Panel: PvE or PvP: Multiplayer Game Design Considerations

[Music] uh yeah so now we're going to discuss a PVE or PVP mul player game design uh considerations I think we're all ready and all here and miked up so I think we can get started so yeah please uh give round Applause a warm welcome to our panelists so uh Sonia from Phantom gam Labs Robert from Photon and Chris from Cosmo Universe yeah please make your way to the stage thank you how you doing does it matter uh not not at all I I'll sit at the end cool see everyone

uh yeah fantastic so probably be useful if I got questions up but uh uh yeah so uh for those that don't know I've been doing this track morning but I my name is Craig Chapel I'm the head of content at pocketgamer.biz uh but the interesting people are the experts beside me uh if you could all uh just yeah introduce yourselves what you do and uh yeah sure yeah I actually just realized that my career is very like social SL multiplay player heavy as I started with uh building MMOs then I moved to uh create social sdks that's called but unity and came back to game development side uh where at Zinga whereare we connected world to games and now I'm building a coop at the core uh multiplayer games so yeah maybe that's there yeah that's the kind of funny the

expert on mod you don't like single player think about it think about it thank you thank you soia and yeah Chris yeah M Chris Chris uh yeah I'm running the small studio uh my studio is a the group of the band developers we help the other Studios to integrate the bend uh using their existing platform uh myself I used to work at metacore as a tech lead also the red links the Ubisoft here as online tech lead I joined the industry about 30 years ago and mostly I work for the MMO or the realtime multiplayers for very long time yeah so yeah that's me thank you thank you and yeah Robert please yeah hi I'm Robert I'm from phon I'm the vice president there so handling more the business side of things customer relations uh dealing stuff but also talking with tons of Studios about their multiplayer plans and how to make them possible let's put it this way way and yeah and I'm since

20 years in in multiplayer so I really started early on with Nokia phones and jtme uh multiplayer games was a little bit early back then but uh after some some troubl times we could pivot everything and today we have about 1.4 billion monthly active players in our multiplayer cloud and yeah amazing amazing customers uh all over the world all over the globe things have definitely changed yeah over that time and of course phot on you do you just did the talk but you do uh kind of behind like stumble guys as well with the obviously the team ker and uh now SC uh um so uh yeah I've got bunch of questions I think the first question I guess just just kind of set things up as you know as developers what do you think more about now I I'm sure mileage again always varies with these things but do you think more about single player uh and then with multiplayer is it PVE or PV

opportunities in mobile game development uh and then do you have to have elements of at least two of these or three of these like how do you think about kind of multipay these days I guess um yeah actually I've been thinking quite a bit about the about the topic now that um it's it's easy to start from single player and kind of add on social or multiplayer to that that has for some reason maybe that's just kind of an easy approach currently I feel that yeah you can choose you don't have to have three you don't have to have two you can just go with go with one as well as long as you basically Excel have kind of Las sh focus on on the experiences you are creating because this yeah this is about creating something new and when thinking of where the game industry is it's it's basically shifting trying to find also New Opportunities like is it more about kind of the destination gaming or is it more about just like

more traditional multiplayer or or I don't know like where whereever the direction is going so but yeah point being it it doesn't need need to be single player first and that's why we go PVE first interesting yeah from my point of view I think uh just this is my very personal opinion but uh yeah it mostly depending on the game itself but uh from every time I'm thinking like uh the single player is more emotional and the multiplayer is more psychological and social yeah we know some concept about this and then yeah uh it's like if we and I think the most important thing is what we are expecting from our players it's like if we want to deliver the experience of us more emotional concept of the game then probably single players are easier to

yeah give some better expression to the players uh if we want the players to feel more social or some competitive play or something more like a psychological uh area then probably the multiplayer could be easier to tackle that so that's what I think yes Rober yeah although of course I'm working all the time in multiplayer I I think I mean the most important thing is that you don't look at what's out there and what might be uh what trend should I follow so you first need a great gr idea and then I would say doesn't matter so if it's multiplayer PVE PVP pvep there are tools out there so you you can do it and if you if you believe in your idea and think it's a good idea you should should do it but of course if if you uh then it depends a little bit on on uh on your company right so uh

multiplayer games they are dominating the charts they are absolutely dominating the revenue uh so most uh the games that bring the most Revenue are multiplayer games that's that's for sure but yeah and then it depends if you're a multi-billion dollar company then you should definitely go into multiplayer but if you're an indie team the idea is what counts well I guess there still uh lots of top grossing single player games like uh I guess Roy match Candy Crush at the top but I guess they do still integrate social elements I guess so it's always a factor it's social multipl yeah that's that's true I mean uh you can have so is Monopoly go really a multiplayer game uh so or is it more uh I I don't want to say fake multiplayer but it it's it's giving you the impression that you you compete

against people and this might be the the uh uh definition of multiplayer I'm I'm not sure so but uh technology Wise It's not really needing uh um net code sdks that that we provide so but yeah sure sure you can create a single player experience enhance it with with our social features and make the people feel they can compete and what we definitely found is that competition leads uh in general to more retention uh which is an very important fact for any game even for single player games right it's another interesting way to think about PVP as well like on top of a single player game rather than just you're actually facing off all the time really interesting I guess um like how do key cons sorry can't speak how do key design considerations differ between PVE and PVP sure there are many ways but if you I don't know where to maybe I'll start

and then you add on so yeah so of course loads of uh issues to consider uh starting maybe with starting with the scale of the game it's it's very different balance is different of course like many design decisions are there PV you need to focus more on the story to actually help the kind of floor or the the U the progression I don't know maybe yeah I yes uh I don't know this is else or not but yeah it's like a uh I think the PBE is more to isn't this like incorporating with the other players but not only that within the PBE we can also give some kind of a competition I mean it's like when we play the the actual Sports in real life like uh football uh we have 11 players in the team but at the end of the play still there is a one player of met of to match or like some different stats we can have so it's like the PBE

and PBE technically is in the technical side I I I think there's not nothing very much different because anyway it goes through the network we have to synchronize everything the more important thing is uh what experience we want to deliver to the player like do we want to say okay you need a good teamwork or you need some interaction with the players or just we want to push the player to like a playing the some some uh like uh boxing or like uh some person versus person yeah PBE single person uh versus single person uh play game experience or something like that so I think it's more related to uh What uh the game design or the game service really want to uh deliver uh their uh concept of the game to the player uh first I don't like the

expression PVE very much because it's super broad so is a stumble guys is it a a PVE game or is it PVP because I mean most might think or say it's PVE because uh you're running at one goal and against the environment but no you can also push people away so it's it's definitely also competitive uh so I I rather like is it uh cooperative game play or a competitive gameplay I I I prefer these expressions and um then I I think PVP or competitive gameplay has some uh fun in it itself how can I say if you if you go give two people a tennis record uh in VR or in a game you can have fun by just this so it can be super simple uh um to make it make it fun fun because of the competitive

element while I think in more Cooperative uh games you should always make sure that um and I was talking about uh this with da yesterday you should really make and I think you guys uh trying to achieve this for for your current game you really need to uh find a way how to to uh incorporate these Cooperative uh elements in the overall meta game and that's not necessarily needed in in competitive game so maybe it's even easier from a a design uh from a game design perspective not from a technical perspective I slightly disagree there but um yeah I was going to say what what was your thoughts on that if you had a differ on the technical side yeah I mean uh when you are thinking about uh competitive games uh you have more unpredictable ility so if you have a

environment you know how this environment behaves and if you have a a a co-op game or PVE game uh you know how this environment behaves so there's less unpredictability and so there's less you need to work around let's say but like always it depends a little bit on the type of game You're Building uh yeah that's that's for sure game like with a lot of physics uh is always difficult to make multiplayer uh so if you have a co-op sports game that can be super super hard if you can just pass the ball or something and throw it and so this can be really tricky in in in multiplayer and then so it's blurry unfortunately but in in in general I always think competitive is uh technically more challenging but but again I I don't want to do too much

marketing but there there are tools out which help you doing that and achieving that so it's doable for everyone but if it's your first game your ever first multiplayer game I would rather go with a co-op game um oh interesting first and uh I you mentioned a second game Phantom game laabs is is is is working on there so uh I guess um and I have lost question uh it seems like we're seeing an Emer of games in development that are focused on correct me if I'm wrong of course focused on kind of Co-op and PVE uh action games and I guess like Rift Busters but uh I guess what's the opportunity that you see in that space and then so far through development and you've been in testing like what's the lessons you've learned as well well the opportuni is I think are quite obvious um social is a fantastic glue to improve retention and retention is the and engagement is the way to

basically keep the players uh engag and of course like you know experiencing enjoying the game for over a longer period of time so so that's the obvious uh objective and um well we actually started the development from single player experience oh wow and learned so we we use both like quantitative and qualitative data so so we learned that actually players those raids or runs that where more like kind of collaborative or enabled players to like hustle with others so in a group of you know three or more and those were the most liked one so that's why we actually we did this kind of pivot we uh forget about the whole like single player experience we don't need it it's more like stronger experience if we build the social and the kind of a whole game play experience from the day Zero around

Co-op but I but I guess like you know why did you why did you choose PVE overse players against other players yeah so um well we need to we are a team of 10 so small team we need to focus we can't do all and then we start from you know our uh strengths and sort of best best knowledge and of course yeah we you know played Hil divers too and we're like yeah actually this type of game should could be perfect so it's all also about like sort of inspirational references like what basically uh excites our our designer Minds I'm a huge fan of Hell divers too and uh I if anyone's played the hell divers actually difficulty which is not even the most difficult that is is an experience um I guess one of the things you touch upon there that I like to open up to everyone is is how important is it

to be thinking right and you touched on this is right at the start of development okay you know we're going to add these certain multiplayer or social aspects right at the start rather than adding them later or even pivoting later like how important is it to do that okay looking me I guess development it's always creative process right so I don't think CH yeah yeah yeah yeah uh so the how important uh okay uh yeah um no uh it's like a I don't want to say how much important or not I think this is because uh more like a what you want to choose uh because it's like as I said every every game has a different uh expectation that they have a different aiming targets uh so yeah it's I think this is more about uh what you want to really choose and uh bring into your game because we cannot do it everything yeah if there is a game with uh super

great single play super great PB PVP everything yeah I don't know I never seen that kind of a game so yeah like yeah even uh not all the the the the big company can do everything so uh but one thing came to my mind like uh uh even the small Studios uh if someone asked me like uh uh what could we really uh technically inter into the game uh the the the what's that uh between the different uh like PB PVP or even the co-op or any type of the game mechanic itself and yeah I I sometimes I'm telling them like uh don't need to worry too much to uh challenge uh the PVP or like uh even the massive multiplayer or RPG uh because it's like a the the very first video game game one of the video

games is the pong the PVP game yeah it's it's okay is it's totally different than these days but yeah I mean yeah it's it's more based on where you are really going to focus on it and then yeah you can choose the path where you can reach there and luckily we have a good technology good platform Photon here yeah uh we don't need to invest everything by ourself so yeah uh so I think this is more about what you are planning for not just right yeah tackling the difference between the the the options I think it's super important uh absolutely um but it must make sense right so uh you know I'm in the industry since quite some time and when that's all started I don't remember exactly when people started and there were lots of

social SD Cas coming to the market and uh I saw a lot of games which just Incorporated social features which were totally senseless right they did not really add to the game experience and um but I think it's it's uh super critical and I I think there are a lot of good examples why it's critical so one thinking about fortnite and the lobby at the beginning right so they made made it a social Feature Feature they made the waiting time until the game starts until the game fills up they made it really a feature of the game uh with the dances and then of course the uh the vanity items all all the nice skins that you can buy are much more important if you have time before showing your your latest uh uh stuff that you got from from the fortnite store and paid a lot of money for it um so and games are a lot a lot more than

so they are social element in in our societies right and and people like to talk about it and of course it's I mean we are social our humans are are social and that's why social elements are super important uh in games too and if you do it in a right way it can drive a lot of retention uh to your game so again bringing stumble guys as an example uh they had tournaments and tournaments were I think one of the key elements of the success of the game I mean the game grew to number three of the most downloaded games in 2023 without any user acquisition which is almost impossible and this just worked because of their social elements it was very streamer friendly first so streamers could play it and then they could show a code to their AUD audience so the audience could play with their

streamers oh great I can play with my streamers this was a social element and then the tournament and they even so uh people before the tournaments were kicking off uh people uh were coming to the game because they trained in order to be prepared for the tournament and after the tournament they keep on going because they had a lot of fun or they wanted to get better or whatsoever but uh so when a tournament was there was always a spike in in users before and and afterwards and uh what they also did what which was super clever they gave uh the popular streamers uh the way to set up their own tournaments with our tournament engine and so you could have your own streamer tournament and this was I mean it's a social element in the game but also a social element which resonates outside to the streamers they

could uh engage with their audience so the game gave them a very good tool to engage with the with the audience um yeah and this was very very important but it you you need to really think about it doesn't make sense that it add value or is it just invite someone and why should I do it right so uh I think this is a great example of because yeah I've been creating this social SDK so cre example how also the industry changes like back in the day it was yeah we basically you know provided like basic social features which were like you know achievements leaderboard skills chats friend lists however you yeah so sort of kind of basic stuff but there there was not really much of thinking the devs were just like yeah okay yeah sounds good sounds good it was like a great ball of twine like you know more and more and more and it it was like a impossible and irrelevant social passle on on on on top of the actual the

core gameplay experience and I think like yeah the fortnite ex example I think we we have gone so far which basically just highlights yeah it it's it's better to you know you know take a step back think of the player experience like what are actually trying to build what actually makes sense and forget about all the others that you know leaderboards kind of sounds cool but really like is it necessary uh maybe uh maybe let me so maybe a bad example is is a game center from Apple so is I don't know is anyone using it so I think it's it's terrible and it tries oh now here social elements and if you incorporate them everything will be great no uh this is this is kind of an anecdotal question that is not based on any data other than my experience of what some play games so one of the I

wondered if it's a design consideration that you think about which is if I'm playing with some friends we play pubg more battle royale pubg or like Apex Legends one of my favorite things about it is it's a time to actually catch up with friends because there's the actionpack moments where you'll go kind of quiet and just talk about what's happening on screen and then you get the The Quiet Moments where you're actually just chatting with each other and and that's actually kind of a social hangout almost is that something that you think about like quiet and and more actionpack moments and how players will I guess interact with each other during those yeah definitely um I yeah that's basically what I consider kind of the destination gaming that you actually you have a Lads of time or just to like hang out even in Roblox and that type of games you actually spend quite a lot of time actually not kind of creating or playing you just like hang out and uh yeah we are sharing an office with hype hype so they do this like H generated content um gaming platform I think

that's a great um kind of source of inspiration also for for different approaches like how much it it is about like playing games and how much the experien is about just like sort of you know hanging out there for us I don't know yet we are hoping we'll we'll come up with some original idea in that area but definitely you know look looking at it at the moment yeah Ed I I think it's it's a fantastic uh example uh why do I think so because uh I mean often we're talking about we're fighting about awareness of of users and discoverability and we and about budget of Gamers but we are I think we are fighting for time of the gamers because time is also a constraint so people do not have endless amount of time to play games and if you can play a game while

hanging out with your friends this is combines both right so you don't have to decide oh should I go out and and meet with them but then I cannot play right so and this combines both and I I think that's that's fantastic and I I mean I'm not the type of of of gamer but even we played pubg when it comes when it came out on on iPads uh with my old friends and we hardly can meet because we live in different cities so we meet on that game and we played that game uh yeah what that's that's uh fantastic but I think um yeah that's not easy to achieve right I uh please oh yeah uh I I I really agree on uh your opinion I Robert's opinion and and it's like a uh the one thing every time uh when I was talk when uh we talking about the social with the game yeah actually that social is not the same social in

our real life we we are just having we we have our life and some different uh what's that kind of a different area or like a different place in somewhere in the digital world and that social is more like a uh from my point of view is like uh every time if there is any uh any interaction or anything we do in this digital world uh it may need to uh possible to have a some some kind of a relationship or or anything uh we can also uh bring it out into our life then that can make some more better social uh in the game what I mean is like uh yeah yeah when we play the pubg or any any type of game if if there's no one playing the same game beside me and they

don't understand anything and even they don't want to yeah listen about it then actually that is only there and then can we really say that is well well how can I say like a welld designed social feature in the game because even you don't know if I talk to you okay that something happened there like a blah blah blah and then doesn't it isn't it fun then if you can react that that I think that's the best way so it's so it's like all the social feature in the game yes uh we we talk about the the like a a word or some kind of a interaction between the players but yeah we need to bring that idea into our real life to make it more worldwide and better uh so I think that's more for the social feature in the game yeah there was a just random there's guy journalist tweet recently like how at least in the I guess our e system maybe it's not a general thing but how strange or great a

moment in time that was when pubg released because it's like excuse me it's like um I don't think I've experienced any other game before or since then that literally I could talk to strangers like in the in the UK industry slack or or or discords or other journalists like at any time at any time of day any any day of the week someone was free to play that game with you and it was just crazy how everyone had it and everyone was up for playing it I guess it was because it was a new experience I think it probably also tapped in a bit more to Discord at the time and I wasn't using it as much for example interesting moment in time um we got we got a couple uh I've got a couple more questions here and then we can open it up to the to the audience um one of the things I wanted to ask is like how do you think about the number of players you can and should have at once in your game so please correct me if I'm wrong on these figures stumble guys has 32 I I think and uh and

Squad Busters I think it's team of three and then obviously we talked about some of those other ones where like pubg was like a 100 and even though I play Apex every day I actually can't remember what the limit is since 64 can't remember uh but yeah but from a design and Tech standpoint I guess how do you think about player limits and design around that so first uh I mean I mean we are not building lots of games I'm more watching what our customers are doing but uh we do provide matchmaking and so this is the first thing I mean you have to fill that up right yeah so and uh stumble guys could have gone up to 64 uh players technically that would have been possible even on mobile phones but they decided to stick to 32 players and of course they launch with spots which is uh super important because people do not want to wait forever so

this should be the first if you because I've often heard oh I want to build a game with 100 100 players and they saying okay then you need to have a clever game design uh because uh you're small company are you sure that you can reach so many people that can fill your game right and if it's is it still fun with less players is it still fun uh with a ratio of I don't know if you always have 80% Bots or whatever or you just put couple of Bs so it's really uh a tricky thing uh to to to consider and then it really yeah it it depends some games I mean I I uh said in my uh talk that I was working on bomber man uh back then and uh we found that it's absolute killer if we would have so so it's you know bom man right it's with four up to

four players usually even with up to eight players but the uh uh normal mod is with four players and it was an absolute killer if you have just two players and two Bots then boops the retention so we needed to fill the games up with at least three players one bot that was okay below that your game retention was B going down like like crazy and this is a tricky thing that you need uh to to consider while creating new game so and we have one customer Su Lotus they building uh 33 players or 33 Immortals is the game uh and it's this 33 player co-op game and are you battle against some s little um RPG type of of game and you battle against bosses and I haven't played it yet and but I'm super curious how they manage the game design because if if uh

you start with maybe even manage it to start with 33 real players and then they drop out how fast do the others drop out when you progress in the game wow that's I have a lot of respect uh of these guys designing such a game right yeah that's why we are going with mainly with you know three players as we feel that you know people are just not yeah people or humans manage like small groups better so so when it's a collaborative game even if you don't have specific roles but you just feel uh to be more uh needed or relevant when there's a small group but to question about the scale so we have like runs or rid or maybe runs is a right term so it's kind of right couple of minutes of uh missions uh where typically go with uh two others but you can also do runs

with uh you know in a group of 12 so right so but I I think that's the range that we are testing and yeah I'm also very curious about the 32 mors I need to try it like how on Earth do they manage but but you say they're like you teams are free but why not teams of two teams of four teams of five why why why threee um why is that the magic number so yeah as I said like one of our inspiration was sell divers too so we just thought of like yeah um it's like it's yeah and also about the population like population of the group that it's it's nicer to more fun to play with real people than with with bots so it's easier to get those like actual three players in but I don't know we'll we'll test we we do live testing so we measure learn get feedback from players we might change it okay yeah that's fair yeah I I think the most important thing is what kind of a interaction experience

we want to give to the players yes like uh uh we are trying to find the the magic number for the game itself and and isn't this like uh uh the small group or the big group uh mostly uh the players feels like okay how many how many people I can interact in the game uh will be the best for my play yeah I mean it's like okay uh let's say I'm going to watch the football uh I'm I'm going to visit the stadium for watch the football with my family actually most most of the time I'm interacting with my family member only like four but if I go there if there's only four people are you going to feel really cheering up of the sorry the play yourself it's like even I'm not interacting with the the people at the opposite side of the stadium uh there's a 50,000 people there but still they are cheering they shouting out yeah and that is not the direct interaction but still there is some kind of a

environment and the the atmosphere coming to you to make you feel more much better in the game so I think this kind of uh uh balancing between the direct interactions the the environment interactions those things can uh measure into the game to find the best number of your game um I've got another question question we've got a few minutes left but does anyone in the audience have a question uh if you want to ask ask it right now all right I can't see a hand but I can't actually see anything so that's all right I uh I don't think there's a question but I I I guess I have one last uh uh question if I miss someone just just shout at me that's I'm used to it um can you uh I guess how how do you prepare for a launch uh and ensure that from a technical standpoint that your game is ready to support you

know potentially millions of players or at the very least you know more than you might expect and then how do you anticipate those numbers and and also as a thir part just prepare it a cost effective way I guess because you could prepare for 10 million but if you're never going to get that that's probably quite expensive so I've I've done product and analytics for mobile games for yeah long time so my Approach is always like well there are things we know we know our budget for like use acquisition we know the cpis so we basically can estimate the traffic and sort of uh conversion from installs to Da so and then add whatever percentage of Organics on top so I think that's always like a it's a very simple math exercise but it's easy and you know smart to do then you basically have an idea that you know if you know nothing like overly surprising like some viral whatever visibility

happen so this is basically what what you will be seeing it's it's you know more more or less like this and maybe in the beginning a bit more and then it kind of uh drops there so and that's yeah I been going through so many games and it's it's always the same pattern so I can say that you know it's it's always wise to from the kind of the product or design side to just do the like basic math and and then yeah how to manage the kind of server side well we rely rely on our partners so so I I let them to handle the Ser instances and scaling hopefully dynamically yeah typically uh most of our customers completely overestimate right uh how fast it goes so everyone thinks oh what happens when I have 1 million and one day 1 million CCU or so then I often wonder because there are public numbers you can go to

steam DB and you see 1 million CCU there only a couple of games um uh that that reach those numbers on on the whole globe right um so it doesn't go as fast usually but but sometimes it does and then it's good to to have the right partner so I not long ago this year um uh short before 1 April so Rebecca lner from landfall they uh did cont warning which was a super success and they called me on a Thursday and asked hey Robert we are on on your premium Cloud we will launch on Monday uh are we fine and I say yeah yeah no worries so but I I'll tell our Ops Team and then they went within 24 hours from zero to to number five uh most played games on on Steam with hundreds of thousand of CCU which was crazy so it was even fast for us so we could manage it and and and handle uh that but that's I mean amongst

all the thousands of games we have launched it was really outstanding so I've never never seen that before so it it can happen and then yeah I hope you have the right partner for that because you cannot really prepare for that so if you prepare for that that's crazy because it just happens one in a million right um if you don't then yeah you have a right partner or you have have trouble scaling yeah I think we already overdue the time but yeah it's like a yeah I think this I just realized this panel is really interesting because we are in a little bit different area we all work together with the multiplayer games but yeah we have a little bit different uh background and experience before and then from my uh programming background it's like yeah I have a lot of uh story about this but yeah example like uh the Crossfire in China we reached 8 million CCU uh something like that but yeah it

never happened at the beginning uh as you said yeah it's it nobody expected something or like it was not really anticipated yeah so and the system was not ready also so every time is this like a anticipation like it how we know the future so but at least the technical side very technical side we can be prepared a little bit more uh uh yeah there there's a more about the technical design not not the business or the the platform itself but yeah so I think the more important thing is yes uh yeah we we it's like a not only the anticipation itself it's like more important thing is what we are really uh aiming for uh because yeah we cannot reach wherever we want immediately yeah all right we are out of time but please give a huge round of applause suit I'm sorry did I oh sorry please give a huge round of

applause to the to the panel thank you so much thank you thank you [Applause] [Music] [Music] he [Music]