JRR III

EA SPORTS / Mobile Gameplay / College Football 27

College Football
Mobile 27.

I was the sole gameplay owner for College Football Mobile 27. I worked with three engineers and two UI/UX designers to build the touch controls, tune the gameplay, and adapt changes from the console game for mobile hardware. My implementation work included XML and supporting C++.

Role
Technical Designer
Scope
Gameplay Owner
Platform
Mobile

Selected work

What I worked on

How I took the console game and made it work on a phone, from the touch controls to the code behind them.

01 / Gameplay ownership

Gameplay owner

I was the sole gameplay owner on College Football Mobile 27. My work covered the whole game, from controls and tuning to the questions that came up during implementation.

The mobile game was built on the console game, so I kept up with every console gameplay change and explained what it meant for mobile. Then I worked out what could carry over, what had to change, and what the engineers and UI/UX designers needed from me.

Areas of contribution

  • Owned day-to-day gameplay decisions
  • Kept the mobile team up to date on console gameplay changes
  • Saw controls and features through implementation and tuning
  • Decided when mobile needed a different solution
  • Gameplay Ownership
  • Feature Development
  • Cross-team Design

02 / Interaction design

Mobile Controls

A controller has a lot of buttons. A phone doesn’t. I had to fit the main football actions on screen without covering the game in controls.

I built the control setup in XML and wrote supporting C++ when the existing systems couldn’t do what we needed. I worked with two UI/UX designers and three engineers so the on-screen buttons, inputs, and gameplay behavior stayed in sync.

Areas of contribution

  • Designed and iterated on the touch controls
  • Built control behavior in XML
  • Wrote supporting C++
  • Controls
  • XML
  • C++
  • UI/UX Collaboration
College Football Mobile 27 pre-play gameplay showing defensive touch controls

03 / Technical design

Implementation & Tuning

Some console systems just needed new tuning. Others needed a workaround.

When console behavior didn’t translate, I worked through the problem with the engineers. Sometimes that meant changing the tuning. Other times it meant adjusting the design or adding supporting code. Additionally, mobile is a different audience than console and so I had to adapt the difficulty of the game to a new audience.

Areas of contribution

  • Tuned gameplay for touch controls and mobile hardware
  • Found workarounds for systems that did not transfer cleanly
  • Updated mobile gameplay as console features changed
  • Worked with engineers on implementation changes
  • Gameplay Tuning
  • Problem-solving