Niantic // Directing a Live Game Feature

Niantic // Ingress // Overclock

Feature Director - Tech Art - Audio - VFX - UI - Prototype

• First game with VPS technology worldwide

• Developed the project from concept stage to publishing stage

• Directed server engineers, client engineers, design, art, product, cross functional, community, marketing

Fun things about the project! Different colors make up the tesseract depending on which team owns the current portal

Different audio ambient sounds depending on which team

The 4D animation was fun to make, but it had to be very fast so it didn't impede player game-play.

Challenges

Rendering the 4d hypercube involved complex matrix math. Everything here is procedural, so tests could only be done with the game running, and had to get creative about how to test artwork and VFX for mobile devices in AR as well.

It was tough working with brand new technology, VPS, and needed to anticipate problems with this experimental technology in a short timeline. By going through prototyping and then production, different types of choices need to be made in order to get the product shipped, deciding where we need to nail it on quality, or where we need to be more strategic with our resources. Had to be very vigilant to keep out scope creep!

Presenting Overclock at AWE 2023