Of course, mistakes were made along the way. With the livestream, Vlambeer made Nuclear Throne’s development entirely open to the public and made players feel like active participants in the game’s creation. Players could tune in and see why Vlambeer was changing the game and how Nuclear Throne improved as a result. Whether it was Paul Veer’s pixel animations, Jukio Kallio’s musical compositions, Jan Willem Nijman’s game design tweaks, or Joonas Turner’s sound effects, Nuclear Throne’s team built the game from scratch in front of thousands of viewers at a time, often joking and chatting about the design philosophy behind every edit. There was always a plethora of development tasks to address during the livestreams. Vlambeer would show fans how Nuclear Throne was being made each week, twice a week, until the game’s official release. When the Nuclear Throne development team originally unveiled the game’s Early Access launch, they also announced the beginning of live development streams every Tuesday and Thursday on the official Vlambeer Twitch page. That attitude went well beyond chats with players on Steam. More importantly, he made the Nuclear Throne team feel like an approachable group of people that players could reach out to if they had a problem. Ismail’s regular presence established a direct line of communication with the game’s players, keeping them in the loop with weekly updates. He would chat about Nuclear Throne on Twitter and the Steam community forums, informing fans about bug fixes and gauging players’ thoughts about content updates and changes. As a Steam Early Access title, the game came out with a set of standard community features: an announcement section, a storefront page, a community hub, and a discussion forum for players to chat about the game’s overall progress.Įarly Access developers are expected to check out their game’s discussion forums and respond to players, but Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail would take feedback one step further. Nuclear Throne entered Early Access on October 11th, 2013, over half a year after the game’s original release as Wasteland Kings following Mojang’s MOJAM 2013 game jam. In return, Vlambeer’s players not only saw how Nuclear Throne was made, but were also given the opportunity to impact the game’s development in real time. When Vlambeer decided to make Nuclear Throne’s development cycle an open process, the team pioneered a new way to take direct input from fans, seeking feedback on the various tweaks, balances, and feature updates planned for the game’s release. The key here is to not just openly discuss a game, but to maintain full transparency between the player and the game’s developers during its creation. According to the team’s GDC 2014 talk “Performative Game Development: The Design and Marketing of Nuclear Throne,” performative game development is a “fully transparent development process in which players can play, follow & discuss game” in active development. That’s the foundation behind Vlambeer’s “performative game development” initiative. But in the right hands, Steam Early Access can be an incredible opportunity for transparency and open game development between a developer and its players. Games like DayZ, Space Engineers, and H1Z1 have been sitting in Early Access for years, with fans complaining that updates have been slow and unsatisfying. Steam Early Access tends to get a bad rap, and in a way it’s understandable. Indeed, Early Access paid off for Nuclear Throne’s version 1.0 release – by the time the game was ready to launch, the title had already earned a sprawling online fan base that ranged from Reddit to YouTube, tumblr to Twitter, and everywhere in-between. The game had been in active development for a little over two years, with regular updates hosted on the game’s Steam Early Access page. Last December, video game developer Vlambeer officially released its roguelike-like Nuclear Throne on Steam and PlayStation Network.
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