Brutally Honest #126 by Matej Lancaric

Hey, FAM! What’s up?

🥃 Drink talk

Well, well, well. Isn’t this a Gamescom week? It is. There were a lot of survival guides last week flying around for Gamescom.

Do you want to hear the ultimate tip on how to survive Gamescom?

Stay home!

🦩Tip of the week

Feedback is a gift! With creative feedback, it’s not always true. In my humble opinion, feedback for UA creatives should be ONLY between the creative & UA teams: no producers, no game artists, no CEOs, no janitors.

Ideally, the fewer people, the better.

Why? Because everybody has a fucking opinion about everything. Even when they don’t understand the context.

I believe in a very straightforward creative framework and feedback loop.

Creative framework: How to win in 2024?

Me and the person who works on the specific video. That’s it.

I like to see numbers from the testing campaign first; then, we can speculate, iterate, and change things.

Before we see any numbers, it is either ego talking or actually some experience (but that is not always relevant)

Because in the creative testing and feedback, “I don’t like this” will not make the cut. Why?

Because who cares if you or someone else doesn’t like it? If you are the target audience, okay. That is a fair point. Most likely you are not.

You get the point. Everybody wants to give feedback, but it’s not always appreciated, especially in creative testing. Let the numbers talk!

💀 Dr. Doom is not amused

One of my industry friends amused me with his direct and honest TL;DRs, so we agreed to share it here, too! My friend remains anonymous as Dr.Doom!

“This is textbook Dr. Doom’s strategy. In pursuit of following the maximum doom factor, you first announce that you are closing down a completely good studio, which already shipped a critically acclaimed title, and actually let them close. And then a month after you actually close the studio and tell everyone they lost their jobs you sell them to a different company. Maximum effort, keep it coming, Microsoft 😎” Sincerely, Doom (https://www.gamesindustry.biz/krafton-acquires-tango-gameworks-and-hi-fi-rush-ip-from-xbox)

🎉 “Ha-ha” moment

Because life is too short to be serious.

🎮 two & a half gamers – Squad Busters’ new update!

BIG update with +100% revenue uplift for Supercell’s Squad Busters:

😑 Mega Troops removed and moved to Skins.

✖ Chest Multipliers

So far, it looks like I can pay for fewer things in the game, but players are happy. Let’s see if you can pay bills with players’ happiness. Oh, wait, you can’t. 😶

Hats off, Supercell, for making drastic changes to the game. I wish you all the best and look forward to the next update!

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