Honestly, all you really need to do to make a mini boss or other “strong” enemy stand out is to give them a significant boost in health. Players tend to conflate how long an enemy survives with its relative strength. The longer the foe lives, the “toug…
Ask a Game Dev 2022-04-22 19:24:13
Just to note — I’m assuming a few qualities about you — that you are dedicated to learning the craft and that you are committed to finishing what you start. There will reach a point on every project after the honeymoon phase of “oh this is cool and new…
Product update: GameAnalytics A/B testing allows you to go deeper
We’ve improved our A/B testing feature on GameAnalytics so you can optimize further your games and try out new great ideas and concepts. You can now stop user acquisition and exclude offline users from your tests. A/B Testing: Stop acquiring users We notice many game developers want better control over the allocation of users in…
How can gamers convince a company to remove Denuvo (or any other intrusive / remote server dependent protection) from an old (4 years old) game?
The greatest factor in whether this is possible is whether development is continuing on the game or not. If the game continues to receive new content updates over time even four years after release (e.g. Street Fighter V released in 2016 and has recent…
Getting Mobile Multiplayer Right (Part 1): History, Genres, and Motivations
Adding multiplayer elements to your mobile game is a straight-up win-win situation. It creates a sense of community, brings a competitive edge, and gives your players a reason to come back. Taking all that on might feel intimidating. But today, building quality mobile multiplayer is easier than you might think. But how exactly do you…
Hi dev! A game I’m excited about received a formal release date that ended up much earlier than the reveal’s time range. I know what delays can mean, but is there a chance this could be a bad thing? Thanks for the insight!
It’s quite rare for a publisher to push up a release date. This is typically because delivering a product is set for a specific date so that marketing and the expected release season (e.g. targeting the holiday season). These decisions are often made a…
Ask a Game Dev 2022-04-14 19:04:08
Continued engagement has a lot of positive externalities beyond just selling people more stuff. If you play a game for a few hours and quit, you might have some pleasant memories of it when the sequel rolls around or you might not. However, if you play…
Ask a Game Dev 2022-04-12 19:03:54
There’s a few reasons we don’t do this. Let me try to break it down for you.1. Because fans don’t always have the context to understand our decisionsMany decisions are made because of multiple factors. The team’s expert on combat mechanic design could …
Ask a Game Dev 2022-04-11 19:03:13
When you boil a critique down to its very core, you really end up with only three parts to it. Practically any critique can be broken down into something like this:
In my experience, the usefulness of a critique is inversely proportional to the ambigui…
Ask a Game Dev 2022-04-10 19:04:28
Humans tend to project our own wants, desires, feelings, etc. onto others — that is, we tend to assume other people believe what we believe, like what we like, dislike what we dislike, etc. This tendency has many far-reaching side effects such as confl…