Consistency is extremely important to success, but so is a surprise now and then.

When it comes to life and personal goals, or to making a game or running a live service game, consistency is extremely important. In life, putting yourself in a position where routine and patterns help keep you on pace and motivated helps make sure that you keep moving forward towards your next goal. If every day you get up and go for a run, it gets easier over time and eventually it’s second nature.

The same is true of running a game or a business. Your players or customers need a sense of reliability so that they know they can count on you when they need you, or that taking the time to learn your game systems will be worth it since it will consistently be around. One of the reasons I stream the same time every weekend, or the reason we have a patch schedule. Consistency helps form that relationship in a healthy way.

On TFT, sets has been our consistent path and it’s something we’ve never missed on delivering. New set every 6 months before, now every 4 months, was important to deliver and sometimes we had to make tough calls to make sure that would happen. The Galaxies mechanic wasn’t done in time so we shipped it a patch later for example, because that consistency and reliability mattered.

BUT, that’s not enough. Patterns get boring, and this is true in games and in life. If you do the same thing over and over, you’ll find yourself in a rut. Even if it’s the healthiest lifestyle you’ve got yourself in, humans get bored and no one wants to do the same thing over and over. That’s why we take vacations and trips, or do something else for entertainment. Those little surprises in life matter to give us something to look forward to as we continue on that primary path of life.

Games are the same way. While we deliver a new Set every 4 months now, that’s not enough and that pattern would get boring quickly. We need to surprise players as well along the way. New systems, game improvements, things like set revivals, all little delighters along the main path that keep people wondering “I wonder what they’re going to cook up next.”

Even my stream is the same way. Yea showing up same time every weekend is great, but if it was just the same game grind over and over, that will get repetitive. Have to throw in some surprises like viewer games, Q&A streams, dev visits, and more, so people never know quite what to expect.

These tweets have been something for myself in this space as well. Consistently do them, but surprise what the content is and what to talk about. Find ways to make it interesting every day. Then end the same way I always do. So good luck in finding this balance for yourself, and take it easy 🙂