From April 2013 to May 2015, I served as a Mission Designer at Pretty Simple, working on Criminal Case—a phenomenal hit on… Facebook?

Official website: https://prettysimplegames.com

All-in-One Formula

My first gig in the gaming world was probably the most all-encompassing one. The role of Mission Designer at Pretty Simple touched on just about every aspect of game development. This entailed drafting pitches for investigations, writing dialogues, coordinating assets with the team, monitoring their completion, brainstorming ideas for mini-games, creating a LD tree for the investigation’s progression, and then… coding it all manually into .json files.

In the end, I penned 12 episodes of the game, feeling each time like I was delivering a full game.

A Lot of Leeway

I do think some of my episodes were more memorable and humorous than others. And while we had a common foundation, I have to admit that the creative freedom allowed every Designer to truly express themselves. Although there were certain guidelines to follow, especially concerning the mission trees to cater to players prone to in-app purchases, there were no constraints on tone or theme.

It was also the first and only time I worked within a team of Mission Designers (there were 8 of us when I left the company), which gave the game a diverse range of flavors, all made possible by this same creative freedom.

And honestly, it was refreshing to have this freedom, especially since I can admit now that American crime procedural TV shows bore me to tears. They tell such linear stories. To put it bluntly, all CSI-type series seem lackluster to me. Plus, I never really got the hang of Clue.

A dedicated tool?

After two years, as I became more involved in how episodes were produced, it became clear that certain tasks could be automated or assisted. Especially as the hiring process started bringing pure writers to our design team, many of whom were pretty resistant to the technical stuff. Which is understandable.

Looking back, I think it was a tad absurd to produce such a game long-term, especially one that was described by the CFO as an “endless” cash cow. And according to the management, we had the best developers one could dream of. That was probably true!

So, I drafted documentation for a tool that allowed drag-and-drop of mini-games, dialogue boxes, connecting emotes and animations, with everything playable since the code was automated.

In short, it was like Articy. Which, by the way, probably already existed back then, but I was unaware. It could have been Articy, Ink, or something else. It just made so much sense. I still think today a tool of this caliber was crucial for such a massive production.