Malcolm McDonough
Overview
My Responsibilities:
-
Design content for new playable classes, systems, items, and features for a multiplayer asymmetric FPS horror game.
-
Overhaul of existing systems, classes, and items to solve long-standing design problems
-
Write and revise Game Design Documents for upcoming game content and features
-
Maintain game balance through regular patches
-
Utilize spreadsheets to create living documentation of class, weapon, and level generation statistics
SCP: Secret Laboratory is a multiplayer asymmetric-horror FPS where lobbies of 10 or more players fight for control of a massive underground facility. Players play as different classes, either civilians, humans who want to escape the facility, SCPs, monsters that want to kill all non-SCP players, or militants, humans who want to kill the SCPs and any opposing factions to claim control of the facility. SCP: SL is developed under a live-service model, receiving regular updates with gameplay improvements, balance adjustments, and new content.
​
As a Game Designer on SCP: SL's Development Team, I play a pivotal role in shaping the gameplay and content of the game through regular updates. My core responsibility is creating detailed design proposals for new mechanics, systems, and content. I am also responsible for outlining various improvements to the overall gameplay, such as quality of life adjustments and balance changes.
14.0 Update
Overview​
​​
-
Major content update released in December 2024
-
Overhauled the Reinforcement System to reduce the time players spend waiting to respawn and eliminate strategies involving stalling rounds
-
Designed a full rework of SCP-106 coming in a future update.
-
Adapted aspects of the upcoming SCP-106 rework to help the character to play well with the major changes made to Heavy Containment Zone.
Reinforcement Overhaul
The Reinforcement Overhaul is the largest part of the 14.0 update that I was involved in designing. The overhaul was created with two major goals in mind: preventing round stalling, a strategy where players will hide and run away from combat to wait for reinforcements to spawn, and reducing respawn times for dead players. To meet these goals, the design team and I designed an overhauled respawn system that requires each of the game's human factions to earn respawn tokens through gaining "influence points" by interacting with SCPs, rescuing civilian players, and interacting with different SCP items throughout the facility. Additionally, whenever a player gained Influence for their faction, the time remaining for that faction's next respawn wave is reduced as well.
By introducing these new objectives into the game, players now need to actively engage with the game in order to earn respawns, meaning stalling was no longer as effective of a strategy for winning rounds and players would spend less time waiting to respawn thanks to the time between respawns being more dynamic with these changes. The overhaul also addressed several other design issues with the game, like militant players killing civilians at the start of a round and rounds going on forever by directly rewarding players for protecting civilians and limiting the number of spawn waves possible each round.
​
Currently, the overhaul is still in being worked on behind the scenes to refine and polish out any and all issues that emerge now that the 14.0 update has released. Currently, we are hoping to alleviate several player communication problems with the new system, particularly with communicating when respawns are going to happen to players on the SCP team and making various adjustments to game balance to ensure SCPs have enough survivability to keep up with the more frequent respawns.