Lord of the Rings Online
Studio: Standing Stone Games, formerly Turbine Inc.
Title: Game Master
Time on Project: 2015 – 2018
Where My Design Career Began
Before I ever owned features, wrote specs, or collaborated with engineers, I learned the most important skill a designer can have: listening to players.
As a Game Master on The Lord of the Rings Online, I lived at the intersection of community, systems, and live operations. Every day, I helped players navigate Middle‑earth — from bugged quests in Moria to lost items in Rohan to the eternal mystery of “why won’t this pie deliver in the Shire?”
It was my first real window into how players think, what they value, and how even small friction points can ripple across an entire world.
We lovingly used the term GM to describe the Customer Service role, one that I proudly wore as a badge of my entry into the Games Industry, and a way to speak with players firsthand about their experiences and what made them either excited, upset, or what feedback they had for our game team. I would collate them into a ‘Voice of the Player’ document, and present them to our Game Dev team. These connections are what made me feel like a better player-first desiginer in the future.
My Role
Challenges & Solutions
Challenge
During the lead‑up to the Gondor expansion, our team saw a surge of recurring issues: progression blockers, quest logic bugs, and edge‑case interactions that only surfaced at scale. Players were reporting the same problems across multiple regions, but the information was fragmented and difficult for the design team to act on
What I Did
I created a weekly cross‑team “Voice of the Player” report that consolidated ticket trends into a clear, prioritized summary. Instead of dozens of scattered bug reports, designers received a single, structured document highlighting:
- The most common issues
- Steps to reproduce
- Severity and player impact
- Emerging patterns across zones and quest lines
I also joined regular syncs with the design and engineering teams to walk through the findings, provide context, and help validate fixes
Impact
This process helped the team triage issues faster, reduce noise, and improve the stability and quality of the Gondor launch. It also strengthened the relationship between Customer Support and Game Design — a collaboration that continued long after the expansion shipped.
What I Learned
LOTRO taught me the foundation of my design philosophy: players always tell you what the game is actually doing, not what you think it’s doing.
From this role, I learned how to:
- Listen deeply and empathetically
- Identify the root cause behind player frustration
- Translate raw feedback into clear, actionable insights
- Communicate across disciplines with clarity and respect
- See the game through the eyes of the community
These lessons shaped how I approach systems, narrative, and live operations to this day.