WWE 2K23

DESIGN DIRECTOR - CONSOLE / PC

WWE 2K23 was our opportunity to both extend and polish the work we did in the previous title. To that end, my design team and I proposed the addition of two larger features to our client, "Live Events" for MyFaction and "Seasons" for MyGM.

Live Events was crucial in providing a constant stream of live, playable content and desireable rewards to our players. Seasons for MyGM added a more structured meta-progression element around the mode.

"GM Mode is my preferred management sim mode, and this year’s version is even bigger and more robust than ever." - IGN

"MyFACTION has a variety of challenges, including Daily and Weekly events which will gift you plenty of rewards and packs, keeping things continually fresh." - GAMINGbible

"MyFACTION can now be played online, after being just a single-player, offline mode last year. So if you enjoyed the process of upgrading wrestlers as cards, then you’ll appreciate the expansion here." - Shacknews

Design Challenges

DESIGN CHALLENGES

Putting the "Live" in Live Service

In WWE 2K22, we laid the foundation for a great collectible card game / live service mode and now we needed to build up from that foundation. While the mode was regularly releasing new card content to players, the rest of the experience didn't really have much else keeping it fresh. To that end, the Live Events concept I proposed to our client and my team was something that I thought could add value in those three tried and true critical areas: engagement, monetization and retention.

From the engagement side we created topical events within the brand based on current, historical or fantasy WWE matches, complete with in-game challenges and rewards that were relevant to players. To generate more card pack sales, specific card gating requirements were added to gain access to certain events with unique rewards. The retention aspects consisted of limited time events released on a schedule that was communicated and marketed to players so they could plan ahead. Ultimately the combination of these elements led to a 50% increase in card pack sales year-over-year.

Online Multiplayer

Adding competitive play was another natural expansion to our second year in MyFaction. My previous experience with these types of features helped guide my team in keeping our overall design goals simple for our first foray into online. Despite the cautious approach, we still ended up having to scale things back due to technical challenges. Although Quick Play was ultimately limited to "friendly" head-to-head matches, it still allowed players to take their unique lineups into a match and compete in different match types that were updated every few days.

MyGM - Seasons

With the unexpected departure of a designer on the MyGM team, I ended up having to pick up the slack and pull double duty as Director and Designer on this project. To that end, one of the concepts that gained traction with the team after discussing it, was the idea to add more meta-progression elements to the mode, which culminated in the Seasons design. What started out as a design to simply track a player's progress across multiple "seasons" evetually became a much larger suite of features that included expansions to almost every system in the mode. These improvements along with the addition of more match types and allowing up to 4-players to compete against each other locally, was well received by fans of the mode.