April 13th Town Hall Notes
Did you miss the Blockstars Town Hall on April 13th, 2023? The Blockstars studio shared updates on the game’s progress and transition into mobile. This blog covers everything that was shared if you missed it!
Art Development Updates
The Blockstars creative team is diligently creating art assets for the first region of the upcoming mobile game. Tentatively named “Laurel Meadows”, it will feature upgradable locations, and several buildings for you to explore with your new Blockstars. From concept to completion, each item in the “art pipeline” is meticulously examined and improved upon, undergoing several reviews and iterations to get the look and feel just right. The team is already 80% complete with the region assets and will continue to release sneak peeks on our Discord.
Updates on Engineering and Product Development
The Blockstars engineering team has made significant progress in developing the mobile game. We have created the first playable slice, which is currently live in an internal build. However, it is not yet available to the public.
As the game is still in its early stages, the product team is focused on fine-tuning the balance to ensure that it’s intuitive and provides enough feedback to players. The team has also been making necessary changes and tweaks to support the new sets of Blockstars that will be available on mobile.
Developing Blockstars on the Unity platform allows our engineering team to work faster and be considerably more efficient. This has led to significant progress in both building the game and improving the features and mechanics for mobile platforms. By using the Unity game engine, the team set upmany of the core game mechanics in just two weeks, whereas the development for the same feature, when on blockchain, took months to complete.
Designing a Long-Term, Free-to-Play Game
The Blockstars mobile game is intended to be a long-lasting, free-to-play game that allows players to own various buildings and locations. The development team is planning features that give Managers lasting functionality and utility.
The game is designed to be enjoyable for both short and long gaming sessions, with many rewards for players. The team is enthusiastic about creating an immersive 3D world and is excited to see how players respond to it.
A Collaborative Development and Feedback Process
Collaboration is an essential ingredient for success in any game development project. At Blockstars, we embrace it. The team’s willingness to work together and accept feedback from all members is critical. Feedback is an opportunity to improve and refine the project. We understand that the first attempt may not always be the best one and that it takes time and effort to iterate and assess feedback until we reach the best possible outcome.
Creating a game is a complex and intensive process that requires careful planning, from conceptualizing “napkin drawings” to iterating and incorporating feedback repeatedly. It’s essential to appreciate that game design isn’t as simple as it may appear on the surface, and game art can be more intricate than it seems. The development process benefits greatly from valuing feedback as an integral part, which can ultimately lead to creating an exceptional game.
Throughout our different development cycles, we have not only acted on the suggestions from within the confines of our team, we have also counted on the feedback of our community. There are several features that were part of the web game that are being ported over to the mobile version that came about from the suggestions of our community. In actuality, the early development of the mobile game itself was at the urging of our community members.
Re-visioning the Community:
Blockstars is currently undergoing a re-visioning of its community to include a mobile audience, and the first step is to make it easy for people to join.
To ensure that new gamers are not overwhelmed by the various chat rooms, the team plans to gate them based on ownership. For example, a sales bot room will only be visible to those who own an actual Blockstars token. The team will also add more chat rooms as needed, but they will only be discoverable to those who need that information. We hope that this new community structure will serve all players well.
A prototype of the reworked community will be shown to Blockstars Origin and Foundation owners, and the team will review all feedback, iterate on it, and then make the changes in the coming week.
Join our Town Hall
Our next Town Hall will take place on April 26th, 2023. Connect with us to get reminders!
