Jim, from the Pillsbury Law Firm, talks about the legal issues with online games
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.chromacoders.org/engage-expo-pillsbury-law-firm-interview.mp3
Or listen to it here…
Mike, of Metaverse Mod Squad, outlines their staffing capabilities for gaming development
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.chromacoders.org/engage-expo-metaverse-mod-squad-interview.mp3
Or listen to it here…
Overview: Cricket Master Blaster is a simple flash game in which you try to hit as many balls just right (per the rules of cricket) as possible in as few shots as possible. It screams “niche market,” as a game relying on a fundamental understanding of cricket to get the full experience.
What’s Good:
Action: Many players think of games as “a thing you do,” and while that paradigm is shifting as games that grow things while you’re away continue to rise in popularity, there are people who think they aren’t really playing a game unless they’re doing something. This game definitely meets that need.
Viral Technique: Challenge: The “can you beat my score” challenge is a very popular method of getting a new person into a game. In fact, it’s one of the first; Arcades thrived in the first place because people wanted to top their local pinball machine’s scoreboard.
Viral Technique: Leaderboard: Their leaderboard is done well. It updates daily, and has three different categories to shoot for, so the average player feels he has a shot at getting on there if he tries hard enough. That balance of prestige and accessibility is key, and it’s really present here.
What’s Bad:
No Space: There is a sense of detachment from the game, because there is no “place” in the world. If the opening area were a trophy room of some kind that the player could fill with achievements by playing along, the player would have a stronger sense of owning a little piece of the game. That sense of ownership is a strong incentive to keep coming back.
Incomplete Tutorial: The tutorial pops up whenever the player starts a game. It explains how to play their flash game in general, but players who have heard of cricket but never learned the rules feel totally lost. It should include the tutorial for their game the first time the player logs in, a tutorial that can be found in a help section if the player needs to review, and a short explanation somewhere of the sport itself, to get the “wandering player” interested. It’s nice to have a niche market, but far better to have a product that increases the size of the niche!
Not Much to Buy: Perhaps the colored uniforms are more meaningful to players in the countries they represent, but I really wish there were something I could purchase using winnings from playing the game well. Instead, the in-game money is more like Stamina in other games; you get it at regular intervals and it limits how much time you can play at once by running out. Ask around, and you’ll find that most people do not like the feeling of running out of money.
Much like the lack of “placeness” to the game, the lack of anything to spend in-game currency on makes the whole experience feel less real. The only thing you can buy (those uniforms) calls for the money you purchase (or earn by signing up for offers). Without merchandise, the leaderboard and friend challenges become the only strong incentive to play, the only in-game indicator that you’re doing well.
What to Add:
World: Hard to pin to a single principle, but I’ll try. If the achievements in the game are treated as objects (a trophy, medal, or placard) and the most recent or most impressive earned by the individual are posted on the main page, both the problem with lack of place and lack of stuff are solved at once.
Facts: This is really two separate things. First, as I said, is that teaching people about cricket in a fun way could grow interest in the game. Second is that the names of various cricket players could be brought in, to imbue the game with the kind of attachment to reality that Fantasy Football enjoys, or at least the star power of NBA Jam. The target audience is clearly the cricket fan community, so bringing in their favorite players could really increase interest.
Noah, from Gambit, discusses monetizing social games
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.chromacoders.org/engage-expo-gambit-interview-final.mp3
Or listen to it here…
Overview: MiniPlanet is a group of programs hooked together around a world, and players can complete jobs, run a store, gamble, chat, and spend their earnings on lovely furniture for a home of their own. Apropos to the name of the app, I suppose, is the fact that there is no central game here. There is a central world, and games for relating to it.
What’s Good:
Avatar Generation: Particularly for a game as social-heavy as this one, a good avatar generator is key, and this game has it. Players can make themselves look mostly like themselves, or as different as they like, on a whim.
Costumes: Somewhat related to the advanced avatar generation is the fact that the player can buy special clothes and outfits to customize his own look. Having the ability to purchase something that travels with you to all your social situations is much more compelling than having the items for the personalized location, at least early on. That more compelling ability translates into an increased desire to play the various games and earn the in-game currency.
Slick Look: Unlike almost everyone else, the slick look of this app extends even into the store, so that the player doesn’t feel like he’s walking into a sleazy alley to buy his merchandise. There are still just a few bugs with the graphics, but they’re largely negligible except to the hardcore gamer, and the hardcore gamer is clearly not this game’s target audience.
Varied Play: With a decent repertoire of underlying games, this game could take off by having a little something for everyone. It’s almost there.
What’s Bad:
No Core Game: My first impression of this game is that it’s like Maplestory without the game. It provides a cute chat experience, a forum for people to talk, and a few benefits for selling things or playing a gambling game intelligently. But the game never says “This is the goal.” I have no idea how I gain xp (I assume I do, because the game tells me I am level 1 of 25).
Invisible Benefits: Visibility is highly important for anything that can give a bonus of any kind to the player. In the cafe games, you can see what’s on the stove. In the farm games, you can see your crops. In the adventure games, you can see the countdown to your next encounter or the next time your hp will recover. In this game, you can only see your products when you take the time to go into your store, and then you can’t see anything else.
Loading Times: This may be unfair, but it’s still true: Because other games have set the bar for loading times so low, this game feels like it runs slowly because it has screens and areas that take an entire four seconds to load. Gasp! If possible, it would be better to put me into the space immediately and then add people in once I’m there. Then I feel less as if I’m waiting.
Tiny Store: The clothing store should be obvious and easy to find, possibly its own main tab.
Getting Around: More generally, it’s tricky sometimes to get from place to place, which it shouldn’t be in such a simple game. Movement should be very intuitive.
What I’d Add:
More Games: This one is a no-brainer. As more of a game-world than a game, MiniPlanet benefits from having more games in it. If the games are designed in different ways, there really can be a little something for everybody. Right now there’s nothing for someone who wants to do battle, and (see games like ZOMG!) a game-world like this can definitely include that kind of game.
More Leaderboards: If there are many games to play, there can then be just as many categories in which players can excel. More competition with players of similar interests (see: those who play the same kinds of games, in my game-world) encourages and facilitates the social aspect of the world.
Mixed Price Plans: The inclusion of items that can be bought using either real money or in-game money helps fight the impression that you are denying content to non-paying players. The occasional “payer-only” item is good, because it increases the prestige of owning it. Still, items that cost both types represent a prestige to the non-paying player that can make them more excited about your world.
Hey folks,
The guy that did the custom forum for Facebook and open sourced it…has now finished a puzzle game for the iPhone…you can check it out here…
Feel free to post feedback and comments below 
Chris, from Forterra Systems, talks about using games for business training
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.chromacoders.org/engage-expo-fortera-systems-interview.mp3
Or listen to it here…
Hey folks,
Got a link to this blog post by the Unity CEO…a lot of the info is relevant to indie game devs…I’ve reprinted it below…
Original Link: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/01/14/2010-trends/
Without further ado.
The Year of Gamification, Part 1
We call the adoption of game technology and game design methods outside of the games industry “gamification”, and this is a really broad trend.
Unity and other game technologies are being used across more than a dozen sectors that have little or nothing to do with games. Architectural visualization is an obvious and older example. But apart from that we have some of the world’s biggest engineering and manufacturing companies, as well as several actual armed forces as our customers. TV production companies use Unity and other game engines to produce live TV shows and Machinima videos. Big corporations make employee training and simulation applications using Unity, and some of our customers have gone into online meeting and collaboration. Game technology being applied to all these areas means that Unity users are valuable to many and not everyone has to make a living from games.
Action item: Sell your skills outside the games industry. With a knowledge of other industries, you can create new and innovative products or businesses servicing these industries. The sky’s the limit.
The Year of Gamification, Part 2
A second aspect of gamification is that game design methods and strategies are being used outside of games to design better products and user experiences. A boring site like Mint.com has experimented with turning personal finance into a game, social networking experiment FourSquare maintains high-score lists for people who bar-crawl, and natural-language search startup Siri hired an accomplished game designer to design their user experience.
Action item: Learn game design and apply it to everything – how people sign up for a website, how people “succeed” in using your product, how customers share it with their friends and become leaders of user groups/clans, etc. Game design can be used for all of this.
Another Golden Age for Garage Developers
We are definitely going to see even more quality games done by small teams in 2010. With very little risk and by mainly investing their own time, a small team of 1-2 people can make a hit game that will sell millions of units. More importantly (and what makes this different than 4 years ago), there are now many more channels through which to distribute and sell such a game. Many such games are receiving world-wide acclaim.
Action item: Find an awesome partner and go create!
Publishers Continue to be Valuable
With casual, online and mobile games requiring smaller production budgets and eschewing retail (and thus expensive and slow) distribution in exchange for digital, the game industry was expecting to get rid of the publisher as a concept.
But as the iPhone ecosystem clearly proves (as well as the web somewhat less clearly with portals like Shockwave.com and distribution companies like Zynga and RockYou), the publishers stay. Though they may not be forwarding cash and fully owning the game IPs, their expertise in marketing, game design and online distribution metrics and strategies make them a valuable, if no longer totally required, partner to the game developer.
Action item: Consider working with a publisher. Fortunately with publishers’ leverage lessened, they are typically less demanding with regards to what they have to own (IP, sequel rights, revenue share). Or become your own publisher by building that expertise. This is not a simple task, but has been done by some of the top online game developers.
Everything Becomes a “Console”
This one is somewhat controversial. It seemed that with the move towards mobile and web, the closed ecosystems of the console world would be under siege and eventually collapse. What game developer (except perhaps the ones most entrenched in with the Nintendos-Microsoft-Sony trinity) hasn’t fantasized about this walled garden having its walls rammed down?
Well, welcome to the new world. The iPhone has proven that given the right amount of “openness”, neither consumers nor developers really mind closed platforms.
Even on the anarchic web (regions of which remind one more of a Mad-Maxian post-apocalyptical cyberspace than an enlightened utopia), Facebook is in the process of creating a closed environment within which consumers and game developers can meet and exchange fun and money (more or less) safely.
This section could also have been labeled “the Rise of the AppStore Model”, since it’s more the App Store than the gaming console which inspires this megatrend. And framed like that, it might have made people happy. But this is a problematic trend (to say the least) that should make us stop to think.
Action item: Make use of this. Or if you’re brave, build your own!
Facebook Wallet, Apple Tablet, Unity on Facebook
And then are the obvious ones.
Of course Apple will launch its tablet. We even know the screen-size and CPU make. The only uncertainly left is what day it launches. And its price.
Surely Facebook will launch a payment platform which in tandem with Facebook Connect will dramatically transform the face of microtransactions on the internet. If they do this right, it will finally enable the web-wide microtransactions which we’ve been dreaming of since the dot-com era.
And of course Unity will be big on Facebook. Several major games will get launched on Facebook, offering awesome games to hundreds of millions of people (not to mention significantly moving the needle on adoption of the Unity plugin).
Action item: Left as an exercise for the reader 
Overview: Car Madness 2 is a game that brings the excitement of street racing to the Facebook scene. The design uses a fairly standard leveling system that unfortunately comes across a little forced; the premise doesn’t really match the way the game plays out.
What It Does Right:
Photos: The sense of actual cars that the player owns, and the use of our society’s pre-existing pride in our cars, is very savvy. Using photos and names of real cars, the game has very nice-looking art (design teams work for a long time on making cars look good) that will almost certainly be appreciated by the game’s target audience.
Battle Centered: The interest in the street racing scene is primarily about the competitive urge. Having this game’s primary interest revolve around the process of racing against other players is a good decision. More generally, if you have a specific audience, make sure your product serves that group’s needs first.
Madness: The title got me to look at their store. Having a good name for your store can make a big difference in whether or not players look in on it.
New, and Uncertain Value
Viral Ultimatum: This is a risky maneuver. Car Madness 2 has a vast majority of their content absolutely unavailable unless the player is bringing friends into it. A few other games with almost identical gameplay design permit the player to move forward on almost everything alone, though much of it’s faster with a group.
The same could be done in a much less aggressive manner if the players you invited were not required to accept and keep the application; if instead you simply had to decide these were the friends of yours you wanted proxies of in the game. As it is, even if I am interested in all the game’s content, if my friends aren’t okay with allowing the app I simply can’t play most of the game.
Collection: Certainly the idea of collection isn’t hugely novel (the phrase “gotta catch ‘em all” comes to mind), but I haven’t seen much of it in the Facebook App medium. Here, I’m still uncertain what the purpose is to collecting these treasures. If the design explicitly says what I get (even saying “a mystery prize” is better than saying nothing on the topic), then that collection could become its own kind of quest.
What Could Use Work
Theme Matching Play: A quick racing animation would go a long way to letting the player feel the excitement of the races. If the designers have an algorithm for making “traction,” “power,” and “aerodynamics” important on different tracks or during different races, and could have that play out in the course of an animation, it would be downright fantastic.
Keeping the Excitement: Sure, it might be an authentic part of the life, but having a mission be “pizza delivery” doesn’t inspire me, and it’s not what I’d call a “racing tour.” It’s not even what I’d call a racing tour for level 1 racers. The big racing hill just outside town is the kind of racing tour for a racer who hasn’t made a name for himself. ”Make Donuts” makes even less sense.
Story: It’s not present, and anyone who’s seen the “Fast/Furious” series of movies knows that a story definitely can be present in a street racing environment. Right now it makes little sense that the player can’t go to Miami when the game starts. But if there’s a story the player understands from the first moment why: Because the story hasn’t gotten to that part yet.
PvP Racing Achievements/Locks: As a game that calls so much for the competitive edge, Car Madness 2 would do well to have several missions scattered through its various cities that require a certain number of wins in races against other players, possibly even wins against certain kinds of cars. If they develop their stories, they could even include an extra story for players who win against enough other players. Fundamentally, if you’re going to make a game that uses competition so heavily, you should include serious rewards (see also: content) for players who go in for that competition. Money and xp, which are available for a player who never challenge others, aren’t sufficiently different.
Balanced XP Gain: The xp value for racing other players is so huge, and the xp for playing the regular content so small, that the player completes both level 1 missions before he’s even halfway to level 2, but if he does just a few races with other players (which, lacking animation, should at least have some sense of how the game came to its decision of who won written out: “Bobo’s car resists the crosswinds with its better traction! Winner!”) he gains a level. By the time one runs out of Stamina for racing other players, one has gained three or four levels. At which point, of course, there’s nothing to do unless you bring your friends in.
To Balance It: Lower the xp gained from racing other players to about half the current rate. Increase the number of missions available at each level. Rather than naming the missions after activities, in this case, I would name them after tracks or courses. Also, provide multiple tiers of mastery to each mission, with prizes (probably parts of the collection) for hitting each tier, so that your players want to go on missions even when they’ve already hit 100% in that mission. Doing so multiplies your game’s compelling play time without your having to generate loads of new content right away.
Sam, from Italy, talks about making a casual football game MMO
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.chromacoders.org/engage-expo-football-mmo-interview.mp3
Or listen to it here…