III: Pitch Presentation

For this final phase, I was required to deliver a presentation about my companion, taking the contents from the detailed design document and pitching those ideas in a detailed breakdown. LinkedIn post

Lessons Learned

Presentation Quality

I decided to include all the relevant information on the slides as opposed to using minimal words so anyone looking at the slides without my voice over is able to clearly understand my companion. The flow of slides are taken from the detailed design document to ensure the information is communicated in the intended way.

Design Quality

I got the feedback to focus more on the systematic design and how the companion interacts with the game's features. After this I iterated on my design, allocating 2 slides to discussing how Gigi interacts with the many discovered features of FarCry 5.

Communication Clarity

I stated my design goals from the very first slide to establish my companion's intention, and for each slide when discussing reasoning I relate it back to the design goals. This way each new proposed feature of the companion contributes to the overall design intention.

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