MLB The Show 19
Description: MLB The Show 19 is the 14th installment of the critically-acclaimed baseball sim series.
Platforms: PlayStation 4
Team: 80+ person team
Type: Professional Project (Sony San Diego Studio)
Role: Associate Game Designer
Core Responsibilities:
Systems Design for Road to the Show (Personality and Relationships feature)
Narrative Design for Road to the Show (Personality and Relationships feature)
UI/UX Design for a Road to the Show (Personality and Relationships feature)
Tools: Proprietary
Available for purchase here
During MLB 19’s preproduction phase, the team targeted several design issues in the Road to the Show mode. Road to the Show is the game’s career mode. The user creates a character and plays through their career from their earliest days of Minor League baseball to Major League stardom. The mode also features narrative cutscenes with dialogue choices between games.
A few of problems identified were:
Dialogue choices with coaches, your agent, etc. don’t have enough systemic impact.
Friendships and rivalries are a big part of the real-life pro baseball experience, but they’re not represented in MLB: The Show in any form.
Perks (equippable player abilities) feature a clunky UX and are underutilized by users as a result).
In response to these issues, I pitched a feature to the team’s lead designers called Personality and Relationships. The feature moved into production, during which I owned all aspects of the design. Below, I describe the feature in more detail, but in short it offered solutions to the design problems in the following ways:
Problem: Dialogue choices need to provide greater impact on game systems:
Solution: Important dialogue choices impact the player’s personality. As the user advances a personality type (out of 4 possible options), they unlock Perks which thematically dovetail with the characteristics of that personality
Problem: Friendships and rivalries aren’t represented in the game
Solution: Between games the user is offered the choice to interact with teammates and rivals. Interactions increase the strength of their relationship. Strong relationships make perks more powerful
Problem: Perk system is underused and has UX issues
Solution: Perks are passively activated. The user equips perks before entering the game and they trigger based on in-game criteria, rather than being user activated.
Road the Show 19 trailer
My fellow RTTS designers and I recorded voice over describing our features for this promo video.
Perk Skill Tree
There are 4 possible personalities for the player to embody: the Captain, the Maverick, the Heart and Soul, and the Lightning Rod. As the player makes dialogue choices they increase their Personality attributes and unlock perks.
Each perk has 2 versions: a normal version, and a more powerful “boosted version” as the player increases their relationships with teammates and rivals they unlock access to boosted perks. I designed the UI/UX of this screen as well as the perks themselves and their effects.
Teammate Interactions
At various junctures between games, the player is offered the chance to converse with teammates
After choosing a player to speak with, you are given a dialogue scene in which you discuss recent events with personality-driven choices. I wrote these scenes and designed the UI.
