It's the holiday season! And if you're a game developer, you're either taking a muchneeded vacation, or you're crunchingto get ready for a January launchor you're digging through the backlog of unplayed games in your Steam library.The holiday season normally promises a weird contradiction for game developers.The games released during this time are games that need to be relevant and playable year roundreleasing a game specifically pegged to major holidays during this cycle isn't just a creative challenge, RS 3 Gold but a financial one as well.Nevertheless, we've talked to some of our game development friends and gathered a list of some holidaythemed gamesand games that incorporated a holiday themethat offer instructive examples for game developers. Thanks toEmma Larkins,Jam Blute,Christopher Yap,John Ryan,Elaine Gomez, Josh Green, andBrian Handyfor weighing in! The Animal Crossing series: Creating content with ingame calendersNintendo long ago found one of the most innovative and easily integrated solutions to helping players feel the holiday spirit with the Animal Crossing games. If you haven't played them yet, the game's internal calendar system has events, characters, and special scripted sequences that are only available at certain points in the year, meaning the design team can fold in events from all across the year.The Gamecube version tied these events to the console's internal clock, and an ingame character showed up to give you a tonguelashing if you tried to reset that clock. Timed events don't show up in many other games outside of Nintendo's simulator titles or the Easter eggs of Batman: Arkham City. With the increasing pervasiveness of online connected consoles, the opportunity for calendar events that can quietly check the date/time against a server might expand.World of Warcraft,Guild Wars II, Cheap RS Gold and other MMORPGs:Holiday quests as reasons to log in via The holiday season is important time for online games, as no matter what kind of revenue model you're relying on, increasing the player base and incentivizing any kind of ingame spending can help keep a game's lights on, or fund additional content down the line.Designer Emma Larkins points out that World of Warcraft's Feast of Winterveil, or Guild Wars 2's Winterday, which mostly include lowcost mob spawns and a few special items, still have value even years after their creation. As someone relatively new to World of Warcraft, it gives me a chance to connect better with some of the older areas.'rdquoThe holiday content in games is a fascinating extension of the 'lsquogames as a service' model,'rdquo she says rssong . The updated content adds value to the community, and can be used as a powerful marketing tool getting users to buy or play the game on certain dates to earn limited items, or play with ingame items that only activate at certain times.'rdquoLarkins admires how this model extends out to Rocket League, which provides free cosmetic items for players who check in at a certain time.