Huge difference between gaming and marketing. In gaming, you make things that you enjoy, hope others enjoy it too. In marketing, your opinion is worth jack shit. Only engagement counts. That makes for shitty games imo.
Ik it’s only anecdotal, but I played Brawl Stars when it was in beta and witnessed almost all its updates until global launch (and have caught up with some more recent updates here and there). It went from a genuinely fun mobile game with character and potential to a plastic husk primed for whatever monetisation and “engagement” strategies analytics says needs to be shoved into it next.
At the time I couldn’t fathom how all those updates that often made gameplay and progression less fun could ever be more “engaging” (the change from portrait to landscape in particular felt like straight up poor game design), but in hindsight it’s clear what that really meant.
Huge difference between gaming and marketing. In gaming, you make things that you enjoy, hope others enjoy it too. In marketing, your opinion is worth jack shit. Only engagement counts. That makes for shitty games imo.
Ik it’s only anecdotal, but I played Brawl Stars when it was in beta and witnessed almost all its updates until global launch (and have caught up with some more recent updates here and there). It went from a genuinely fun mobile game with character and potential to a plastic husk primed for whatever monetisation and “engagement” strategies analytics says needs to be shoved into it next.
At the time I couldn’t fathom how all those updates that often made gameplay and progression less fun could ever be more “engaging” (the change from portrait to landscape in particular felt like straight up poor game design), but in hindsight it’s clear what that really meant.