I had the privilege of working on Poptropica from 2012 to 2016, eventually serving as the Executive Producer/Game Director after previously holding roles of Lead Framework Architect and Lead Gameplay Developer.  I grew up playing point and click adventure games (King's Quest, Space Quest, Hero's Quest) on the PC and platformers and RPGs on the Nintendo (MegaMan, FF6, ChronoTrigger) and have always been very interested in creating 'game worlds' so being able to contribute and eventually direct product on Poptropica was a great opportunity.

Poptropica is a long running product that has been around since 2007, initially the brain child of Jeff Kinney of Wimpy Kid renown and developed in its initial stages by the incredibly talented Jordan Leary.  By the time I joined the team there were already more than a dozen islands, each island being a self-contained world with its own unique story, characters, and gameplay.

My first big assignment was creating a new framework that could be used to support the existing browser-based game and create an app for Android and iOS mobile devices.  I worked closely with William 'Billy' Belfied to create an entity component system based framework that could handle everything that Poptropica had done and had yet to do, while meeting the more stringent technical limitations of the mobile devices circa 2012 and models prior.

It took about a year to develop, but in the summer of 2013 we started using the framework and all islands from Virus Hunter onwards were created with it.  Billy and I continued to work on the framework as we prepare for the launch of the app in the iOS store, which happened in December 2013.

Beginning in 2014 I served as the Lead Developer for the following islands, see pictures below, some of which spanned multiple episodes.  As Lead Developer I represented the development team and would work with the other leads in the creation and design of the islands.

I was also involved in the redesign of much of the UI/UX, working closely with Nate Greenwall our UI Lead.  This involved the mobile character creation process, the HUD, the Costumizer, the Map, the mobile Store, the Inventory as well as the introduction of the Home Island.

The Home Island was something I continually advocated for in order to create a new navigational paradigm, one that moved away from the existing GUI-centric page navigation to one that was more environmental tied to the world.

Home Island was designed to be a place where it was easy to add new game features while making them more immediately discoverable and accessible by the players.  It was also a place for new players to get oriented with what was possible and encouraged them to set off on an adventure designed to teach them the ropes.

Though it may be hard to believe it wasn't until 2015, 8 years after its inception, that Poptropica offered an introductory experience for the game.  This was something I had personally petitioned for since I first began, and was one of my central initiatives as Executive Producer.  

Monkey Wrench Island was something I directed soup to nuts including initial script, gameplay, development oversight, and production as well coordinating the extensive play-testing that guided our iteration process.  Beyond the standard tutorial elements I applied personal goal theory throughout to increase retention, which more than doubled after thre island was released.

The Costumizer and Inventory both went through a major overhaul when we moved to mobile, as we could no longer design for precision mouse clicks on small touch screens.  This presented an opportunity to improve upon the existing design that made the UX friendlier and more responsive to various screen dimensions.

I led the redesign of the UI/UX of the Inventory working with Dragan Grubesic and later Nate Greenwall. In addition to design input I also was responsible for programming the Inventory and Cards in our new framework, which proved to be quite a challenge.  One of the trickiest technical hurdles was supporting the rapid speed that the scroll bar allowed users to look through the inventory, this required for very performant card creation and  destruction, while making extensive use of entity pools.

The Photobooth was a new feature I proposed and led production on, with Scott Gilman heading development and Nate Greenwall on UI.  It was a great experience working with this small team to create a space for players to create their own images using a sticker book-style interface.  This was meant to provide a downtime activity for players between island launch as well as a tool for players to create and promote Poptropica content with their own vision and voice.  Upon release we used the Photobooth to host a Halloween contest that proved to be a big hit with players and led to some truly amazing creations.

  The Photobooth was specifically designed to support seamless content updates.  The abiltiy to easily and quickly update props and costumes allowed support for recurrent seasonal updates and the abiltiy to rapidly adjust for current trends and memes.

This presents just a brief overview of some of my work for Poptropica, focusing on higher level designs that existing outside of standard island gameplay.  If time allows I plan to explore more of the actual island development and design.