Alice Bowman

- Leading development of MAG's hit word game Wordzee! - Defining product strategy, informed by competitor analysis and market research - Managing the roadmap, setting OKRs, and fulfilling producer responsibilities for our team of 8 - Maintaining cross-team communication and collaboration - Aligning and committing with stakeholders across the company - Monitoring KPIs and analysing data - Working with our BI team to plan a roster of A/B tests

Over 8 years, I engaged in numerous short-term contracts of work as a game designer, narrative designer, and product consultant for various studios. Contracts include: - Game design for Team Artichoke's pitch prototype - Consultancy for Peerplay's debut unreleased title, from both a game design, narrative and product perspective - Narrative design for HUGs, a soft-launched prototype by start-up TrulySocial

- Created 16 game days worth of launch content for Love and Pies - Key contributor to meta and story overhaul that delivered record D1 retention and a green light to launch - Established a team of content designers: participating in the hiring process, managing their onboarding, and organizing workload - Managed alignment between narrative, art, and design - Worked closely with producer and other stakeholders to determine content release schedule - Championed narrative and content pipeline - Script editing and feedback - Implemented cutscenes in Unity - Supported lead writer in defining story direction

- Joined Trailmix as a level designer when Love and Pies was in prototype stage - Created thousands of levels across four different iterations of the core - Helped hire and onboard a second level designer - Transitioned to working on cutscene creation in Unity - Contributed to story direction, character ideation, and narrative - Script editing and feedback

- Alongside my PhD, I worked part-time as a level designer for Crafty Candy and Angry Birds POP - Created levels to pass rate specifications - Worked with QA and other level designers to ensure the accuracy of projected pass rates - Responded to live data, monitoring churn, pass rate and monetization and adjusting levels accordingly

- I was a Game Designer for Crafty Candy, a match-3 game and Outplay's best-performing title at the time - Created episodes of content and batches of levels, from concept to release to live iterations as needed - Monitored churn, pass rate and monetization of live levels, and adjusted levels accordingly - Contributed to the design of new features - Contributed to live ops schedule - Developed a best practice guide for level design - Developed a best practice guide for copywriting - Wrote fortnightly company-wide updates on the game, keeping stakeholders informed - Wrote briefs for art outsourcers, managing feedback and iterations to guarantee consistently high-quality

- Moved across various projects in different stages of development: ideation team, a game prototype, a soft-launched game preparing for launch (Shuffle Cats), and a live game (Farm Heroes) - Designed a new feature for Shuffle Cats - Designed a mini-game - Created levels for Farm Heroes - Pitched design ideas for new games - Competitor analysis

- Worked on Fallen London and Sunless Sea - Assisted with QA tasks, testing the PC and app version of Sunless Sea - Participated in writing team meetings, providing feedback and input on story content - Proofread narrative content for Fallen London -Created an example mod using StoryNexus and JSON -Assisted in organizing a fan competition - Wrote blog posts re. modding update

I spent three years researching the applications of serious games in supporting the emotional wellbeing of cancer patients at Abertay. Whilst undertaking this study I created a project in Unity, that drew on dating sim design paradigms to become a support group sim. The design for this project was informed by interviews with breast cancer patients and focus groups, that were carried out in collaboration with the Maggie’s Centre and Macmillan Cancer Support. I eventually stepped away from my studentship due to the impact of Covid on both myself and the research participants I was working with, but the application of games to emotionally support patients remains close to my heart. I have continued the development of my support group sim in my spare time, and am working on other projects that will utilize aspects of this research.