Level Up: Join Our Game Expansions Workshops!

[BreakfastCandy]

Hi developers!

Last week, we posted our first ever Level Up Roundtable featuring RedManta and now we’re back with a Level Up workshop that’s all about game expansion! Our workshop-style events share game design best-practice through insightful presentations, handy documents, and Q&A sessions.

This is the first of many workshops that will delve into the technical details of different game design topics. Make sure you subscribe to our new YouTube channel because we’ll be hosting even more workshops that cover other aspects of game development.

Follow this thread and follow us on YouTube to get notified when we share another workshop!

Level Up Workshop: Game Expansions

In this four-part Level Up workshop series, Roblox Game Insights game designer Dan Spaventa introduces the topic of game expansions, the addition of new systems that enhance gameplay and reinvigorate player engagement. The presentation includes practical tips for integrating expansions into your game’s core loop, as well as creating renewable content that promotes sustainability during live operations.

Watch the Workshop (Part 1)

Download the presentation:
Game Expansions Level Up Part 1.pdf (7.1 MB)

Level Up Workshop: Production

This entry in our multi-part series of workshops is all about production. Game designer, Dan Spaventa, walks step-by-step through the expansion development process - from brainstorming ideas to supporting a live feature.

Watch the Production Workshop (Part 2)

Download the presentation:
Production Part 1.pdf (5.7 MB)
Production Part 2.pdf (7.3 MB)

Level Up Workshop: Balancing Expansions

In part three of the Game Expansions Workshop, Dan discusses the importance of balancing your expansion features to ensure that you and your players get the most out of them. Topics include: setting goals, gathering feedback, and striking a balance between analytics and intuition.

Watch the Balancing Expansions Workshop (Part 3)

Download the presentation:
Balance Level Up Part 3.pdf (3.5 MB)

Level Up Workshop: Feature Support

Our fourth and final Game Expansions Workshop focuses on supporting an expansion feature once it is live in your game. Dan provides techniques for gathering and prioritizing feedback, then creating a roadmap for future updates that enhance your expansion.

Watch the Feature Support Workshop (Part 4)

Download the presentation:
Feature Support Level Up Part 4.pdf (3.2 MB)

That’s it for our Game Expansions workshops! We hope you enjoyed them. We’ll see you in our next series of Level Up events :)

[JuanGamerPlayz_RBLX (Juan)]

Can’t wait to see the episode 2 coming soon!

[DiscombobulatedJack]

This is great! Having the ability to access these workshops on demand is extremely cool, even looking at these in-depth and visually will be very useful to developers in terms of understanding how certain systems and ideas work when it comes to game expansions.

It’s time for me and many others to level up!!.. after I get some sleep of course.
because well, bri’ish

[Reditect]

I know it would be good to have bi-weekly updates.
( As weekly ones would be too much work. Especially if you have school or another job. )

When should I and others add in a “major update”?
Should I stop the bi-weekly updates for one month to focus on a big update and then release it at the end of the month? Or is there a better option?

[Reditect]

( Around 17:37 on the video. )
Another thing you could do for the “fight club situation” is give it limits.

Maybe attending class at least once per week will allow you to go to the fight club. Or maybe only being able to go to the fight club on weekends.

Would adding limits to an update be a good idea? ( whether a time based thing, or a “do this”, then get to the update. )

[omgcchheeessee (West)]

This will definetly come in handy to me. I sometimes have trouble coming up with ideas with good gameplay loops!

[Dspav]

Hi Reditect! It really does depend on what your team is capable of in terms of team size and bandwidth as you had mentioned. I would recommend that if there is a big idea you want to add to your game and given the scope/demand that it requires full team focus that you go for it!

Keep in mind however that not everything needs to go into this one major update. Instead you could sit down with your team and identify what are the most essential features that need to go into this update. Once you stand that feature up, over time you can slowly iterate and improve upon the experience. We call this an MVP, minimum viable product, where you develop the core experience for a single release and then build upon it in future updates. In this way you can get an idea out to your audience much sooner with the added benefit of being able to iterate based on player feedback vs. spending months on a single feature only to be potentially met with poor reception.

In another part of this workshop I will be covering MVPs and some of the other planning techniques you can use to efficiently develop your big ideas. That video will be up in the coming weeks!

[Azorpine606 (azor)]

Great to see more of these- Can’t wait for Episode 2! Thank you again Red Manta and all those helping with this! Having these workshops will be a major help to learning developers and is amazing. Game design is a very important aspect and this covers it well.

Good luck to everyone using these! And great job Red Manta!

[BullfrogBait]

This is a really valuable resource and will definitely lead to developers making more successful games.

I wish there were more examples for game expansion ideas.

[BreakfastCandy]

Hello again! Our Level Up Workshop on Production just went up on our YouTube channel. Give it a watch here and let us know if you learn anything interesting!

I’ll be back to share Part 3 next week