Sebastian King
MFA Digital Animation and Interactive Media, 2026

Project Description:
As video game development becomes more popular, the need for better game development tools simultaneously continues to grow. This thesis explores two important roles which are fairly new and relatively unexplored as a subject of research (Hauteville, 2019) (“Avoid an Identity Crisis as a Technical Designer”, 2022): the technical designer (TD) and technical artist (TA). This paper seeks to understand TDs and TAs support and augment game development pipelines through the creation of new tools and workflows. Further, it demonstrates what this work can look like in practice through a series of auto-ethnographic case studies. These case studies showcase a variety of game editor tools, scripts, and game content, alongside the collaborative processes which led to them, which all contributed to the production of various game projects. The important question in analyzing these case studies is how such tools, content, and processes help or hinder the creativity of the projects’ lead designers and artists. Finally, this thesis explores the hidden connections between current tools design processes and co-design methods and attempts to envision how more formal co-design processes and a co-creative mentality can help make better technical designers and technical artists. 

Committee Members:
Scott Swearingen (Advisor), Shadrick Addy, Alex Oliszewski

Keywords:
Technical Design, Tools Design, Technical Art, Co-design, Game Design, Game Engines