Making a Competitive Strategy Game Survive

This is a Game Dev Podcast with my guest Youge Wen, aka. "Bearlike", the lead developer of my favorite strategy game Mechabellum, published by Dreamhaven, the publisher and developer founded by Blizzard's Mike Morhaime. We talk about the death spiral for online multiplayer games, game design, balancing for Mechabellum and exchange some advice with each other. Links to my Guest ➤ Play Mechabellum on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/669330/Mechabellum/ Listen to the podcast on the go (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.): ➤ https://tyrollerjonas.podbean.com/ 0:00 - Intro 0:43 - Jonas on Mechabellum; how it was made? 1:13 - Two-person start in 2017; Mahjong/poker prototypes 4:53 - No moving units, Go’s influence, fixing Round 1 snowball 8:36 - Avoiding RTS snowball: equal income and reborn units 11:36 - Unity choice; simple, low-latency networking design 16:04 - Should you make a competitive auto-battler? (Don’t) 19:26 - Live service pain and the death spiral 22:16 - One bad update can kill an indie PvP game 25:02 - Balancing philosophy: define goals, fun over variety 27:45 - Double red/green: when to nerf (win rate vs pick rate) 31:10 - Unit design with spreadsheets; emergent counters & guidelines 37:16 - Counters without tags; armor experiments and why they failed 41:27 - Tech design, tradeoffs, complexity vs fun; balancing techs 46:56 - If you insist on PvP auto-battlers: know your goals 49:50 - Technical constraints and scoping to your team 52:03 - Monetization and positioning competitive strategy games 58:00 - External shocks; start with PvE; Bazaar-style offline PvP 01:00:15 - Fewer players and shorter matches to reduce concurrency 01:03:37 - Marketing, Early Access pitfalls, Battle Aces; co-op PvP prototype 01:08:08 - Managing community negativity and inevitable mistakes 01:12:56 - Balancing PvE: ensure tool use; buff enemies, not players 01:17:00 - Keeping old versions via Steam branches 01:19:23 - PvE/co-op opportunities; Thronefall co-op and saying no 01:25:51 - Scoping, minimal art, and fast content pipelines 01:26:52 - Meta shifts as side effects 01:28:54 - Team size; Out of Hand; art style and marketing lessons 01:33:07 - Mechabellum roadmap; armor hopes; expanding the universe 01:36:37 - Business reality: support what earns; risk vs reward 01:38:07 - Randomness vs determinism: upsets, styles, and info gaps 01:45:01 - Designing perceived fairness: RPS illusion and football 01:50:23 - Jonas’ next game; staying small; freelancers vs growth 01:54:17 - Endless Mode learnings and map persistence idea 01:58:10 - Wrap-up My game "Thronefall": ➤ Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2239150/Thronefall/ ➤ Discord: https://discord.gg/gVYctptyg8 ➤ Nintendo Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Thronefall-2669627.html#Overview My game "Will You Snail": ➤ Play Will You Snail on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1115050/Will_You_Snail/ ➤ Join the Will You Snail Discord: https://discord.gg/G3mRDrK For the game developers among you: ➤ Join our creative game dev community on Discord: https://discord.gg/Ye6zzfQ

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