Reaching the End

So here we are at the end. Throughout the book we have take the time to look at the design principles and psychology involved with the creation of a service and to use that to generate revenue. But more that that, what I hope we have done is to make you reconsider what gameplay means and how we can expand the choices available to us by reimaging a game as an ongoing relationship with the player.

If I have succeeded in my objectives, the question of whether to go freemium or not will have become irrelevant. Instead we will be focusing on the delight of players and finding a more sustainable way to deliver entertainment to them.

However, this isn’t a book that will tell you exactly what the formula is for success, I have only tried to get you to ask yourself the questions that matter. No one can teach you to be a better game designer through a book, but I hope to help you make that step for yourself by considering the values and factors at every stage of your design.

Being a successful commercial designer means taking the time to consider the art (in its widest sense) and the experience as well as the revenue potential for our games. To do that we have to consider the roles of the game mechanics we use as well as the context in which we use them. We cannot ignore the real-world impacts on that gameplay, whether that’s the social experience or the external pressures on our players. If we want longevity we have to consider how the metagame empowers players to sustain their engagement, we can’t assume that having a fun game is enough.

Understanding the rhythm of play, our use of pace, and schedules of reinforcement are essential to delivering our promise of a service, rather than just another game we play once. Building on that engagement by using familiarity, but still bringing a sense of uncertainty is essential if our players are going to find the fun in the game and better yet feel compelled to share that with other players.

It’s not just about the player of course, although they are central to our thinking. We also have to consider how we function within the market place and engage with the other audiences including publishers, app stores and the wider press. Responding to those audiences will impact how we design our game and the way we empower players to share their experiences with others. That sharing process has become a critical success factor given the scale of the competitive environment, and understanding the effort needed to sustain those social connections is similarly important.

Then we have to consider how we assess our success and build into the experience mechanisms that allow us to fairly judge whether we are satisfying our players’ needs without overly compromising the vision we have for our game. This leads us further into having to consider how we work with our colleagues in order to deliver the game and find ways to resolve the associated technical problems that arise because we have taken the decision to use the power of the internet, whether as a “thin” or “thick” client experience.

Finally we looked at the psychology of paying and how this affects our objectives as designers. It’s the objective we started out with—make something entertaining people are willing to pay for. At the end we still have to put the players’ fun first, otherwise we have no answer to our most important question, “so what?”

If there is one thing I want you to take away from this book, it’s that question. “So what?”

Amazing Possibilities

This is an amazing time to be a game designer and the challenges will only increase. However, I hope that my experience as collated in this book has provided some small insight into how you can still change the gaming world. Even if you don’t have the biggest, smartest team you can still create a work of art that is unique to you and that others will want to enjoy … even be inspired by. And if I’m right, then you can still make enough money to be able to do it again.

There will still be stand-alone premium AAA (marketing budget) console game products, although certainly fewer than in previous generations. There will be a similar number of freemium services that will hit the zeitgeist enough to make mind-blowing profits like Supercell and King did in this generation. But there will continue to be success for many more games companies outside the top ten lists.

I believe that the move to services will create a more stable, sustainable business climate supporting a larger ecosystem of games developers, making more than a modest living from clusters of loyal happy players.

That seems like a perfect environment to encourage more focus and attention to making better games, perhaps even to create experiences we want to tell our kids about. After all, if we just wanted to make huge amounts of cash, we could have gone and gotten a “proper job,” couldn’t we?