The process isn’t very intuitive though, hidden in a Steam sub-menu of a sub-menu that only dedicated players will know to seek out.Īnd there are limits, as we learned the hard way. We achieved our goal, allowing players to access archival builds of Dead Cells on demand. ![]() At Motion Twin, we’d already been using branches for our alpha and beta test pools.įor the Legacy Update we simply created 16 different branches, one for each major version of Dead Cells.Īgain, easy - though not exactly elegant. You’re probably familiar with Steam’s beta branches, a feature theoretically meant for internal testing or maybe for players to access an upcoming update early. Now how do you do it? It’s easy, albeit a bit of an unofficial hack. It helps to know why you made certain decisions before changing them again, and the archive’s allowed us to check our own work, trace a line between past and present - even settle disputes, on a few occasions. There’s an old adage, Chesterton’s Fence, that essentially states that if you come across a fence you should figure out why it’s there before tearing it down. We’ve also found the archive a useful resource, as we get further and further into development on Dead Cells. Psychologically, it’s an interesting change though. We like to think we’re pretty good stewards, and that we’d make the tough calls even without the Legacy Update. Whether it will actually have an effect on day-to-day development? It’s hard to say. There’s a creative freedom that comes from knowing any change we make can be easily reverted by naysayers. Players are no longer shackled to our vision, which in turn means we can experiment with elements of Dead Cells that before seemed untouchable-or at least volatile. The Legacy Update doesn’t completely remove that stress, but it does diminish it. Should we make the “right” choice for Dead Cells, even if in doing so we made a lot of our players angry? (See: The hornet’s nest we kicked over by locking achievements for certain custom mode setups.) Major updates were stressful though, especially ones we thought might fundamentally alter the game or prove contentious. That’s not to say we didn’t, as anyone upset about balance passes or legendary drop rates can tell you. In the past, we worried about making sweeping changes to Dead Cells. A weight off our mindsĪnd that leads into our second point: Keeping an archive is good for you, the developer, as well. With the Legacy Update, that more difficult 1.0 experience is readily available for those who want it. Others disagreed, and they did so quite loudly. People noticed - or at least, a hardcore subset of fans noticed. After much internal debate we decided to do a massive balance pass, effectively dropping the default difficulty to make Dead Cells more approachable to newcomers. That was the big tentpole feature for 1.1, but there was more to it. In fact, one of our most contentious changes came after we left Early Access and released the 1.1 update, now colloquially known as the Pimp My Run update because it added a Custom Game mode to Dead Cells. There, too, you have a divide between “The Game People Paid For” and “The Game That Exists,” one that only grows wider the longer you support a project, the more you add or tweak or disable. It exists, your perfect Dead Cells experience.Īnd we’ve focused mostly on Early Access, but really, these lessons extend to the whole Games-as-a-Service era. We haven’t taken away the game you wanted, bought, and enjoyed for maybe hundreds of hours. ![]() If you think we lost the thread after version 0.7? Now you can play version 0.7 to your heart’s content. Pop the champagne.Īn archive means nobody needs to be left behind, though. If the latter outweighs the former, then congratulations, you’re a successful indie developer. You make decisions about the game’s direction, you accept that you’re going to lose some people along the way and gain others. Traditionally, you’d say “Tough luck.” There is no Death of the Author in video games, or at least not so long as they’re still being updated. ![]() What do we say to someone who’s put hundreds of hours into Dead Cells, only to find they no longer own the game they wanted? Problems arise when those visions clash, when our decisions not only don’t match player desires but also “ruin” the game for certain players. But people are buying into not just the game that exists but the game they think will exist a year, two years, even five years down the line. After all, Dead Cells is our game, and we’re going to do what we think is best. Developing a game in public entails giving up a bit of ownership. Player feedback informed many of our decisions, both big and small, and Dead Cells would be different (and probably worse) if we hadn’t collaborated with our fans.įeedback isn’t free, though. Early Access was important to the development of Dead Cells.
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