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Team Profile: Zeke Sparkes

By Keith Cross on Apr 24, 2008

Cryptic Studios has posted a profile of Zeke Sparkes, lead content designer for Champions Online.

Learn more about Zeke Sparkes, the lead content designer for Champions Online:

Q: What do you do as the lead content designer for Champions Online?
A: I lead a team of awesome designers that are tasked with planning and implementing the persistent and instanced content for the game. That includes designing big outdoor zones, smaller interior game maps, critter AI and behaviors, scripting missions, populating maps with spawns and hooking up events.

It usually starts with us talking with our writer, John Layman, about what types of things and stories should be going on in a particular area of the game. Then we sit down and sketch out a map of the physical play space and what we want to populate it with. After that, we work closely with art to make sure they can take what we're planning and make it look good without working 120-hour weeks for two years straight. Depending on what the chunk of content is, we'll either provide a quick white box in game for the artists, or work with them directly to make a more detailed white box. At that point, the team starts placing scripts, missions and spawns down on the map, while art turns it into a snazzy looking environment. Afterwards we clean things up to match the final art and then we play it, play it, play it, play it, and play it some more to make sure everything feels good and is fun.