Madden NFL Mobile is the handheld version of the ultra-popular Madden NFL series, providing a more streamlined version of the experience and gameplay that players have come to expect over the years.
Madden NFL OVERDRIVE (MM S5, 2019 product year)
“New year, new engine, new name.”
Madden NFL Mobile saw it’s biggest change yet in Season 5. A new engine, a new title, and a whole new real-time PvP mode dominated the conversation; Madden NFL Mobile had become Madden NFL Overdrive.
My role on MM S5 expanded once again, seeing me take on the new challenge of mentoring the growing content design team as a stakeholder in our live content design process. In this role, I helped guide the content team’s design direction and took part in stakeholder reviews, content greenlight/kickoff meetings, and milestone check-ins from the other side of the table, so to speak.
During this time, I also moved into a pre-production design role in the months leading up to our full launch production period, where I helped lay the groundwork for the live service design strategy for the upcoming year. This included working with data analysts, feature designers, engineers, and artists to help shape the new core loop of the game and how our content promos would feed into it, as for the first time we would be introducing a real-time PvP mode, Overdrive, that would be central to the player experience.
The move to an updated game engine necessitated the rebuilding of all of our 3D gameplay scenarios. We took this opportunity to truly revamp the new & returning player experience for the first time since the game’s original launch. I was responsible for designing and building the basis for a new content “promo” that would be available to all players upon launching the updated title. This provided a better way for us to illustrate not only our new gameplay mechanics and systems such as player archetypes, but also took players through our typical content promo flow in a more organic way.
Throughout all of this time, I represented the live content team during the production of new tools and features, ensuring that our live content workflows and expectations were being respected and considered at all times when it came to tools and features we would be expected to use and maintain.
Madden NFL Mobile S4 (2018 product year)
With Madden NFL Mobile Season 4, my role on the team expanded quite a bit. I assumed a principal role, serving as the main point of contact between the growing live content team and our product & development managers. This meant taking a step back from actually creating as much content in order to focus on getting ahead with our seasonal content designs, working with PMs to identify and capitalize on new engagement and monetization opportunities, working with data analysts to craft designs that encouraged desired player behaviors, and working with development managers to ensure we remained within the scope & capacity that our content team could produce.
Some of my most notable and successful content designs were:
Color Rush (Sept. 2017) - The Color Rush promo replaced the Breast Cancer Awareness promo from prior years and performed incredibly well. MM was a top 5 top-grossing title on iOS during this period.
Most Feared (Oct. 2017) - The Most Feared promo is an annual tradition. Season 4's Most Feared promo proved to be both successful and a huge learning opportunity. While the promo was financially successful, players lamented the complexity of the design, finding it to be confusing. Working with analysts to find out why, I applied those lessons to subsequent designs.
Pro Bowl (Jan. 2018) - The Pro Bowl promo is typically short & sweet, but that didn't stop the simple, engaging promo from bringing MM back to the top 10 on the iOS top-grossing chart!
Super Bowl (Feb. 2018) - The Big Game. The Super Bowl promo is a consistent driver of revenue and engagement. That was no different in 2018, with MM hitting the top 3 on the iOS top-grossing chart on Super Bowl Sunday!
Easter (Mar.-Apr. 2018) - The Easter promo is always a fun one for MM. 2018 proved no different, with Easter content catapulting the game back into the top 10 top-grossing games on iOS. The Easter promo is perhaps the most well-balanced promo I ever designed for MM. It garnered high praise from our players and it was financially successful, generating the highest average revenue per spender of the entire season to date. It was proof that our previous learnings in both engagement and monetization design had paid off.
In addition to the above, I continued to evolve and champion the grammar guidelines I created during MM S2. I also continued to work with our tools engineers to identify issues with our toolset, improve workflows, and propose & design new tool features to make content creation easier as the team has grown.
Madden NFL Mobile S3 (2017 product year)
Madden NFL Mobile Season 3 saw a steady progression of my role within the content team. I was the first to learn a new set of proprietary content creation tools in order to teach the rest of the content team. I continued to be the primary content designer responsible for implementing new player items, collectibles, collections, packs, and store offers. About halfway through the season, I assumed the role of principle content designer, starting with the NFL Combine promo in February of 2017. My most notable content design on S3, however, was the NFL Bosses program in May of 2017.
The NFL Bosses program served as a solution for two problems. First, a steady decline in active players and daily revenue as the season wound down, and second, increasing negative feedback from players that had too many unused items sitting on their bench in-game with nowhere to put them.
The solution addressed both. To satisfy our remaining hardcore players, we released new players each week that were the highest overall rating we had ever released until that point. To satisfy those with tons of unwanted items, we created ways to allow those players to trade those items in and make progress toward earning these new Boss players.
As a result, our active player count nearly leveled out for the remainder of the season. Players now had a place to put every single item they could acquire in the game and make progress toward the most powerful endgame players available at the same time. With their benches depleted, players started spending again to amass more items, and the NFL Bosses program created the highest sustained revenue period that deep into the game's yearly cycle in its history. We went on to apply these successful lessons into almost all facets of MM S4.
In addition to the above, I still held the primary responsibility of integrating new content into testing & live environments. I continued to evolve and champion the grammar guidelines I created during MM S2. I also continued to work with our tools engineers to identify issues with our toolset, improve workflows, and propose & design new tool features to make content creation easier.
Madden NFL Mobile S2 (2016 product year)
I joined the Madden NFL Mobile team in January of 2016 as a content designer. I quickly became responsible for building all player items, collectibles, collections, packs, and store offers using XML for the remainder of the game's yearly cycle. Because these items serve as the basis by which most other content is created, I was given the responsibility of pushing our content through code reviews and deploying it to testing & live environments. During this time, I started to document best practices and optimal workflows for several of our in-game content programs that were updated weekly to coincide in real-time with actual NFL events. This documentation also led to creating grammar guidelines for the live content team in order to ensure all content remained consistent in all areas of the game regardless of the creator responsible. I have continued to update and champion these guidelines as new features and systems have been added to the game.