Gallery
(Move through reel to see description)
Overview
In September 2025, there was a gathering of 150 game designers for a 3-day conference in Berkeley. My role was designing and running the “Megagame” - an overarching immersive experience incorporating each others games. Team Purple and Team Orange competed in a Risk-like tournament, with mini-games at every turn, to become the “rulers of the land”.
Including
Game Design
Project Management
Experiential Design
Metagame 2025
Board game library, with a camouflaged new board game, created at the conference
One long continuous crossword the wraps around the side of the building, for them to solve collaboratively
Team propaganda for subgame - election tournament
Taser Fight! Best of three, winner conquers new Lighthaven territory for their fae court
High speed game tournament, 1 minute per move- Orange on one side, purple on the other
Purple Headquarters where they could talk strategy and receive secret messages. Access was granted to players on the team by completing a code task with 3 other purple players.
Conference "players manual"...with some instructions eaten away...hmmm
A live map showing the players what areas they currently own throughout the conference space, and which ones still need to claimed
MegaChess - one token came in everyone's merch bags, they each have one move to play in the weekend
Game designers meeting from different places in the country
The whimsical version of Lighthaven Campus, each strong hold representing a territory that must be claimed, made by Angelina Duran
The orange team completing their jigsaw in a heated race. The custom jigsaw reveals a clue that would benefit their team
A hidden deck of cards that is hidden under a deck, gives the team who finds it an advantage in the Megagame
A special guest, Will Shortz, editor of New York Times Crossword, in our speaker series
My Role
I designed and organized the game that attendees would play throughout the conference, an overnight game lasting 3 days. When they arrived to the conference they were assigned to either team purple or team orange. They got merch bags (that I designed) which included tokens they could use for different actives throughout the conference. The activities were games from some attendees who wanted to play-test their new games. Part of my role was organizing the structure of how these games could be connected and fit into a cohesive megagame for all attendees.
At this link, https://www.metagame.games, you can find the schedule that had both the speaker series and the megagame actives. It was a live website showing the updates of the territories and who owned them throughout the weekend, so even newcomers joining the conference later in the weekend could get caught up and be a part of the team. The final victor, who won over Lighthaven, was the Orange Team.
The story was that there were two fairy courts in the land of Lighthaven (the name of the event space in Berkley) and they both wanted to be the rulers of the different territories throughout the land. They therefore came to an agreement to have their human subjects battle it out on their behalf through a series of mini-games to win that area of land (which gives them an advantage for games in adjacent lands). My goal was to add a cohesive layer of whimsy over the real life experience of the conference.
As shown in the layout map to the the left, the different buildings in Lighthaven campus held different games, giving the chance to turn it your color - the territories could be flipped due to a subsequent game. There are roads connecting the territory that had to be unlocked through completing sudokus placed throughout the physical campus.
