SERVICE SUMMARY
WORKSHOPS:
PACKAGES
Marie offers workshop packages for both foundational and advanced game design topics, aimed at specific design areas. She also offers game jams, where she guides the team through coming up with their own game pitches and presenting them for the team. All packages contains a mix of talks and exercises for optimal learning. Marie also offers custom packages. Get in touch to tell Marie more about your situation and goals and she can suggest relevant packages of sessions.
ADVANCED CLASSES
Sessions with specific and deep knowledge in specific game features
Core Combat Design
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
What are the decisions that the player takes second-to-second, minute-to-minute and hour-to-hour in your game? What are the tools that the players at their disposal to take said actions? How overloaded, or understimulated, is the player, in terms of both mechanics and tactics?
Takeaway: Balanced player stimulus
This session dives into different the different categories of gameplay depth – knowledge, mechanics and strategical, and speaks about how you can build features that touches upon them all to create cohesive gameplay that challenges all of a player’s senses and abilities.
Takeaway: More gameplay depth
Which common playstyles does different players have, and how to they harmonize with different combat archetypes, and different combat roles a player can assume? This session dives into how you can make your gameplay flexible to allow for several playstyles.
Takeaway: More enjoyable gameplay
Beats and intensity can be described as a game’s EKG. What does that mean in practical terms? How can they be used to your advantage when designing? In this session, we go over them and talk about ways to create and distribute them over the course of a game and session.
Takeaway: A more enjoyable game for players
Multiplayer design
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 different the different categories of gameplay depth – knowledge, mechanics and strategical, and speaks about how you can build features that touches upon them all to create cohesive gameplay that challenges all of a player’s senses and abilities.
Takeaway: More gameplay depth
Session focused on how your game
can serve players to help them understand what’s happening in the game, promote
them to follow the same decision logic and be able to coordinate their
strategy.
Takeaway: Better teamplay
Session where we look at different ways to build and strengthen the social glue between players that both makes them want to excel, play together as well as keep coming back to the game.
Takeaway: Better retention
What does a pro player need to be able to rise to the top in your game? What tools does coaches require, and how do you ensure orgs can get enough exposure? This session goes into the features you need to ensure your game can grow a thriving esports community.
Takeaway: Making your game community-ready
Game AI (NPCs)
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
Session teaching some of my secrets in AI – a system developed that makes AI respond to player actions in immersive and realistic ways depending on both the nature and strength of the actions, the personality of said AI and its relationships with other surrounding AI.
Takeaway: More realistic AI actions
Player immersion rests upon the whole package of what they experience whilst ingame, – the narrative, sound, VFX, animation and so on. This session walks through my Mood System – a model that seamlessly improves the appearance and expression of an AI, in parallell to it taking actions.
Takeaway: More realistic AI expressions
Having been the feature owner and responsible designer for all boss fights on an AAA game, Marie dives into and share some of her design secrets on how she approaches their design and work with devteams to create fun, intriguing and challenging boss fights that are satisfying to beat.
Takeaway: Better boss design & process
In this session, Marie walks through common segments in boss fights and guides how to plan and layout your own fights. She also introduces her storyboard and the concept of using different intensity curves depending on the ingredients in your fight and how many stages are present.
Takeaway: Better boss fights
FOUNDATIONAL CLASSES
Sessions that go into the very building blocks and methods of game design, useful for all teams irrespective of game type
Design Theory Evolved
What characterizes a good design pillar? Should they overlap, or stand out, or complement one another? How can they be used to inform the rest of your design? What elements bind them together to explain the full direction of the game?
Takeaway: Clear design direction
In this talk, Marie walks through the concept of design hierarchy, and how it can be used to structure your vision to ensure your that the core aspects of your game gets to thrive and harmonize with one another, and make the game feel coherent.
Takeaway: More concise & coherent design
Workshop to help sort and prioritize ideas and features. By establishing what’s core in our vision, and what’s not, we make sure to leave room for important features to grow and thrive, whilst darlings get put on hold for the time being.
Takeaway: Alignment, clear priorities, more solid design structure
Often when we design, we become prescriptive. The resulting gameplay isn’t always as fun as was intended – but that’s what experience goals can change. This session tells how to use them to align and motivate your team, and put the focus back where it should be: on the player.
Takeaway: Aligned team, more fun features
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
Personas is a concept the industry has used for years, but what are they? How do they ‘work’? When are they useful, and how should they not be used? This session tells how to use them in the best way to make informed choices in your design, and ensure it caters to many players.
Takeaway: A more rounded game experience
Creative Processes
Have your creatives ever felt
stuck, uninspired and drained of ideas? In this workshop, we explore the
concept of Creative Habits and try a couple of short exercises that the team
can do together every morning to keep their creative brain active and ensure
ideas always flow.
Takeaway: More ideas, higher creative output
Inspirational talk about how to tap
into and use your whole feature team to your advantage when designing – and
motivate them to achieve greatness in the process.
Takeaway: More team happiness and cohesion, better quality design decisions
How often should you play your own
build? How can you get relevant, actionable quality feedback whilst also making
the team feel like their time was spent valuably and that they have been
listened too? This talk dives into best practices.
Takeaway: Better quality playtest feedback
Collaborative exercises used to both ideate and then align together which ideas to move forward with. After an initial demonstration, the participants are divided into teams and take turn to lead sessions using fictional topics.
Takeaway: Tools to get great ideas and an aligned and a motivated team behind them.
In this talk we will explore the art of using references to other games when working with teams. What characterizes a good reference and how can it be used to boost the immersive understanding of how your features should work? What are the pitfalls to look out for?
Takeaway: Clear and relatable design
In this workshop, Marie presents
examples and advice on how to write design docs so they are clear, concise and
inspirational. The participants then to gets to try their learnings on messy
fictional documents, and gets peer feedback on their changes.
Takeaway: Write better design docs
When should you prototype, how should you prototype? Should you prototype in several layers? What answers can it give? In this session we discuss the concepts fail-fast and fail-right and discuss which way of prototyping works best when.
Takeaway: Quick and solid design decisions
TESTIMONIALS
"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!"
"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. “
"Incredibly insightful"
Keep an eye [...] if you want to join her next masterclass, I most definitely recommend it!"
SERVICES OFFERED
Schools & indie studios
This service includes:
- A workshop package of your choosing
- Sessions as outlined
- Online or in-person
- For up to 30 people
€1000
(excl VAT & travel)
Incubators & funded studios
This service includes:
- A workshop package of your choosing
- Sessions as outlined
- Online or in-person
- For up to 30 people
€1500
(excl VAT & travel)