Work Case Study
Seafight Live Events & Player-Facing Features
Live-service design for Bigpoint's 20-year-old browser MMO
Game DesignLive ServiceEventsEngagement
Role
Live-Service Game Designer
Status
Shipped · Ongoing
Tools
Jira, Confluence, Analytics dashboards, Figma
Context
- Seafight is a long-running browser MMO with a player base that has years of progression, habits, and expectations. My work at Bigpoint covers player-facing live-service design: new event concepts, feature ideas, event systems, reward structures, UX improvements, redesigns, sales beats, feedback review, and post-launch tuning.
- The design challenge is not simply adding more content. It is creating experiences that feel clear, motivating, and worth returning to, whether the work is a new event, a new system, a feature improvement, or a redesign.
Problem
- Seafight's long-running player base knows the game deeply, so new live content must feel valuable without breaking long-standing systems.
- Recurring events need enough novelty to motivate veteran players while staying readable for returning players.
- Design changes have to respect a 20-year economy, live cadence, and existing player progress.
My role
- Live-Service Game Designer
- 6–7 live events per year with production, community, monetization, and implementation dependencies.
- Work must fit Seafight's existing systems and avoid devaluing player inventories.
- Design specs need to be precise enough for distributed implementation and live tuning.
Design decisions
- A typical event starts with the player motivation: what are players returning for, what should be new this time, and what behavior should the event encourage? From there I shape the event loop, completion goals, reward structure, special encounters, sales beats, and UX support.
- After launch, I review participation signals and community feedback, then adjust where needed. That feedback loop is central to live-service design because player expectations are specific and the cost of confusing or unrewarding content is immediate.
Outcome
- Designed and delivered recurring, seasonal, and experimental Seafight events.
- Created event systems and player-facing UX improvements now reused across the live-event cadence.
- Events frequently scored 9–10/10 in internal post-event community reports compiled from player feedback.
- Retained as a freelance designer after Bigpoint's restructure to continue supporting Seafight live events.
What this shows
- The work established Seafight as my clearest shipped live-service work: live MMO events, measurable feature redesign, reusable event UX, feedback-led iteration, and continued trust from Bigpoint after restructure.
- It also clarified the kind of player-facing work I want to own: live events, content, systems, features, engagement loops, and experiences that improve through launch feedback.