The last week has been big for us!

• We announced the company.
• We got some press pickup from VentureBeat, Game Developer, and GamesIndustry.biz.
• We launched our first experiment, Homestretch Bet (play here), and we've already shipped some improvements based on early feedback.

Like the Homestretch Bet horses, we're off and running!

This newsletter is where we'll provide updates and announcements for our experiments and games, as well as where we'll provide behind-the-scenes details on our development process and approach.

This week, let's talk about why we named the company 2weeks!

Finding core loops

“Core loop” is a term of art in game design for the central set of activities you perform in a game that animates the rest of the experience. It’s the thing at the heart of the game that you do over and over.

In Mario, the core loop is running and jumping to navigate platforming challenges. In Final Fantasy, it’s the back and forth between battles and exploration.

Getting the core loop right is the most critical part of making a great game. You can’t save a game with a weak core loop by layering systems on top, but you can expand on a great core loop in myriad ways.

Mario expands its core loop through mechanical variation, introducing new types of platforming challenges. Final Fantasy does this through progression mechanics; battles yield rewards that enable you to level up your party, enabling you to tackle harder and more varied battles, and overcome challenges that unlock more world and story to explore. Much of the art of game design is finding core loops that are compelling and have lots of natural expansion opportunities.

It’s somewhat unintuitive, but most of the production effort that goes into making a traditional game is spent away from the core loop. The core loop is the engine of the game, but the engine can’t run without fuel. The content and systems built on top of the core loop create the holistic experience.

This is where you spend most of your time developing a full game - you need lots and lots of fuel to sustain the experience.

Still, you have to start by building a great core loop.

Our core loop

The central focus for our studio is to rapidly prototype new game concepts and test them by releasing them publicly, much earlier than a traditional studio would. Essentially, we’re focused on building and testing core loops.

My first pitch for a studio name was actually “Core Loop,” which turned out to already be taken. But once we thought about it more deeply, we realized that rapid prototyping was our core loop. We wanted to find a name that reflected that.

Some rapid prototyping processes are very short. For example, a typical game jam or hackathon often takes place over a period of two or three days. This may not seem like enough time to really test a game concept, but many great games have been started this way - Ludum Dare typically only runs for two to three days, and frequently leads to notable games.

Really short prototyping periods really constrain what kinds of experiences you can make. It can be particularly hard to do anything that requires collaboration between multiple people with different specialties in that short a period of time. Plus, really short timelines tend to lead to really high-intensity work, which can’t be sustained on an ongoing basis.

Some processes are much longer. We’ve previously built prototypes on timelines as long as six-month milestones. This is more common when the prototype hinges on some kind of technical innovation that requires its own development and iteration in tandem.

Really long prototyping periods have different kinds of risks, especially when it’s tied to other kinds of R&D - it can be hard to tell if the tech needs to improve or there’s a problem with a core loop or if there’s a mismatch between the two. Plus, prototypes always have a risk of failure, and spending six months to learn something just doesn’t work can be extremely painful.

Our preferred process takes… you guessed it: two weeks.

2weeks

My first exposure to two-week prototyping was Amnesia Fortnight at Double Fine. It originally started as a creative exercise to relieve some of the pressure during long production periods for full games, where people got to pitch new ideas and wear different creative hats. Several of Double Fine’s games started as Amnesia Fortnight prototypes, including Hack ‘n’ Slash, which I pitched, prototyped, and led.

Two weeks winds up being a really effective time period to run an experiment. It’s short enough that you have to come prepared: you’ve got to know basically what you want to build, and how you’re going to build it. At the same time, there’s enough time for people to collaborate, be creatively experimental, try different things, and adapt. It’s intense but sustainable - you can get a ton of stuff done with 10 solid working days of really focused effort.

Ideally, you spend the first week putting together something really rough but playable so that you can spend the second week iterating and improving the experience.

This ideal is rarely, if ever, achieved - more likely, you’ll cruise into the end of the first week having found that some stuff is coming together, but some stuff definitely isn’t. The team figures out some way to pivot, doubling down on what is working and converging to something playable by the end of that second week.

Sometimes it still doesn’t pan out! Maybe the concept didn’t actually wind up working that well in practice, or maybe the work was just too ambitious to squeeze into two weeks of development time. The upside to the failures is that you always learn a lot from them. Maybe you build conviction around some alternative approach that’s more achievable, or simply realize that it’s best to move on to other ideas.

Even when it does work, and you’ve built something that shows promise, there are always still a lot of rough edges. The point of prototyping is building something to the point where it barely works so that you have enough information to know what you’d do to fully realize the concept.

Typically a studio will keep these prototypes private, using them as showpieces to pitch a concept to publishers and get budget to make a full game, or as conversation pieces to guide internal development.

We’re taking a different approach and releasing our 2weeks experiments publicly.

We’re making games on the open web for you and your friends. This means we can build faster, ship earlier, and work in public more than we could at a traditional studio or on conventional gaming platforms. Web games have a rich history of this kind of experimentation and scrappiness, and we’re excited to be part of it.

Harvesting fuel

We’re going to ship more and more 2weeks experiments over time, but we’re also going to take time to learn from and iterate on the experiments we’ve already shipped.

For instance, we’ve just launched Homestretch Bet, and have already learned a ton from it. A lot of what we've learned is design-based; we’ve already gotten a lot of great feedback on the game mechanics, pacing, and how information is displayed.

We’ve also learned a lot about the technical infrastructure, too - shipping helped us identify some problems with load time and memory usage, particularly on mobile devices. We’re highly motivated to address some of these issues ASAP, especially the improvements that will provide ongoing benefit for future development efforts or address compatibility issues that will help more people play.

We’ve also decided the next experiment we’re going to run. We don’t want to spoil the surprise yet - we’ll share more in a future update - but a key aspect is that it will support multiplayer. We have some nascent multiplayer support in our engine, but also need to stand up enough of the technical infrastructure that it’s ready for when we start the experimental process in earnest.

This’ll be the natural cadence for us going forward. Experiment, measure the outcomes, reinvest in our games and tech, and experiment again.

That’s the 2weeks core loop.

P.S. We want to extend a special thanks to everyone who has jumped in early on the newsletter and the 2weeks Fun Club Discord server. We’ve decided to work in public from the beginning, which is exciting but nerve-wracking. The enthusiasm and positivity from the folks who have already showed up is very much appreciated. We’re looking forward to being on this journey together.