The first day is about getting to know the game and gathering material for Marie’s analysis.

MORNING

  BRIEFING:   Marie meets the team and gets up to speed on the project

AFTERNOON

  PLAYTEST:   Marie plays the game repeatedly with the team and takes notes. She also records the dynamic sessions that occur for later analysis and demonstration

The second day is filled with Marie’s own analysis and recommendations on how the game’s design could be sharpened to make it esports-ready.

MORNING

  ANALYSIS:   Marie keeps working with her analysis, reviewing recorded footage and plays the game a few more time with people or bots to try out specific scenarios

AFTERNOON

  PRESENTATION:   Marie presents her analysis

  DISCUSSION:   Marie and the team discusses the conclusions in her analysis, align on the biggest takeaways and which design areas to focus on most. This might cause re-priorities for the rest of the week

The third day looks at gameplay depth, skill and learning curve.

MORNING

  TALK:   Gameplay challenges, that teaches the core building blocks of competitive games, divided by mechanics, tactics, coordination and compounded challenges. It also goes into how these are layered to achieve gameplay depth

  WORKSHOP:   The team maps up the gameplay challenges in their games. The team and Marie analyze the balance of single player versus team challenges, assess the gameplay depth level in both and discuss where improvements are needed to achieve “hard to master”

AFTERNOON

  TALK:   The Path to Pro, that introduces the ‘esports pyramid’ ecosystem and teaches how to segment players by game familiarity, skill and ambition level

  WORKSHOP:   The team classifies their players is different segments from beginner to pro and together with Marie analyze if each has the information and tools it needs to progress to the next segment over time (if it has the ambition to). The goal is to ensure ‘easy to learn’ is always true and ‘hard to master’ is reasonably attainable to ensure the ecosystem has an healthy flow

  ALTERNATIVE WORKSHOP:   If the game does not have players yet, a more relevant workshop will be Player goals & incentives‘. This workshop looks at both intrinsic and extrinsic player motivation for each skill- and grind- and socially oriented players, and ensure every persona has a player journey with goals that appeal to them and incentives to keep playing

The fourth day is spent looking at and strengthening teamplay and tactics.

MORNING

  WORKSHOP:   Dynamics and tactics, that looks at different dynamic elements that happen or may happen in matches, and how players can leverage or form tactics around it. Ensures that there is more than one way to play a match and opportunity for tactical masterminds to overcome their opponents

AFTERNOON

  WORKSHOP:   Looking at the result of Marie’s analysis, the team discusses the improvement needs in teamplay. The workshop will look at communication and coordination tools, player incentives to coordinate in the first place and ability to follow what’s happening in the game (information that helps align on tactical decisions)

On the last day, the team looks at how they can build, foster and retain a thriving community of players, and build the interest and engagement needed to really turn the game into an esports title.

MORNING

  TALK:   Fostering a good gamer culture

  WORKSHOP:   The team sits down to discuss the cultural shortcomings identified in Marie’s analysis. They evaluate her suggestions and the practices in her talk, along with adding their own gamer experiences and preferences. For each improvement chosen, they estimate need, value & cost and work out a suggested roadmap

AFTERNOON

  TALK:   Viewability & Engagement where best practices and best-in-class examples are demonstrated in terms of engaging an audience, have them understand and follow a match as it unfolds and get excited

  WORKSHOP:   The team discusses what their ambition level are for viewability at different milestones of their development- and release cycle. They then start sketching out a feature roadmap and uses any remaining time to flesh out more details

  ALTERNATIVE TALK:   Matchmaking Learnings where Marie shares her learnings designing, balancing and evolving matchmaking systems from previous projects