Practical Game Design

Validation funnel in-game development

Let us delve into a slightly less traditional and more experimental approach to game production. While most game studios avoid talking publicly about unreleased and failed game projects, companies such as Supercell and Wooga often talk about the huge amount of games they have killed (canceled) at various stages of their life cycle. Some projects get canceled as late as during a soft launch that is, a test release in one of the smaller market such as Canada, Australia, Philippines, or the Netherlands.

Isn't canceling 9 out of 10 games hugely wasteful? And why would a nearly finished game ever get shelved?

Companies that adopt this model often operate in the mobile market, where the costs of marketing and ...