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.

In this episode, Allison provides an in-depth look into the essential principles of tracking key success metrics in the gaming industry. She lays out a comprehensive understanding of the three core pillars: Acquisition, Engagement, and Monetization.

By watching this video, you’ll gain a clearer understanding of how to optimize important metrics like New Users, Retention, and Lifetime Value (LTV) – key aspects that can considerably impact your app’s performance.

This episode is packed with insights, practical tips, and strategies, making it a must-watch for all game developers, regardless of the stage of your game development journey.

Happy viewing!

Branching paths and dialogue trees go hand-in-hand with games. If you’re developing a game with even a modicum of story, the likelihood is that you want to give players an element of choice, too.

It can seem a little daunting at first. But creating a dialogue tree – a flowchart of the player’s choices in a conversation – doesn’t need to be complicated. Even the smallest changes can really immerse a player into your game. It’s about making them feel like they matter. I did this, therefore that is different.

The same principles for creating a single dialogue tree apply when planning your plot. So whether you’re coming up with a single conversation in a mobile game or developing a completely story-driven RPG, let’s dive into how you can plan out your dialogue trees.

Separate your choices from your hubs

There are two main reasons you’ll want to write a dialogue tree. You either want to advance the story or give information – give a choice or create a question hub.

• Choices are a one-way street. These are dialogue options where the player picks a response and there aren’t any takebacks. They make a decision and there’s a clear fork in the road.
• Hubs are for information dumping. These options are about answering questions. While speaking to a character, your player can pick an option, get the answer, and then return to a central hub – listing all the options once more.

It’s important to recognize this difference. When writing a choice, you need to make the response in-line with the character’s personality. Whereas you should write hubs in a more neutral, straightforward style.

So when you design your dialogue tree, make sure you distinguish between these two types of dialogue. Both in your planning, but also in your game’s design. (Maybe you only give hubs to NPCs that don’t affect the overall story, so people don’t accidentally make a choice when they thought they were in a hub.)

Not every choice needs huge consequences

Just because you’re giving a player a choice, doesn’t mean it needs to result in an entirely different ending. Not every choice is a huge branching path. Some – if not most – might affect your game in other ways.

In Beholder, all of your choices affect how other characters treat you, what happens to your environment, and even the ending of the game.

There are four ways a choice might affect your game:

• Story changes. These are those critical moments that create an entirely new branch on your tree. Maybe a character’s life hangs in the balance, and whether they live or die takes you down a completely different path.
• Power changes. These choices affect the gameplay itself. If a player successfully persuades an ally, maybe the final battle is easier. Or perhaps they gain more uses of a specific power because they were kind to a small child.
• Character changes. A player’s choice affects how a character treats them throughout the story. If you’re rude, they’re rude back. If you’re sarcastic, they tell everyone how funny you are. These reward a player for roleplaying. (For example, in Fable if you act aggressively then the NPCs will show that they’re afraid of you.)
• World changes. More subtle changes happen because of the player’s behaviour. Maybe a character grows roses in their garden because the player idly mentioned that was their favourite flower. Or maybe when the player was rude to the queen, they later overhear two NPCs gossiping about it.

Fable is a prime example of character changes. The more evil deeds you do, the more terrified the villagers are of you. 

So when planning your dialogue tree, note down what affect the decision will have on the rest of the game. Tagging these choices will help you keep track of what you need to add to the final version.

Signpost critical choices

One of the most frustrating experiences for a player is to make a choice, and not have any idea how it’s going to impact the story. If most of your dialogue has been question hubs or the choices generally led to simple power changes, they might not expect a sudden story-changing option.

So try to make it clear when a choice matters. You don’t need to literally flash a message on the screen. (We’re looking at you, The Wolf Among Us.) You can let the characters explain the importance to the player. It’s much more natural if a character says something like: “It’s all down to you. No turning back. What’ll it be?”

Give big choices time to breathe

If a choice is going to have huge, game-changing consequences – it’s good to leave time between that choice and the final result. Mass Effect was infamous for its ending branches, because it felt as though everything the player did up until the ending was pointless. It was only the final choice that mattered.

But imagine they’d offered the same choice much earlier – and more subtly. Throughout the story, characters could’ve asked the player what they felt about artificial intelligence: Would you kill or control them? How you responded to each of those characters could’ve determined which option Commander Shepard took at the end.

It still would’ve been the same choice. But it would’ve felt much more impactful. You said you’d kill them all. You said it every time. You chose to make Shepard this way. The result wouldn’t be arbitrary. It’d be inevitable.

Signposting how critical those decisions were would be a challenge. But not impossible. Characters could hint that the player ought to watch what they say. “Careful, Shepard. You oughta watch your mouth. Say something enough, and it changes you to your core, you know.”

Keep your branches down

The more branches in your dialogue tree, the more work you’re going to give yourself. Even if it’s an isolated conversation, be wary of exponential growth. There are two parts of a conversation to consider:

• Branching points. These are the moments where the conversation is going to branch completely in at least two directions. Even if you loop back around, you’re going to be writing two separate versions of the conversation.
• Dialogue options. How many options do you give your player at those branching points?

If you have three branching points in a conversation, each with two options, you’re going to have eight branches to write. Add one more option to each, you’ve got 27 branches. Another option? 64.

The equation is simple: It’s the number of options to the power of the branches. So the more branches you want, the fewer options you’ll want to give.

Consider your resources

How complex you want to make your dialogue tree really depends on the resources you have. How many people do you have in your team? If it’s only a few, you probably want to keep your dialogue tree pretty tight. What platform are you publishing on? If you’re making a mobile game, you’ll want to keep your dialogue short and sweet to fit on the screen.

Reigns is renowned for its choices. We’ve lost count of how many endings they have. Which is something Nerial could easily do. Because their core gameplay and design are so simple, they could spend more time crafting endings.

Any size studio – for any platform – can use a dialogue tree. But make sure that you don’t take on more than you can chew. Good dialogue takes time to refine. And when there are lots of moving parts and branches, you’ll need to go over the whole story multiple times to make sure it’s consistent.

Draw out your structure

The best way to design your dialogue tree is to draw out the structure like a flowchart, either by hand or with a tool like Microsoft Visio. If you want a tool specifically for gaming, Twine is a good alternative. Though it takes a little getting used to.

Once you’ve decided exactly how you’re going to draw your tree, start with the main path. What’s the main line through your game? This is the trunk of your tree. You can decide where to branch off the main path once you’ve got the main structure sorted.

It can help to write segments of the main path first, so that you have a better idea of how the story will flow.

How should it look?

Bandersnatch was a Netflix show with lots of branching parts, endings and deadends. It’s a very useful model to use when planning out dialogue trees. In fact, Reddit user alpine- recreated the flow.

As you look through the tree, you’ll notice a few key features:

• Loops and returns. Quite often, there are moments where the choice either loops back around or two choices only branch for a little while before returning to the main trunk.
• Skips. Occasionally, a dialogue choice is there just to bypass a lengthier section. If you use these yourself, ask yourself whether the skip might affect what the character knows and any future dialogue.
• Notes. You’ll notice that rather than drawing a completely separate branch, they’ve used dotted lines to indicate when a choice affects a different section and then added a note. For example, near the top right, it says: “Now Stefan knows about this pathway.” And this causes a small dialogue change in the scene.

Bandersnatch is probably denser than you’ll need for your game. With five different endings, and a huge number of options, it can get a little messy and intricate. So we’d recommend trying to have fewer endings and more sidenotes – where decisions cause other effects in your game, such as world or character changes. Rather than a completely alternative path.

Create variants, not just branches

The trick to creating an immersive experience isn’t to have loads of endings. It’s to have a mix of loops, skips and notes. Choices don’t have to affect the main branch that you’re creating immediately.

One way to do this is with variants – a slightly altered version of a scene or dialogue. Rather than a completely separate branch, you just have two versions of the same conversation. For example, if a player is rude to a character – maybe add a tag to all the scenes where that character appears. You now know that you need to create a variant of each of those scenes to keep the whole story consistent.

These smaller variants of scenes make it feel like every decision matters – even if they don’t completely change the main storyline. If you combine these choices that cause world or power changes, you won’t need to write hundreds of different scenes.

Think about locks and keys

One way to help a player feel accomplished is to lock certain choices. Did they pick up a key item? Do they have the relevant stat for this interaction? Has a major character died – so the player is forced down a specific path?

In Detroit: Become Human, they actually show the player the flowchart for the game as a way to encourage players to explore every outcome.

You’ll notice that certain choices are unlocked because of what the player has done in the past. For example, “Used friendly approach in ‘the interrogation.’” Because the player made that choice, this option is now open to them.

Interestingly, you’ll also notice that this is all within a returning branch. All these choices lead to the same result: The player finds Jericho. At this point, the main story continues. The small choices they made in the past merely affect how they discover Jericho – and how hard it’ll be.

There are four kinds of locks that you can use:

• Open. These are dialogue options that have no restrictions. The player can choose these freely, without needing to have done anything in the past. Often you’ll use these.
• Direct. These are where a specific choice has led to certain options opening up. For example, having enough intelligence, picking a certain background for the character, or having a specific item in your inventory.
• Convergent. This is where two or more choices need to come together to unlock a specific option. For example, if they persuade the three army generals to join their cause, perhaps they could strongarm the foe into a truce rather than fight.
• Accumulative. Multiple options scattered throughout the dialogue add up to unlock an option. Morality systems are a good example of this. The higher your morality, the more ‘good’ options you unlock. Or perhaps it’s tied to a specific character. If you’re kind to them, maybe their loyalty meter increases, unlocking more choices.

You’ll notice that games like Fallout or Cyberpunk use a combination of these locks to feel more immersive. While smaller titles like the text-based adventure game, Lifeline, primarily use open or direct paths.

Think about both sides of the conversation

Remember, you’re not only writing the dialogue for your characters. You’re writing what the player can say, too. When writing that dialogue, there are a few principles that can help make sure they land well:

• Use questions for hub items. If the player can repeat the dialogue – like in a question hub – questions can help make sure the player understands they’re not actually making a choice. So be careful using questions for actual choices.
• Make the option specific. You often won’t have room to write out the whole dialogue the player will say. So it’s probably best to try and summarize the first few lines. Giving just an emotion can lead the player to think: “Wait, I didn’t mean that.” Vague options make it difficult for the player to know which to pick.
• Decide if the player actually talks. When the player chooses an option, do they see what they said? Do they actually speak or do you skip straight to the NPCs dialogue? Just avoid making your dialogue choices a press-a-to-continue button – otherwise it might seem like the player has only said about ten sentences the entire game.

Whatever you choose, it’s important to write the dialogue in a character’s voice. But remember that the player is affecting the character’s personality. So if they’re always picking the angry options, maybe they take on a rougher tone.

For example, in Red Dead Redemption 2 there are many subtle changes to the dialogue depending on the player’s honor. For example, the low honor Arthur comes across as greedy and callous, while high-honor Arthur comes across as much more empathetic.

Make the conversation feel natural

It can be rather silly if a character is crying about their dead parents one moment, and jovially answering questions the next. If you have any dialogue that the player can repeat – like a question hub – think about how that should change depending on where they’re at in the story. Write different variants of the dialogue so that it feels right.

Another way to make a conversation feel natural is to allow the player to interrupt the other characters. This is much harder to implement, but Oxenfree does it beautifully.

In Oxenfree, the player can choose dialogue choices at any point, even while other characters monologue. The interruption itself isn’t what’s so great, though. It’s how they get the dialogue back on track. Using phrases like “Anyway…” or “As I was saying…” they can seamlessly cut back to the original dialogue as though it was a real conversation.

See how players react

As Ernest Hemingway apparently said: “The first draft of anything is s**t.”

You never know how smooth your dialogue is or whether it feels quite right, until you start getting people to play your game. So it’s important to test out how players react, which options they choose and which options they miss.

If you’re looking to craft your own dialogue tree, you can use our tool to track where your beta testers are jumping ship or which choices might be falling flat. Give it a try.

Making your games as diverse, accessible and inclusive as possible is not just a great thing to do, it also opens your game up to a larger audience. How will people with a different sexuality react to your game? Different culture? Different age? Different gender?

Being diverse and inclusive is about acknowledging the differences we all have – and making sure that you think about how your game will affect everyone.

The advice in this article is only the start. As time goes on, the industry will learn more about how to be more inclusive – more advice will enter the conversation. But it takes effort to stay on top of these changes, so make sure you’re being proactive and regularly searching for new information to stay in the loop.

But for now, look at a few ways you can make more inclusive and diverse games.

Follow universal design principles

Before developing and designing your game, look into universal design principles. Using them as a basis, you should follow these seven principles:

• Make it equitable. So make sure that your game works for all people, and that if it can’t be identical for different people, it’s at least equivalent.
• Make it flexible. Give people the choice to change things that don’t work for them – whether that’s controls or the pace of the game.
• Make it simple. Make sure that your game’s user interface is easy to use, without a lengthy tutorial. And that the options are easy to find.
• Make it available. Give everyone a way to access the instructions, regardless of their physical or mental abilities. For example, how would a blind person read your tutorial?
• Make it safe. Think about how your game might affect people’s mental and physical health. Remove anything that could cause harm. And – if you can’t – at least give warnings.
• Make it effortless. Design your game so that people don’t need to strain themselves or do repetitive actions. And – if you can’t – make it easy to adjust the settings.
• Make it reachable. Make sure that anybody can see and reach the elements of your game, regardless of their body’s size or mobility.

Games for Change has a good process to make sure people are being inclusive, which you can apply to your studio. Adapting their seven steps, you should:

1. Define. Figure out the potential problems and write down any barriers.
2. Research. Look into those problems and get to know them inside out.
3. Brainstorm. Get together and come up with possible solutions.
4. Develop. Pick the best ideas and create prototypes of those.
5. Review. Test the prototypes with a diverse group of testers and get feedback.
6. Finalize. Add those prototypes into your actual game.
7. Evaluate. Test and get feedback on your game to make sure you added those ideas in correctly. (And that nothing else in the game design interferes with your solutions.)

With this process you should be able to create a toolkit that addresses issues for all your games, not just the one you’re currently working on.

Give people options

We’ve written before about how to make your game more accessible. And it almost always comes down to giving people options. Here’s what should definitely be in your settings menu:

• Subtitles. This helps people who are hard of hearing, as well as international players.
• Motion blur, head bobbing, depth of field. Some people can feel motion sick when playing games. These options help them find the right balance for themselves.
• Color palette. At the very least, add options for default, red-green friendly, and blue-yellow friendly. Or let people choose exactly what colors they want to use.
• Difficulty. Letting people choose an easier difficulty can be the difference between them being able to actually play your game or not.
• Controls. If someone only has one hand and you don’t have a way to remap the controls, they’re never going to be able to play your game.
• Tutorials and hints. Let people turn back on tutorials, as they might not be able to remember everything.
• User interface elements. Let people turn off and on aspects of the user interface – or even move them around.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. But it’s definitely the bare minimum you should be doing to make your game accessible.

Just remember, it’s much easier to incorporate these aspects into your game if you start building the game from the ground up with them in mind.

Hire fairly and diversity will come naturally

One way to make more inclusive games is to have a more diverse team. The more varied your team, the more perspectives you’ll have in your team. And the best way to get to that point? Be fair in your hiring process.

If you focus on making your application process fair and equal – you’ll naturally hire a more varied and diverse team. It’s not about hitting a quota – it’s about giving everyone a fair chance.

Widen where you place job ads

If you only advertise your jobs on Mars, you’d only get martians applying. The same is true – if more complicated – if you advertise at specific universities or with specific newspapers.

Wherever you advertise, you’ll only get their audience’s demographic applying. So if you want to increase the pool of candidates, open up where you advertise your jobs. Widen the adverts, widen the pool.

Remove personal details from résumés

The more equal your process, the more likely you’ll hire a diverse team. If you hire purely based on achievements and experience, you’ll naturally overcome any possible biases. (As long as your adverts are in the right place.)

So ask your HR manager to replace the names, age, gender, race and photos on people’s résumés with placeholders. This is called ‘blind recruitment’. And it means that you’ll invite people to interviews based on their experience alone.

Some recruitment software can do this automatically. But you can get someone to do it manually (as long as they’re not involved in actually picking candidates).

Make an interview scorecard

The more you can get rid of subjective reasons when choosing who to hire, the more you’ll hire people fairly. So put together a checklist, assign each bullet point a score, and add them up at the end. Now, you can fairly compare candidates – without your personal biases possibly getting in the way.

For example, say a candidate reveals they have ADHD in the interview. Your gut reaction might be that they’ll be easily distracted and unable to perform the role. But if you use a scorecard – asking them specific questions about what they’ve done in the past – you’ll be able to judge their actual performance and skills. Rather than basing your decision on your assumptions about their life.

Find diverse playtesters, if nothing else

If you do all this and still find that your studio isn’t as diverse as you’d like, you can always make sure you’re getting lots of perspectives through your playtesters. For example, in VR – it’s important to get people of lots of different heights testing your game. If everyone who tests the game is tall, you can easily cause problems for shorter people.

If you search for playtesters from different countries and cultures, you’ll – at the very least – be able to catch potential problems before you release your game into the wild.

A diverse team is only the start

You also need to make sure that you’re treating your employees fairly and listening to all their views. But it’s a great start to making sure that you build a more diverse culture. Diverse cultures lead to diverse perspectives. And diverse perspectives lead to inclusive games.

Think about your characters

At this point, you should have a diverse team, a toolkit of solutions, and a standard set of options. You should be able to create an inclusive and accessible game.

Now it’s time to think about the creative side of your game. Your characters. Are they diverse? Is the story you’re telling inclusive? Have you fallen into the trap of making stereotypes, rather than rounded people?

Making a diverse game with a cast of characters from different backgrounds isn’t about hitting a quota. It’s about making sure that you’re not just falling into the habit of making characters that look and think just like yourself.

Don’t assign numbers to physical traits

Activision infamously made an internal tool that – while it was meant to help them create diverse characters – inadvertently came across as clinical and creepy by players.

An example of how Activision’s tool ranks characters in Overwatch.

Why did this cause a problem? Because you can’t assign a number to these aspects. Why does Lucio, for example, rank so high on ethnicity? What makes him ‘more ethnic’ than other characters?

Assigning a number to traits like this is problematic. It puts a value on being one thing over another. That’s not the correct approach. It comes across as just ticking boxes: “Yes, we’ve got a gay.”

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t audit your cast of characters. You should go through your game and ask yourself: What sexuality, race, gender, and physical traits do our characters have? Doing that can help you combat your implicit biases – you might find that all your characters share pretty similar traits, because that’s what’s natural to you. Maybe they all come from the same background. Maybe they’re all the same age. If they are, an audit could help you spot those biases and help you change some of your characters.

Make rounded characters, not tokens

Ultimately, you want to make your characters believable. What you don’t want is to insert a character just to pay lip service to diversity. For example, adding a gay black friend or a damsel in distress. This is called tokenism – defining a character just by their physical traits. And adding them just because.

So don’t try and hit a quota. Instead, create round characters first. Ask yourself: Does their gender, race, or sexuality actually influence their motivations, desires and actions?

When creating a character, you want to start with their overall personality first. So note down:

• Their role in the story. Are they a hero or villain? Mentor or obstacle?
• Their virtues. What’s good about them? Are they just? Restrained? Patient? Courageous? Friendly? Kind?
• Their flaws. What’s bad about them? Are they lustful? An alcoholic? A gambler? Envious? Quick to anger? (Bear in mind, a disability isn’t a flaw. This is about their personality. Not what they can and cannot do.)
• Their motivations. What drives them? Why are they helping or hindering the hero? (Or, if they’re the hero, why are they on their quest?)

Now that you have their personality sorted, you can approach the rest of their character more fairly. Now is when you can come up with:

• Their backstory. How did they get to this point? Where were they born? What events in their life were important to them?
• Their traits. What’s their gender, race, sexuality and body type?

You can now go back over their personality and use their backstory and traits to influence their motivations, but never their virtues and flaws.

For example, a woman from an Indian background will have a very different upbringing to a man from Brazil. This might affect their motivations. But it wouldn’t mean that they’re no longer kind. Likewise, if the point of the character is that they’re rash – that also shouldn’t change, just because of their culture.

In other stories, maybe these traits affect how other characters treat this person. Does that influence their motivations? Are they fed up with being ignored or ostracised?

Question your internal biases

Making your game inclusive and diverse is really all about making sure you challenge your own biases. So be proactive and challenge yourself. Question whether your design or narrative is reaching as many people as possible.

And a key part of that is writing a story that’s true to the characters – not stereotypes or cliches. So if you’d like to learn more about how to craft that story, read our blog on how to improve your narrative.

Editors note: This article was written by Om Tandon, industry specialist, game consultant and UX Director. You can read his original version here.

What does the stellar mass market success of games like Marvel Snap, Marvel Contest of Champions and CoD Mobile share in common? No, it’s not just that they are all popular IP/Franchises. (IP driven games fail very often too, it took 3 versions to get CoD right on mobile). While it’s true there is no one factor or a “Reductionist” winning formula like gameplay, IP or UA. There is however a common pattern or framework that emerges, when you look closer at the success of developers who chose to adapt traditionally hard core PC/Console genres successfully on mobile…Is there really such a framework? and if it exists can it be repeated?…read on to find out!

Marvel Snap is getting 10X more downloads and 10X more revenue compared to CCG’s like Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering, as per Apps Radar on mobile.

This latest CCG sensation from the developer “Second Dinner” has taken the world by storm since late 2022, amassing millions of downloads, becoming game of the year and recently touched 30 million dollars in worldwide revenue as per games.biz.

This game has truly taken CCG or Card Collectible Genre games to the masses. CCG being a traditional genre (Magic the Gathering, Hearthstone) has always had a big fan following on PC, but it has been somewhat niche in appeal on mobile, as these games involve deep strategy, elaborate deck building, mental gymnastics and calculated moves, requiring massive time sinks, memorising of minions, spells, hero powers which pushes this genres appeal to a more mid core to hard core player rather then a casual player.

Marvel Snap from ex Hearthstone (Blizzard) team, does what many successful mobile adaptation of traditional mid core/hard core games genres have historically done – EASING and ERASING the cognitive loads for mass market appeal.

Load Reduction: The Framework

I have written extensively about the concept of “Easing and Erasing” of cognitive loads for players on mobile in my previous article series on “Marvel Contest of Champions” and in a 2 part series on FPS games on mobile. (CoD mobile’s success lines up with this thesis)

Just like a juggler simultaneously managing multiple weights in the air, which calls for intense concentration, dexterity and a high degree of skill. A game imposing multiple cognitive loads on a “Casual” player can frustrate them by placing immense friction in their path.

Many traditional PC/Console game genres especially mid core/ hard core games, make players simultaneously juggle multiple loads that force the player to learn, think, memorise, and keep track of multiple aspects of the game, like manage resources, multi touch inputs, strategic planning, constant peer pressure, stats. min/maxing, buffs/de-buffs soliciting, as a result all of these loads make the; learning, playability, skill and mastery curve steeper for an “Casual” player, making the game appear hard to play, now combine this with the amount of real estate you have on mobile devices, all these loads ramp up friction and act as a high barrier to entry for casual players on mobile.

The question that begs an answer is, if you are a mobile game developer seeking mass market appeal for a traditional PC/Console genre, how do you revise these loads for casual players, while still keeping the genre’s essence intact?

Load Management is the key…

From repeat successes I have seen and analysed over the years, many developers that made the successful mobile adaptation of mid/hard core genres for mass market appeal have either altogether removed certain loads (Load Erasing) or reduced the load’s magnitude ie: difficulty of those loads (Load Easing) by trading off and diluting game mechanics.

Let’s look at some case studies, here are two traditionally hardcore PC/console genres games that became breakout hits on Mobile that I have analysed in the past:

Marvel Contest of Champions

1) Brawler Genre: Top grossing hit Marvel Contest of Champions applied the load management framework to make high dexterity and multi input dependent “Brawler Genre” accessible for casual mobile players

Marvel Contest of Champions

Classic brawler games from arcade machines to pc, console, hand held devices have always been about the thrill & skill of mastering varying combos and moves with swift reaction time.

Street Fighter

Traditional street brawlers like “Street Fighter” have an assortment of moves mapped to the controller as seen below. Just like FPS, this genre also traditionally demands high motor and sensory coordination as the fights are in real time with an enemy who can execute ‘N’ number of combos and special attacks, countering them requires adapting your hero’s fighting controls on the fly.

How controls map to “Classic Brawler” games on Console & PC

We can see above, how in classical brawlers not only player has to track opponents movement but also combines them with well timed combos for punching and kicking.

Legacy arcade “Brawler” genre controls found their way into Pc/Console adaptations.

Origin of course lies in the old arcade machines, which were designed to fully engage and immerse players within the game session, without affordance for distractions. Tactile controls were designed to use and engage multiple fingers at a given time. needing players complete immersion and involvement.

In contrast to the classical definition of brawlers, Marvel contest deviates quite a bit by “Simplifying the diverse combat system” which some may consider the beating heart of this genre.

Marvel Contest: Control Scheme

Marvel Contest, in contrast, dilutes this volley of inputs to just few taps and swipes which is sensible for mobile devices as affordance for distractions is high and supporting muti-touch input of different fingers together is cumbersome if not impossible.

Marvel Contest achieved this by load management via Erasing of loads, where in, the heavy cognitive loads involved in traditional pc and console games are removed altogether, to achieve better balance and match the skills of casual mobile audiences.

Marvel Contest, mainly ERASES the loads of “Classic Brawler” genre by simlifying and automating controls and battle moves to “4 simple” inputs from the player, erasing 8 different kind of combos and inputs altogather!

(Read the full article, I published in 2016)

CoD Mobile

2) FPS Genre: From a pure User Experience & loads perspective, FPS games have traditionally required a high level of mastery and precision too. An FPS player juggles multiple cognitive loads of varying magnitudes at the same time while coordinating motor & sensory skills, overcoming the friction of controls in order to achieve their goal. This cognitive load is much greater in magnitude and complexity compared to other hardcore genres found on mobile (RTS, RPG, MOBA, TPS, etc.)

Mapping out FPS genre specefic Heurestic loads

Using our juggler analogy we can see in a pure traditional FPS their are at least 6 loads a player has to juggle!

Given the small real estate (screen size) of mobile devices, this problem is even further compounded by Fitt’s law:

Fitt’s Law: The smaller the target and the farther a player needs to move, the harder it is for them to successfully complete the action, especially with time pressure.

Fast movement and dexterity are the hallmarks of FPS games. Players are constantly moving around the 3D world attempting to identify targets and then move their cursor quickly to shoot their opponents. Moving this to mobile only makes things harder. This is one of the fundamental reasons why shooters on mobile have been hard to crack — too much cognitive load, and too frustrating to track targets.

So how does COD Mobile attempt to fix this? The game recognises and embraces two distinct player types: casual and core. They keep the funnel wide by having a primary mode which keeps the cognitive loads low, and they also have modes where pro players can have all the control they want.

ERASING: Reduced number of cognitive loads

COD Mobile very effectively erases a number of cognitive loads (mentioned above) a FPS player has to manage by enabling features like auto-firing, aim-assist and CoD’s best-in-class ease of movement, which automates these actions. This emphasis on ease is reflected in the 2 default control options that COD Mobile offers:

These default simplified control schemes give casual players an easier learning curve, along with greatly reduced cognitive load in line with what they are accustomed to on mobile.

Thus simple mode actually “Erases many Loads” for players in line with our load management framework.

EASING: Controls for Advanced Players

While default control schemes work well for casual players, the “Advanced Controls” offer a wide variety of customisation options (in line with PC & console game settings) for hardcore players who are very particular about their preferences and like to heavily experiment & customise UI inputs to their own play styles.

If players want, they can adjust the sensitivity and turn “On” and “Off” up to 25+ parameters from the “Basic” and “Sensitivity” control menus covering everything from auto firing and auto sprinting to the gyroscope and movement sensitivity.

On top of that, advanced controls give the ability to individually scale, move and configure each button/UI item on the HUD, allowing players the ability to literally build and personalize their own user interface. This is an example of “Easing Loads” via giving players ability to adjust the magnitude or difficulty of traditional FPS loads

In short:

CoD Mobile tailors to the preferences of both casual and hardcore players in control schemes via reducing the impact of traditional FPS cognitive loads, while offering a high degree of customization and make the game more accessible, enjoyable and playable on mobile, lowering the high barrier to entry normally found in the FPS genre.

Now that we have seen this Framework of Easing/Erasing loads repeat itself with two traditionally core PC/Console genres.It’s time to see how Marvel Snap does the same!

(Read the full article here)

Marvel Snap

Before we look at CCG loads, let’s talk about the IP, Marvel universe is the most sought after and recognisable cinematic brand worldwide and has a huge fan following across demographics, appealing to a broad age group from (Gen Alpha under, 12 year olds to Baby Boomers, 55 year +) , in fact it beats iconic franchises like Star Wars by a mile.

UA Edge: The IP not only adds more flair and familiarity to the genre, it also aids in competing with big franchises like Hearthstone and Magic by driving organic downloads helping a small studio effectively use it as a UA tactic.

Choice of the IP is smart, as it brings familiarity and curiosity amongst a more casual audience who might never have heard or played fantasy CCG games like “Hearthstone” and “Magic the Gathering” in the past

That said, as we know IP is a big factor in organic growth but IP alone is not enough for making a game successful, retention, ease of play and stickiness of core loop are the more important ingredients, that’s where Marvel Snap shines by successfully using Easing/Erasing of user loads.

3) CCG Game Loads:

Traditional CCG games like Hearthstone feature complex game rules and mechanics. In these kind of games, hundreds of unique cards with different special effects make the game fun to play yet difficult to master for players.

In a nutshell Hearthstone is a 2-player turn-based zero-sum strategy game with imperfect information, and complex states such as non-determinism, and partial observability. Chance events are everywhere such as summoning a random minion, or casting a random spell to random targets.

Loads a player needs to manage in a CCG game like Hearthstone

Given this wide variety of actions, management of cards, decks, memorising large no. of moves and strategising alongside resource management is something we know, easily overwhelms a causal player.

Using the Easing/Erasing load management framework we saw earlier in the article, here is how Marvel Snap leverages it.

Easing Deck building Load: Instead of elaborate card selection and deck building which games like Hearthstone require (Hundreds of cards, with players building up to 27 custom decks, each deck having 30 cards)..which you can imagine requires time and labour along with good understanding of what each card does. MS simply has 2 decks to start with for the player with each deck comprising of only 12 cards.

Deck building is pretty automated from start. Players do not have to actively think about which cards should go in which deck right off the bat. This removes the need for a steep learning curve and does not overwhelms a casual player

Erasing Card Archetypes: Marvel Snap cards are primarily Marvel Universe “Heroes” from popular crowd pleasers like, “Ironman”, “The Hulk” and “The Punisher” to lesser known heroes like “Quick Silver” and “Misty Knight”.

Archetypes like Weapons, Minions and Spells cards found commonly in other CCG’s are totally missing, which removes the load of remembering, understanding and synergising these varied archetypes, simplifying the gameplay.

Easing Memory Load: This is a by-product of simplification of “Easing” elaborate deck building and “Erasing” card archetypes, as players don’t have to memorise any opening plays, specific counter-plays and counter moves, removing the need for strategising before getting in to a game.

Erasing Attack on Opponent Cards: The load of attacking the life of individual cards played by your opponent has been completely removed. By having a location based winning approach, players just need to focus on amassing more and more points on each location, removing the need to target and attack individual cards played by the opponent.

This Easing and Erasing results in Byte sized snacking and satisfying core loop sessions – which fits just under 3-4 minutes…perfect for a casual mobile player!

Conclusion:

1. While there might be no exact reductive formula or recipe that goes into making of a mass appeal hit game, there definitely are quantifiable patterns and frameworks which can be leveraged to scale the gameplay for mass F2P audience.
2. The Load reduction framework which utilises “Easing & Erasing” of loads is based on attitudinal/behavioural traits, heuristic framework & preferences of casual to mid core F2P audience, which developers and designers have been (consciously or subconsciously) using to simplify complex game mechanics for mobile
3. CoD Mobile, Marvel Contest, Marvel Snap bring highly addictive (but complex) traditionally popular PC/Console genres like FPS, Brawler and CCG to mobile. As we analysed above, without load reduction which aids gameplay adaptation, these games could have easily overwhelmed casual mobile players, even if they had a huge IP backing them up.

With proven pedigree, traditionally popular but relatively complex PC/Console game genres will always be a source of inspiration for mobile F2P games. By using Load reduction framework consciously, developers and designers now have another powerful tool in their arsenal to get the experience right for mobile and achieve mass market appeal!

If you liked this article, please feel free to check out my other game deconstructs at https://www.uxreviewer.com/ or get in touch for consulting queries. Feel free to connect with me for future articles.

“All your base are belong to us.” Funny as it is, it’s a pretty janky translation. Thankfully for Zero Wing, the bad translation didn’t affect it too much – it was one of the top-rated games in 1989 and even had a rerelease on Steam in 2022. But other brands haven’t been so lucky.

When Toyota released the MR2 in France and Belgium, they had to quickly rebrand the car. If you pronounce the letters, it sounds like merde (m-er-deux) – or s**t in French. Not a good look.

This famous translation fail is from Zero Wing, released on Sega Genesis in 1989. 

But those are translation errors. Sometimes, it’s a cultural mistake. Even simple hand gestures can cause controversy. Did you know that the okay gesture is used like the middle finger in Brazil? We’re sure that’s tripped up some tourists.

So if you’re looking to translate your mobile game into another language, we’ve got a few best practices to follow. Practices that’ll help make sure your game doesn’t end up going viral for the wrong reasons.

Translation and localization are different

Strictly speaking, we’ll be talking about localization. Not translation. There are actually three types of translation to consider:

• Translation. This is where you translate a sentence word for word. It’s usually best for instruction manuals or in the medical field, where it’s important nothing changes.
• Localization. This is where you translate the spirit of the piece. Most of the sentences will keep their meaning, but your references and idioms will change to match what people would actually say.
• Transcreation. This is where the translator essentially rewrites everything. You work with them from the very beginning and they write their version alongside the original.

This isn’t the only slip up Aero Fighters 2 faced. We also had “I never thought I’d be frying over a jungle”, and “I am a Punk Rocker, and I fight for justice” for someone who just did not look like a punk rocker…

In gaming, we don’t really want to translate. That way be dragons. Instead, we want to localize our games, so that any cultural references or phrases make sense to our players.

Now we’ve got that cleared up, what are the best practices for localizing your mobile game?

Get advice on the languages early

Localization isn’t just about the words. Colors, symbols, references – these all play their part. So you’ll want to choose exactly which languages you’re considering translating into as early as possible. And then you’ll want to find locals – or professional translators – of that culture.

While there are tools like Trados, Smartcat and Phrase – automation will only get you so far. And it will only deal with the words.

Ask for a cultural report

Tell your translator which languages you’re hoping to release in and ask them to send you a list of points to consider. For example, they might tell you that black is considered unlucky in Japan. So if you’ve got a luck-based mechanic, you’re going to want to change up your palette.

This report should contain cultural dos and don’ts, as well as language and topics that are considered taboo or could have strange connotations. In China, for example, they don’t allow red blood in their games. Instead, developers have to make it green. And it looks like China might be asking developers to remove any form of blood at all.

Once you have that report, you can use that information to make more informed decisions as you design your game.

Put together a lore bible

We’ve spoken about lore bibles before – and they’re vital for making sure that you keep your narrative consistent throughout your game. But they’re even more important for your translators. Particularly if you’re translating into multiple languages – you’ll want to have all your translators working from the same hymn sheet.

In your lore bible, list out why you’ve made certain decisions. For example, why did you name your characters that way? Is it a made-up word that needs recreating in their language? What about your mechanics?

This is particularly important when it comes to dialogue. You’ll want to note down the intent and subtext behind the lines, so your translator can decide whether to change it to suit the culture.

Let the translators play the game

Context really matters when translating a piece of writing. But if it’s too early to let them play it for themselves, make a short video walking through everything.

Make sure you can easily edit strings

Never hard-code your writing. Use variables instead. That way, you can code a simple script to print or export all those variables into a spreadsheet. This will make the translator’s job much easier.

Bandai Namco have a handsome portfolio of games under their belt. And usually without any flaws. But their ‘The Tales of…” games skipped a backflip in its development. 

It’s not just dialogue that needs translating. Think about your dates, currencies, item descriptions and hint text. Not only that, but what about the language around your game? Your App Store description, your logo, and your marketing materials. All of that is going to need translating, too.

Give your words room to grow

When programming your game, you also want to consider how different languages will actually look. Aside from making sure you can deal with different characters, you’ll also need to think about the layout. Some languages will take up far more space than others – take Cryllic script languages, like Russian, which on average use about 20% more keystrokes than English.

You don’t want to cut any words short – you don’t know what they might end up meaning. So imagine what would happen if the text became much longer.

Test out your translations

Before you go live, make sure you test it out with a few local people first. These will help you spot the differences that might’ve emerged during the translation process. For example, you might want to track whether people drop out of your tutorial more in French compared to English. Or maybe you want to see how many people use a mechanic after you’ve shown them a tooltip.

Whatever you want to track and keep an eye on, our free analytics tool can help you get the data you need. Try it out for yourself.

VR is all about immersion. It’s about allowing players to lose themselves in more than just a game, but a new world. You have to build VR experiences the right way to make this happen. This goal is always top-of-mind for Schell Games. In this interview, we spoke to Schell Games’ Vice President of Product, Charlie Amis, to learn their story.

“For VR, you want to make the player feel like they’re actually in the world you’ve created. This isn’t as true or a high priority in PC and console games. If people start to lose that sense of presence and immersion, then a lot of the reason they put the headset on is hurt. They want to go to another world or be someone new. So you need to help them feel like they’re really there and really that new person.”

With that in mind, here’s what Charlie had to say.

Let people play out the fantasy

Simulation is key for a successful VR game. Much more so than other consoles. People want things to feel real.

“It’s clear that simulation, as both a genre and concept, is far more popular in VR than in Console and PC games. It’s also defined a bit differently. VR players generally want to experience things as close to reality as possible.”

Take your players’ imagination and turn it into a reality

When chatting with Charlie, he said one of the biggest reasons why they went with the concept for I Expect You To Die was because they asked the question:

“Would it be cool to be a spy in VR? Among Us VR is similar here, too. Being able to actually play as an Impostor or Crewmate in first person was just so appealing to players.” 

If we were to play Among Us as a real-life physical game, how would we do it? We would run around the ship and complete the tasks with our hands. That’s what the VR version should be.”

So if you’re ever stuck for ideas, think about what roles or fantasies your players will want to experience, and take it from there.

Make the gameplay satisfying

Helping a player experience their fantasy is only half of the work. You have to make the game satisfying to keep them hooked.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if you could be [fill in the blank]? So many games have that question baked into their core. Then it’s about how satisfying those interactions you can do in that new role. Does it feel good when playing? Are the interactions intuitive? Is it fun to do these interactions a ton of times?”

There’s the distinction. Start with the fantasy. And then make it satisfying and fun. That was Schell Games’ mindset when they started work on Among Us VR.

“For Among Us VR, a camera above the map facing down (like in the PC version), playing in third person, wouldn’t have worked. Players want to walk through the hallway and be physically in the game. Otherwise, what’s the point of a VR version?”

Your players won’t notice missing objects

But they will notice objects they can see but can’t interact with. If they can’t pick up or mess around with items, it can break the experience. This was especially the case with I Expect You To Die.

“There was a champagne bottle in the first level that didn’t do anything originally. But players were picking it up. And you should be able to pop the cork. You should be able to drink it. You should be able to break the bottle. And then the broken bottle shards should be able to cut things. Otherwise, you’re breaking immersion, hurting how intuitive your interactions are, and missing out on a lot of fun.”

“There are many objects in PC and console games that are just… there. Which is fine. It’s background stuff that fills the room, and you do not expect it to be interactive. But you’ll see in many VR games that there’s less junk. But the stuff that is there, the player can and should be able to interact with,” Charlie added. 

With the champagne bottle, they had a choice to make: either make it interactive or remove it altogether. Schell Games chose the first option (and they made it part of the level). But for you, if it’s too much work to develop further, then remove it. Otherwise, you’ll break the immersive experience.

You need fresh techniques to direct your players

In most flat games, you can layer different techniques to help guide your players through the level. VR, however, is more complicated. Your player could be shorter and not see or reach something. They may not know to look up. You have to give them an extra hand in places to help them progress.

“There are problems in VR where the player may not look where you want them to. And you don’t want to be too obvious; otherwise, it’s too easy and less immersive. But you can layer in techniques. So for I Expect You To Die, rather than saying ‘look up’, we had a bit of dust fall from the ceiling. We found our players naturally looked up to that. 

“In one level, we had a water tower that the player needed to interact with. Because it was far away from the player, they didn’t notice. We added a light, but it didn’t help. So we added a slow blinking light, which did catch our player’s attention. But we had to do it in a natural way,” Charlie added. 

You may have to get creative. Playtesting is crucial at this point. Getting live feedback from your players when they get stuck can help you come up with creative ideas to get around the problem.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew

Once you have the base gameplay sorted, your next job is to decide what other features to add. If you’re adapting an existing game, what changes do you make to the original version?

When recreating Among Us for VR platforms, Schell Games only made two major changes to the original game.

“We started with simple changes. Aside from making it first person, which was incredibly important, the next big one was adding spatial voice chat. It made the game feel more real. You don’t want to hear every player at the same time, but being able to hear a conversation from around the corner is exciting. You wonder, can I trust them or not? That’s interesting and new gameplay for Among Us”

There were plenty more features and mechanics the team considered adding. One, in particular, was having multiple floors on a level for players to explore.

“There’s so much more we could have done and could still do. We thought about adding multiple vertical levels to the map for players to climb to. But we decided to focus on small things first and see how the community responds before taking on more changes to the original.“

It’s better to start small and then layer in more post-launch. Not only does it help your team manage the workload, but it means you can roll out more content to keep your players engaged later. You can see what Schell Games has on their roadmap for Among Us VR to get an idea of what pace they work at.

VR takes double the time and double the tech

VR is much more demanding. It’s an entire 3D world your players can explore and get lost in. And many of the regular tricks that devs use to save on rendering costs are lost when building VR games.

“It does take much longer to build a great VR game. One example on the visual side is that players can pick up many more objects and look at them from every angle and up very close. Having your objects be static or only rendering the visible sides to save processing power doesn’t work as much in VR because of this.” 

And you can’t lose out on quality. VR games, although they’re now much better quality, can still make your players ill.

“If you’re not careful with how you develop your VR game, you can make your players physically sick. If the frame rate drops too much, or there’s a problem with the floor collision, and you fall off the map, it can be extra bad for the player. A collision glitch like that in a PC game that may be funny or silly is a lot more intense in VR.”

You’re rendering everything twice

You have two screens you’re working with. Double the screens, double the render. And at a high framerate (anything under 72fps in VR can make players uncomfortable). This is another reason you’ll find fewer objects and extraneous visual detail in VR titles.

“You have a screen for each eye, and you’re basically doubling the amount of performance costs for VR games. But it won’t be long until better tech is released and the ceiling on what’s possible rises.”

Players can move their camera into odd spots, bring objects close to their face, and the GPU needs to render two versions. So it’s demanding on the graphics card. It’s like running two copies of Fortnite on your computer – one for each eye. And unless you have your VR headset hooked up to a beefy computer, you’re working with a mobile CPU to manage all that.

Use analytics to make informed decisions

“We use analytics in a few different ways after we launch. For our I Expect You To Die games, analytics helps us prioritize and iterate which features to use for our sequels. If we know from playtesting that players generally really enjoy specific features, but we see from analytics that players aren’t engaging with them, perhaps it’s a good idea to make them more accessible in our next game.

“Analytics played a big role for Among Us VR liveops. As a multiplayer PvP (player versus player) game, it’s critical to get the balance right between crewmates and imposters. Finding out who is winning more often, when, and why, helped us to make changes to the balance and create a better experience for everyone.”

When we asked Schell Games what they’re using, they recommended User Testing for their playtesting, and GameAnalytics for collecting quantitative data.

You can’t treat AR/MR the same way as VR

Schell Games recently started building games using AR and MR technology. A lot of developers go in thinking they’re the same. But after speaking with the team, they told us that isn’t always the case.

“Mixed reality and VR have very different design aspects. You can’t control the level design much in MR and AR. Your game experience has to adapt to every player’s own space. They put the headset on to go beyond reality, but they’re still in the same room. So you have to make it extra special.”

AR games need a lighter touch than VR games. They’re much more stripped back.

“It’s tempting to add a lot to your experience. But it’s often better to add small elements that change the real world in a dramatic way. You need to work with the environment that is there and “augment” it. The more virtual objects you add, the less mixed reality it is.”

Keep it simple with small changes that make a big impact. If you add too much to AR/MR, ask yourself: Should I be making a VR game instead?

Use analytics to perfect your VR world

We have an SDK that works with VR. It’s easy to get set up and going with your own VR titles; it’s the same process as installing our normal SDKs. Sign up for our tool to get started today.

Hybrid-casual is a fairly new concept to enter the gaming world. You may have heard the whispers around the industry and a few hybrid-casual games already entering the app stores. But it’s starting to make its mark in the market. Players are starting to spend more time in games (with time spent in apps up 80% from 2019 to 2021). And in response, Developers and studios alike are turning their attention to this new type of game development and reaping the benefits (if done correctly).

So what exactly is hybrid-casual? How does this differ from hyper-casual? And what do you need to do to get started?

That’s what we aim to cover. Let’s dig in.

So, what are hybrid-casual games?

It’s when you mix together the simple core gameplay of hyper-casual, with the features and monetization models of mid-core. The hyper-casual market is oversaturated and extremely competitive. So the idea originally came about from developers and publishers experimenting with more features and mechanics in a bid to engage their players and increase retention.

To put it simply, hybrid-casual breaks down into three parts:

• Keeping a simple core mechanic: So still sticking to the short, simple, and satisfying rule of hyper-casual titles. You’ll have one core mechanic for your game, which is still intuitive and easy to learn.
• Layering in mid-core game features: So adding in progression events, leaderboards, collectibles, and more, to add more depth to your game.
• Adding in-app purchases: Offering IAPs, or even subscription options, alongside your ad strategy.

Why the shift from hyper-casual?

For years, we’ve been reading that hyper-casual is the king of the mobile gaming industry. That this genre is one of the fastest-growing genres out there. This is true, but it’s starting to hit its peak.

So why the shift? Before we explain that, here’s some background on the state of hyper-casual gaming.

Hyper-casual has little to no other features

Hyper-casual games all focus on one core mechanic. They’re stripped back of any other features and just focus on simple and intuitive gameplay. It takes seconds for the player to get the gist of these types of games, and usually are as straightforward as swiping or pressing a button.

Image source: Aquapark by Voodoo 

But they tend to suffer from low engagement and retention

Hyper-casual games are addictive but repetitive. It’s due to simple core gameplay, and lack of any additional features or motivations. Players will ultimately lose interest over time, as they don’t have a reason to come back.

Another culprit of this is due to the oversaturation of the market. This genre is the entry point for mobile game developers. They’re simple and quick to make. You have a lot of people now teaching themselves to code and build games, starting with hyper-casual. And you see more studios turning to hyper-casual because there are more accessible deals from publishers.

So there’s an ocean of these types of games out there. In turn, affecting CPI rates, retention, playtime, and LTV (lifetime value).

The ad monetization model alone isn’t working

Hyper-casual relies on ads. Interstitial and rewarded are popular types here. And it works. Players want a fun, free-to-play game that will fill up their time. And, up until now, it’s been a successful model. But with the growing competitive market, it’s not cutting it anymore.

And this affects the amount you can make from these games

To truly be successful when making hyper-casual games, you need low CPI, and high D0 through to D14 retention. Because hyper-casual games rely on ads, if your players don’t stick around and play enough of your game, your ARPU (average revenue per user) will suffer. And worse case, you make a loss.

Hybrid-casual helps increase retention and engagement

If you want to increase your retention, you need to give a reason for your players to come back. The best way to do this is by offering progression and different meta layers and features. So that they can have a sense of achievement from your game and a new motivation to play.

Image source: Bowmasters by Playgendary Limited

It gives breathing room for your CPI

Once you have IAPs in your games, your can afford to have a slightly higher CPI. It gives you the opportunity and time to increase your retention and session length, depending on the type of hybrid game.

How to develop a hybrid-casual game

It’s not as simple as just slapping on a couple of extra features. And although this genre is new and still evolving, there are a few steps you can take to get this right.

Step 1: Work on your game design

What we’ve been chatting about in this blog. Pair together the simple, fun mechanics from a hyper-casual title with the features and progression from mid-core. But don’t just shove in random features. It’s about building a nice engaging game with progressions that you can slowly introduce players to.

Step 2: Experiment with your creatives

Optimize your ads to not only engage hyper-casual players, but also new player types. You may need to experiment with showing those new features to see what works best for your ad creatives. And what people will react to best. You’ll need to go through plenty of rounds of testing, but you’re opening your game up to a world of new players.

Step 3: Nail your production process

Although this may be longer now, you can still transfer a lot of these skills and practices over from hyper-casual (so optimizing creatives, ideation stage, prototyping, etc). It’s worth noting, that you can expect your development cycle for these types of games to be slightly longer (so, say, for an experienced studio, four to six weeks, rather than the typical one to two weeks development time). But keep that hyper-casual testing mentality. There’s value in rapid testing.

Step 4: Perfect your monetization model

The big thing we’re gonna talk about here is balance. Going hybrid-casual means layering in IAPs. But there needs to be a level of commitment before someone will part with their cash. You’ll need medium to long-term goals to get your players invested.

Players are unlikely to dip into the pockets right away. And they will do it for nothing. Here’s what we know players are willing to spend on:

• Equipping new cosmetics: Skins for characters or weapons. People love customizing their looks and expressing their identities.
• Sending a gift: This implies you have a social element to your game, which is something you could easily do.
• Getting a competitive edge: Whether they want a second chance at a level, or a much-needed boost to beat a boss.
• Unlocking new content: This could be new equipment, characters, maps, or even bonus levels.
• Skipping timers: If there’s a locked level or item tied to a time element, some players may want to wait and unlock then and there.

The earlier you consider your monetization strategy in the game design stage then the easier it’ll be. It’ll be baked into the gameplay, the progression, and upgrades. You can’t just take a hyper-casual game and layer in IAPs. It’s not built for that.

Step 5: Assemble your team

There’s not a one-size-fits-all here. It depends on what type of hybrid-casual game you want to make. But you’ll likely need some more resources and help. A good 3D artist a great place to start, as you’ll want to polish off the artwork and style. Hyper-casual games look the way they are for a reason. It’s to do with CPI. The more polished a game looks, the higher CPI it may have. Which doesn’t work for hyper-casual, but is okay for hybrid.

You can also consider tools and platforms which offer these types of features out of the box. Companies like LookLocker or PlayFab, for example, have premade game systems to save developers time here.

Take a note out of Archero’s book

Archero is easily considered to be the first true hybrid-casual game. The controls are simple and intuitive. All the player needs to do is move around and shoot (both done in one fluid action). And the core loop is straightforward. You fight, get rewards, and then improve your character and equipment.

But what Habby has done is layered in features to add depth to the game. Players can get access to collectibles, new abilities, and upgrades to their weapons. These all scream roleplaying game. And that would be the case, yet these features have also been stripped back and simplified, to appeal to the casual gamer.

Archero monetizes with in-app purchases, subscriptions, and rewarded ads. And it works, because players are motivated by the gameplay. These types of monetization models simply wouldn’t work with a purely hyper-casual game, because the player has no incentive to do so.

A data warehouse can help perfect hybrid-casual games

We mentioned it above. But one of the most important elements behind hybrid-casual is striking that balance of showing ads, encouraging subscriptions, or pushing IAPs.

Data warehouses can make it easy and faster to make important decisions. It can help you decide which items to push, and which ones to scrap. Which players you should show more IAPs to, and which ones you should show more ads to. And much more.

We actually offer data warehouse of our own, which we’ve coined the name Player Warehouse (creative, we know). You can learn more about that here.

In early 2021 some clever bods* at a university wrote a research paper about how individual game mechanics affect player attrition (i.e. how many players your game loses over time). It was called ‘Serious Snacking: A Survival Analysis of how Snacking Mechanics Affect Attrition in a Mobile Serious Game’. While that title might make it sound a bit daunting, the paper has some really useful tips on ways to successfully keep people coming back to a game over a long period of time (called ‘snacking’). And luckily, we’ve done the reading so you don’t have to.

Why is snacking good?

Some games are designed for long single-play sessions (called ‘feasting’). But for most casual and hypercasual games played on mobile devices, short daily interactions with people coming back regularly are going to be most profitable for developers. So the more snacking you can encourage, the better it’s going to be for your bottom line.

Snack time

In a previous work the researchers had come up with a framework of five game mechanics which encourage people to ‘snack’ on games – i.e. play regularly in short bursts. They were:

1. rewards: immediate bonuses for completing certain actions
2. novelty: giving players new game elements
3. completion: letting them finish tasks, quests or goals
4. blocking: stopping them playing for a certain amount of time
5. waiting: hindering players’ progress or stopping them from accessing certain resources.

Just knowing what encouraged people to snack wasn’t enough for our researchers though – they wanted to find out which one of these was the best at successfully engaging people for a long period of time.

Time for a test

The researchers built a game called Infinitus Algebraica (AKA Infinitu8 Algebra1ca) which let players solve equations by choosing tiles from a grid. They generated 350 levels which got more difficult as players progressed, then monitored which of the mechanics encouraged the most snacking. They then released six versions of Infinitus Algebraica on iOS and Android, and observed how participants played over three weeks, in uncontrolled conditions. There was a base game, then alternative versions each featuring one of the five mechanics.

1. Base game: no power-ups or inventory system. Visual skins, background music, and all levels were unlocked from the start.
2. Rewards: this added a scoring mechanic with power-ups.
3. Novelty: an RPG-like levelling-up system with 40 ranks. When players hit certain levels, they got skins, music, and power-ups.
4. Completion: there were 48 missions. Players got power-ups, skins, and music for completing these.
5. Blocking: the researchers restricted play time to ten minutes every eight hours.
6. Waiting: every eight hours the game selected and spawned power-ups. The rest of the time it displayed a countdown to the next one.

Our researchers then analyzed the player behaviors that each one of these encouraged.

What were the results?

With novelty, waiting, and rewards, participants tended to play lots in the first few days but then drop off quickly. Blocking and completion got the strongest sustained engagement. Of these, completion was the overall winner when it came to persuading people to play over a longer time – 20 to 25 days, compared to ten days for the other mechanics. The analysis also showed that these results couldn’t be explained by motivation or differences in performance, so it had to come down to the different game mechanics.

Hold on a second…

Before you go rushing off to redesign your game so it’s full of completion, you need to know that this study didn’t have a huge amount of participants – 149 players downloaded the game, and 99 of those played it at least once. The researchers only measured their responses for a fairly short amount of time as well.

This doesn’t mean the research isn’t valid though. It just means that you’ll need to do your own investigations to decide if completion is the best mechanic to get people regularly coming back to your game. Don’t worry, we’re not asking you to write your own research paper (although do feel free to do that as well if you have the time). But some A/B testing of players’ reactions to the different mechanics could really help you boost those all-important numbers. Have a look at our A/B testing tool to find out how to do this.

*The clever bods’ names are Dmitry Alexandrovsky, Maximilian Achim Friehs, Jendrik Grittner, Susanne Putze, Max V Birk, Rainer Malaka and Regan L Mandryk.

If you enjoyed this article, make sure to check out these:

• 6 Tips for Running a Game Jam: a Guide from AudioMob
• Why Painted Door Tests are a Secret Weapon in Game Development
• How to Find Player LTV Blind Spots and Earn More From Your Game

Subtitles might be one of the last things you think of. But they shouldn’t be – because they really do matter. Here are our thoughts on why, and some tips to help you get them right the first time.

Subtitles are a must in today’s mobile games. And not just for gamers with hearing impairments. They’re important for lots of other ‘life’ reasons – people use them if they’re playing a game on public transport, because they have crappy speakers, if they’re trying not to disturb flatmates/children/significant others, and so on. While the numbers for mobile games aren’t really available yet, it’s clear that people playing on consoles are using subtitles – when Ubisoft tracked subtitle use on Assassin’s Creed: Origins, they found that 60% of players play with these switched on. And this is for a game that most people will be playing on a TV with a decent sound system in their living room – so they’re less likely to be worried about disturbing others.

Getting them right

Okay, so we’re agreed that you should include subtitles in your mobile game. But they’re still just words on a screen, right? How hard can it be to get them wrong? Well, surprisingly easy, judging by the number of games which do just that.

The problem is that there are actually a lot of variables when it comes to subtitling, many of which you might not necessarily think of. And getting it wrong can ruin a player’s experience of your game (have a look at this Neogaf thread from 2015 for some angry gamers saying just that). Think of your subtitles like you would your controls – they need to be clear, unobtrusive and customizable.

So here are our top ten tips for getting these right first time. But before we get into that…

Subtitles vs captions

A note about terminology – we’ve used the term ‘subtitles’ throughout this article. Technically ‘subtitles’ only refers to onscreen dialogue i.e. stuff characters are saying, whereas ‘captions’ includes dialogue and important sound effects. Please assume that when I mention ‘subtitles’ whatever I’m saying applies to captions as well. You should always give players the option to choose between subtitles and captions.

Okay, back to the tips.

1. Size matters: You’ll probably want to use at least 46 pixels at 1080p for your subtitles. You might think this is quite big. But everyone (and their device) is different. So why not give them a choice of subtitle sizes?
2. Keep it clear: Pick a font that’s easy to read. Although a gothic-looking curly font might suit your atmospheric, vampire-based game, it’s not necessarily going to be easy to read. Remember that people are going to need to read your subtitles fairly quickly. So go for something that’s clear and doesn’t have any serifs.

Once you’ve got your font, use sentence case (like this) – not all caps. Capital letters are ALL THE SAME SIZE which makes them harder to read.

3. Think about colors: White is your best bet for the subtitles themselves, although you might want to use a different color to indicate that someone else is speaking. I recommend sticking to yellow, cyan or green if you do need to do this.

Having said that, using different colors means you do run the risk of alienating colorblind or dyslexic gamers. Other options include adding the name of the character or using a small portrait to show who’s speaking.

This is another area where you might want to look at giving people different options so they can choose the one that suits them. And think about how you’ll deal with a speaker being out of shot – adding an arrow to indicate this could be really helpful.

This is from Beholder. They’ve sacrificed clarity in their font style. Usually, you would want to pick a clearer font, but considering its size, and the black background, it still passes the subtitle test

4. Don’t forget the background: It’s pretty unlikely that your subtitles will be against a plain background, so they could get lost if there’s a lot going on. You can use a letterbox as a background to fix this. Even better, make the transparency adjustable so people can pick the one that suits them best.
5. Look at spacing: Make sure there’s enough space between your words. And think about the number of words in a single line, and where you put your line breaks. As a rule of thumb you should use a maximum of two lines per subtitle, and no more than 38 characters per line (even less, when you think about how big a mobile phone is. So keep that in mind).

If you’re subtitling a conversation, think about staggering the text to make that clear. So it could look something like this:

Robert: We’ve got to get out of here.

Anna: But how do we reach the exit?

Robert: Let’s look around for the key.

6. Make it easy to switch them on or off: If your player doesn’t have a hearing impairment, they might want to switch subtitles on or off, even in the middle of the game. This is especially important for a mobile game, as there is so little space for the screen already. So make sure they don’t have to go searching through loads of menus to do this. And don’t forget the opening cinematic, if you have one. You’d be surprised how many people do – sometimes you don’t even get the option to switch the subtitles on until it’s over.
7. Make sure they’re accurate: Check your subtitles match what your characters are saying. You should include every word, whenever possible, and also any important sound effects for captions. Just because someone can’t hear the dialogue doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get all of it.

Oh, and remember to get your subtitles proofread, especially if they’ve been translated. Typos or grammatical errors aren’t going to make you look good in any language.

This one is from Jenny LeClue. The size is perfect, the colors are just right. And they’ve added an image of who is talking for extra clarity. Our only recommendation for this one would be to avoid all-caps. 

Like this: 

Having said that…

8. Edit if you have to: People talk quickly. And although we said above that you should include each and every word of dialogue in the subtitles, sometimes that might mean there just isn’t time for the player to read them. As a guideline, you need 2 to 2.5 seconds for a full subtitle. That means if you’ve got a particularly action-packed sequence with lots of people speaking, you might need to think about doing some cutting. If you’ve got the cash a professional captioner will be able to do this for you easily. But if not, there are lots of guidelines out there which can help you decide what to keep and what should go.
9. Put them in the middle: Put your subtitles at the bottom of the screen, in the middle. It’s as simple as that. Anywhere else could make them harder to read (and therefore more annoying). But do remember where your players’ thumbs need to be to play the game. There’s no use in subtitles if they’re hand blocks them 50% of the time.
10. Give people choices: If you only take one thing from this post, it should be that one size doesn’t fit all. When it comes to subtitles, you need to give people options, like being able to adjust the size and color of the subtitle text, turn the background box on and off or change its transparency, turn speaker names on or off, and so on.

What next?

While the mobile games industry might be a bit behind when it comes to subtitles, they’ve been around on TV for a long time. So I recommend you check out the BBC’s subtitling guide for lots more great advice on what works, and what doesn’t. Netflix also have a few guides on their website, including these general guidelines.

Editor’s note: This post was orginally written by Om Tandon (Founder/Games Consultant at UX Reviewer.com) and Abhimanyu Kumar (Mobile Games Consultant) on Deconstructor of Fun.

The State of Social Casino

When breaking up the mobile gaming market according to Game Refinery’s taxonomy, the “Casino” (aka Social Casino) category is the third largest by revenue – and it has steadily been growing over 2018. Category revenue grew by +24% YoY, and the “Slots” sub-genre contributed to ~70% of this growth. “Slots” generate anything between an average of 70-80% of real world casino revenues, and the same engagement behaviour is mirrored in the Social Casino space.

“Slots” are the largest revenue generating sub-genre of the Casino category, occupying a 78% share. Read more about our thoughts around this category and its future in our 2019 Casino category prediction post.

* Ad revenues not included

At the same time, the Social Casino space (and Slots games specifically) has not seen too much of product innovation over the past few years. Product offerings are quite constant amongst the top performers – enter the lobby → choose from a multitude of slot machines → bet → win → repeat. Product differentiation is driven by UX, art styles, production quality and minor meta systems such as quests and saga maps.

Further, slots game economies are still stuck largely in the digital dark ages of the single currency economy. Many games feature secondary and even tertiary currencies, but slots players still largely only care about coins. Given this product design stagnancy, one could say that the sub-genre is primed for innovation.

The dormant downloads growth trend of Slots games over the past 2 years further fuels the idea of innovation unlocking more growth in the sub-genre.

Almost all Social Casino titles have fought for market share by staying safe and delivering authentic casino experiences on mobile.

Coin Master – A Massive Disruptor?

It could be argued whether “Coin Master” (CM) falls into the Casino category or not, but either way it is turning out to be the spark that will drive future innovation in the Casino category.

With progressively deep content wrapped into a single slot machine, casual art style, a more substantial meta, strong social features, hyperactive live operations and great UX/production value, Israeli developer Moon Active has pretty much flipped the traditional Slots games design model on its head. The resulting numbers don’t lie, as this bold move by CM is proving to be very successful.

Coin Master’s store screenshots | Source: Apple App Store

Coin Master has made over January revenues have skyrocketed +250% YoY!

CM hovers in the top 50 grossing games.

While it is true that CM does not position itself as a Slots game, it has a slots core that is obviously hard to miss.

With classic blue ocean finding finesse, CM is not only burning global grossing charts, but is also unlocking growth in non-traditional social casino markets like India and Israel – a nut that traditional social casino games have not been able to crack in the past. Clearly, CM has and will continue to expand the definition of “social casino”, while also growing the pie!

CM has unlocked downloads growth in countries like India and Israel – both non-traditional slots markets.

So, what is it about CM that makes it resonate so well? We will answer this question in two parts – first by looking at what CM is all about, and second by comparing to the competition to see how CM does it better.

Editor’s Note: this post was originally published by Om Tandon, Director of User Experience at Digit. With over 14 years experience, Om specializes in UX design, UI design and User Interaction, has previously worked at Gameloft and June Software, and is also a guest writer at Deconstructor of Fun. 

No code. No game engine. No scripting.

Next Generation Game UX Prototypes and prototyping skills are here! If you have been reading or following this article series since last year, you are in for a treat! (Previous articles in this series can be found here and here.)

To recap: Necessity indeed is the mother of invention, and methodology behind this series was born with:

1. LACK of dev. capacity & time for UX prototyping.
2. The NEED & DESIRE for pushing the boundaries of existing UX tools.

Prototypes are the bedrock of usability testing way early in pre-production to gather valuable make-or-break user feedback.

*As described in previous articles, through many iterations we realised a holistic design sprint approach which is called Cross Discipline Teamwork (CDT Sprints) which aims at pulling in different creative disciplines like Game Design, Art, UX, UI at the right times during pre-production using an agile model. This creates opportune overlaps during a features’ pre-production cycle thereby building to an opportunity to rapid prototype near product like experience.

CDT Waterfall Sprint:

*These sprints result in an unbelievably robust near-finish feature experience in high fidelity that can rival (and even in some cases exceed) real products aspirations. It can be placed in the hands of your play testers and stakeholders, used for A/B testing or just used in hackathons for pitching game ideas. And best part?

Hi-fidelity, near finish, robust prototypes can be created without writing a single line of code or using a game engine, with unbeatably fast turnaround times!

But, that’s not all…

Enter Generation 2 Prototyping: Switching prototyping mindset from “T-Type” to “Type-8” format.

While the previous articles in the series did push the limits of existing UX prototyping tools, they can be safely catalogued as Generation 1 prototypes.

With multiple iteration cycles, learnings from user tested prototypes & advancements in state of the art prototyping tool, we have moved towards more refined & immersiveGeneration 2 prototypes.

The focus of this article is not simply how to create prototypes that feel more robust, polished, animated and deliver a real world product experience, but it runs way deeper. With continued experiments overtime with our usability tests, we realised that while standalone prototypes that follow traditional “T-Type” format do generate valuable information about usability of our product, they do not necessarily give players the whole context or the bigger picture. Let me elaborate:

T-Type Prototyping

• Most softwares and apps, if not all of them, have linear decision making tasks for users which result in the creation of “T-Type” prototyping. That is ones that go deep but don’t (or have no need to) go wide.
• Most “T-Type” prototypes (and hence final products) dichotomise information, that is there are no clear overlaps between tasks and outcomes as one task may be completely independent of others. Such tasks do not necessarily interlink or require users to go through a closed loop or though multiple features to reach the goal.
• In a banking app example below (figure (1)) that shows a simple app that may have different features like accounts summary, transfers, e-statements etc. Figure (2) though shows the possibility for the user to carry out each of these tasks independently.

Example for making “Fund Transfers” a user does not needs to look at e-statements and vice versa.

A single session in a utility app can revolve around doing just one specific task, while a single session in games usually revolves around completing a series of interlinkedtasks by design. _Om

TYPE-8 Prototyping

• An ideal session in most games requires players to interact with different features and interlinked tasks in order to complete one cycle of the core loop. As an example, if you open a game you get a loot chest which gives you credits that you could use to upgrade your base or troops pushing you from reward collection loop to base building.

Ever seen a banking app that grant you 200 dollars to go and upgrade your couch or living room?

• Players can of course interact with one part of the (example) loop combat and exit game but in order to have a really meaningful session, players are nudged via prompts, notifications, unlocked items, quests etc. to interact with other interlinked features to have a satisfactory & progressive game session.
• In games, unlike apps, core loops play an incredibly important role in a single session to determine where and why players are at a given point of time and provide them with relevant context of the situation. More importantly, a player can access the loop through any sub-loop. For example along a loop of base building, combat or upgrading there are nudges and cues designed to send players to other parts of the game – progression.

Type-8 prototypes are versatile. They allow intermittent connectivity between simulated micro game loop sessions. While a session in utility apps revolve around accomplishing a specific task, a single session in games is rounded to establish multiple tasks routine.

• This led me to switch from “T-Type” to “Type-8” prototypes that mimic the mechanics of the core loop of a game simulating a micro session, there by giving players more context and freedom in terms of “Why” and the “Need” to interact with a feature or set of features. Images above show the architecture of an “Type-8” prototype. These are designed for players to go though interlinked loops and tasks in a single session (even if they are not in a software build yet) thereby giving them more context whilst allowing for seamless access between different features via multiple access points.

Question: You may ask, that’s all well and good but how do we go about testing such prototypes when no software build exists??

That’s up next!

UX Prototyping the Core loop of a mid-core game

The last article looked at simulating a micro session of core loop of a casual Match 3 game which could then be placed in the hands of actual play testers to A/B test different input mechanism and booster deploying mechanics. This time we have upped the ante and will look at simulating a micro session of core loop experience of a mid-core game.

Think: Boom Beach, Clash of Clans, Rival Kingdoms, Summoners War as archetypes.

Mid-core games have way more complexity compared to casual games in terms of player inputs needed, decision making and loop management. In the demo prototype, we will focus on not only rapid prototyping the core mechanics & gameplay loop as shown below, but also how they interact with each other allowing a “Type-8” interaction as described above.

Above is an hypothetical core loop of a strategy mid-core game similar to Boom Beach and Rival Kingdoms As per the core loop diagram, we will simulate micro sessions of following aspects of a mid-core game:

• Base Building Loop
• Battle Loop
• Unlocking Boosts
• Upgrade Loop
• Non-Linear: if/else logic

UX Process: Creating a User Story Spec.

Before deciding what we want to build, we need to document a user story spec. Usually it can be based on a PRD from product and feature description from game design (this phase has been covered in more detail in previous articles). Below are few example pages of how this spec may look for our prototype.

NOTE: More comprehensive UX spec. writing will be covered in a future article.

First Demo Video: Walk Through

Important: Please put your headphones on for full context.

Screen Capture Version:

Second Demo Video: Walk Through with If/else Logic.

Important: Please put your headphones on for full context.

Screen Capture Version:

CDT Sprint and Type-8 Prototyping:

With CDT Sprints and Type-8 Prototyping, we can create & test more immersive experiences to reflect real world mental models

A holistic design sprint that allows collaboration, creation and validation of ideas with other creative teams such as Product, Gamer Design, Art, UI make UX more inclusive of other disciplines rather than exclusive.

Get player feedback not just on UX… but Game mechanics, UI, Art, VFX, SFX and holistic product vision.

• Are you a Game designer wanting to test out a new mechanics? 
• Are you a UI designer wanting to bring your UI and animations to life?
• Are you a VFX designer wanting to test and try out VFX effects?
• Are you a Sound designer wanting to test and try out your SFX?
• Are you an Art director wanting to gauge peoples reaction to your art style?
• Are you a UX designer wanting to test and try out your interaction design?

Fidelity & User Immersion

In my experience, having tested both high and low fidelity prototypes with users and stakeholders alike, a lot of us may have also observed the engagement and immersion level of users going higher as the fidelity of prototypes go up – which is not at all a surprising insight.

On day-to-day basis, people are used to interacting with products that are finished and final. The brain is used to real world mental models and an acceptable level of fidelity standards for total immersion.

This difference can often be gauged by studying the contrast in level of interest, the questions users ask and their curiosity levels when testing prototypes of varied fidelities. If you have not paid attention to it, this might be a good exercise for next time when you conduct user tests.

As an example for most people/testers, the image (below) on the right may create more immersion in terms of peaking players curiosity and intrigue which can then affect the quality of feedback and opinions people may have or want to share.

*Image source: DeviantArt & Marvel Spider Man PS4NOTE: This is not to say low fidelity prototypes are not useful! It is quite powerful (a full UX cycle (in my process) calls for both low and hi-fidelity prototypes testing (refer here). The difference between choosing when to test low-fidelity or high-fidelity prototypes comes down to variables like scope of what you are testing, complexity of design and the stage at which your pre-production process is.

Every feature design might not require a hi-fidelity prototype, but may need a low-fidelity prototype.

FAQs

You might have some questions on the nature of these prototypes and their scope:

Can we scale these prototypes for every genre of Mobile games?

Over 80% of mobile game micro sessions, can be successfully simulated with some ingenuity and problem solving.

Core loops of majority of mobile games today follow an approach where automation plays a big role. That is the burden on the player – in terms of micro-managing every interaction – is not a necessity. Many games also shift the tactical decision making – in terms of troop training and/or boost equipping – to base building rather than combat loop thereby keeping player interactions minimal resulting in sessions ranging from 2-5 minutes, with the least effort from the player for a full loop to be executed. There are always exceptions to the rule like FPS and Hack & Slash RPG’s for which dev prototypes will definitely do more justice.

Are there bugs?

• Yes. Even though prototypes may try to simulate the end goal results as closely as possible, they’ll have limits. There will be times when an interaction might be too tricky to simulate or might not be worth your time and effort perfecting it.
• We ought to remember though that the primary purpose of these prototypes is to conduct user testing or demonstrations in a moderated environment, hence the moderator or specific instructions (if testing remote) can easily help users avert known problem areas which may be not be present in the end product.

Should we not test dev prototypes at all?

You should test and measure your dev prototypes as much as possible, yes! But if you have them ready in time for testing. If you are building a new feature or game mechanics from scratch that will not hit production for a couple of weeks or months, that’s when Advanced UX prototyping of this fidelity can be immensely valuable.

Pre-development Advanced UX prototypes help play test and sell the vision to stakeholders by simulating micro sessions of features’ look and feel, before thousands of dollars are spent in it’s production. _Om

Does it support 3D prototyping?

Not yet, but it’s quite obvious to see all UX prototyping tools like Invision, Flinto, Principle, Adobe XD etc. evolving every year and becoming more and more powerful. So it’s only a matter of time till we get there. However a lot of 3D experiences and transitions can be simulated using 2D sprites or elements as we demonstrated.

Conclusion: Benefits of CDT and high-fid prototyping

• Achieve hi-fidelity near game finish results without any code or game engine usage.
• Incredibly fast turnaround time using existing or kit bashing UI kits and animations.
• Create near game feel prototypes that can be used for pitching a new game idea or micro session simulation of core loop concept to your stakeholder group.
• Create near game feel prototypes that can be used for play testing features for an existing or new game with real players to gather qualitative data.
• Increase collaboration and coordination between teams and run CDT design sprintsthat result in ready to test ideas.
• Create an additive prototyping library which can be expanded or added on top of existing prototype for testing new features paired with a core loop element.
• Added ability to add conceptual art style, VFX, sound design, animations way early in pre-production with player feedback and A/B test.

Credits: ASpecial thanks to Kamal Nayan Ganguly, Diogo Alves and Pavitra S. Tandon for their contribution and collaboration in helping out with putting together of this project on art, content and editing front.

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