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A rolling newsfeed via RSS from the best creative minds in the industry
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Make it easy to come back. If someone has quit your game (See: Lesson #26), make it so easy to come back they can’t believe they quit in the first place. I’ll apologize right now for not making this lesson short and sweet like I usually do, but this one’s worth elaborating on. I’ll start [...] Read More...
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Make cancellation easy. Seriously, don’t make it difficult in the least. The worst thing you can possibly do is make someone call to cancel their subscription. It may yield you an extra month of their subscription money since people are generally lazy, but it will leave such a horrible taste in their mouth that they [...] Read More...
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Just because you have a good idea doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to implement it. Sometimes a good idea isn’t completely cohesive with the core focus of the game. Sometimes a good idea is very difficult and time-consuming to implement, and that time would be better spent on other things. Sometimes a good idea [...] Read More...
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A good idea stands on its own. It doesn’t matter where a good idea comes from, it’s still a good idea. Let go of your ego and learn to identify a good idea no matter where it comes from, even it’s from a non-designer, player, or even your mortal enemy. I’ve had a few good [...] Read More...
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If I were smart, I wouldn’t touch this with a ten foot pole. Luckily for you, I’m not smart, or I’m at least foolish enough to talk about microtransactions. RMT, or Real Money Transfer (or Trading), is the catalyst for some of the most heated debates in MMO development. Is it wrong? Is it right? [...] Read More...
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A couple more talks and subsequent write-ups worth noting. My old SOE (and VR1) friends John Blakely and Chris Cao talked at the conference. Cao and Jens Andersen discussed cross-platform MMO possibilities and the important considerations you must make when attempting such a feat. Blakely, Mark Jacobs, Raph Koster, and Eric Bethke talked about the [...] Read More...
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A great summary from what looks to have been a great talk: BioWare’s Gordon Walton Gives 12 Lessons from WoW. I agree with most of it, except this: “…He didn’t think it was relevant that WoW doesn’t delete inactive characters — the ‘namespace’ freed by deleting characters makes them worth deleting.” Never delete a character [...] Read More...
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It’s better to start with a great shell than a jumbled mass of crap. Okay, that wasn’t articulated well, but the point is this: If you are outlining a system or some content or whatever it is, don’t mash a bunch of random ideas together and hope they will work out. Instead, create a notes [...] Read More...
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Make decisions. Sometimes it’s better just to make a decision on something you’ve been thinking about for a long period of time and go with it. You’ll discover pretty quickly if that decision was the wrong one, and you can, in fact, change your mind on decisions you made before. It is not a crime [...] Read More...
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What on Earth is genre reset? Quite simply, it is technology (or something else) resetting a genre to the point that it has to be partially reconstructed or even rebuilt from scratch. Oftentimes, this means that it becomes much more difficult to do what was considered normal in the genre previously with the new technology. [...] Read More...
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I love making my character look unique. If you can identify me as “Blackguard” or “Luckbad” or any of the other characters I play immediately because you’re a friend of mine in a game, I am happy. Many games have professed to have better character creation than every else. Interestingly enough, ignorant people have agreed [...] Read More...
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… When I can make them myself?! Um, because you don’t deserve to be making games unless you learn from the mistakes of others. I’m tired of seeing mistakes repeatedly repeated. How many games have you played that had the same idiotic mistake that could have been avoided by looking at roughly any other game [...] Read More...
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Quality Assurance is not a four letter word. Test is, but that is beside the point. The point is, QA is vital to the success of your MMO. These games are simply too big for you to catch everything on the first pass. Never underestimate the power and passion of QA testers–and don’t treat them [...] Read More...
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Every feature demands a sacrifice. Anything you put in the game will almost invariably require you to sacrifice another potential feature or idea. Be willing to make the appropriate sacrifice. What feature belongs in your game more? Does it adhere to the game’s vision? Will it benefit the game more overall than whatever it is [...] Read More...
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… Became the outside voice for Tseric. I’m not sure whether he is “the” community manager or one of the reps for World of Warcraft, but it doesn’t really matter–he’s an official voice of Blizzard. If you don’t know what happened, he basically snapped at players for a dozen or so posts stating things that [...] Read More...
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