At King, we used to have a session every week where we all played each other’s levels. When you’ve designed a level, you test it on yourself and your colleagues. Well we keep a big overview, and use screenshots to compare new levels with previous ones, changing layouts and other things based on this. How do you tell if a level is too difficult? People on Facebook can also complain about different levels, and then we tweak those based on these comments. Then you start noticing all the difficulties they might be having. Sometimes gamers say stuff to please you, so you need to ask good questions and watch them actually playing, without commenting on how they’re playing. I think it’s one of the reasons I was hired by King – I highlighted the importance of testing a lot, they didn’t do a lot of that previously. Has gamer feedback changed your designs for a game? It’s a door into an uncensored audience, who aren’t trying to please you and say what they really think.

I follow a lot of Facebook groups to see what gamers are thinking about games. I found out really fast that this is what I was looking for. I finally did find a game design course and got accepted onto it. So I started off trying to become a programmer, but that wasn’t really for me. There weren’t any courses in game design, as far as I knew at least. I always knew I wanted to work in games, but there wasn’t much available education on it. So how did you go from childhood drawings to working in the industry? I drew a lot, and liked to use my imagination. Imagining games and how they should be played. Yeah! I drew maps and even made some early game designs, if they could be called that. I liked games like Super Mario Kart, like most people did. It inspired my love of mobile games because they did so much within the limitations that they had. I did play a lot of Nintendo – that was my console. Were you interested in gaming as a child? He takes us through his illustrious career, and answers questions from GameCentral readers.

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