Context :

Interhaptics, a company focused on the creation of high definition haptic devices, was working on a new product called "Project Esther". Esther is a gaming chair pillow that possesses 16 actuators (meaning 16 motors to create localised vibrations on the pillow). This product was going to be presented at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) and Interhaptics needed a game demo to showcase how Esther would work in an actual game. To achieve this, they asked me to bring a team together to design and produce a game demo.  

To save time and reassure the client, we chose a game made by a studio partnered with Razer called "Piranha studios" and modded their game called "Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries". Our main objective was to create a short demo (3 minutes for general public use and 10 minutes for journalists) and to showcase as many haptic effects as possible.

My Role :

I was the direct link to the client. I recruited two colleagues to join me in this project : Thomas Blengino (Level Designer & Game Designer) and Chenshuo Li (Unreal Developer & Game Designer). One of my main roles was that of client relations. I would communicate to the team what the client was expecting, and would give Razer periodic updates on how the project was advancing, making documents specifically for that purpose.

Besides client relations and project management, my main role was that of a Game Designer and Haptic Designer. I determined the vertical slice (Gameplay Scenario) of the experience to best meet the client's needs. I then planned how the team would organize to properly produce the demo, taking into account the unknown factor, and thus potential time loss, that comes with developing with new technologies.

I worked a large part of my time with Eric Vezzoli, CEO of Interhaptics, who is an expert in Haptic Design. He taught me the basics, showed me what to look out for and how to properly implement haptics into a gaming experience. Having previously worked as a Sound Designer for multiple projects really helped me understand the basics of haptic design, since the development  process is similar. Through tests and the guidance of Eric, I was able to create 56 different Haptic effects for a 8 minute demo.   

When designing the overall experience of the Demo, we had to take into consideration the different constraints imposed by the time we had to develop, the amount of time a player had, the space they would play in and the various skill the players would have.

One solution we found that worked with these constraints was to make the demo a rail shooter. Rail Shooters is a subgenre within the Action genre that entails an avatar locked onto a predetermined path (that the player has little to no influence over) with a heavy focus on aiming and shooting. This allowed to have ample control on the playing time of the demo whilst limiting the gameplay to only aiming and shooting, simplifying the difficult controls of MechWarrior 5. 

On the right is a sketch that shows the first iteration of our map and gameplay experience. This sketch existed to explain to the client how we organised and paced the gameplay.

The image below it is an explanation of the enemies different spawn point on the rail, showing the evolution and the increase of detail as we worked on the demo.

The gameplay being already mostly defined by the main mechanics of MechWarrior5, I was able to dedicate more of time on how to showcase all the different haptic effects that could be used with project Esther.