Image Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Naughty Dog   Have you ever played a game where you instinctively know what to do as soon as you pick up the controller? All the elements of the games are easy to understand and players can relatively quickly pick up on elements of functionality without them needing to …

All game designers hope to build a game that draws players in and keeps them engaged. During this Machinations webinar we’ll show you how to achieve that. ​Ian Schreiber has been in the video game industry since the year 2000, first as a programmer and then as a game designer. He has worked on six …

Image Ready Player One, Warner Bros. Game design has come on in leaps and bounds over the last decade, normally in reaction to developments in technology. The market for mobile games is now worth more than the console and PC game market combined and Virtual Reality (VR) games have gone from being a sideshow novelty …

Image via Nintendo/YouTube Have you ever been monstering a race in Mario Kart and then, blam, the blue shell hits and you’ve got a few seconds of teeth-grinding frustration while you wallow about and the other players catch up with you? If you have, congratulations, you’ve been caught in a feedback loop. What are feedback loops? …

Recent gaming history has been littered with examples of triple-A games being released well before they are ready. Huge releases from major studios and developers such as Anthem, Cyberpunk 2077, and Fallout 76 have all been released to the public as buggy or highly unbalanced messes. These releases were followed by the predictable fallout as …

The idea of a game that essentially plays itself might not sound like the most entertaining thing, but since its inception in 2016, the idle game genre has grown hugely in popularity. In this article, we’ll be breaking down exactly what an idle game is and what constitutes the basic building blocks of its game …

I’ve always been a fan of finding the latest and best tools for supporting my game design workflow. While these tools only help me execute my designs, the right tech can support creativity and speed up my process, which ultimately impacts the quality of the outcome (the game). That’s actually how I came across the …

We’re looking at how Machinations can be used to test progression systems for different player profiles and play styles, ranging from casual players to your biggest whales. As well as how different players might approach your game and how this impacts their progression. We were joined by Jeffrey Feenstra, LiveOps specialist @ PopReach who went …

Battle Passes are looking like an established trend in free-to-play games, especially PVP, slowly substituting the older aspirations of subscription models that have only been successful for a handful of titles. What exactly is a battle pass, how can it influence your game’s economy, and how do you balance one? Battle pass mechanics As stated …