Nicholas Lovell's Expert Blogs
One small design decision made me systematically discriminate against every female Dweller in Fallout Shelter. It's a fascinating example of how a game decision can have unintended consequences.
The Nintendo/DeNA deal makes no sense. At face value, it would suggest Nintendo is abandoning it's "Blue Ocean" strategy and jumping into a hyper-competitive market which doesn't play to its strengths. So what is really going on, wonders Nicholas Lovell.
Nintendo was the last holdout against the rise of mobile and tablet gaming. Now it has capitulated. Does that signal the imminent bursting of a smart device gaming bubble?
Nintendo's latest strategic announcement means it is choosing to compete in the bloody red ocean of smart device gaming, rather than creating a new market for itself. How will that turn out?
The valuation of King has me terrified.
If King tanks after its stock market debut this week (and I think it will), that will be bad news for the games industry for the next three years.
Valve has just announced that developers will now be in charge of their own pricing on Steam. This is the beginning of PC games prices drifting downwards with an endpoint of zero. Here's why.
The EU investigation into F2P games is about marketing, not principles. It is to be welcomed, but the risk is that politicians will take kneejerk actions which are not in the interests of consumers or businesses.
Five years ago, I wrote a blog post about why I had been tempted to discriminate against women. Much has changed since then, but much hasn't. I thought I would reopen the debate.
It's time to kill the tutorial. They have no place in the age of free-to-play. The First Time User Experience needs to convince me, body and soul, that it will be worth spending time with your game. You get one chance.
Many games studios and professionals struggle with the transition from AAA development to making F2P games. The Pyramid of F2P Games: core loop, retention game and superfan game provides a framework for F2P game design.
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