Challenges
EA-related content is heavily shaped by players and creators, but creating high-quality gameplay clips often requires external tools, capture devices, desktop editing software, or platform-specific workflows. This creates a ceiling for everyday players who want to capture, edit, and share their best moments directly from the game. Highlighter started as an incubation concept called Opticks: a replay editor inside Frostbite that could give players a free, built-in way to capture, edit, and replay gameplay moments across EA titles. The challenge was not only technical, but deeply interaction-led. We needed to make video editing feel simple, fast, and accessible inside a console game. The tool had to support complex behaviours such as camera controls, keyframes, presets, filters, stickers, and replay editing, all while working naturally with a game controller on a television screen. The goal was not to recreate Final Cut Pro or After Effects inside a game. It was to make creating a highlight feel closer to editing an Instagram clip: quick, expressive, and easy enough for players to use without specialist knowledge.
My role
I joined the project during incubation to lead product design for the feature. My role was to define how the replay editor should work as a player-facing product, not just as a technical capability inside Frostbite. I led the interaction design, accessibility direction, UI structure, testing approach, and design system foundations for the tool. Working within a small team, I helped refine the experience through early Skate builds, using hands-on testing and player feedback to understand where the tool felt intuitive, where it broke down, and where the complexity needed to be reduced. As the project matured and was adopted into EA SPORTS FC 25 as Highlighter, my role expanded into release gating, feature refinement, team growth, and franchise adoption. I brought in dedicated UI and UX support, continued testing features with players, and worked closely with technical leadership and FC partners to help position Highlighter as a scalable tool for EA SPORTS and future entertainment experiences.
Approach
I focused the work around four connected priorities.
1. Designing for console-first creation
The core challenge was making video editing work with a controller. This meant rethinking familiar editing patterns around the realities of console interaction, television distance, input limitations, and player expectations. Every part of the experience needed to feel usable without relying on desktop conventions.
2. Reducing complexity without removing creative control
Highlighter needed to offer enough depth for players to create meaningful clips, but not so much complexity that it became intimidating. We explored how presets, filters, stickers, camera controls, and keyframes could be presented in a way that supported creativity without overwhelming the player.
3. Testing with real players
The product evolved through hands-on testing in early game environments, beginning with Skate. We used real player interaction to understand what worked, what confused people, and where the interface needed to be simplified or restructured. This helped move the tool from a promising technical concept into a usable player-facing experience.
4. Building for franchise adoption
As Highlighter moved toward EA SPORTS FC 25, the work expanded beyond a single implementation. I helped refine the feature set, support release gating, and shape the pitch for adoption across other EA SPORTS franchises. This included working closely with technical leadership to explore how the system could scale across sports titles and potentially into other EA entertainment IP.
Impact
Highlighter moved from an incubation concept into a released AAA feature in EA SPORTS FC 25. The product gave players a built-in way to capture, edit, and replay gameplay moments, reducing the dependency on external tools and creating a more accessible path for player expression and content creation. The work also created a reusable foundation for future EA SPORTS experiences. Its interaction patterns, design system thinking, and Frostbite-based architecture helped open up new opportunities for replay, creator, and live sports experiences across the business. Highlighter’s foundations later helped inform adjacent work such as Project Assist, where live sports data and Frostbite-powered replay capabilities could be explored for broadcast and stadium contexts. This expanded the value of the original product beyond player-created clips and into new forms of live sports storytelling. For me, Highlighter was a milestone project. It was my first in-game product feature for a AAA title, and it gave me the opportunity to lead a feature from early incubation through testing, franchise adoption, team growth, and release.
Final thoughts
Highlighter was one of the most meaningful projects of my career because it sat at the intersection of player creativity, technical possibility, and product design craft. The feature had a long development cycle, but that time allowed us to move from a promising concept into something that could genuinely live inside an EA SPORTS title.
It also changed my own relationship with in-game product design. I had worked across web, platform, and innovation spaces before, but Highlighter gave me the opportunity to lead a player-facing feature inside a AAA game, shape the team around it, and help create a product foundation that could continue to grow beyond its first release.
Next projects.
(2016-25©)
3. Testing with real players
The product evolved through hands-on testing in early game environments, beginning with Skate. We used real player interaction to understand what worked, what confused people, and where the interface needed to be simplified or restructured. This helped move the tool from a promising technical concept into a usable player-facing experience.