Making a Competitive Strategy Game Survive

This is a Game Dev Podcast with my guest Youge Wen, aka. "Bearlike", the lead developer of my favorite strategy game Mechabellum, published by Dreamhaven, the publisher and developer founded by Blizzard's Mike Morhaime. We talk about the death spiral for online multiplayer games, game design, balancing for Mechabellum and exchange some advice with each other.

Links to my Guest

➤ Play Mechabellum on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/669330/Mechabellum/

Listen to the podcast on the go (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.):

➤ https://tyrollerjonas.podbean.com/

0:00 - Intro

0:43 - Jonas on Mechabellum; how it was made?

1:13 - Two-person start in 2017; Mahjong/poker prototypes

4:53 - No moving units, Go’s influence, fixing Round 1 snowball

8:36 - Avoiding RTS snowball: equal income and reborn units

11:36 - Unity choice; simple, low-latency networking design

16:04 - Should you make a competitive auto-battler? (Don’t)

19:26 - Live service pain and the death spiral

22:16 - One bad update can kill an indie PvP game

25:02 - Balancing philosophy: define goals, fun over variety

27:45 - Double red/green: when to nerf (win rate vs pick rate)

31:10 - Unit design with spreadsheets; emergent counters & guidelines

37:16 - Counters without tags; armor experiments and why they failed

41:27 - Tech design, tradeoffs, complexity vs fun; balancing techs

46:56 - If you insist on PvP auto-battlers: know your goals

49:50 - Technical constraints and scoping to your team

52:03 - Monetization and positioning competitive strategy games

58:00 - External shocks; start with PvE; Bazaar-style offline PvP

01:00:15 - Fewer players and shorter matches to reduce concurrency

01:03:37 - Marketing, Early Access pitfalls, Battle Aces; co-op PvP prototype

01:08:08 - Managing community negativity and inevitable mistakes

01:12:56 - Balancing PvE: ensure tool use; buff enemies, not players

01:17:00 - Keeping old versions via Steam branches

01:19:23 - PvE/co-op opportunities; Thronefall co-op and saying no

01:25:51 - Scoping, minimal art, and fast content pipelines

01:26:52 - Meta shifts as side effects

01:28:54 - Team size; Out of Hand; art style and marketing lessons

01:33:07 - Mechabellum roadmap; armor hopes; expanding the universe

01:36:37 - Business reality: support what earns; risk vs reward

01:38:07 - Randomness vs determinism: upsets, styles, and info gaps

01:45:01 - Designing perceived fairness: RPS illusion and football

01:50:23 - Jonas’ next game; staying small; freelancers vs growth

01:54:17 - Endless Mode learnings and map persistence idea

01:58:10 - Wrap-up

My game "Thronefall":

➤ Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2239150/Thronefall/

➤ Discord: https://discord.gg/gVYctptyg8

➤ Nintendo Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Thronefall-2669627.html#Overview

My game "Will You Snail":

➤ Play Will You Snail on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1115050/Will_You_Snail/

➤ Join the Will You Snail Discord: https://discord.gg/G3mRDrK

For the game developers among you:

➤ Join our creative game dev community on Discord: https://discord.gg/Ye6zzfQ