Infinity Blade
Game
Documents about Infinity Blade
Epic Offers ‘Peace Proposal’ After US Court Ends Apple’s Control Over the App Store
A recent US court ruling has mandated Apple to alter its App Store policies, specifically prohibiting the company from preventing developers from promoting alternative payment methods for games.
- A US court ruled that Apple violated a 2021 anti-steering injunction, prohibiting the company from blocking developers from promoting alternative payment methods or charging fees on purchases made outside the App Store.
- Apple is now barred from controlling link placement or the language developers use to inform customers about external purchasing options and must replace 'scare screens' with neutral language.
- Epic Games has offered to drop all litigation against Apple and return Fortnite to the iOS App Store globally if Apple applies these US-court-mandated rules to its platform worldwide.
Longtime Epic Games Exec Donald Mustard Announces His Retirement
Donald Mustard, Chief Creative Officer at Epic Games, announced his retirement from the company in September 2023, concluding a nearly 25-year career in the game industry.
- Donald Mustard, the Chief Creative Officer at Epic Games, announced his retirement from the company in September 2023.
- Mustard is widely recognized as a primary architect of Fortnite, overseeing its expansion into the battle royale genre and its extensive series of pop culture and entertainment crossovers.
- Mustard joined Epic Games in 2008 following the company's acquisition of ChAIR Entertainment, a studio he co-founded in 2005.
Epic Games & The Quest to Push Boundaries
Epic Games' evolution from a 1991 college consulting side project into a diversified gaming and technology ecosystem is traced through five "iterations," with the argument that its adaptive capacity and dual role as game maker and tool provider explain why it can do what competitors cannot.
- Epic Games operates as an iterative entity that leverages its internal successes, such as Fortnite, to build foundational infrastructure like the Unreal Engine that serves both the company and the broader developer ecosystem.
- Fortnite’s success was driven by a combination of social connectivity, cross-game avatar persistence, the Battle Pass monetization model, and high-profile live events featuring partners like Marshmello and Star Wars.
- The Epic Games Store (EGS) aims to challenge industry gatekeepers by offering a competitive 12% revenue cut to developers, attempting to disrupt the market dominance of platforms like Steam.
Psychology & Perception: How Games Are Like Wine
Joseph Kim argues in this 2013 GameMakers essay that player enjoyment of a game is shaped not only by its actual qualities but by how the player perceives it, drawing an analogy to wine.
- A 2008 Cal Tech and Stanford Business School study demonstrated that higher price points can physically increase a consumer's enjoyment of a product by altering their perception of its quality.
- Game developers can influence player enjoyment by manipulating external perceptions through branding, high production values, and polished UI.
- Social proof, such as leveraging social recommendations and competitive rivalries, is a critical but often overlooked driver of player perception.