BRETTON HAMILTON'S
GAME DESIGN
Game Summary
Star Stable Online (SSO) is a multiplayer online role playing game where adventures, horses and mysteries are waiting to be explored! The game provides an inclusive, safe, and fun world aimed at girls, teens, and young women between the ages for 8-18! Players adventure across Jorvik, a beautiful island full of never-ending adventures. Together with their very own horse, they become part of a magical story and get to explore a fantastic world from the horseback.
As this online game turns 10 years old this year, we satisfy our audience with action pact story quests, in-game events and holidays, and a myriad of collectables, races, apparel, and new horses! The Star Stable Product Line also reaches its audience through music, animation, books, and comics!
Game Design
As Senior Game Designer on Star Stable Online, I own the development of major content releases, improve pipelines and workflow to resolve tech and design debt, and develop systems and tools to prepare the game to thrive in its second decade of life through the introduction of live-ops, new gameplay systems, and social features. Additionally, I lead efforts to improve cross-discipline collaboration in ways that empower Marketing Teams, Community Services, and our players' relationships with our core development teams!
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System Design: I am focused on integrating live-ops, improving social systems, and creating new tools and content pipelines that will allow us to attract and engage players well into SSO's second decade live! In addition to these higher goals, I also have worked on improving the horse care and bonding experience, achievements/collections, and improving the horse buying experience.
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Game Design: I have a great deal of passion for the moment-to-moment gameplay of SSO, and unfortunately, many of the core gameplay features have aged poorly over the game's life. I work with designers and developers to tackle tech and design debt that impairs our ability to deliver consistent, polished, and satisfying experiences.
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Content Design: In 2020, I led the releases of our biggest seasonal events in SSO. Halloween and Winter!
My team was so successful in this endeavor that players claimed they were two of the most memorable, thrilling, and ambitious seasonal events SSO had released in years. Behind the scenes, we also surpassed engagement and profit expectations for both events!
I will flesh out this section in more detail at a later date!
Game Trailer
Event Media
Other Games
As Level Designer on The Adventure Pals, I was primarily responsible for designing and scripting levels for final chapters of the game using their in-house development tools. I channeled my background in game design to create engaging, novel, and humorous experiences the game would go on to be praised for by using and twisting mechanics the player would already be familiar with!
As Game Designer on Deadwood: The Forgotten Curse, I led a close-knit team of designers and developers. I pitched weapons, enemies, encounters, bosses and level ideas, designed them on paper, prototyped them, and then worked on and owned them until polished.
Role
Senior Game Designer
Platform
PC, iPhone, iPad
Tools
Proprietary Engine, Jira, Mural, Confluence, P4V