I am Liz England, a systems designer with almost 15 years of experience in the game industry.
I was previously a Team Lead Game Designer at Ubisoft Toronto, where I shipped Watch Dogs Legion. Some of my prior work includes Scribblenauts and Sunset Overdrive, but you can check my resume for more info.
My main interests are: procedural generation, AI systems, simulations, expressive game systems (which give lots of agency to players and provide unique stories), and the intersection of systems and narrative. I do my best work when I get to take on huge, complex, and highly interconnected systems (at the high level) that involve a great deal of detail oriented work (at the low level).
You may know me from The Door Problem.
You may also know me from small dark comedy and/or horror games posted on my itch.io site (such as Everyday Misanthrope and growth), or from my twitterbots (such as @litpatches_text and @vg_erotica). I also regularly experiment with machine learning tools.
I also have reviewed books on game design and related fields, though that project has been on pause for a while now.
Some talks I have given include:
- Design & Tech Behind ‘Play as Anyone’ in Watch Dogs Legion (MIGS 2020)
- GDC 2018 Microtalks – Playing with Fire (Designing for Spectacular Failure) (GDC 2018)
- How to Make an Impossible Game: Designing Scribblenauts (NYU PRACTICE 2018)
- Everything I Said Is Wrong: Why Indie is Different Now (Microtalk) (GDC 2017)
- Rules of the Game: Five Techniques from Quite Inventive Designers (Actionable Documentation) (GDC 2017)
- The Worlds of Sunset Overdrive (GDC 2015)
- Transitioning From Linear to Open World Design With Sunset Overdrive (GDC 2015)
You can contact me via email at lizengland07@gmail.com or on twitter @lizardengland.