Good design principles for Meta Game Design
So, I have way too little time and far too much work lately, do I thought in order to help any one that wants it, I'll just scribble down a couple of notes on Meta game design and Menus.
From what I have seen there are 3 meta game structures that work(reaches top 200 grossing for prolonged periods):
Crafting:
Strategy games
Farming games
Collectable card games
Saga:
Really these are puzzle games where you buy more cobtent
Leaderboard centric experiences:
Arcade titled that have timelimeted leaderboards.
So, if I was to make a new f2p game, I would pick one of these and design all my systems around it. Having more than one of these systems in your game requires millions of dollars or massive teams to do effectively, where as a simple and specialized version of one of them can be more effective without requiring such a massive investment.
So, now I picked one of these and start wireframing the screens to get a feel for the game, and ao I can have some meaningful UI to pop into my screens. Some people would say each screen should contain a meaningful choice. To those people I say, yes, but only if that choice is fun and I have time to ittirate and make that choice fun, if not, dont make it a choice. Ensure that the player always has a clear option you want them to take if they were not attentive. Make sure that even a player that only half glances at the game while playing will still have a fun game experience and not suddenly find game difficulty has sky rocketted beyond what they could handle because they missed that one screen you briefly mentioned in your tutorial.
So, that is all I have time for right now, please feel free to describe your own approach to meta game design and share tools with me :)
From what I have seen there are 3 meta game structures that work(reaches top 200 grossing for prolonged periods):
Crafting:
Strategy games
Farming games
Collectable card games
Saga:
Really these are puzzle games where you buy more cobtent
Leaderboard centric experiences:
Arcade titled that have timelimeted leaderboards.
So, if I was to make a new f2p game, I would pick one of these and design all my systems around it. Having more than one of these systems in your game requires millions of dollars or massive teams to do effectively, where as a simple and specialized version of one of them can be more effective without requiring such a massive investment.
So, now I picked one of these and start wireframing the screens to get a feel for the game, and ao I can have some meaningful UI to pop into my screens. Some people would say each screen should contain a meaningful choice. To those people I say, yes, but only if that choice is fun and I have time to ittirate and make that choice fun, if not, dont make it a choice. Ensure that the player always has a clear option you want them to take if they were not attentive. Make sure that even a player that only half glances at the game while playing will still have a fun game experience and not suddenly find game difficulty has sky rocketted beyond what they could handle because they missed that one screen you briefly mentioned in your tutorial.
So, that is all I have time for right now, please feel free to describe your own approach to meta game design and share tools with me :)
Thanked by 1dreampunchboy