![]() The key question was how to keep a game alive (and making money) once it falls out of a portal’s Top 10 list. Multiplayer isn’t common in casual games because, as fellow panellist PlayFirst CTO Brad Edelman put it, “it makes things more complicated.” PlayFirst’s first experience with online multiplayer came in a joint project with Hasbro called Connect Four Cities, which was like “playing checkers on the side of a building.” The designers assumed that players would enjoy playing against other real people rather than just the computer, so they added a feature for two human players to challenge each other. Edelman called it a learning experience, but one that “didn’t discourage us from believing in multiplayer and social gameplay.” They built it, but the players didn’t come. One of the keys to making multiplayer work in Hometown Hero was authenticity. Two players compete for the high-score in competitive multiplayer mode “You can’t just shove new models into this property that everyone loves,” cautioned Dinkin. The team brainstormed ways of adapting the Diner Dash click management model for two players. One early idea was putting the second player in the kitchen, so that one cooks and the other serves the food. Dinkin then realized that teamwork was present among waiters in a restaurant already for example, if someone had to clean up a spilled drink, the other person would have to cover their tables. This also created competition, because the person who covered the tables would also get the tips. They settled on a competitive mode where two waiters compete to serve the same customers and achieve the highest score. Conventional wisdom told them that women ( Diner Dash‘s primary audience) hated competitive play, so a collaborative mode was also added with a single score that both players contribute to. #Diner dash hometown hero full version#Īs it turns out, the competitive mode seemed more fun and was slightly better received by audiences. ![]()
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