THE CHALLENGE

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When the open world ambience scope was first established, I was the sole person responsible for designing and building the scenarios. I worked directly with directors to define what the ambient activities needed to achieve and delivered the initial batch personally. As production scale, the full scope of the ambience requirements became clearly defined: 600+ ambient scenarios in total, consisting of mission-specific, one-off events and ambient activities for the 4 different stages of the game world: from normal civilian life to the various stages of martial law.

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I subsequently scoped the work, created a plan to expand the team, and once the plan was approved I was authorised to execute and hire accordingly.

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I recruited and onboarded 12 new designers, training each of them on the ambient activity pipeline and the design guidelines I had established with directors, ensuring the standard I established were maintained. As the team grew, my role became more managerial and I gradually transitioned scenarios I built over to them.

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Not everyone on the team was working on ambience. I dynamically allocated my team to multiple different areas throughout production, depending on priorities and people's skillsets, taking into account career development wherever possible. This meant that team members moved between campaign missions, ambience, side missions and ARCADIA content.

 

To manage dependencies with Audio, Animation, Art, AI, Props, Vehicles, and Narrative at this scale, I worked closely with the production team to establish the pipelines and workflows that governed how my team interacted with each department. Keeping quality consistent across all areas simultaneously while operating within those pipelines was the core challenge of this role.