Yesterday I began making a test layout for our board game, which we tested today. It failed horribly. We tested it only once, but it quickly became clear that it was too small for 5 players. Not only that but the monster was, contrary to our belief, much more powerful than we had anticipated. Having hidden movement makes it much easier for the monster to ambush the other players. We did however figure out that players needed more places to move and shortcuts, so we did a board on the spot that worked remarkably well. It had 133 movement squares compared to the one I made which had only 61.

However even if we increased the size of the board, it still gave the monster (we haven’t really defined its name or what it is, but we call it monster to distinguish it from players) a way to catch the other players as they have no idea where the monster is, unless they get killed. That is every 4 rounds the monsters location is revealed and the players have to adjust accordingly. I’m surprised how well it turned out with the board that we made up on the spot.

Going forward we need to add stuff to the game, for instance what happens when the monster catches the player, what happens when the player searches for the item they need. It would also be nice to add a feature for teleportation as we had planned, all that however require that we add just one functionality at a time so that we can test between each thing we add. Right now it feels like we got a solid base to work on and right now it feels like the only thing that can screw this up is if we add too much stuff too quickly without proper testing.

Another thing that I see more clearly now is that in a board game it is much easier to make a game when you start with the aesthetics and when you start with what the game should feel like for the player and adjust the rules based on that. Because when you start in that end you know if you achieve the aesthetic goals that you are on the right track and today we got to feel that for the first time, and the hidden movement of the monster gave the player excitement, at the same time playing the monster was really fun as you could see the other players movement, and plan your movement accordingly and trapping the players. Also revealing how much you can go each step also adds to this excitement for the player which was scarier than I initially thought it would be. The meeting we had today boosted my confidence in the game we are making.

Lecture thoughts

Today we had a lecture about AARRR and MDA, plus eternal beta. AARRR is something that is more commonly used on the web. However it is a model that is applicable for games as well, which was interesting. AARRR stands for Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue. The interesting part about this is that it is a model you can use to test out games on the public.

Now this is very interesting, my wife works in the callcentre business as a manager there and they are always using metrics and the word retention. Now retention for their sake is how long agents are staying or how well they are able to keep their employees. Metrics that are used in the callcentre business is a measure for how well agents are doing and how well the earnings for the callcentre is. As an example they have metrics that measure their performance and in some cases also how big their cheques will be. Now we get to look at games the same way. That everything that you put out there can be measured in one way or another. As a business model it is a good way to see if a game might be profitable or if you can just stop the game development and do that in an early stage, because you can see that how much the potential for earning the game will be and how much employees and other stuff costs.

Right now however it is difficult to get a really clear picture of the usefulness of this “new” framework (AARRR), because as I see it it is more a business model than a framework.  I get that it is a model based around what you can make money out of and what you can’t make money out of. I do see that more and more games on steam are now classified as “early access”, which I’m guessing is part of this AARRR framework and eternal beta “idea”. That a product is released when it is done. Another recent example of this is Dota 2, which was in beta for a very long time, and once they released it there was no major change. It was patched later by a larger patch however, since I didn’t play Dota 2 at that time I don’t know if it was right after it became released or if it was during the beta or whenever it was.

In any case, it is a way of thinking of your game, as a cash cow, looking at how much you can earn on the game, what you need to accomplish in order to make a profit. Also it seems to be working well with free to play as well as games you pay to play. It is a framework model worth having in mind going forward, but it is a model I probably will have some problems applying without refreshing this lecture and having a specific game that I want to apply it for. Which to be perfectly honest is what I think you need to do. I think you need to apply the framework depending on the type of game that you are working on. If the key element is to have a free to play and that you get revenue from an ingame store, then I would apply this model, because that is what decide what you are earning money on. However if it is a game you sell, it might not make as much sense to apply this model. I think the deciding factor should be the type of game you are creating rather than setting for a specific model and just run by that. I’m not so sure there’s a right and wrong answer for this though.

The eternal beta part was also very interesting, because one of the things mentioned was that a game could be in beta for quite a while, let’s say you start inviting people early. The early adopters get to play around with it, as a developer you have a couple of builds ready to be deployed, which to the user indicate that the team is working very hard in pushing content, you give a better impression. If the changes doesn’t work you have to make a new build and start over, but it will give the players something positive to say to their mates and be more invested into the game. This makes me think of how Age of Conan did this, they did the same thing, had a closed beta, then added lots of new people. A week later or so they released a mammoth patch that was really huge and you started thinking that they were working their asses off trying to fix stuff and polishing the game. That said seeing how bad Age of Conan was at release, I’m a bit dubious if this was the case for them or not.