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1. Creative Director
The Role Within a Gaming Studio
Stanislav Stanković, 2020

2. ●The Role of a Creative Director
●Path to become the Creative Director
●The way of thinking
Goal
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3. About Me
●Born in Serbia in the City of Niš
●Fell in love with games in the age of 5
●Always wanted to be a Game Designer
●2005 moved to Finland
●2012 started working at Rovio
●2015 joined EA/Tracktwenty
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4. Outline
●The Role of a Creative Director within the studio
●Responsibilities – what do you do
●Skill set – what do you need to know
●Design process - developing your own ideas
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5. Disclaimer
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●I speak from my own experience
●Things may be different in other companies
●Survivorship bias
●Luck plays a part in life

6. Creative Director v.s. Similar Roles
Art
Director
Game
Director
Creative
Director
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7. Creative DirectorArt Director Game Director
Lead Game Artist
Senior Game Artist
Game Artist
Lead Game
Designer
Senior Game
Designer
Game Designer
Junior Game Artist
Junior Game
Designer
The Path
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8. Types of Game Designers
●Systems designer
●Narrative designer
●Level designer
●UX Designer
●Monetization designer
●Etc.
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9. Role within the Team
Creative Director
Art Director
Executive Producer
Product Manager
Development
Director
Outsourcing
manager
Design Team
External Stakeholders
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10. Responsibilities
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11. Two Business Models
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●Premium Games
●Free-2-Play Games
●Game as a packaged product
●Game as a service
●Boundaries are getting blurred

12. During production
●Define the vision for the game
●Communicate the vision to other state holders
●Guiding the game through the approval process
●Communicate the vision to design/dev team
●Determine the scope of the prototype
●Determine the scope of the MVP
●Guide the game through the soft launch
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13. Defining the Vision
●What kind of a game do we want to make?
●Idea: I love samurai, let’s make a game
●Vision: An open world, action adventure
game set in the feudal Japan.
More specifically, at an island of Tsushima
after the Mongol invasion...
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14. Communicating the Vision to Stakeholders
●Other key people within the studio
●Other powers to be within the company
●Why should we make this game?
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15. Approval Process
●Companies have a formal approval process
●Companies need to make profit
●Making a game requires sizeable investment
●Approval process is supposed to ensure this
●The Process can have multiple stages
●Each stage requires a different set of deliverables
●The Process can get murky and change abruptly
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16. Communicating the Vision to the Team
●What are we making?
●Why are we making it?
●How do we make it?
●Development team is multidisciplinary
●Composition of the team changes with each
stage of development
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17. Scope of the Prototype
●Exploring the unknowns
●What do we need to test to prove that
the game would work?
●Technology prototype
●Core gameplay prototype
●Metagame prototype
●Prototype needs to have a clear goal
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18. Release Scope or MVP Scope
●Minimal Viable Product
●Minimal Lovable Product
●Minimal set of features that the game
needs to have for a successful launch
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19. Soft Launch
●Soft Launch or Limited Market Test
●Prevalent in free to play world
●Launching to a subset of players
●Before investing in user acquisition
●Testing technology and infrastructure
●Testing the KPIs
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20. Live Service
●Maintain the vision for the game
●Communicating the vision to the members of
the design/development team
●Communicating the vision to other stakeholders
●Determining and maintaining the feature roadmap
●Determining the scope of each release
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21. Maintain the Vision
●What kind of a game are we making?
●Vision can change
●Vision should evolve
●Game always needs to have a vision
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22. Communicating the Vision
●Why are we making this?
●This needs constant reiteration
●Each new update is a small release
●Stakeholders need to understand
●Developers need to understand
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23. Roadmap
●There are loads of ideas
●We can make loads of cool features
●But in which order?
●Prioritizing features based on various factors
●Feedback from players
●Business needs and opportunities
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24. Defining a Release Scope
●What can be delivered in each release
●Is it meaningful to players?
●Is it meaningful from business wise?
●How is it presented to players?
●What are expectations?
●Do we plan to develop it further?
●How does it fit with the rest of the game?
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25. Skills
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26. Skills
●Mathematics – a game is as a
mathematical system
●Psychology – the way humans perceive
the system
●Art – aesthetics of the game, visual,
narrative, etc.
●Business – key for success in the industry
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27. Acquiring Skills
●Broad general culture – as ideas come from
various sources
●Broad knowledge of games – as diverse as
possible
●Experience – higher you climb, the skills
become more abstract
●Learn by observing and listening - steal
knowledge from others
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28. Understanding Players
●Every game has an audience
●Understand your audience!
●Audience evolves with the game
●You are not making a game for yourself
●You yourself need to like the game that
you are making
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29. Player Psychology
●Everyone wants to be a hero in their own story
●Everyone wants to tell their own success narrative
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30. Psychological Needs
●Self Determination Theory
●Autonomy – volition, our actions are rooted in
our own decisions
●Mastery – sense that we are improving through
learning
●Relatedness – ourselves in relation to other
humans
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31. Structuring Player’s Time
●With the game - session length
●Away from the game - session frequency
●Minute to minute – core gameplay
●Midterm to long term goals - metagame
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32. Core vs. Metagame
●Core gameplay - minute to minute
interaction
●Metagame - structure in which core is
embedded
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33. Player’s Journey
●From FTUE to years ahead
●Early gameplay
●Mid level gameplay
●Elder gameplay
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34. Player Goals
●Short term goals
●Midterm term goals
●Long term goals
●Order in which goals are presented:
○ Long term - Save the princess
○ Short term - Jump over the gap
○ Midterm - Princess is in the other castle
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35. Density of Goals
●Let player write his own success narrative
●Let player choose his own goals
●Linear gameplay
●Nonlinear gameplay
●RPG mechanics
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36. Understanding Feedback
●Comes in many forms
●Comes from various places
●Feedback from team members
●Feedback from other stakeholders
●Feedback from user testing
●Feedback from players
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37. Feedback from Other Stakeholders
●Can come at any point during the process
●Come usually during concepting or after going live
●Driven by agenda
●Individual stakeholders can have their own priorities
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38. Feedback from Team Members
●Comes at any phase of the process
●Team members can be emotionally attached to
particular aspect of their work
●Not naïve users
●Understand game from a different perspective
●Have their own agenda
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39. Feedback from User Testing
●Focus groups, beta testers, soft launch, etc.
●Qualitative in form of surveys and self-reported
observations
●Quantitative in form of various metrics
●Can be quite focused
●Can be more objective
●Happens in laboratory settings
●Context might be radically different than reality
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40. Feedback from Players
●Ultimate form of feedback
●Qualitative, self-reported based on
social media or survey
●Quantitative from telemetry data
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41. Understanding Data
●Connection between data and qualitative
feedback can be complex and counterintuitive
●People say one thing, but do the opposite
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42. Pitfall in Understanding Data
●Cherry Picking!
●Looking for data to justify decisions that were
already made
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43. Filtering Feedback
●Separating valid feedback from invalid
●Distinguishing actionable feedback from
non-actionable
●Prioritizing
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44. Design Process
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45. From Idea to Realization
●Ideation
●Concepting
●Prototyping
●Preproduction
●Production
●Soft Launch
●Live Service
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46. Ideation
●Brainstorming
●Ideas can come from
anywhere
●Ideas don’t come in vacuum
●Something old, something
new, something borrowed,
something blue
●Ideas are a dime a dozen
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47. Concepting
●Idea takes form
●Pride and Prejudice, and Zombies -
Sounds cool but what does this
actually mean?
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48. Elevator Pitch
●Be able to convey your idea in one
sentence
●Iggy Pop Rule: 25 words or less
●Forces you to condense your idea
to absolute essence
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49. Prototyping
●Different ideas need different
approaches in prototyping
●Mapping out the unknowns
●Deciding what needs to be tested
●Paper prototyping
●Software prototyping
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50. Iteration
●Ideas do not come in a perfect form
●Ideas need to be tested and
improved
●This is iteration
●Kill your darlings!
●Test as much and as fast as possible
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51. Preproduction
●Scope of MVP
●Vertical slice of the game
●Minimal set of features that
the game needs at launch
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52. Production
●The boring part
●99% of perspiration
●Blood, sweat and tears
●Putting it together
●If iteration was your friend in
prototyping and preproduction
it’s a mortal enemy here
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53. Soft Launch
●Part of the Game as a Service model
●Launching the game to a limited audience
●Limited in geographic terms
●Limited in reach, i.e., in the scope of user
acquisition
●Test the game in the real environment
●Time to iterate again
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54. Live Service
●Game has launched
●For Free-2-Play games real journey is
just the beginning
●For premium games DLC etc.
●Story begins a new with each new
release
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55. Discussion
time
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