Canada

Game Design

Master's degree

David Grivel

Game Director

Public Speaking

Prototyping

Communication

Collaboration

Problem-solving

Time management

Critical-thinking

Empathy

Team player

Organisation skills

Presentation skills

Conflict resolution

Leadership

Project management

Negotiation

Analytical skills

Accessibility

Design systems

Email writing

User research

Jira

Miro

Confluence

Stakeholder management

Relationship management

Understanding factors that lead to a motivated team - recognition, communication and more.

Keeping team members motivated

Understand the process of training, motivating and directing your team members.

Managing people

How to create a positive workplace culture that drives collaboration and productivity?

Fostering a good team culture

Steps to building and maintaining a strong, cohesive and effective team.

Building an effective team

How to determine what is a good balance of skill sets for your organization's needs

Building balanced teams

Making remote and globally distributed teams work for you and your needs.

Working remotely

Learn essential burnout prevention techniques and replenish physical and emotional energy.

Managing burnout

Talk to people who have learned to manage their imposter syndrome.

Dealing with imposter syndrome

Get actionable feedback on your resume or portfolio.

Resume and portfolio review

Practice HR, technical and behavioural interviews with mentors.

Practice mock interviews

Best practices for running productive design critiques.

Running effective design critiques

Methods of prototyping and solution validation. When to use which kind of prototype (eg. Webflow, Notion, etc)

Prototyping methods and tips

Manage team expectations and get the most out of your meetings.

Running effective meetings

Identify and define potential product problems and generating possible solutions.

Identifying problems vs solutions

Learn how to properly present your work and share ideas and opinions.

Presenting your work with impact

Tips on how to work and collaborate with designers.

Working with designers

How to work with team members with different skill sets but towards a common goal?

Working cross-functionally

Methods and models of exploring, deciding and delivering design.

Building a design process

Managing being the only designer at your company and working with non-designers.

Being the only designer

Explore different generative and evaluative research techniques. User research synthesis and presentation.

Conducting good user research

Ways and resources to improve your design skills.

Improving design skills

Tips on how to work and collaborate with engineers and developers.

Working with engineers

Best practices for documenting projects, epics, and stories

Writing product requirement documents

How to think about design career paths and what progression looks like for designers?

Design career path

Worked as Senior Design Director on the Battlefield franchise until Ridgeline Games got shutdown in March 2024.

- Design vision holder for the game (GD/LD/UX)
- Working closely with Creative Direction and other Directors to align on overall vision
- Pitched Design vision, pillars to HQ as part of our internal milestones process. Frequent follow ups with them to ensure we're aligned on the product and game philosophy.
- Pushed for a more Agile Production approach to ensure time for iterations and prototypes and to achieve higher quality.
- Frequently hold focused game direction presentations to the entire team, to ensure alignment and allow for questions/feedback.

I have been on FC6 since day 1. During my time on this project and based on the different stages of Production, I had responsibilities that encompassed both Direction and Lead/Management roles.
* Director Responsibilities in Conception/Pre-Production: 
-	Creating and maintaining Master Features List documentation
-	Direct Design line of contact for Editorial team (that continued throughout Production)
-	Game Design presenter and owner at official Ubisoft project gates in Paris (Conception Workshop, Systems Update, Kick Off Meeting…)
-	Creating and maintaining high level design/direction documentation (Gameplay loops…)
-	Game Design owner for Directors meetings
-	Game Design owner for full team presentations (incl. Codev studios)
-	Game Design owner for Directors build reviews
-	Working in tandem with Creative Direction to establish and build Game Design direction vision for the game
-	Identifying and focusing efforts on design topics that will add meaningful features to the brand (AI aggression, detection and propagation improvements, holstering and world aggression…)
* Lead Responsibilities from the first day of conception till ship (and post launch):
-	Creating, recruiting, building and managing a team of up to 12 designers (incl. 3 Team Leads) across all Game Design disciplines
-	Overseeing all design topics for our project (incl. Codev design responsibilities for a while)
-	Direct point of contact for Codev design
-	Direct owner of the RPG (delegated ownership of other design departments to team leads)

Far Cry Primal was a shorter project where I led the design team in Toronto for the Beastmaster features (all animal companions, boss fights, epic hunts...).
As a Codev team, we created (among other features) the animal companions that then later on became “Fangs for hire” and “Amigos”, a staple of the Far Cry franchise.
* Lead Responsibilities for the duration of the project:
-	Managing the design team across all Game Design disciplines of our mandate, from pre-production to ship
-	Overseeing all design topics for our mandate

ACU had a small GD mandate in Toronto (iconic weapon, some traversal, some tools…) mostly 3Cs.
I was the sole GD in Toronto so I oversaw the development of all these features.

Worked as a Game Designer on Splinter Cell Blacklist.

In charge of the design of the 4 coop modes of the game.

Worked as a Game Designer on Ghost Recon: Future Soldier		      

* Game Designer, Product Owner and Scrum Master on the Guerrilla (GRFS’ Horde mode)
- Led the Guerrilla team (about 8 people) for the most part of the project
- Created the complete Game Design of the game mode from scratch (both macro and micro)
- Managed all parts of the Game Design specific to this game mode (all game mechanics, UI, AI…) during production
- As a Scrum Master / Product Owner I coordinated with all other sprints to get the features this mode needed

* Game Designer on the AI (micro design)
- Managed the AI archetypes (humans, vehicles, turrets) system on a micro level (tweaks)
- Designed a xml editor (that was then coded by a GPP) that would help Game Designers edit most of the game parameters more easily (AI, UI, 3C…)
	
* Game Designer, Product Owner and Scrum Master on the Systemic Voices sprint
- Designed what kind of voices our AI / Players would automatically use, where to use them in the game and how frequently
- As a Scrum Master / Product Owner I managed the Voices sprint team members and coordinated with all sprints to get the voices implemented in the game
- Worked closely with the Audio Director and the Script Writer to get these voices written and recorded properly
- Helped design the Voice Manager our engineer was working on (it’s the whole system on which the voices are based)

* Game Designer and Scrum Master on the Audio Fight sprint
- As a Scrum Master on this sprint I I managed the Audio Fight sprint team members and coordinated with the AI sprint to get the improvements we needed. 
- This sprint was created as a strike force to ensure a big improvement on the overall audio quality of the fight in the game (voices, impacts, weapons,…).

Worked as a Game Designer on Crysis2 at Crytek GmbH

* Design Responsibilities:
- In charge of parts of the AI system (from the Design side) on Crysis 2

* Technical Responsibilities (using CryEngine 3):
- "Go to" Design person for all things related to AI markup and setup
- AI scripting and markup 
- Gamelogic scripting (game events, sounds, music, particles FX...)

* Other Responsibilities:
- Training licencees on the CryEngine 3 (Sandbox Editor / AI)
- Training new hires with the CryEngine Sandbox Editor tools

Working as a Junior Level Designer / Game Designer on 2 undisclosed projects.

* Design Responsibilities: 
- Creating Game Design documentation and prototypes with the Game Editor
- In charge of the AI and Combat Design on one game prototype
- Creating Level Design documentation
- Creating Level prototypes with the Game Editor
- In charge of the technical design side of 2 main levels of 2 projects TBA

* Technical Responsibilities (using CryEngine 2 and 3):
- AI scripting and markup 
- Gamelogic scripting (game events, sounds, music, particles FX...)
- Cutscenes scripting

* Other Responsibilities:
- Training new hires with the CryEngine Sandbox Editor tools
- Training Licencees with the CryEngine 2 (Visual Scripting (Flowgraph) and Level Building)

I was working for 4 months as a Junior Level Designer on the Highlander project (PS3 / Xbox 360 - UE3).

* Design Responsibilities: 
- Creating Level Design documentation
- Creating a Level prototype with the Game Editor
- In charge of the technical design side of the Vertical Slice level of Highlander

* Technical Responsibilities (using Unreal Engine 3):
- AI scripting and markup 
- Gamelogic scripting (game events, dynamic objects...)
- Cutscenes scripting

Dirty Team is a team of Supinfogame students. I was Lead Game Designer on the Dirty racer project. My role was to create the Game Concept and assume all Design documents and communication within and outside the team. I was responsible for the game vision as well as taking the final Design decisions.


* Design Responsibilities: 
- Creating the entire Game Design documentation
- In charge of supervising all Game Design parts of the project
- Creating Level prototypes with the Game Editor

* Technical Responsibilities (using CryEngine 1):
- Level Layout

* Other Responsibilities:
- Communicating and keeping the creative vision of the project throughout the production process

I was working for 2 months in this company as a Junior Game Designer on an undisclosed project.

* Design Responsibility: 
- Creating Game Design documentation for 2 undisclosed projects

David Grivel🇨🇦