Issue 39 - MW2 isn't about shooting, Pre-Mortems, and News from Apple
ISSUE?#039
?? This week's quote
"We can want something without liking it, or like something without wanting it."
?? In the news
Apple is set to make a monumental change to the App Store on the iPhone. In response to looming regulations in the European Union, Apple has software engineers and services employees working on a project to “allow alternative app stores” on the iPhone and iPad. This change could launch as soon as iOS 17 next year.
Shares of?Roblox?were down 16% on Thursday after the gaming company released?a November business update?that showed slowing growth and a decline in how much it earns from its daily users.
Once fast-growing $100bn industry hit by post-pandemic changes in player behaviour and drop in consumer spending
?? More studios should do pre-mortems....
I think more studios should do pre-mortems.
Most game devs have the belief that their game is the best thing in the world and it’s going to be a massive success.
But the brutal truth is it’s not. It probably actually sucks in so many ways and is missing so many features.
Here’s a way to change your outlook and identify key risks that you can better try to address to either significantly improve your games chance of success or help you kill it now and move onto a game that does:
Do a premortem:
What are the reasons your game will fail?
Where are the biggest risks?
What are the unknowns?
Think of your game from an investor’s perspective. They often run through this exercise before making an investment.
Here’s a freebie - how are you legitimately going to solve the marketing problem? Why is your game at risk of failing to attract or get in front of the right players?
Be honest, who is your actual competition. Is your game actually worth the pain of switching and having to learn everything all over again? Is it really worth over coming the sunk cost fallacy of all that time and money they’ve spent? Can you really overcome the social connections those players have?
Remember this the whole time - most games cant overcome these challenges. What makes your game the rarity that can?
h/t?Tom Hammond
?? MW2 isn't about the shooting
Modern Warfare isn't about shooting your opponent.
It's actually more like rock-papers-scissors...
Did you know that there are real rock-paper-scissors tournaments?
People sign up, go through qualifiers, and compete in front of spectators. Prizes can be as high as $50,000.
But is there any strategy to the game? Isn't it just a game of random numbers and guesses?
No way.
领英推荐
It's a mind game. It's a mind game of watching your opponent and understanding the subtle intricacies that mathematics cannot explain.
We all love mind games and working our way through decision trees.
Let's look at Modern Warfare 2 as an example.
On the surface, Modern Warfare 2 looks like a game about shooting your opponent. That’s why they call it a shooter. And shooting is the simplest way to describe it.
Point at someone. Pull the trigger. Bam. Done.
Good mindless fun, right? But if shooting was all there was to it, people would quickly tire of it.
BUT people play this game for hundreds or even thousands of hours. - why?
Because the game isn’t really about shooting. It’s about the mind game. The mind game of predicting, deceiving, and outwitting an opponent—an intricate dance of mental evaluation and counter-evaluation.
Far from being mindless, the game is downright cerebral.
The Modern Warfare 2 game creates a thrilling mind game because of its highly accurate and deadly weapons.
Players can be killed with just one or two shots, so being caught off guard can be fatal.
This means that the key to success in the game is not just in how well players can shoot, but in how well they can anticipate and outmaneuver their opponents.
The game becomes a strategic battle of wits, where players must carefully plan their moves and always be on the lookout for potential threats.
That's why people play the game.
Why are they playing yours?
h/t?Michael Moran
??? User-centered design or emergence design?
While we all know that high modern design, where the designer holds all the power, is not something we should practice, how many of us think of emergence design?
User-centered design solves the problems of the average user but what distinguishes good products from excellent ones is the ability to give control over the design to the user.
By designing for flexibility where the product is open-ended and able to adapt to context as well as easy to learn, you're allowing your users to not only be a data source you collect and design for, but a collaborator who uses their will to control and transform the product into exactly what they need.
??? Best Podcast Throwback: Starting a Game Studio
Founders of game studios who have "been there and done that" share their top secrets and tricks on how to start your own game studio.
That's all for now. See you again next week. ??
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