About Me
I am Liz England, a systems designer with about 15 years of experience in the game industry.
I’m currently the design director at System Era Softworks. I’ve worked on some really cool stuff, such as the procgen and simulation elements of Watch Dogs Legion and the dictionary and systems design in Scribblenauts, but you can check my resume for more info. Some of my interests are: procedural generation, AI systems & simulation, expressive game systems, the intersection of systems and narrative, and how players use games as creativity tools.
Soren Johnson did a nice three-hour interview with me for his Designer Notes podcast in 2023.
You may know me from The Door Problem.
You may also know me from small dark comedy and/or horror games posted years ago on my itch.io site (such as Everyday Misanthrope and growth), or from my twitterbots (such as @litpatches_text and @vg_erotica, now deprecated. RIP).
I also have reviewed books on game design and related fields, though updates are rare.
I’m on the GDC advisory board (who help build out the conference program each year). I often participate as a judge for various games competitions (such as the IGF design jury).
Contact Info
Latest Blog Posts
- Review: Situational Game Design by Brian Upton
- Review: Uncertainty in Games by Greg Costikyan
- Review: Morphology of the Folktale by Vladimir Propp
- Review: Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives by Jeff Howard
- Review: The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
Some Talks I’ve Given
- Design & Tech Behind ‘Play as Anyone’ in Watch Dogs Legion (MIGS 2020)
- GDC 2018 Microtalks – Playing with Fire (“Designing for Spectacular Failure” Microtalk) (GDC 2018)
- How to Make an Impossible Game: Designing Scribblenauts (NYU’s PRACTICE 2018)
- Everything I Said Is Wrong: Why Indie is Different Now (Microtalk) (GDC 2017)
- Rules of the Game: Five Techniques from Quite Inventive Designers (“Actionable Documentation” Microtalk) (GDC 2017)
- The Worlds of Sunset Overdrive (GDC 2015)
- Transitioning From Linear to Open World Design With Sunset Overdrive (GDC 2015)