I have written a blogpost about how often we think is ideal for patching a game that is continuously being added to (as we do with Awesomenauts). I am curious what your experiences are with this. Have you worked on a game that got continuous patches and additions after launch? How often did you patch, and why?

We have found that patching too often is a bad idea, because it makes the patches really small, which in turn makes it difficult to market them and build hype for the new content. So we now try to do a new patch once every 6 weeks, which gives us time to slowly reveal its features, do a proper semi-public beta and have a lot of content in each patch.

Here is my blogpost, explaining our reasoning further and how we do marketing for individual patches:

Why patching too often is a bad idea / The magic of the Vault

What are your experiences with patch frequency?

Weekly, I think. Much more delay than that, and people start losing interest. People have short attention spans.

Runescape has had great success with weekly updates. For really major updates that you want to hype, you can start promoting a few weeks ahead, but only if it's something really exciting.

Depends on the game, and especially depends on the nature of the patch.

In the past when patching wasn't an option developers needed to invest in QA to ensure everything was covered. The game was done, filed away, and archived off of developer's machines three months before it was in player's hands.

Sadly these days too many companies send an incomplete game to manufacturing, then have a patch ready a few days before launch that implements all the features they knew were missing but convinced Sony/Microsoft to let them ship with, followed by a day 1 patch for the stupidly obvious bugs they didn't catch, a day 3 patch, a day 7 patch, followed by weekly patches for months. So many of these the product launch is a death march where product designers and producers made ludicrous decisions because they had the option to patch it later, ignoring things like QoL or scoping. Why properly scope the project, they might think, when we can keep even the most expensive and seldom used features, not bother with detailed tuning, and still make a six months release date; we'll just use a two year budget and a year of patches and make the six month launch date. The first launch is basically just a vertical slice demo of the game with the game turning into the real game after a year or so, but only if enough people buy the early bug-riddled incomplete version.

I absolutely hate the idea of regular patches for bugs, or regular patches for balancing, or regular patches for other defects caused by rushing a game out early. Usually it means product failures, which means bad customer experience, which means crappy game. Usually also those are indicative of failures starting at management and problems that go all the way down through the org chart. Wiser programmers flee when they see it coming. Too many studios these days are run by industry-inbred incompetence where they saw the bad habits at other studios and picked those rather than picking up the good habits of better software engineering methods. As an example, recently on Reddit there was an argument about a midsize MMO design, they had several hundred thousand MAU but they had zero unit tests in their server and back-end code, they were rewriting their (mostly untested) billing code on the fly and touting themselves as high quality because they followed a continuous delivery system, even though they had zero automated tests and none of the major protections in place used by smarter, more mature developers. Yes, they managed to deliver a game, but their software architecture was from the dark ages.

On the other hand, regular updates of additional content, adding 10 more levels, adding expansion packs, adding DLC, those I like to see fairly regularly when they make sense for a game. As long as the game is still popular then additions and expansions to keep it fresh are wonderful. I've been on long-tail projects with new DLC content released weekly for multiple years. If players are still engaged and want new building blocks for their toy and are willing to keep it commercially viable, let them.

Hi Oogst.

I played Awesomenauts a few... years back I believe. From what I can remember, it was a good game!

Now to answer your question, I believe it depends on the game, but generally speaking, quicker cadence is more desirable.

I believe the challenge comes from meeting, or rather, adjusting the expectations of your playerbase.

I've been involved in a variety of games with a weekly cadence, and this is where I've seen optimal results. Other games I've worked on that had a monthly cadence tend to miss going their full potential (oftentimes coming up with disappointing results in terms of player retention).

If you'd like you can take a look at Space Engineers. This is a great game, and they've been amazing a lot of success with their current weekly cadence.

As for your specific situation, is there any way you can increase cadence and content? (can you make a few hires or reallocate resources?)

I see that you're currently transmuting your problem into something else: since we can't have the cadence we'd like to have, why not make this incremental releases that we can market. The problem is that you're using this for user acquisition instead, which is an entirely different goal.

Are your issues with shorter cadence with retention or acquisition? (or monetization perhaps?)

Edit: On a last note, I would avoid using the term 'patch'. To more people this suggests you are fixing bugs, which also infers you develop bugs. What you really want to put forwards is the fact you're actively working in the game, and are releasing new content. 'Content Push', 'Release', etc. are all better terms to refer to what you're doing. This may not appear like much, but imagine that a player comes across a post about your game (it's the only thing he's ever seen) and he sees 'Patch'. He's likely to thing: here's another incomplete Beta filled with bugs, I'll give this a pass. My 2 cents :)

Edit: On a last note, I would avoid using the term 'patch'. To more people this suggests you are fixing bugs, which also infers you develop bugs. What you really want to put forwards is the fact you're actively working in the game, and are releasing new content. 'Content Push', 'Release', etc. are all better terms to refer to what you're doing. This may not appear like much, but imagine that a player comes across a post about your game (it's the only thing he's ever seen) and he sees 'Patch'. He's likely to thing: here's another incomplete Beta filled with bugs, I'll give this a pass. My 2 cents :)

Great point Orymus3, I'd never thought of that. Personally I don't have any negative feelings about "patch", but I can see how some people would correlate them to bug fixes for a buggy game that was pushed far too early.

Maybe call it "Free DLC"? Since DLC is good, and free is even better. Although we tend to think of DLC as optional, while a content push like this might be necessary for the game itself, particularly to continue to work with other clients if you're talking any form of online or co-op play (I'd just worried some people wouldn't understand what is meant by content push).

Release is fairly mainstream however.
Plus you can easily come up with means to make it enticing: "So what does the Holiday special release contain?"

Maybe call it "Free DLC"? Since DLC is good, and free is even better. Although we tend to think of DLC as optional, while a content push like this might be necessary for the game itself, particularly to continue to work with other clients if you're talking any form of online or co-op play (I'd just worried some people wouldn't understand what is meant by content push).

Update, or Themed Update. Expansion or Expansion Pack. Anything but "patch".

You may not have connotations of 'patch' == bugs, but I know I do. When I read "patch", I think about zero-day patches and emergency bug fixes applied at launch. I think of installing recent patches on all the servers for a stupid bash bug.

When I see "Patch 37" I think "Wow, they've needed 37 attempts to make their game run. Sucks to be their customers."

However, if I see "Halloween Update" I think "Cool new costumes!"

If the update is required, make it about the new content: ("You need to install the latest updates to connect to the servers. %s", theme_message) with an update-specific value of perhaps "Try the new witch and warlock costumes" or "Gifts for everybody" or "Get lucky with the new shamrock bowtie" or "Now with 50% more napalm" or whatever fits the update.

I absolutely hate the idea of ... regular patches for balancing

I agree that bugfix patches suck, but balancing is something that partially needs to be done on a live game. With a game as complex as Awesomenauts (which is a MOBA, one of the most complex types of games to balance) it is impossible to find ALL possibly overpowered strategies beforehand. There are just too many possible strategies. Planning to get it perfect at launch is very naive for a game as complex as that.

And even if you do get the perfect balance before launch, it is still not good enough: over time an active multiplayer community will evolve a meta where they all start doing the same tactics. Even if those tactics are not actually overpowered, just thinking they are overpowered makes them all do the same thing. This makes the game boring, since so many matches end up being the same thing. Even perfect balance cannot fix this, the only solution is to regularly patch to rebalance and change which tactics are effective.

I see that you're currently transmuting your problem into something else: since we can't have the cadence we'd like to have, why not make this incremental releases that we can market. The problem is that you're using this for user acquisition instead, which is an entirely different goal.

Not at all! We chose the new patch frequency not because of production issues, but because we think it is better for the game and community. In the first year of Awesomenauts we did patches much more quickly after each other, but each patch was smaller. We stopped doing that because we think doing bigger patches less frequently has more impact, and our experience so far agrees with this.

On a last note, I would avoid using the term 'patch'. To more people this suggests you are fixing bugs, which also infers you develop bugs. What you really want to put forwards is the fact you're actively working in the game, and are releasing new content. 'Content Push', 'Release', etc. are all better terms to refer to what you're doing.

Interesting point, I had never looked at it like that! Definitely something to consider!

And even if you do get the perfect balance before launch, it is still not good enough: over time an active multiplayer community will evolve a meta where they all start doing the same tactics. Even if those tactics are not actually overpowered, just thinking they are overpowered makes them all do the same thing. This makes the game boring, since so many matches end up being the same thing. Even perfect balance cannot fix this, the only solution is to regularly patch to rebalance and change which tactics are effective.

Google: Perfect imbalance in game design

You are right. If everything is perfectly balanced the game does become boring. Exactly equal gets boring fast.

You want it intentionally imbalanced, but perfectly imbalanced. A usually defeats B, B usually defeats C, C usually defeats D, D usually defeats A, applied on multiple dimensions of the characters. Players can only choose a subset of the features to be active, so in every case there exist counters to all the different strengths but those counters may or may not be in place, based on other decisions by the players.

There are so many great examples of this. In card games Magic is one. Every year they launch hundreds of cards in the core set, but a deck is usually based around only five or six key cards. With a few very rare exceptions, every good combination can be countered by multiple other combinations, but not by all combinations. I might be able to build a smashdown deck, but it can be easily overcome by control and evasion. I might be able to build an evasion deck, but it loses to a control deck or removal. I might be able to follow a removal theme, but struggle against a simple weenie-rush or against evasion. Each set usually includes five major themes and ten lesser themes, but limitations to deck size constrain your actions. Thus players need to constantly adjust their imbalance, and it is impossible for the system to reach equilibrium since when one strategy becomes popular there are multiple alternate strategies that can defeat it. In the rare event of an extremely overpowered card, yes, they need to make an adjustment, but it is usually to just one card out of the hundreds in the pool.

Several of the Smash Bros games also found an excellent level of imbalance. Dozens of characters to choose from, each with strengths and weaknesses that partially counter each other, placed in environments that often favor differing strategies on the combination of players. Skilled players can pick random characters and boards and still have exciting matches.

Lots of other examples of perfect imbalance in games, two is enough for this post. :-)

Update, or Themed Update. Expansion or Expansion Pack. Anything but "patch"....

When I see "Patch 37" I think "Wow, they've needed 37 attempts to make their game run. Sucks to be their customers."

However, if I see "Halloween Update" I think "Cool new costumes!"

If the update is required, make it about the new content: ("You need to install the latest updates to connect to the servers. %s", theme_message) with an update-specific value of perhaps "Try the new witch and warlock costumes" or "Gifts for everybody" or "Get lucky with the new shamrock bowtie" or "Now with 50% more napalm" or whatever fits the update.

Update! That's the ticket :)

I love the idea of themed updates. That would be exciting.

I'm sure it's easy to add a few new clothes and items to every update (depending on your game), even if the primary secret purpose is to fix an exploit or something. I hope that wouldn't be seen as deceptive.

Sounds like a good solution to the naming problem.

Google: Perfect imbalance in game design

You are right. If everything is perfectly balanced the game does become boring. Exactly equal gets boring fast.

You want it intentionally imbalanced, but perfectly imbalanced. A usually defeats B, B usually defeats C, C usually defeats D, D usually defeats A, applied on multiple dimensions of the characters. Players can only choose a subset of the features to be active, so in every case there exist counters to all the different strengths but those counters may or may not be in place, based on other decisions by the players.

+1 I second this.

It's much easier to design a game when characters are fundamentally different in some way and rely on those unique abilities or specializations, and get strong enough advantages or disadvantages against others to make them meaningful.

If one is "more powerful" in an absolute sense, that makes more people choose that one... but then the one that beats that one becomes more popular too, because of the higher popularity of that first one (more victims!), and so on. All characters remain relevant, because their true value is partially predicated on the rarity of their selection.

It's self-balancing.