Game Design reports and market data
3,361 documents·56 writers·968 charts and tables
Documents
Game Developers Conference65 min
Creating Dr. Grordbort's Invaders for Magic Leap One
Dr. Grordbort’s Invaders serves as a foundational case study for spatial computing, illustrating how developers can leverage mixed reality to create immersive, systemic experiences on the Magic Leap One.
- To prevent immersion-breaking object interpenetration, implement a 'smoosh' physics system where virtual objects bounce and react physically when colliding with one another.
- Design for physical comfort by limiting intense gameplay sessions to 2–5 minutes, using a 'home base' hub to allow players to take breaks and manage fatigue.
- Use a priority-based visual system, such as subtle screen-edge 'glints,' to guide player attention toward critical objectives without overwhelming the field of view.
Game Developers ConferenceJul 2020
GameMakers45 min
Making a Hit Mobile Match-3 Game | GenJoy's David vs. Goliath Story
The mobile match-3 market remains intensely saturated, requiring smaller studios to adopt highly disciplined, data-centric strategies to compete against industry giants.
- Success in the saturated match-3 market requires validating D1, D7, and D30 retention metrics via minimum viable products and fake store profiles before committing to full-scale production.
- Marketing expenditures for mobile match-3 titles typically dwarf initial development costs, necessitating a shift in resource allocation toward aggressive user acquisition.
- Smaller studios can compete with industry giants by utilizing lean, flat organizational structures that enable rapid decision-making and agile pivots based on real-time user data.
GameMakersJul 2020
Game Developers Conference27 min
Implementing Pixar's Brain Trust Model at King and How It All Went Wrong
King, the developer behind the Candy Crush franchise, attempted to implement a centralized advisory model modeled after Pixar’s Brain Trust to improve game quality across its global studios.
- King failed to implement a centralized 'Brain Trust' model because teams perceived the static group of senior experts as intimidating gatekeepers, leading to the group being labeled the 'Angels of Death.'
- The initial centralized model collapsed due to a lack of clear goals, conflicting management feedback, and cultural misunderstandings regarding the role of 'champions' in the development process.
- King successfully pivoted to a decentralized governance model that separates project support from formal evaluation, utilizing a flexible network of senior creative talent instead of a fixed panel.
Game Developers ConferenceJul 2020
Game Developers Conference27 min
The Holy Grail of Multiplayer Level Design: Casual and Competitive Maps
The design of multiplayer maps requires balancing the distinct needs of casual and competitive players, a challenge often referred to as the pursuit of a "holy grail" map.
- Successful multiplayer map design requires balancing the needs of casual players, who seek recreational play, with competitive esports players who prioritize strategic depth and tournament viability.
- Designers should categorize player skill progression into layers: basic mechanical movement and shooting, map-specific tactical knowledge, and high-level meta-game strategy such as character bans and team compositions.
- Casual-friendly maps often rely on 'single-scan' layouts that allow players to process the entire environment quickly, whereas competitive maps require complex, multi-option layouts that prevent stale gameplay.
Game Developers ConferenceJul 2020
Game Developers Conference55 min
Deep Learning: Beyond the Hype
Deep learning and reinforcement learning are fundamentally transforming game development by functioning as trainable, high-performance function estimators.
- Deep learning and reinforcement learning are shifting game development from scripted mechanics to trainable function estimators, enabling advancements in automated motion capture, voice synthesis, and facial animation.
- The primary industry objective is to move beyond combat-centric gameplay toward immersive role-playing experiences featuring complex social interactions and emergent, human-like behaviors.
- Practical applications, such as those seen in Battlefield 1, demonstrate that neural agents can successfully navigate complex 3D environments and prioritize resources.
Game Developers ConferenceJul 2020
Game Developers Conference61 min
Designing Great Interactive Narratives on Mobile
Effective mobile interactive narrative design hinges on the delicate balance between player agency and structured storytelling.
- Mobile narrative design should prioritize character-driven emotional engagement over complex mechanical branching to maintain technical manageability and foster player empathy.
- Because a significant portion of the audience does not complete full narratives, developers must craft individual lines as compelling hooks and design episodic experiences that provide value in short, interrupted sessions.
- Meaningful player choice is defined by the ability to foster personal identity and connection rather than the sheer volume of potential branching outcomes.
Game Developers ConferenceJul 2020
Jonas Tyroller17 min
3 Out of Control Developers Making a Game (In 48 Hours)
The development of the game Nursery Curse, created for the 2020 Game Maker’s Toolkit (GMTK) game jam, serves as a case study in collaborative rapid prototyping and the challenges of scope management.
- The 'Nursery Curse' project, developed for the 2020 GMTK game jam, ranked 377th out of approximately 5,000 entries, demonstrating the viability of rapid prototyping under a 48-hour deadline.
- Effective scope management is critical in short-term development, as the team identified a lack of a refined core gameplay loop as their primary challenge due to feature creep.
- The team utilized Unity and the A Pathfinding Project to handle complex character movement, while Miro served as the central hub for brainstorming and feature prioritization.
Jonas TyrollerJul 2020
Thomas Brush17 min
Let's Play YOUR GAMES from a Dev's Perspective
This analysis evaluates the indie arcade title #Funtime from a professional game development perspective.
- The indie arcade title #Funtime received an 8/10 rating for its polished technical execution, specifically its effective use of Unity-based post-processing, particle systems, and grid-based movement.
- The game successfully employs an economical design strategy by extending a single color-matching mechanic into diverse, challenging scenarios to maximize depth with limited resources.
- A critical friction point exists in user onboarding, where the absence of persistent on-screen control prompts for movement and color-cycling leads to player frustration and potential abandonment.
Thomas BrushJul 2020
PocketGamer.biz43 min
Monetisation & Skills as Motivation PG Connects Digital #2
Game design relies on a sophisticated interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic human motivations to foster engagement and long-term retention.
- Successful game design integrates intrinsic motivators like mastery and creativity with extrinsic rewards to ensure both routine tasks and complex gameplay remain engaging.
- Monetization strategies should be embedded into the core design process from the outset rather than added as disruptive, post-development features.
- Placing advertisements at the beginning of a session leverages the sunk-cost fallacy, encouraging players to invest more time to justify their initial commitment.
PocketGamer.bizJul 2020
Game Developers Conference58 min
Expanding Animation and Design Capabilities in Post-Launch Battlefield 1
The post-launch development of Battlefield 1 demonstrates how animation teams can significantly enhance gameplay depth and historical authenticity by leveraging flexible, data-driven tools.
- To overcome the limitations of rigid legacy animation systems in Battlefield 1, the DICE LA team developed flexible, logic-based reload systems that allowed for weapon-specific behaviors like ejecting partial magazines or reeling in cloth ammunition belts.
- By decoupling reload logic from fixed animation loops, the team enabled complex interactions such as the Perino M1908's ability to top off ammunition at various stages, which required managing 120 rounds through a hybrid of manual and additive animation layers.
- The team successfully scaled their post-launch content production by building reusable systems; initial development efforts for the first six weapons in the 'In the Name of the Tsar' expansion paved the way for an expanded list of 11 guns that utilized the same underlying animation logic.
Game Developers ConferenceJul 2020
Extra Credits6 min
Shark Attack! Thursday at Noon - Variable Ratio & Interval Schedules - Extra Credits
Effective game design relies on the psychological principles of operant conditioning to maintain player engagement, specifically through the strategic application of variable ratio and variable interval reinforcement schedules.
- Variable ratio and variable interval reinforcement schedules are essential psychological tools for maintaining player engagement and preventing fatigue in game design.
- Variable ratio reinforcement involves fluctuating the quantity or quality of rewards to preserve the sense of discovery and prevent gameplay from becoming mundane.
- Variable interval reinforcement randomizes the timing of events or encounters to foster a constant state of tension and anticipation.
Extra CreditsJul 2020
Game Developers Conference60 min
ILMxLAB: Pioneering Immersive Entertainment
Immersive entertainment is undergoing a fundamental transformation, moving away from isolated virtual reality experiences toward a model of persistent, interconnected digital worlds.
- Location-based VR experiences can serve as a primary retail anchor, as evidenced by a Westfield London location where 71.6% of visitors reported the VR attraction was their sole reason for visiting the mall.
- The future of immersive entertainment lies in a multi-platform ecosystem where a single identity and narrative persist across devices, ranging from mobile AR and tablet-based crafting to console gaming and full-immersion VR.
- Hyper-reality experiences like 'The Void' successfully leverage untethered headsets, motion capture, and multi-user networking to create social environments where strangers often leave feeling like close friends.
Game Developers ConferenceJul 2020