{"id":1040709,"date":"2026-01-17T02:33:29","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=482369"},"modified":"2026-01-17T02:33:29","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:33:29","slug":"how-do-you-know-when-your-game-is-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/how-do-you-know-when-your-game-is-good\/","title":{"rendered":"How do you know when your game is good?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Push to Talk is a weekly newsletter about the business of making and marketing video games, written by games industry veteran and marketing director Ryan Rigney. Subscribe here<\/a> for eclectic and spicy interviews and essays in your inbox every Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Back in 2009, it was far from obvious that League of Legends <\/em>had the potential to become one of the world\u2019s most popular games.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this story the OGs from the League of Legends<\/em> dev team used to tell about the first moment they realized their game was good.<\/p>\n

This was probably 2008 or early 2009\u2014before the game\u2019s open beta. LoL<\/em> has never been a particularly welcoming game, but in those early days, even the dev team had to be forced to join mandatory daily playtests. Initially, there was a lot of grumbling about it.<\/p>\n

But at some point in the process, something changed. People started playing the game not because they had<\/em> to, but because they were having fun.<\/p>\n

Suddenly people began playing even after regular playtest hours had ended. They were shouting more, laughing more, and staying late to play just one more game<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Moments like these are rare in game development. Because of how specialized and zoomed in each dev\u2019s role is, you often work for years before you have any sense of whether all of a game\u2019s parts are going to fit together.<\/p>\n

But there are signposts along the way, little magic moments when you start to think that the thing you\u2019ve been toiling over might actually be good.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve started to wonder: What do those moments look like for other developers?<\/p>\n

This week I reached out to some devs who were there for the critical magic hours during the creation of games like Apex Legends<\/em>, Caravan SandWitch<\/em>, and Age of Empires<\/em>. I asked them: How do you know when your game is good?<\/em><\/p>\n

Their answers below.<\/p>\n

Apex Legends<\/em><\/strong> \u2014 It\u2019s All About the Feel<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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By the time Chad Grenier and the rest of the team at Respawn Entertainment began work on Apex Legends, <\/em>Grenier had already spent over a decade shipping some of the most critically-acclaimed shooters ever made, including not just Titanfall <\/em>and Titanfall 2<\/em>, but the Infinity Ward-led Call of Duty <\/em>games too.\u00b9<\/p>\n

This was a team that knew very well how to make a fun first-person shooter. So Grenier \u2014 whose FPS credentials<\/a> stretch all the way back to the original CoD <\/em>and who later became Game Director on Apex<\/em> before founding his own studio<\/a>\u2014says the challenge was to make the game fun even when it was played in suboptimal conditions:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe game was often fun because you were partying up with your work friends, chatting, and knowing who you’re playing against,\u201d Grenier told me in an email. But \u201cit didn’t simulate a real online environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

To force the team into a more creative mindset, Respawn employees embraced limitations. \u201cWe forced the team to playtest without parties, voice chat, and randomized gamertags,\u201d Grenier says. That experience was in part what inspired the team to develop Apex\u2019s<\/em> acclaimed ping system for communication between un-mic\u2019ed players.<\/p>\n

Grenier says the Apex Legends<\/em> team also heavily prioritized improving the \u201cgame feel,\u201d which he describes as \u201cthe connection from the player to the game, via whatever control input device you’re using.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spend a lot of time just moving around, strafing, snapping in and out of ADS, shooting dummy targets in a test map over and over again to smooth out the experience,\u201d Grenier says, before listing a litany of examples he looks for when testing for game feel:<\/p>\n