Small team, big challenges

Working on LotR:ACG is a major highlight for me. I am someone who has been a major Tolkien fan since I was a child. Joining Fantasy Flight Interactive and eventually Antihero Studios to work on this project was something that not only helped me refine my design skills, it really helped me find my voice in design.

For most of the development cycle of the game, we had a small team in Madison, WI, USA, and a remote programming team based in Shanghai, China. This allowed me to become much more comfortable with remote work and dealing with other members of the team that were not in-office which has come in very handy after the last few years.

Our office had a very collaborative and open design process. Being able to field ideas to the more experienced members of staff was a very good growth opportunity, especially given that this was my first major title. It allowed me to question how I looked at a design and absorbed feedback. I had a lot of freedom to create ideas and experiment, but I also had regular meetings with the producer and the head of studio to make sure that what we were making was on-target for our product.

We also faced adversity in our project as well. From the business side we had changing deadlines and sudden feature addition requests, while from the consumer side, we dealt with the feedback from some of those changes and how they impacted the product. The traditional tabletop game was beloved by its community, so making a digital game that wasn’t a direct copy of it was offputting to some. Balancing these two while keeping everything moving forward was always a rewarding challenge. But I feel that it was a great experience overall. Our community was largely positive, which really made me feel good about my work when I nailed it, but definitely called me out if I made a mistake or didn’t think about a card’s interactions.

The cards and campaigns themselves were interesting and challenging to design and deploy. Needing to manage the requirements of the IP, such as Tolkien/MEE approvals on every piece of art and content, really taught me to be very consistent and think carefully about maintaining a unified vision. Having a custom-built unity editor with visual scripting to facilitate card editing was something new and interesting to learn, including improving my Python skills. Looking back on it now though, we may have been better served with a more raw editor process. At the time, it was seen as the most practical option for where the company wanted to take the process of design.