Agents of Mayhem

I was a combat/systems designer, scripter, and DLC lead designer on Volition’s Agents of Mayhem.

Agents of Mayhem is a 3rd person open world action-shooter. The main mechanic is that the player plays as a squad of three playable characters and is able to seamlessly swap between them while playing.

During my time on Agents of Mayhem, I…

  • Worked on the combat team to envision and develop a quick paced, exciting combat.
  • Designed the gameplay of 6+ playable characters called “agents”.
  • Prototyped, maintained, and debugged the agents in an in-house visual scripting engine.
  • Worked with writing, animation, progression, VFX, character art, and many other teams to make sure the agents were cohesive hole with a consistent vision.
  • Worked closely with the UX team to create a visual and written language to communicate game information that was clear to the players.
  • Lead the DLC team to create three more agents with both designers and programmers working under me.

Agents I owned: Daisy, Hardtack, Kingpin, Lazarus, Oni, Red Card

 

For each agent, I…

  • Worked with narrative to create a gameplay vision that matched the character.
  • Designed their “kit” and playstyle including…
    • A Weapon
    • Special Ability
    • Mayhem (ultimate) Ability
    • Melee attack
    • Utility abilities.
  • Collaborate with the animation, VFX, and audio teams to implement the agent’s design and maintain the agent’s vision.
  • Prototype their kits and hook up their animations, VFX, and SFX.
  • Worked closely with the progression team to design and implement the agent’s progression allowing for multiple play styles.
  • Designed a unique solo agent mission for each agent.
  • Tweaked and balanced the agent with rest of the combat team.
  • Maintain and debug the agents through launch.

 

As Lead designer on the Agents of Mayhem DLC, I…

  • Worked with directors to find a direction for the DLC’s content.
  • Worked with production to plan, schedule, and task out all the work for the DLC.
  • Lead a small team of one combat designer and three programmers to design and implement the agents and their missions.
  • Designed agent Lazerus and oversaw the design of agent Gat and Safeword.

 

Other things I did for Agents of Mayhem:

  • Helped UX design and implement our visual information including damage numbers, hit/health feedback, status effect representation, and UI feedback.
  • Worked with UX to create a consistent keyword dictionary for all gameplay information in our game.
  • Designed the game’s core gameplay and agent tutorials.
  • Wrote and maintained the tutorial text and ability descriptions for all agents.

 

I have also written two twitter thread/blogs about my work on individual agents in more detail: