Black Deck - Card Battle CCG

Project Description

Company

Role

Tags

View

Player

Platform

Engine

Duration

Calendar

Work On

SayGames Ltd. (Co-dev w/ Inforce Games)

Design Manager - Live Ops

Single-player | Multi-player

Mobile | PC

NDA

2.10 Years

October 2021 - July 2024

Live Ops | Retention | Meta Systems | Product Management | Quality Assurance

Black Deck – Card Battle CCG is a turn-based collectible card game featuring 240+ unique heroes across 10 factions. Players journey through over 300 stages, face 48 epic bosses, and ascend treasure towers. Guild Wars, PvP arenas, dungeons with Titans, and powerful god summons add layers of strategic depth.

Motivation is to deliver deep strategic gameplay that rewards tactical thinking, deck-building variety, and cooperative guild play across fantasy encounters.

Monetization leverages gacha card summons, artifact pack IAPs, VIP passes, and seasonal battle passes—designed to support content updates, engagement loops, and competitive progression.

What Makes My Experience Unique?

Managed retention features and Live Ops calendars, executing 9 (playable & payment) events to boost player LTV and DAU with personalized content.
Led cross-functional product design and management to align gameplay systems with monetization goals and audience retention metrics.
Implemented rigorous QA pipelines and feedback loops, significantly reducing bugs and ensuring consistent, high-quality player experiences.
Designed and optimized meta systems that enhanced progression, daily engagement, and long-term player investment across all core loops.
Assigned to improve 7 underperforming IPs, gaining unique experience in strategic turnaround, prioritization, and impactful design execution.

My Experience

Google Play Download Button.avif

App Store Download Link Image.avif

https://youtu.be/OGb6AKuSkYw

https://youtu.be/rwFacbEYDLU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGFZa2wRcrA

https://youtu.be/1t83tDT2ZqM

https://youtu.be/wnuFnJ7uuRs

https://youtu.be/kFTq430kOGE

https://youtu.be/akKjLC2YZkk

Tools

NDA Proprietary Tools

Appmagic

Playliner

Senor Tower

Google Suite

Adobe XD

Asana

Figma

Notion

Jira

Slack

Linear

Miro

Responsibilities

Live Ops

Led and mentored a small Live Ops strike team, aligning deliverables, testing, and rollout across all time-sensitive game events.
Designed and scheduled daily, weekly, and monthly Live Ops content pipelines (Version 1.9.0 - 1.28.1) aligned with player engagement metrics and seasonality.
Designed and maintained Live Ops calendar for events like Ascended Tournament, Card Collector, Summoner Tournament and many more.
Collaborated with analysts to evaluate event performance data and adjusted Live Ops pacing based on LTV and churn trends.
Conducted QA sweeps before and after updates to ensure event triggers, reward systems, and payment hooks functioned as planned.

Retention

Created a new comprehensive 365-day retention roadmap with phased content pacing, personalized incentives, and event-based milestone engagement hooks.
Balanced daily login rewards and quest difficulty pacing using player data, optimizing challenge-reward ratios for different progression tiers and cohorts.
Implemented segmented personalization of daily offers and progression boosters using LTV models, behavioral triggers, and churn prediction analytics.

Meta Systems

Core Loop & Economy

Balanced XP curves, stamina economy, and hero upgrade costs to ensure long-term engagement and progression pacing.
Designed resource sinks for high-level players including faction-specific crafting, card fusion systems, and artifact enhancement tiers.
Created interconnected meta loops between PvE, PvP, and Guilds to encourage multidimensional player investment.
Implemented asynchronous PvP leaderboard resets and reward brackets to support long-term competitive retention.

Card Collection System

Designed rarity and drop rate systems for 240+ cards across 10 factions with summoning mechanics and pack balancing.
Built card evolution and upgrade meta, with level caps, ascension mechanics, and duplicate recycling for higher-tier crafting.
Developed synergy bonuses across faction-based decks to deepen meta-strategies and reward long-term roster building.
Created card tagging and sorting UX for enhanced deck management and personalized deck-building experiences.

My Learnings

Working on Black Deck – Card Battle CCG was a defining experience in my design journey. The scale and frequency of live events, coupled with the ever-evolving needs of a global player base, taught me the intricacies of maintaining a healthy game economy, while also designing for excitement and surprise. It wasn’t just about running content—it was about anticipating player behavior, segmenting rewards, and crafting systems that adapt over time.

One of the biggest challenges we faced was aligning event design with user progression and monetization cycles. A few early events failed to hit key KPIs due to unclear onboarding and over-tuned difficulty. Rather than pivoting blindly, I worked closely with data analysts and our Live Ops team to identify friction points. We refined event loops, segmented players more effectively, and rebalanced milestone thresholds. That effort led to a 17% uplift in mid-core engagement within two update cycles.

This project made me deeply value the craft of experience continuity. Beyond designing systems, I learned the importance of consistency, player trust, and subtle emotional pacing—lessons that transformed my mindset from just "game design" to "player experience strategy." It’s what made me grow into a Player Experience Designer.