This project was a matter of necessity more than anything else. Infinity Ward had a level that they had already built early on in development, but they needed help taking it across the finish line.

I inherited Operation: Burn Water, a level set on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and was asked to update it, polish it, and carry it through to ship.

Highlights for me were:

• I think the lesson learned here is that sometimes you take one for the team and you do what’s needed for the overall health of your organization. Game development is fast-paced, and we’re always working on shifting sands. The work is also never guaranteed, so the actions you take and the impressions you make, whether as an individual contributor, a team, or a studio, to your peers or to the people who hold the purse strings… those all matter.

• Beyond that, I’ll say that although no designer particularly enjoys being handed partially finished work and asked to polish it up, however, I also believe that the job of game designers is to be creative within their box. And that box is sometimes small and sometimes large, but there is always enough room to be creative and improve within your box. So, that’s what I did on Operation: Burn Water, and I hope the results show.