Usually, for re-works, we’re looking at the mechanical side. Sometimes the mechanics are holding back the balance; for example, when we did our stealth re-work, we almost couldn’t put those characters in a place where they were balanced because they would feel really frustrating to play against. So, by bringing down the frustration that created space for us to adjust the bala

KM: We may look for opportunities to do that. I don’t have any of the specifics on what we would do there yet. Historically, we weren’t really trying to tell a cohesive story for the rest of this year. We really think of it as a season this initial year starting out with this Rise of the Raven comic later this month. We really try to delve into the realms, the realm lords and what the Nexus

Other developers try downloadable content. To combat profit loss from piracy, developers continue to work on a game after its release and provide extra content to those who are willing to pay. You can pay $60 upfront for a game and continue to pay later if you want more. Unfortunately, this draws a fair amount of criticism, especially when games started coming out with day-one DLC—if the content was ready at the time of release, gamers asked, why not just include it in the game? Further, what was to stop developers from holding back content gamers wanted so they could ask for more money later on? Out of this has come a new trend of free-to-play games, which on the surface seems greats, but whose implementation is proving aggravating and even alienating for gamers and developers al

Many gamers’ first memories involve swapping a controller back and forth during the original Super Mario Bros. , or memorizing the fatality combos in Mortal Kombat . Today, young gamers are far more likely to remember being cussed out on Xbox Live. Multiplayer games have undergone a massive shift in recent decades. Compared to the cozy prevalence of couch co-op games in the 90s, very few games today include local multiplayer as an option. Online multiplayer games are the new standard, but when and why did this trend be

More revenue. Another, less benign, reason for this shift to online multiplayer is money. Many distributors cite piracy as a major cause of declining profits , and increased DRM restrictions make sharing games with friends much more difficult. Decreasing the amount of local multiplayer means that friends who want to play together need their own copies of the game, their own system, and their own subscription. The result is increased costs for gamers and increased revenue for distribut

Enter free-to-play games. Though free-to-play isn’t an entirely new business model—in fact, it originated in early MMOs often targeted towards children and casual gamers, such as Neopets and MapleStory —its implementation is spreading. Rather than asking for an expensive sum upfront, as the traditional sales model does, free-to-play games are free but include advertisements, microtransactions, or in-game purchases that expand the players’ experience, such as League of Legends ‘ additional champions or Hearthstone ‘s card pa

This past week at DreamHack in Bucharest, Romania, a number of tournament organizers for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive reportedly met to come up with a response to rumors of an upcoming CS:GO super league, and the ongoing discussion is causing some drama within the game’s commun

Now, as you see, our patch schedule is insane; I think we patched 57 times last year which is nuts. But there’s so much content; we’re always tweaking things. Everything is open for improvement. It doesn’t really matter what’s in-game or what’s new in the game; we’re always looking at it on how we can make this game bet

Distributors clearly have a lot to gain from online multiplayer games, especially with the popularity of microtransactions and the increasing popularity of DLC—more maps, more costumes, and more weapons often tempt gamers into paying more. This works well for free-to-play games like League of Legends or other MOBAs, but announcing DLC before a MOBA Game Tournaments‘s release often draws criticism. Many players argue that paid DLC encourages some developers to omit necessary or desired player content for higher prof

It’s no secret that Valve’s annual The International competition is one of the biggest events in eSports. 20 million viewers can’t be wrong . Valve has slowly but surely built up the world championship for Dota 2 into an annual spectacle with a prize pool worth millions of dollars. With that said, Dota 2 arguably doesn’t have that big of a footprint the rest of the year, at least compared to some other eSports titles. For example, Blizzard’s Starcraft II and Riot’s League of Legends hold multiple regional events every year ahead of each game’s world championship that get a lot of attention. Dota 2 tournaments not named The International are out there, but usually don’t generate as much interest as the main ev