Games media worth reading, watching or listening to.
Activision: Matchmaking Series: The Role of Skill in Matchmaking
- “With deprioritized skill, returning player rate was down significantly for 90% of players. […] This is a concern for all players, including the top 10%, as if this pattern is allowed to continue, players will exit the game in increased numbers. Eventually a top 10% player will become a top 20% player, and eventually a top 30% player, until only the very best players remain playing the game. Those original top players will become increasingly likely to not return to the game. Ultimately, this will result in a worse experience for all players, as there will be fewer and fewer players available to play with.”
Joey Schutz: The Case Against Gameplay Loops
- “If our gameplay loops are just facilitators of content, it’s no wonder their games are left hollow and inert. It’s no wonder we stop playing them. Why bother if everything that awaits us is just fluff, filler, sound and fury? If we’re just hamsters spinning wheels?”
Jon Perry: How Tabletop Design Helped Shape ‘UFO 50’
- “This talk chronicles how Jon Perry leveraged his background as a published board game designer to create novel 8-bit strategy games for the 2024 indie video game UFO 50. […] He does deep dives on how the designs of those games drew upon tabletop influences and principles. Along the way, he also shares some of the design tools he’s developed while working on board games, and how those tools can be applied to video games.”
Jonas Tyroller: This Problem Changes Your Perspective On Game Dev
- “Design is a search algorithm. You’re searching for the best game possible. If you want to delight as many players as possible or maximize your revenue, then aim for fun, appeal and a reasonable scope. Fun is for keeping players, appeal is for gaining players, and scope is for making sure you can finish the game. Optimize your search, cause the success of your project depends on it.”
Rym DeCoster & Scott Rubin: Every Game is the Same Game
- “How often do you describe a new game as “X game crossed with Y game?” This is Dominion crossed with Chess. This is Quake crossed with Dance Dance Revolution. This is a Civilization-style game but with puzzle elements. If games are collections of mechanics, and genres are also essentially collections of mechanics, then we can dig deep into how games are described to find the deepest and most core patterns of game.”
Ludokultur 