A while ago, I talked about why so many games offer 3 options to players making a decision. I also wrote about when to use 4. Today I’m going to quickly cover 2, 5, and 8. 2 options is best used for thematic contrasts like good/evil or war/peace binaries – but in the context of […]
When working on Rise of Shadows at Blizzard Entertainment we had an extra slot for a mage Epic, and not much time left to experiment. I knew a lot of mage players loved playing a bunch of spells in one turn, using mage’s cost-discounting effects to turn 1-cost and 2-cost cards into free flurries of […]
Let’s talk about “Net Fun” in PvP games. If your game is only fun when you win, you have a big problem. Matchmaking can’t fix this. Given a 50% win rate, Humans still feel the impact of losses more intensely than we feel the benefit of gains (thanks “loss aversion”). I think about it like […]
Here’s how we solved a huge problem that led to players feeling dumb, frustrated, and mad at themselves… When they should have been mad at us. Faeria is a unique strategy cardgame where players build the board they play on each match. Most of your focus is on the cards you’re playing, but you also […]
Do you know the “Draw-Forward” Formula? It’s one of the most useful tools for helping players 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐭. You can use it in almost any genre where players make build, gear, or loadout choices. It works extra-well in Roguelikes. When we make strategic choices in games, we’re looking for the best value. However, we’re bad […]
Among the game devs that I mentor, it’s never the seniors that ask me the headache-causing questions. It’s the college students. Often they’re sending me some thought-provoking article or paper on the “nature of games as a medium”. These pieces get so far away from how I view design in general and art as a […]
Dan Felder 