News

JikGuard
Anatomy of a Failed Kickstarter pt3: Lessons Learned
Part 3 of my analysis of my failed Kickstarter campaign. We’ve gone over the plan, we’ve gone over the data; now it’s time to sit down, look at the results and draw out some lessons.
May 4, 2020
JikGuard
How to Crack the Match 3 Code?- Part 1
A deep dive in to "Meta" evolution of Match 3 games, analysing the key design shifts in UX & Game Design in 2020, backed by industry data. Future projections and how new and veteran Match 3 devs. are adapting to this new reality!
May 4, 2020
JikGuard
Video Game Deep Cuts: The Streets Of Rage-aholic Wasteland 2
Lots of great things to see this week, from Streets Of Rage's surprising comeback to an Animal Crossing talk show & far beyond.
May 3, 2020
JikGuard
Classic Tools Retrospective: The birth, death, and re-birth of Gamebryo 2
David Lightbown talks to Dan Amerson, Mike Daly, John Austin, and Tim Preston about the Gamebryo engine and tools. This article traces its history from NetImmerse, the Gamebryo rebranding, merger with Emergent, Lightspeed, and acquisition by Gamebase.
May 1, 2020
JikGuard
Should Players Buy Their Own UI?
Why does Animal Crossing force players to purchase UI improvements from the in-game shop, and what's the resulting impact on the game’s UX?
April 30, 2020
JikGuard
The Impact of One Streamer on a Game After Release 2
How much did a streamer with 250k followers impact the sales of Six Ages, five months after release?
April 29, 2020
JikGuard
Developing Your Game's Community For Maximum Pre-Release Fans 2
It seems important to me that devs spend a lot of time on nurturing their game community before launch. But many can’t or don’t. Here's advice on how you can do a better job!
April 28, 2020
JikGuard
Recording Statistics - An Exercise in Minimalism
A description of how statistics recording is implemented in The Machinery.
April 28, 2020
JikGuard
A/B Tests for Analysing LiveOps. Part 3
A/B testing of LiveOps part 3: statistical significance, approaches to the interpretation of results, and some conclusions
April 27, 2020
JikGuard
Floating Point Combat Systems
An in depth examination of combat systems that have scaling, floating point value based progression. This is a continuation of my recent blog post about Integer Based Combat Systems.
April 27, 2020
JikGuard
Video Game Deep Cuts: XCOM's Cloudpunk Industries Of Titan 2
The latest piece rounding up the week's notable writing and videos in games includes pieces on new games from Cloudpunk to Industries Of Titan, plus a bunch of neat historical writing & research.
April 25, 2020
JikGuard
Tales From Discoverabilityland: A Story Of Three Graphs
Is your view of where Steam is glass half-empty, or glass half-full? Either way, we've got some graphs that you can obsess over! Plus lots more...
April 23, 2020