The document discusses the challenges of managing game parameters for large development teams working on gacha games. It outlines problems that can occur when using tools like Git, Jenkins, and Google Sheets, such as long build times, inability to review changes, and conflicting edits. The document then describes a new proprietary tool developed by DeNA that solves these issues by allowing local Excel file editing and conversion, custom version control and branching for Excel files, and browser-based parameter comparison. The results were improved workflow through immediate testing and reduced errors from simultaneous edits.

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How to manage parameters
for Gacha games
GIC 2020
November 20, 2020
Masaki Hitonishi
DeNA Co., Ltd.
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What’s a Gacha game?
■Monetized by gacha (mechanism similar to
capsule-toy vending machine)
■Similar to loot boxes
■Most of these games are free-to-play mobile
games
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What’s a Gacha game?
■Major game genre in Asia
⁃ Japan, China, Korea, etc..
■Tend to be pay-to-win
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Gacha games constantly
have new content updates

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Assets in releases
■Images
■3D Models
■Game parameters
⁃ Numeric, string or flag values that define the
behavior of the game in the Data-Driven system.

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It is challenging to release
precise parameters

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This is not problematic for
small teams

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But it is problematic for large
teams

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Problems for large teams
■Communication difficulties
■Problems are harder to find
■Each sub teams works in parallel for every
release
■More mistakes occur

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Problems about game parameters
■Waiting a lot of build time to confirm your inputting
parameters in the actual games
■Breaking the developing game through wrong
parameters
■Deploying future data you must not reveal yet

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We were using the following tools and services.
■Git
■Jenkins
■Google Spreadsheet

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But these tools and services
have some problems

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Jenkins problems
■ Takes a long time to complete the job
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Git problems
■Version management system can’t control Excel
files
■It’s hard to review exported CSVs through
Github Compare view
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Google Spread Sheet problems
■Can't convert to game parameter file while other
members are editing the same sheets
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We developed a new tool that
solves the above issues

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■Freed from Jenkins and GoogleSpreadSheet
■New branch management
■Review to game parameters
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Freed from Jenkins and Google SpreadSheet
■We quit Google Spread Sheet and started to use
Excel
■And enabled to convert game parameters on
each local computer
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New Branch management
■We built our own version management system
to control Excel files
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Review to game parameters
■We made our own Compare View showed in the
browser
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Before
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After
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Results of our work
■We can check the game immediately without
waiting for Jenkins jobs
■It's easier to review the game parameters
■We no longer fail to play games in development
because others are editing
⁃ We can complete the work individually
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Summary
■The larger the team, the harder to build an
efficient workflow
■A good approach for that is to branch
management and build time reduction
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