- Joined
- Jan 25, 2014
- Messages
- 87
- Reaction score
- 50
This is not a suggestion; there will be no talk of warp drives and wishful thinking. Rather this is a discussion on what may be one of starmade's core and most pressing issues, player engagement.
As human beings we have a tendency to jump straight to solutions instead of trying to understand what exactly the problem is. This is especially true with game development, more importantly public game development and play testing. As many great ideas as there are on the forums, reddit, and well... just about everywhere, from a game developer's perspective these suggestions are pretty meaningless if they don't work towards the very thing video games were made for: fun.
starmade has a problem, a big one. That problem is that it is just not very compelling. time and time again I see people who are interested in the game pick it up and play around with the creative tools, only never to play it again. Why is that? Well it might be that the only really engaging aspect is building, there really isn't much else that defines the game. If you look at some of the most successful creative games; terraria and minecraft , they have all the flexibility of a creative sandbox but they have the reward systems and consistent tension and risk that come within any other well-made interactive experience. What makes these games successful are that people who aren’t creatively inclined or don’t want to play with friends can still see the appeal. This underlying appeal and gamification not only makes the game fun but strengthens the creative aspects and makes our creations that much more meaningful.
We as players need a reason to keep flying. Maybe we keep flying because each new asteroid has the promise of fuel so we can get back home, or maybe we keep flying so we can find the schematic for that really cool missile launcher to counteract some other player’s First Order Optimal Strategy. Maybe the thing that gives meaning to our creations is something we haven’t even thought up yet but makes starmade just that much better.
Simply put starmade has a real engagement issue, and the longer we wait in the development cycle to start working on this issue, the harder and more expensive it will be to fix it. That being said, it is early enough in the development cycle that it hasn't become a huge problem, and I have high hopes for the game and the dev team and can’t wait to see what comes next.
Good luck schema
As human beings we have a tendency to jump straight to solutions instead of trying to understand what exactly the problem is. This is especially true with game development, more importantly public game development and play testing. As many great ideas as there are on the forums, reddit, and well... just about everywhere, from a game developer's perspective these suggestions are pretty meaningless if they don't work towards the very thing video games were made for: fun.
starmade has a problem, a big one. That problem is that it is just not very compelling. time and time again I see people who are interested in the game pick it up and play around with the creative tools, only never to play it again. Why is that? Well it might be that the only really engaging aspect is building, there really isn't much else that defines the game. If you look at some of the most successful creative games; terraria and minecraft , they have all the flexibility of a creative sandbox but they have the reward systems and consistent tension and risk that come within any other well-made interactive experience. What makes these games successful are that people who aren’t creatively inclined or don’t want to play with friends can still see the appeal. This underlying appeal and gamification not only makes the game fun but strengthens the creative aspects and makes our creations that much more meaningful.
We as players need a reason to keep flying. Maybe we keep flying because each new asteroid has the promise of fuel so we can get back home, or maybe we keep flying so we can find the schematic for that really cool missile launcher to counteract some other player’s First Order Optimal Strategy. Maybe the thing that gives meaning to our creations is something we haven’t even thought up yet but makes starmade just that much better.
Simply put starmade has a real engagement issue, and the longer we wait in the development cycle to start working on this issue, the harder and more expensive it will be to fix it. That being said, it is early enough in the development cycle that it hasn't become a huge problem, and I have high hopes for the game and the dev team and can’t wait to see what comes next.
Good luck schema
