Hello

My name is Brian Evans and I currently work as a Senior Associate Producer at Ubisoft Reflections. If you are interested you can learn about my journey to get where I am today.

I joined a little over 5 years ago in July as a Project assistant to support a team working on the production phase of the Division 2. With the support of great mentors and team mates we produced a successful sequel for players across the globe. During my time on the project I was quickly promoted to Junior and then Associate Producer following the release of the game. I was asked to then provide production support for two major DLC additions to the game; “D.C. Outskirts: Expeditions”, “Coney Island Amusement Park” and “Warlords of New York” which were challenging as I was ask to work within the constraints of; tech budgets, release on time, with reduced staffing and a high quality bar to meet. After proudly and successfully delivering the content I was asked to take on another project working directly with directors to produce their vision whilst working with an external art production company. I learned two valuable lessons whilst doing so; No matter the cost of the interruption, if there is strong misalignment of the goals then the project needs to halt so we can reassess. If the supplier company needs production support, give it to them.

As I was wrapping up the final polishing phases of the DLC’s I was asked to learn to become an outsourcing manager and Art producer for a future project I would be working on. After 6 months of preparing for the role of outsourcing I was told to help with my career that I should change teams and join the Gameplay production team to gain more experience. As part of this transition I was asked to also hire and manage an associate producer to take over my responsibilities of outsource manager.

I can now say that I’m a Senior Associate producer leading a team of producers and providing production support to my feature teams, the project and the studio.

My role was to specifically support the production team of Level artists, level designers, tech designers and tech artists. I was given 6 teams to manage with the support of leads to help deliver our large mandate on a tight schedule. Our goals were to support creating the streets of Washington DC following a specific art theme and create engaging content and activities for our players to experience.

and I am a Game design student at Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland. For three years I have been crafting immersive user experiences as a Level Designer, Game Producer & Gameplay Designer on student projects. I was employed as project manager intern for Dare to be Digital 2016, providing me with a unique challenge of managing 89 team members as well as event production for Dare to be Digital Protoplay.

Below you will find my current research project which aims at discovering the challenges faced by level designers when crafting a transmedial narrative by creating a Mod of Dota 2. I maintain a blog which allows you to learn more about the project.

Transmedia storytelling is at the forefront of maintaining a franchise with the likes of the Harry potter series, spanning books, movies and games. Yet what challenges awaited game designers who had worked transforming the movies into levels? What would if the player could wander around into rooms never before revealed in the books or the movies. How would that affect the overall narrative of the audience? That is what my research aims to investigate, the challenges that affect level designers when transforming a narrative, what scope of freedom do they have? What are the limitations?