About the Author

Hi. I’m Sara Jensen Schubert, and I’m an MMO designer. My background is in web design and complaining at Lum’s.

In 2002, I shipped Shadowbane as a data entry flunky. I moved up to design in about a month, and continued to manage all game data and all game balance, and I also got to write the occasional system. I’m particularly proud of the resource system.

In the following years, I shipped two expansion packs; one of them earned me one of the MMO business’ only “balance designer” credits. After the second expansion, I moved up to lead designer and had a grand time managing all the patch plans and writing most of the systems, while continuing to manage all data and game balance. I also wrote a pretty cool metrics suite, one of the only ones at the time in the whole MMO world.

From 2006 to 2008, I was a senior designer at Spacetime Studios, writing systems for our massively multiplayer space shooter, and occasionally doing interesting research on player performance in twitchy games. I also learned about balancing shooters.

I’m currently a systems designer at Sony Online Entertainment, working on DC Universe Online.

Conference Presentations

Social Network Stuff