Game Designer Involvement Powers Team Fortress 2 Success

Robin Walker, who is the lead designer working on Team Fortress 2 for Valve has revealed how change sits as the core of the team-based multiplayer shooter and how his team has made sure that players embraced all new content it has launched.

Speaking to Gamasutra, the developer argues, “After each major update, our team gets together and sketches out a general framework for the next update. The team spends some time discussing what combination of these various goals makes sense for the next update, and then we try to find a customer facing wrapper around it.”

A “wrapper” is a main idea around which all the content can be organized and which makes it easier for the player to understand the new additions.

Another reason for the continuing success of Team Fortress 2 is the fact that game designers are actually creating the marketing for the game.

He further says, “We think that marketing is a game design problem, and that means we need to ensure each update is easy to market. So once we’ve know what an update’s public face is, we start trying to sketch out how the release will work.”

After a new batch of content is launched, the Valve team then keeps close tabs on the feedback that the player base offers, reading conversations on the official forums and taking support calls in addition to gathering data from how they actually play Team Fortress 2.

Valve has made the multiplayer game a testing bed for ideas that have since then been adopted in other games it has created.

Team Fortress 2 is now free-to-play and anyone can jump right into the game and experience its unique gameplay.

Valve is making money from Team Fortress 2 by selling players a number of cosmetic enhancements that have been a hit with the dedicated community of players.