Astroneer

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Project Info

Working on Astroneer has been a pivotal period in my growth as a leader of creative teams, a product owner, and as a designer. I joined the development team in the later part of 2019 after their initial 1.0 launch and exit from Steam’s Early Access earlier in the year. Initially working as a systems and limited time event designer, I eventually took over as the game’s Creative Director and have since worked to guide a series of successful updates and content drops that have grown our active player base and helped to establish the broader universe of the Astroneer IP.

Direction & Product Development

One of my primary areas of responsibility has been to provide overall direction to the Astroneer development team concerning our longer term goals and the strategy of development efforts that will help us accomplish them. Specifically, I’ve been accountable for deciding which creative areas we devote our time to and generating understanding, consensus, and excitement within the team about the journey.

The following updates have shipped during my tenure in the Creative Director role:

• The B.O.O. Update – Patch Notes | TRAILER
• The Holiday 002 Update – Patch Notes | PROMO
• Patch 1.18 – Patch Notes | PROMO
• The Mission, Compass, and Power Update – Patch Notes | TRAILER
• The Jet Powered Update – Patch Notes | TRAILER
• The Fall Update – Patch Notes | PROMO
• The Holiday 003 Update – Patch Notes | PROMO
• The Xenobiology Update – Patch Notes | PROMO
• The Controls Update – Patch Notes | PROMO
• The Rails Update – Patch Notes | TRAILER
• The Skybreak Update – Patch Notes | PROMO
• The Holiday 004 Update – Patch Notes | PROMO
• The Awakening Update – Patch Notes | TRAILER

A facet of my director work has been developing the roadmap of continued updates for the live game; this is a multifaceted process that takes into account studio business needs, marketing and supporting product efforts, and timelines around major event windows such as seasonal sales, promotions, etc. This is meshed with my creative direction goals for the game in consultation with various discipline leads and with an eye toward our production capacity.

BELOW: An example in-progress roadmap I constructed and managed with production assistance. T-shirt sizing was used to gauge relative effort of a given feature to help in determining areas of focus and to help with priorities and timeboxing. Items on the roadmap were considered base on impact relative to effort with a goal of creative comprehensive, themed updates.

A significant part of this role has been having accountability for the state of the game and to advocate for quality in what we produce for players. It has also involved pushing for work that may not inherently seem exciting or immediately impact our audience but will serve all parties in the long run. I also have routinely represented design and UX perspectives during bug triage and player support meetings, with a specific focus on the overlap between game quality and feasibility of work.

The Xenobiology Update, Nintendo Switch & Narrative Development

I worked closely with the Astroneer narrative director to develop the Xenobiology Update to coincide with the title’s launch on the Nintendo Switch. This was a specific decision intended to kickstart our burgeoning IP development efforts by introducing deeper lore and characters to the Astroneer universe while also breathing life into the game world with the addition of the game’s first interactable NPCs:

The success of this update and the overwhelmingly positive response to its adorable “space snails” and their offscreen caretaker marked the beginning of a trajectory that saw the fleshing out of the backstory of Astroneer over the next several major updates. These were accompanied by growth within our playerbase and fervor over the game’s storytelling, culminating in the extremely well-received Awakenings Update the following year:

Team Leadership

I’ve provided explicit leadership of the Astroneer team over continual, successfully shipped updates. It’s been my duty to keep my finger on the pulse of multiple, simultaneous areas, often across several updates at a time.

In this capacity as a team lead I have been responsible for providing context for the work being done and maintaining focus on the holistic quality of what we’re developing. I’ve also helped to facilitate communication between various discipline leads and contributors, often using tactical insertion of observations, advice, and knowledge sharing to head off roadblocks and empower team members with new info or tools.

Successfully leading the Astroneer team has required empathy and clear communication. This has included explaining why a given idea is or isn’t being pursued, reinforcing the value of exploratory work, giving clarity about the creative process and iteration, and generally helping team members to see the value they provide even if what they’re doing might need seem important on the surface.

Documentation, Organization & Pipelines

A significant portion of my work on Astroneer has involved defining, organizing and maintaining various documentation items to provide clarity and alignment across the team. Largely this work has been done in Confluence, using a variety of content management tools such as labels and filtered inclusion widgets to pull info into multiple contexts while requiring it only be updated in one location. A sampling of a few areas and documentation structures I owned and actively maintained:

• Roadmap Update Statuses & Synopsis
• Design Team & Discipline Hub
• Design Process Pipeline & Feature Statuses
• Missions System, Content & Data Reporting
• Limited Time Event Pipeline & Data Reporting

I specifically developed the pipeline process of authoring missions and string data in external spreadsheets and then bringing these into the relevant game assets; this was done in close collaboration with our narrative team and production personnel responsible for sending off our content for localization from external vendors.

Design Management & Prototyping

I also operated as the lead designer for the Astroneer team. This included performing duties such as managing and assigning tasks to other designers and establishing documentation best practices for specifications and concept pitches. I assigned design team members as owners of specific features and reviewed their work while communicating with them about their project needs, concerns, and preferences.

As an extension of this, I often engaged in exploratory prototype work in potential development areas, recording and sharing my results to demonstrate concepts. When other designers engaged in this work, I reviewed their findings and determined next steps in close consultation with them. For larger, multidisciplinary prototype efforts I lead team playtest sessions and gathered feedback; I then helped determine next steps in consultation with other area experts as we moved through the iteration process.

Marketing & Community

I’d commonly help support the communications pushes around a given update either by participating in our private beta tester channels, public Discord, or even making appearances on streams or vlogs. Below are two examples of vlogs featuring discussions where I had the opportunity to explain the thinking and process behind the features being developed as part of my overall direction:

Twitch Stream where I speak extensively with our marketing director about the missions system and overall vision for it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/938883273 (starting around 20:00)

Features Designed & Contributions

I’ve directly contributed a number of features to Astroneer during my time on it, often acting as owner for a given item from concept through to ship. Depending on the feature, this include some or all of:

• Proof of Concept / Mockups
• Specification Documents & Supplements
• Playtest Scenario Creation, Balancing, Iteration
• Blueprint / C++ Implementation

The following is a non-exhaustive list of shipped feature efforts I designed and implemented either in their entirety or as a major contributor:

Mission System Design, Retrofit & Content Expansions

Possibly my single largest area of direct contribution to Astroneer is the design of its missions system and interweaving it into the existing game. This was prompted by an examination of our player data and a determination made that a significant portion of players would benefit from more direction and provided goals to improve their onboarding. Starting from near-scratch in Unreal, I prototyped a rudimentary architecture and used it to demonstrate potential approaches before greenlighting full development.

ABOVE: A video from early in the missions development process where I share my approach and speak about some of the concepts demonstrated.

I worked closely with engineering to bring my prototype example alive with an eye toward extensibility. Critically, the initial missions content offerings needed to surface and support the existing Astroneer progression but in a way that achieved our desired pacing and preserved the sense of exploration and discovery.

ABOVE: A high level outline and flow I created for early planning of our missions content progression, accompanied by my spreadsheet mission architecting. The latter approach was used extensively in consultation with narrative for subsequent missions content release for planning and authoring/editing text.

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Overall, my time with Astroneer has stretched me in new and exciting ways and caused me to use the breadth and depth of my skillset to plan, direct, and execute in consistently successful ways.