What exactly should you be focusing on this year? What are the trends that will really impact your development? We’ve dug through the most popular trends and brought together the topics you should keep an eye on in 2024.

1. Learn about AI and Machine Learning

With the release of Google’s Gemini, we’re seeing AI continue to explode. It won’t be long before it’s a common tool that we all use day to day. Getting to grips with how it works is going to be essential, particularly in gaming.

At the same time, we’re seeing hyper-casual games shift to richer and deeper experiences – becoming hybrid-casual. In fact, the number of hyper-casual games dropped by 18%, while hybrid-casual grew by 13%, according to Sensor Tower.

By their nature, hybrid-casual games have a longer development cycle than hyper-casual games. Using AI and machine learning can really speed up this process. You can get the rich, deep experience necessary in a similar amount of time.

AI can help in multiple areas

• Speeding up your development process isn’t just about getting AI to help you code your game. You can use it throughout the cycle:
• Ideation. Get AI to help you come up with ideas and ask it to pull out common trends in mobile gaming.
• Creation. You can generate assets, like 3D models or soundtracks, or use it to create mood boards for your in-house artists.
• Dynamic content. AI can make your NPCs more realistic by automatically responding to the player. This way, you don’t need to write thousands of lines of dialogue to add characters to your game.
• Experimentation. A machine learning algorithm can run through your game thousands of times in a few days. So you can test your gameplay, challenges and ad placements to make sure that they’re perfect.

The more data you have, the more efficient your AI model will become. Data fuels the algorithm. The best way to improve your machine learning and AI models is to feed them more data and let them run.

If you need to collect vast amounts of data from multiple sources, look at our DataSuite package. With that, you can bring all your data together to perfect your monetization models and gameplay.

2. Consider a brand partnership

Newzoo states, “To win the hearts of gaming fans, brands will move toward IP crossovers, social media and streamer partnerships.”

We’ve already seen this happening. Fortnite has partnered with brands like Gucci, Marvel, and Netflix. Roblox has partnered with Spotify and Samsung. Overwatch even partnered with McDonalds.

Clearly, brands are looking to tap into the gaming market. It could be cosmetics in your game, in-game billboards that function as product placement, or even entire DLCs.

These partnerships can be a useful alternative to traditional ad models. You can get a new source of income for your title, attract new players, and keep your game fresh.

In fact, on average, IP or brand collaborations boost a game’s Daily Active Users (DAU) by 11% in the first seven days of a launch.

3. Explore augmented and virtual reality

Back in June, Apple announced its Vision Pro headset. Rumours are flying that it’ll launch in early 2024. However, Apple isn’t the only one entering this space – there are plenty of other brands hot at their heels. It’s a revolution in technology to rival the advent of the smartphone, with analysts predicting that there’ll be 6.9 billion AR and VR users by 2028, growing to about $58 billion. Meanwhile, the Augmented Reality Gaming Market Report believes AR alone will grow around 30% year on year.

Whichever way you look at it, the market is set to explode. Not only with players, but with brands. Companies are looking to partner with studios to create experiences for their customers that offer them more value.

While we’re best known for providing KPIs and insights to mobile game developers, we’re also compatible with games in virtual and augmented reality. Check out how we helped HyperVR or VRMonkey.

4. Pump more resources into your Live Ops

As we said before, hyper-casual games are dropping in downloads by 18% each year, while hybrid-casual games are growing by 13%. There’s a marked shift in the industry to move to deeper games, which offer more value to players and increase playtime and engagement.

Live Ops has become the standard way to monetize your game in this new era of mobile gaming. Over 90% of the world’s top games are supporting their titles using this approach. On top of that, 97% of revenue from the top games come from this strategy.

This means that developers need to keep providing support and updates for their games, long after they’ve launched. It’s about building a community, releasing regular content, and keeping your core players engaged and happy.

If you want to make sure that your Live Ops are pulling their weight, it’s useful to run tests and gather data on what’s working. We can help by letting you run AB tests, giving real-time data, and adjusting gameplay parameters on the fly. Check out our Live Ops page for more details.

5. Consider making a web store

In December 2023, a jury decided that Google had an illegal monopoly with its Play Store. It’s yet another example of how lawmakers and judges are attempting to loosen the hold that platforms have over the stores they run.

Right now, Google and Apple alike take a hefty commission from every purchase made through their stores. And they are quite restrictive on what is and isn’t allowed. Recent legislation, like the Digital Markets Act in the EU, has forced these gatekeepers to allow developers to push people towards their own web stores, cutting out these fees.

This is particularly important, considering how difficult it is to acquire new users. Casual games are hit hard by these fees, considering how little they earn from each download.

By creating your own web store, you skip the commission and can encourage players to stick to your own ecosystem of games. You can even offer VIP bonuses for loyal players who use your own store. This compliments the natural shift we’re seeing towards more hybrid-casual games, giving publishers and developers an opportunity to create deeper experiences and relationships with their players.

6. Explore more non-disruptive advertising routes

As the mobile gaming industry shifts towards hybrid-casual, it’s important to focus on keeping players for longer. It’s all about retention. One of the top reasons that players abandon a game is if there are too many ads that interrupt the gameplay. It ruins the fun. Instead, developers need to focus on other forms of advertising to supplement their revenue streams, such as:

• Rewarded ads. People actually find rewarded ads enhance their experience. According to Google Admob, 50% of players said they’d be less satisfied if the developer removed the rewarded ads.
• Native advertising. By partnering with brands and putting ads as an element in the game, such as on in-game billboards – you not only have a familiar, unintrusive spot for ads, but one that can actually make your game more immersive.
• Audio ads. Audio can play in the background, while people continue playing. They don’t disrupt the gameplay. Done well, they can have up to 39% better retention compared to video ads, according to a YouGov study.

7. Let players collect characters

There’s a reason games like Pokemon are so popular. People quite simply love to collect and hoard things. This is why character collection is one of the most popular meta features among the top games.

Allowing your players to collect characters opens up multiple possibilities. They can be in-app purchases, part of your battle pass or VIP subscription service, or even a rewarded ad. Monetizing this collection is a great way to make sure that you’re adding value for your players and giving them incentives to stay.

8. Think about going into the action genre

In 2023, action was the only genre that grew in both revenue (9%) and downloads (13%). These are games that are more high-octane and exciting than your typical hyper-casual genre, and borrow from the rogue-like genre. Games like Survivor.io that throw hordes of enemies at you while you level up your gear.

If you’re not keen on making an action title, it’s worth considering simulation games instead. These have now overtaken the puzzle genre – pinching their number three slot.

9. Be data-driven

Whether you’re creating your own web store, using AI in your development, or looking at non-disruptive advertising routes, data will be central to your strategy. With GameAnalytics, you can get cost-effective, sophisticated and in-depth data that can help inform your decisions and make sure you’re setting yourself on the right path for 2024.

AI is definitely going to change how we work, play and live. But right now, it’s not exactly great at being original. It tends to churn out a lot of generic advice and content. But, while you can’t (yet) plug in a prompt and have it develop a fully functional mobile game, you can use AI to help you come up with ideas and speed up your process. Here are a few ways you can use AI when developing your prototypes.

How should you use AI?

Regardless of whether you’re playing around with Midjourney, ChatGPT or any other AI, there are a few rules to getting the most out of it.

Make your prompts specific

The more detailed and specific you are in your initial prompt, the more useful the response will be. If you’re generic, you’re going to get generic responses. Asking it to come up with a “unique mobile game concept” isn’t going to get you far. Instead, make sure you give it as much information as possible. Write in your prompt like you’re describing a brief. The more you put in, the more helpful the response will be.

Don’t stop at the first response

Using AI is all about refining your prompt and becoming more and more specific until you get to a response that works. When testing the AI, we often needed to add caveats or get it to perform tasks one by one if we wanted to get the best result.

Use multiple AIs

We’ve found that it’s best to give multiple AIs the same prompt. Ask Bard, Bing and ChatGPT the same question, and you’ll get much more varied responses. So mix and match between AI if you want some variety. It can also smooth out some issues we’ve found with certain prompts. What works with one AI might get completely different results with another.

What can you use AI for?

It’s best to use AI when you’re looking for a very specific output that would take a team ages to do themselves. If you try to use it to come up with original ideas or themes, you’ll find that your prompts are too open-ended. Those are best left to real humans. For example, if you just ask it to come up with themes for your mobile game, it’ll likely rehash ideas that are already popular – basically telling you to create games already in the top charts. Not particularly useful. But specific tasks – that’s where AI shines.

1. Brainstorm your concepts

This is an area where AI can excel. Coming up with thousands of ideas in mere seconds. With the right prompting, you can get it to create a huge list of concepts to add to your own ideas. Even so, most of those will be duds (much like in any brainstorm). But that’s fine. You’re just using them for inspiration.

As for the prompt, it’s best to ask it for ideas using a specific mechanic or with a specific theme. For example, “show me a long list of themes for a hyper-casual game that uses swipe mechanics.”

2. Make snippets of lore for your items

If you have thousands of items, it can take up a lot of time writing a paragraph of text for each one. With AI, you can generate these snippets of lore almost instantly.

We asked Bard to create lore snippets for various magical items in a game.

The responses you get won’t be perfect, but they give you a starting point. Edit them and make changes to fit your specific needs, and you’ve saved yourself a ton of time. Similarly, you could use AI to write the backstory for locations, bosses, levels, or even power-ups.

3. Write short descriptions for multiple items

While lore can add flavour to your game, you’ll often find you need to have a few short sentences as hover-over text for every item in your game. Give the AI a list of items you need to describe, and you can speed up that process.

AI can easily put together short descriptions for multiple items at once.

4. Create characters in just a few prompts

By building on multiple prompts, you can develop a whole host of characters to populate your game. For example, you could start by getting the AI to brainstorm a list of twenty Japanese names suitable for an archer. Once you have your name – we’ve chosen Yumi (meaning “bow”) – you can ask for a more detailed description.

With a name in hand, we know have an entire character bible for Yumi the archer.

By telling Bard to use specific headings, we can generate multiple snippets of information that will be vital in making Yumi a rounded character.

5. Write dialogue to sprinkle into your game

There are numerous situations where you might need a short piece of dialogue from your characters, whether that’s when they level up or when they first enter the dungeon. By telling an AI about the character and listing the various situations, you can get it to produce all these snippets at once.

Giving AI a list of headings is a useful way to get multiple results at once.

If you need more, tell the AI exactly how many snippets of dialogue you want. Or maybe you include multiple characters and see how they interact with each other.

6. Help refine your mechanics

If you know what type of game you’re creating, you can get the AI to help with specific tasks. Maybe you need a puzzle for a dungeon or a list of items a shop might sell. For example, imagine you’re making a crafting game. You can feed in your resources and have the AI come up with a list of recipes.

Kickstart the design process by getting AI to come up with some baseline crafting recipes.

7. Refine the writing you already have

It isn’t just generating text that you can use AI to help you with. As we’ve mentioned, AI can be rather generic if you’re too open-ended. So if you want truly original thinking – develop the lore yourself and then get the AI to refine it.

We tell Google Bard to rewrite our description of Yuttgard.

From our – quite bad – description of Yuttgard, Bard has produced something much more enticing. It’s not perfect, but it’s got way more flare than our original and would be ideal if we’re only trying to put together a prototype.

8. Write marketing materials

Scripts for videos. Headlines for banner ads. App store descriptions. These all need words that you might not have time to create yourself. Just remember to give as much information in your prompt as you can.

Even if we don’t use the exact wording, the AI can give us a good starting point for our App Store description.

Use analytics to track your success

Once you’ve made your prototype, you’ll probably want to run some A/B tests to see what’s working with your players, and whether your idea is as rad as it sounds. In which case, try out our A/B testing tool and get all the data you’ll need.

Taking a game from console or PC to mobile is tricky. The controls are far more limited and the screen can easily get cluttered and unreadable. The hardware can’t handle as much physics, especially when that game is a premium title. But the developers at Psyonix did a fantastic job when recreating their Rocket League game into the mobile sensation, Rocket League SideSwipe.

This wasn’t just a copy-and-paste job. Psyonix made some serious changes to the gameplay, design, and mechanics. All for the better. Aside from the obvious theme of rocket-fueled cars, this feels like an entirely different game. In this article, we analyze what exactly those changes are, and what you can learn from them.

Three rules when taking your game from PC to mobile

When making mobile games, you should aim to hit three principles: make them short, satisfying, and simple. When we compared the differences between the two games, we found every change the developers made contributed to one of those rules.

1. Make your game simpler and consider the screen size

There are some key differences and limitations between PC, console, and mobile. But user interface aside, playing on a smaller device is a heck of a lot different to when you have a large screen and controls.

That might mean removing or limiting certain features to make your game work for your mobile version. Or completely rethinking the gameplay itself.

Here’s what you can do.

Understand what limitations you’re working with

You have less CPU power, less space, and less time from your players on mobile. So you need to understand what limitations you have and adjust your game to cater for them.

Psyonix decided to make the game 2D, instead of 3D, for example. Not only did this make it simpler for the player, but this also avoids the massive amount of physics calculations that a 3D game would have. Fewer dimensions, fewer calculations for the device, faster game.

The developers also limited how many players can have in a match. While you can have up to eight players on console or PC, you can only have up to a maximum of six on mobile. This not only makes it quicker to find matches but makes the games less overwhelming and busy.

Build your game to work on a smaller screen

Mobile phones are getting larger, but you’re still comparatively working with a much smaller screen. For example, if the map for Rocket League SideSwipe was any bigger, the player would need to zoom out. Players would struggle to see their own car, with their thumbs blocking most of the action.

2. Keep the session lengths short and snappy

Players don’t have much time when playing on mobile. They could be anywhere. On a bus on their way to work, in a queue at the bank, or even in the bathroom. You don’t always have their full attention for long. So you need to keep your game short and snappy.

Cut out features that don’t add to the mobile experience

On mobile, clutter will cause your players to drop out. Psyonix got around this by cutting out instant replays on their mobile version. This kept the matches shorter and punchier. Because the maps are smaller, it’s also quicker and easier to score a goal. Having instant replays every 20 seconds would just constantly interrupt the match.

Rocket League SideSwipe also removed the chat function and instead replaced this system with stickers. It’s easier and quicker to communicate with your teammates (or mock your enemies).

Test to find the perfect session length

In the original Rocket League, the matches were five minutes long. But in Sideswipe, they’re only a minute and a half on average. This keeps players engaged and decreases any potential dropouts. When we looked at the data from Benchmarks+ (part of our new pro tier), we found that the typical session length for casual games is about 4 – 5 minutes. So for a game like Sideswipe, this is around 2 – 3 matches per session.

This can vary from game to game. So make sure to test what session length works best for your players by watching your retention and drop rate.

3. Make your players feel epic

Your players will naturally spend less time in casual mobile games, so you want to make sure they have a great experience when they do. That way, they’ll keep coming back.

Replace inactive players with bots

Drop rate on mobile is much higher, as players could leave for any reason – lost signal, got a phone call, or reached their bus stop. If your game is online, consider adding bots to replace inactive players, so as not to interrupt the game for everyone else. This is what Psyonix did, and it works fantastically.

Cater for all types of players

With mobile, you’ll find yourself with a lot more casual players. Having an offline option, difficulty levels, or a top-tier matchmaker to pit them against players in their own skill range can make sure your game stays fun for everyone.

To cater for more ambitious players, introduce leagues, training arenas, and competitions. Just remember not to overcomplicate any of these – you’ll need to strike a balance between customization and options, and simplicity.

Make the game rewarding wherever you can

When playing on a console for a couple of hours, overexaggerated sounds, graphics and notifications can get annoying. But this is crucial for shorter sessions on mobile. You need constant feedback and rewards to keep your players satisfied.

Psyonix did this in their mobile version. In SideSwipe, the graphics are a lot more exaggerated when you hit the ball and score. There’s a lot more excitement and colors. Whereas in the console game, it’s less so.

Use data to perfect your monetization models

There are plenty of monetization models you can adopt for your mobile version, and there’s no ‘one size fits all’ strategy when it comes to your mobile game. It’ll take a lot of testing and tweaking to strike the right balance of fun for your players, and a healthy ROI.

Rocket League SideSwipe is a completely free-to-play game, where players earn items, skins and cosmetics through levelling up. Nothing more. The mobile version helps Psyonix reach new players for their console version, where they make money through their Rocket Pass subscription, in-game purchases, physical merchandise, sponsorships, and DLC.

In a 2022 interview on GamesIndustry.biz, Psyonix co-studio head Phil Piliero, said:

We’ve seen significant growth in territories outside our core playerbase, especially in international markets where mobile is the primary platform for gaming. This has allowed us to reach new audiences in addition to our console and PC players, and gives these players their first experience within the Rocket League franchise.

What Psyonix did may not be the best route for your own title. You’ll need data to find out what’s best for your games. And a lot of it. Our free tool can help you answer all of your major analytics questions. And if you’re looking for something more advanced, then our DataSuite products can help you out. Get started today, or speak with our team on how we can help you.

VR games are growing in popularity – with predictions that 23 million VR-related jobs will hit the market by 2030. And with better technology and increased interest, more and more developers are shifting towards this new field.

But even with better tools, online tutorials, and a larger community, making a VR game is still a challenge in the park. It’s very different from what you may be used to building. To get ahead, we’ve been doing our own research and interviewing the best VR devs to get their top-tier advice. So, here’s what we learned and what you need to know.

Controls being second nature

Depending on your audience, you can expect your players to have some experience with games in the past. They should understand controls and button layout, which may be different for VR.

For starters, VR controllers are a new concept. PlayStation and Xbox controllers have been around for decades and are usually the first thing people think of when you mention gaming. But unlike other platforms, your players can’t see their hands with VR. Saying ‘Press X’ isn’t enough in this situation. They can’t remember where it is or see their hands to figure it out.

Think up creative ways to lend them a hand. ‘Show, don’t tell’ is a handy tool here. You could have a semi-transparent image of their controller pointing out which button to press and showing exactly where it is on their controller. Seeing where the switch is on their controller can help them understand what they should be pushing. That’s what Half-Life: ALYX did, and it worked well for them.

Playing for hours upon hours

Unlike other platforms, people can’t wear their headsets for long periods. It’s very easy for players to experience eye strain, headaches, and motion sickness if they play their VR for too long.

So you may want to think about a target session length. Too long, and your players may quit halfway through with a pounding head. If you’ve created hyper-casual games before, then the rules of ‘keep it short, sweet, and satisfying’ can easily transfer to VR.

With that in mind, it depends on the type of game and players you have. Ramen VR’s Zenith MMORPG game saw players spending two hours at a time in their title. So take this section as a guide rather than a strict rule. Use data to listen to your players and find what works for them.

Cutscenes or forced camera perspectives

Cutscenes can be great to help tell your story or highlight important events. And in traditional gaming, it’s fine to shift your player away from first person and into a cut scene or even certain camera perspectives. But the sudden shift of perspective in VR can be very jarring and disorienting, if not done correctly.

The unique element with VR is that your players are always in a first-person view. So rather than watching from the sidelines, your players can be in those cutscenes, experiencing them first-hand.

Quick-time events

Quick Time Events, where players are prompted to press specific buttons within a time limit, are great for adding tension to your games. But not so great in VR. For one, the sudden change can break their immersion and slap them back into the reality of they’re just playing a game. And keep in mind that your players can’t see their controls, so they may struggle to react quickly if they’re also processing which button to press.

Focus on more natural and immersive mechanics to add tension. Or, if you want to add a time-based element, run focus groups to see if that’s what your players like. You’ll probably need to test this quite vigorously to find the right balance of fun and challenging without being overwhelming and disruptive.

HUD elements

In most games, you’ll have some key information on-screen (like health bars, mini maps, objective markers), which convey crucial information to your players. But in VR, these elements can hinder their immersion and obstruct their view.

So consider how you’ll relay this information without overloading your players. We recently interviewed Halfbrick Studios, the developers behind the Fruit Ninja series. When designing their HUD, they opted to instead create a pad with all of the info their players needed in the form of a ninja scroll. It made it so much more natural for the player and kept it in the game’s theme.

Don’t underestimate the power of level design here, too. You don’t always need to spell things out for your players. Having clear objects, buildings and landmarks with certain colours and shapes can help intuitively guide your players to where they need to go without relying on a mini-map. This technique has been used many times in open-world games, too.

Nintendo devs actually revealed that they use this technique in their Zelda games. Key landmarks were always in a triangular shape. When players saw those shapes (usually mountains), they had two options: walk around or climb up them. Both actions led the players in the right direction. This same technique can be used in VR, too.

Written information

The screen of your VR is right in front of your eyes. And that can sometimes be uncomfortably close, especially if you need to read things. Having too much text for your players to read can break the immersion, add to their eye strain, and cause headaches.

So you’ll want to get creative when relaying information. Using auditory or visual cues whenever you can keeps the players immersed but also eases up on their eyes.

Precision controls

When playing games on consoles, PC, or even mobile games, your players can get pretty precise with their aiming. When playing multiplayer games with a mouse and keyboard, a flick of the wrist is all your players need to do to target their enemies. With mobile, you just slide your finger across the screen.

VR games can be a little trickier. You will be directly mapping a player’s hand movement to virtual weapons, so they may not have the same level of precision. Consider what limitations you’re working with. And depending on your game, perhaps give the option to increase aim assist or develop mechanics that feel natural and responsive.

Robo Recall, one of the first games to come out on Oculus, tackled this quite nicely. Here’s what we could see:

• They used very clear visuals: You can grab weapons, enemies, and even bullets out of the air easily. There’s a clear white circle around where you can grab them, so you know exactly where to point your controller.
• Time slows when catching objects: In the game, all of the bullets coming at you are slowed down. One, to help you dodge (otherwise, you’d be overwhelmed). But you can also catch bullets and fling them back to the enemy. Lots of fun. But impossible to do in real time.
• They use larger hitboxes for items: You don’t need to be precise when catching or picking up objects. If you’re close enough to a weapon or object, you can easily summon it by pointing in its rough direction. This is very common in VR, considering how restricted players are when moving around.

Lots of assets

In most games, you’ll have lots of background objects to fill the scene. Otherwise, the game can feel bare and barren. The issue with VR, everything needs to be rendered twice (as you have essentially two screens). Not only that, but every object should arguably be interactive. If a player tries to pick something up and can’t, well, that’s just another reminder that they’re just in a game. It can be confusing to know what’s interactive and what’s just background stuff when you have loads of objects. And think about the frame rate and CPU power – the more you have, the more power you’ll need.

So you’ll likely have less clutter and objects in the background. But that’s okay. Just make sure that whatever you have in your levels, your players can engage with them in some way. Even if it is just picking up a mug and throwing it across the room.

We recently interviewed Schell Games, the creative minds behind ‘I Expect You To Die’ and ‘Among Us VR’. They had items in their game that didn’t do anything and were just there. But after testing, they noticed their players trying to interact with it. It led them to decide to make it a unique object that they could pick up and break.

Get started making VR games

Some of these techniques and rules may not always apply to you. That’s where data comes in. Sign up for free and download our SDKs to get going.

Since it’s release in May 2023, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has trounced the charts. It’s got a 95/100 on Metacritic, and social media is awash with praise. It’s not a surprise. Zelda games have always been among the upper echelons – classics synonymous with gaming. But Tears of the Kingdom is a rarity in the series. It’s a direct sequel with largely similar mechanics to its predecessor.

So it’s worth taking the time to look at exactly what we can learn from Tears of the Kingdom and how its design philosophy helps the game appeal to every type of gamer out there.

Sequels don’t need to change the formula

On the surface, Tears of the Kingdom is a very similar game to Breath of the Wild. It’s the same map. It uses the same shrine and temple format. The weapons still break as you use them. Even the artwork and user interface are pretty much identical.

Despite its similarities, Tears of the Kingdom feels like a different game. It’s got all the same ingredients, but it’s more than an expansion. It’s as though they’ve created a new sub-genre. We wouldn’t be surprised if Zelda-like becomes a term everyone knows shortly.

But with every similarity, Nintendo has improved and expanded on Breath of the Wild. They’ve cleverly expanded the map. They’ve tweaked the art. They’ve made the puzzles more satisfying in the shrines and temples. And they’ve changed the core mechanics to change the experience completely.

Keeping the user interface and general style the same is a wise move. God of War: Ragnarok completely changed its user interface from the previous game. This makes the experience jarring for the player, especially if the changes aren’t necessarily in the right direction. Tears of the Kingdom does change the user interface in minor, subtler ways—improvements, not an overhaul.

It shows what a good sequel should do: evolve without changing what made the original great.

Stay true to your design philosophy

Exploring and curiosity are the keys to Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild. With Breath of the Wild, they found a fantastic way to encourage players along a set path without taking away their agency. This flows through to Tears of the Kingdom. Stables, towers, shrines, and key locations still entice the player towards them, but they’ve found fresh ways to expand on these.

But Tears of the Kingdom adds another tenet: creative exploration. Nintendo realized that one of the most satisfying elements of Breath of the Wild was choosing your own path, particularly in puzzles.

Back then, the shrines and the divine beasts had rigid solutions. Most players likely solved these in the same way. But occasionally, people would find novel ways to work around the system. Players loved thinking about a problem laterally and solving it in a way Nintendo never intended.

Nintendo changed the puzzle philosophy

Developers can typically choose between one of two philosophies when designing a game:

• Creative at heart. Create a sandbox and let players do whatever they like. Minecraft is the perfect example of this. It gives players a bunch of tools and total freedom to use them. People then play around with those tools. This isn’t very suitable for puzzles.
• Logical at heart. Games focusing on logic always have a unique solution to a problem. Return of the Obra Dinn, Bastion, Portal. In all these games, you’re presented with a problem and must try to solve it the way the designers intended. True, Portal left in a few ‘alternative’ solutions, but this was only because they were cool, harder than the actual solution, and only a few players would ever do it.

Puzzle design typically thrives on logical, unique solutions. That’s where the satisfaction lies. It’s in the “ah-ha” moment. You can’t have an “ah-ha” if there’s no logical conclusion. And you can only find a logical conclusion if that’s the only path you could possibly take.

Or can you? Tears of the Kingdom shows us that there’s another way. There’s a way to blend creativity and logic.

Unique solutions limit creativity

When you have a unique solution to a problem – a single path the player must take – you naturally restrict creativity. In most cases, that’s what you want. You don’t want players trying to clip through the walls or carry an object from three levels ago to ruin your painstakingly crafted puzzle. Portal, for example, forces you to destroy cubes before you continue to the next chamber.

Tears of the Kingdom clearly didn’t want to go down that route. They wanted creativity to be integral to their game. They must have noticed that players actually enjoy “breaking the rules.” So they let them. They allow you to carry puzzle-breaking equipment into shrines (usually) and use them to overcome the challenges. And as a matter of fact, they encourage it.

They still have an “intended” path, but it’s… optional. In one shrine, you’re meant to whack a boulder across the room to hit a pad. However, players can actually just lob a weapon at the pad and it’ll still register.

This proves that they want players to try and circumvent their puzzles. They’re encouraging it. They could’ve easily made the sensor only register when the boulder hit it. But they made it like a pressure plate. They did that deliberately. They had to code it specifically to allow for creative solutions. Even though it feels like you’ve cheated the puzzle, you’ve actually done exactly what they wanted: you thought creatively. Instead of “ah-ha” you get “oh-ha!” A satisfying sense of surprise. You feel clever, but in a different way.

Creative solutions make even basic puzzles interesting

A surprising side effect of so much creativity is that it makes even mundane problems much more interesting. In Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, there are plenty of puzzles to overcome in the open world, but it soon becomes repetitive. There just isn’t enough variety.

In Tears of the Kingdom, you regularly need to scale a mountain or get up to a high ledge. It’s the most basic of ‘puzzles’ you can imagine. But the difference is that players have dozens of options to do it. You can ride the winds from a bonfire, bounce on a spring, attach a missile to your shield, build a catapult, or even reverse time on a hunk of fallen debris and cling on for dear life as it rises up into the sky.

In Jedi Survivor, there’s probably a button you need to press to use an elevator.

Creative solutions are more realistic

This all ties into the themes of Tears of the Kingdom. Firstly, it’s a game about exploration. And in real life, there’s never a single right answer. If you were to genuinely come across a bobby-trapped temple, you’d certainly try everything you could to sidestep the strange puzzles they’d made. By breaking the common belief that a puzzle can only have a single solution, Nintendo makes the puzzles so much more satisfying for an explorer. You feel like you outsmarted your opponent.

And encouraging people to think differently seems to be a core theme of Tears of the Kingdom. They’re saying: You need all your wits and experience if you’re going to win the battle. It’s not about how strong you are. It’s how you use your resources.

You can change philosophy between areas

Nintendo doesn’t just allow for pure creativity, though. Not all the time. They’ve cleverly split up the world into different areas. In the open world, players have complete freedom. You can build contraptions to beat a boss or get to a shrine. See a camp you want to clear? It’s totally up to you how you do it. Bomb it, charge in with ice weapons, or parachute in raining arrows down on their heads.

Inside shrines, they have a slightly different philosophy. There’s an intended path, but you can usually find a way to solve the problem your own way. Temples, meanwhile, are the most restricted. While it seems you have complete freedom – you have all your abilities – you usually need to use the new mechanic you just picked up. They’re actually much more logically designed. This makes Tears of the Kingdom appeal across the spectrum, from pure creativity to pure logic.

Use creativity to appeal to all player types

You’ve likely heard of Bartle’s four player types: achievers, explorers, killers, and socialisers. Using creativity as a core tenet, Tears of the Kingdom hits all four:

Creativity helps Achievers get 100%. There’s plenty to achieve in Tears of the Kingdom. So these players are easily satisfied. But allowing for creativity means that they can solve these puzzles however they want. By giving them more options, they make it easier to get that satisfaction if they ever get stuck.

Creativity helps Explorers travel. Despite using the same map, there are still plenty of secrets to uncover. And, with the new build mechanics, it’s easier and more fun than ever to explore the world.

Creativity gives Killers replay value. The sheer number of ways that you can defeat your enemy and create cool weapons gives Killers plenty of reasons to try out different combinations and battle every enemy they meet. That creativity keeps the combat feeling fresh.

Creativity gives Socialisers something to share. You’d think that, without multiplayer, Tears of the Kingdom would struggle to keep the Socialisers on board. But because of the creative building mechanics, Socialisers can build outrageous structures or solve puzzles in unique ways and then share the results with the rest of the world. Even just talking with your friend about how they approached a shrine can tickle that itch.

With more creative freedom, influencers have more room to create creative content. So even the passive gamers, who prefer to watch streams and other play, are engaging with the game. Most of which get the same level of enjoyment from watching as you would from playing. The number of viral videos on social media is outstanding. The sheer amount of surprises and creative choices a player can make means that there’s an endless stream of content that players can create. Content that keeps the game front of mind and draws in even more players.

Designing your game around creativity doesn’t just appeal to all kinds of player, but can help indirectly fuel your marketing. Linear games just don’t have that “share factor.”

You don’t need branching storylines to be “open”

The lesson here is that if you’re building an open-world game, you don’t need to create a thousand different dialogue trees with different outcomes. It can be about the journey they take through the story. Rather than trying to program a thousand NPCs to allow for every single approach the player might take, you can simply just let them approach the challenge itself in whatever way they want. Those creative choices are what makes a game feel open. That’s how you give players freedom.

It takes a lot of testing to perfect

Nintendo needed to do a lot of testing and tracking to see how players explored the world. Back when they first designed Breath of the Wild, they tracked where players were going and how they were interacting with the map. This led them to realise that they needed to change their design to ‘encourage’ players towards a point, rather than simply pointing them there. These were insights they could only get by looking at the data.

So if you want to gather that kind of data yourself, you should try out our free analytics tool.

“Hello? Is this thing working? Can anyone read me?”

It’s with these three simple sentences that the original Lifeline begins. And the player has to make their very first choice. How do they respond? Already, your path can diverge (though it’ll quickly circle back). After learning that Taylor has landed in a rocky desert, the player can recommend investigating a crash site or heading for a white peak.

It’s here that Lifeline’s true mechanic begins. As Taylor walks to their destination, the player will have to wait in real-time – sometimes hours – before Taylor sends their next message.

And that’s the key to the Lifeline series. Players don’t just respond and pick a path; they wait in real-time and can reply through their phone or smart-watches notification menu – as though responding to a real person.

How a text-based adventure fits on mobile

As a premium game, with over half a million downloads on Google Play alone, a 4.6-star rating, and seven sequels – 3 Minute Games has clearly done well for themselves. In fact, the series was so beloved that the original developers bought back the rights to the IP and started releasing sequels due to the sheer amount of fan demand.

But 3 Minute Games didn’t start as a separate studio. It was originally part of Big Fish Games – an experimental arm to test new waters and explore new spaces. Lifeline wasn’t the only game they came up with – but it was the one that stuck.

We spoke with Mars Jokela – Lifeline’s game designer – and Dave Justus – the writer behind the scenes – to ask them what advice they had for other developers and what it was about Lifeline that worked.

Focus on a concept

“Notifications were the key,” Mars told us. “Apple had just announced that there would be an interactive lock screen on the iPhone – you could reply right from the lock screen. That was the genesis of the idea.”

The idea actually sat around for a while until Apple announced the Apple Watch.

“That lit a fire under the concept,” Mars added. “It was obvious that this wearable device was going to be perfect. So we thought – let’s keep the scope small and focus on this one specific idea. We actually put out six or seven different games – super simple and small concepts. Hyper-casual, before hyper-casual was even a thing.”

They were essentially creating prototypes, like Poll Party, where you’d get prompted to answer a quick poll. But all of them shared the same initial concept: Use the notification menu somehow.

“That was the philosophy at the time: How do we address this concept we’re trying to make?” Mars said. “Most were simple ideas but ended up needing too much backend work. We put out about seven games in that first period, all based on the game idea. That’s why it’s so important to express that singular concept.”

In fact, Mars explained that you don’t need to be completely original. You just need that one nugget that’s unique to your game. Branching storylines like Lifeline have been a cornerstone of gaming since the ZX Spectrum – but the notifications and real-time schedule transformed it into a unique game.

Execution does matter

The key to making sure that your game or prototype is going to be successful is polish. You don’t need to add hundreds of meta-features straight off the bat – if you’ve got the core gameplay loop sorted. Those extra mechanics can come later.

“Even if it’s a small game, make it feel good and honest to your concept,” Mars said. “Don’t ship out games with half-finished content or mechanics. They can be small and focused, as long as you fully express your idea. With Lifeline, we had just enough at the start – you can make binary choices, and you’re stranded on the moon. That was enough to work with.”

Once Dave – the writer – joined the team, that concept evolved and changed dramatically as he wrote the story. But the core concept remained.

Figure out your guard rails

Constraints can actually lead to more creativity. The actual story behind Lifeline was heavily influenced by the limitations the mechanics imposed.

“We didn’t want the character to be gendered, we wanted it to be three days of real-time, I could only give players two choices, and we could only communicate through dialogue”, Dave explained. “So I was looking for places to add delays. An hour of walking. Eight hours of sleep. Even if it was ten minutes heading down a corridor.”

These creative constraints are what make Lifeline feel so real and compelling.

“Writing these games is very different to writing a comic script because it’s all dialogue,” Dave said. “Even if it’s expositional, like ‘I’m looking at this crater or spaceship’ – all of that needs to be words coming out of a character’s mouth. That can be tricky to make sound realistic.”

It’s not just narrative constraints that can help a developer create a realistic game. There are technical constraints, too.

“I’ve worked a lot developing for new platforms, with different interaction models,” Mars said. “Developing for a watch means you have to think differently about the game design. You have to think about how people are going to have to raise their arm to fiddle with the controls. What’s natural?”

Think of dialogue vines, not trees

Branching paths in the narrative are a huge part of a story-driven game. But they can be a nightmare to write.

“If you let it branch out too much, you’ll never capture the story,” Dave said. “It’s about taking little deviations from the main line and then weaving them back together. It’s actually easy to keep branching, but if you do that, you’ll end up with 64 passages with no endings.”

Instead, Dave suggests finding ways to get to the key story moments you want to tell. You don’t want to tell stories that are going to be hidden away on some tangential path that nobody will ever see.

“It’s more like a vine, than a tree,” Dave said. “Don’t hide your best scenes.”

Make sure choices matter

Writing your dialogue like a vine – rather than a tree – might sound like individual choices aren’t important. But that shouldn’t be the case.

“What makes a game a game is player agency,” Mars explained. “It’s a delicate balance. The player needs to feel like the choices they’re making matter. Even if that choice is that Taylor dies early. It’s fine to cut a path off and end it.”

Another technique is to bring back an element later in the story. The branch might come back together – run along the main vine for a significant time – but having that item or talking to that character might push the player down a completely different path later down the story.

Listen to feedback

As a story-based game, Lifeline doesn’t need to track how people progress through levels. But they do need to keep their finger on the pulse.

“We look at player sentiment a lot, read reviews and stay active in the community,” Mars explained. “What matters most is engaging the players – the strength of the writing.”

“The amount of love and devotion has blown us away,” Dave added. “We never thought this level of fan love was possible – we even get fan art and cosplay.”

Me and @Ghost_Logic went as the weirdly cool space and magic nerds at #dragoncon this year! @lifelinegame pic.twitter.com/QIYSp0NLqf

— Holly (@PekaSairroc) September 7, 2017

One key challenge from the community came when the team experimented with a free to play model.

“Lifeline’s player base didn’t love it, so the Lifeline Universe app never left beta,” Mars explained.

One reason for this was that micro-transactions break the immersion. Players need to suspend their disbelief if they’re going to relate to your characters and story. So interrupting them with ads or micro-transactions doesn’t work.

“The second your friend wants to charge you to tell you a slightly better joke, that’s when you stop talking to them,” Dave said.

For story games, it seems the best model is a one-off payment or subscription.

“We recently released Lifeline+ on Apple Arcade,” Mars said. “And it’s been great seeing a resurgence in activity. That subscription model, getting regular stories without interrupting the gameplay, that’s perfect for us.”

Keep up to date with the latest news

We definitely recommend keeping an eye on this space. Mars hinted that they’ve got a new project in the works, but that they’re not quite ready to talk about it. It should be coming out this year, so make sure you follow them on Twitter to get any updates there. And if you enjoyed hearing from 3 Minute Games and learning their advice, make sure you subscribe to our newsletter to stay in the loop.

Stepping into a game designed for the younger generation is like stepping onto an alien planet. The culture is odd, the design unfamiliar, the purpose unclear – there’s a sense of unease as you try to decipher what’s going on. It’s similar to the uncanny valley. You half-recognise the world, but something feels strange.

That’s the feeling we had when we first logged into PK XD – a massively open sandbox game for youngsters. It’s hard to even define PK XD’s genre. Is it a platform for other games, like Roblox? Sorta. A metaverse? Maybe. An adventure game? Not really. We’re going to settle for… playground. It’s a playground. A big open sandbox world with loads of mini-games and people just… playing.

But that wasn’t what was so alien about PK XD. It was that the design philosophy was completely different – like they’d created the game under a different set of rules. It wasn’t until we spoke to the team that we discovered that was actually the case. Deliberately. And it was effective. PK XD has over 500 million downloads on Android alone. It gets 30 million views on YouTube every week. And their average session length is 25 minutes a session, with people playing around an hour and a half a day.

Clearly, there was something to learn here.

Kids play by a different set of rules

“You can’t blindly apply all the industry best practices to a game like PK XD,” said Charles Barros, CTO at Afterverse – the developers behind PK XD. “A lot of traditional game developers would think: Why aren’t you doing that? Well, it’s because it’s a different audience.”

That’s why PK XD feels so strange. It’s for younger players. We’ve grown up with games. There’s a whole language of symbols, tropes and traditions that are embedded in our subconscious – blue means mana, cassettes inevitably give you a voice-over of exposition, save points before a big room means there’s a boss battle coming up. Deliberate or accidental, we have a catalog of experiences to draw from.

A four-year-old doesn’t.

PK XD doesn’t have a tutorial, because kids don’t bother going through them. They avoid text labels, because a lot of their players can’t even read. They keep the rules simple, because a six-year-old just won’t understand anything too complicated.

But kids learn quickly. They explore, press buttons just to see what’ll happen and are quite happy to wander around until they stumble on something. So how do you design a game with that in mind?

Target your youngest player

“Most people are making games for someone between 12 and 20,” Charles said. “But it’s not that simple when you’re talking about kids. A kid at four is very different from a six or seven-year-old.”

This means that you need to consider your youngest players. You need to make your game extremely intuitive. Don’t rely on text, don’t bother with tutorials, and make sure you start the fun immediately.

“Fun and friends,” Charles said. “People come back because they like the game and their friends are there.”

What about designing with parents in mind?

One criticism we have for this design philosophy is that it only works for the kids themselves. Removing tutorials and streamlining the interface is all well and good for the kids, but what about the parents?

We don’t just learn by ourselves. Big brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, mum and dad. They teach us, too.

Perhaps there’s a simple solution to this. When creating an account, there could be an option to say you’re a parent or guardian. In that version, you could have more in-depth tutorials and onboarding.

Afterverse has solved this problem in a different way – by building a community of content creators.

Support your content creators

Content creators don’t just entertain your community, they teach tips and tricks, reveal upcoming news, and help players explore aspects of your game that they might have otherwise missed. And often in a much more entertaining way than an in-game prompt ever could.

This isn’t only for younger audiences. It’s true across the board. Almost every creator that focuses on a single game will eventually realize there’s demand for educational content.

One of the keys to Afterverse’s success has been nurturing their relationship with content creators. It’s a positive feedback loop. They help creators get subscribers, and the creators keep subscribers interested in the game.

“We have hundreds of official partners and a team to handle those relationships, advising and reviewing videos to help them grow their channel,” Diego Moreira, CEO at Afterverse explains. “

In fact, Afterverse does a lot to help their creators grow. They write a blog for creators, give early access to content, give access to their IP, and help them grow their channel. For example, they have billboards around the PK XD world that link to YouTube – promoting creators within the game itself.

This also helps Afterverse keep their finger on the pulse.

“You have to let your creators say what they think,” Diego said. “Our partners are still independent and they’re still players themselves, so they feel free to criticize us and they might even blast us. But that’s great. They’re amazing and they’re very close to the audience, so they’ll report back to us on what’s working and what isn’t. It’s very valuable feedback.”

Think about why creators would stick around

The key to attracting (and keeping) creators is to make sure that your game has plenty of replayability. Sandbox games work well, as there’s always another video the creator can make.

“If you move to another game as a content creator, you’ll start to lose your audience,” Charles explains. “For example, if you’re making videos about a racing game you might eventually run out of video ideas. But what do you do? If you switch to first-person shooters, you’ll lose a chunk of audience.”

This is why open sandbox games like Minecraft work so well for videos. There’s always another story to tell, a new challenge to attempt or a new update to feature.

Break fast, test often, keep moving forward

Behind the scenes, it’s important to experiment. Afterverse learnt a lot of lessons from their previous experience making children’s content. But it was from A/B testing and making quick changes that they found the right balance.

“We’re very aggressive about changes to the game. Break fast – that’s our philosophy,” said Pedro Almeida, Afterverse’s lead software engineer. “When it’s small changes, just release it and look at the data. Then use A/B testing for those bigger tests.”

But it’s important not to forget your purpose. When looking at your data, it’s important to group up your players and understand why you’re getting your results.

“Sometimes a player is looking for an experience that isn’t PK XD,” Pedro explained. “Maybe they’re too old for our game or maybe there’s a different game we should create for those players. Either way, we don’t want PK XD to lose its identity.”

So while it might be true that some players don’t like a change or new feature – it doesn’t mean it’s true for the main audience. That’s where those content creators come back. Afterverse can use their data to spot trends and then speak with creators to see whether it’s an anomaly or not.

Alien worlds need new approaches

All in all, returning to PK XD it’s suddenly clear why there isn’t a tutorial, why the first objectives are simple but with enough reward to afford a new home, and why everything feels just a little strange.

It’s because we’re old. And Afterverse hasn’t made PK XD for us. They’ve made it for their players and the content creators that entertain them.

Start your own journey

If you’re wondering what’s going on under the hood of your game and want to start figuring out how your various cohorts are reacting to changes in your game, download our free analytics tool and start digging into the data.

So, Sloyd is a 3D automation tool for instantly generating game-ready assets, and we have just gone live with AI prompting. We’ll tell you all about it, but first, let’s take a step back and look at the state of AI in gaming and specifically in modeling.

How AI is used in game development and in 3D modeling

I bet you’re already using AI to some degree in your game development workflow. According to a survey conducted by A16Z Games, 87% of studios are using an AI tool or model as of today. Yet, the use right now is mostly on the periphery, as the vast majority of studios are using horizontal, non-game-specific tools (ChatGPT/GPT-3/4; Midjourney; Copilot; etc).

To this point, AI has been adopted to varying degrees for concept art ideation, coding for games, creating textures, NPC scripts, sound effects, and motion capture. The area with the least adoption is 3D modeling. It’s no wonder; when it comes to 3D models for games, we have high standards. A game asset not only needs to look good but also needs to perform.

The key to a game-ready asset is good topology. The term “topology” refers to the distribution and structure of vertices, edges, and faces of a 3D model. The topology shows how well vertices are organized (cgiscience). A model with bad topology will be created with many more polygons than necessary to serve its artistic purpose. It would simply be needlessly heavy, limiting the amount of art you render in a single frame.

More often than not, when taking assets from another source (a marketplace, an older studio game, or a generated model), we need to make modifications and adjustments. Working with an asset with bad topology will also be costly. It will be much harder to work with the UVs and make changes to the textures. It would also be difficult to modify parts of the mesh and even harder to animate without stretching or shrinking parts of the asset.

Looking at the outputs of the best-in-class GenAI research, Get3D, and Dreamfusion, the topology is very far from optimal. They don’t look great, they gobble polygons, and are extremely painful to work with.

A third factor in using generative 3D models is the creation time. A result can take an hour. One might argue that an hour is a lot less than creating a model from scratch. But often you need several iterations before you get a satisfactory result, and if each iteration takes an hour, the overall tradeoff of time versus quality is a lot less compelling.

Crab 3D model taken from Dreamfusion inspected in Blender. (Left – UV, right – vertices)

A parametric approach is the key to instant, game ready assets

Sloyd adopts a ‘Lego pieces’ approach to 3D automation. It employs parametric 3D geometries as its base building blocks and assembles them into 3D assets. On the one hand, this approach might appear limiting as the system can only create from the building blocks it has been ‘fed’. However, it carries a significant advantage: the results are guaranteed to possess clean topology, easily manageable UVs, separable parts, and optimization for performance. The Sloyd team is actively expanding its library of building blocks, aiming to enable the creation of a wider range of assets. While Sloyd doesn’t cover everything yet, it ensures that every model you create is game ready.

Lamp 3D model taken from Sloyd inspected in Blender. (Left – UV, right – vertices)

Adding to its capabilities, it’s incredibly fast! Input your text, and you’ll receive a result in mere seconds. Following that, you can make adjustments to items using simple inputs like sliders, and the changes occur in real-time. Currently, each text prompt yields a new object. So, if you’re dissatisfied with the outcome, refining your text will yield a new model. However, in the near future, you’ll be able to iterate on a model using text descriptions, and all of this will be in real-time.

AI prompting of models, step-by-step

Signing up for Sloyd is free and you’ll get to creating in a few seconds. There are a few ways to start creating with Sloyd, and the newest way is AI prompt. Just describe what you want to create in simple words. Include the object’s name and one or two adjectives. To achieve optimal results, focus on props, weapons, furniture and buildings. Try something like: “Well with an oriental roof”, “spaceship with X-wings” or “big flying saucer”.

Sloyd, step 1: AI prompt

A model will spawn on the canvas and a new side menu with sliders, toggles and buttons, will open.

• Buttons: At the top, you’ll find selectable parts that change areas of the model.
• Sliders: Adjust standard parameters such as height, width, and curvature using sliders. These parameters allow you to manipulate the shape of your model.
• Toggle Parts: Toggle different parts of the model on or off to create unique variations. Experiment with different combinations to achieve the desired look.
• Advanced Options: Delve into the details to access more advanced options for fine-tuning your model’s appearance. You might encounter sliders that drastically alter specific features or parts of the model.

Sloyd, step 2: iteration with sliders and buttons

One of the standout features of Sloyd is the Randomizer. This tool provides an excellent starting point for your design. Click the Randomizer button multiple times to generate various design iterations.

• Explore unexpected and creative design possibilities that you may not have considered.
• Find a starting point that resonates with you. It could be a unique design element or an intriguing shape.

Once you’ve crafted your ideal 3D model, it’s time to add the finishing touches:

• Materials and Colors: Navigate to the Materials section to experiment with different colors and textures. Transform your model’s appearance by selecting vibrant, bold colors or more subdued tones.
• Preview Your Changes: As you make adjustments, the outline of your model will update in real-time. This feature allows you to visualize the changes you’re making and make informed decisions.
• Export Your Creation: When you’re satisfied with your masterpiece, select the object and click the Export button. Choose the desired format for your export, such as GLB or OBJ.

What’s coming up in Sloyd in terms of AI and 3D modeling

While our AI prompting is still in the experimental stage, it’s continually improving. Yet, this is just the initial phase. The upcoming stage involves introducing the capability to iterate on a model using text. Subsequently, our plan encompasses enabling the AI to comprehend color and material changes, as well as generating and integrating AI textures. Our big leap will be AI spatial assembly of 3D models. Once accomplished, the system will autonomously select ‘Lego pieces’ from a virtual ‘warehouse’ and meld them to craft a 3D model without external guidance. This, coupled with an extensive and perpetually expanding ‘warehouse,’ will render the potential to create pretty much everything. As we extend this capability from crafting singular models to multiple models simultaneously, we’ll have AI world creation from the ground up.

We’ve previously delved into how AI tools such as ChatGPT, Bing, and Bard can speed up your development process. These tools are highly efficient for creating large amounts of text at once – from lore snippets to item descriptions.

Another powerful application of AI is in the realm of art. We’ve explored how you could use PicFinder to help generate AI art for your game. But AI generators aren’t just useful for character concepts. They can create a wide range of assets that you’ll need. As we mentioned in our previous posts: the results won’t be perfect, but AI can certainly help you develop a workable prototype faster. You can then pass these AI-generated creations to your actual art team for further refinement, ensuring stylistic consistency.

Understanding AI commands

Each AI tool operates differently and has distinct parameters you can tweak – especially in the realm of art.

MidJourney has a whole array of parameters

There are two ways to change your settings in MidJourney. The first is to change your default settings using “/settings”. But these only touch the surface of what you can do.

You can explore the full list of commands on their website, but there are a few that are particularly useful to know. Put these commands at the end of your prompt. They all begin with a double dash, followed by the parameter of your choice.

• –chaos <0-100> The more chaos you decide to have, the more random elements MidJourney will add. This is useful if you want each of the four images to be very different from one another.
• –no <terms> MidJourney will try to remove your terms from its results. For example, if it keeps adding lakes to your landscapes and you want it to avoid that.
• –v <number> or –niji MidJourney regularly updates the version. But if you’ve used a prompt using an earlier engine and liked the style, you can always specify which version to use. You can also use niji, which is their model specifically for an anime style.

PicFinder prioritizes the front of your prompt

If you’re using PicFinder, you can change the settings next to the prompt bar. It’s worth experimenting with the aspect ratio, as this can lead to quite different results. For example, square images are more likely to look like portraits or avatars. The most important part of PicFinder is that it prioritizes the first words you type in. So make sure you put the key information at the front.

They also have four models you can choose from:

• MindCanvas. This is their default setting, and it’s the most varied option you can use. It’s good for anime, cartoon and fantasy styles, but covers most bases that you’ll need.
• ReV Animated. Use this one when you’re making a character and want a good front-facing portrait. If you’re looking for character inspiration, this is the model to use.
• AbsoluteReality. This is the model to use when you want something more photorealistic. It’s particularly good at environments.
• Samaritan 3d Cartoon. This is for really cartoony characters and objects.

Whatever tool you’re using, try out different settings, models and parameters to see how it affects your image. Once you find what you like, for example, a specific art style to use, make sure you copy and paste that style into each prompt at the end (or make a note of the settings you used). That’ll help make sure you get more consistent results.

Inspiration for art styles

It can be a bit daunting when you first start using an AI generator. What exactly should you add? Thankfully, Andrei Kovalev has created MidLibrary, which can let you see pretty much every style possible. Even if you’re not using MidJourney, this can be a useful site to help you refine your prompt. Similarly, you can use a site like Stable Diffusion Art to find styles.

Give your artists a better brief

When coming up with characters, it can be difficult to describe what you mean. This is where an AI generator can help you give a better brief to your artists. You see, a generator can’t create a consistent character – every time you use it, it’s going to start from scratch. But it can help you show your actual artists what works for you. So type in your prompt, pick out the results that appeal to you, and use them to form your actual brief.

When using PicFinder, we typed in these prompts to get a design for our character:

• female character who is a vampire hunter
• female character who is a vampire hunter pixel artstyle
• female character who is a vampire hunter cute artstyle
• female character who is a vampire hunter studio ghibli style.

You can even use it to rule out certain routes. For example, we really don’t like the top-right image that it generated. So we’d let our art team know what to avoid.

Create maps to help your world building

Struggling to start creating your world? Maybe you’ve got a rough idea of the layout, but don’t know how it’ll all look when it comes together. Well, AI can generate you a map.

A map of a fantasy world, include three continents, parchment –v 5 (MidJourney)

Admittedly, it seems to have struggled with the number of continents. But it’s a start. We could easily use this map as a starting point for creating lore or places of interest for our characters.

And if you need it in your game’s style – you could start with a more specific prompt. Just by changing the style, we can get vastly different results.

A map of a fantasy world, include three continents, 3d isometric, –v 5 (MidJourney)

Generate textures for your tile maps

It can be painstaking to get textures for different surfaces – especially if you want a specific style. But AI can generate these for you in a matter of moments.

Cartoon stone texture wallpaper (PicFinder)

If you’re making a 2D game, you could even get it to generate an entire tileset, letting you build new rooms with relative ease.

A tileset for the floor in a mobile game –v 5 (MidJourney)

Create assets and icons

If you’ve got a thousand different items in your game, it can take months to draw each and every icon by hand. You could licence a library from somewhere, but then every game starts to look the same.

Instead, you can describe the items to an AI and get them in a style that fits with your game. Even if you’re only using these as placeholders in your prototype, while your artists work on the real deal – it’s going to be far better than a generic icon.

Flaming sword, item icon for a mobile game (PicFinder)

Remember, with some tools you can use a specific image as an initial prompt. (For example, we took a photo of a random hat we had lying around and asked MidJourney to turn it into an icon.) Maybe you do this when you want a specific look or maybe if you want to create variations of the App Store icon.

A random hat we had lying around as an item icon for a mobile game (MidJourney)

Remember: If you don’t like the options that it creates, you can always try again or ask it for more chaos.

Add flavour to lore entries

In our previous AI article, we got Google Bard to refine a description of a floating city – Yuttgard – for us. We can just imagine that the player could unlock the lore and check it out in some sort of in-game codex.

But having just text might be a tad dull. Maybe we want to spice up the entry and show the players what Yuttgard looks like. Well, AI could help there, too. Type in your lore and see what the AI comes up with. It might be abstract, or it might show the location you’re describing.

We put the full description from Bard into MidJourney, along with “Arcology style –v 5” (MidJourney)

It might not be just in a lore entry you use this. Maybe you need a background image for your marketing or a landscape shot for a blog post you’re writing. You can create these kinds of image, too. (In fact, we used MidJourney to create the cover image for this article.)

An island landscape with a volcano in the centre, in a mobile game screenshot style –v 5 (MidJourney)

As you can see, there are plenty of ways you can use AI to speed up your development process – and get to a prototype faster. Textures. In-game images. Icons. Character concepts. All of these could take months to develop by hand, but with AI you could do them all in just a couple of days.

Test out your ideas

Using AI, you can create lots of variations of your art and then A/B test to see which ones appeal to your players more. If you’d like some help tracking the results, you can use our live ops features for games. This includes A/B testing and Remote Configs so that you can switch out assets without having to release new versions of your games to the App Stores.

In tennis, a golden set is where you win a set without losing a single point. And that’s exactly what Wildlife Studios managed to do with Tennis Clash. It was the most downloaded mobile games in 78 countries when it launched. It’s got an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 on the app stores. And it’s had over 50 million downloads on Google Play alone.

So let’s look at exactly what we can learn from Tennis Clash.

Make your game simple to play, difficult to master

We all know the rules of tennis. Tennis Clash manages to translate those rules into straightforward controls. Swipe to hit the ball, tap to move. The further you swipe, the harder you hit. And which direction you swipe in decides which direction you hit the ball. All very simple.

Just like real tennis, it becomes about tactics and split-second decisions. Where is your opponent? How hard should you hit this one? Where should you reposition yourself? Getting it right – hitting the ball just where you planned – that’s why it’s satisfying.

But how about short? In real-life tennis, you typically have games, sets and matches. Four points win a game. Six games win a set. Two sets win the match. (Usually.) That’s too long for a mobile game, so Tennis Clash simplifies the scoring system. First to hit seven points wins the match.

Tennis Clash is a great reminder to developers everywhere that you don’t need to overcomplicate your core loop. Two simple controls and a simple points system are all you need. Instead, encourage your players to master those simple controls by either getting them to compete against each other or against harder and harder bots.

Give your players a reason to revisit old content

There are two main ways that Tennis Clash encourages players to progress. The first is an RPG-like system. Players can get better gear – like rackets, string and shoes – which directly affect their character’s abilities. The better your character’s stats, the more likely they’ll succeed in doing what you wanted to do. You can upgrade your gear by spending coins. Pretty simple.

The second way is through their tours. In other games, these would be your worlds or your levels. Interestingly, unlike most games – players must bet coins on each match. The more matches you win, the harder the tours you can enter. And the more coins you have to bet upfront.

Because you can spend these coins on upgrading your gear, this creates a great dilemma for their players. Can you actually afford to upgrade your gear now? What if you lose your next match? Will you be left penniless, needing to start from tour one once again?

This means that there’s a practical reason to revisit older tours. Either you’ve spent all your coins or you don’t fancy taking the risk. For other games, this can be a very useful system to have players revisit older maps and levels – adding more replayability to your game.

Use ads to mitigate losses and amplify wins

Because players must bet coins to enter a match, they’ve also created themselves an opportunity to show rewarded ads in a very natural way. If a player loses a match, they can watch an ad to recoup their lost coins. But if they win a match, they can watch an ad to double their winnings.

This makes it far more likely that players will actually want to watch these ads. There are tangible benefits, and it doesn’t feel like the ads are being forced on them.

Consider how else Tennis Clash could have added ads. They could’ve had it so that there was an ad after every match and that players earnt coins after each win. The outcome would’ve been exactly the same. But by framing it as a bet – and only allowing players to get a rewarded ad a certain number of times a day – they reframe the context. Players are actually relieved to see an ad, rather than getting frustrated.

If you’re finding that players are getting frustrated by your ads, it’s worth asking yourself whether you can reframe the context. Can you use them to mitigate losses and amplify wins?

Partner regularly to keep your game current

Tennis Clash has regularly been in gaming news for its partnerships ever since it launched. They’ve teamed up with the Fédération Française de Tennis, the US Open, World TeamTennis, The Laver cup, WTA and ATP, and the Billie Jean King Cup.

These partnerships were simple tournaments, with the winners often getting in-game rewards and kudos on Wildlife Studio’s website. And they solidified Tennis Clash as the official tennis game. This was particularly important during the pandemic when tennis matches were being cancelled because it allowed fans to still participate in the event.

It wasn’t just tennis organizations that they’ve partnered up with. They even worked with Gucci to bring style and outfits into the game. A sponsorship that helped the Gucci brand stay current while giving Tennis Clash more content to keep their players entertained.

Regularly partnering has helped to keep Tennis Clash in the spotlight. And it’s a lesson that mobile developers all over should remember. The best way to keep your players around is to keep giving them something new. But that something new doesn’t need to be too complicated. A simple tournament, sponsored by a brand they love and respect, can hit that sweet spot.

Play to your demographics

Wildlife Studio regularly updates Tennis Clash with seasonal content. Valentine’s Day, Christmas, April Fool’s Day, Mother’s Day, Lunar New Year. Most of these are – like their partnerships – open tournaments that players must buy tickets to enter. Another useful revenue stream.

But they also make sure to think about their players. Two notable events were their Tax Day event and their Celebrate Diversity event. Clearly, Wildlife Studio had spotted that their demographic was young, entrepreneurial and liberal. And that inspired them to create these events.

Of course, this is only speculation. But a Tax Day event is an extremely specific event to host. One that they must have been sure would be successful. Otherwise, why would they have spent the time creating it?

It’s a lesson all developers should learn. What other interests do you players have? How old are they? What level of education do they have? For example, if you discover that most of your players enjoy reading, perhaps you host a World Book Day event. Are you getting a lot of Scottish players? Maybe you celebrate Robert Burns’ birthday.

The more you can tailor your events and updates to your specific audience, the more they’ll feel a cultural connection with your game.

Use analytics to discover what makes your players tick

Information is power. The more you know, the more you can improve and iterate on your game. So if you’d learn about what works and what doesn’t, try out our free analytics tool.

First of all, let’s face it, AI is not great at everything yet. But game designers, artists, and producers have adopted it rapidly because there are things it does really well. Concepting, storyboarding, and ideation are prime examples here. We’ve been doing our own exploring, and wanted to share with you the cases that have worked well for us.

We’re using examples from PicFinder, so you can explore and get inspired by each use case, starting directly from this article.

Environment concept art

Getting ideas for new games, concepts, worlds, and environments can be a time consuming concept. You can search for images, which can take hours. Or you can create them, which will take even longer. But 2D gen AI tools make environment ideation extremely fast, so you can explore many versions of a concept and storyboard your way into a crystal clear design.

Some examples of game environments with different formats.

Action games

Robot battle – tall scene

Large battlefield – wide scene

Casual games

Green garden scene – portrait format

Castle interior scene – tall format

Character concept art

Generating new characters prevents many teams from accelerating their release pipeline. Generating character assets is also essential for monetization and engagement, as players can unlock new characters through progression or payment. GenAI makes character iteration a lot faster, for a few different genres.

Fashion, makeover, and decoration games

Fashion makeover outfits – tall format

Portrait with eye makeup – portrait format

Cozy living room – square format

Cute, cozy, casual games

Explorer bear

Girl next door

Royal cat

What we learned along the way

1. Prompts matter a lot

Using longer prompts is better. But also thinking of prompts like a Google Image Search description more than how you would describe the item in real life seems to work well. Words like “high definition” or “perfect features” help get better quality art in general.

2. Starting from an image saves a lot of time

Many genAI tools allow you to upload an image and will then create new versions in that format. This can help a lot with initial iteration, especially if you’re looking for a very particular type of art. For fashion outfits or makeovers starting from an existing outfit image will help.

3. Different image formats generate different results

Searching for a character in tall format might generate a full-body image while in square format would create a portrait. The format changes the results a lot, so exploring with the exact format you need can help get closer to what you need faster.

How can we help?

If you’d like us to share more genAI resources, drop us a note to let us know. GenAI is on everyone’s minds and we love being a resource on anything that helps you make better games.

Editors note: This article was written by Teemu Haila, Co-Founder & CPO at Metaplay. You can read their original version here.

How to avoid the critical mistakes studios make when launching games.

For such a sophisticated industry, it’s ironic that the single biggest mistake I see young gaming studios make is so simple: failing to plan ahead.

Instead of building or choosing a backend tool that offers functionalities needed by games with hundreds of millions of users, they choose one that ticks the boxes for the feature specs and technological infrastructure required in the initial stages of the game’s life only.

Then the game begins to scale and the studio realizes that their backend tech doesn’t support their future roadmap – the one that will catapult them into the top grossing charts. And they’re left with a set of major obstacles.

Below, I explain how launching a game with a short-term mindset – even though that is often encouraged in this industry – can be detrimental to its long-term success and cause avoidable headaches further down the line.

Short-term decisions, long-term implications

The pressure to ship a new game quickly is felt by all studios in 2023. In the game’s first stage, the team needs to build an MVP, soft launch, run data analysis to see if there’s a product-market fit, then deepen the game’s core loop and features. All in the space of around 6-12 months, depending on their budget.

The issue with this pressure is that it tends to cloud a studio’s long-term vision.

The three stages of a F2P game

To understand the problems brought on by short-term decision making for a game’s backend, let’s unpack the lifecycle of a successful F2P title.

From zero to one

In the first phase, concept validation is the name of the game. The team’s development focuses on the next year’s needs at best, choosing basic functionalities.

This typically means games are developed in editor rather than making slower device builds; offline gameplay will be prioritized while multiplayer action will be faked; game design will consist of pre-made features; and anything ‘extra’ will be avoided.

From a technical standpoint, this means launching a basic prototype is fairly straightforward. It involves building the game logic, connecting this to game analytics and game services (like in-app purchases), and building a database. Experienced developers can put this together using off-the-shelf tools in just 4 months.

At this stage, it ticks the boxes. However, if all goes well – the game concept has been validated and VC funding has poured in – the game moves into a new stage of existence. Let’s call it the scale-up phase.

The scale-up phase

Now the tech requirements are very different, needing to support a game with millions of players. New functions to build include cheat-proof logic, scalability to enable millions of players without crashing, multiple deployments of the game running for different departments in the studio, and DevOps to facilitate live environments.

That’s just the tech – on the game design and product side, they have to build out customer support functions, LiveOps tools, feature documentation, localization for different audiences, over-the-air (OTA) updates, and of course ensure all features are on par with the rest of the top 100 grossing games to stay competitive.

While to some extent, this is possible using the default backend solutions typically chosen from day one (although things get messy and scrappy pretty quickly), the major headaches arrive when the game enters the next phase.

The unicorn phase

For the few games that break into the hundreds of millions (or even billions) of players league, the tech and design requirements become even more demanding.

Legal compliance, security against hacks, tech documentation, integrating in-house analytics, and general maintenance are just a few of the requirements.

On the design side, meanwhile, if in the scaleup phase the goal was feature parity with the other top grossing games, the priority in the unicorn phase is feature innovation.

But how is this all related to the short-term thinking I called out at the start?

The impact of shipping a game without a tech upgrade path

When the time comes to truly scale and innovate, to become the next Supercell or Moon Active, the ramifications of shipping a game without a tech upgrade path are far-reaching. For instance:

1. Your game design becomes limited by available tech features

When the need to stand out from competition arises, game designers may come up with great ideas for new social features or LiveOps functions. However, due to the tech limitations brought on by a sub-par tech backend, the product team will struggle to execute and most likely push back on the concepts. This stifles growth and innovation.

2. Your tech stack diverges into inflexible micro services

At a certain point, it’s impossible to continue building on top of the existing tech stack. This often leads to the creation of a web of microservices, which causes confusion and inefficiency among development teams.

As a result, it can be almost impossible to troubleshoot bugs in the game, which can lead to increased downtime, and ultimately decreased revenue.

3. Your team spends increasing amount of time maintaining legacy systems

Existing, outdated systems drain resources as games seek to innovate. For example, LiveOps specialists might want to create a new leaderboard or guild feature, but the backend technology doesn’t offer the capability to do so.

As a result, time-consuming new systems must be built to sit alongside the old ones, creating a messy tech stack and sub-optimal operations in development teams.

These are just a few potential symptoms of choosing a backend solution tailored for the short-term when launching a game.

Tips for shipping without regret

So what aspects of a top-grossing free-to-play game does a developer need to lay the foundations for from the start?

• Game configs (over-the-air game updates, AB-testing, Google Sheets),
• Cheat-proof game logic (command pattern, mirrored execution),
• Customer support tools (in-game mails, dashboards, accounts, permissions),
• Legal compliance (GDPR, backups, security)
• LiveOps tools to keep the game exciting and maximize player retention and LTV.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not arguing games need to actually build out all of these functionalities from day one. That would take years.

My point is that they need to at least prepare for them by ensuring the tech capabilities are there as and when they’re needed.

Failing to lay these foundations from the start creates the need to carry out a major refactor of the backend code when it’s time to grow from the mid-level tier to the top 100 grossing hits.

And code refactors take significant time and investment at a time when real high impact work – such as building out and optimizing innovative new social features in your game – should be the priority.

Metaplay: The backend solution of choice for ambitious games

Metaplay is the only backend suite offering aspiring gaming unicorns the tools needed to ship and grow a top grossing game.

With our tools, there are no regrets further down the line or obstacles to your tech upgrade roadmap. From day 1 all the way through to unicorn status, we enable developers to make feature complete games, with tools for:

• Game programming
• Backend engineering
• Product and live ops
• Player support and QA

Don’t take my word for it – here’s what Arttu Aalto, Co-founder of Playsome had to say:

“The key benefit in addition to reliability, support and featureset has been access to source code and full customisability. There are no limitations to what we can implement and operate”.