EDUARDO LOZANO MUNERA
SENIOR SYSTEM GAME DESIGNER
Senior System Game Designer
In essence, System Design is the art and science of crafting rules. However, rules don’t exist in a vacuum; they are not what we truly care about when playing a game.
What we truly desire in a game is to achieve an experience.
For approximately a decade and a half, I have passionately dedicated myself to understanding that peculiar, elusive phenomenon wherein a collection of assets on a screen can elicit tears, screams of terror, exhilaration, or heartfelt laughter.
System Design is just a part of the whole Game Design discipline, but I’ve chosen to make it my passion and my profession.
COMBAT DESIGN
Combat is an essential core element of most Action and RPG games.
I have been deeply involved in various combat systems within several of the projects I have worked on. From hitbox design for meticulously crafted movesets and character skills to intricate RPG systems teeming with stats, formulas, and other mechanical layers.
When designing a combat system, I prefer to be on the frontlines.
PROGRESSION DESIGN
Designing a Progression system implies a careful control of the pacing and rules under which you release the content to the player.
The goal is to create a player journey, a “travel” through the game which both engages and makes the player excited about what’s next.
Progression design is very related to math skills but also player psychology and working with a Data-Driven approach to test hypotheses and perfect this journey.
3C: CHARACTER, CAMERA, CONTROL
One of the best chefs in the world said the fundamental difference between normal cooking and top tier cooking is not in the recipe itself but in the details.
3Cs follow the same principle. They are the fundamentals of most games, but they are heavily influenced by the game’s vision. A game’s genre , conventions and particularities will impact a lot on how you tweak the camera, the control, or what the character can even do in the first place. All of this is critical to deliver a satisfying experience.
I think a design team should spare no effort into polishing 3Cs so it feels good to play.
TECH & SPECS
A Designer needs to communitate well. This means proper understanding of specs but also gaining mastery of descriptive writing.
I have created literally thousands of specifications and mentored several designers extensively about the importance of good and well maintained specifications, presentations and prototypes, and to properly write them for programmers, artists, QA or stakeholders. This includes also diagrams, workflows, spreadsheet models, and any other tools best used to convey information.
Besides that, my Computer Sciences background and my aptitudes in programming gives me a degree of understanding and freedom when providing or even creating my own tools, technical insight or (very valuable) knowledge when talking with technical teams.
I have good experience with Unity, Unreal and several propietary Game Engines; besides the usual tools of the trade: repositories (P4F, Git, Subversion), agile methodologies (SCRUM, Kanban…), wikis (Confluence, wikimedia…) data analytics platforms and DB work (DeltaDNA, Unity Analytics, GameSparks) etc.