Discord
Chat and voice platform that grew out of gaming communities. It publishes safety transparency reports, including a report on child protection under Brazil's ECA Digital law.
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Reports about Discord
482 documents by other writers name Discord in the title or summary.
A Day In The Life: Indie Game Development
The life of an independent game developer is characterized by a high degree of autonomy, constant multitasking, and the necessity of balancing creative output with the psychological pressures of entrepreneurship.
- Indie game development requires balancing creative output with the psychological demands of entrepreneurship, necessitating a disciplined routine to manage inherent industry instability.
- Developers must function as multidisciplinary project managers, handling tasks ranging from Unity programming and animation to marketing and community engagement on platforms like Discord.
- Effective production requires the use of task-tracking software to pivot between flexible development phases and the rigid requirements of a launch window.
New Party Who Dis?: Gaming as a Broader Vernacular to Reach Voters
Gaming has become part of the common vernacular politicians use to reach voters, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the lead example.
- Gaming has become a critical political communication tool, with figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez utilizing streaming platforms and memes to build authenticity among younger voters.
- Netflix identified Fortnite as a more significant competitor for consumer attention than traditional rivals like HBO, despite Netflix adding 8.8 million subscribers in Q4 2018.
- Niantic secured $245 million in funding at a $4 billion valuation, highlighting significant investor confidence in the sector during this period.
Overview of the Mobile RPG Market
Mobile RPGs remain a regional story: the genre accounts for roughly half of top-grossing titles in Japan and China, but only a bit under 10% of iOS revenue in the US.
- In the US iOS market, RPGs account for slightly less than 10% of total revenue, ranking as the fifth-largest genre behind shooters.
- RPG market penetration varies significantly by region: RPGs comprise approximately 50% of the top-grossing games in both China and Japan, while remaining a smaller niche in the US.
- Puzzle RPGs are a dominant force in the US, with 'Empires & Puzzles' by Small Giant Games increasing its subgenre revenue share from 6% to 35% during 2018.
Wowie Jam! - (2019 February 1)
The Wowie Jam, scheduled for February 2019, serves as a creative initiative designed to push independent developers toward exploring unconventional game design territories.
- The Wowie Jam, held in February 2019, is a three-day game development event focused on experimental design and unconventional mechanics like non-combat warfare.
- Submissions are evaluated against seven specific criteria: fun, simplicity, visuals, sound, creativity, theme adherence, and a subjective 'Wowie' factor.
- The event guarantees that every participant's submission will be played and featured in a dedicated YouTube video for promotional visibility.
Cities Appropriate Pokémon GO: Remix Models for Local Needs
This study investigates how cities in the United States are appropriating and remixing mainstream location-based games, specifically Pokémon GO, to create city-specific events and achieve local objectives.
- Cities can layer custom activities such as scavenger hunts, raffles, and participatory street art onto Pokémon GO, creating a 'ludo mix' where municipal agency operates within a game whose design is controlled globally by its developer.
- The study compares two US cities' 'open streets' events staged from 2017, with one drawing around 30,000 players within a gathering of 100,000 attendees, while the other deliberately chose a smaller scale to preserve control over local history.
- Local governments can pursue equity goals, such as adding game content about marginalized northside neighborhoods and investing in inclusivity, through partnership with the game company.
ROM Hacks, Randomizers, and Retro Games: Challenging Copyright and Remixing Zelda
This conference paper, presented at the 2019 Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) conference, examines how videogame hacking communities share and distribute projects built on copyrighted commercial games despite legal risk.
- The paper uses the A Link to the Past Randomizer, a ROM hack of the 1991 Super NES game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, as its central case study; the hack turns the linear adventure into a randomized, competitive game played through communities on Twitch and Discord.
- The author frames ROM hacking communities as creative labour operating at the margins of media production and law, placing the work within the history of hacker ethics and the tightening of intellectual property enforcement after the rise of the Internet and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
- Nintendo's lawsuits against ROM distribution sites such as LoveROMs.com and LoveRETRO.co are argued to produce a chilling effect on hobbyist hackers who lack the resources to resist corporate pressure.
5 Reasons Why Game Development Is SO HARD!
Game development is a demanding professional pursuit that requires navigating significant psychological and operational hurdles.
- Developers must balance diverse, non-creative operational roles—including accounting, marketing, and community management—alongside core development, which frequently disrupts schedules and project deadlines.
- The rapid pace of technological evolution in the gaming industry forces developers into a perpetual cycle of entrepreneurship and continuous learning to maintain professional relevance.
- The iterative nature of skill acquisition often leads developers to view their past work with disdain, resulting in perfectionism that causes project abandonment.
Predictions for 2019
This analyst outlook for the 2019 games industry argues that innovation and competition will broaden audiences, even as growth cools.
- The industry faces an 'imminent winter' in 2019 characterized by market saturation, increased government regulation, and a slowdown in consumer spending.
- Cloud gaming will emerge as a major frontier driven by infrastructure giants including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, effectively breaking down traditional walled gardens.
- Platform holders such as Sony and Apple are shifting toward subscription models to counter plateauing hardware sales and secure more predictable revenue streams.
GDC plays Hades with Greg Kasavin
Supergiant Games’ development of Hades represents a strategic pivot toward iterative, community-driven design within the roguelike genre.
- Supergiant Games successfully transitioned from multi-year linear production cycles to an agile, monthly milestone cadence by utilizing the Early Access model on the Epic Games Store.
- The studio maintains high-quality, iterative development with a compact team of approximately 20 people, relying on direct feedback loops via platforms like Discord to refine gameplay and narrative in real time.
- Supergiant Games explicitly rejects industry-standard forced crunch by codifying internal values that prioritize work-life balance and individual responsibility.
Attracting more than gamers - Esports as a social event
Esports has evolved beyond competitive gaming to function as a significant social phenomenon, attracting a diverse audience that extends well past the core demographic of active players.
- Approximately 32 percent of the 380 million global esports viewers do not play the games they watch, indicating that the industry's primary appeal is shifting toward community and culture rather than game mechanics.
- The social nature of esports is driving massive real-time engagement, with live chats at events like Intel Extreme Masters Katowice recording nearly 1,000 messages per minute.
- Physical attendance at tournaments is surging as fans increasingly treat esports events like music festivals to participate in cosplay and communal experiences.
Social gaming trends: From casino to casual
The mobile gaming landscape is undergoing a fundamental transformation as social integration evolves from a niche feature into a core requirement across all genres.
- Mobile gaming is shifting from hyper-casual mechanics to mid-core complexity to improve long-term retention and combat player churn.
- Developers are prioritizing social-first ecosystems by integrating synchronous multiplayer experiences and leveraging private community platforms like Discord.
- Monetization strategies are moving away from aggressive tactics toward sustainable models, specifically focusing on battle passes and cosmetic vanity items.
Why gaming today is less about the game and more about social experiences
The modern gaming landscape is shifting from a focus on individual gameplay to a model centered on social experiences and community interaction.
- Gaming is shifting from individual gameplay to a model centered on social experiences, where the game itself often serves merely as a backdrop for real-life interaction and community building.
- Top gaming influencers, such as Ninja, act as a primary form of currency, generating tens of millions of dollars in earned media value through audience engagement on platforms like Twitter and Instagram.
- The industry is bifurcated into macro communities (YouTube, Twitch) for mass awareness and micro communities (Discord, Snapchat) for high-trust, peer-to-peer engagement.