Discovery
CompanyJapan
Documents about Discovery
The Hidden Levers of Game Discovery: Supply and Demand
The primary thesis of this analysis is that video game discoverability is increasingly dictated by a fundamental mismatch between supply and demand.
- The number of games on Steam grew from 5,000 in 2015 to over 60,000 by 2022, creating a supply-side saturation that outpaces the 62% growth in daily active users since 2019.
- The market has shifted to a 'no-reset' environment where evergreen hits and Games as a Service (GaaS) titles capture long-term player attention, making it increasingly difficult for new releases to gain traction.
- While Unity reported a 93% increase in game creation between 2020 and 2021, the market has transitioned to a 'hit-driven' curve where the majority of indie titles struggle to recoup costs compared to previous years.
Creating League of Legends Champions: Our Production Framework Revealed
The production of champions for League of Legends relies on a rigorous, multi-phase framework designed to balance creative innovation with operational scalability.
- Riot Games manages the creative chaos of champion development by implementing a structured production framework that prioritizes clarity, scalability, and flexibility to prevent creative energy from being wasted on process-related confusion.
- The development process is divided into distinct phases—Ideation, Pre-production, Production, and Sustain—each with clearly defined deliverables to ensure the team knows exactly when a project is ready to advance.
- During the Ideation phase, the team utilizes a 'pattern lock' deliverable, which requires identifying the champion's strategic identity and finalizing three of their five core abilities to prove the character's viability.
Console Game Discovery: 4 Big Trends in 2022
The console gaming landscape in 2021 is defined by shifting discovery patterns, the rise of subscription models, and distinct platform-specific audience preferences.
- Success on Xbox and PlayStation is increasingly driven by external visibility on platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and Steam, making a strong PC presence a critical precursor to console performance.
- Subscription services like Xbox Game Pass are shifting the industry toward lump-sum deals and curated discovery, though this model complicates long-term revenue projections and makes securing placement increasingly competitive.
- Steam wishlists are inconsistent predictors of first-week sales; titles with 5,000–9,999 wishlists typically sell between a few hundred and 3,000 units, while those with 20,000–50,000 wishlists see sales ranging from 2,000 to over 15,000 units.
A New Dimension to Below: Personal Discovery and Adaptation
The development of the title Below serves as a case study in overcoming significant technical and creative hurdles through iterative adaptation and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
- The development team for Below achieved its distinct visual style by combining 3D geometry with hand-painted normals and flat cards, creating a complex 'Zelda-skew' perspective where objects point toward the camera to avoid clipping.
- Initial production workflows were highly inefficient, requiring artists to compile assets via batch files that took up to 30 minutes and script changes through text editors rather than using a real-time game editor.
- To improve productivity, the team developed in-game tools that allowed for real-time movement of assets, light editing, and post-process adjustments, significantly reducing the need for external scripting and level reloads.
Sprawozdanie z Działalności PlayWay S.A.: za okres od 1 stycznia 2018 r. do 31 grudnia 2018 r.
PlayWay S.A. demonstrated a robust financial and operational trajectory throughout 2018, characterized by a decentralized development model and a highly liquid balance sheet.
- PlayWay S.A. achieved a net profit of 16.37 million PLN and net sales revenue of 34.8 million PLN in 2018, driven largely by the Steam platform, which accounted for 70% of total revenue.
- The company maintains an exceptionally strong balance sheet with 37.5 million PLN in cash reserves and a 93% equity-to-assets ratio, enabling self-financed operations without external debt.
- Growth is supported by a decentralized model overseeing over 20 subsidiary studios, including key entities like Ultimate Games and Frozen District.
Building a Living World from Ancient Ruins in Assassin's Creed Odyssey
The creation of ancient Greece for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey centers on the synthesis of rigorous historical research and large-scale, modular production techniques.
- The development team managed the massive geographic scope of ancient Greece by coordinating nine global studios under a unified creative vision and a honeycomb design philosophy.
- Production efficiency was achieved through a robust pipeline featuring over 35 architecture kits and 4,000 unique props, supplemented by procedural tools for vegetation and cave systems.
- The project utilized agile two-week development sprints to maintain consistency and alignment across decentralized teams throughout the production cycle.
Raport Bieżący Nr 68/2018
Movie Games S.A., an associate company of PlayWay S.A., entered into a formal licensing agreement with Discovery Licensing Inc. in December 2018 to develop and publish a video game based on the popular television franchise Mythbusters.
- Movie Games S.A. secured a licensing agreement with Discovery Licensing Inc. in December 2018 to develop and publish a video game based on the Mythbusters television franchise.
- The partnership grants Movie Games rights to utilize Discovery’s trademarks, music, sound assets, and character likenesses for a game title scheduled for release in late 2019.
- Discovery will lead a large-scale international marketing campaign, including television advertisements, product placement, and digital outreach to the Mythbusters Facebook page's 6.6 million followers.
Raport Bieżący Nr 60/2018
Ultimate Games, a subsidiary of PlayWay S.A., entered into a strategic licensing agreement with Discovery Licensing Inc. in November 2018 to develop and publish a video game based on the popular survival television series Naked and Afraid.
- Ultimate Games, a subsidiary of PlayWay S.A., secured a strategic licensing agreement in November 2018 to develop and publish 'Naked and Afraid: The Game' based on the Discovery reality series.
- The licensing deal grants the developer full rights to utilize the show's trademarks, musical scores, sound assets, voice recordings, and character likenesses.
- Discovery committed to a comprehensive marketing strategy, including television advertisements, product placement, and endorsements from the show's survivalists to promote the game's early 2020 release.
Raport bieżący nr 39/2018: Zawarcie umowy licencyjnej z Discovery – gra Deadlist Catch
Ultimate Games, a subsidiary of PlayWay S.A., has entered into a strategic licensing agreement with Discovery Licensing Inc. to develop and publish a video game based on the popular television franchise Deadliest Catch.
- Ultimate Games, a subsidiary of PlayWay S.A., has secured a licensing agreement with Discovery Licensing Inc. to develop and publish 'Deadliest Catch: The Game' for a 2019 release.
- The agreement grants the developer access to core intellectual property, including trademarks, music, voice acting, and character likenesses from the Deadliest Catch television franchise.
- Discovery will manage a comprehensive global marketing campaign, incorporating television advertising, product placement, talent endorsements, and promotional support on digital distribution platforms.
The Digital Museum - Assassin’s Creed Origins Discovery Tour - Extra Credits
The Discovery Tour mode in Assassin’s Creed Origins represents a significant milestone in the integration of interactive entertainment and formal education.
- The Discovery Tour mode in Assassin’s Creed Origins establishes a proof-of-concept for AAA studios to repurpose commercial game engines into formal educational tools for historical study.
- By removing combat and incorporating expert historical consultation, the mode successfully transforms a high-fidelity game environment into a digital museum experience.
- The current implementation relies on a restrictive, linear 'on-rails' design that mirrors traditional audio tours, which limits the medium's potential for self-directed learning.
Exploring SimCity: A Conscious Process of Discovery
The development of SimCity centers on the philosophy that sandbox games thrive when built upon simple, modular systems that encourage emergent gameplay.
- Sandbox game development should follow a breadth-first approach, layering core mechanics, feedback, and player tools incrementally to justify development effort through actual gameplay experience rather than theoretical design.
- Avoid the 'complexity rabbit hole' by keeping individual simulation components simple; early prototypes for SimCity (2013) showed that over-engineering systems like power plants created unmanageable UI and performance requirements.
- Performance in sandbox simulations requires avoiding global loops; instead, use bucketed systems and round-robin scheduling to propagate navigation and agent information across frames.
Facebook Instant Games – The state of play
Facebook Instant Games functions as a cross-platform, HTML5-based gaming ecosystem integrated directly into the Messenger and Facebook interfaces.
- Multiplayer engagement is the primary driver of retention, with users playing across multiple chat threads exhibiting up to five times higher engagement than solo players.
- Facebook Instant Games leverages a massive potential audience of over 2 billion users on Facebook and 1.3 billion on Messenger to facilitate frictionless, social-first gaming.
- In-thread updates are the most critical discovery channel, accounting for 47% of all game sessions on the platform.