Education

Designs mechanics that are intuitively understood, incorporating tutorials and progressive learning.

New players find it hard to grasp basic gameplay or to access features.

Variation

Introduces mechanics with diverse outcomes and interactions to sustain interest and avoid monotony.

Gameplay feels too predictable or repetitive after initial engagement.

Relevance

Ensures mechanics directly contribute to and impact the game’s narrative and goals.

Players feel disconnected or find the gameplay actions lacking significance.

Balance

Ensures fair play by providing multiple strategic options and equalizing opportunities for success.

Player feedback indicates a lack of variety or fairness in gameplay.

Innovation

Innovates by creating or significantly improving mechanics to offer new challenges and experiences.

Players feel the gameplay lacks novelty or fails to differentiate from others.

Accessibility

Ensures the core loop is intuitive and engaging from the start, with clear instructions and entry points.

New players are overwhelmed or confused at the beginning of an experience.

Goals & Rewards

Crafts clear, scalable goals with immediate and long-term rewards that are integral to gameplay and player achievements.

Players feel unmotivated or the rewards feel disconnected from their efforts.

Progress & Feedback

Provides timely, personalized feedback linked to player actions, using various communication methods judiciously.

Players feel lost or inundated with irrelevant information, impacting their engagement.

Depth & Pacing

Manages the complexity and challenge progression, adapting to player skills to maintain interest and fairness.

Gameplay feels monotonous or unevenly challenging, affecting different player groups.

Long-term Goals & Rewards

Sets compelling, overarching objectives that give players a reason to invest in the game over the long-term.

Players complete initial content quickly and eventually stagnate or lose interest without any clear path forward.

Layered Rewards

Distributes rewards at varying intervals to maintain interest and reward continual engagement.

Players feel over- or underwhelmed by the frequency of rewards, or that upcoming rewards are too distant.

Session Triggers

Implements mechanisms and incentives that actively encourage players to return for future sessions.

Players exhibit sporadic play patterns without regular engagement.

Community

Fosters identity and community so that players can adopt unique styles of play, express themselves, and build relationships.

Players feel isolated or uninvolved in the game’s community/social aspects.

Product Metrics Theory

Players feel isolated or uninvolved in the game’s community/social aspects.

You’re uncertain about how lifecycle stages impact each other and need strategies to effectively manage player engagement, reduce churn, and re-engage former players.

Goals

Sets clear, strategic objectives that are in strict alignment with the project’s mission and vision. This ensures every phase and task contributes directly to the overarching goals, streamlining efforts and resources.

Your project suffers from lack of direction, conflicting priorities, or stalls due to unresolved strategic questions.

Milestones

Establishes specific, measurable checkpoints that not only signify significant achievements but also enable structured evaluations at critical points, allowing for proactive adjustments to the project plans.

There are (frequent) misjudgments in project progress, necessitating last-minute changes or extensive reworks. Additionally, there’s a need to boost team morale by celebrating key successes.

Tasks

Employs robust tracking tools to manage and clearly visualize task progression and responsibilities across teams. Each task is defined with specific objectives, assigned responsibilities, and set deadlines to ensure systematic project execution.

You encounter challenges in prioritizing tasks or tracking progress, leading to uncertainties about achieving milestones and causing disorganization that impacts the project timeline.

Feedback

Actively solicits and integrates feedback from both users and stakeholders throughout the development cycle, ensuring it informs the milestone reviews and subsequent project adjustments.

Critical issues frequently surface too late in the development process or post-release, adversely affecting user and stakeholder satisfaction and retention.

Pre-production

Prototypes, iterates, and refines mechanics within a vertical slice to ensure the mechanics and core loop are engaging and fun. Decisions on art style and level of polish are finalized early to avoid costly changes after significant development has begun.

You aren’t familiar with “greyboxing” or “vertical slices.” Projects lack clearly proven or fun mechanics; there’s uncertainty whether the core experience will engage users; or art style and polish decisions are made too late, leading to significant changes after development.

Production

Expands on concepts proven in pre-production, fully developing all game elements including levels, story, and additional mechanics. Integrates all components into a cohesive whole, maintaining consistency and adhering to the project timeline and budget.

The scope of your worlds are (often) not fully realized or cohesive (at all, or late in the process), with elements that were introduced in pre-production not effectively being expanded or integrated or with large changes being made late in development.

Release

Conducts final tests and quality checks; finalizes the launch strategy, ensuring a smooth rollout and a strong market entry. Prepares fast—follow fixes to address any immediate issues post-launch.

When creating your worlds there are (often) unresolved technical issues, or the launch preparation is lacking in strategy, marketing materials, or distribution plans.

Language

Utilizes scripting features effectively such as functions, classes, generics, interfaces, and promises in TypeScript, or events, lists, and loops in Code Blocks.

You are unfamiliar with scripting features in TypeScript or Code Blocks; you often struggle to express ideas in code.

Engineering

Develops and maintains large codebases with a focus on architecture, testing, debugging, and performance optimization.

Your projects suffer from poor structure, bugs, or inefficiencies that hinder scalability or performance.

Math & Physics

Applies math and physics knowledge to script 3D experiences, including vectors, rotations, quaternions, interpolation, and physics concepts like force and momentum.

You find it challenging to implement projects involving complex math and physics concepts necessary for realistic/polished 3D interactions.

Meta Horizon Systems

Masters Meta Horizon’s technical features such as ownership, player interaction, physics, locomotion, spawning, and persistence.

You are not using or are struggling with Horizon’s features like physics, persistence, asset spawning, triggers, or grabbing.

Mesh Creation

Designs and optimizes 3D models for virtual environments and items, ensuring they are detailed, efficient, and stylistically consistent. Masters advanced features of chosen 3D modeling tools.

Your models lack detail, suffer from performance issues, or you struggle with creating certain types of content, such as humanoid figures.

Materials & Textures

You are not using or are struggling with Meta Horizon’s features like physics, persistence, asset spawning, triggers, or grabbing.

Your models appear flat or unrealistic; they underutilize techniques that enhance detail and realism, such as pre-baked shadows or texture detail enhancement.

Animations

Designs animations that are dynamic and responsive, finely tuned to user interactions and gameplay mechanics. Employs advanced techniques like easing and spring animations to ensure movements are natural and lively.

Your animations feel lacking or unnatural; they do not seamlessly integrate with user actions, resulting in a less immersive experience.

Effects

Integrates visual effects, sounds, pop-ups, UI, and haptics to create a cohesive sensory environment. Enhances scenes with depthenhancing visual effects, contextually accurate soundscapes, and realistic haptic feedback. Strategically uses UI elements and pop-ups to maintain immersion without overwhelming users.

Your environment lacks depth or fails to fully engage the senses; sounds and haptic feedback do not match actions; UI elements disrupt rather than enhance the user experience.

Brand & Advertising

Creates and maintains a brand identity for a business including storytelling, logo, messaging to establish reputation, user/customer loyalty, and value propositions. Designs, executes, and optimizes targeted advertising campaigns that effectively communicate the project’s brand and value propositions across various channels, including social media platforms like Discord and TikTok. Uses datadriven insights to refine strategies and improve reach.

Your project struggles to gain visibility, brand awareness, or to reach the intended audience. You see low visitation.

Community

Builds and actively nurtures a vibrant community, fostering engagement through regular interaction, content sharing, responsive support, and moderated safe spaces. Implements strategies like regular community events, rewards for active members, and feedback mechanisms that directly influence project improvements.

Community growth is stagnant; existing engagement strategies fail to activate passive users, or community feedback loops are ineffective, leaving user needs and suggestions unaddressed.

Partnerships & Networking

Cultivates strategic partnerships (where applicable) to leverage external networks and enhance market visibility. Establishes collaborations with entities from influencers to corporate sponsors that align with the project’s values and can mutually benefit from shared audiences.

There is a noticeable lack of support from other entities, difficulty in reaching beyond your current market, or missed opportunities in forming mutually beneficial alliances that could boost visibility and credibility.

Team Management

Oversees all facets of team dynamics, including hiring, contract management, payroll, and legal compliance. Develops, leads, and maintains a productive team environment by fostering collaboration, communication, and professional growth. Implements strategies for effective team-building, conflict resolution, and ensures adherence to legal and contractual obligations.

Team dynamics are strained; hiring processes are inefficient; contract disputes arise; payroll issues occur; or there’s a lack of compliance with legal standards affecting team performance and cohesion.