Posts by Sjonsson

  • Bombard me with interesting articles!

    Quote from Deathy

    I can generally suggest BBC articles, they stand for quality (imo).

    But on a more game related look, have fun with this.


    The magic constant 0x5f3759df in Quake III's src code:

    http://h14s.p5r.org/2012/09/0x5f3759df.html

    Will make sure to check that out! Never heard of that magic constant, totally gonna read dat' stuff.


    Quote from Pampers

    reddit

    stay out of the default subreddits, if you want more in-depth and quality

    Hmm, is reddit really SFW enough? At home there's always some obnoxious stuff coming up, not often but often enough.

  • Bombard me with interesting articles!

    Hello there 'peeps!

    So to stay alive I recently picked up a evening job at a telephone operator as a salesman and thus I have (as all telephone salesmen do) a lot of idle time where people are not answering - and it is on this time I've started reading a lot of articles.

    Your favorite article(s) of all time, no matter if it's gonzo journalism, science, occultism, game development, politics, first world problems, wars - whatever!

    I just want more high-quality reading.

    That said, BOMBARD ME!

    Thanks!

    Edit: I'll make sure to list all of them in this post too.

    -=-=-=-=- List of Amazing Articles -=-=-=-=-

    GAME DEVELOPMENT

    CARD GAMES

    CULTURE

    MOVIES

    SPACE

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ar…-electrons.html


    -=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=--=-=-=-

  • Giving guest talk on Level Design

    Quote from Sentura

    I would personally not recommend Mapcore for them either, as it is not really a place for beginners. Instead I would link them to tutorials and encourage rapport between students. I think them seeing professionals post stuff could be detrimental towards their own abilities when just starting out.

    I don't agree with this. Sure the discussion should probably be done at a dedicated forum, student to student, but just reading topics and threads where proffessionals and experienced mappers discuss and iterate is just pure gold to observe. I know this cause when I arrived here I was a student myself and started lurking and boy did I learn much from all of you.

    You do make one point though, it can be hard seeing how good others more experienced people are but really that's something you gotta face and as long as you're not a complete rookie I don't think it's that bad. If they value prestige higher than the passion for mapping, maybe they should try something else, and more importantly - they wouldn't belong here.

  • Heroes of the Storm

    Also this happend. Valla (me) and Diablo wombocombo. It was super coool!


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  • Heroes of the Storm

    I've sat down with HoS for about a week and a half now. Finished about 30 matches and I have to agree it's actually refreshing.

    There is something I have mixed feelings about, that is the complete removal of individual progression. What do I mean by that? Well, in HoS there is global experience, no items and in that sense no personal economy - every gain or loss is for the team. This is something that definitely makes HoS stand out in comparison with other MOBAs where individual progression (or regression) is even encouraged by gold loss on death, EXP loss when you're not in range for XP gains et cetera.

    In my opinions HoS take on this is mostly better except when you are playing Solo Queue, that is getting matched up with random players as randomized teams always have weaker communication and teamplay overall. When you cannot get individual gains you cannot carry the matches and therefore HoS take will hinder you as a solo player.

    Another thing I don't like about HoS is the lack of items since that removes a layer of personalizing your way of playing a character and adapting to the match on the fly.

    My view of HoS is that Blizz have wanted to streamline the design and remove layers that does not facilitate teamplay. Also it is clear that the design does not contain very many rubberband mechanics, it is driven by snowball mechanics - if you lose a fight, you're gonna lose a tower or even a fort and it's irreversible which leads to shorter matches.

    I'm not sure whether EXP gain is based on how big the EXP gap between the teams are but I haven't noticed anything so far.

    I really like that HoS is objectives driven and not frags-driven.

    All in all, I like it even though I miss certain extra layers from other MOBAs I played.


    TLDR; I like HoS but I'm missing the extra layers.

    Yes, I take my MOBAs very seriously.

  • To F2P or P2P, that's the question!

    Don't say your sorry, I made the thread to hear that 'nonsense'! Jokes aside, we had different ideas for the spells.

    • First one is directly copying the analogy League of Legends goes about it, which is simply: you can only use the spells you have purchad with the in-game resource or with money. No spell is meant to be stronger than others just as LoLs champions aren't meant to be stronger than others. For me this one is a bit problematique yet players seem to accept this way.
    • Second one is, whenever a match starts all players will be able to pick from a pool of spells where all players' spells are gathered. That players who have bough spells will never have the upperhand from just buying spells but it will ensure that they are available.

    When you say limit character customisation I guess you are talking about cosmetics? And yes that's something we are planning to do too, we just fear that only cosmetics wouldn't do the job. The players would always have the same amount of spells no matter which one of these two ways we pick, it would only be the arsenal that'd be affected.

    At least until next year but it should totally be available to GDC in March.


    That's my view on in-game adds too, I don't think it would work well at all in PC games unless it's 100% immersed into the world. Like soda machine with coke or something - not that I ever want it, I just think it would work. I have been trying to get in touch with companies that do games similar to ours but they are hard to get in touch with. As I mentioned in my reply to jackophant no spells are meant to be stronger than others, the first basic spell you have from start is to be just as viable when you unlock the last one.

    The ethical dilemma is more about our values. I sat down with the team and we discussed for three hours straight about company values, what we envision to be the dream workplace and what we can do to reach that. What we established was that we do not want to become whale hunters, we don't want to develop games for the whales to spend more money, to find the sweetspot where they just pump in more coins - we want to target the fun-factor of the game and let the money come from that. I am not sure that is applicable at all on F2P just yet.


    Quote from FrieChamp

    Developing a game is hard. Developing a successful F2P game is very hard. If you operate on a shoe-string budget and don't have a Game Designer with F2P experience, a Product Manager and Data Analyst on your team, I'd advise against it. Instead of working on the core game you will soon be adding all these extra game layers, in-game shops, sales and events that are needed to HAVE A SHOT AT making the game financially viable. Factoring in that this is a PC game, I'd focus on making the core game an awesome experience, put it on Steam for a low price, work with the community and add some cosmetic items and such as IAP. To summarize: a hybrid-model is what I'd advise, too.

    Good points you're making there. The extra layers is my worry too, afraid that we won't make it to the finish line and even if we do all those extra layers would make the general quality of the game to topple. About hybrid models, I haven't seen that a whole lot and my personal worry is that players would question "Why the heck am I enforced IAP to get all the content when I already paid for the game?" I may be entirely wrong though.

    After reading all this so far my opinion of hybrid have gone up quite a bit.

    Once again, thanks for all the replies, it's gold to me!

  • Games W.I.P Thread

    We have been quiet for quite some time now and we have been saving up for a good ol' post with lots of pictures.

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      Art overload!The arena has gone through a lot of changes in terms of lighting as seen in the picture below. Currently the readability of the game has been decresed but this is something we will fix shortly, ending up with a much prettier game with a strong readability. As seen the magma shader have been reworked again, this time not because we weren't happy with the visual results but a technical restriction of Unreal Engine 4 which is to be implemented at a later stage, we noticed the last shader sadly caused the game to crash. [Blocked Image: http://www.frogsong-studios.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/MapOverview20141112.jpg] There have always been plans for the decorations of the level and it is not until now the artists have been going at it with continous focus. There are still more things to come and adjustments to make but here is the first take.[Blocked Image: http://www.frogsong-studios.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/DecoratedRock201411121.jpg] [Blocked Image: http://www.frogsong-studios.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/DinoDecoration20141112.jpg] [Blocked Image: http://www.frogsong-studios.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/WellGreenLighted20141112.jpg] Except for changes in decoration we have also rehauled some of the spell effects, for one; the Fireball! [Blocked Image: http://www.frogsong-studios.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/FireballEffect20141112.jpg] Anders have been trying out additional body types for the Acolytes and here are the results!<br> [Blocked Image: http://www.frogsong-studios.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/AcolyteBody04.jpg][Blocked Image: http://www.frogsong-studios.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/BodyTypesConcept01.jpg] The menus have also been rehauled, just look at it! The first picture is of the lobby, currently each player will show up in a corresponding spot and in the future this will be a place to show off all the fantastic (cosmetic) equipment you have! [Blocked Image: http://www.frogsong-studios.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Lobby20141113.jpg] The main menu is so far very basic and currently you can browse online servers, host and join. In the future we aim to have a statistics tab, a leaderboard and other kinds of cool functionality. [Blocked Image: http://www.frogsong-studios.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/MainMenu20141113.jpg] The programmers have been working long and hard on a great deal of things such as making and fixing bugs. Jokes aside, they did make some great work, for one they have started implementing the Spell Shop that appears in between each match round. They also finished (for the time being) working on the Server Lists along with the Host and Join functions. What's missing now is the so called Master Server where we handle all players wanting to login to the game, yes that means you'll all have logins! (No, that does't mean it won't be seamlessly integrated with Steam.) What's more?Meeting-wise it has been calmer than prior weeks as we have focused hard on the production but most likely that will change once we got the MVP (minimum viable product) up and running. We are still in a wild discussion about Free-2-Play versus Pay-2-Play business model for the game as well as whether we should aim to get an investor or publisher for the game (not the company, we aim to always stay independent.) Next friday we will be revealing something really big. Biggest reveal yet for sure! Stay tuned, stay magical! Wanna join in for testing some time? Just post here or send a PM! / Stefan

  • To F2P or P2P, that's the question!

    Quote from 2d-chris

    2d-chris, on 14 Nov 2014 - 3:12 PM, said:

    Rift, which admittedly launched as pay to play.......

    I did not know that a big game like Rift had a hybrid model up and working smoothly. Totally agree with you about how this is the future. We never thoroughly discussed a hybrid model, I will bring that up on our next meeting and see where it takes us.

    This far it's been more about the models Dota and LoL is doing it alongside usual P2P with DLCs.

    &nbsp;

    Quote from Sigma

    Sigma, on 14 Nov 2014 - 3:23 PM, said:

    This tells me that a supportable monetization strategy is in order, but furthermore it tells me that you need to separate the concepts of what you consider break even with what you consider the operating budget....

    Secondly, your market analysis has informed you that nearly all other genre contenders operate under one type of monetization (F2P). Furthermore, the F2P mindset is heavily prevalent in consumer behaviors. This leads me to believe that F2P on its face should be your target monetization strategy, but as you stated scalability of such a strategy poses problems (can you elaborate here?)

    Perhaps instead of going the free to play but pay for content route as the primary monetization driver (which I will throw in will have a large user conversion ratio (smaller number of players to capitalize on) based on other company data releases on industry websites) you can increase your monetization rate per player by incorporating an advertising network with a more passive advertising plan. This is fairly common and can be done in non-interferring ways and will create addional, more reliable revenues to plan with.

    I totally see what you mean with operating budget vs break even. I guess I used the term 'break even' in the wrong context. Break even budget and the requisites for the operating budget to break even are not the same I guess! I'll make sure to split those up, thanks.

    Frankly, our market analysis doesn't strech very longer than what we know of the market by talking with a lot of fellow MOBA gamers and other kinds of people. We do not have the tools to make an extensive market analysis and therefore we will only assume that what we think is our target audience may be entirely wrong.

    When I mentioned scalability I was mainly referring to two things, scaling amount of players and over how long time. Let's say our shop pricing is very badly adjusted for our audience and noone is buying anything (no cosmetics or whatever F2P-incentive we are using), yet the amount of players keep on racing in over the passing months - then our operating costs will tower sky-high over our income and the company (due to a very low initial capital) will go bankrupt very quickly. This could not happen as quickly if we would go P2P as each player playing the game ensures income.

    About the advertising method, there have already been a company contacting us about in-game advertisements and personally I totally distantiate from it. I believe games should be about entering another world and if there's a Coke sign there all of a sudden the immersion is broken. Now, if I silence the visionary in me and bring out the economist I totally see how this could help out with all those 'leech customers' who doesn't actually pay anything but play it anyway. You mention this is fairly common, I know that's the case in mobile games but I have never seen this done in a PC game. Could you give me examples?

    &nbsp;

    Quote from jackophant

    jackophant, on 14 Nov 2014 - 5:23 PM, said:

    But don't do a Hi-Rez and release an F2P game and then a year in undercut everyone who spent money by offering a &pound;30 &quot;goty&quot; edition which comes with everything...

    The upcoming game TOXIKK by REAKKTOR studios are using quite a good pre-order model imo. Each pre-order package comes with increasing perks which could be attractive for early adopters, almost like their own kickstarter. They are P2P however, so I'm not entirely sure how it works.

    &nbsp;

    Maybe I could suggest a slightly altered method in which you have a range of payment methods. Not dissimilar to faceit's payment plan, where you would offer a free (albeit slightly limited version) and then increasing levels of price to purchase AND perks you get in the game over the levels below you. This way the game is still free but there's encouragement to upgrade your &quot;purchase level&quot; and everyone can try it for free first if needed.

    So you're saying, don't piss off all that F2P-paying players with a 'Get it all' offering later on? Have it in there from start, right?

    And yes, early-bird incentives are probably a really good idea, which I think can be incorporated in both P2P and F2P.

    Restrictions vs how much you pay is perfectly doable I think, though it is probably very hard to know how much you can actually restrict the players alongside the pricing. For our game my thoughts have been restricting the amount of spells a player can use, still give a very broad range of spells so you feel there is food on your plate, just that if you want the whole buffet you gotta pay.

    &nbsp;

    Quote from Taylor

    Taylor, on 14 Nov 2014 - 8:18 PM, said:

    One important difference between F2P and P2P is in the former players have absolutely no investment in your game and will leave at the drop of a hat, whereas if they&rsquo;ve sunk some money into already they will be prepared to carry on playing. This means you have to dedicate a lot more time to testing, retention and metrics to make sure these players are still around. This doesnt mean just have a good introduction, but usually some amount of coddling through an &ldquo;onboarding experience.&rdquo;

    The other difference you&rsquo;ve probably got covered. F2P doesn&rsquo;t work if the game is 5 hours long and then uninstalled, but as a competitive multiplayer game you probably only need to chuck on daily log on bonuses or whatever.

    SMITE entered the MOBA space with pretty much both models. The game is free to play and you can unlock characters with in-game currency, but there is a &pound;30 character pack that just unlocks everyone. Another model you might want to consider is just to go DLC crazy like Magicka or Blah Simulator but it&rsquo;s tricky to fit this into a competitive multiplayer game.

    On your last point about F2P... it probably won&rsquo;t. In a F2P economy you have some players who put a few months in and go &ldquo;I quite like this game, I owe it &pound;5 I&rsquo;ll buy a skin&rdquo; but most of the money you&rsquo;ll make is rich people just buying everything they can. This is the whole whales/spenders thing.

    I got the picture you have to do tons and tons of metrics for the F2P model and that's something we don't have resources for and even if we did I'm not sure that's the way we'd want to develop games.

    Yeah, I appreciate the model Smite has as unlocking the champions actually doesn't take all that long, even though it is dangerously close to Pay-2-Win. In comparison the pricing Leauge of Legends do per champion (which I think is scandalous), I feel HiRez are giving the players a fair deal. About DLC-mania model, I like it but have to agree, I also think it's hard to fit into the competitive scene because of splitting the player base and getting new players into the "current meta" (read vanilla + all dlcs).

    About the last F2P point, that was something a friend of mine noticed who launched a Day Z like MMO. Problem is: I think it's very case specific. Yes, I do believe you are right that F2P is all about whale-fishing, which brings my thoughts to the next layer of problematique - the ethical one.

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    Thanks for replying everyone, really useful!

  • To F2P or P2P, that's the question!

    Hello there fellow Mapcorians!

    You may or may not know of me and my fellow gang's studio called Frogsong Studios yet unless you've seen the posts I wrote in the Game W.I.P thread. For the last seven months we have been developing a game called Spellsworn which is a player versus player, arena styled game where each player has a wizard cast spells and knock out opponents out of the arena into the hazard zone. Last man/team standing that is. (Some of you may have played the WarCraft 3 mod, Warlocks, this is pretty much the same thing.)


    [Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/pCHp3PE.jpg]

    For the latest five months we have had an ongoing discussion about whether the game should be free-to-play or not. Of course we are going to skip the Pay-2-win elements entirely but that's not the biggest point of interest here. The biggest one is, why would we make the game free-to-play and is it a good idea?

    From all the discussions we had we realised a couple of things (or at least we thought this is how it goes):

    • Our target audience expects free-to-play (read Moba players).
    • We cannot be sure moba players actually are the audience, since we had no big scale testing yet.
    • There is a lot of Data Analysis and Data Mining you have to do to get free-to-play working properly.
    • There is a very high risk rate at releasing a free-to-play game due to possible misscalcuations in the Break Even Equation (read Pricing, Maintenance costs etc.)
    • Releasing a free-to-play game without a buffert in your company's wallet is extremely risky if the game get's popular quickly. (If the break even equation is poorly done and scales negatively, you're in a lot of trouble.)
    • All other bird's view arena styled games (yes there are more than MOBAs) use F2P.
    • F2P will bring a lot of extra layers to the game and thus to the development.
    • With a working break even equation the game's lifetime is 'infinitely' exandable.
    • Decreases the threshold for players to actually try out the game, thus adding more opponents for players, facilitating matchmaking et cetera.
    • Management costs will skyrocket.
    • Developing a F2P game with a dedicated analyst or economist can reduce the risks to an extent.
    • It will take an amount of time before players start buying things in the free-to-play shop, differentiating from weeks to months.

    On the flipside of things, what about pay-to-play?

    • No players eating up 'unpaid server time' (read our budget.) If they play it, the paid it.
    • Finite 'paid server time' per player budget, unless we release DLCs or alike. That said, each player will have a sum of ours to player included in the price of the game.
    • P2P business model is A LOT safer to scale.
    • Does not tie us up into developing F2P-content (cosmetics and such) just for people to buy, but rather expand the game in a direction lead by gameplay.
    • Is 'guaranteed' to bring us money.
    • We can release the game and go on to the next project while only a part of the studio works on DLCs.
    • If the visual profile of the game doesn't speak to players strongly + the fact that they have to pay before trying it, the entrance threshold for the game may be too big and leave us stranded with no players.

    We have split opinions on this in the studio where mine is: I do believe we could do a very good F2P game out of Spellsworn, just not without money in our pockets before actual launch. I believe F2P development is very dependent on marigins.


    Now what I would love to hear is your take on how to go with it? Why and why not?


    Pretty please, give us more perspective!

    Cheers, Stefan