Secret Identity Studios & Gazillion Entertainment
Project Role: Game Design Intern
Become an Avenger
Drawing on over 70 years of comic history, Marvel Universe is an MMO of unprecedented depth and loyalty to the brand millions of fans have come to know and love. It provides players the opportunity to take on the role of some of Marvel’s greatest heroes and battle alongside their friends. Players can explore detailed regions from the comics as they follow the prime story arc, written by Brian Michael Bendis, and make their own adventures with their custom team of Avengers.
Marvelous Systems
Working with the design team, I helped to create some of the super powers and abilities players and enemies will come to use. Utilizing a large compartmentalized database system, I properly linked, tuned, and tested powers before implementing them into the server build and submitting them for approval. I tested the game daily and adjusted values in the database to ensure the most entertaining experience for the player, and to better balance enemies. The team also gave me the responsibility of starting the first iteration design work on nearly 30 mobs, including combat design. I also made it a personal goal to keep the team’s extensive documentation of spreadsheets, tool tutorials, and wikis up to date.
Creating a Universe
A great deal of my internship was spent practicing the craft of level design, creation, and tuning using the Secret Identity tools. The team taught me how the world is structured, and the pipeline from white-box to full art assets and navigation so that I could lend a hand wherever I was needed. I performed a variety of tasks including; creating test layouts, establishing sets of environmental props, implementing proper collision, occlusion, and navigation systems, building level layouts, setting up levels to run with the database, and moving from white-box to orange-box iterations.
Project Development
Working with Secret Identity was a fantastic introductory experience into the world of studio game development. I worked as one of over a half dozen designers, performing a variety of tasks that allowed me to test my abilities in all the various facets of game design. The tools I used while working on Marvel Universe included the Secret Identity development engine, an extensive database system, Perforce subversion control, Rally project management tools, and the Microsoft Office Suite.
In my short time with Secret Identity Studios I learned so much more than I can possibly write here:
+ Working in a truly professional game developer environment.
+ Participating as a member of a much larger team.
+ Staying in contact with producers, artists, QA, and other designers.
+ Scheduling with SCRUM for a long development cycle and iterations.
+ Mastering new tools and workflow quickly.
+ Balancing enormous gameplay systems.
+ Providing extensive weekly play-testing feedback.
+ Discussing possible design issues and bugs, and how to fix them.
+ Receiving tasks and completing them ahead of schedule.
+ Creating and linking fun and playable world spaces.
“Alex did a good job throughout his internship. He contributed imaginative design ideas and demonstrated a super-solid work ethic. I’d happily work with Alex again.” - Jesse
