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by: Jake Birkett (@greyalien)
Money/Hour spent optimization
- Question: what about value based pricing?
A high dollar/hour spent on the game itself (guessing this doesn't count past investment in engine)
- kept a small scope
- worked for the target audience
- money spent on art (quality assets appealed to audience)
- it was localized
- 7th match 3 game (allowed him to work quicker & build off previous work)
Make a lot of smaller games rather than one bigger game:
Roll a bunch of dice, not just one big die.
His most recent 2 year long game project (shadowhand) didn't pay off nearly as well in dollars made per hour as some of his smaller match 3 titles. Jake says Shadowhand is definitely his best, most polished game, but thinks his dollar/hour metric proves this doesn't pay off.
Reign in perfectionism in areas that players won't care about, focus on quality where the player cares.
Try shipping first chapter/season/base game before adding in additional content, like DLC after the game has proven worth.
- Reuse engine
- Don't make a 3D game
- Get help from experts
- Artists (audio & visual), its more cost effective to pay them for what they're good at doing quickly (and better)
- Keep a polish list
- Keep any feature that is non essential on a secondary list
- Does this item still feel important a week later?
- If any customers comment on them after launch, fix it then
- Be aware of wasting time
- Build using inverted pyramid
- Adam Saltsman 2016 GDC talk?
- I think it's mentioned later on in this one
- build a small shippable piece, then keep building a bigger layer on top, where you can ship at any point on the pyramid
- Productivity
- Monitor it & try to improve your metrics
Be Realistic