YURI BIALOSKURSKY
Multiplayer | Social | Systems | UX
GAME DESIGNER / DIRECTOR
MADDEN NFL 09
GAME DESIGNER - PS2 / XB / GC
During the waning years of Madden on the previous generation of consoles, we had a small team and a bit more freedom to deviate away from the main game. We decided to focus on improvements to existing modes, so I designed a new "decades" progression system for our Franchise mode to help incentivize multiple seasons of play, a new goal system for our Superstar mode in order to motivate users to engage in lesser used mechanics and additional content for our Fantasy Challenge mode.
"...while most of the features from last year return...the new twist comes with the team expectations that you're given when you sign a contract with a team...and is perhaps the best inclusion found within this year's game." - IGN
"Between its perfectly refined on-field action, engaging franchise mode, full-fledged online capabilities, and alternate game types like Superstar and Fantasy Challenge, it’s chock full of more pigskin pleasure than most of us could hope to get to in a given year." - Games Radar
DESIGN CHALLENGES
Franchise Decades
Our Franchise mode had largely remained the same for a number of years and one of our biggest issues was keeping users engaged past their first season. In an effort to address this, I designed a new progression mechanic that would provide users with a way to not only track their results each season, but generate a score based on those results as well as a variety of factors like personnel moves and team milestones.
Superstar - Team Expectations
Much like our Franchise mode, our Superstar mode had also been neglected for some time so we decided to make a number of improvements starting with my design for a new objective system called "Team Expectations" which challenged users to meet a certain percentage of on and off the field expectations as part of the contract with their team. The system would also evaluate and adjust the expectations a team would make for a player based on the stage of their career (Rookie, Pro and Veteran) as well as their performance up to that point.
Superstar - Gameplanning
Another improvement I helped design within our Superstar mode, was for our "Game Planning" feature. The original feature allowed users to practice specific plays tailored to an opponent prior to playing them, but other than practicing, it never provided users any feedback to let them know if their efforts made any impact. I ended up designing a new system of in-game feedback that would let users not only know when they were facing a play they'd practiced against, but also allow them to adjust to it and then reward them for successfully identifying and countering it.
Superstar - Earn Your Spot
Player progression in our Superstar mode had been limited to off season improvements and didn't really maintain a tight compulsion loop for the player. At the same time, voluntary team practices also served no real purpose other than to simply fill out the user's calendar. When I designed the "Earn Your Spot" feature, I took both of these elements and worked them back into the core loop for the user by creating a new system of goals to accomplish during team practices, which in turn earned them points that they could then use to improve their skills, progress their player and overtake other NFL players ahead of them on the depth chart.
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