Game Geek Speak

Lots of folks are talking about how over-hyped social games are, how they are not at all social, how they’re just a fad, etc. But I think there’s something being missed in these rants.

The interesting thing to me about social games is the distribution platforms (ie, the social networks). Despite what anyone thinks about the hype, social sites as a gaming platform really is something new in that regard. Reach. I once marveled about the reach achievable through Mochi Media and Flash games, but that is dwarfed by the 400 million+ users of Facebook. That’s new, and it’s remarkable.

Never before has it been so easy to invite a friend to check out a game. No need to fire up an email client or even type. Your friend receives the message right on the site where the game will be played. No need to run another app or go to a different site (one you might not trust or that might crash your computer with too much bling).

Never before has the process/interface been so standardized (ie, very low friction) in between the friend getting the invite and getting into or out of the game. Everyone knows how to add or remove a game/app.

Never before have people felt so comfortable “installing” a game/app because they know the platform gives them control (unlike mailing lists, etc) over what communications they receive (or not) and when (if at all).

This converges with the growing power and ubiquity of Flash and other web browser technologies, giving rise to a huge number of highly accessible games (not all of them “casual”). These have existed before, but not on a platform like Facebook that brings so many other crucial factors into play, like reduced interface friction, user comfort, and low barriers to entry.

It’s still an uphill battle to get attention (and revenues), but it’s easier than out in the frontiers of the web, alone.

“Social games” seems to be the new black these days. And, yet, the social mechanics seem to boil down to nothing more than “collecting” as many “friends” as you can in order to unlock content. (Please imagine me using quote fingers dramatically when you see those quotes.)

For instance, some games have “quests” (in most games, that means one click).

These jobs sometimes require you to have a certain amount of friends in your “crew” or group or neighbors before you can access it. That really just means inviting players into the game and forgetting about them since they become a number.

Interestingly, this gives rise to “add me trains,” where a huge comment thread consists of players asking other players to add them as friends to increase their in-game friend count.

Or, you give a friend a gift to entice him or her to play the game. Gifting can be very fulfilling, but in this case it’s entirely in the service of marketing the game with sleight of hand. It’s not actually “social” in the way you expect when you say the word.

But…

…is this fun?! The answer depends on who you ask, but it’s not much fun to me. These games are certainly engaging because of the behavioral psychology behind their design, but I’m not sure that is the same as being fun.

There’s no meaningful interaction in most current “social” games. Your social graph is nothing but a marketing data mine for the developers. I don’t have a big problem with that on its own, because you do opt in. You don’t have to invite your friends. But the motivating factor is not the quality of the game, and I would wager that you won’t need to force your players to tell friends if the game is good enough.

I love the idea of shared worlds.

As I define it, a shared world game is where the gameplay alters the world state, and the world state alters the gameplay in a fun feedback loop. It’s really fascinating to think about the potential when players’ actions can change the world in which they play, and then that, in turn, can affect what players do next. It sounds like a blast to me.

It also happens to dovetail nicely with social games. I mean, here’s a chance to make them actually social! I don’t mean like “talky ha-ha” social. I mean like “negotiating with each other” or “participating in simple forms of governance within a game world” social. You know, the kind of social where you interact with other people and fun things happen as a result.

To be clear, these things don’t have to happen in synchronous, full-on MMO style. But it also doesn’t have to be a game as vacuous as most of what we see on Facebook today.

The time is ripe for a new kind of social game that is more than hollow mouse clicks on a plastic harvest. And I hope to make one soon.

Whoa. Unity really is going to be omni-platform!

I can’t wait to have a chance to make a web game that I then port to iPhone, Android, and XBox Live Arcade. This kind of thing can’t really be understated for small developers because the best way to maximize your revenue per game is to release it on as many platforms as possible.

Some highlights from the press release:

…major updates to Unity’s rendering capabilities, its physics features and significant optimizations to its core systems… [I hope this means PhysX and Mono upgrades!! Confirmed! Mono 2.6.x!]

Illuminate Lab’s Beast lighting software provides Unity developers with a complete global illumination solution for photorealistic scene lighting.

[Unity iPhone has] a very fast 2D sprite engine…

Global illumination and occlusion culling might be Pro-only features, but it’s still really exciting.

Set for release this Summer. Bring it on!!

Creating passionate users is NOT about finding ways to make everyone like you. It’s about finding ways to use your own passion to inspire passion in others.
via The Creating Passionate Users blog

Applies just as much with games as anything else.

Zynga has some massive MAU and DAU numbers, but I think you have to be pretty “middle ground” to be that main stream. I also think that’s why social games have a lower ARPU than “core” MMOs and the like.

It’s the hardcore players that will pay. You can certainly get some revenue out of the rest with ads, but I think it would be interesting to try to aim squarely at a specific audience and ignore the allure of being able to state that you have a zillion monthly active users. I’d love to know the ARPPU on that “mediocre” audience versus a passionate audience of 500,000.

“$40 for lips couch, selling like hotcakes.”
–Sebastien de Halleux, PlayFish, speaking about Pet Society

Whoa. I would *never* have priced a virtual couch at $40. Not because I think virtual goods are not worth money, but because my personal sense of value tells me that it’s not worth that price. But there are a lot of factors in play on that decision: my sense of what is fun, my desire to “show off” to other players, my personal income, and so on.

The big lesson here is, as someone famous said, “Value is what it’s worth to a customer; price is what you charge for it.”

We simply can’t comprehend what our players might be willing to pay or do based on our own judgment. I think, especially as indie developers who might not have as much business experience, it’s really hard for us to imagine the value of our products and then price accordingly. I see this a lot in downloadable games with prices like $3 or $5 or $9. If players love your game enough to pay even $1 for it, they probably will pay a lot more (price wars not withstanding).

Online games such as MMOs and social games implementing a virtual goods business model have a similar obstacle. When pricing virtual goods, pick a price that you think nobody would ever pay, then double it. Heck, I’d probably have to quadruple it! I would find it hard to image someone paying $10 for a couch in Pet Society. But to hear that it sells like hotcakes for $40 shows that I could be losing a lot of revenue.

So, start with a high price. You can always come down. Nobody complains about a price drop. You can also test price points with analytics to find the sweet spot.