Hello everybody, recently I have found some very nice slides from the maker of "Plants vs. Zombies". I found them very inspiring and maybe you will share that feeling. http://www.slideshare.net/gwertzman/the-making-of-popcaps-plants-vs-zombies There are quite some great lessons to be learned from that talk. Ah, and sorry if this link has already been posted. I used the search function, but did not find anything.
Here is an overview of the talk's advices, which are very, very nice: be inspired by other games but innovate too prototype your ideas; "play early, play often" add fun, remove frustration don't be afraid to be creative don't worry about the name (too much) share creative ownership with the team test early, test often. encourage feedback; ideally solve for new players without impacting experienced players; don't rely on instruction prevent players from making bad choices measure have fun!
I really liked the part when the developers went through some statistical analysis for improving the gameplay. This is an idea that I have adopted immediately, allowing for statistical data to be submitted to me via email. I can then put it into some software and get some nice graph. This is very promising.
It's always pretty awesome to get a look behind how a game gets built up.... Especially when it's a so famous game like PvZ.... I really liked how different the first tries were... Thanks for sharing
