Oskar Lazar : : System Designer – Programmer

When I joined in the 1-week game jam in Lucca, by the end of which we developed our game Plastic, I joined two days late due to personal reasons. The team was not on a good path. There was little drive, communication, and the product so far was not very promising. I analyzed the situation and started endorsing constructive actions. My personal skills resulted in higher productivity and more engagement.

For the game Overbloom I was enthralled with finding a narrative that is relevant for the concept of a split screen. I invested a significant amount of time in researching stories, that could inspire our setting, and held a visual presentation of which to my team. A teammate then had an idea that would allow for a more visually pleasing setting and the respective creation of assets and visual effects. The team liked this idea the most, even though it did not pay off on our so obvious main mechanic. I was instantly on board, even after communicating my concern with this setting, and went through with it.

Person A expected quicker results from B and C. The wording A used was not particularly sensitive or insightful about their co-worker’s feelings. This manifested through A’s choice of words. B and C did not stand up for their feelings and the situation they found themselves in, as it was not clear that A did not know their perceived offensiveness. I stepped in for B and C and told A to adjust their tone to match the situation.

On our game Moko, I researched extensively on Polynesian religion, politics, and their relevance in islands such as New Zealand. I wanted to make sure our game would not appropriate their culture, as their pantheon is a living religion and their cultural assets have been appropriated throughout the history of pop culture. Even the acclaimed Disney Movie “Moana”, for the production of which the company assembled a team responsible for being sensitive with their source material, had misrepresented the Samoans.

When I was developing Plastic for the first two days, I did not catch on to the part of the briefing that required us to have Circular economy as part of the narrative in our game. I quickly realized that my team had neither informed me of this prerequisite nor acted in a way that would get us to fulfil it. This completely changed my view on the project and gave me a new wave of motivation, steering the project to the desired outcome, happy to have a more clear goal in mind.

When challenged to make team decisions on feel and vibe while designing Moko, I started designing small matrixes for every team member to vote on the words we gathered. This helped us get a mathematical overview of aspects such as preferences within a team.

When joining Karma Games for their journey of developing strategy heavy euro board games, I had little experience with the genre. 3 months in, I had played 10 games of our caliber, and developed a sense for their game system design.

In the development of Obscrete the team members had vastly varying opinions, pretenses and subjective views on subject, setup and game feel. This was due to the abstract nature of our game. I would frequently list pros and cons of different perspectives and initiate a voting. The development of this strategy accelerated odecision-making process.

When hyped by a brainstorming session for finding a game concept I can get very passionate. While coming up for ideas for the game jam that would later produce Overbloom I vented my energy by doing handstands and other acrobatic maneuvers.

In a university project, we were tasked with filling silhouettes that our fellow students designed. In this process I took the same silhouette, which was particularly nondescript and made over 20 vastly different designs not only varying visually but also content-wise with different limb formations, number of creatures, stances, and equipment.

When challenged to make team decisions on feel and vibe while designing Moko, I started designing small matrixes for every team member to vote on the words we gathered. This helped us get a mathematical overview of aspects such as preferences within a team.