When everyone is working on separate areas/mechanics/levels, how does this unify into a coherent experience in terms of difficulty curve? I’d say you are working the second or third level, how are you to judge how difficult it is allowed to be or what challenges from prior levels are you allowed to throw at the players?

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к When everyone is working on separate areas/mechanics/levels, how does this unify into a coherent experience in terms of difficulty curve? I’d say you are working the second or third level, how are you to judge how difficult it is allowed to be or what challenges from prior levels are you allowed to throw at the players?

System designers manage difficulty curves. It is up to them to tweak numbers and timing in order to make sure difficulty feels good along the way. They work primarily within formulas and spreadsheets in order to keep things predictable for the general …

You mentioned how devs only are working on your “areas”. Is the version of the game you are working on somehow cornered off from the rest? For example, if you are working on part of an open world game, is the executable you are working on not have the rest of the world, or if you are working on a level, do you only have one physical access to that level?

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к You mentioned how devs only are working on your “areas”. Is the version of the game you are working on somehow cornered off from the rest? For example, if you are working on part of an open world game, is the executable you are working on not have the rest of the world, or if you are working on a level, do you only have one physical access to that level?

We’re basically cordoned off from other elements of the game for the sake of iteration speed. It takes a non-trivial amount of time to build assets and data for game levels, especially in AAA games. If I’m working on a particular level or dungeon, wait…

Isn’t it a bit silly to get upset over leaks? I don’t see how people seeing your work could be a negative thing

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к Isn’t it a bit silly to get upset over leaks? I don’t see how people seeing your work could be a negative thing

Leaks are often not the complete story. A leak is a snapshot of an in-development game at a specific point in time doesn’t adequately convey what the game will be when we’re finished — especially since the game is still in development and many things a…

Any advice on dealing with leaks? I find that it really kills motivation and is pretty upsetting.

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к Any advice on dealing with leaks? I find that it really kills motivation and is pretty upsetting.

It really sucks when something you’re putting a lot of yourself into gets spoiled early and without full context. It feels a lot like the public then starts judging your work so harshly and that often feels like they’re judging you by association. [I’v…

Will there ever be a future where AAA studios open source their games? What are your thoughts on it?

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к Will there ever be a future where AAA studios open source their games? What are your thoughts on it?

It seems unlikely that this would happen. You’re basically asking if a company would ever invest multiple millions of dollars by paying developers to build technology, tools, and assets, and then making them all free for the public to use. This certain…

How do game companies decide when to run scheduled maintenance? Is it simply as “whenever the player count is usually the lowest?”

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к How do game companies decide when to run scheduled maintenance? Is it simply as “whenever the player count is usually the lowest?”

There’s a lot of factors involved. Our server binaries can only run for so long while remaining stable, meaning we must run maintenance on them if only to restart them so that they can free up any held system resources and clear any bad states the serv…

The new Sonic racing game told me the other day that online would be unavailable briefly due to a maintainence period. You’ve gone over the kinds of things that happen during this time before I’m sure, but I thought — no big modern Mario Kart games have ever done this. What would allow a game to never go down for maintainence like this? Or is it more likely that all games do, but they just don’t announce it and count on most players not noticing? (Would Sonic being crossplay affect this at all?)

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к The new Sonic racing game told me the other day that online would be unavailable briefly due to a maintainence period. You’ve gone over the kinds of things that happen during this time before I’m sure, but I thought — no big modern Mario Kart games have ever done this. What would allow a game to never go down for maintainence like this? Or is it more likely that all games do, but they just don’t announce it and count on most players not noticing? (Would Sonic being crossplay affect this at all?)

We run maintenance in order to keep up our hardware and apply software patches and upgrades. If there is no maintenance needed, it is because we don’t have any hardware and software doing any work that we need to maintain. As an example, for old FPS ga…

Rumours are swirling about Microsoft bringing out an ad-supplemented cloud gaming subscription. If this proves popular do you think advertisers will have influence over the content of games they could appear alongside of?

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к Rumours are swirling about Microsoft bringing out an ad-supplemented cloud gaming subscription. If this proves popular do you think advertisers will have influence over the content of games they could appear alongside of?

Advertisers are canny when it comes to who they wish to advertise to. Different products appeal to different kinds of people — you’re not going to see as many toy sales to adults as to children, for example. Since advertisers get to choose what kind of…

Have you ever worked on a game that had sooo many bugs, testing anything was almost impossible, and the game ended up being cancelled?

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к Have you ever worked on a game that had sooo many bugs, testing anything was almost impossible, and the game ended up being cancelled?

Yes, but none of the failed projects were built in any kind of professional capacity. Basically, the failed projects I joined were amateur led projects that often had minimal commitment from engineering being done on them. The volunteer engineers did w…