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The Attention Budget Rule: why tutorials should teach maximum 3 things at a time
The attention budget rule serves as a critical framework for game design, positing that players can effectively process no more than three new mechanics at a time.
- Players can effectively process a maximum of three new mechanics at a time, making this the upper limit for effective tutorial onboarding.
- Chaining passive experiences like loading screens, victory sequences, and dialogue dumps creates a 'boredom trap' that significantly degrades player retention.
- Effective onboarding requires a rhythmic oscillation between high-tension gameplay and brief periods of relaxation to maintain player momentum.
Supercell buys Metacore amid brutal layoffs, Second Dinner cuts, inside Scopely x Niantic, more
The mobile games industry is currently navigating a period of significant restructuring and strategic consolidation.
- Supercell has acquired Metacore in a deal involving a €180 million investment, resulting in the layoff of 160 staff members—over half the company—as the studio pivots to focus exclusively on Merge Mansion.
- Marvel Snap developer Second Dinner has laid off 16 employees, though the company confirmed that development on its current roadmap and an unannounced second game remain unaffected.
- Scopely and Niantic executives revealed that their partnership, which has significantly improved revenue performance for titles like Pikmin Bloom, involved intense integration efforts and complex technical collaboration.
S07, E15: The modern mobile gaming economy (with Phil Black)
The mobile gaming industry is undergoing a structural transformation characterized by market consolidation and a pivot away from the unsustainable hyper-casual model.
- Direct-to-consumer (DDC) web shops are becoming a standard strategy for midcore games, particularly in the 4X genre, to bypass platform fees and increase LTV, with some third-party providers now offering fees as low as 5%.
- The competitive advantage in user acquisition (UA) has shifted away from creative output—which is easily cloned—toward sophisticated predictive infrastructure, such as cohort-level modeling and signal engineering.
- The mobile gaming market is experiencing a consolidation of revenue into puzzle and 4X genres, with hyper-casual games serving as a 'minor league' farm for testing mechanics that are later integrated into more complex, high-revenue core loops.
The Martial Arts Mindset That Won 2 Million Players
The transition from an unconventional background in English education to the successful founding of Eplay Studios illustrates the potential for indie developers to thrive by prioritizing player-centric, skill-based competitive gaming.
- Eplay Studios achieved 2 million installs across a portfolio of 25 competitive games by focusing on real-money, skill-based gameplay.
- The studio leverages the Skillz platform and Beamable to outsource complex infrastructure, including matchmaking, payments, and live operations, allowing the team to focus exclusively on core game mechanics.
- Success in competitive gaming requires prioritizing player trust through strict fairness and balance, as players will churn if they perceive the competition as rigged or uneven.
Inside Dorian's No-Code UGC Platform
Dorian functions as a no-code user-generated content platform designed to democratize interactive storytelling by bridging the gap between narrative-driven experiences and the micro-drama market.
- Dorian is a no-code UGC platform that prioritizes narrative-driven interactive storytelling over mechanic-centric design, specifically targeting female-first fandoms where 90% of its creators are women.
- The platform utilizes free-to-play monetization mechanics, specifically 'patronage,' which allows creators to generate sustainable income by letting fans vote with their dollars for specific storylines or character developments.
- Solo creators on Dorian often outperform venture-backed studios in profitability because they maintain total control over their vision, avoiding the diluted creative output and siloed information common in larger professional teams.
🎲 Will Coin Master Board Adventure eat Monopoly Go? (Our year-end predictions)
The mobile gaming landscape is currently defined by a high-stakes battle between established titans and aggressive new entrants within the social casino and board game genres.
- MoonActive’s Coin Master Board Adventure is directly challenging Monopoly Go, currently recording 2.2 million monthly downloads compared to Monopoly Go’s 1.8 million.
- The mobile gaming sector is shifting toward hybrid experiences that integrate merge and idle systems with traditional social casino mechanics to drive engagement.
- Monopoly Go faces significant market pressure due to rising user acquisition costs and diminishing returns, despite maintaining a massive creative library of over 15,000 assets.
🚨📢 BREAKING NEWS: Record Revenue, Record Layoffs, Why Only 2 Genres Are Actually Winning in 2026
The global gaming industry reached a record $195.6 billion in revenue in 2025, yet this financial milestone coincides with a severe labor crisis, characterized by over 44,000 developer layoffs since 2022 and an additional 2,000 to 3,000 job losses in early 2026.
- The gaming industry reached a record $195.6 billion in revenue in 2025, yet this growth is highly concentrated, with Roblox alone accounting for 67% of net market growth.
- Mass layoffs continue to plague the sector, with over 44,000 developer jobs lost since 2022 and an additional 2,000 to 3,000 cuts in early 2026, leaving nearly half of terminated U.S. developers unemployed.
- 4X strategy games, led by titles like 'Last War' and 'Whiteout Survival,' are the only genre currently experiencing simultaneous growth in revenue, downloads, and user engagement.
I Have Some News About My Indie Game "Twisted Tower"
The development of the indie game Twisted Tower, a project five years in the making, is currently in its final, high-intensity phase.
- Beta testing is a critical, painful process that requires gathering honest feedback from a representative audience to overcome developer ego and identify objective flaws.
- Effective beta testing involves analyzing specific metrics such as game difficulty, completion time, worst-case experiences, and pricing expectations to inform final development decisions.
- Game development requires a strict sequential workflow where tasks like localization and cutscene finalization cannot occur until core gameplay and story elements are validated through testing.
The Evolution of Forever Games | Design Club
Lifestyle games, often categorized as forever games, function as a player’s primary hobby by providing effectively unlimited, repeatable content that transcends the finite nature of traditional narrative-driven titles.
- Long-term viability for 'forever games' requires prioritizing technical debt, such as engine modernization and server architecture upgrades, over purely cosmetic content updates.
- To prevent player burnout and accommodate aging demographics, developers must transition from rigid daily requirements to flexible weekly progression systems.
- Successful live-service titles mitigate onboarding barriers for new players by implementing level-syncing and accelerated progression paths that allow them to integrate with veteran communities.
Press Play to Start: The Challenges of Exhibiting Video Games at the Museum
Museums are increasingly grappling with how to exhibit video games as art, a shift that has accelerated since MoMA's 2012 acquisition of fourteen games for its Architecture and Design collection and the Smithsonian's The Art of Video Games that same year.
- Games resist conventional art presentation because their interactivity, dependence on evolving technology, and commercial origins do not fit the neutral 'white cube' gallery model, a tension framed through theorists Brian O'Doherty and Lev Manovich.
- Institutional recognition of games as art accelerated with MoMA's 2012 acquisition of fourteen games for its Architecture and Design collection and the Smithsonian's 2012 exhibition The Art of Video Games.
- Curators must 'translate' games' digital culture, community-based contexts, and interactive logic for diverse audiences, a framework associated with Domenico Quaranta, while funding pressures and audience appeal shape which titles are selected.
Collective Aesthetics Through I-Position and Self-Engagement: Advancing Usability for Inclusive Solo Board Games
This paper argues that the usability and aesthetic value of board games have been studied almost exclusively in multiplayer contexts, leaving solo play and self-engagement underexplored despite their potential to support neurodivergent, disabled, and introverted players.
- The paper argues that board game usability and aesthetics have been studied almost exclusively in multiplayer contexts, leaving solo play and self-engagement underexplored despite their potential to support neurodivergent, disabled, and introverted players.
- Drawing on Goleman's four domains of emotional intelligence and Hermans' Dialogical Self Theory, the authors propose that solo board games let players inhabit multiple "I-positions" and experience "psycho-aesthetic escapism," a freedom often constrained by group-oriented mechanics.
- Usability is reframed around identity positionality and self-engagement rather than mechanics or interface alone.
Digital Arts, Digital Games and Volumetry: State-of-the-Art and Current Scenario
This paper examines the convergence of digital arts, digital games, and volumetric technologies, arguing that volumetric video and volumetry, interactive three-dimensional visualization techniques rooted in mid-twentieth-century computing and photogrammetry, can broaden the creative and social reach of digital games.
- Volumetric video offers six degrees of freedom and deeper immersion than conventional 2D or 360-degree video, but the research on it remains exploratory and inconsistent in its terminology.
- The main barrier to volumetric media is its heavy data demand, with point cloud video reaching roughly 5 Gbps, which keeps the technology outside the mainstream.
- The paper argues that volumetric visualization techniques, rooted in mid-twentieth-century computing and photogrammetry, can broaden the creative and social reach of digital games.