Most in-development live service games plan ahead for one year’s worth of post-launch content from the jump. Typically this is planned to follow a quarterly schedule, so that we have sufficient development time to build a sizable amount of new content …
Is classic game porting/remastering becoming its own specialization? What I mean is, of course it’s happening more these days, so/but is space growing to be someone who specializes in these projects? Or is it still niche enough that the small number of teams/staff who do it will continue to do it?
The answer here is «kind of». Here’s the main issue — game development is expensive. AAA studios are expensive and cost a lot to run, assigning a AAA studio a remake/port project is not really worth it when compared to the estimated return on investmen…
What would it take to have a resurgence of physical games (for PC mostly)? I recall multiple times of digital only games being taken away by companies and there being an uproar about it. But it was never enough to create change.
Honestly, there’s two major things that need to happen for physical media to be a bigger thing on PC. Think about things from a game publisher perspective and what kind of costs are associated with making physical media.First, retail stores take a 20% …
Why do you think MOBAs manage to remain so popular when losing a match can be such a long and arduous process?
MOBAs as a genre generally sustain themselves primarily because playing the game at lower skill levels allows players to feel ownership and powerful when they do well, but also provides them excuses from having to admit their own responsibility in thei…
How do you go about balancing appeal for mooks or the lowest importance NPCs?
The principles of appeal still apply, even when designing mooks. Good mook design has resulted in iconic franchise monsters! Here’s a few examples.Take a look at some of these iconic mook designs. Interesting shapes, exaggerating relevant features, and…
Related again to Concord: back in 2016, when Overwatch and Battleborn released simultaneously, I read somebody online say that Overwatch succeeded not because it was a better game, but because it had characters that teenagers were horny about. I know this was a joke, but is there any truth in that? I imagine the main target user of online shooters is mostly male, and in their teens (or ok with juvenile themes). Do games with characters that male teenagers are used to find sexy sell more?
«Sexy» is a subset of the twelfth principle of animation that’s applying here — «Appeal». «Appeal» generally means «visually interesting», which we can break down into different aspects. For things to be visually interesting, some things we want to con…
In a previous post you mentioned that “the cost of development for AAA fidelity games is mostly too high now to be profitable on their own”. And we have heard that it’s more expensive now to make games than ever before. But we also hear that profits from games are higher than ever before as well. How do those two statements go together? If profits from making games have gone up (with a bigger market, what I presume is DLC bringing in extra money) why are game prices still rising from 60 to 70 USD, for example?
We’re not seeing profits from games being higher than ever before. We’re seeing record profits from successful games and we’re seeing a bunch of unsuccessful games pull the profits down because those unsuccessful games cost just as much as the successf…
How do you see the price versus value proposition of the new PS5 Pro, as a developer? It feels like the increase in graphical fidelity is fairly low compared to the man hours put into achieving it, and the cost for the consumer. On the other hand, PC gamers often spend twice as much money on a desktop PC, so maybe there’s a market for it. What do you think?
Some of my coworkers and I actually discussed this issue on the day the PS5 Pro was announced during some downtime. Our general consensus was that the PS5 Pro is a decent value for a gaming enthusiast who hasn’t managed to get a PS5 by now and still wa…
I’m willing to accept that AAA games should often be sold at a higher price to help deal balance the increasing cost of development. Do you think that companies would do better to raise prices quickly and wait out the sticker-shock or to try and raise prices very slowly to attract less attention?
I’m pretty sure that, as an industry, we’ve mostly already moved beyond that. Haven’t you noticed just how many AAA game releases these days aren’t about a single sale but live service? The live service model is the price increase. The cost of developm…
How do pro consoles affect what happens to developing games if any, considering you have to make a game that also has to work on the less powerful console.
We typically have a «target» platform that we’re primarily aiming at. That’s what gets the majority of the work, that’s what we build our stuff on. That might be the PS5, the PC, or whatever. Our target platform is typically the platform we believe wil…
