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Spiderman-2

Friendly Neighborhood Gaming

Video Tutorials

One of my personal favorite tasks I worked on for Spider-Man 2 was creating the tutorials. My primary goal was to collaborate with designers to produce cinematic yet informative videos that help players understand fundamental mechanics. Since my main objective was to ensure players grasp their new abilities, I chose not to make these videos overly flashy. Instead, I focused on demonstrating skills in their most common applications. I also recorded many segments using previously unlocked skills to provide players with ideas on how to combine the different abilities they have unlocked (e.g., using a dive before a loop-de-loop to gain extra momentum).

One exception to the simplistic design of these tutorials was the "Power Spike." Since this was a purely numerical upgrade that allowed players to spam abilities more often, I decided to lean into the Symbiote's chaotic nature and show how quickly and violently Spider-Man could defeat enemies (as shown in the video on the left).

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Spiders and Bugs

"Spiders are not bugs, Hulk. They're arachnids."

Naturally, one of my main tasks was to inform our talented developers at Insomniac about existing bugs in the game, along with their causes. One bug that caused us a lot of issues was probably the most infamous of the year: the "spider-cube." We discovered this bug earlier in development, but we were unable to implement a fix before launch. Our primary goal before launch was always to prevent any crashes or progression stoppers, so everything else, including spider-cube, took a backseat.

I believe we could have benefited from a more nuanced system to better communicate with our developers, allowing larger issues to receive more attention and time for fixes. Now, working as a Designer, I’ve made it a habit to check in with QA to see if any high-risk bugs or potential quality drops are present in any given build.

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Spider cube.png
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