joemag game design

joemag's design portfolio and blog

[joemagdesign]

Company: Redux Games

Project: Teamfight Tactics

Role: Senior Game Design

Tenure: April 2024 to Current

Summary: Small scrappy independent game studio mostly of Ex-Niantic colleagues.

Developed progression systems for Contracted Partner

Created compelling Pitch Decks for new publishing opportunities

Designed and implemented multiplayer game prototypes in Unreal

[joemagdesign]

Project: Teamfight Tactics: Remix Rumble

Date Released: November 7th, 2023

Worked on early ideation for traits

Designed Jazz, 8-bit and prototyped a number of champions in the set

Designed Augments, in particular "Blank Slate" which was very popular among streamers and content creators.

[joemagdesign]

Company: Riot Games

Project: Teamfight Tactics

Role: Game Designer II

Tenure: April 2022 to January 2024

Summary:

- Worked on Sets and Champions for TFT Sets, Monsters Attack! and Remix Rumble. - Developed unique and interesting mechanics for players. - Worked on Augments, found fun and weird ways to add variance and excitement to each and every game

[joemagdesign]

Company: Niantic Inc

Project: Unannounced

Role: Game Designer - Systems

Tenure: January 2020 to April 2022

Summary:

- Developing robust and extensible game systems

- Creating engaging and clear documentation: gdds, slide decks, wireframes, etc

- Designing unique AR experiences utilizing Niantic's cutting edge technology- Crafting our in-game & real money economy

- Developing gameplay and content that is consistent with IP expectations

- Fast prototyping mechanics to prove out ideas and designs

[joemagdesign]

Brawl: A Brawl of Fire and Ice

First Ran: July 25th, 2018

Rules: Constructed Deck. Solo PVE. Fight Ragnaros the Fire Lord and Ahune the Frost Lord, they are fighting over who gets to the be boss and keep shoving each other out of the way.

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSEYgVLsCYM

Background: For Fire Festival that year I really wanted to have a big fight between Ragnaros and Ahune as they were antagonists the previous, each hosting their own Festival. I wanted to bring back that rivalry in a different way. Ahune had been pushed out and was trying to force his way back in by being way too friendly, all of his dialogue is like “oh we’re such good friends Ragnaros!” “WE ARE NOT FRIENDS!!!” Was a lot of fun to develop this dynamic. I think I learned more about balancing for single player from this brawl than any other. I wanted players to get through 2 60 health pools and have them feel like threats, it all started much harder than I intended but through iteration I brought them back down to a more reasonable difficulty.

Successes:

+ Players enjoyed the difficulty, lots of positive feedback about the challenge of it all

+ Players enjoyed the VO lines, brought a lot of flavor to the encounter

+ The theming of it came through very strong

Lessons Learned:

- Single player content is always pretty complicated to develop, with multiplayer it’s easier to just make things symmetrical. Here you have to really build out the enemies in a different way. Always account for more development time for balance with these.

- Feels like a hard brawl to repeat, it wouldn’t feel functionally different just new cards that could possibly trivialize the encounter.

[joemagdesign]

Event: Fire Fest-E.V.I.L.

First Ran: July 2019

Summary: Dalaran has crashed into Blackrock Mountain and crashed Ragnaros’ Fire Festival! Play tons of new content for big rewards!

Components:

- Introduction of Dungeon Runs in Tavern Brawls. “Blackrock Crash,” a remix of Blackrock Mountain bosses with new mechanics.

- New Tavern Brawl “The Burndown” where decks are generated and spread virally

- New Fireside Brawl “Big Bad Rag Raid” a new Raid brawl where you take on a Ragnaros with a huge health pool

- New Quests and Rewards

- Community Engagement events tied to Expansion Card Reveals

Background: This was far and away the largest event we had ever taken on. We had been working on Tavern Brawl dungeon runs for a moment and we started working closely with our publishing team to really elevate the event. The whole idea really took off from a very simple photoshop I did:

The idea of Dalaran crashing into Blackrock Mountain became this rallying image and helped drive much of the events development. We also had this idea for a brawl where decks would spread, basically if you lose you get a copy of the deck that beat you. We felt it was big and interesting enough that we gave it a bit of a Ragnaros wrapper and brought it into the event.

We also tied some card reveals to progress through the Blackrock Crash dungeon run, the goals we set were pretty conservative and the players burned through them quickly!

Successes:

+ Probably our most successful event, increased every conceivable metric

+ Dungeon Run brawls were a success and are now a whole new format for us to generate content with

+ Community Event was a lot of fun, nice to have players feel like they were all contributing to something bigger

+ The trailer really helped make the event seem more real. I was so excited to see my goofy photoshop be used for the inspiration for the great shot of Dalaran buried deep into Blackrock.

Lessons Learned:

-  The Rag Raid could have been improved or done something more new.

- The structure of the Burndown made it so a couple incredibly overpowered decks became dominant quickly. Led to some fun conversations on reddit, though definitely some frustration.

- We did a thing where the brawl lasts 2 weeks. The second week was only marginally different than the first and was less popular. For future similar events we’ve made a point for the weeks to feel distinct.

[joemagdesign]

Brawl: A Less Friendly Game of Chess

First Ran: June 27 th, 2018

Rules: Constructed Deck (6 cards). An update to the classic Chess Brawl and mission from the One Night in Karazhan adventure. Your 6 cards are effectively your “cheat” cards and can change the board dramatically.

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H09O0zfaVc0

Background: I work a lot with Pat Nagle, famous Blizzard designer and my boss. He created the original Chess event in World of Warcraft in the Karazhan dungeon, he also created the Hearthstone variant. In some random meeting he blurts out “We should make chess where you can build your deck!” and I went out and implemented it. Decided to keep it fairly limited so that it plays mostly like normal Chess and it makes those few cards more impactful. It really didn’t go through many iterations, one of those rare brawls that just works.

Successes:

+ Players enjoyed the strategy of choosing cards, it developed its own meta.

+ Players thought it was cool to revisit older brawls with new twists like this

+ Was very easy and straightforward to implement

Lessons Learned:

- Players always expect the minions to do damage equal to their atk and were disappointed when they realize buffing the minions did very little.

- Similar to the previous point a lot of card mechanics simply weren’t built to support interacting with Chess, there wasn’t anything overpowered but there were more than a few instances where players were confused by the behavior

[joemagdesign]

Brawl: Rise of the Zombeasts

First Ran: June 13th, 2018

Rules: Pre-constructed Deck. Both players are Deathstalker Rexxar with a deck full of randomly generated Zombeasts. Their hero powers are also free.

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWRnz3MisiM

Background: After we launched Knights of the Frozen Throne a lot of players gravitated towards Deathstalker Rexxar and the possibilities his “Build-a-beast” power created. There were more than a few requests for this to be more of an all-encompassing brawl. I tinkered with a few different versions of the brawl. One where a Build-a-beast triggered at the start of each turn, found that to be too slow. In that version I also had a deck of 30 Snowflipper Penguins, mostly because it was funny and I wanted players to focus more on the Zombeasts than anything in their deck. That realization led me to creating the deck from Zombeasts and going forward with that.

Successes:

+ Players enjoyed the heavily strategic nature of the brawl

+ Players noticed how this was some version of a brawl they had been requesting for some time

+ Was a fun way to highlight a specific mechanic

Lessons Learned:

- Games still could go very long and very slow, a couple poisonous and lifesteal minions and you end up where you started. 

- Mirror matches are inherrently a bit slower, even with random Zombeasts you’re still playing mostly the same deck as your opponent

[joemagdesign]

Event: Hallow’s End 2018

First Ran: October 2018

Summary: Return to Hallow’s End with new brawls and old favorites, the return of Dual Class Arena, and a special bundle!

Components:

- 2 Tavern Brawls: Repeat of Headless Horseman brawl. Monster Smash, brawl where you play as Witchwood bosses.

- Box dressing, spider webs and spooky lighting

- Special emotes for all standard heroes (not hero cards)

- Board dressing, breakable pumpkins on the board

- Dual Class Arena

- Special packs bundle including Sir Annoy-o Paladin hero

Background: I had worked on the original Hallow’s End event but this one was more totally under my supervision. I had this big brawl with Witchwood monsters kicking around for a bit and it fit logically with a bigger “spooky” event. Was nice to bring back some old favorite brawls and the Dual Class Arena. The bundle was the first time we were including something like the new Hero outside of a normal pre-purchase.

Successes:

+ Players enjoyed seeing the event mostly in tact again.

+ The new brawl was very popular, players liked seeing all the different Witchwood heroes and figured out the strongest.

+ Felt like a lot of things were going on at the same time. The event felt big!

Lessons Learned:

-  Interestingly we were concerned about the work that would be required to make sure Dual Class Arena work in year 2, turns out we just turned it on and it just worked! It’s rarely that easy so you take the win where you can get it.

- Was nice to get to re-use so much but it probably could have used something more to feel very new. Although it’s good for new players who might not have seen it the last time it ran.

[joemagdesign]

Brawl: Gone Fishin’

First Ran: May 30th, 2018

Rules: Constructed Deck (20 minions). Both players get Tad’s Pole which at the end of each turn summons a minion from your opponents deck. 

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ9olU4h5SY

Background: I get a lot of Tavern Brawl pitches and a lot are scoped way too large, too many custom cards, too many mechanics etc. The initial pitch for this came from a guy on our QA team, give both players the pole. It was simple and easy to implement so I gave it a shot. One thing we found through playtesting is that it’s very easy to make a garbage deck full of spells and invalidate the rules of the brawl, so I instituted the 20 minions deck-building rule. We also found that with certain scenarios you would end up with games that wouldn’t end, so I dropped the health max to 20.

Successes:

+ Players found the challenge of building a deck that could be used against them interesting.

+ Players responded well to the 20 health. Wasn’t overly disruptive.

+ The Class/Chosen tweak mechanic came in handy in a future brawl “Henchmania.”

Lessons Learned:

- It didn’t come out but anytime you’re dealing with building a deck for your opponent there are a lot of strategies that give them nothing to do (like all healing spells)

- Even with these rule changes you could end up with a slow game with not enough damage on board to complete. Something to be aware of for future brawls.

[joemagdesign]

Event: The Season of Rastakhan

First Ran: February 2019

Summary: A special event to close out the Rastakhan’s Rumble expansion cycle. A series of Tavern Brawls themed to the solo adventure content but against other players! Use shrines to defeat your enemies! Gain bonus free packs each week for playing the Brawl.

Components:

- 3 Tavern Brawls: the Brawl of Champions. Choose a Troll Hero and you’ll get a shrine, the shrines change and get stronger each week.

- In-game VO announcing the event

- Special quests for playing each week.

Background: For Blizzcon 2018 we were announcing Rastakhan’s Rumble. I was assigned to make the demo for the showfloor. I wanted to show off both the new cards and a twist on the single player content. So I made a brawl where you would get a super powerful shrine (the major mechanic in the single player) and would play against another player. The shrines led to a lot of fun moments and it was a minor hit. I expanded this concept so that everyone could play around with this. We wanted to do it bigger than a normal brawl so we expanded it into this small-to-medium sized event. We added quests and even made a short video to promote the event.

Successes:

+ All the brawls were very popular, some of best engagement of the year. 

+ Players had a lot of fun figuring out which Hero & Shrine was good each week.

+ The quests were simple but they gave players an excuse to come back each week.

Lessons Learned:

- The video was cute but I think I was trying to hard to be a character. Going forward I need to be more relaxed and really more like myself.

     - One comment, which I’m still laughing about, was that I looked like a “devolved” version of Ben Brode.

- The brawls felt more unified but it didn’t feel like a full event, there weren’t enough components. We would make a point in the future (like Fire Fest-E.V.I.L.) to beef out these events near the end of a cycle.

[joemagdesign]

Brawl: Portals to Another Dimension

First Ran: March 22nd 2018

Rules: Choose a Class. At the start of the game choose one of three portals: Tech Portal, Swarm Portal, Mind Portal. 20 copies of the portal will be shuffled into your deck. Each card will add a random themed card to your hand, it costs (3) less.

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90ijtsbxC7s

Background: This brawl was a part of the StarCraft 20th anniversary celebration. We wanted to make a brawl that was lightly themed to StarCraft without making a ton of highly specific cards (also with very little new art). I wanted to lean into the concept of the StarCraft Trinity, the balance between Terran/Zerg/Protoss and apply that to Hearthstone. So I created sets of cards that felt like they represented the StarCraft factions, about 80 each, and then these portals work like normal unstable portal. My dream was that players would compare the Class/Faction combos to see which is the strongest.

Successes:

+ I learned a lot about the systems involved in creating subsets during this.

+ Was nice to be included in the broader anniversary package.

+ The Class/Chosen tweak mechanic came in handy in a future brawl “Henchmania.”

Lessons Learned:

- The fantasy was a bit too oblique, we tried to not scream StarCraft but players basically couldn’t even hear it. It was missing the real StarCraft flavor.

- Was far too random and only rarely did it feel like a win. The cards in the subsets weren’t powerful enough together to feel interesting.

[joemagdesign]

I GOT PROMOTED SOOOooo

Project: Hearthstone

Role: Game Designer - Live Content

Tenure: March 2019 to January 2020

Summary:

Mentoring new Associate Game Designers.

Working with marketing and brand teams to build bigger events.

Created lots of in-game content quickly with limited resources.

[joemagdesign]

Brawl: Wacky Waxy Winter’s Veil

First Ran: December 20th, 2017

Rules: Constructed deck. At the start of the game Greatfather Kobold delivers 3 Large Waxy Gifts to your board, they have “Deathrattle: Add a Legendary minion to your opponent’s hand. It costs (3) Less”. Break open the gifts to get cheap legendaries!

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTYeF-YZrEw

Background: This came during our Winter’s Veil event during the Kobolds and Catacombs expansion. I wanted to do something holiday-inspired and Kobold-inspired. For a while I had it in my head as “A Very Kobold Christmas”. So my thought was what would the Gift Exchange brawl from the previous year look like with a Nightmare Before Christmas-like Kobold interpretation. Hence the Wax-covered gifts.

Successes:

+ Players enjoyed the twist on the older brawl. The cheaper legendary minions led to some interesting strategies.

+ We recorded a Kobold going “HO HO HO HAPPY WINTER’S VEIL!” it accompanied a shadow of a sleigh flying over. Was able to create this character of “Greatfather Kobold” with some simple reuse.

Lessons Learned:

- Constructed brawls around the holidays always feels a little weird. It’s asking a lot from a player when they’re looking for something fun and easy.

- This may seem silly but the event and holiday in WoW is called “The Feast of Winter Veil” or simply “Winter Veil” not “Winter’s Veil” I used the wrong term both in the name and in the VO line... oops.

[joemagdesign]

Brawl: The Void Singularity

First Ran: November 29th, 2017

Rules: Constructed Deck. At the end of each turn destroy all friendly minions and create a “Singularity” minion with their combined stats.

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1rfbx9tFEY

Background: This was actually the brawl I pitched to get the job I have now. I didn’t just pitch it, I made it using the Hearthstone development tool, playtested it, and iterated on it. I had made my first brawl before I was hired. Once I joined the team I set out on making it real.

Successes:

+ Players enjoyed the challenge of figuring out the best strategy for the mechanic.

+ Was a pretty simple idea that was easy to implement.

+ Was easy to re-run, as new cards would change the experience.

Lessons Learned:

- Learned a lot about the programming loop for Hearthstone, there were issues with Deathrattle cards I smoothed out in future launchs.

- This was around the time we put out Death Knights and Zombeasts so some players were expecting the card texts to also be combined.

[joemagdesign]

Brawl: Battle for the Crater

First Ran: August 2nd, 2017

Rules: Random Deck and Random Class. One player gets a deck made mostly of Dinosaurs the other player gets a deck made mostly of Elementals.

Background: I wanted to have a brawl that would cap off the Journey to Un’Goro cycle. Something that would have the flavor of the expansion to send it off. I decided the best way was to take it’s major themes and create a new random brawl around it, Dinosaurs vs. Elementals!

Successes:

+ Our first time giving a random class on start up. 

+ Flavor was fun and a good way to end the expansion.

Lessons Learned:

- Dinosaur is not a particularly well-defined tribe like Elemental was. I had to make a set of cards that included beasts from Un’Goro and all the dinosaurs from previous expansions. 

- Related to the first point most of those dinosaurs don’t have strong synergies compared to the elementals who all play off of each other. As such generally Dinosaur would be weaker.

- It’s hard to gauge the balance on something like this in the small scale of our playtesting. Due to the imbalance and the specific flavor I would not likely run this brawl again.

[joemagdesign]

Brawl: Ragnaros’ Fire Festival

First Ran: July 5th, 2017

Rules: Constructed deck. A “Mini-Rag” minion gets added to your board. At the end of each turn Mini-Rag deals damage equal to its attack randomly, if it kills a minion it’s attack increases by 1. Grow Mini-Rag to earn rewards!

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIQ8nrG3Dnw

Background: This was a marquee brawl as a part of the very first Fire Festival. We had the ability to unlock increasing visual emotes, little fireworks behind the “wow” emote, and needed a system to deliver them. Working closely with Pat Nagle I came up with this idea that’s sort of a blend of Co-Op and competitive. You could simply win or you could grow your Mini-Rag together. If you used Mini-Rag to kill 50 minions you would unlock better fireworks.

Successes:

+ Was an interesting blend of strategies.

+ Mini-Rag having the pitched up “Die, Insect” was fun and players enjoyed the little wink.

+ Worked well as a method for distributing the fireworks.

+ Fun for players who wanted to challenge themselves to build a giant Mini-Rag.

Lessons Learned:

- The blend of strategies could be confusing for some players. Some would just try to win outright and that removes some of the fun.

- We had to run this brawl mostly unchanged for Fire Festival year 2 because of how the fireworks system was hooked up.

- The art for Mini-Rag was not a full piece, would have liked to have done something more special for it.