It's In The Game!
Managing Design and Live Service
Designing Missions and Weekly Challenges
One of my primary responsibilities was designing our recurring challenges and missions, often spotlighting retired NFL Legends. Each mission gave players a temporary opportunity to play as these iconic athletes across a series of three gameplay scenarios. My process always began with research—diving into what made each legend great, both statistically and stylistically. Once I had a clear understanding of their identity, I designed missions that let players feel that greatness firsthand. For example, if a player was known for relentless pressure and aggressive defense, I’d create challenges that demanded fast reactions and reckless pursuit, forcing players to think and act under pressure—just like the legend did on the field.
Equally important to me is understanding the culture and preferences of our player base. Over time, we saw that players gravitated toward offensive challenges, finding them more enjoyable and engaging, while often breezing through defensive ones. With that in mind, I design defensive missions to be short and impactful—quick bursts of challenge that hold attention—while offensive missions are more elaborate and strategic, allowing players to explore and savor the fantasy of controlling a football legend.
(Not our actual pipeline for company privacy)
Working on improving workflow
Between Madden NFL 24 and 25, our team underwent significant internal changes to both our design pipeline and toolset, replacing a system we’d relied on for over a decade. As expected, this transition came with its challenges. I was asked to represent the design team in key planning meetings, where I helped define tool priorities, shape long-term workflow goals, and ensure our tools team focused on the features that would have the greatest day-to-day impact on designers.
Playing a central role in shaping our internal design goals for the next several years was both exciting and high-pressure. My primary objective was to communicate the most pressing pain points experienced by designers and advocate for their perspectives on upcoming changes. In hindsight, I recognize the value of even deeper cross-team outreach and would aim to more proactively gather feedback from designers working in areas less familiar to me.
With these changes recently making its way to our official pipeline, we’ve already seen a marked improvement in team productivity. I’ve also taken the lead in identifying overlooked areas within the new workflow—evaluating their impact, prioritizing them based on team need, and continuing to push for iterative improvements.
Peer review content creation
Despite the fast-paced turnaround times on Madden, one thing we never compromise on is peer review. Every piece of content—whether it's a daily challenge, a new player character, or a feature update—goes through designer feedback to ensure balance, clarity, and overall fun. We regularly review elements like challenge difficulty, overlooked bugs, consistent terminology, and anything else that might impact the player experience. Over time, we've built a team culture grounded in honest, respectful critique.
I often lead segments of our final review meetings, especially those tied to economy and monetization, but I also make a point to evaluate other design elements where I can offer perspective or improve clarity. It's important to me that feedback goes both ways, and I strive to model a tone that’s constructive, direct, and humble.
Managing short turnaround times and maintaining quality
Working on a live service title as large and fast-moving as Madden has been an incredible experience—and one that comes with tight, unrelenting deadlines. We regularly ship four to seven updates a week, each introducing new content for players. While I love the opportunity to keep the game fresh and engaging, it can be a challenge to meet my own design standards and deliver quality content within such compressed timelines.
Through this, I’ve developed a strong sense of how to design efficiently—implementing features that maximize player enjoyment while respecting development bandwidth. Larger-scale content, like new single-player modes or deeper experiential updates, are often out of scope given time constraints. Instead, we focus on highly impactful changes: improving UI clarity, tightening functionality, and delivering quality-of-life updates that meaningfully enhance the user experience.
That said, when the opportunity arises to take on larger, more ambitious improvements, my team and I are ready. I’ve learned to balance ambition with practicality—pushing for change where it counts, while ensuring we stay focused, efficient, and aligned with what’s realistically achievable.
