“It’s a really tough balance to strike. The difference between having a healthy development cycle and making sure you are not overworking your team and that they are not exhausted. But then again this is like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and you hope to draw energy from it.” – Joe Walsh
Joe Walsh is the Lead game designer at Mediatonic and helped introduced the world to Fall Guys. Since it’s debut, Fall Guys has broken many records. In this interview we do a deep dive behind the studios early prototype and learn about the meteoric rise of the biggest game of 2020.
Topics discussed in this episode:
0:00 About Joe Walsh
1:11 Insight of when Fall Guys started to become a hit
2:59 Early expectations versus reality
6:25 How much was streamibility factored into the game design?
11:16 From a team to two and growing to a team of 60+
15:03 Changing of reponsibilities from designing to managing large teams
17:29 Balancing design coming from internal team and catering to fans
22:05 Maintaining momentum after a game is a hit
29:57 How timing was measured and perfect with Fall Guy’s release
33:07 How Fall Guy’s design can carry forward to other IPs
34:29 Roadmap for future updates
37:00 Multiplayer for Small Teams are challenging
40:17 Problems of networking issues on a fast-growing game
45:44 How did remote working affect brainstorming game design sessions?
48:35 Post Production and the problems of dev kits
51:29 What does is dev life looking like after the pandemic
58:00 Shout out
This episode is brought to you by AppFigures!
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