Hunt: Showdown
CRYTEK
NOVEMBER ‘22 - PRESENT
LIFE SERVICE
Hunt: Showdown is a competitive first-person shooter with PvE elements, wrapped in a Southern gothic horror setting.
Working on Hunt, I act as a feature owner reporting directly to the Design Director. I lead development on game modes, new player experience, and progression amongst other features. What I relish working on a live service title like Hunt is being able to make development an interactive process, iterating on features quickly based on player feedback.
During my time at Crytek, I’ve had the opportunity to hone and learn many new skills. I’m most proud of the following:
Feature ownership: Being responsible for the quality and delivery of key features, on time and in budget. I’ve demonstrated my ability to be entrusted with a high level brief and run with it, leading cross-disciplinary teams to achieve our goals. I’ve worked on a range of features, including:
New game modes
New player experience and tutorial updates
Player progression and metagame balancing
Weapon & ability design
Live design: I’m responsible for balancing a series of engagement and monetization mechanics, from weekly challenges, to Prestige, and Battle Pass balancing.
Visual Scripting: Using CryEngine's custom visual scripting tool, I’m empowered to help prototype and deliver my features.
Data analysis: Analysing user data to interpret live game trends and assess feature KPIs to inform design decisions.
Community engagement: Contributing as a team ambassador to our partners and community by appearing on dev streams, helping draft comms, and responding to feedback in social channels.
Feature highlights
Weapon design
Hunt: Showdown’s gunplay and satisfying weapons are a cornerstone of its gameplay. I had the chance to lead the design process on two new additions to the arsenal: the Homestead and the Wildland.
The intention behind these weapons was to create weapons with a high power level, but limited availability, akin to power-ups in a classic arena shooter. Players acquire these weapons from a unique in-game location, and at a high cost. This balance helped inform the look, feel and performance of the weapons - powerful, luxurious, satisfying.
As a feature owner and designer, my main responsibilities were to coordinate the various teams working on the weapons, to own the technical set up and weapon balance pipeline. The two weapons were well received by the game’s community, successfully striking the required balance between power and scarcity.
Bounty Clash
Hunt: Showdown is practically synonymous with its core gamemode, Bounty Hunt. Slow-paced, high stakes, intricate and expansive, it is what keeps players coming back to the game after over 7 years. However, the game’s fantastic shooting mechanics and iconic arsenal had players wanting more frequent and accessible action than Bounty Hunt could reliably offer - with this in mind, we started ideating on a new limited-time mode to serve those needs.
I led this ideation process, and the subsequent development of Hunt’s first new game mode in over 4 years: Bounty Clash. It aimed to deliver a very condensed PvP experience, allowing players to quickly hop into the action. It pits 12 players against each other in a single compound, with a only one reward token to extract, all in 15 minutes or less.
The mode’s launch was a resounding success, transitioning from a limited-time mode to a permanent entry into Hunt’s mode rotation and surpassing all the internal metrics we’d set for it. Working with a small team of 6 developers, we delivered an update highlight on time and within budget. The mode continues to be supported and updated, and remains popular with the playerbase.
Progression rework
As Hunt continued to evolve and mature, many progression mechanics implemented in the early days of the project were no longer meeting players’ needs. It took too long to unlock all items, with some unlocks being gated behind counter-intuitive or repetitive requirements. These issues were amplified as Hunt has a Prestige system, allowing users to reset their progression, meaning frustrations with progression mechanics were felt again and again by repeat-Prestige players.
I was tasked with redesigning and implementing an updated core progression, with a focus on increasing accessibility, clarity and overall progression speed.
To do this, I worked hand in hand with our data analytics team to interpret our available user data and create projections of new progression speeds. This informed our balancing decisions, and lead to us shipping a greatly improved progression experience.
Other features I’ve contributed to:
Controller haptic feedback rework
As part of Hunt’s initiative to grow its console user base, I contributed to a fundamental controller settings rework by improving the game’s haptic feedback for all weapons, items and principal player actions.
Hunter progression
I helped design & implemented a new system that builds on Hunt’s fantasy of taking a nameless bounty hunter into the bayou and making them a legend. Players unlock new cosmetic by reaching max. level with certain hunters.
Monetization & engagement
I’m the feature owner for weekly challenges, and work hand in hand with game & live design to adjust challenge balance based on the latest content, battle pass requirements and community sentiment.
Shooting Range
As my first assignment upon joining Crytek, I lead the team implementing the Shooting Range for Hunt.
This long-requested feature helps players better understand Hunt’s complex gunplay and abilities. It continues to be a staple of the game’s user experience.
Tutorial rework
I lead the design and implementation process to shorten and refocus Hunt’s tutorial. Using player data to drive decision-making, we increased the tutorial’s completion rate and improved the new player experience.
