I partnered with Tiger Electronics and Hasbro Games to deliver a truly magical sword play adventure in Middle Earth. My involvement included over 250+ hours of billable game design services, from crafting the initial concept brief, generating concepts, and writing multiple game specs. It was a fast and iterative process that spanned 4 months in the spring of 2004. I collaborated with managers, designers, project leads, and licensors to meet an aggressive development timeline.
To begin, I reviewed the existing project demo that had been sent to New Line (including email threads to rapidly get up to speed), played a wireless sword game that we’d adapt to Lord of the Ring (called Dragon Quest, but we were not supposed to make a saga or RPG) and met with the team. A licensor approval meeting was just 3 weeks away, and we had much to define. Should we base the game on one movie or all 3? Did player navigation require a map? How would we deliver all of the different characters from this iconic property? I shared game concepts with the team and expanded our scope until I had delivered a final 24 page game spec with dozens of supporting visuals, including one-page storyboards, and gameplay matrix documents.
My work also involved UI/UX, interface flow, level progression, gameplay storyboards, and digital mockups. I wore many hats and collaborated with many professionals across the product development team: managers, designers, engineers, licensors, and senior staff. Specific tasks I further provided: writing cut-scene dialogue, finding sound effects in the movies, and navigating licensor approval. Also tested playable code and generated frequent prioritized punch lists for all manner of changes. It was a lot of emailing across 12 time zones! Wish we’d had video conferencing back then :D