Burnout Paradise is an open-world racing game set in the fully explorable Paradise City, built around high-speed driving, spectacular crashes and player freedom. The game redefined the Burnout formula by moving the series into a seamless open world where events, exploration and competition emerge as players speed through the city.

Designers at Criterion Games collaborated closely on the development of all core gameplay systems. The features I developed though to completion were Crash Mode and the dynamic traffic network, helping shape how players interact with the world and how collisions, chaos and spectacle emerge during gameplay.

As a senior member of the design team at Criterion Games, I collaborated on the core design of Burnout Paradise alongside a small, highly iterative design group. The team worked collectively to develop the game’s systems, events and open-world structure, rapidly prototyping ideas and refining them through constant playtesting.

Design was intentionally lightweight and highly visual. Rather than large documents, features were developed using post-it notes and physical boards that allowed the team to rapidly discuss, iterate and prioritise ideas as the game evolved.

Throughout development we regularly played the game together to evaluate features, tune gameplay and “find the fun” through iteration.

• Collaborated on the core design of gameplay systems, events and open-world activities

• Helped design and refine the game’s online features and connected multiplayer systems

• Contributed to the design of race types, challenges and event structures across Paradise City

• Designed and implemented the junction-based event start system triggered by wheel spins

• Iterated gameplay features and the environment through constant team playtesting and tuning

• Assisted in vehicle handling and balancing the roster of vehicles - trusted to give reliable feedback

A fun feature that I conceived and implemented was the “Picture Paradise” mode - essentially a screensaver mode that I thought up after seeing hundreds of TVs around the Criterion office sat with the game idling on-screen. After 10-20 seconds of idling the game fades out and the camera freely roams the roads, focussing on key landmarks (which I personally tagged). The feature was considered really cool internally, and a significant budget was given to provide relaxing classical music for the mode.