Dev Blog #3 - Social Social Social!
It’s that time of week again. We’re back with more hot behind-the-scenes action on The Anacrusis. This week, we’re talking about social games. What they are, why we love them, and what we’re doing to make The Anacrusis a fun place to spend some quality time with your pals.
But first, a reminder from our last post. We’ve had a great response from the modding community and are starting to reach out to folks. If you’d like to talk to us about making mods for The Anacrusis, you can sign up over here.
We’ve been playing social games for a long, long time. Our first social gaming moments were often a byproduct of geography—like playing Wizards and Warriors with your neighbor or that year-long series of late-night games of Madden that stopped the moment we all moved out of the dorm. There was that brief, perfect storm of a neighbor who loved Quake and had a basement big enough to host a ten-person LAN party. When multiplayer games moved online, social games became centered around our communities, both on- and off-line. Sometimes it was just a group of beautiful souls who read poetry to each other while they were playing Team Fortress 2. But the one thing common to all of these social gaming moments was that they happened because the people playing wanted them. The games were just convenient settings.
We want The Anacrusis to encourage those social moments, to give players positive, fun, shared experiences whether they’re physically together or not. It turns out that there are a bunch of moving pieces that have to work together to make that happen--it means making the game easy for anyone to pick up and play, making combat that’s challenging for everyone, creating short- and long-term tasks that are meaningful, and controlling the game’s cadence, so that the challenging periods of uptime are broken up with downtime.
But if any part of that formula breaks, the social element disappears first. If the action is too relentless, there’s no time to recount that moment of triumph. If the tasks you have to complete don’t require thoughtful action, they feel like busywork. Without challenge, engagements are unsatisfying. When it’s working well, the game gives players something to talk about and then gives them time to chat. And if the game isn’t accessible enough that you can play with whoever you want, wherever you want, does that really count as social?
Let’s break down one aspect of the social gaming equation--cadence. The AI Driver is our main tool to control the cadence of the game. It spawns every health scanner, every weapon, each Matter Compiler, and every enemy in the game. If the players are moving too fast, the driver ramps up the number of enemies it spawns. If the fights are too easy, it will change the mix of common aliens and elites. At the same time, making players fight never-ending hordes of aliens is exhausting. You need that downtime between fights to rest, recover, and chat about your triumphs, but then we make sure there's enough time for you to get back to giving your friend who thinks the Cleveland Browns are the single greatest sports team of all time the grief they deserve.
Naturally, there’s a lot more that goes into making a game social. We have to make sure you can always play with your friends, whether they’re on console or PC, whether they’ve played for hundreds of hours or just downloaded the game from Game Pass, whether they’re experts or are brand new. It means that we don’t force players to level up a specific character or class, which can prevent them from playing with friends who are different levels or who chose the same class. It also means that we won’t enforce level or rank requirements, which can keep friends from playing together if they don’t devote the same amount of time to the game.
At the end of the day, this is why we spend so much time playing the game ourselves and watching new and returning players play the game. The only way to find out what works with the nearly infinite range of players who will eventually play The Anacrusis, is to test with as many people as possible. (BTW, we’re still recruiting testers! Join the Discord and come play with us!
When we do everything just right, it makes The Anacrusis a very satisfying place to hang out with your friends. When you need a break, you get a break. When you’re ready for more action, you get some more action. Awesome stuff can happen in the game, but you’ll still have a moment to have a heartfelt talk with your friends. It’s a place where you can just have fun hanging out, and along the way, you’ll kill a few thousand aliens and maybe save the human race.
It is, after all, still a video game.
If you want to read more posts like this, we’re putting them up every week right here on Steam. Mash the Wishlist button and they’ll show up in your feed the moment they’re posted. Have questions about The Anacrusis? Head on over to our Discord and join the conversation!
But first, a reminder from our last post. We’ve had a great response from the modding community and are starting to reach out to folks. If you’d like to talk to us about making mods for The Anacrusis, you can sign up over here.
We’ve been playing social games for a long, long time. Our first social gaming moments were often a byproduct of geography—like playing Wizards and Warriors with your neighbor or that year-long series of late-night games of Madden that stopped the moment we all moved out of the dorm. There was that brief, perfect storm of a neighbor who loved Quake and had a basement big enough to host a ten-person LAN party. When multiplayer games moved online, social games became centered around our communities, both on- and off-line. Sometimes it was just a group of beautiful souls who read poetry to each other while they were playing Team Fortress 2. But the one thing common to all of these social gaming moments was that they happened because the people playing wanted them. The games were just convenient settings.
We want The Anacrusis to encourage those social moments, to give players positive, fun, shared experiences whether they’re physically together or not. It turns out that there are a bunch of moving pieces that have to work together to make that happen--it means making the game easy for anyone to pick up and play, making combat that’s challenging for everyone, creating short- and long-term tasks that are meaningful, and controlling the game’s cadence, so that the challenging periods of uptime are broken up with downtime.
But if any part of that formula breaks, the social element disappears first. If the action is too relentless, there’s no time to recount that moment of triumph. If the tasks you have to complete don’t require thoughtful action, they feel like busywork. Without challenge, engagements are unsatisfying. When it’s working well, the game gives players something to talk about and then gives them time to chat. And if the game isn’t accessible enough that you can play with whoever you want, wherever you want, does that really count as social?
Let’s break down one aspect of the social gaming equation--cadence. The AI Driver is our main tool to control the cadence of the game. It spawns every health scanner, every weapon, each Matter Compiler, and every enemy in the game. If the players are moving too fast, the driver ramps up the number of enemies it spawns. If the fights are too easy, it will change the mix of common aliens and elites. At the same time, making players fight never-ending hordes of aliens is exhausting. You need that downtime between fights to rest, recover, and chat about your triumphs, but then we make sure there's enough time for you to get back to giving your friend who thinks the Cleveland Browns are the single greatest sports team of all time the grief they deserve.
Naturally, there’s a lot more that goes into making a game social. We have to make sure you can always play with your friends, whether they’re on console or PC, whether they’ve played for hundreds of hours or just downloaded the game from Game Pass, whether they’re experts or are brand new. It means that we don’t force players to level up a specific character or class, which can prevent them from playing with friends who are different levels or who chose the same class. It also means that we won’t enforce level or rank requirements, which can keep friends from playing together if they don’t devote the same amount of time to the game.
At the end of the day, this is why we spend so much time playing the game ourselves and watching new and returning players play the game. The only way to find out what works with the nearly infinite range of players who will eventually play The Anacrusis, is to test with as many people as possible. (BTW, we’re still recruiting testers! Join the Discord and come play with us!
When we do everything just right, it makes The Anacrusis a very satisfying place to hang out with your friends. When you need a break, you get a break. When you’re ready for more action, you get some more action. Awesome stuff can happen in the game, but you’ll still have a moment to have a heartfelt talk with your friends. It’s a place where you can just have fun hanging out, and along the way, you’ll kill a few thousand aliens and maybe save the human race.
It is, after all, still a video game.
If you want to read more posts like this, we’re putting them up every week right here on Steam. Mash the Wishlist button and they’ll show up in your feed the moment they’re posted. Have questions about The Anacrusis? Head on over to our Discord and join the conversation!