Facebook games are old Play-By-Mail games

I was sitting in a meeting discussing Facebook games when the person who called the meeting listed some of the important facets of a successful game.

Engagement
Retention
Free and paid optional actions
Economic balance
Player to player social interactivity

Those of you that know ANYTHING about Play-By-Mail (PBM), know that these are the exact same issues. The biggest company in PBM was Schubel & Son. I met Mr Shubel at a Star Trek convention in 1976. It was before he got into PBM and his son was a toddler.  He understood the basic principles  of engagement, retention, free vs. paid options, economics and social interaction between players. While PBM was never a huge industry, there is no question that Schubel & Sons was a leading company.

This encourages the player to keep going, to come back, to be involved. This engagement, results in retention. The player must always be able to do SOMETHING.  This leads to Free and Paid options.  The free options are always available, even if they are limited by “energy” that must be regenerated over time. The player must only leave the game because they have other priorities, not because they have run out of options.

Paid options are the difference between a handgun and a M16.  They both have devastating affects, but the M16 has greater range and can deliver more bullets faster. While there are many possible examples, this is the one I use as a test with every feature of a PBM game or now, a Facebook game.

There are plenty of examples of the non-player characters, in Shubel & Son games, attacking without reason, and of course ANY battle resulted in a fee to the players account.  But as a player, knowing that at any time you could be attacked, you stayed always defensive, but also risky.

Typically turns in PBM games are weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly.  The fees were $4.00 or up to $15 a turn and people played these games for YEARS.  Because the basic principles were met.

The economy in a game is as important as being true to the theme.  If you’re in a Sci-Fi game, you might get out of sorts if your character has to wield a colt 45.  For the economics, if that colt 45 is 50 game bucks, and the bullets are 500, there is just as much of a problem. While that is an obvious and dramatic problem,  most economic problems are much more subtle.

A game designer I admire very much is Sid Meir.  One of his basic principles has been adapted by many game designers, including myself.  That principle is that the game should be playable as early as possible in the development process.  Getting the economy “playable” at the beginning of the process is just as important.  You need to know why the players buy a certain weapon, why they buy a spell or seem to gravitate towards a special ability more than the others LONG before the game goes public.  To leave these into the players hands without testing, is foolish. 

Schubel & son realized very quickly that players wanted much more than to just fight with each other.  They wanted to learn from experienced players, they wanted to form alliances and wanted communication avenues that allowed for a meta-game to be created.  They wanted to be able to negotiate the terms of surrender on a 1-1 level.

Unlike today with instant communication, in 1980 we had only snail mail.  But players used the in game communication systems to their maximum, and then asked to connect directly. It was this direction connection that pushed the games to a higher level, and that’s what Facebook does best.

So you think Mafia Wrs is new?  You think Farmville was discovered as a great design in Facebook gaming?  You think virtual good is new?  Think again, think about PBM.  Companies like Schubel & Son, Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo, these people created this business and we can learn a lot from them.  And if we ignore them as no or low tech, we’ll suffer the fate of those companies and games that didn’t follow the principles that they created.

What PBM have you played lately?  Farmville?  That’s a good one.

Mac

Define "Casual Game" please

When someone asks me what kind of “gamer” I am, i rarely say “hard core”.  But by most definitions I most likely am a hard core gamer.  But I think of myself as a casual gamer. I don’t have a huge library of games, sorry to disappoint you, and it takes a lot for me to buy a game at full price.

But there’s another definition, a casual GAME vs a hard core game.

Are casual games the type of game where we don’t care about the winner?  Is it that we don’t keep track of wins and losses, or is it a game where we don’t obsess over the little things that make us better at playing it.  Or is it how difficult the game is to play?

If you use the last one, when does a game become too difficult to not be considered casual?

LAst week I spent a good part of my Saturday shooting zombies in Left 4 Dead.  Normally I’d call that a hard core game… but… all you do is move and shoot.  Is there an easier game to play?

Or casual might refer to the subject matter.  One of my favorite games to play is Uno.  Its very simple and really easy to teach people how to play.  But if you have ever played this game on the XBOX using the camera, well, its not casual at all.  (I think I’ll do an entire post on what people do on that camera)

Image via Wikipedia

The most common distinguisher that I have heard is a simple question: “Would your Mom play this game?”.  Which for some small number of Moms the answer to the question with Left 4 Dead, is yes… My mom hates zombies. In her mind Left 4 Dead is a casual game.

But I think most of game developers don’t look at it the way my mom does.  We think of Uno, or Bubble Spinner (from AddictingGames.com) as more casual games.  A game we can leave in the middle of and not feel bad that we left our hard fought progress.

If we say that a casual game is one that’s easy to get into, the rules are easy to understand and we can leave quickly and easily with no remorse… how does World of Warcraft not qualify? With some 13 million people playing it I think we can assume that there are plenty of Moms, Dads, kid sisters and Aunts playing daily.

Can we use the program size?  If its a downloadable game, does that normally mean its casual?  Again WOW qualifies, but lets keep going.

Program size certainly isn’t apparent to the game buying public.  My mom has no idea how big a program is, she only knows it either comes through the Interweb or on a DVD.

Can we use price?  That would make every iPhone game made, and a few on XBLA, casual games.  We know that’s not true.

How about development budget?  Again the public doesn’t this figure, but it is a good indicator of depth.  If a game takes a long time to develop, there must be a lot of something in there.

Image via Wikipedia

Lets explore that depth idea.  Depth isn’t about a game that ends vs. a game that doesn’t.  There are also theoritical endings, in Bubble Spinner you could just keep popping bubbles forever.  But there is a limit to how long you can expect to be successful.

But depth of game play is our most likely dividing line.  Using depth we can see a clear division that makes sense.  WOW, Left 4 Dead (my mom aside), any game by ID or Sid Meir, these are not casual games.

Uno, Monopoly, Bubble Spinner, Tetris, these are all casual games using depth as our divider.

But where does SimCity land?  How about The Sims?   I realize, I just opened another can of worms.

So how do you define casual game?

Mac

Crunch time = Producer failure

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

What does “crunch time” mean?? In standard terms it means that the entire team is working insane hours. Some are sleeping at their desks and there is no weekend. Crunch time can happen any time in the project cycle but usually it occurs near the end, where the big milestones live.

I say it now, and I say it loud… if there is crunch time in a project THE PRODUCER HAS FAILED.

Really, I’m not kidding.

What does the producer actually MAKE during development, he or she makes the schedule. It’s tough to make these schedules because, as we all know, producers aren’t: artists, programmers, designers or even QA. Don’t get me wrong, the producer may fill these roles but it’s just because of some dire need, not because he or she’s the best on the team at that job.

And having made a few hundred of these schedules, I can tell you… it’s next to impossible to accurately predict what crazy artist #4 is going to do 16 months from now. But we do our best to estimate based on an 8-hour day, with weekends off. Sometimes we’re smart and we skip known holidays like… Christmas, 4th of July and MY birthday. (I usually give everyone a half day on my birthday, in case they want to gang up for a “pie in the face” type event.)

So the question that is maybe rambling around in your head is: How do you void this failure?

Great question!

The answer is, YOU don’t. You have a TEAM, the schedule is not ALL ABOUT YOU. It’s all about making everything MESH. You really don’t know how much crazy programmer #3 is going to produce in a day, but his or her boss better know!

At one company we tried the pre-production test cycle. We made one level of the planned twenty-seven level game. I joined the project later in the cycle, near the end of the test. I examined the result, time taken, shortcuts learned, and pronounced: “Your 27 levels have to be reduced to 6, to make the schedule.” I was instantly popular with the team, and the object of scorn from management. The sad truth was, I wasn’t conservative enough… should have been only 4 levels.

I could go on and on about how to make a schedule, but that’s another post. What I can tell you about crunch time, is… you as the Producer should see it coming, and do whatever it takes to avoid it. Crunch time in hindsight burns the team out, gives you a bad rep, and really… do you like it? No one does.

So don’t be proud of surviving crunch time, be proud that your team worked together and you never had to crunch!

Your turn…

Mac

America’s Army Dev Studio Closes Doors

Well here’s a non-shocker. The dev team was a great bunch of hard working guys, but there’s just only so much a group can do against the tide of bad management. I have no doubt that the GAME dev guys from their producer on down will be able to find jobs quickly. If any of them are reading this, I know they do, I’ll be glad to help in any way I can so shoot me an email.

Image via Wikipedia

Above the producer level was a layer of folks who had no business working on a game. I’m sure without a doubt that they were talented folks, but their focus in life was not to make a great game. When the ultimate person in charge was/is the Chief Accountant for the Army, there has to be a problem. What they needed was a very strong buffer between him, and the team. I never met the man, but my understanding from the team was that he was the yelling screaming motivator type. All my years of experience tell me, that type of manager fails to bring out a teams creativity.

Once you have an anchor to creativity, the game has no place to go but down. Even with great effort from a great team.

I felt sorry for the team when I was there. But after talking to a couple of team members long after my 7 hour stint there, I’m glad that I did not become more involved. I walked away thinking: “Great job, but wow what a challenge. I feel so sorry for whats coming…”.

Lets keep in mind, that due to government contracts… they couldn’t get a coke machine in their office!

Good luck to you guys and keep in touch.

Mac

wow… just… wow

OK, this is as good as it gets.  I agree with the comment: “Amazing, but too bad the game doesn’t look this good”

Ahead of the tech curve

Many days ago, I was a part time programming contractor for Origin Systems. I worked on a couple of canceled Commode 64 titles and helped with the conversations in Ultima V. When that project was completed I spent some time with Rich Garriott mostly to try to continue to have work to do. He was working on Ultima VI technology and I asked him a newbie type question: “Why are you working on tools that will help you create a game when few in the public have the processing and graphics power to play it?”.

The answer might be obvious: “By the time the game comes out, it will be more common”. He was thinking two years ahead, when I was thinking of today. It was a great lesson that I have carried with me ever since.

The one genre that must always push the tech edge is First Person Shooters. I worked on a couple of these and if the schedule is pushed out at all, the ugly head of “XXX game looks better” rears! And its also hard to argue with.

I’ve only worked on a couple of console systems and I was surprised o find that although the hardware is set in stone, the programmers were still expected to make ghames that looked better or did more with each generation.

While I was at SEGA, one of my bosses was approached by the marketing department.  They needed something to put in their print ads that showed SEGA had something better than Nintendo. They both had the same processor speed, basically the same graphics power… s0o we had to have some edge.  He called a meeting… we all bounced ideas around and out of know where, he said: “How about Blast Processing”.  We all laughed.  There was nothing in the Genesis that blasted anything, but it sounded fast.

I think I’ll just say that he was ahead of the marketing tech curve, and let it go at that.

Comments?

Mac

He’s dead Jim…

Image via Wikipedia

I’m still happy with the latest Star Trek film, and I’ve had 2 weeks to mull it over. Yes there are tech problems with parts of it… to many to list here, but I enjoyed how it all fell together. We even got to hear some great old Star Trek lines… but one that we didn’t hear: “He’s dead Jim..”. And I guess that’s a good thing…

But when do we know a game is dead? Its easy to look back and see, yes, no sales… its dead! But when do you stop making content for a game that has some DLC? When do you officially move on?

In board games we only do an expansion when the expected sales, 1/3 of the original sales, makes finanacial sense. That’s a hard thing to NOT do because as a designer and publisher, I think I can stir sales by subtley fixing some of the problems with the original. Also, it shows that as a publisher I support my products.

But at some point, its time to just hang it up. It doesn’t mean your product failed or that you did a bad job… it just means that the microsecond of our attention span has moved on. Recently I used a phrase: “Throwing sauce on the pig”, which means trying to dress up something that is not worth the effort.

As hard as it is, look at the sales and realize that a small percentage of those who already bought the game, will be buying the downloadable Content (DLC). If that number is not large enough to justify the production of the content, move on.

Comments? Need an example? Are you listening Germany?

Mac

What does the "user experience" mean

When I get to the game I love it… but how hard is it for the user to get there in the first place?

As we take steps into a world where the digital download is the preferred method of video game distribution, the method becomes very important. I recently mentioned in a post about a download that wanted to take 9 days, of course that’s ridiculous. I don’t think we need to have just ONE system, but whatever the number of systems, they need to be under 5 clicks, and 3 is a sweet spot.

That basically means, 3 clicks, and 2 screens. I will admit here, I have never used Steam so I can’t make any comment other than I have heard its a very good and clean system. I hope one of my readers will comment with details about Steam.

The “user experience” starts when they decide to buy your product, regardless if it will be downloaded or comes in the box.

I have seen some focus, rightfully, on the product but I have also seen to little focus on the delivery system. If you make it hard to get your product, then you’ll scare away so many customers that your product will suffer before its seen. At Broderbund my boss there explained to me that they created some really good game affects starting at level 50… and realized that the game was so hard that only 1% of their customers ever saw all the effort they put into it. This same problem applies to digital distribution.

One of the products I worked on had a fixed ship date that the developer wasn’t able to hit. The date moved around on them and there was some feature creep so it wasn’t a developer failure at all. As the Senior Producer on the product it was up to me to offer solutions. We added “Updates” button to the main product screen. When the player pressed the button, the product looked for an update, verified that the player wanted it, if a “yes” was the answer then it would download and install it, and rerun itself. One button update bought us weeks of dev time. Had it merely loaded a web page and then started a long trail of downloading and saving files, we would have lost customers.

Think about the stumbling blocks between you and the player enjoying the product. How many of those can you eliminate?

Your thoughts?

Mac

Going to E3

Every year that they’ve had a real E3, I’ve been there. I think most of you know that the last two years have been fake E3. They were press only events, invite only, and small. Although a few notable companies, Disney and Activision, had some really bad press events for the most part it was pretty boring and didn’t create any buzz… which is the entire point of the show!

I have a large collection of autographs of famous people, and all from E3. I was so junior at SEGA that I couldn’t secure a conference room to meet with developers. And standing in the booth was never a good situation… so I hit on the idea of standing in line to get an autograph and have our meeting. I would say to a developer: “Larry Bird is going to be at the Acclaim booth Saturday from 1-3, lets get in line at 12:30 and have out meeting”. Without fail, they showed up and we had a great meeting.

I repeated this over and over and never once did a developer fail to show up, or even be late!

So I’m going again, for a single day. I’m sure I’ll see old friends, and someone will ask me if I’m going to some big party… which I will say no because I have a flight back at 8. But it will be great to see the booths and how the companies struggle with the sound level and the women not wearing much.

(They could always do what Ripcord Games did, hire a beautiful woman and then put her in baggy clothes. I said: “Lets put a bag on her head and complete the picture”. I insisted we find clothes her size and suddenly she had a crowd around her and was doing the job she was hired to do.)

I have a million convention stories, from both E3 and CES. I loved CES because it was twice a year, in Chicago and Las Vegas, two great cities. I miss going to that show…

I’ll report back all of the vents of what will be a very busy day. But until then, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite William Shatner quotes from the first E3.

This has been great, see you all next year at E4!

Mac

I hate the monastery game Dev industry

I’ve been fortunate enough to have been a hiring manager at various times in my career. One of the first times was at US Gold, the men of the place had trouble making a commitment to hire a QA person. While I certainly agree that picking the right person for a QA job is important, lets keep in mind that it was an entry level position.

I firmly believe that this was a case of typical male’s not able to actually make a commitment. I asked them to re-interview their top 3 and then we’d pick one 3 days later. We followed that schedule and when it came right down to it we had two very qualified people and it was a toss up. I finally said: “Lets not have a monastery”.

We hired her and she worked out great. She has stayed in the industry and if recall from her last Linkedin update, she’s an Executive Producer. I couldn’t be happier for her. Since hiring her I have become sensitive to not only how hard it is to get INTO this industry, but how much harder it is if you’re a woman. I have hired many women into the industry, some are still in it and others are not… but they had a chance, an equal chance, to make it or go into another field.

I found a great blog on women in gaming, you can find it here: Dame Dev

Your comments?

Mac