On Monday, co-founder of Arkane Studios and the current WolfEye Studios President revealed a smidge of what their second title will be like.
Since the release of their debut title, Weird West, in March 2022, WolfEye Studios has remained incredibly tight-lipped about their future plans. This is until Monday, when the Creative Director and President of the studio, Raphael Colantonio, let out a small tidbit about what their next game can look like. Below is an X (formerly Twitter) post from Co
On Monday, co-founder of Arkane Studios and the current WolfEye Studios President revealed a smidge of what their second title will be like.
Since the release of their debut title, Weird West, in March 2022, WolfEye Studios has remained incredibly tight-lipped about their future plans. This is until Monday, when the Creative Director and President of the studio, Raphael Colantonio, let out a small tidbit about what their next game can look like. Below is an X (formerly Twitter) post from Colantonio that alludes to their next game.
We’ll reveal a bit more about our next game in a few days… Fans of the previous 1st person games I was involved with (Dishonored and Prey) will be happy.
Colantonio says, “Fans of the previous 1st person games I was involved with (Dishonored and Prey) will be happy.” Considering the Creative Director said specifically 1st person, it’s almost an announcement that WolfEye Studios’ next game will be from the first person POV. Although the same studio developed both titles, Dishonored and Prey featured vastly different gameplay mechanics, storyline elements, and characters and couldn’t be more different outside of the general FPS gameplay.
It’s worth mentioning that WolfEye Studios’ previous title, Weird West was from a Diablo IV-like viewpoint and featured werewolf transformations. Underneath the post, Colantonio does expand on what he meant with his comparisons to Dishonored and Prey. A fan, MonokumaGK replied to the post asking “Why you did not mention Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah as “previous 1st person games (you) were involved with”?” Colantonio replied, “I could have mentioned them too. But only so many characters in a tweet.”
Outside of confirmation that WolfEye Studios is indeed working on a new title, Colantonio has only revealed that their next game will likely be from a first-person perspective. Fans should note that WolfEye Studios still hasn’t made any formal announcements regarding the title, so fans should take this news with a grain of salt until further information is released.
Xsolla, the company behind Roblox, proudly announces the launch of Xsolla Academy Online (XAO). Since its inception in 2005, Xsolla has been a cornerstone in the gaming industry, assisting developers and publishers in funding, launching, selling, and monetising their video games globally. Now, Xsolla extends its wealth of knowledge and expertise to the wider gaming community with XAO, a gamified training platform designed to empower game developers and professionals.
Xsolla Academy Online is
Xsolla, the company behind Roblox, proudly announces the launch of Xsolla Academy Online (XAO). Since its inception in 2005, Xsolla has been a cornerstone in the gaming industry, assisting developers and publishers in funding, launching, selling, and monetising their video games globally. Now, Xsolla extends its wealth of knowledge and expertise to the wider gaming community with XAO, a gamified training platform designed to empower game developers and professionals.
Xsolla Academy Online is crafted to help individuals at all stages of their careers, from seasoned professionals seeking advancement to newcomers navigating the complexities of the gaming business. The platform offers a comprehensive suite of training programs focusing on practical application and industry relevance, ensuring that participants can confidently tackle business challenges.
Key Features of Xsolla Academy Online
Industry-Relevant Skills and Best Practices: XAO offers six gamified tracks covering essential areas such as Game Business, Monetisation, Marketing, Distribution, Investment, and Xsolla Solutions for Business. These tracks provide frameworks, effective practices, and tools to enhance business strategies and career development.
Bit-Sized Skills Training: Address your most pressing questions with concise, expertly crafted content. Select your area of interest and dive into a variety of topics designed to provide quick and effective learning.
Engaging, Gamified Learning: Learn at your own pace with interactive, engaging content. The gamified approach ensures a fun and effective learning experience, accessible from anywhere in the world.
Always Up-to-Date Content: Stay current with the latest industry trends and practices, all available on one convenient platform.
Networking Opportunities: Connect with a global community of fellow developers, industry experts, and potential investors through forums and networking events, fostering valuable connections and growth opportunities.
Join the XAO Community
Explore the diverse programs and meet the exceptional instructors who bring unparalleled expertise to XAO. The platform is designed to help you build strategies with long-term positive impacts and provide solutions to daily business challenges. Whether you aim to advance your career, enter the gaming industry, or elevate your game business, Xsolla Academy Online offers the tools and support you need.
Join Xsolla Academy Online today for free and set your game business on a path to success. Visit xsolla-academy.com to learn more and become part of an amazing community dedicated to fostering innovation, accessibility, and growth within the gaming industry.
In a vote on June 26, Microsoft employees who worked at Bethesda Game Studios voted to unionize. Microsoft acknowledged 241 union members on July 20, and the studio will now be affiliated with Communications Workers of America (CWA). According to reporting by IGN, the new union would negotiate with Microsoft for a new contract that would prevent any workplace abuses or exploitations. Bethesda Game Studios is the famed developer of several popular franchises including Fallout and The Elder Scroll
In a vote on June 26, Microsoft employees who worked at Bethesda Game Studios voted to unionize. Microsoft acknowledged 241 union members on July 20, and the studio will now be affiliated with Communications Workers of America (CWA). According to reporting by IGN, the new union would negotiate with Microsoft for a new contract that would prevent any workplace abuses or exploitations. Bethesda Game Studios is the famed developer of several popular franchises including Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, and was Microsoft's biggest acquisition prior to their industry-shaking purchase of Activision-Blizzard-King in 2022.
Source: X.
The news of the studio's move to unionize is welcome, as other AAA companies have instigated mass layoffs for talented teams, with NDAs preventing them from sharing portfolios containing relevant assets. Bethesda Game Studios has also had its share of troubles with shutdowns and workplace controversies from its parent company. In May 2024, IGN reported thatMicrosoft shut down at least four Bethesda-owned studios and would not provide updates for games like Redfall despite retailing a DLC. The most that players could expect to receive is "the value of a purchased upgrade."
Bethesda employee controversies
In 2018, the development of Fallout 76 involved a high "human toll" with 10-hour, 6-day workweeks and employees not given time to rest and recharge if placed on that team. Contracted QA testers, in particular, were reportedly underpaid despite several being coerced to work on weekends, and the extra pay did not compensate for the physical and emotional demands. Paid employees would monitor and time the contractors' breaks. Complaints to upper management achieved nothing and Fallout 76's buggy release led to increased pressure and even death threats from frustrated players.
A 2022 report from Kotaku condemned this crunch culture and how it encourages burnout in creative fields, leading to entitlement in upper management and lower-quality output. Several employees even reported developing chronic conditions such as tinnitus and back pain, with low morale settling among the team. No one was trying to protect those working to find the bugs and remove them; in some cases, the recommended fixes were never applied.
Another troubling workplace incident saw a Bethesda employee posting an eight-paragraph pro-life rant on Slack in 2022 following the Supreme Court's decision to strike down Roe v. Wade. This rant contributed to what some employees felt was a work environment where affected employees, including those queer or identifying as female, already felt tension and hostility rooted in sexism and ableism as they inquired about what protections they would receive regarding contraceptives and abortions. Neither ZeniMax Studios nor Microsoft offered comments when Kotaku reached out to them. The existence of an unsafe environment is often cited as a reason for low morale in the workplace.
Possibilities of unionization
Unionization is one method to protect game developers and employees from these sudden layoffs, crunch culture, and hostile work environments. Workplace union protections may assist those who have gaps in their portfolios owing to NDAs or whose work may never see the light of day if a game gets canceled. Most importantly, vulnerable employee positions like QA testers could receive competitive wages and appropriate allocation of hours on projects that require large amounts of input and testing.
With luck, Bethesda Game Studios will report positive changes in the workplace. Concrete improvements could help prevent a repeat of the Fallout 76 controversies as well as chronic health conditions that overworking can cause. Employees can take pride in working at the company, rather than lose the spark that made them enter gaming with a desire to create. Unionization at Bethesda Game Studios was a long time coming and may represent a continuing trend in the industry.
If you can cast your mind back to around this time last year, you might remember Garry Newman—him off of Garry's Mod, and founder of Facepunch Studios—announcing that "Unity can get fucked" in the wake of sudden, badly thought out changes to the engine's pricing scheme that would have seen devs fork over fees on a per-install basis once certain "fee thresholds" were met.Unity eventually walked back the most egregious aspects of those changes, but it's probably no
If you can cast your mind back to around this time last year, you might remember Garry Newman—him off of Garry's Mod, and founder of Facepunch Studios—announcing that "Unity can get fucked" in the wake of sudden, badly thought out changes to the engine's pricing scheme that would have seen devs fork over fees on a per-install basis once certain "fee thresholds" were met.
Unity eventually walked back the most egregious aspects of those changes, but it's probably not surprising that Newman is more committed than ever to his kinda-sorta Garry's Mod sequel/brand new engine s&box, which has been in the works for years now. In fact, Newman spoke a bit about his vision for the engine in a recent dev blog.
"I don't want to pay Unity $500k every year so I can then pay my own staff to optimize and fix their engine," writes Newman, quite reasonably. Facepunch's other game, super-popular survival game Rust, has been based on Unity its whole life, but Newman has already said Rust 2 would be based on a different engine.
"Unity has been good to us," he says, so it looks like bygones are bygones when it comes to those fee changes, "but I regret that we didn't always have our own engine being developed in the background… The long term goal is to be making all of our games on s&box, and to have expanded so the engine works on mobile/console/etc."
So Newman would quite like to stop paying Unity for the privilege of fixing its engine, which makes sense, but he also regrets that "the Garry's Mod community mostly have to leave Garry's Mod if they want to make money from the things they create in it."
Later on, Newman writes that "In Garry's Mod, if you made a popular game, the next step was to abandon the community and make a new version in Unity or Unreal. That fucking sucks."
That means a key element of s&box will be "A Garry's Mod type platform, where there's a list of games and you can jump between them. But this time providing a way for the game developers to monetise."
Which could, of course, open the floodgates to all kinds of dreadful shovelware. "Everything you download on iOS/Android app store turns out to require a subscription. Every Roblox game is pay to win. We need to do better than that.," says Newman, "Let people make money, but don't let it get predatory."
Which sounds easier said than done, to me, and would probably necessitate relatively strict moderation, but Newman hopes to lead by example. "For this to work we need games that get people sticking around. We're making games that will try to do that, and we'll be making an official sandbox mode too." There will also be s&box game jams to get devs' creative juices flowing.
Plus, Newman promises he isn't just trying to lure disaffected devs into his own financial bear trap. "We don't want the burden of collecting royalties or license fees. The platform and our own games should make us money. That should be our incentive." In what I can only interpret as a jab at Unity, he writes "I would also like to offer some assurance, legally, that we can't change the rules further down the line, when we get jealous about how much money everyone is making."
Which all sounds quite idyllic, so I hope Newman pulls it off. Over the last few years, it feels like the games industry has coalesced more and more around the two poles of UE5 and Unity, with other engines increasingly left out in the cold.
It'd be great if the engine that is—for all intents and purposes—Garry's Mod 2 succeeded in diversifying a bit, and treated devs better than Unity has been in the process. There's just one thing that needs to happen before Facepunch can let devs "use the s&box engine to create games, export them, give them away for free or put them on Steam," Valve has to say yes.
"We obviously need officially Valve to say yes to this, but Valve are cool, they get it, I don't think they're gonna say no. They just need to know what they're saying yes to—so our aim is to put a demo together and see what we can do." So keep an eye out for that, and if you want to try s&box out now, you can check out its developer preview on its website.
In-game economies are entirely different beasts than real-world economies for one major reason - total currency is not zero-sum. In the real world, it is (mostly) zero-sum - individuals cannot create money out of nothing, so any amount of currency I spend is transferred to someone else and the total amount of currency in the system is preserved. No individual can buy real gold bars infinitely, they'll run out of money to buy the bars eventually and the price of the gold bars will increase as the
In-game economies are entirely different beasts than real-world economies for one major reason - total currency is not zero-sum. In the real world, it is (mostly) zero-sum - individuals cannot create money out of nothing, so any amount of currency I spend is transferred to someone else and the total amount of currency in the system is preserved. No individual can buy real gold bars infinitely, they'll run out of money to buy the bars eventually and the price of the gold bars will increase as the cheaper sellers are bought out and remaining sellers raise prices. At the ultimate end, there is only so much gold on the planet, which means that even an individual with effectively-infinite money has an upper limit on the total amount of gold she can buy.
In most games, a player character can typically sell as many wombat testicles to the NPC vendor as she might have, creating new currency out of thin air for each testicle sold. There is no limit to the number of wombat testicles she can sell and there is no limit to the amount of currency the NPC can generate for her. Similarly, any currency spent on NPC vendor goods or services (e.g. training costs, equipment repair costs, resurrection costs, consumable costs, etc.) is completely removed from the system. This is called a "faucet to sink" design. The NPCs that generate currency are the "faucet" from which the money comes, and the NPCs that remove currency in exchange for goods and services are the "sink" in which the currency is removed from the system. When the faucet and the sink are generating/removing roughly the equivalent amount of currency from/to the system, the system is in balance. When the faucet outproduces the sink, more players have an ever-increasing amount of currency which is inflation - too much currency chasing too few goods. When the faucet underproduces the sink, we have deflation (which is much rarer) - too little currency chasing too many goods.
In order to reduce in-game inflation, the solution should be fairly obvious - the designers introduce new "sink" options to remove additional currency from the system. This usually takes the form of new consumables, gear options, or benefits from NPC vendors that cost a lot of currency to utilize. Since players will want these new benefits, they'll start spending more currency instead of hoarding and inflation will fall.
Any company that wants to release a premium game console basically needs to make an enormous investment that will probably not pay off for years. There are three major requirements for this process.First, the company must develop gaming hardware. This is generally an expensive process - building anything physical is costly, time-consuming, and is a moving target because competitors aren't stopping either. The hardware must be manufactured and factories equipped and set up for mass production. Se
Any company that wants to release a premium game console basically needs to make an enormous investment that will probably not pay off for years. There are three major requirements for this process.
First, the company must develop gaming hardware. This is generally an expensive process - building anything physical is costly, time-consuming, and is a moving target because competitors aren't stopping either. The hardware must be manufactured and factories equipped and set up for mass production.
Second, they must develop software development tools for both themselves and for external developers to use in order to build games for that console. This requires a significant internal development team to build drivers and software interfaces. Beyond this, they likely need to develop their own flagship game (or more) to launch with the console. That generally costs at least $50 million for a AAA-fidelity game and at least two years of lead time to build alongside the hardware development.
Third, they must secure investment from third party developers to build games for that console. Using that $50 million price tag for a game, we'd need at least four or five additional games to launch with in order to entice players to buy in - no one buys a game console without games to play on it. If they want four launch titles to go along with the console launch, that requires at least $200 million in investment from others.
There are only a handful of companies in the world that have the kind of money, technology, and resources needed to make such a thing happen and some of them already have game consoles. The others look at the market, at the cost of entry just to compete (not necessarily even to pull ahead), at the expected returns on investment, and it's no surprise they choose to invest their money in other opportunities that seem more likely to bear fruit.
Sure, I can answer both.1.) when making a game what’s the best place to start?Always start with core gameplay. What will the player actually be doing? The player must be an active participant in whatever is happening in the game. If players are just going to sit and watch passively, they aren't playing a game at all - they're watching a show. What makes something a game is the active participation of one or more players to drive progress and make choices. In order to figure out how the player pa
1.) when making a game what’s the best place to start?
Always start with core gameplay. What will the player actually be doing? The player must be an active participant in whatever is happening in the game. If players are just going to sit and watch passively, they aren't playing a game at all - they're watching a show. What makes something a game is the active participation of one or more players to drive progress and make choices. In order to figure out how the player participates, you need to think about the various things the players will be doing and how those things are fun. A good rule of thumb is to list the actions as verbs. In a game like Call of Duty, the player verbs would be running, jumping, aiming, shooting, and throwing grenades. In a game like Street Fighter, the player verbs would be punching, kicking, jumping, blocking, crouching, throwing, walking, and performing special moves. Think about the actions player will be doing in your game and how you will build that out.
2.) most have their brand/developer names, but do you need one to publish games?
You don't absolutely need to have a separate brand or name to release a game - several solo devs have gone the route of full transparency. However, having a brand name does help to establish a separation of your work from you as a human being. That kind of association is pretty much permanent because the internet never forgets. Having the game, its community, and anything you post indelibly tied to any of your other public-facing actions on the internet (including personal social media posts) can be a double-edged sword. Having an intermediary name/entity be a shield can help a lot when you need it, and going 100% public is something that can't be taken back.
The good news is that the PS5 and the XSX aren't too far away from each other in terms of hardware power and architecture. Further, developing on XSX also mostly works out of the box with DirectX, which means it is easy to also get the game running on PC. It's relatively easy to build a game out of a generic system and task our engine programmers with getting that generic system working on each of our target platforms. The difficulty in multiplatform development comes from trying to get the same
The good news is that the PS5 and the XSX aren't too far away from each other in terms of hardware power and architecture. Further, developing on XSX also mostly works out of the box with DirectX, which means it is easy to also get the game running on PC. It's relatively easy to build a game out of a generic system and task our engine programmers with getting that generic system working on each of our target platforms.
The difficulty in multiplatform development comes from trying to get the same generic system to run on drastically different hardware power profiles or architectural differences (commonly known as the Nintendo problem). If we have a game that assumes the player's hardware have at least 16GB of RAM and an 8-core 3.5GHz CPU and we suddenly have to fit that game into 4GB of RAM and a 1GHz 4-core CPU, we've got to make a lot of drastic changes in order to get the game running at all. I'm fond of saying that porting PS/Xbox games to Nintendo hardware is trying to get an entire Honda Accord to fit inside a Mini-Cooper.
The general rule when estimating the cost of making a change is how early during the process the change is made. The earlier in the process the change is made, the cheaper the cost of the change. Making a change to a movie before it's cast and shot is much easier and cheaper than making a change after the filming is complete. Making the decision for a project to go multiplatform from the jump means that the entire project will be built with maintaining multiplatform stability as a major goal. This means that further decisions will be made with that goal in mind - the team might spend those resources elsewhere instead of optimizing for certain platform-specific hardware features.
As for why Square-Enix decided to go platform exclusive with FF16 and the FF7 Remakes, it is likely that Sony offered them a seemingly-better deal. Most third party publishers get a standard deal with the platform - the platform takes a 30% cut of all of the game's revenue, the game must pass certification, the platform gets some kind of exclusive content for that version of the game, and so on. If the platform wants to get an exclusive, they offer a better deal than that - maybe Sony agrees to pay for some of the marketing of the game, maybe Sony takes a smaller cut of the revenue, maybe Sony waives the certification costs on the publisher's next five Playstation games, and so on and so forth. These concessions and incentives are certainly worth considering. Sometimes they work out well for the third party, like Insomniac's Spider-Man games. Sometimes they don't.
Updated Integration DocsTo make our onboarding process more efficient, we've updated our integration documentation here.We also created a Photoshop file for previewing how your game icon & screenshots will look on the new game cards on our platform. The link can be found here!Developer Spotlight | Rogue SwordWatch our video spotlight on Rogue Sword, creators of Dungeoneers.If you're interested in being featured in a livestream or dev spotlight video, please reach out to marketing@kongregate.
We also created a Photoshop file for previewing how your game icon & screenshots will look on the new game cards on our platform. The link can be found here!
Today marks a milestone in Kongregate’s history as we proudly unveil AI Adventure Creator - a text-based, AI-generated fantasy adventure game, set in the popular Spellstone universe.
Unlike most games where you play through a pre-generated storyline created by game designers, AI Adventure Creator uses advanced ChatGPT tools to help build new worlds, scenes, and characters for your story.Built by The Kongregate Squad - Kongregate’s group of in-house designers - the game puts control of the sto
Today marks a milestone in Kongregate’s history as we proudly unveil AI Adventure Creator - a text-based, AI-generated fantasy adventure game, set in the popular Spellstone universe.
Unlike most games where you play through a pre-generated storyline created by game designers, AI Adventure Creator uses advanced ChatGPT tools to help build new worlds, scenes, and characters for your story.
Built by The Kongregate Squad - Kongregate’s group of in-house designers - the game puts control of the story in your hands. You’ll have access to all the tools you need to create your own RPG adventure, complete with a vast archive of art and characters to help flesh out your world. Creators and players alike can use these tools to make their own stories together and share them with others.
Take your character through scenes to complete a quest… or take control of the engine to build scenarios and characters for others to interact with. Let your imagination run wild!
Who Is The Kongregate Squad? The Kongregate Squad is a group of innovators dedicated to creating agile, easy-to-learn games for our community to enjoy. The K Squad’s ongoing goal is to develop games specifically for our community, gathering direct feedback from our passionate players to make the next generation of games for Kongregate.
Spellstone Lives On! Spellstone holds a special place in Kongregate's history as one of our most popular collectible card games, paving the way for the creation of another top CCG in Kongregate’s repertoire - Animation Throwdown. With its unique art style and game mechanics, Spellstone remains one of Kongregate’s best games, both on mobile and Kongregate.com.
When we began looking to develop our first ChatGPT-based game, the immersive world of Spellstone held a rich and storied lore that felt like the perfect setting for this project. The K Squad wanted to honor that world and the work of those who have made Spellstone so uniquely special when developing this game.
Spellstone’s player base remains a thriving community on Kongregate, especially on our Official Discord. We look forward to hearing from you about this exciting new venture!
The Role of AI in Game Development AI Adventure Creator is a testament to the seamless collaboration between artificial intelligence and human developers, dispelling any notions of AI replacing the creative genius of human minds.
AI was employed to analyze player behavior, adapting and enhancing gameplay dynamics in real-time by answering prompts, building dialogue, and delivering art to populate settings between scenes.
This dynamic adaptation ensures that each player's experience is unique, engaging, and tailored to their individual preferences, creating an immersive gaming environment.
The Human Touch While AI played a significant role in automating certain aspects of content creation, it was always under the guidance and direction of our skilled developers in the Kongregate Squad. This collaboration allowed for more efficient asset generation, freeing up human resources to focus on the aspects of game design that require human creativity.
Kongregate remains committed to preserving the essence of human creativity in gaming. The personal touch, emotional depth, and nuanced storytelling that only humans can provide are evident throughout the AI Adventure, ensuring a gaming experience that resonates on a profound level.
Key Features Define your world! Create immersive and interactive fiction, built in collaboration with YOU! Answer prompts and our cutting-edge AI will fill in the details of your adventure Edit levels to create stories for other players to enjoy!
Action! Your decisions and actions will change the landscape of your character’s story. The AI produces responses from NPCs and creates quests for your character to complete.
Share these stories with other players!
Together, we will build fantastic worlds where your imagination and the collective creativity of our community will make the game even better for everyone. Your input matters, and we can't wait to see what you'll bring to AI Adventure Creator!
If you're interested in receiving developer emails, sign up for our newsletter here!
Mojo Melee is a new PvP auto-chess game created by Mystic Moose and recently published on Kongregate.com. Featuring a unique art style and fun gameplay, Mojo Melee blends real-time strategy with intelligent team tactics to create a truly immersive experience for players of all experience levels.Mojo Melee is also Kongregate’s first foray into publishing a web3 game that was not developed in-house. But with Kongregate leading the way with emergent technologies that make web3 gaming possible, Mojo
Mojo Melee is a new PvP auto-chess game created by Mystic Moose and recently published on Kongregate.com.
Featuring a unique art style and fun gameplay, Mojo Melee blends real-time strategy with intelligent team tactics to create a truly immersive experience for players of all experience levels.
Mojo Melee is also Kongregate’s first foray into publishing a web3 game that was not developed in-house. But with Kongregate leading the way with emergent technologies that make web3 gaming possible, Mojo Melee is a perfect fit for the Kongregate brand.
We sat down with Michael Levine, CEO of Mystic Moose, and Ted Newell, Director of Marketing to get some extra insight into this new and exciting project.
Crafting the Mojo Melee Experience
"The inspiration for Mojo Melee came from recognizing a distinct void in the auto-chess market," CEO Mike Levine explained. "Many existing games felt too long-winded and were generally tailored to attract hardcore gamers, which left a considerable portion of casual players feeling alienated. The aim [with Mojo Melee] was to design a game that was not only streamlined and quicker to play but also inclusive for all types of gamers."
Mojo Melee's gameplay, which features 1v1 duels and 8-person multiplayer battle modes, provides a fresh, nuanced experience that adds new dimensions to the classic auto-chess gameplay.
"Players can expect a rich, rewarding gameplay [...] that accommodates a variety of skill levels. From highly detailed character designs to customizability, the game features numerous elements to keep players engaged. They can delve into competitive ladders, unlock special achievements, and even participate in seasonal events."
Standing Out from the Crowd
What truly sets Mojo Melee apart is its focus on community and inclusivity.
“The team designed this game is designed to cater to both hardcore gamers looking for a challenge and casual players who want a quick and fun experience,” says Ted Newell, Director of Marketing.
“This commitment to balance and fairness is made possible through a data-driven approach, with constant iterations based on player feedback and behavior. Mojo Melee is more than just a game; it's a living, evolving universe.”
The Art of Mojo Melee
The captivating art style of Mojo Melee plays a crucial role in bringing the game's enchanting atmosphere to life.
"The art style was born out of a desire to craft a universe that was as visually striking as it was compelling. We wanted a style that would resonate with the mystical and whimsical nature of the game," said Levine.
This design encapsulates the magical essence of the world and sets the tone for the game's broader themes of competition, camaraderie, and environmental awareness.
From character sketches to enchanting surroundings, every detail is crafted to engage players and immerse them in the Planet Mojo universe.
Mojo Melee and Kongregate
The decision to bring Mojo Melee to Kongregate was a strategic one, as the platform aligns perfectly with the game's vision.
"Kongregate is a platform that has consistently supported innovative indie games and cultivated thriving gaming communities," said Levine. "The visibility and the dedicated user base that Kongregate offers seemed like the perfect venue to present our game to a broader audience who could appreciate our game's unique aspects."
Development Challenges and Player-Centric Approach
Developing Mojo Melee wasn't without its challenges, particularly when integrating web3 technology.
"Creating a game that runs smoothly across various platforms - particularly when integrating web3 technology - was not trivial. We wanted the web3 aspects to be as seamless as possible for new players and give them the option to participate. A lot of effort went into ensuring the web3 aspects are at the end of the funnel, treated as a reward, and do not give any competitive advantage."
The player-centric approach is at the heart of Mojo Melee's development process. Newell highlighted, "We place immense value on player feedback. We’ve employed a multi-pronged approach to gather insights, ranging from AMAs to detailed community surveys. These insights are then fed directly into our development cycles, ensuring that we’re making the improvements and additions that our players actually want to see."
A Message for Aspiring Developers and Kongregate Enthusiasts
For developers considering creating a web3 game, the developers' advice is clear:
"First understand how blockchain can genuinely add value to your gaming ecosystem rather than just using it as a marketing gimmick. We believe web3 in games is critical to empower players, but we also don’t believe it should be the headline per se. It’s a feature."
For those considering Kongregate, the platform offers an incredible resource in the form of an active, engaged community. It’s a fantastic venue for indie developers to get the visibility and user engagement they need to succeed. Web-based gaming lets players dive directly into games with few hurdles.
Community and Future Plans: A Vibrant Player Ecosystem
The Mojo Melee community is an essential part of the game's success. The developers have instituted regular AMAs, update logs, and social media campaigns to keep players informed and involved. Their Discord server is a hub of activity, featuring a shop, points system, and constant events for players.
With Mojo Melee now on Kongregate, the developers expect to seamlessly integrate the two communities, enriching the game and community with diverse perspectives and feedback.
"We're extremely excited to introduce Mojo Melee to Kongregate and can’t wait to see you dive into this unique blend of auto-chess gameplay and community features. Whether you're here to climb the competitive ladder or just to enjoy the game, we have something to offer that will meet your needs. Your participation is not just playing a game; it's being part of a community and a journey that we're all on together."
Uh-oh. The latest patch for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2—Insomniac’s PS5-exclusive open-world superhero blockbuster—added more than just a new game+ option. According to a tweet from the developer and also noticed by fans online, you can now easily access a debug menu and beat the entire game in a few quick button presses. Read more...
Uh-oh. The latest patch for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2—Insomniac’s PS5-exclusive open-world superhero blockbuster—added more than just a new game+ option. According to a tweet from the developer and also noticed by fans online, you can now easily access a debug menu and beat the entire game in a few quick button presses.
To enhance the gaming experience, studios and developers spend tremendous effort creating photorealistic, immersive in-game environments.
But non-playable characters (NPCs) often get left behind. Many behave in ways that lack depth and realism, making their interactions repetitive and forgettable.
Inworld AI is changing the game by using generative AI to drive NPC behaviors that are dynamic and responsive to player actions. The Mountain View, Calif.-based startup’s Character Engine, which can be
To enhance the gaming experience, studios and developers spend tremendous effort creating photorealistic, immersive in-game environments.
But non-playable characters (NPCs) often get left behind. Many behave in ways that lack depth and realism, making their interactions repetitive and forgettable.
Inworld AI is changing the game by using generative AI to drive NPC behaviors that are dynamic and responsive to player actions. The Mountain View, Calif.-based startup’s Character Engine, which can be used with any character design, is helping studios and developers enhance gameplay and improve player engagement.
Register for NVIDIA GTC, which takes place March 17-21, to hear how leading companies like Inworld AI are using the latest innovations in AI and graphics. And join us at Game Developers Conference (GDC) to discover how the latest generative AI and RTX technologies are accelerating game development.
Elevate Gaming Experiences: Achievement Unlocked
The Inworld team aims to develop AI-powered NPCs that can learn, adapt and build relationships with players while delivering high-quality performance and maintaining in-game immersion.
To make it easier for developers to integrate AI-based NPCs into their games, Inworld built Character Engine, which uses generative AI running on NVIDIA technology to create immersive, interactive characters. It’s built to be production-ready, scalable and optimized for real-time experiences.
The Character Engine comprises three layers: Character Brain, Contextual Mesh and Real-Time AI.
The layer also enables AI-based NPCs to learn and adapt, navigate relationships and perform motivated actions. For example, users can create triggers using the “Goals and Action” feature to program NPCs to behave in a certain way in response to a given player input.
Contextual Mesh allows developers to set parameters for content and safety mechanisms, custom knowledge and narrative controls. Game developers can use the “Relationships” feature to create emergent narratives, such that an ally can turn into an enemy or vice versa based on how players treat an NPC.
One big challenge developers face when using generative AI is keeping NPCs in-world and on-message. Inworld’s Contextual Mesh layer helps overcome this hurdle by rendering characters within the logic and fantasy of their worlds, effectively avoiding the hallucinations that commonly appear when using large language models (LLMs).
The Real-Time AI layer ensures optimal performance and scalability for real-time experiences.
Inworld used the open-source NVIDIA Triton Inference Server software to standardize other non-generative machine learning model deployments required to power Character Brain features, such as emotions. The startup also plans to use the open-source NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM library to optimize inference performance. Both NVIDIA Triton Inference Server and TensorRT-LLM are available with the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform, which provides security, stability and support for production AI.
Inworld also used NVIDIA A100 GPUs within Slurm-managed bare-metal machines for its production training pipelines. Similar machines wrapped in Kubernetes help manage character interactions during gameplay. This setup delivers real-time generative AI at the lowest possible cost.
“We chose to use NVIDIA A100 GPUs because they provided the best, most cost-efficient option for our machine learning workloads compared to other solutions,” said Igor Poletaev, vice president of AI at Inworld.
“Our customers and partners are looking to find novel and innovative ways to drive player engagement metrics by integrating AI NPC functionalities into their gameplay,” said Poletaev. “There’s no way to achieve real-time performance without hardware accelerators, which is why we required GPUs to be integrated into our backend architecture from the very beginning.”
Inworld’s generative AI-powered NPCs have enabled dynamic, evergreen gaming experiences that keep players coming back. Developers and gamers alike have reported enhanced player engagement, satisfaction and retention.
Inworld has powered AI-based NPC experiences from Niantic, LG UPlus, Alpine Electronics and more. One open-world virtual reality game using the Inworld Character Engine saw a 5% increase in playtime, while a detective-themed indie game garnered over $300,000 in free publicity after some of the most popular Twitch streamers discovered it.
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