As my first professional video game release, Saints Row: The Third was a sort of trial by fire. Coming from my time at school learning level design, I was thrown into mission design shortly after joining Volition due to changing needs. I like to think I picked it up quickly, and despite being an associate designer, I ended up being responsible for a full third of the games primary missions.

I continue to carry the lessons I learned on SR3 over a decade later. I think it’s important, no matter what game you’re making, to be player-first in all decisions. There can be times where you want to add friction to an experience (maybe to create verisimilitude or to make sure a story progresses exactly as you’d like), but we designed SR3 to trust that the player wants to have a great experience and won’t go out of their way to ruin it. “Fun trumps all,” was a common phrase as we tweaked our final designs and missions.