DraftKings [Black Throne Studios]
At DraftKings, I work as Lead Designer for the internal casino games studio team [Black Throne] helping create innovative online casino games for mobile and web. Working at DK has given me valuable experience in UX design, as well as product management. I have been responsible for wireframing, creating game flow charts, design docs, visual design, rapid prototyping, and final asset implementation for dozens of games. First party DK games have proven to be a major driving force for customer acquisition growth and our offerings differentiate us greatly from all other online casino competitor products.
Since we are a smaller games team, I have been heavily involved in the game design process and asset pipeline from start to finish. I also have experience working in a producer role where I managed all partner games production, as well as games release management for 6 months.
A few of my most notable projects include online multiplayer poker, live Auto Roulette, and multiple slot games.
At DraftKings I have had the opportunity to design and create numerous slot games. Each of the games have unique core loop mechanics which drive gameplay and bonus features. Coin Connect was our first in-house slot game. We chose to go for a pixel art theme with a main character who would interact with the paylines and symbols as the player spins the reels and wins money. The biggest payouts come when the player hits two adjacent coin symbols which connect to form a big win amount.
I was responsible for wireframing, prototyping, UI layout setup and art implementation, as well as sound hookup on Coin Connect.
Live Auto Roulette
Another notable slot game I worked on is Sauce Boss BBQ. The core mechanic behind Sauce Boss is the collection of BBQ food symbols. If the player collects 15 of the same symbol on a pay line before they receive 3 "bad reviews" they receive a boosting multiplier for their successive spins. Collection numbers reset after receiving 3 bad reviews. This was a very fun project to be apart of and I really enjoyed the theme of the game and focusing on selling the narrative of the main character BBQ Buck and his food truck.
I was responsible for wireframing, UI and animation implementation, as well as user testing.
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Dig! is one of our first internal variety games which meshes together traditional risk based choice selection wrapped in a visually appealing and gamified experience. The deeper you choose to dig, the higher the potential reward. The player takes on the role of a miner character (Mr. Dig) who is in search of treasure held in the cavernous mines below. The player may choose to cash out their winnings after each choice or risk it all to make it the bottom level and win it all.
As the Lead Designer on Dig! I was responsible for wireframing, prototyping, UI and art environment implementation, animation implementation, soundscape and sound FX iteration and implementation.
DraftKings Live Auto Roulette is DraftKings first live casino games product. For this game, we partnered with an external studio to build and implement the front end client, while an internal team worked on the backend. The game plays as a normal game of roulette where the player may place chips (bets) on a roulette board. There is a live stream feed of a roulette wheel in the background, which reveals the winning number. Thousands of users may interact with the same wheel at once while the game unfolds in real-time. This an immense technical accomplishment for our team to produce a polished and stable live games product. I worked as lead designer to build out the game's interface and also support visual development.
DraftKings Electric Poker is DraftKings' first and only online multiplayer poker offering The game works similar to a normal game of Poker, with one twist. After the countdown timer has expired, the players are forced to go all-in on each hand until only one player remains. The last player standing is awarded a prize amount determined at the start of the game. Electric Poker was a huge collaborative effort between multiple different engineering, operations, and product teams. We faced many challenging hurdles during development but were able to work together to release this game to our customers. I worked as a designer to build out the main game UI, conduct and action on user testing, align stakeholders, create user stories, and improve the general user experience. Also of note that I was included on a USPTO design patent for my contributions to our Electric Poker product.
