Games, Stories & Community

6+ years of passionate pursuit

My strategic work at NAU was satisfying and mission-driven, but my creative heart kept pulling me back to side projects connected to my passion for games, stories, and community. In 2015, I led design and creative for the indie game Bot Land (shipped 2019). During that project I decided to actively pursue narrative- and game-adjacent design work. I also started a podcast about modern storytelling and built a constellation of TTRPG community projects (a wiki-slash-lit-mag, a Twitch Actual Play, a weekly conversation space) surrounding Monte Cook Games’ products.

In 2021, I made “games” official: I was hired as Senior UX Designer by DoubleDown Interactive to establish UX design for their mobile games prototyping studio.

Spinning in Space

Spinning in Space is a sweeping, retro-styled space adventure game from DoubleDown Interactive, exploring a whimsical galaxy filled with (many!) dozens of characters and interweaving plot lines spread across five distinct planets.

I led UX across most of the production lifecycle through public open beta, when the project was canceled. I am particularly proud of the modular UX design system I created to unify the player experience across the app’s many features and gameplay modes.

©2023 DoubleDown Interactive, LLC. All rights reserved.

UX lead for a fully-produced mobile game

sis-cinematic.jpg
sis-conversation.jpg
sis-slots.jpg
sis-surface.jpg
sis-collections.jpg
sis-store.jpg
sis-status.jpg

DoubleDown Interactive

Across 2+ years as Senior UX Designer at DoubleDown’s Unity prototyping studio, my work included:

  1. Design leadership, establishing culture and process following a gap in UX staffing

  2. Full UX production on a complete flagship mobile title (view case studies)

  3. Agile prototyping/exploration of 10+ game concepts/pitches (including my own)

  4. Communicating and presenting, internally and to leadership in Korea

Built in Seattle interviewed me about my approach:

a senior UX design role

Process examples

UX wireframe animatic: Narrated tour of a collection management feature, captioned for our team in Korea. (audio narration)

UI design comp: The beautiful high-fidelity visual design created by our UI artists.

UX prototype: Clip from a Figma demo incorporating final UI artwork.

 

Prototyping interactions

DoubleDown’s prototyping studio was set up to rapidly conceptualize and prototype game ideas across genres.

Many of these were fully-fledged Unity prototypes created by our technical artists — but the UX team often produced lower-fidelity interactive wireframes, animatics, or prototypes to explore ideas even more quickly and at low cost.

Here is a sampling of prototypes and animatics I created to think through or communicate user interaction ideas.

©2023 DoubleDown Interactive, LLC. All rights reserved.

rapid experimentation for games and features

One-thumb interaction for a vertical 4X game concept. (After Effects: Tyler Thompson)

Navigating a card collection view

Sketch showing touch interaction in a card-based linking game

Annotated solution for tracking currency rollovers (audio narration)

Detailed demo of interaction states accompanying documentation for Unity developers

Sketch showing player interaction with goal markers on a map

Ian Smith
Game Design Manager, DoubleDown Interactive

“[Jason’s] passion for a wide variety of games and the deep thinking he has done about the nature of play is evident in both his designs and in collaborative discussions … I cannot overstate how vital Jason has been as a patient and persuasive communicator advocating on behalf of the breadth of players that will play our game.”

Bot Land

I designed the UX/UI and managed creative for this bot battler, including hiring a team of a half-dozen illustrators and animators and guiding them through concepting and production. The game was released on both desktop & mobile, requiring thoughtful adaptive UX across a wide range of screen sizes.

an indie game (Steam/iOS/Android), 2019

iPhone screenshot showing gameplay. Bots move around a circuit-board background. UI allows user to configure their team.
iPhone screen of a configuration screen, allowing the player to select different bots and loadouts.

Designing customizable Bots

Bots needed to be expressive, while also fitting comfortably within the arena’s grid. I designed a customization system and a production process that allowed the artists to push compositions as far as possible — without breaking anything.

bot-land-wire.png
mobile-configure.png
Lobby
Arena
Customize
Code

Ryanne Levin
Bot Land illustrator and animator

“Jason’s a joy to have as a creative director. He creates a work environment where developing and sharing creative ideas feels both encouraged and collaborative. He allows artists the creative freedom to explore project solutions, yet still provides clear, specific feedback and direction at project checkpoints. His approach keeps projects fun and exciting for creatives…”

Image of Ryanne Levin. Young woman smiling with bright green eyes, and long brown hair swept across her face.

Professional Development for Game UX

  • Focused all-day practical workshop on Lean UX practices for game studios, including strategies for using UX thinking to improve collaboration across disciplines and teams internally.

    (Game UX Summit 2022 Masterclass taught by Rachel Leiker, Lead UX Designer at Epic Games)

  • Attended as an industry professional. Added an accessibility workshop at Microsoft Inclusive Tech Lab. Memorable session: “Extremism in Games” by Rachel Kowert, Research Director at Take This. (2022)

  • Two-day course discussing human psychology and its practical application to UX design in the context of games. Our cohort focused heavily on the design of onboarding/first-time user experiences.

    (GDC Masterclass, taught by Celia Hodent, PhD, Author and former Director of UX at Epic Games)

  • Attending as a game UX designer for the first time — learning from sessions and making some connections. (2016)

  • Attending as a player, official GM for Monte Cook Games, podcaster/streamer, and community leader. (2017/18/19)

The Secret Cellar

Why (and how) are humans telling stories today?

With this question top-of-mind, I began conversations with artists, creators, and storytellers across various mediums.

Aesthetically nestled in a surreal speakeasy inspired by the setting of Monte Cook Games’ Invisible Sun, the show returned often to themes including game design, play, expression, hospitality, and self-reflection.

a podcast about story, 2018–2020

An eye, a keyhole, a cocktail… Look deeper still! What do you see?

The Crepuscule Notion

What started as a wiki-slash-literary-magazine for the surreal socialite set… grew into a livestreamed Twitch Actual Play hosted by Monte Cook Games, with a followup event at Gen Con.

The Crepuscule Notion allowed fans to upload wiki-style articles about the people, places, and things discovered in their home TTRPG games, so other players could draw inspiration from and fold them into their own stories.

“The Truth Bleeds at Twilight” was an 8-part series set in the offices of a tabloid newspaper office in the world of Invisible Sun. Design artifacts included press passes, flyers, dynamic OBS layouts for the stream, and art direction for portraiture.

Co-produced by Ian Smith.
Character portraits: Kendra Hinojosa.

a community TTRPG production, 2018

Character card for "The Editor", a hunched figure in a top hat, looking away from the camera, with a mysterious symbol emblazoned on his coat. He holds a cartoon version of the martini from The Secret Cellar.
Character card for "Seru", a man with a flat cap whose face and hand are turning to glass. He holds a magical glowing weapon in his hand and looks prepared to punch a foe with it.
Character card for "Bismuth", a femme-looking person with a bowler cap. Her light-brown skin and dark hair has iridescent patches shining through it. She casts a sideways glance.
Character card for "Catafalque Green", whose skin looks like wood, with flowers blooming from twiglike hair.
Character card for "Jacobi JJ Jisenji", a masculine figure whole pale skin contrasts, with long brown hair. A small ghostly lizard sits on his shoulder. He casts a wary glance to the left.
Character card for "Drummel", an enthusiastic-looking masculine figure with a bushy mustache, swept-back hair, and a bow tie. A shadowy image of Meldrum (who looks very similar to Drummel) is visible in the background.
Press pass for "Chellah, Editorial & Exposé". She has long flowing purple hair that defies gravity, and roughly half of her body seems to be ghostly.
Screenshot from an episode of “The Truth Bleeds at Twilight," with Jason as GM. An arcane-looking game board with round cards fills the right side of the screen. The other players show expression of shock, bemusement, or laughter at something that ha
Title cards from the show. The 8 Episodes have titles like "Tyrannical Clock," "Sublimation," Making & Unmaking" and "The Dawn of Dusk".