Let’s say a game has been in development for a year, then the world has something major happen that wrecks the economy (recession, pandemic, etc). Does that mean you can adjust the number of sales to be considered profitable?

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к Let’s say a game has been in development for a year, then the world has something major happen that wrecks the economy (recession, pandemic, etc). Does that mean you can adjust the number of sales to be considered profitable?

There’s no single answer to your question because there’s a lot of unknown factors. The game may have been in development for a year, but the situation would be very different depending on when the game is scheduled to launch. If the game is very close…

If PC modders do mods that would unlock stuff instantly instead of playing the games normally, and since you guys keep track of stuff like how many players do what in those games they play like new customizations, achievements, and whatever, is there any concern in the dev side about seeing data points being possibly done in a “cheating” way? Like, would that have any impact at all in some way?

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к If PC modders do mods that would unlock stuff instantly instead of playing the games normally, and since you guys keep track of stuff like how many players do what in those games they play like new customizations, achievements, and whatever, is there any concern in the dev side about seeing data points being possibly done in a “cheating” way? Like, would that have any impact at all in some way?

We can usually figure out when players are cheating — checking for that kind of thing really isn’t significantly different from checking for achievements and such. We generally don’t care if players choose to cheat as long as they aren’t [griefing] oth…

Did you have team members who actually doesn’t play much games? I’d imagine positions like networking engineer, community manager, or even artists could get by without a lot of game knowledge. Do they contribute something else that gamers don’t?

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к Did you have team members who actually doesn’t play much games? I’d imagine positions like networking engineer, community manager, or even artists could get by without a lot of game knowledge. Do they contribute something else that gamers don’t?

While most game devs do play games in some form or other, there are plenty of developers who are much more casual in the kind of games they play, and some who don’t play any at all. The ones who don’t play are usually the ones who are further removed f…

Why aren’t movie tie-in games, especially those that are a story adaptation to the movie’s story they’re loosely based on, really a common thing anymore since the beginning of the last decade?

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к Why aren’t movie tie-in games, especially those that are a story adaptation to the movie’s story they’re loosely based on, really a common thing anymore since the beginning of the last decade?

It’s mostly because mobile devices became the platform du jour to publish movie tie-in games and other similar shovelware-style titles. Development costs are lower, turnaround time is faster, expectations are lower, and audiences are larger on mobile, so it makes sense that licensors would go there.

In addition to the rise of mobile, the relationship between a movie tie-in console game’s development cycle and the movie itself was already fraying in the mid to late 2000s. Back when AAA games could be developed by a fairly small (

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Does a licensor offer the developer benefits beside the use of the IP, such as reference assets or facilitating the use of original voice actors?

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к Does a licensor offer the developer benefits beside the use of the IP, such as reference assets or facilitating the use of original voice actors?

Sometimes they do! Back when licensed movie games were a thing, I worked on one. The studio I was working for was actually developing two different licensed movie tie-in games at the time and the dev team relationships with the different movie studios …

If the relationship between publishers and developers is collaborative, what about other license owners they base their games or content on like Disney, Universal Studios, or even other game company owners? Aren’t they also driving forces to a dev’s decision for everything involving them as I hear?

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к If the relationship between publishers and developers is collaborative, what about other license owners they base their games or content on like Disney, Universal Studios, or even other game company owners? Aren’t they also driving forces to a dev’s decision for everything involving them as I hear?

You are correct — license owners are another set of requirements and approvals that developers must appease in order to ship a game. While the developer’s goal is to make the best game they can, the licensor’s ultimate duty is to make the most out of t…

American Mcgee is trying to get his new game greenlit. I know that his games are profitable and well received. However, it’s taking aver 4 years for a response, and I’m puzzled to why it is so. What exactly causes a company to consider greenleting a game? Does it require more than the creators reputation?

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к American Mcgee is trying to get his new game greenlit. I know that his games are profitable and well received. However, it’s taking aver 4 years for a response, and I’m puzzled to why it is so. What exactly causes a company to consider greenleting a game? Does it require more than the creators reputation?

There are many reasons one would pass on a game pitch, many of which have nothing to do with the pitch itself. Finding a publisher is very much like dating — the game being pitched must meet a bunch of the publisher’s needs in order for them to run wit…

When it comes to microtransactions, how much data does it take to adjust prices? If a class of items (such as skins) is underperforming expectations is a price reduction considered or is it better to stay the course since there is no need to liquidate stock like in a physical store?

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к When it comes to microtransactions, how much data does it take to adjust prices? If a class of items (such as skins) is underperforming expectations is a price reduction considered or is it better to stay the course since there is no need to liquidate stock like in a physical store?

We don’t really do a lot of price adjustment of existing products, since it doesn’t cost us anything to continue to offer it at the price we ask. Usually we try to figure out why a particular product did or didn’t sell well, and then try to adjust it i…

Will the ideal matchmaking system give every player a winrate of 50% over a long enough time period? If it doesn’t, why would some players consistently show a better winrate? The Pokémon Unite community treats winrate as indicative of skill, but my intuition is that this can’t be true unless the algorithm is designed to make it so.

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к Will the ideal matchmaking system give every player a winrate of 50% over a long enough time period? If it doesn’t, why would some players consistently show a better winrate? The Pokémon Unite community treats winrate as indicative of skill, but my intuition is that this can’t be true unless the algorithm is designed to make it so.

Let’s take a step back for a moment. The purpose of a matchmaking system isn’t to keep players at a 50% win rate, it’s to match players of roughly equal skill with each other in order to make for engaging games. The primary goal of matchmaking is to reduce the number of curb stomp games where the winners are bored and the losers are salty, because neither side really enjoys the experience all that much. This usually ends up stratifying players into skill bands, where the players within that band are generally able to give each other a decent challenge and minimize the number of lopsided games. Having a win rate close to 50% is a result of such a system but is not necessarily a goal.

Barney Stinson declares ALT

Matchmaking systems can’t ensure every player has a 50% win rate because it breaks down when there are very small numbers of players within a skill band. Let’s examine an extreme example of this at work. Imagine the best player in the world, Neelo. The only player on Earth she cannot handily defeat is her rival Noriko. Between the two of them, Neelo has a slight edge and wins 55/45. If Noriko is online, Noriko can only ever be matched against Neelo and Neelo will win 55% of the time. If Noriko is not online, then no one can beat Neelo and she wins 100% of the time. There is no way a matchmaking system can ensure a 50% win rate for Neelo in such a situation.

Kanye says ALT

This isn’t an issue for most skill bands because there’s often hundreds or even thousands of players playing in those bands at any given time for a sufficiently popular game. However, the very top echelons of player skill often run into issues with matchmaking because of the availability of qualified opponents. Professional competitive players playing normally online will tend to win more than they lose because there just aren’t enough players of their skill level online at any given time to match them with. Since there aren’t enough players that skilled to make matches, the matchmaking algorithms will necessarily widen the search as time passes and often match them with less skilled players often with fairly predictable results.

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Does crunch affect all team members evenly, or does it affect some more than others? IE Artists do crunch, but they crunch programmers the hardest.

boynextdoornewsОставить коментарий к Does crunch affect all team members evenly, or does it affect some more than others? IE Artists do crunch, but they crunch programmers the hardest.

Let’s take a step back and consider some context to your question. If there is too much work to do before a deadline, we either have to push the deadline or increase the amount of work done during the time remaining. Let’s assume that the deadline is i…