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Design Notepad: The Perfect Un-planned Feature

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Unplanned features, a concept that doesn't sit well with most game developers (producers I'm looking at you), and rightly so! Additional cost and bugs means they can be risky. After all, they are the very definition of feature creep. However, making games is a creative process. Things change during the course of development, inspiration strikes or something you've been experimenting with turns out to be a huge value add. Not all features are born equal, some are much more suited to being a last minute addition than others. What are the attributes of the perfect unplanned feature? How can we spot them and take advantage? Makes use of what's readily available If the feature can be created with elements from existing systems and assets it's immediately something that's worth at least considering. It's a "modder" approach, taking elements of the games that were created to do one thing and repurposing them to create a variation of a feature or even som...
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10 design lessons from 10 years in games

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