Lead Open World Designer  ·  Lucid Games  ·  UK

What makes a world interesting? The stories it can tell.

I'm Steven Kerrigan — a mission and open-world designer with 17 years in AAA, building those stories into Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2 and L.A. Noire.

GTA V Red Dead Redemption 2 L.A. Noire Fast & Furious: Crossroads
Selected Work

Objectives, shipped

Detailed missions and the systems beneath them, on titles that reached tens of millions of players — each taken from concept to release. Footage below is sanctioned gameplay of missions I designed.

◆ Shipped

Grand Theft Auto V

Rockstar Leeds · 2013 · Mission Designer

Heist-Prep Missions Systems Optimisation

Designed missions across the Strangers and Freaks strands, then spent nine months on-site at Rockstar North building heist-preparation missions — the setup jobs that feed the game's marquee scores. The tapes below are a slice of them.

I also shipped the getaway-vehicle mechanic, new to the series — letting players choose and stage their own escape vehicle for a heist, built for maximum freedom while staying heavily optimised — and the first moving mission trigger in a GTA title.

◆ Mission Tapes
◆ Shipped

Red Dead Redemption 2

Rockstar Leeds · 2018 · Senior Mission Designer

Side Missions Systems Team Support

Owned side-mission strands including The Gunslingers and the loansharking line, plus the systems beneath them — handling their unlocking, world-map blips and asset loading.

As senior designer I held much of the team's scripting knowledge, supporting designers across the studio and keeping work moving under heavy deadlines. The leads credited that support with both lifting the team's skills and steadying it under pressure.

◆ Mission Tapes
  • The Gunslingers — Black Belle6:10Watch ↗
  • The Gunslingers — Emmet Granger6:58Watch ↗
  • The Gunslingers — Billy Midnight3:49Watch ↗
  • Money Lending and Other Sins IV — loansharking27:12Watch ↗
◆ Shipped

L.A. Noire

Rockstar Leeds · 2011 · Mission Designer

Mission Design Concept → Ship

Took mission designs from first concept through to release, and was sent to Team Bondi to fix issues that threatened the game's launch — chosen for my knowledge of their systems and for slotting quickly into a new team.

The tapes are Street Crime cases I built.

◆ Mission Tapes
  • Street Crime — Theater Robbery2:12Watch ↗
  • Street Crime — Camera Obscura3:05Watch ↗
  • Street Crime — Bus Stop Shooting2:13Watch ↗
◆ Shipped · Licensed IP

Fast & Furious: Crossroads

Slightly Mad Studios · 2020 · Senior Designer

Set-Pieces Whitebox → Ship Tooling

Designed a wide range of set-piece missions from whitebox to release on a high-profile licensed brand — integrating assets, balancing mid-to-late-game difficulty, and helping push the studio's newly created scripting language to production quality.

◆ Mission Tapes

ALSO GTA: CHINATOWN WARS — JUNIOR DESIGNER, ADDITIONAL SUPPORT (ROCKSTAR LEEDS)

Mission Log

Seventeen years, five studios

2024 — Now
Lucid Games
Lead Open World Designer · Liverpool

Leading open-world design at the Liverpool studio.

2020 — 2024
Savage Game Studios → Neon Koi
Lead Designer, then Principal Mission Designer

Set the mission philosophy and session design as design lead, and built a multi-discipline design team from the ground up, on an unannounced action title — at the studio that became PlayStation's first mobile team.

2018 — 2020
Slightly Mad Studios
Senior Designer

Set-piece mission design on Fast & Furious: Crossroads, whitebox to release.

2008 — 2017
Rockstar Leeds
Mission Designer → Senior Mission Designer

Nine years across GTA: Chinatown Wars, L.A. Noire, GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 — missions, the systems beneath them, and scripting support across the studio. Sent to Rockstar North, Team Bondi and Rockstar San Diego for high-priority content and cross-studio work.

2017 — Now
Wizard and Castle
Independent Practice & R&D

Self-directed design and contract work alongside full-time roles, plus active R&D into AI-assisted design and production tooling.

About

The designer

I design the missions and systems that make an open world worth spending time in. Across 17 years I've taken work from the first whitebox to a shipped, polished feature — and, increasingly, led the designers doing the same.

My instinct is systems-first: a memorable mission usually rests on a quietly robust system underneath it, and I like owning both. I form strong opinions, document them so a team can build from them, and I'm comfortable being the person who makes the call when the path isn't yet clear.

These days that also means leading teams, bridging to external co-development partners, and keeping a studio's design craft sharp between projects.

Design
Open-world, mission & quest design · systems design · design documentation & frameworks · rapid prototyping · difficulty balancing · design leadership · external-partner collaboration · mentoring
Engines & Tools
Unreal Engine · Unity · Godot · AAA proprietary toolchains
Code
C# · Java · C++ (basic)
Currently Exploring
Local LLM inference · RAG pipelines for design docs · agentic coding tools