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OneEightHundred
Feb 28, 2008

Soon, we will be unstoppable!
Commute 15-20 minute mostly-highway drive from burbs to burbs.

Lunch = Aside from BYOL, there are some sandwiches+salads for sale in the break room, a cafe in a shared area outside of the office (which unfortunately was used as an excuse by the property owner to ban food trucks, boo), a few shopping centers about a 10 minute drive out. If you want something fancy, then you can drive 20 minutes drive to downtown Durham and have a tarantula burger.

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mutata
Mar 1, 2003

I commute 3 seconds to my desk downstairs. Lunch is instant noodles and a fried egg. Freelance life wooooo!

My longest commute was probably 20 minutes bike ride to the bus, then a 1.25 hr bus ride. I've also had an hour long car commute. Shortest actual commute was ~15 minutes by car.

I try to bring a lunch as much as possible since eating out over time is a huge unnecessary expense.

Gearman
Dec 6, 2011

Game dev job: 25 minute commute by car in the burbs. Office was near the center of a small town with a Wholefoods and some restaurants within walking distance. Mostly brought my own lunch, with the occasional trip to one of the local places with some co-workers. No served food aside from crunch dinners. Sodas, Red Bull and free coffee though.

Non-game dev job: 120 minutes by car or train. Either one costs ~$7,000 a year either in train passes or parking passes. Office is right in the middle of the city, with lots of restaurants. We have lots of kitchens but no on-site chefs or anything. Free coffee, seltzer, snacks, and beer though. I usually bring in my lunch with the occasional walk to a restaurant nearby with co-workers. Now that the weather's nice and baseball season has started, I've begun taking the train over to the ballpark for some gameday hot dogs or sausages. It's pretty amazing that I can do that.

Studio
Jan 15, 2008



GC_ChrisReeves posted:

Genuine question. What is your commute like and what do you do on lunchbreaks?

For myself, I can walk the whole eight minutes down the road into work no big deal as I live city centre, but how far out are you all commuting? Does this mean you have to stay in a more expensive city hub or is living further out in the burbs an option for you?

As for lunches, we don't have any on-site catering and I'm lazy so more often than not I'm off getting lunch in the centre of dundee, coffee shop, baked potato, Boots sandwich, I could probably save a lot of money packing my lunches. But some of y'all work in these huge office campuses and often have on-site catering and food courts and stuff.

Tell me about the not-work related aspects of your job.

15-20 minute drive, 15 minutes walking from our overflow parking lot to our office (or 10 minutes if I take the shuttle, but I prefer the walk).

Lunch is served at my office and it's alright, but it means I rarely leave the area for lunch. We have a new on-site gym, so I'll exercise and eat now :toot:.

Wilko
Dec 3, 2013

:toot:
40 minutes by train to work, right in the city centre. Closer would be nice, but Stockholm is loving stupid small apartments for extortionate rents, and I can read on the ride in instead. Lunch is BYO, go out to a restaurant or bring it back. Now we're getting some nicer weather cos spring's coming round I take my lunch up to the roof and eat in the sun.

Hughlander
May 11, 2005

Office is downtown and I’m in new construction at the edge of suburbs. So 40 mins in morning and 25 at night.

Lunch is something from the kitchen between meetings then fitness center for an hour.

Johnny Landmine
Aug 2, 2004

PURE FUCKING AINOGEDDON

GC_ChrisReeves posted:

Genuine question. What is your commute like and what do you do on lunchbreaks?
Tell me about the not-work related aspects of your job.

My commute is about 35-40 minutes on the train, with roughly 40 more minutes' walking to/from stations. I listen to a lot of podcasts. Three days out of the week I get up extra early and hit the gym; there's a fitness center in my building, but I go to a different place because I like to exercise before work and it doesn't open early enough. So there's about 10 minutes' more walking on those days.

For lunch, I bring my own from home four days out of five. On Fridays, a bunch of the English speakers on staff usually go out for lunch to kvetch about the week. There's a bunch of pretty decent restaurants and takeout places nearby. There's a cheap lunch delivery option that a lot of my coworkers use but I don't because while it would be convenient, it usually doesn't look super good.

With the rest of my lunch break I usually take a walk/run minor errands or play games by myself or with coworkers (usually me getting destroyed at Tekken). This past week I've been participating in a company game jam, though, so a lot of lunch time's been going to that.

Tricky Ed
Aug 18, 2010

It is important to avoid confusion. This is the one that's okay to lick.


My commute is about 20 minutes from 'burb to 'burb by car. We're not part of a complex but there are a few restaurants within walking distance, a whole lot more within 10 minutes' drive, a delivery option, or in times of duress there are enough free snacks to cobble together a meal. Lots of people bring their lunches and while I should for health and financial reasons, I don't because I like seeing the outside of the office for a little bit every day.

When I first moved out here to SoCal there were generic trucks where you could get an okay meal for $5 or so but everyone's trying to out-epic each other now. We used to have food trucks regularly but as meal prices passed those of the restaurants nearby and everyone started putting truffle oil on everything, people stopped buying their stuff so now we don't get them any more.

ninjewtsu
Oct 9, 2012

how big of a deal is the international market in the games you make?

is it treated as a kind of "if other countries want to buy our game that's gravy" deal or are you ever altering the game to appeal to an international audience?

as a related question, how much do different countries have different tastes in games/certain game designs? is a good game recognized as a good game pretty much everywhere, or are there certain things that can make reception to a game divided depending on the country in question?

Cactus
Jun 24, 2006

Sometime back I was looking into why Splatoon 2's matchmaking system was so seemingly quirky and counter-intuitive and I came across a Reddit thread where a Western dev working in Japan posted an article describing the difference in culture, and the conception of what games are. It makes for a fascinating read:

https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/splatoon-2-hideo-kojima-nintendo-japanese-games-w501322

There are a number of interesting quotes but this one caught my attention:

quote:

You once said that when you went to work for Kojima at Konami, you possessed “westerner’s knowledge” that was a hindrance rather than a help.
“Hindrance” is probably not the word. It is a hindrance if you persist in that way of thinking while the team is going in a different direction.

It’s not just language. It’s a way to perceive games, and the user. I see it on Splatoon right now. You look at Splatoon, and then people look at Overwatch. These are two totally different games. Overwatch is a self-service game. You boot the game and say, “Hey, I like this mode. I like this character. And I’m only ever going to play this mode, this character, and this map.” You’re like, “I’m going to get what I want.”

But in Japan, everything is tailored. You’ve probably heard Sheena Iyengar’s TED talk, in which she went to a restaurant in Japan and tried to order sugar in her green tea. The people at the cafe said, “One does not put sugar in green tea,” and then, “We don’t have sugar.” But when she ordered coffee instead, it did come with sugar! In Japan, there’s a sense of, “We’re making this thing for you, and this is how we think this thing is better enjoyed.” This is why, in Splatoon, the maps rotate every couple of hours. And the modes change. “I bought this game. Why can’t I just enjoy this game the way I want?” That’s not how we think here. Yes, you did buy the game. But we made this game. And we’re pretty confident about how this game should be enjoyed. If you stick with us, and if you get past your initial resistance, you’re going to have the time of your life with this game. You’re really going to love it.

You think you know what we want better than we know what we want?
We think we know what you don’t know you want.

You think you know what you want. But we know what you will want once you understand it. There has to be some effort from the player to play ball with the developer, just like in a restaurant where there is a course menu. You enter the restaurant, and this is the course today. It’s displayed outside the restaurant. When you enter the restaurant, you know what you’re going to eat. Once you’re inside, if you want to eat something different, that’s not how it works.

With Splatoon 2, there definitely are people who want to know why they can’t play the Salmon Run mode all the time.
I’m not allowed to speak on it, because I’m not the game director. What I can say, and what I think can be said, is that there are lots of reasons. You have to trust us that if you could play Salmon Run online anytime, that would result in a worse experience for you and everybody.

As you can imagine the reddit thread got very salty and entitled about that, but I found myself agreeing with him. It's your game and you have the right to design it the way you think is best. I changed my opinion on Splatoon 2 after reading that, and I've been having a lot of fun with it to this day. Immediately after:

quote:

You’ve suggested that Western devs playtest too much. Why?
It’s the designer’s job to make playtests as unnecessary as possible. It’s a cheeky statement, but it’s true. When you hear what Ubisoft, Naughty Dog, Valve, all those guys are doing--they track your eyes, they do it for months with hundreds of players--that’s a waste of money. If you feel that you need that much playtesting, and if playtesting results in significant fixes to your game, something went wrong before the playtests.

Do devs ITT agree or disagree with this? With the quality of recent games released by, for example, Nintendo, I'm inclined to give their views on these kinds of things a lot of merit. Could Western studios benefit by taking a leaf out of the Eastern way of doing things?

edit: This also reminds me of when I first got my Switch and spend a few days decrying that Nintendo had swapped the a and b buttons on the pad that traditionally serve as the "accept" and "cancel/back out" functions that have become standardised across the industry. Why are they trolling me?!? Then after a while I got used to it and it clicked: When I pick up a switch controller my brain goes into "Switch mode" and when I pick up the 360 controller to play a PC game it reverts back. It's subtle but really clever IMO - I don't think Nintendo were being belligerent and swapping them just because they could. They are making their product take a slightly different space in your mind; you know you're playing a SWITCH so you use a different... I dunno, neural map? I'm not explaining what I think they did very well, but succinctly, it's a way to differentiate theirs from everyone else's in a more subconscious way.

Cactus fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Apr 25, 2018

leper khan
Dec 28, 2010
Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

Cactus posted:

Sometime back I was looking into why Splatoon 2's matchmaking system was so seemingly quirky and counter-intuitive and I came across a Reddit thread where a Western dev working in Japan posted an article describing the difference in culture, and the conception of what games are. It makes for a fascinating read:

https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/splatoon-2-hideo-kojima-nintendo-japanese-games-w501322

There are a number of interesting quotes but this one caught my attention:


As you can imagine the reddit thread got very salty and entitled about that, but I found myself agreeing with him. It's your game and you have the right to design it the way you think is best. I changed my opinion on Splatoon 2 after reading that, and I've been having a lot of fun with it to this day. Immediately after:


Do devs ITT agree or disagree with this? With the quality of recent games released by, for example, Nintendo, I'm inclined to give their views on these kinds of things a lot of merit. Could Western studios benefit by taking a leaf out of the Eastern way of doing things?

edit: This also reminds me of when I first got my Switch and spend a few days decrying that Nintendo had swapped the a and b buttons on the pad that traditionally serve as the "accept" and "cancel/back out" functions that have become standardised across the industry. Why are they trolling me?!? Then after a while I got used to it and it clicked: When I pick up a switch controller my brain goes into "Switch mode" and when I pick up the 360 controller to play a PC game it reverts back. It's subtle but really clever IMO - I don't think Nintendo were being belligerent and swapping them just because they could. They are making their product take a slightly different space in your mind; you know you're playing a SWITCH so you use a different... I dunno, neural map? I'm not explaining what I think they did very well, but succinctly, it's a way to differentiate theirs from everyone else's in a more subconscious way.

Microsoft swapped a and b when they made their controller. SNES predates it by quite a long time.

Circle is the button typically used in Japan for accept on PlayStation controllers. Also on a lot of ps1 games. It’s where A is on Nintendo hardware.

Canine Blues Arooo
Jan 7, 2008

when you think about it...i'm the first girl you ever spent the night with

Grimey Drawer

Cactus posted:


Do devs ITT agree or disagree with this? With the quality of recent games released by, for example, Nintendo, I'm inclined to give their views on these kinds of things a lot of merit. Could Western studios benefit by taking a leaf out of the Eastern way of doing things?


Disclaimer: I'm not a designer.

I think most Western Games, especially ones with larger budgets, lack any kind of cohesive direction or vision. I think a big reason why the indie scene is so hot is partially because the toolsets have become significantly more accessible, but also because there is a of 'character' that comes through when a game is the vision of a single person. I strongly believe that games like Stardew Valley, Meat Boy, or The Witness simply cannot happen behind the doors of a studio that has millions of dollars on the line because it's too scary to put that money down and not 'guarantee' a return. The games feel so hollow, so soulless as to not even feel like a game, and players figure this out. I don't think developers don't really mean for this to happen either, but little by little, what might have started out as a great idea gets chipped away at by Market Research™ or User Experience Testing™ or Focus Testing™ or simply time.

The problem is that all that testing compromises the game in ways that are really subtle. If you are making a game that's supposed to be a good game, then Discovery is what will carry your audience for years. Discovery can happen within the Systems, often expressed as 'depth'. Magic the Gathering and Path of Exile are masters of producing relatively little content and hooking their audience forever because there is always something new to Discover in the game systems. The other venue of Discovery is content - The traditional MMO way of doing things: Add more stuff.

Here, the problem is that your Market Research / User Experience / Focus Testing groups are awful at measuring either one of these things. Systems are something you don't really start engaging with meaningfully until you are several hours into the game, but can carry a game for literally thousands of hours if they are strong enough. The amount of content in a game is hard to determine by some person playing the game for between 30 and 120 minutes. So instead, these things measure First Impressions, and that's it. If the game direction is weak, they'll put all the eggs in that basket and focus hard on First Impressions Market Research and if you do this enough, you end up with Destiny 2: A game with less depth then the kiddie pool and not enough content to make up for it.

Edit: I'd instead like to see a shift to a spot where designers are primarily seeking out expert subjective and objective feedback from players who have thousands of hours in the genre. These are the players that can sniff out problems with your systems a mile away and while the more modern market research is useful for initial acceptance testing, I'd sooner push hard to use strong players as the basis for the feedback you apply, especially when it comes to game systems.

This came off more like a rant! It kind of is! I've seen this happen first hand and heard stories from others and it's always frustrating to wonder what could have been. I think it's why people are excited about anything Hideo Kojima makes, or Team Ico, or games like Nier: Automata. They feel like they have strong, confident direction and a vision. It certainly seems like Japanese developers are more willing to embrace the idea of 'vision' more than the western developers and while it often results in a game that may only appeal to a small audience, I think it's also the only way you will ever see something truly brilliant. I think people are generally right to hope for more of that because it's increasingly rare.

Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Apr 25, 2018

Triarii
Jun 14, 2003

Cactus posted:

Do devs ITT agree or disagree with this? With the quality of recent games released by, for example, Nintendo, I'm inclined to give their views on these kinds of things a lot of merit. Could Western studios benefit by taking a leaf out of the Eastern way of doing things?
He's kind of saying "if you do everything perfectly on the first try, there's no need to playtest and iterate on it" which is, uhh, technically true I guess. But then he points out Portal as a good game that he approves of when that game was almost certainly playtested and tuned to hell and back, so I'm not sure he quite has his ideas straight. It's also probably a lot easier to nail, say, level design on your first attempt when you're making a Mario game with designers who have been making Mario games for 20 years and know exactly how players respond to every sort of situation; if you're trying crazy new ideas (like in Portal) then it's much harder to know what's going to be obvious or unclear to a new player while you're designing it.

As far as that "tailored" game experience, there's definitely a certain amount of protecting players from themselves in any game (western or eastern), since players will sabotage their own fun even when more fun options are available if you're not careful. Enforcing variety is often an example of that, because given a choice, players will often repeat something until they get sick of the game and quit when they would've had fun for longer if they tried out different things (they will also, without fail, complain that they aren't being allowed to repeat the thing they want to do forever).

And, uh, yeah, the Switch isn't Nintendo's first console. They've been doing this whole thing for a while. Surprised you hadn't heard.

Cactus
Jun 24, 2006

The last console I had was a cube. I missed out on the wii and thus the whole motion control gimmick, which is why the switch feels so new and fresh to me right now.

Haifisch
Nov 13, 2010

Objection! I object! That was... objectionable!



Taco Defender

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

The problem is that your Market Research / User Experience / Focus Testing groups are awful at measuring either one of these things. Systems are something you don't really start engaging with meaningfully until you are several hours into the game, but can carry a game for literally thousands of hours if they are strong enough. The amount of content in a game is hard to determine by some person playing the game for between 30 and 120 minutes. So instead, these things measure First Impressions, and that's it. If the game direction is weak, they'll put all the eggs in that basket and focus hard on First Impressions Market Research and if you do this enough, you end up with Destiny 2: A game with less depth then the kiddie pool and not enough content to make up for it.
This makes me wonder if there's a feedback loop going on here.

People 'know' that most people only play the first parts of the game(assuming a game with a definite beginning and end, or at least a state where you've done basically everything there is to do), so that part is designed to be the strongest & less attention is given to later gameplay, which makes the game more boring as it goes on, which makes people quit playing before reaching the end, which reaffirms the common knowledge that relatively few players will reach the end of any given game.

I'd honestly be curious to see if there was a big difference in big studio games vs indie games when it comes to people reaching the end. Although you'd have to control for differences in expected game length, too.

leper khan
Dec 28, 2010
Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

Haifisch posted:

This makes me wonder if there's a feedback loop going on here.

People 'know' that most people only play the first parts of the game(assuming a game with a definite beginning and end, or at least a state where you've done basically everything there is to do), so that part is designed to be the strongest & less attention is given to later gameplay, which makes the game more boring as it goes on, which makes people quit playing before reaching the end, which reaffirms the common knowledge that relatively few players will reach the end of any given game.

I'd honestly be curious to see if there was a big difference in big studio games vs indie games when it comes to people reaching the end. Although you'd have to control for differences in expected game length, too.

We actually do know that though and it isn’t a new phenomenon. Scrape trophy data for 360 games for example. Or steam :rip:. The data absolutely backs it up, or at least did ~10 years ago and there’s no reason it should have changed.

A good number of people won’t get past the title screen.

Gerblyn
Apr 4, 2007

"TO BATTLE!"
Fun Shoe
I think there's a big difference between using focus groups/market research to guide your creative vision, and doing user research to see how players react to your game. The former can certainly dilute the vision of a game, and lead to cliched stories, and stuff like that. The latter, however, is unequivocally good.

Take Stardew Valley, the developer skipped early access, and put out a finished game that he was happy with as a completed product. He then released 8 patches over the space of 3 weeks fixing bugs, implementing usability improvements and doing balance tweaks, all based on feedback from his users. That was user testing, he just did it after release rather than during development, and you can clearly see how much it helped improve the game.

Hughlander
May 11, 2005

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

The problem is that all that testing compromises the game in ways that are really subtle. If you are making a game that's supposed to be a good game, then Discovery is what will carry your audience for years. Discovery can happen within the Systems, often expressed as 'depth'. Magic the Gathering and Path of Exile are masters of producing relatively little content and hooking their audience forever because there is always something new to Discover in the game systems. The other venue of Discovery is content - The traditional MMO way of doing things: Add more stuff.

Here, the problem is that your Market Research / User Experience / Focus Testing groups are awful at measuring either one of these things. Systems are something you don't really start engaging with meaningfully until you are several hours into the game, but can carry a game for literally thousands of hours if they are strong enough. The amount of content in a game is hard to determine by some person playing the game for between 30 and 120 minutes. So instead, these things measure First Impressions, and that's it. If the game direction is weak, they'll put all the eggs in that basket and focus hard on First Impressions Market Research and if you do this enough, you end up with Destiny 2: A game with less depth then the kiddie pool and not enough content to make up for it.

My problem with that is that I'm in mobile games. There's pretty much zero chance of someone getting to 120 minutes unless they're fully hooked by a tightly crafted new player experience. You can complain about the metrics but I know the percent of app launches that never get past the first user input. I know the session length of that first session and the retention to the second. The kind of games I'm talking about don't have several hours to start engaging meaningfully because you'll have finished your poop and deleted the app well before then if you're not already invested.

I can launch a dozen split-tests while the game is in test market to know which one raised the 10 day retention by 3% and compete directly the monetary value that will have when the game goes world-wide. You drat well believe that I'm going to spend that time to do so, I'd be a fool otherwise.

Cocoa Crispies
Jul 20, 2001

Vehicular Manslaughter!

Pillbug

Hughlander posted:

I can launch a dozen split-tests while the game is in test market to know which one raised the 10 day retention by 3% and compete directly the monetary value that will have when the game goes world-wide. You drat well believe that I'm going to spend that time to do so, I'd be a fool otherwise.

We're talking about games, not portable dopamine stimulators.

Canine Blues Arooo
Jan 7, 2008

when you think about it...i'm the first girl you ever spent the night with

Grimey Drawer

Hughlander posted:

My problem with that is that I'm in mobile games. There's pretty much zero chance of someone getting to 120 minutes unless they're fully hooked by a tightly crafted new player experience. You can complain about the metrics but I know the percent of app launches that never get past the first user input. I know the session length of that first session and the retention to the second. The kind of games I'm talking about don't have several hours to start engaging meaningfully because you'll have finished your poop and deleted the app well before then if you're not already invested.

I can launch a dozen split-tests while the game is in test market to know which one raised the 10 day retention by 3% and compete directly the monetary value that will have when the game goes world-wide. You drat well believe that I'm going to spend that time to do so, I'd be a fool otherwise.

For sure! I don't think the kind of ideals I laid out necessarily apply to the Mobile space (yet), and I think the market there functions quite a bit differently.

That said, I think there is serious money for a group that figures out how to engage players in a deeper way. It's hard as hell (and risky...and expensive) to break from the mold that the mobile market has established, and I think we are seeing the first signs of it with games like Fortnite, but the mobile market was such a rapid race to the bottom that it's seriously compromised the 'vision' and 'art' part of the games. It's further complicated in that the mobile interface just isn't that great and isn't conducive to building more complicated games. It's really, really hard to apply those ideals to the mobile space, but I do think it's possible.

I think the key here though is abandoning the metrics that mobile traditionally uses and embracing the ideals of a 'vision'. I will also acknowledge that getting someone to fund someone's 'vision' on the mobile market space will prove to be quite challenging, but until that becomes more normal, Cocoa Crispies kinda has a point.

quote:

Take Stardew Valley, the developer skipped early access, and put out a finished game that he was happy with as a completed product. He then released 8 patches over the space of 3 weeks fixing bugs, implementing usability improvements and doing balance tweaks, all based on feedback from his users. That was user testing, he just did it after release rather than during development, and you can clearly see how much it helped improve the game.

Certainly! But it's really important to acknowledge the methodology here: The audience was 'selected' from people who wanted this game, and from people who cared enough and played enough to write up unsolicited feedback. This is as opposed to people who you select randomly, who are asked to provide feedback and might not necessarily have any passion for a given product or idea. The Stardew Valley approach of user research is exactly what I advocate for: More 'expert' opinions and less focus testing of an audience that fits a desired demographic.

Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Apr 25, 2018

Studio
Jan 15, 2008



Uh, did Stardew Valley have like, no beta testers or people that played it besides the dev before release?

Post-release support is not user testing, because it's not actually a test.

Cactus
Jun 24, 2006

Studio posted:

Uh, did Stardew Valley have like, no beta testers or people that played it besides the dev before release?

Post-release support is not user testing, because it's not actually a test.

Isn't that just a different word for the same thing? You either invite a group of people to play your game before release and make changes based on their feedback and call it a "beta" or you release your game and make changes based on player feedback and call it "patching" - but it's still the same process, no?

Gerblyn
Apr 4, 2007

"TO BATTLE!"
Fun Shoe

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

Certainly! But it's really important to+ acknowledge the methodology here: The audience was 'selected' from people who wanted this game, and from people who cared enough and played enough to write up unsolicited feedback. This is as opposed to people who you select randomly, who are asked to provide feedback and might not necessarily have any passion for a given product or idea. The Stardew Valley approach of user research is exactly what I advocate for: More 'expert' opinions and less focus testing of an audience that fits a desired demographic.

I work with a user research lab, and they do not pick people at random from the street. They pick people who have an interest in the type of game that is being tested, and have played other games in the same genre. When you get the research results, you can see which participant said what, as well as what gaming experience/interests each participant has so you can make decide how much you want to value that user's opinion. I'm not sure what experience you have with these labs, but as far as I'm aware this is a fairly standard approach.

CodfishCartographer
Feb 23, 2010

Gadus Maprocephalus

Pillbug

Cocoa Crispies posted:

We're talking about games, not portable dopamine stimulators.

We live in 2018, mobile gaming isn’t just skinnerbox dopamine shots anymore. If last year’s lootbox bullshit is anything to go by, mobile gaming is FAR ahead of AAA gaming in a lot of respects. the poo poo EA was doing with Battlefront 2 hasn’t been A Thing That Works in the mobile game industry for quite a few years. While paying 100% attention to user metrics isn’t always the best way to solve a problem, I do think that it’s valuable and that mobile gaming has a far better read on how to do it compared to AAA studios.

Hughlander
May 11, 2005

Cocoa Crispies posted:

We're talking about games, not portable dopamine stimulators.

What exactly do you think playing the latest god of war does to you at a chemical level?

GeeCee
Dec 16, 2004

:scotland::glomp:

"You're going to be...amazing."

Cocoa Crispies posted:

We're talking about games, not portable dopamine stimulators.

We are talking about games because mobile and f2p are games too, no matter what the r/gaming hivemind might suggest otherwise.

ShadowHawk
Jun 25, 2000

CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

leper khan posted:

We actually do know that though and it isn’t a new phenomenon. Scrape trophy data for 360 games for example. Or steam :rip:. The data absolutely backs it up, or at least did ~10 years ago and there’s no reason it should have changed.

A good number of people won’t get past the title screen.
I'm surprised no one's written a tool where you give it your Steam account and then it auto refunds every game you haven't played 2 hours of yet.

Cocoa Crispies
Jul 20, 2001

Vehicular Manslaughter!

Pillbug

Hughlander posted:

What exactly do you think playing the latest god of war does to you at a chemical level?

Presumably it also bores the player with timers and begs them to buy a bag of gems?

mutata
Mar 1, 2003

All right, I think both sides have gotten their jabs in re mobile games and monetization mechanics. Probably best to turn it into an actual conversation or move on, eh?

ShadowHawk posted:

I'm surprised no one's written a tool where you give it your Steam account and then it auto refunds every game you haven't played 2 hours of yet.

Isn't there like a 2 week or less ownership requirement too?

Canine Blues Arooo
Jan 7, 2008

when you think about it...i'm the first girl you ever spent the night with

Grimey Drawer

GC_ChrisReeves posted:

We are talking about games because mobile and f2p are games too, no matter what the r/gaming hivemind might suggest otherwise.

I honestly argue that there is a line that has been crossed in these markets. It's pretty dishonest to argue that 'All/Most f2p and mobile games are trash dopamine stimulators', but it's equally dishonest to argue that games like Clash Royale is a game with integrity, or that the Saga series is somehow 'inspired'. It seems to be so difficult to talk about this because everyone seems to retreat to their respective corners. Taken to their extremes, in one corner, any mtx ever is satan incarnate, and in another corner, 'people just play what they like, and we are just providing a service'.

I think there is a strong argument to be made that the mobile market, especially the f2p market is pretty lovely.

So, instead of sleeping tonight, I spent the time to look at and codify the 75 top grossing games on the Google Play Store:

https://imgur.com/a/oH903MR

All of them except one has the core experienced of the game compromised by MTXes. Now, that doesn't mean these shouldn't somehow qualify as 'games'. Pokemon Go, Golf Clash, Marvel Future Fight and even Design Home all have some really neat ideas as games, but a lot of these games are uninspired cash-ins that exist first to make money and if it happens to provide something of substance, well, that's a nice side-effect.

Looking at the list:
- Green Games all give you a finite amount of time to play the game that can be bypassed with MTXes of up to $100.
- Yellow Games have a competitive experience where people who pour money into it have a serious gameplay advantage in PvP.
- Light Blue games have single player components that have progression walls that are effectively 'locked' behind MTXes. Some of them have light PvP components as well.
- Orange games are all Crash Clones (or close enough) and MTX's are about on par with the 'Yellow' games.
- Red games are literally casinos. About a quarter of the top 75 grossing games on Google Play Store are Casions.

Compare this to the top 10~ games on steam right now:

https://imgur.com/a/2lBjLQn

The difference between these games (Save Payday 2...) and the Mobile ones can be summed up in one word: Integrity.

Rocket League is $20 bucks. You drive around and have a wonderful time and you can buy car hats if you want, but the MTXes don't compromise the game or it's systems: Rocket League has integrity. Far Cry 5 is a game you buy and the game is whole and complete and doesn't ask anything out of you - Far Cry 5 has integrity.

To be fair to the mobile space, the Top Paid Games seem pretty good. Most of them do not succumb to the worst that the mobile market has to offer.

-----

To bring this back full circle though, when it comes to a discussion about what makes a game a capital-g Game proper, I think it's 'Vision'. Games at their best do make you feel something, or provide an experience, or create a moment to be remembered that's more than just skin deep. Moments like discovering the upside-down castle, or rolling up to the first colossus, or seeing "Would you kindly" written in blood, or just seeing the red text 'You Died' are so powerful that I don't even have to call out the name of the games and it probably evoke emotions and vivid memories from a lot of folks reading this. This is not just a nostalgia thing either: The Witness has this same kind of hit and perhaps even more potently than most. Celeste speaks to a lot of players in ways that other games, especially platformers, never have.

When people like Cocoa Crispies are almost sarcastically dismissing the mobile and f2p market, it's because those markets are dominated by 'profit-first' games. They don't deliver these kinds of experiences because they don't care to. The game isn't about delivering those kinds of experiences. The game is primarily about making as much money as it can and will gladly sacrifice everything else at that alter. Those kinds of games are not Games.

Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Apr 26, 2018

Triarii
Jun 14, 2003

I don't concern myself with labeling things too much but having worked on both F2P mobile games and traditional games, there is a definite, qualitative difference in the development process. In a traditional game, even if the project lacks a clear vision, your objective is still to make something that players enjoy to the greatest possible extent so that they get all their friends to buy it, give it high review scores, buy your future games, etc; that's just not the objective in a F2P game. The majority of the design time/effort is not spent developing fun gameplay mechanics and systems but rather compelling monetization techniques. The ultimate question for any potential concept in the game is not "does this make the game more enjoyable" but rather "will this cause the game to make more money." There's a lot of talk about "finding the balance between fun and profit." If analytics show that players majorly drop off after playing for 30 minutes, the solution is always to give them an injection of premium currency right at that point or throw a flashy event banner at them, not to figure out why your gameplay is so boring that it only keeps people interested for 30 minutes.

I'm not sure this can even be fixed, really - that's just how money is made in the mobile space. I can spot one of my company's games on that top 75 list.

floofyscorp
Feb 12, 2007

I was asked to describe my game in 15 words or less yesterday and it was surprisingly challenging. So, fellow developers, how would you describe your current project in 15 words or less?

Here's mine, which is not very good but better than my original idea of 'a cross between Minecraft, but prettier than that, and World of Warcraft, but not as pretty as that':
Build a house. Dig a mine. Fight a goat. Work some iron. Make new friends.

GeeCee
Dec 16, 2004

:scotland::glomp:

"You're going to be...amazing."

floofyscorp posted:

I was asked to describe my game in 15 words or less yesterday and it was surprisingly challenging. So, fellow developers, how would you describe your current project in 15 words or less?

"Ask your kids" :v:

Virtual Lego. Punch Trees, Ride Pigs, Fight Beasties, Get Bling Armour, Get mad at the devs.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Payday 2's been one heck of a ride when it comes to company practices and design, lemme tell yah. There's probably a book somewhere just in the saga of development changes and nightmarish PR that the game has inflicted upon itself- but turnover's been so high, I'm not sure anyone other than the CEO has been there for the whole thing.

Chunderstorm
May 9, 2010


legs crossed like a buddhist
smokin' buddha
angry tuna

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

lots of words about games

At the end of the day, they're still games that people play, with a set of design goals rooted in MTX.

Having spent more money on Rocket League and Dota 2 than on most games, I think it's unfair to say that 'integrity' is the thing that sets them apart. F2P games aren't made by a shady cabal of people snickering about the best way to steal your money - they're just developers working toward a goal so they get paid as well. I work with someone in the F2P space who describes it as awful and soul-sucking, and based on the needs of the projects, I absolutely believe that. Still, I think it's super lame to classify them as not-games. Comes off to me as gatekeeping in the same way that defining so-called "walking simulators" as not-games. I still consider things like Dear Esther to be games, though in that particular case it's one I just don't really like because I find it boring.

So yeah. F2P cash cow games are certainly games, just games with a vastly differing set of goals than, say, God of War. Just because something is still a game doesn't mean it's immune to criticism, of course, and your feelings that led you to that conclusion I feel are reasonably valid.

mutata
Mar 1, 2003

Canine Blues Arooo posted:


When people like Cocoa Crispies are almost sarcastically dismissing the mobile and f2p market, it's because those markets are dominated by 'profit-first' games. They don't deliver these kinds of experiences because they don't care to. The game isn't about delivering those kinds of experiences. The game is primarily about making as much money as it can and will gladly sacrifice everything else at that alter. Those kinds of games are not Games.

This is a solid and probably personally useful, subjective, personal definition of "games". It certainly isn't the definition that we're using in this thread, though, as contextualized in the OP:

mutata posted:

Wait shut up. By way of disclaimer, in this thread we'll be discussing an industry of businesses, all of which are out to make money, but many of which also want to make good games. This thread is not intended to advertise or shill for game companies nor am I here to evangelize about the industry and convince anyone that it sucks or it doesn't suck or whatever. The games industry is made up of thousands of separate companies with different goals, methods, and intentions. Some are scum. Some are sincere. All of them are staffed by human beings. This thread is an attempt to shine light and show that the industry is a beautiful pallete of shades of grey and much more complex than the average angry forum thread paints it. Ok, cool.

I'll also remind the thread that there is a list of people who I can vouch actually work in the games industry in the 2nd post. I'm sure I have missed some of you who have contacted me while this thread goes into lulls or I'm traveling or what have you. If I've missed anyone, please get in touch again and I'll add you to that list. Thanks!

HolaMundo
Apr 22, 2004
uragay

sponge would own me in soccer :(
Dismissing f2p/mobile games is childish.

Yeah, sure, as a gamer it sucks but it is similar (somehow, it's not 1:1) to what has happened with DLC in "real" games. Twenty years ago you'd pay 30-40 bucks (maybe full $60, I can't remember) for an expansion like HL: Opposing Force and it was a full game content wise, not just skins or a bunch of missions.
Paying for extra characters in SFV sucks, but the game isn't less bad/good because of it. It's just the way the market evolved.

I'm pretty sure there are companies which are profit-first but I'd say there are few in comparison with the whole industry.
We make mainly premium mobile games where I work and quality and fun always come first. Obviously the three founders want to make money, everyone does because we want to have a job and keep making games, but there's no way we will make something less fun/good because it will profit more. In fact we take extra care when designing and making stuff which is paid, it must be fun and be super cool.

HolaMundo posted:

I've worked for almost 6 years as a programmer on a (mainly) mobile studio who has a quite successful TD series.
mutata: I don't have PMs and I couldn't find your email to verify.

Quoting my old post, mutata!

GeeCee
Dec 16, 2004

:scotland::glomp:

"You're going to be...amazing."

HolaMundo posted:


Yeah, sure, as a gamer it sucks but it is similar (somehow, it's not 1:1) to what has happened with DLC in "real" games. Twenty years ago you'd pay 30-40 bucks (maybe full $60, I can't remember) for an expansion like HL: Opposing Force and it was a full game content wise, not just skins or a bunch of missions.

Yeah DLC and MTX are more of a thing now because of massively increased development costs, dev time, higher quality bar and static box prices over 40 years, so margins have been getting ever smaller.

Extra Credits did a good rundown on this.

https://youtu.be/VhWGQCzAtl8

OneEightHundred
Feb 28, 2008

Soon, we will be unstoppable!

leper khan posted:

Circle is the button typically used in Japan for accept on PlayStation controllers. Also on a lot of ps1 games. It’s where A is on Nintendo hardware.
I'm still not sure why the reversal happened. The US/Japan schemes used to be the same, up until the middle of the PS1 generation when they diverged. It's not like there's some legacy reason for it... the legacy was to leave it the way it was.

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

The difference between these games (Save Payday 2...) and the Mobile ones can be summed up in one word: Integrity.
There's a talk somewhere or other that compared the mobile/F2P situation to syndicated television, talking about how the business model really sets the parameters of what you can do. The whole model of syndicated TV is that the same show could be running on multiple channels and people have to be able to turn it on and watch it even if they were watching a completely different season the day before, so everything had to be chopped up and it was much harder to run long story arcs, etc. whereas the "golden age of TV" with things like Breaking Bad was only possible by changing the business model.

The thing with games that are fully paid up front is simply that there's never a point where the developers have to think about how to convert non-paying players to paying players. F2P always does, and most of them answer by trying to repeatedly annoy the crap out of players that aren't paying, and many of those also figured "hey, we can just never stop annoying the player and we'll keep getting more money!" It resembles coin-op in a lot of ways.

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

I think most Western Games, especially ones with larger budgets, lack any kind of cohesive direction or vision.
I think the bigger problem is that western games have become largely about creating a comfortable experience. The Souls series was a bit of a wake-up call, but there's more to the problem than just difficulty, it's also a lack of willingness to defy convention, a lack of non-mechanical challenges, and a lack of good motivators outside of the core gameplay loop.

GC_ChrisReeves posted:

Yeah DLC and MTX are more of a thing now because of massively increased development costs, dev time, higher quality bar and static box prices over 40 years, so margins have been getting ever smaller.
DLC is just a modernized way of doing expansion packs and MTX exists because people value their money differently.

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WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

The difference between these games (Save Payday 2...) and the Mobile ones can be summed up in one word: Integrity.

I have issues with Payday 2, but its MTX structure is absolutely not one of them. The paid DLC has always contained substantial amounts of content, there's always been a concerted effort to make sure that you don't need all the DLC to be effective, the paid DLC has been explicitly used to fund content-heavy free updates, and the current package for the game includes all but two DLC packs (one of which is a joke DLC, and the other of which is a cross-promotion with Hotline Miami 2 where that game's special edition comes with PD2 items and Jacket as a PD2 character- the former came out after the Ultimate Edition, and the latter was never purchasable individually and is effectively cosmetic)

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