SERVICE SUMMARY
BOOTCAMP:
DESIGN DAY
This bootcamp exist in several variations, each laser focused at a certain layer or area of game design. It aims to infuse teams with knowledge to take their game design further, and coach them while doing so. Each variant begins with an intro of one of Marie’s popular talks, that opens up the subject at hand and sets up for further learning. Marie then gives a specialized talk that hits the nail on the head on what aspect of design to improve, and how, by explaining and providing templates and models. In the afternoon, she then sits down with the team(s), and guides them through a workshop exercise based on what she just taught. At the end of the day, the team(s) present their results from other teams to learn and feedback on. The Design Day can be taken as a singular day, or by putting together a program of several Design Days as per your needs. They can be held in person or online. They can also be held for a singular devteam or several ones, that Marie jumps between during exercise segments.
VISION VARIANTS
This bootcamp runs over one day, but there are several variants of it available depending on your needs:
Game Vision & features
The first part helps establish and articulate a clear vision. The second talk shows how to take said vision and extrapolate info a feature set, either by creative leadership, designers or feature teams.
Session where Marie shares her refined model for defining a creative framework around the traditional concept of game pillars, to ensure cohesion, synergy and harmony whilst establishing clear boundaries to what the game is & isn’t.
In this talk, Marie walks through the concept of design hierarchy, and demonstrates her intricate model to take the game’s core aspects or pillars and extrapolate them into a synergistic feature set, no matter if your game is in early concepting or if it already hit production.
The result will be a game design where every feature makes sense, brings value and forms a coherent and immersive gameplay experience.
The groups chooses one of Marie’s templates, maps out the game’s pillars and then uses the model to extrapolate features that realize said pillars whilst showing strong synergy that makes the game feel holistic, provide a rounded experience and appear well-thought out.
Marie walks around and helps each group or designer in their process.
The team shows and walks through their core aspects or pillars and how they have used these to extrapolate a synergistic feature set.
Creative Briefs
For teams with a vision in place who wants to establish high-level game design in each game area.
This is an extra design layer between pillars and features that most large game projects benefit from. It lets designers explore synergies and establish boundaries between one another, and align with creative leadership.
In this talk, Marie walks through some best practices for design documentation. We will then walk through the transformation of improving a messy design document and step by step turning it into something that is clear, concise and inspirational to read.
In this session, we walk through Creative Briefs – a whitepaper document that establishes the high-level design in a given game area – their components, each component’s purpose, how to write them, how to establish their creative boundaries and the level of abstraction they should be authored with.
These briefs can then be used to align, sync and ensure your game is synergistic across all design aspects – from narrative to progression to gameplay.
2-3-hour exercise where Marie helps teams or individual designers author their own creative briefs. Marie also pinpoints potential areas where there is overlap and need for teams to sync, and suggests synergies following with what each group is designing.
The groups or each designer walks through their newly created creative brief and presents it to Marie and either the whole team or creative leadership for feedback.
The Steam page
For teams who have a good idea on what their game is about, and want to project this idea 'on paper' to see what the final product would look like.
This is a valuable design tool that helps teams understand where the value lies in their game idea, how unique it is and how their current game design would stack up in comparison with competitors.
Inspirational talk about how to find the fun that makes your game stand out, how to convey it to others, align and agree on what to do, how to implement and test it and most importantly – how to keep it.
Workshop that discusses how Steam Pages can be used as a tool for alignment, to faster understand where your game vision is heading and to make your game stand out more.
We walk through the history of Steam Pages, which elements and aspects they should or could contain and best practices for authoring each one.
Each group gets a digital template where they can make a mock-up version of a Steam page for their game or pitch.
The group(s) walk through their newly created Steam page and gets feedback and reflections from Marie and the other participants.
Core gameplay & depth
For teams who want to improve on the variation & depth of their core gameplay
The core gameplay of everything you have played can be deconstructed into a few reoccurring mechanics and patterns. What are they, what do they challenge the player on and how can they be layered combine to create deep and varied second-to-second gameplay?
Takeaway: More varied core gameplay
This session dives into how gameplay depth is achieved by using gameplay challenges, and how these can be composed throughout the course of a game to provide a sense of mastery, make the player feel smart and offer varied gameplay.
Outline:
To start off, we dive down into defining what core challenges are the ‘bread and butter’ of a game, focused on layering and mastering a few mechanical and/or tactical challenges, depending on the game’s genre.
Marie then shows how to plot a graph that illustrates game’s progression and indicates how & where the core challenges deepen to increase stimulation and provide mastery. She shows examples on how to unlock and ‘upgrade’ said core challenges to provide a sense of progression and refreshment whilst staying in a similar style to what the players have practiced.
Marie then illustrates how, for a couple of chosen game genres, temporary challenges can be added at times, both to provide gameplay variation but also to offer sequences where the player can draw on any unlockable abilities the player has gained.
For the temporary challenges, Marie discusses the addition of tactical challenges – especially those that draw on the knowledge the player accrues and the awareness it develops, to instill a secondary dimension of mastery.
Finally, Marie makes a pass over the gameplay graph and shows how to add compounded challenges and gates throughout the game, to require a minimum skill bar from the player, to ensure it’s always set up for what awaits next and worthy “graduation tests” when the gameplay is about to evolve.
Note: This workshop works best for simulation games, survival games, RPG’s, platformers, action-adventure and strategy games.
2-3-hour exercise where Marie helps different teams plot out the gameplay challenges their game offers over time, and add or change challenges to improve their game’s challenge variation, sense of mastery and difficulty.
Teams are permitted to add placeholder challenges in areas of the game that are not yet fully designed, that optional requirements that narrows down what the final challenge would be.
The team walks through their newly created visual graph that shows how the challenges in their game increases and shifts over time, and what skill gates the players might need to pass as they progress.
Boss Fights
For teams looking to sharpen their current boss fights or design new ones
Marie dives into and share her design process to create fun, intriguing and challenging boss fights that are satisfying to beat.
In this session, Marie walks through common segments in boss fights, their purposes and best practices and shows how to plan and layout your own fight. She also introduces her storyboard template and the concept of using intensity curves to gradually increase difficulty and excitement at each stage of your fight.
Exercise where the participants themselves get to use the storyboard template Marie has presented in order to compose a new boss fight or illustrate their own – and add improvements according to what they’ve learnt, with Marie’s help, suggestions and coaching.
Participants lay out and walk through the storyboard they created to explain their boss fight and its segments and how it all comes together in an immersive, stimulating, and challenging experience.
MORE DETAILS
Executive Summary
Marie has an Executive Summary that describes her sessions more in detail along with key sample slides. She keeps this under wraps to protect her intellectual property from public disclosure, for several reasons.
Get in touch below to ask for access, or to book a free call and explore what talks might be relevant for your business - without any expectation of commitment.
TESTIMONIALS
"Great experience"
The biggest help for us was definitely her extensive AI knowledge, where she shared her best practices from past AAA games she worked on. She went into several advanced topics. It was especially great to hear her thought process when creating the behaviors of enemies, and how she user tier lists when designing enemies. Her hands-on combat experience was very valuable to us, and we learned a lot from her.
After a week of bootcamp, our team is now well set to tackle our coming milestones, but her expertise could really be helpful again in the future. “
"Creativity was booming"
We found Marie easy to work with. She was responsive, flexible and tailored her program and content to our wishes. She also took the time to walk around and help everyone in their thinking, making sure no one was stuck, and even went above and beyond by spending some time playing and giving feedback on a game in development. All in all, we loved working with her and definitely want to bring her in again!"
SERVICES OFFERED
Schools & indie studios
This service includes:
- A one-day bootcamp
- Real game idea or fictional game
- Within your creative boundaries
- According to your scope constraints
- Online or in-person
- For universities & self-funded indie studios
- NDA can be signed
€800
(excl VAT & travel)
Incubators & funded studios
This service includes:
- A one-day bootcamp
- Tailored schedule as per your request
- Based on improving your game
- Within your creative boundaries
- According to your scope constraints
- Possibility to swap in any of Marie's other sessions
- Online or in-person
- NDA can be signed
€1200
(excl VAT & travel)