Access
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Documents about Access
Tooth and Tail: Building Community Within Open Game Development
Pocketwatch Games successfully navigated the resource constraints inherent in small-scale game production by pioneering a model of community-integrated development.
- Pocketwatch Games utilized community-integrated development to offload critical operational tasks like quality assurance, balance testing, and tournament organization to their player base.
- The studio transformed development into a collaborative ecosystem by treating dedicated users as an extension of the internal team, allowing for faster iteration cycles.
- Access to early development builds was restricted to active participants, ensuring that testers were genuinely invested in the project’s long-term success.
Darkest Dungeon: A Design Postmortem
Darkest Dungeon centers on the philosophy that the human experience of adventuring is defined by psychological trauma and permanent consequences rather than traditional power fantasies.
- Darkest Dungeon features approximately 70,000 words of text to support its Affliction system, which includes 15 character classes, seven distinct afflictions, and four virtues to simulate human emotional responses.
- The developers intentionally designed the game to prioritize the 'sword arm' over the 'sword,' focusing on the psychological state of heroes rather than traditional RPG power fantasies to create moments of triumph through the possibility of failure.
- The 'corpse' mechanic, introduced during Early Access to eliminate dominant combat strategies, caused significant player backlash because it was implemented as a major gameplay change that altered the experience for existing customers.
Gamers Are Spending More on Fee-Based Online Networks
The German games industry experienced a significant shift in consumer behavior during 2016, characterized by a sharp rise in spending on fee-based online network memberships.
- Sales for fee-based online gaming networks in Germany grew by 48% year-over-year, rising from 77 million euros in 2015 to 114 million euros in 2016.
- The total German market for computer and video games surpassed the two-billion-euro mark for the first time in 2016, reaching 2.13 billion euros—a 7% increase over 2015.
- Gamers aged 20–29 represent the largest demographic for paid network memberships, accounting for 34% of the user base.
Offworld Trading Company: An RTS Without Guns
Offworld Trading Company reimagines the real-time strategy genre by replacing traditional military combat with a dynamic, player-driven free market.
- Offworld Trading Company differentiates itself from traditional RTS games by focusing exclusively on the 'macro' economic layer, removing unit micro-management to create a distinct sub-genre.
- The game's market mechanics utilize a dynamic pricing system where buying black market items, such as pirates or sabotage tools, increases their cost for all players, naturally limiting their frequency and impact.
- Early access development allowed the team to replace a standard setup screen with a reverse-auction mechanic for starting locations, a core feature that was iterated upon for 12 months prior to the official launch.
ARK: Survival Evolved: Lessons from the Trenches of Early Access
The development of ARK: Survival Evolved demonstrates the efficacy of an emergent development strategy, which prioritizes iterative growth and high-level guiding principles over rigid, pre-defined design documentation.
- Success in Early Access relies on an emergent development strategy that prioritizes iterative growth and high-level guiding principles over rigid, pre-defined design documentation.
- The development team utilizes a structured feature scorecard system to objectively evaluate updates based on development feasibility, team passion, and long-term meta-game health.
- Concurrent user counts serve as the primary metric for project success, functioning as a more reliable indicator of engagement than Steam reviews.
Early Access Lessons from Raw Data
Raw Data established a significant milestone in the virtual reality industry by becoming the first title to surpass $1 million in revenue within its initial 30 days.
- Raw Data achieved the first $1 million revenue milestone for a VR title within its initial 30 days of release.
- The game’s success was driven by a design philosophy prioritizing high-fidelity, active physical engagement and intuitive weapon handling over rigid realism.
- Cooperative, social gameplay served as the primary engine for long-term player retention and organic market growth.
A Torch in the Dark: Using Creative Direction to Light The Darkest Dungeon
Maintaining a rigid, externalized creative vision serves as the primary defense against scope creep and development drift for independent studios.
- A clearly articulated, externalized creative vision acts as a decision-making razor, allowing developers to filter features and resolve conflicts during the uncertainty of production.
- Red Hook Studios defined the core of Darkest Dungeon as an uncompromising, Gothic, low-fantasy, Lovecraftian experience centered on making permanent decisions with imperfect information.
- The team rejected standard RPG tropes like isometric camera angles and exhaustive lore exposition to maintain a claustrophobic, uncertain atmosphere that forces players to experience the game's horror.
How to Make and Self-Publish a Game in 12 Months
Achieving a successful game launch within a twelve-month window requires a disciplined approach to project management, characterized by rigorous scheduling and the willingness to excise non-essential features to preserve core development timelines.
- Achieve a 12-month development cycle by strictly prioritizing core features and cutting non-essential elements to maintain the project schedule.
- Mitigate technical and financial risks by utilizing familiar technology stacks and vetting contractors exclusively through established professional networks.
- Maintain high-quality art production with limited internal resources by outsourcing tasks to trusted former colleagues.
TIGA Genre Report 2016
The UK game development landscape in 2015 was defined by a strong preference for action and adventure titles, which accounted for 24.21 percent of all releases.
- Action/Adventure is the most common game genre, with over 45 releases, followed by Arcade and Puzzle/Trivia, each with over 30 releases.
- Mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Windows Phone) show a higher number of releases in Casual, Puzzle/Trivia, and Action/Adventure genres compared to other genres.
- Desktop platforms (PC, Mac, Linux) have a significantly higher number of releases in Action/Adventure and RPG genres, with over 70 and 60 releases respectively.
Biz Daily: Why Undead Labs shut down Moonrise before it launched
The cancellation of the creature-based RPG Moonrise by Seattle-based developer Undead Labs highlights the challenges of the modern mobile games-as-a-service model.
- Undead Labs cancelled the creature-based RPG Moonrise because it failed to meet essential 1-day, 7-day, and 30-day player retention benchmarks during its eight-month soft launch.
- The project was deemed commercially unsustainable because the developer could not achieve the monetization levels required to offset the high ongoing infrastructure and operational costs of a live-service model.
- Publisher Kabam shifted its strategic focus away from original intellectual property, prioritizing high-revenue branded content like Marvel-themed titles instead.
Mike Bithell on strategies for indie success
Independent developers achieve long-term sustainability by prioritizing unique, non-clonable experiences over chasing fleeting market trends.
- Prioritize unique, non-clonable game experiences over chasing market trends to ensure long-term studio sustainability.
- Maintain lean business structures by capping headcount to preserve agility and using rapid prototyping, such as game jams, to test core mechanics.
- Utilize platforms like Early Access to integrate player feedback throughout the production cycle, which aligns the final product with audience expectations and extends the game's lifecycle.
Game Developer Index 2014: Sweden
The Swedish gaming industry demonstrated exceptional vitality during the 2013–2014 period, cementing its status as a global powerhouse through rapid revenue expansion and significant job creation.
- The Swedish gaming industry experienced rapid growth between 2013 and 2014, with total revenues surging 76 percent to reach EUR 752 million.
- Industry expansion was driven by a 29 percent increase in full-time employment and a 17 percent rise in the number of active companies, anchored by the international success of King, Mojang, and DICE.
- Swedish firms are increasingly adopting self-publishing and digital-first business models to capture global market share via mobile and digital distribution platforms.