Comment on Does the 2 hour refund limit on Steam affect game design?
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Yes, the two hour limit affects game design. Based on what I’ve read about Blue Prince, it probably didn’t affect that one much at all. The business model always affects the game design. When games were expecting to be rentals, the first few levels would be front loaded with the best that the game had to offer, and then later levels would be more phoned in. In the arcades, games would be louder to catch more attention, they’d be harder to make you put in another quarter, they’d reduce downtime to get the next person on the machine, etc.
icecreamtaco@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Still happens today. First impressions matter, budgets are finite, and sometimes reviewers only play the first few parts.
PapstJL4U@lemmy.world [bot] 2 days ago
Yeah, the theory if front-loaded design is just reality of game development reality. No, D2 Ac4 wasn’t limited because of rentals - it was bad,because one year of crunch and still nit enough time does this to a product.
Halo1 last third is bad, because they did not have enough time, nit because they cared about rentals.
Game content dev generally starts at the beginning.