My favorite novel. I think I’ve read it more than any other book. Enjoy!

You think that’s bad? You should hear the way some product managers talk about their player base in F2P games… 😬

The story told around WDI is that Walt coined the term because his dogs would follow him around the house if he showed them a hotdog. The “dumb hungry dogs” bit is news to me. Not saying it didn’t happen, but also never heard it put that way while I was at Disney.

At Walt Disney Imagineering, the equivalent was what John Hench had dubbed “the weenie” — using a landmark and environmental storytelling to lead the guests towards the main attraction.

Any chance we’ll ever see a vinyl repress of Year Zero…?

It doesn’t seem that bad, actually. More than 10% of players are getting to the end of the game (or what I assume is the end — I’ve not played it.) When I worked at Disney and Universal, I got to regularly see retention data and that looks like a pretty common drop off.

Thanks, I hope you get a chance to play it soon! We just launched our pre-alpha test two days ago.

Writing a GDD is having the hard conversation, even if it’s with yourself. As soon as you need to explain a system, loop, mechanic, etc. to another person (even if that other “person” is just your design journal) you discover things — edge cases, exploits, contradictions, etc.