Cooking Up A Blockbuster Game
Forbes: What if, like Dr. Frankenstein, you could stitch together the best bits of your favorite games to create a guaranteed hit? What if you knew adding a few key components to a title would boost its sales exponentially or extend its shelf life? What if there was a recipe for designing a perfect game?
Those were the answers I sought when I asked Electronic Entertainment Design and Research to run an algorithmic regression on a mock game called "FutureNot" that I whipped up. But such a recipe does not exist, says EEDAR President Geoffrey Zatkin. Games can’t be assembled like a Mr. Potato Head doll–swapping out eyes and ears until you find the most agreeable feature set. But if you look at the whole game, it is possible to project sales and determine whether it is worth including specific ingredients.
