Peridot (Niantic)

100% Unique AR Pets, Always By Your Side

   Role: Lead Game Designer
   Engine: Unity
   Project:
Peridot Website
   Team Size: 50+

Peridot is an AR real-world pet game where you bond with adorable magical pets and collaborate with other players to diversify their species by hatching a new generation of 100% genetically unique creatures.

I joined as the first game designer on a team of 10 in pre-production. I brought the game into soft launch, defined workflows for design/art/engineering, and helped define OKRs. I designed live-ops and game design simulation tools. I hired and onboarded other designers, planned and delegated work to the entire team, and led the product’s vision. I created and presented decks on progress to the C-suite.

I consulted as a game designer for third-party developers using ARDK. I showed them our game design process, first-party tooling I built for live operations, and created game design templates for their use.

Product Management – Defined the roadmap from prototype to soft launch. Designed the monetization systems and content using spreadsheet simulations and mockups. Ran competitive analyses to determine gaps in monetization practices. Ran experiments using in-house tooling I designed to optimize the monetization model. Made the mockup assets for the app store that were used by the agency to create the finals.

Product Design & Analysis – I managed the Game Design Document and documentation for the design team. Designed gameplay systems and first-time-user-experience using charting and spreadsheets along with associated dashboards and funnels for quick analysis and iteration on live data. Defined and mocked up art assets for new content (like Peridot archetypes) and items. Wrote or edited every piece of text content in the game. Designed the tooling for the text content.

User Experience & Playtesting – Ran interviews, focus groups, and playtesting for the team. Created a survey a month for tester cohorts. Created mockups, specifications, and how to measure success for all user interfaces and features. I created a new user journey storyboard once a year based on our player personas to update the vision for the game and align the team.

Contributions

Gameplay Tools

Building tooling for managing game systems was a big part of my work, from game data management tools, narrative and content tools, to breeding simulation tools, to live ops experimentation and event tools.

I researched tooling, the data we'd need to manipulate, and who would need to use it and have access to it. I would then mock up the tools in Figma and meet with each stakeholder to understand if it met their needs. I would then work with engineering partners to write a minimum viable specification, and test it out as it was built to make sure the data was correct and working as intended.

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