Paste's Best Casual Games of 2010

It is somewhat sad that the only "traditional" download game (of the ilk made by Big Fish, PlayFirst, etc here) - is maybe Puzzle Agent.

No Ravenhearst, etc.

http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2010/12/the-10-best-casual-games-of-2010.html

Of these I have played
#9 - Ninjatown Trees of Doom

#7 - Cityville

#6 - GameDevStory

#5 - Trainyard

#3 - Nelson Tethers, Puzzle Agent (note this was also on Alex Ahlund's top 40 iPhone apps)

I want to play the other 5 also. Of these 5 I have played, Ninjatown and Cityville are the two i have returned to the most.

Realities and Red Herrings: Game Developer's Guide to Profitability

http://casualconnect.org/content/Seattle/2010/realitiesandredherringsseattle10.html
Good talk from Sean Clark of Big Fish Games, who I've met in meetings at PlayFirst.
Watching the talk today, did not see it in Seattle...

- he was working on a text-based RPG at Playdom?
- also interesting that he left Playdom to go back to Big Fish
- different routes to the top of the mountain...like Ed Viesturs
- what's the best way to use the limited resources that I have?
- how to filter out the noise and get the signal?
- audience: developers, especially indie developers


Sean Clark is the Executive Producer for Casual Downloads at Big Fish Games. Prior to Big Fish Games, Sean has been a Project Director at LucasArts Entertainment Company, a Studio Director at EA/Pogo and an Executive Producer at Playdom. During his more than 20 years experience in the game industry, Sean has been involved in all aspects of game development and distribution, from writing and designing to directing and producing. Additionally, Sean has also served on the studio management and business sides of Core/Retail, Casual and Social gaming on platforms ranging from PC to Console and handheld to browser-based games.

Browser Tech Smackdown - Casual Connect

A panel that I did not attend but am listening to it now:
http://casualconnect.org/content/Seattle/2010/browsertechsmackdownseattle10.html


The web game industry has changed tremendously in the last 5 years. Unfortunately the technology behind it has not evolved as quickly.
Will the next 5 years be different? Will Flash continue to dominate, or will there be a changing of the guard? Is 3D the killer feature, or is there something else that could disrupt the status quo.

Executive Summary:
Not sure if they really answered these questions - there was no clear winner of the smackdown, other than Kongregate being open to the open community of games delivered with all these browser techs.
Unity comes across as being one of the tech engines that makes the most sense, after watching this panel.
Moderated by Jim Greer, Kongregate
Nice intro - "I'm not an expert, but I know some experts."
In intro, ask each panelist to throw out one controversial opinion to get the panel started.
He also asked on Rededit to get questions for the panel! Nice!

Crossplatform desktop/mobile - Unity can do this, David Helgasson points out.

Business model/commerce features - Mark De Loura mentions the Web store for Chrome.

Danielle of Adobe points out that Flash does support controllers. David points out that Unity does too.

What about a Flash App Store?
Offer commerce services or cloud-based services?
No - we don't want to compete with our users - companies using Flash are already delivering this.

Q: Why is it so much more complicated to make Unity games than Flash? (another questioner expressed the opposite opinion, asking what kind of cake the engineer wants who developed the scripting system for Unity).
Jim Greer calls out the visual style of Flash as a benefit.
David H points out that a lot of people actually find Unity easier to use than Flash. Laying out the game in a 3D space can be more intuitive.

Also, many high end web games are developed in 3D and then baked down... (that's true for Willows!)
So it's easier to use Unity if you are authoring in 3D in the first place.
(Danielle never got to respond from Adobe...)

Questioner asks Paul from Microsoft about how to optimize large Javascript applications
Basically his answer was, we will work with the developer community and the standards bodies to evolve the standards.

Flash player question - being able to turn off sound globally should be a feature
Asked Danielle - she said it never came up at a developer event she went to.
Jim Greer says that on Kongregate you go down half a point if you don't have a mute button in your game.
It sounds like the whole panel thinks that the browser should have a mute button!
Much discussion about watching or doing something in the browser and having to re-find the mute button in each app or tab.

But there's so many layers - the OS, the game, the tab, the panel basically thinks this must be why it's not a browser feature yet.

Q from Audience:
Why would I want to develop in HTML 5 if anyone can just click "view source" and steal my code?
Mark De Loura says - you have to use obfuscators now if you are coding in Javascript to hide it from those who use "View Source" but if you're a crafty engineer there are ways to figure it out...that's true of DRM in general, people can always figure it out.
Then again, the web always has meant openness and being able to view source, but if you spend millions of dollars on a game or app, certainly don't want someone else to view it.
(Note that "View Source" is how I learned how to code in HTML 1.0 back in 1994, along with Stanford's web tutorials.)

Q on Business Model
Kongregate is 50%/50% virtual goods and ads now, Jim Greer says.
Q: What are you going to do about the fact that hardcore gamers hate virtual goods?
They don't care about cosmetic upgrades, they hate paid players having advantages, and they don't respond to ads because they block them.

A: Unity says, we don't have a specific feature for the business model, you can implement whatever you want...
Do people not buy things in the web browser because you can't? Or because you don't want to?

Kongregate does upgradable single-player experience and
natively social MMO type experience.
The natively social game gets more traction in virtual goods and making more money...

But a lot of people don't want to play games online! They want to play alone. The panel seems concerned to leave behind the single player immersive experience.

Mark De Loura points out the different ways of paying for content:
Example - Watching 24. You can buy the DVD, you can watch it online, you can watch it on hulu with ads.
He doesn't want games to be delivered in only one way.

Jim Greer - fear that we are cannibalizing some of the great gaming experiences.
It's hard to justify building a high budget game if you are also throwing the content out for free with virtual goods.

David H of Unity says - this might change as the companies get better at delivering this content for free and properly monetizing their users. (ie, there is hope for free to play).

Q: What's the role of a portal in the next 5 years?
Jim Greer: We see ourselves as being all about a community of players.
They come to us because they like great games, we deliver them great games.
We deliver achievements, their progress is tracked.
"All my friends are going to play with me."
Pogo, WoW, and Kongregate all have succeeded this way.
We succeed best in an open environment.
He is very excited to see C++, Unity, fast streaming html 5 games, all on our service.
In the wrapup I realize that this panel was a great idea as positioning for Kongregate as one of the big customers for all these games.

Free Realms, SOE

Play Free Realms again to get new update.

* Laralyn McWilliams interview on MMOgamer at the Launch of Free Realms
" It’s just been really fascinating for us as a team to watch and really exciting because for a long while we were the sort of little game nobody had heard of.

We were SOE’s small project, and so it’s really great for us to finally get it done and get it out in front of players and then have players enjoy it as much as they are."

" While right now casual games are on the upswing, they’re going to hit a certain peak and stay at that peak, and the people are going to say, you know, “I want something deeper.”

* Interview with Laralyn at G.I.R.L talk

SOE's Casual "MMO"s - Clone Wars Adventures

Clone Wars Adventures
I completely forgot about this game until seeing this article, stating that it has 1 million users only 1 week after launch!

Trying it out now. The 1 million users are receiving Golden Mouse Droids this weekend. It's free to play. Competes right now for my thoughts with Lord of the Rings Online, also free to play, and Knights of the Old Republic, 2003 award winning RPG from Bioware, which is almost free to play at $2.99 on Steam!

Very quick registration and avatar picking...

Takes 35 MB to download the SOE installer - I assume this is the same installer used for Free Realms...

Nice - goes directly into opening cutscene, which popped up when I was doing something else in the background.

I am welcomed directly by YODA!
To a briefing with Mace Windu, Anakin, etc. I am a Padawan Learner!
They need my help in the fight. There is much to learn, etc etc.

At one point the pace of the conversation slows a LOT when Mace Windu starts talking about earning credits...
and buying stuff... in the store...

Mace Windu looks at me meaningfully as he says this.

Finally, call to play "take this lightsaber, it's yours now!"
A real lightsaber of my very own. Wow, in KOTOR I could not get this right away.

Then I transition to the game lounge. I expected to see a character beckoning me to click on them, but I feel kind of lost.

It turns out that you can launch mini-games by walking around the ship and launching them, but it's a lot easier to just click on the Games button in the HUD and choose one.
Similar to the currently available version of Free Realms, except there is some exploration in Free Realms. There's no real narrative progression, or "quests" which I think is because of what they found out when they did the first Free Realms.

Very well done art and theme, voice acting, sound effects all hit the quality bar!

In each mini-game, you play through a series of levels, sometimes against other characters. In many of them, the medium and hard levels are only open to Jedi Members (those who have paid for monthly membership with Station Cash or hard $).

I played the below - all pretty standard fare where it comes to mini games, but thematically making sense:
- lightsaber battle - level 1 is Obi Wan, you must hit arrow keys quickly in the right sequence. I beat Obi Wan but 2nd level was against Anakin's Padawan learner, and I blame the computer speed as I tried twice but couldn't beat her fast enough.
- typing game - type the right letters as they fall down the screen, boss fight is words (this was obviously too easy at easy level, which was the only level I could play without becoming a Jedi)
- star speeder - flying forward on rails, steering and shooting at enemy ships
- blaster training - shooting range - droids pop up and you shoot them.

I guess I wish that it had more of a narrative pull to link the games together.

If I earn X credits, do I get rewarded again by Yoda and the Jedi Council who welcomed me?
Is there the semblance of a metastructure?

Here are links about Clone Wars.

* Gamasutra article about Clone Wars
* Interview with Producer Todd Carson of Clone Wars (Todd's presentation is super excited!)
* Laralyn McWilliams interview on MMOgamer at the Launch of Free Realms
" It’s just been really fascinating for us as a team to watch and really exciting because for a long while we were the sort of little game nobody had heard of.

We were SOE’s small project, and so it’s really great for us to finally get it done and get it out in front of players and then have players enjoy it as much as they are."

" While right now casual games are on the upswing, they’re going to hit a certain peak and stay at that peak, and the people are going to say, you know, “I want something deeper.”

* Interview with Laralyn at G.I.R.L talk

Dragon Quest 9: Crossing to Casual?

I fell in love with Dragon Quest 4 years ago when my friend Adam told me that this cute blue Hershey's Kiss thing was actually a monster that you fight in the game! Now I can make a whole slime outfit for my warrior (named after my husband Dave)

However, I had a hard time finishing Dragon Quest 8, on the PS2. Random battles made the experience way too slow, and not rewarding enough. Too much grinding, it was not possible to get even the first success in the first dungeon without grinding back and forth on the low-level monsters.

Also I wished it was on the DS so I could play where I play most other long RPGs, on my commute to work! I did buy and finish DQ4 on the DS.

But I have been looking forward to a new DS DQ for a while. Enter DQ9: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, which I bought on launch day, July 11.

The developers (Yuji Horii, creator of the series; Level 5/Square Enix, the developers; and publisher, Nintendo) seem to be trying quite hard to make this game more palatable for at least 3 "new" audiences, and I think they have succeeded:

1. Americans (Dragon Quest/Warrior just not very popular here in US but is HUGE in Japan. My friend Andrew who is a Pokefan, had never heard of DQ).
   
2. Women (see link to Iwata Asks interviews on my earlier blog post - addition of char customization, they think has helped this. Game is more popular with Japanese women than the previous titles too). They've also focused on several other "casual" features that we focus on to improve conversion for our games at PlayFirst (list below)
   
3. Kids - The series is 25 years old so many of the original fans are now parents and teaching their kids about Dragon Quest. Horii-san said in the Iwata Asks interview, that they wanted the local multiplayer feature so that parents could play directly with their kids and teach them about the game together.

Here are some of the specific "casual" features that I think contribute to DQ9's improvements over at least DQ8, if not the entire series. Also, I know that overall the marketing of the game is focused on the new multiplayer features, but here in the US I think that people will fall in love the most with single player first and then use that fandom to suck others into the multiplayer.

Customization, Metastructure (with clear goals) and Rewards.

Laura Shigihara's "Girls in the Video Game Industry" series

http://shigi.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/girls-in-the-video-game-industry-1-tammy-tsuyuki/

for reference.

Dragon Quest 9

Iwata Asks about Dragon Quest 9
Currently listening to these 10 interviews with Yuji Horii (designer of the Dragon Quest series) Satoru Iwata (Pres, Nintendo), and Ryutaro Ichimura (Producer, Square Enix).

Focus seems to be to explain and promote Dragon Quest in general and especially this latest game, for the American/Western audience.

They point out that in Japan, they are seeing a lot more women playing DQ9 for the first time, they attribute this to the character customization feature.

A "Patty's Pub" spontaneously opened in Akhihabra.

"It has become a social phenomenon." - Treasure Maps are randomly generated and people share them. One person found an amazingly good map and then they started sharing it in public - for example, at the Akhihabra pub. Kids asking their dads to take their DS with them when they go on business trips in other cities, for the Tag Mode sharing.

Have played the first hour or so of the game and it is so far much better than DQ8 for me. Progression in the early town is faster, it's more rewarding to have the multiple goals of helping people, and I really appreciate being able to choose from my random battles.

I can run back from an early dungeon/boss area to the town, and completely bypass all the slimes and other small fry that will only give me 1 exp point each. In DQ8, I had to bump into all of them.

In one segment, they said that they wanted parents to be able to play with their kids, go in and fight monsters that might be scary, etc. They also call out girlfriends playing the game only to play with their boyfriends. What about girlfriends pushing boyfriends to play?

Iwata points out that for turn-based games like this, the skill and reflexes are not as big of an issue. Horii adds, "Anyone can play through it if they give it a chance".

Siliconera article.

Emily Short Takes on Love and Death: Bitten

Just documenting Emily's latest post on GameSetWatch on one of our games - now Love and Death: Bitten.



In general I agree with her - although the story of this game, quite frankly, is what it is for the kind of game it is - as she points out before going into a more discoursive critical review of the narrative!
We know most of our audience is not Emily Short (but we should probably be trying to hit our narrative, story and characters to hook her in also). It's very hard to get them to read.


Interesting quotes on the elements that do work:

I am not a great fan of hidden object gameplay. I played Love and Death: Bitten for two reasons: it was getting strong reviews as a casual game with a lot of story content, and it also contains a number of other types of puzzle.

The reviews don't lie: if we set aside the essential implausibility that the protagonists stop at the most inopportune times to search for trinkets, this is a pretty decent story/gameplay mesh for a hidden object game.

She also appreciated our attempts to tell the story via the hidden object scenes and the "thoughts" of the characters when the player clicks on items:

After the first act, the hidden object experience is used to unveil Damon's past and the characters' different attitudes towards that past, rather than to set up their overall abilities. Much of the action is set in the castle where he lives: the hidden object screens are full of memories when he manipulates them, and discovery when Victoria does. The list of objects to find in a given scene gives some hint about what the viewpoint character might be thinking, even when he or she offers no explicit comment.

Victoria, for instance, investigating Damon's study, finds an assortment of objects that point at his talents and musical abilities. Damon, on the other hand, notices the tokens given to him by previous lovers, and cast-off bottles of wine -- hints at a dissolute lifestyle. The game does not go into this in any explicit detail, but perhaps we can judge from this that Victoria sees Damon more favorably than he sees himself. In any case, it's a relatively deft and thoughtful use of this play style.

Finally, in one scene, the player is required to combine the hidden objects into a tableau that tells the full story of Damon's background. It's contrived, but it does work; it gives the backstory of how Damon became what he is, and connects several previously unexplained pieces of evidence.

On the flip side:
"There is not a moment of human truth from one end to the other."

See also her previous Homer in Silicon posts on other PF games:
* Chocolatier: Decadence by Design and also Chocolatier 2 (and Choc 1, linked in the Choc link). She also played The Great Chocolate Chase.
* DinerTown Tycoon - "Unfortunately, the gameplay of DinerTown Tycoon is still fairly unadventurous; it is merely borrowing from a different genre than Diner Dash. There is little in the play of DinerTown Tycoon that one can't find in the deeply bland and profoundly unexceptional Cinema Tycoon, Cinema Tycoon 2, Cinema Tycoon Gold, and for all I know Cinema Tycoon Platinum Studded with Diamonds XXVII. "

It may sound as though I entirely despised the game, but I didn't; I played the whole thing through and I wasn't hating it while I did so. The whole Diner Dash series is designed, tested, and manufactured by people who know what they are doing. It's just that what they're doing is not always what I would call "game design."

* Passport to Perfume - she liked it, kind of. She liked making the perfume.

* Wandering Willows - "amiable but undemanding" (do we want our games to be "demanding"?)
One of the most entertaining quotes here:
(I found myself fleetingly wondering about the slave-labor hierarchy of this society, since the long-term inhabitants mostly rely on the newcomer to provide them with food and clothing, while the newcomer in turn manipulates the cunning but speechless animals into doing all the really hard work. But I am fairly certain the designers did not intend me to think about any such thing.)
mwa ha ha, perhaps Dan DID intend us to think about slave-labor!

* Emerald City Confidential

* Omnibus post about many casual games including DD:HH and Wedding Dash: Having played the original Diner Dash to exhaustion, she's not excited about either one (and probably by extension the WD sequels). Also oddly enough she didn't like Cooking Dash either.

Not sure if she has ever talked about Dream Chronicles.

LifeQuest from BFG

Also I am playing LifeQuest which is #1 on BFG right now and is a Big Fish Studios game.
(with an interesting very personal Special Thanks in the credits - apparently it is dedicated to the mom of one of the designers).

Very appropriate for Mother's Day.

Very addictive.

PuzzleBots

OMG. The demo for Puzzle Bots (and the game itself) is very very good.

Very quick thoughts
- lasted close to an hour (good)
- I felt engaged the whole time - just the right amount of challenge - had to click HINT twice (two separate questions) and hint was very logical, provoked a "duh!" moment (Oh, I would have got that...)
- character and story development very good. Zander and Yuriko as a very cute almost couple (and story hints at a triangle with a new scientist being hired into lab - Zander thinks she's cute).
- I always love the theme of small things (the robots) in a big world, and seeing the impact of what I do while controlling the robots (for example the coffee maker "spaceship" that launches the 2 robots across the break room).

Casual Connect Leadership and Development Panel!

Here’s the spiel that got approved by the Women in Games IGDA group:

What:

http://archives.igda.org/women/archives/2010/03/call_for_propos.html

When & Where:

Monday, 7/19, in Seattle at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel.

Link: the Leadership & Professional Development Forum.

This debut pre-Casual Connect conference was a big hit last year!

My pitch:

Successful Female Game Devs Speak: It Pays to Hire Women in Games

Yes, we do need more women in the game industry! We need to make sure girls and women are aware of the opportunities, and make sure employers are aware of the benefits.

Q: What do you get when you hire women to develop games?

A: Successful, fun games that sell! Come hear women from different experience levels, companies, and genres share their experiences in the game industry, plus the learnings and successful games that resulted.

For Panelists - let's go a bit deeper than the "hey we're women in the game industry!"

What issues can we really dig into, for an audience of managers/employers/execs in casual games (many of whom statistically at this conference are male).

Other Panelists:

Maryann Klingman, Senior Producer, PlayFirst.

Maryann’s career spans 17 years and over 40 titles: working in educational software as an Executive Producer and now directing the production of casual downloadable games published by PlayFirst. She is a strong mentor and role model and inspirational team builder.

Because of Maryann’s example, her daughter, Theresa Duringer, grew up inspired by her mother’s success in the game industry. Theresa now works at Electronic Arts as a Community Manager on Spore, among other titles.

Prof. Carrie Heeter, Michigan State University. (tele-teaches from San Francisco).

Carrie Heeter is a frequent speaker at game design conferences. Her current game design and research includes brain games, deliberative decision games, and adaptive learning games. She has been designing interactive media since 1990, winning more than 50 awards. She co-founded the Serious Game Design MA track at Michigan State University and is a PI in the GEL (Games 4 Entertainment and Learning) Lab. Heeter is PI on numerous National Science Foundation grants to study gender and gaming and play style and learning. She is co-editor, with Kafai, Denner, and Sun, of the book Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender, Games and Computing. She is creator and editor in chief of http://investigaming.com , a gateway to research on gender, gaming and computing for game industry professionals and academics.

Karen Clark, Senior Project Manager, World Golf Tour

Karen is an industry veteran and expert in Agile project management: she’s worked at Bioware on Dragon Age Origins; at EA on Online Features including for Mass Effect 2, as well at Linden Lab, Garage Games, and more. She also co-founded the GameMentorOnline site and is the chair of the Women in Games International Mentoring Program. http://www.gamementoronline.org/

Tentative or unconfirmed

• Brenda Brathwaite
  
• Jane Jensen (Kenny introduced us this week, she has not yet responded)
• Amanda Fitch (who founded and runs her own game dev company, Amaranth Games. Aveyond series.) Just asked her today 4/29 on LinkedIn.
• Erin Robinson (designer/developer of the new adventure game Puzzle Bots. Won Game Design Challenge at GDC 2009. Co-Host of IGF Awards at GDC 2010). Emailing her now 4/29

Moderator:

Solveig Pederson Zarubin, Producer, PlayFirst

Over 12 years in the game industry, from educational software to The Sims 2, to casual games, Solveig enjoys bringing talented people together and guiding them to a finished, high quality game. Or in this case, a panel! Most recently, Solveig has been a Producer at PlayFirst, as lead producer on Diner Dash: Hometown Hero, Wandering Willows and Love and Death: Bitten. In spring 2006 after the Women in Games conference, Solveig also co-founded a small lunch group for women in the game industry, which has now lasted for four years of monthly lunches and networking!

Here’s my LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/solveigpederson

Bitten Launch!

The game I have been working on with a large number of talented people, for over a year, finally launched today to the public!

A bit jaw-dropping that it looks like it will be potentially quite successful commercially, at least the most financially successful game I have worked on at PlayFirst. A bit hard to get my mind around it.

Recently on 24, the character Chloe O'Brien said, "I don't do praise well."
I often feel the same.
Often it's much harder for me to deal with success or impending success -- than to just buckle down and deal with a crisis or a problem. I spent most of the day working on other projects ...and not really being able to sit and let the potential success soak in...other than sneaking peeks at the forum postings!

It's been a few weeks since we GM'ed the game. I have been playing the game again back and forth on BART commuting today, and I can honestly say that I still like to play it! Even the hidden object scenes which are my least favorite as a player, still draw me in. This project was full of emotion for almost everyone on the team, we all cared pretty deeply about it.

David Ryan Paul, the first lead artist on the project, wrote this blog post which has links to all the artists involved except for:
Jeff Troupe, Alt A Games, and Xing Xing Digital Corporation.
We had talented designers - Patrick, Helen, Dana...
Once again I was lucky enough to work with the "Ninja-neer" - Jim.
And Paul, who jumped in to learn the engine in the middle and got us through several major changes (I don't have a nickname yet for Paul. "Remember Sweden!")
Plus as a bonus, Peter, "Winston Wolf", and the awesome senior production of Maryann (who just won a "greenlight Oscar" award today).

Here's the PlayFirst blog post I wrote as the Producer interview...there are tons more Bitten posts on the PlayFirst blog - character diaries, the "focus hat" video made by Mike which stars Chuck and Helen (and I wave my arms around while wearing a werewolf hat).
Also the game trailer (I do like the animation that Big Fish has on their landing page as well).
Plus character profiles, and soon also concept art.


I was so happy to see the positive posts in the forums today and reviews. Early positive word from trusted fans and players is so important...and we are very thankful for it. Many people posting later in the day said that their decision was almost made for them after seeing these posts. I also really love this feeling of connectedness with the fans.
It's like playing Diner Dash:Hometown Hero live with Heather89 the moment that we turned on the multiplayer server for the public almost 3 years ago. Or watching the small but dedicated fan base for Wandering Willows get sucked into the game.

One example from the Big Fish forums: "Poodlebear" posted at 1:41 am on 4/13 - so they had downloaded as soon as possible since the game went live at midnight on 4/13
"Loving this so far - 40 minutes into the demo."
It *is* a very dark, and adult, story and no doubt some players will have issues with that, but not meeee! Love me some vampire hotness.
Buying! Gently Poodlebear Approved given I've only played 40 minutes... "
(I was briefly suspicious that this could be another team member, but Poodlebear's account has been active since 2007 and s/he has written thousands of posts!)

At 3:52 am Poodlebear had played a couple more hours and believes he/she is about halfway through: "Unless something really wacky occurs I can now fully Poodlebear Approve!"


Brenda Brathwaite wrote a post on "Moments to Gold" which is probably way more emotional than I can get about this game, but what resonates for me is this emotional feeling at the end of a big project:

Here it is...we made this! We hope you like it!
We (most of us) still like to play it even after working on it for months!

Let's Play: Blackwell Legacy LP walkthrough

Let's Play LP walkthrough of the Blackwell series from Wadjet Eye (for future reference and entertainment purposes).

Also to mask the fact that I have not played through all 3 games yet, when talking to Dave Gilbert. :-)

Fwd: Future of connected games

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: Solveig Zarubin <solveigp@gmail.com>
Date: March 14, 2010 9:05:41 PM PDT
To: "solveigp@gmail.com" <solveigp@gmail.com>
Subject: Future of connected games

Future of connected games panel

SteamPlay
People do not want to be a pc or apple player of a game.
They want to be a fan of a game.
Want to play at home on pc and connected.
Pc and mac versions at once

Facebook has not made it easy to present different sides of a person.
Notifications - all these different people - I don't want to spam them all with the notice a turnip just blossomed

Compare control over xbox and pc
Bioware
Uses telemetry across all the platforms
See social.bioware.com

Portal guy - valve
pc is an open platform- can ship updates

Beta requirements are diff for connected games - you make changes in public for all to see
min from nexon
We really gotta get people in, it is part of the design process
We make mistakes and fix them on the fly

Zynga guy
Ngai asks - I have heard that games ship with 30 percent cimplete
What does that even mean?
There has been a team on farmville for months after 5 week start

Min does not know what 30 percent complete is
They have games that have been out for 10 years - are they done now?

Ngai - do you think of "old content" differently ?
Old content is new content to new player

Zynga guy
Look at the new user experience and make sure it is not too overwhelming for the new player
Wow must have that issue too

Blizzard guy
New exp pack out
We get better at making content
But the people who benefit are the people who have gone thru he old content laready
All the new players are mostly casual
New exp - looks at the whole content from level 1 to 6o and makes better

Ngai asks abor mass effect 2 - casual audience coming in at lower price?
Bioware - we also add expansions, etc
Story features for kotor
Development philosophy as a service.
Continuous dev process

What is the smallest unit of willows

Connected gaming future is not one that can be built with less people
Can the industry survive it's connected future?

Easier to be smaller now
Don't have to ship to gold master to get space on the retail shelf
Everybody can do it

Look at lifetime revenue per user
Games as a service
Change tw metrics used to measure success - some are the metrics used in social games or on steam.

(why would anyone use playground now)

Min talks on korea
Pc cages function as a hub for players

Don't be binary
Give some away, sell some ..
Dlc is what used to be an expansion pack

Zynga

New content and features for retention and revenue
Revenue not necessarily the MOST important.
Build cimmunity by giving away content which builds revenue eventually

Bioware giuy
Can't replace a really creative person

Escapist question
Asking about arg
Valve game team came up with it
The people making it saying "I really know my audience and this will work"

Battle.net- are they going to aupport 3rd party?

We are not just game creators
We are entertainment creators

Min - you are creating another relationship with the user.
People are not going to think about your game as much but they will think about the other people they are playing the game with.

If you are a fan of your game - make cool shit that people will want - that's why we made action figures.




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Indie Summit Keynote: Randy Smith, Spider

Here is a long writeup on this talk from "mittens" - aka Trent Polack.

My Notes:
Basically, as Trent said, he is calling out the importance of:
* depth
* immediacy

I was glad to see that Trent and I were both kind of surprised to see the amount of time spent discussing all the case studies.
And also giving his blunt opinions of the other games.

My notes:

What does it mean to be indie?
Does not mean bad design

More powerful indie - better design

Canabalt
Flight control
- high level of engagement without reading rules

Discusses affordances
- stuff you can do
- large impact on the game state
- weaker - jump in place
- stronger - jump between things without dying
- mimal effort to experie

Crayon physics deluxe
Scribblenauts

Social games can learn from virtual worlds

What social games can learn from virtual worlds
Hangout games guy
Decided not to go to the indie game marketing one.

People who invite fewer people over a period of time are more effective.

Importance of retention increasing

How do virtual worlds retain their players
Player investment
-persistence
-creativity
Deep content
Fresh content
Service
Find ways to spend more on service vecause it pays off hugely
Concurrency
- community events, hosted, emergent
- most compelling - find ways for concurrency - fb is now so
asynchronous.
Enough content to allow players to interact - can't make content for
years
- the game is the icebreaker that forms community amongst the players.

Community

Monetization -
Retail -grandma
Subscription - tie to virtual world

Need a diversity of reasons to pay in order to monetize.

Hybrid
Cost of acquisition and scale of social
Long term retention of virtual world.l

Hangout has a mini game that you play when friends are not here

It is a pain to be embedded in facebook - they are planning to move
away from facebook eventually - connect to fb for the social graph but
not be in facebook as soon as the market will support

Amortize customer service across all the none - paying users
100 people paid for by 5 paying users

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Tiger Style Talk

Sent from my iPhone

GDC 2010: backwards order, Jim Munroe

Chris (aka @savetherobot) introduced me to Jim Munroe at GDC lunch today. He was really gracious in talking to me after Chris's departure and we walked over to the GDC Rant session together.

Here is a link to Chris's AV Club article re: Everybody Dies, Jim's award-winning interactive fiction.

Here is some reverse fandom, because like everyone else I have met at GDC, especially the people I met through Chris, I didn't realize how cool Jim was on meeting and chatting.

Even before I have seen anything that I should already know about, here's some interesting things that we connected on in person:
- on the basic business side, he is interested in making a point and click adventure game and so I tried to promote PlayGround SDK and PlayFirst in general. I hope he will pitch something to us. Maybe something even cooler than a straight download game.
- he is involved with a coalition of projects and people in support of Toronto's videogame communities called the Hand Eye Society (and is inspiring me to get involved in or start something similar here)
- I realized that I like creating communities also but I don't make the time to do it myself.
- he knows who Pat Murphy is
- he asked me if I had ever been to WisCon! (and has been there in the past and really liked it).

Here's the stuff that I was supposed to already know...
- http://nomediakings.org/about - short list
- 5 books after leaving Harper Collins, the most recent one a post-Rapture graphic novel called Therefore Repent! (he gave me a copy!)
Made this game which is awesome, as well as a text based social sim based on GDC 2009.
Everybody Dies (2008) [play it]
It starts with a metalhead, Graham, realizing that throwing that shopping cart over the bridge was not the great idea he thought it was. Even if it did get him out of washroom duty at Cost Cutters. Windows, Mac, Linux.

- also is a science fiction novelist
- and comic writer
- and movie maker (just one: My Trip to Liberty City (2003, 9 minutes) [watch it]
I try to stay out of trouble as a Canadian tourist in Grand Theft Auto III.)
- who appears to write about the same "post-Rapture/post-apocalyptic" stuff that I am fascinated with in The City Not Long After and The Stone War

Also I would like to be a fly on the wall for a panel discussion (or just a chat in a bar) between
Jim Munroe, Pat Murphy, and Richard Kadrey (after reading description of "Therefore Repent")

Female Game Industry CEOs

Doing a quick Google search to see how many more I can find, in addition to our own Mari:

Amy Jo Kim, CEO of Shufflebrain
Shufflebrain looks pretty cool actually.

And here is the top 100 women in games industry according to Edge Online:

Interesting article

Beyond Rockett and Purple Moon

Want to also read through the comments here to see what specific games they call out in terms of current games liked by these women and girls.

Agree that the Purple Moon games were not that fun.

Example - comment from NerD:Blatella:


12/29/09

Up until last year I worked for a game company. The gender mix was pretty evenly split. There was something interesting that happened there that was related to the game Beyond Good and Evil.

We were trying to find new and inventive things to add to a game we were producing, and I mentioned this game's camera feature in a couple of meetings with the producers and developers. There would always be a great deal of nodding from the women in the room, and quizzical looks from most of the men.

It turned out that I was the only man in the meeting who had played the game.

I find it disappointing when people I consider progressive in every other aspect of their lives won't play something with a female protagonist because it might somehow make them less manly.

Also this comment from
WednesdayAM:


12/29/09

While I do question the idea of girls wanting to "make friends" in games (since I've always been a loner type - which I blame on my middle-child-syndrome tendencies - and hated having to find other people to quest with when I tried WOW for all of one month), I can say this much - my boyfriend and I are butting heads when playing Super Mario Wii due to the simple fact that I want to jump every goomba, kill every piranha plant popping out of a pipe, and break every block to find all possible coins and hidden things, and often he just wants to beat the level and move on. But that's a habit I've had from my loner gaming days. I have girl gaming friends who have the same disposition as me on that, I have others who are more my boyfriend's style of gamer. A lot of this is not gender-specific, it's gaming-preference-specific.

Though, I will admit in a heartbeat that I hate first person shooters that usually end up being used for years solely as multiplayer killfests. Yes, killing your friends is fun for a bit, then it just gets old without there being a point. Give me a game with some open exploration but an actual win-point. I like to win. It's fun.