![]() ![]() If you make a really fun game, in a really fun universe that people want to be in, then I think the rest will take care of itself. Not to be cliché, but it's kind of like the, "if you build it, they will come" type of thing. I really do think if you make a really, really fun game that people love playing, then they want to be in that space - and that's all we think about. I've never made a free-to-play game, so maybe it's different in that space, but maybe not. I can certainly see the other side of it. When I spoke to Gabe Newell, he said worrying about monetization is secondary to worrying about making a good game.ĭM: I couldn't agree with that more. And if someone wants to pay for extra stuff, then it's their game. ![]() And then once the game is really super fun, then I'm going to say "It's great," and we ship it. Because I just have to get it all just right. So I can't even think about microtransactions when I do that. Because I really believe that good game balancing, it's the trickiest part of my job, and it's the difference between whether a game is fun or not.īecause you have to have it be just difficult enough that you're still fighting for something, but not so much that it's punishing. I've got to make it a well-paced, well-balanced experience.Īnd especially for a game like Infinity Blade, with all those RPG elements, and now we've got even more, where we've got weapon crafting and all this stuff, and so there's a lot of stuff to balance to make it feel. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to do it, but to me, I'm just like, I've still got to balance the game the same way I always would. And so we've left that in for Infinity Blade II but we haven't. ![]() And we have cool stuff that we're hoping to do with it.īeyond content, you also added microtransactions to the original game in updates - based on user demand.ĭM: They want to see all the content they want to experience the game the way they want to. We thought it was really cool doing all that free update stuff, so everyone is taking a little time off now, and then we're just going to roll everyone onto keeping going with Infinity Blade II. And then we hit it hard in the middle of May, and now it's done. I wouldn't even count that as pre-production - but at least pre-thought of what's going on. I guess the difference is earlier, in that we were like, "Yeah, I think we're going to do Infinity Blade II next," and so even though we weren't working on it, we were thinking about what it should be, what it would look like. So we just rolled everyone on the update stuff. We're not a huge team, so it's pretty much we can work on one thing at a time. You're not a huge team, and you rolled directly from updating the first game into the second game.ĭonald Mustard: That's the thing. In this interview, Mustard talks about how the team survived that challengingly-short development cycle, why he doesn't know the first thing about building in microtransaction hooks and why that doesn't matter, why he thinks Japanese games have more satisfying core gameplay than Western titles, and the secrets of pacing and catharsis that he thinks are essential to building engaging experience. So the team added microtransactions, and rolled into a schedule of regular updates for the game - which continued until the team rolled right from those updates into development of Infinity Blade II, this past May. I didn't understand how prevalent that mindset was in the marketplace," said Mustard of the original game's release. We want more of it,' and 'Why can't we buy gold? Why can't I buy gold to buy more swords and more shields and more stuff? Because I don't want to have to just play the game.' Interestingly enough, right when we put out the game, we were getting thousands of emails, and they were pretty much split between 'Yay! We love the game. ![]() It had no in-app purchases or whatever just a straight-up game. "We released Infinity Blade on December 9th. Fan requests led Mustard and Chair to start building regular updates for the game. It's a bona fide App Store hit with broad appeal and dedicated fans.Īt GDC, Chair Entertainment co-founder Donald Mustard told Gamasutra that initial ideas to add microtransactions to the premium game came from fans. But news that by this June, six months after it launched, it had already earned Epic Games $10 million (even after Apple's cut) was somewhat surprising. As the debut title for Unreal Engine on iOS, it was flashy, and it arrived not long after the iPad, too. The original Infinity Blade always looked set for success. ![]()
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