Player Experience Driven Development for Archmage Rises

Recipe for Success

The last several weeks have been planning and transition. We’re bringing on four new team members in just over a week, so getting everyone aligned and on the same page as far as game vision has been pivotal.

Mark Webster is a 15+ year veteran game designer (GoW:Ragnarök, God of War 2018, Guitar Hero, Skylanders) and Lead Designer on Archmage Rises since last fall. Last week he laid out for the team how and why we are tackling development in a Play Experience way.

I recorded this meeting for the new employees starting in May. But afterwards, I felt it was so good and explanatory that I am taking a chance: I’m sharing this internal meeting with you, our faithful fellow adventurer.

This is the first slide, which I forgot to record.

Notes:

  • What we’re working on is Update #3 Exploration, but it is so comprehensive of an update that it is most of the game. It is going to take us a while, many months.

  • We will continue to make patches every other week as long as we need to, while we are doing the above.

  • Mark mentions something about ‘Adventure Books’ and ‘Seasons of Life’. These are concepts around structuring the overall ‘life’ of a player character still very much still in design discussion. I’ll have more to say when we figure out what it means!

Rivals

  • All five mage types are working: Fire, Ice, Arcane, Earth, Storm

  • Phil and I are doing one last round of experience testing before we release to the beta branch. Think it is this week.