tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30093414198362458852024-03-18T20:57:12.477-06:00Andreas Papathanasis' blogAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-16650146012396245802018-01-16T20:58:00.000-07:002018-01-16T21:20:01.570-07:00Player Relationship types in Hades’ Star<a href="https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AndreasPapathanasis/20150512/243195/Social_Games_and_their_opportunity_frontier.php">Social games</a> have an interesting property: The exact same feature can lead to significantly different experiences, depending on the relationship between the participating players.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>First, let's define three relationship types we'll be using.<br />
<ul>
<li><strong><u>CLOSE FRIENDS:</u></strong> These players know each other before they start playing, and have a relationship in real life.</li>
<li><strong><u>ONLINE ACQUAINTANCES:</u></strong> These players have met each other, went through shared experiences and as a result have a variable strength bond. Guilds/Alliances/Groups are typical ways online/social games create this kind of relationship. When strong enough this relationship can persist between games and in some cases even become elevated to Close Friends status.</li>
<li><strong><u>STRANGERS</u></strong>: Everyone else. In a large online world, most of the players are and stay strangers to each other.</li>
</ul>
These three types are generic and should apply to most social games. Other more specialized relationship types and sub-types exist, and some games can create and reinforce their own relationship types. But the three above are a good initial starting point when thinking about how prior interactions between players (or lack of such interactions) can affect their experience in a social game.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM8ZGJyDcKLmK8szt5E8jt2ua5A7XLOq_pdhA9JQnl5i4UQAZLpatlokpJ4kYL4fLQddvpK-iDpoC8Uo35abWfxQ7njRK8pS5f8IK3jWmJmvQnAc47ikoXrZu-yNXea0HNF0MM2hyphenhyphenido4/s1600/league-of-legends.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM8ZGJyDcKLmK8szt5E8jt2ua5A7XLOq_pdhA9JQnl5i4UQAZLpatlokpJ4kYL4fLQddvpK-iDpoC8Uo35abWfxQ7njRK8pS5f8IK3jWmJmvQnAc47ikoXrZu-yNXea0HNF0MM2hyphenhyphenido4/s400/league-of-legends.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">League of Legends is less enjoyable when played with strangers</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Often entire games (or their individual sub-features) are designed around a specific relationship type, and can break down badly when that assumption is violated. A version of Mario Party or <a href="http://www.spaceteam.ca/">Spaceteam</a> playable online with strangers would only provide an unbalanced, awkward, potentially toxic experience. Team based competitive games like League of Legends are typically less enjoyable when played with complete strangers, as opposed to a team that has been playing together for some time – especially when considering the quality of the social interactions.<br />
<br />
On this post, I present a case study from designing social features for our game, <a href="http://www.hadesstar.com/">Hades' Star</a>, while keeping different relationship types in mind. I will describe how the features worked out in practice when released to actual players, and how they break down when the relationship among players isn't the expected one. In some cases, this break down was a surprise to us. Other social designers may find some of the insights helpful.<br />
<br />
Hades' Star is a persistent space strategy game, <a href="https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AndreasPapathanasis/20150715/248581/Improving_on_the_promise_of_Master_of_Orion.php">loosely inspired by Master of Orion</a>. In the game, players colonize planets, mine asteroid fields, establish trade routes and fight AI ships to expand into their own corner of space (the "Yellow Star" area they are assigned to). By default, no other players are allowed access to that Yellow Star. Interaction with other players happens via separate features, as described below. We designed these features specifically to target the three different player relationship types defined above.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo338gKw1-LhKdo5X34WAUeFPdn8-WNB3MaC2S2aMxP9hexxXUc_2wGb16M1lVkS-0UlDt3Urhs8PaHc0bdi6ETL3YN3MEJto5sqxywaflq7MW2APFy7tG4kfEIb47sZmnmQvrE6rPND4/s1600/device_screen_4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="575" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo338gKw1-LhKdo5X34WAUeFPdn8-WNB3MaC2S2aMxP9hexxXUc_2wGb16M1lVkS-0UlDt3Urhs8PaHc0bdi6ETL3YN3MEJto5sqxywaflq7MW2APFy7tG4kfEIb47sZmnmQvrE6rPND4/s400/device_screen_4.jpg" width="223" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In Hades' Star, players start alone, and have some choice on how and where they meet other players</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>
<br />
CLOSE FRIENDS AND DIPLOMACY</h3>
After a few days of progress, players have the option to construct a Diplomacy station. That station allows them to link their Yellow Star to another player's Yellow star, enabling both players to jump their ships to the other player's home area. There are some benefits to sending ships, like helping the other player with combat against AI, and trading.<br />
<br />
From the beginning, Diplomacy was designed to be an optional feature exclusively for close friends who happen to play the game together. It can be completely skipped without significantly sacrificing progression rate.<br />
<br />
We regularly hear from close friends, relatives, and couples, that they enjoy this feature as it brings into their hobby another person they care about. Very often one or more of the close friends participating are playing extremely casually, largely ignoring the rest of the game’s features. They just show up daily partially because they way to interact more with the person they care about.<br />
<br />
Close friends are not the only types of players that use our Diplomacy feature. We have also seen it used among strangers. Some players prefer combat to trading, and vice versa. Those players have found they can use the Diplomacy feature to link their star to another player that can do for them the trading or combat daily activities they don't like. They find such helpers by asking in public chat channels. Seeing a feature designed for close friends also bring some strangers together has been really cool.<br />
<br />
We have yet to hear of a player having a bad social experience with our Diplomacy feature. We attribute this to the rigid rules we use to guard this feature against strangers trying to grief each other. We do not allow any kind of direct attack against the other player, and guard against unwanted behavior by allowing a player to instantly end diplomacy at any time (this will send the other player’s ships back to their home star).<br />
<br />
<h3>
RED STARS: ZERO SUM AND STRANGERS</h3>
The main 10-minute loop in our game is the Red Star mission. Every day, players send their battleships to procedurally generated star systems that have very short lifetime, contain planets with valuable Artifacts, and must fight the AI ships guarding the planets in order to escape with the loot. Red Stars are open to everyone: most systems will have 2-5 players participating at the same time. These players cannot attack each other, but they can work together to take out the guarding AI ships.<br />
<br />
From the beginning, we knew that because of their matchmaking mechanism, Red Stars would generally pit strangers together. Our initial, naive assumption was that we could encourage cooperative gameplay between the 2-5 strangers. In practice, most players saw Red Stars as a competitive mode, with the goal being to take more Artifacts than the other players. They would use “friendly fire” effects in ship abilities to slow down or neutralize other players. The minority of the players who wanted to play cooperatively cried foul. Naturally, the entire situation wasn’t good for the community and against the positive spirit of cooperation we wanted to promote.<br />
<br />
In retrospect, the reason for this failure is obvious. We tried to design a cooperative mode out of a zero-sum experience (in Red Stars, Artifacts are shared which means one player’s gain is another’s loss). This is extremely hard to accomplish when the participating players are strangers. <a href="http://www.lostgarden.com/2017/01/game-design-patterns-for-building.html">Daniel Cook’s phenomenal work on Game Design Patterns for building friendships</a> describes how when there’s no pre-existing relationship between two players, loss aversion and other factors make it less likely for a positive reciprocity loop to start developing.<br />
<br />
If we could design this mode from the beginning, we would try making the whole experience non-zero sum (i.e. separate Artifacts per player). In the end, we kept the “competitive” Red Star mode since many players enjoyed it, and it fits with the game’s theme (a lawless area of space, where pirates and bad behavior by other actors can be expected). We were still able to offer a separate version of Red Stars that matches our original cooperative vision, giving an alternative to players interested in playing with online acquaintances or close friends.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguwDE5xep7IR6KjpAfB4WfkTx70nrRyZy_X2C8hF_0xKWJ49NGk43g0SlqQyFpEYU6zqNT2Zmc8KKnDUrUHKxgICxpqhIfW7YruhNemSdZsrqZ2XjCqJtTftwsZD-zQvmPyHfuITco340/s1600/hs1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="899" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguwDE5xep7IR6KjpAfB4WfkTx70nrRyZy_X2C8hF_0xKWJ49NGk43g0SlqQyFpEYU6zqNT2Zmc8KKnDUrUHKxgICxpqhIfW7YruhNemSdZsrqZ2XjCqJtTftwsZD-zQvmPyHfuITco340/s400/hs1.jpg" width="223" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Red Stars initially failed to give the social experience we were aiming for</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h3>
REPLACING STRANGERS WITH ACQUAINTANCES</h3>
Hades' Star offers a feature where players can group together in so called Corporations. Such social structures that allow player grouping is a classic way MMOs turn people from Strangers into Online Acquaintances. The quality of the shared experiences players go through together determines the strength and quality of the relationships.<br />
<br />
In the initial version of the game, Corporations simply offered a common chat area where players could talk daily to other players in a more private setting than the very noisy general chat channel. Even with this small feature, many Corporations created real bonds between players, via daily interactions involving mainly questions around the game and helping newer players advance.<br />
<br />
With Corporations in place, we had an obvious way to turn Red Stars into an experience between acquaintances, not strangers. A few months after launch we introduced Private Red Stars, which could only be accessed by players of the same Corporation. As expected, we found that these Red Stars offered a completely different experience.<br />
<br />
When part of a smaller group, and because they knew they would interact with the group again, players abandoned all tendencies to be selfish in Red Stars. Instead the pattern of players joining Red Stars with the sole purpose of helping newer players became much more frequent. Most Corporations created implicit or explicit rules about not stealing artifacts from other members, and even the ones that didn’t quickly got rid of a few rare bad apples that didn’t follow this expectation. We have never heard any complaint about stealing in private Red Stars. Even if it does happen, the solution is simple: A player could simply search for a better Corporation.<br />
<br />
<h3>
WHITE STARS, AND THE CHOICE TO GATE ACCESS TO SPECIFIC RELATIONSHIP TYPES</h3>
Our newest feature (Corporation vs Corporation) expects online acquaintances to be pitted against strangers. This mode pits two teams of 5-20 players each in a shared White Star area, where the goal of each team is to collect the most resources. Moving ships in this mode takes a very long amount of time (the entire game lasts 5 days), effectively making the whole experience asynchronous. Similar to games like <a href="http://subterfuge-game.com/">Subterfuge</a> and <a href="https://np.ironhelmet.com/#landing">Neptune’s Pride</a>, this gives a lot of time for chatting and coordinating with fellow Corporation members. Unlike those games, each player has the same goal with their Corporation mates, so there’s no “let’s make a fragile pact now that we’ll certainly break later” nonsense. It is not possible to communicate with the enemy Corporation – they’re just there to provide the cunning and unpredictability of a human opponent, not for social interaction.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz_Cbi-SDXEZ6lb5qHb4nJgjptQatkcqFbHOHm6k6Ob6-OlebuoK2bSW8_DCGv-P0XQskjJ49blNj-9XUUz6gosWl1yohozYjr-0vW0GDON9thtppRzjUVKtP9akcOch_HYumzswuVOBg/s1600/ws.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="952" data-original-width="535" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz_Cbi-SDXEZ6lb5qHb4nJgjptQatkcqFbHOHm6k6Ob6-OlebuoK2bSW8_DCGv-P0XQskjJ49blNj-9XUUz6gosWl1yohozYjr-0vW0GDON9thtppRzjUVKtP9akcOch_HYumzswuVOBg/s400/ws.png" width="223" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With 10-40 players in each match, White Stars is the most social feature in the game</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Team based cooperative games often suffer when the team is composed of complete strangers. The more experienced players can be toxic to players who haven't made a lot of progress or aren’t as skilled. By offering this feature only to Corporations, we have pre-emptively worked around many of those issues.<br />
<br />
Players who tell us about their first White Star experience always mention the positivity of figuring it out along their Corporation members, even when that first experience is negative for other reasons (i.e. because the Corporation they got matched against is much stronger than theirs). We have heard countless stories of people bonding, sticking together against the odds, implementing and changing plans for hours.<br />
<br />
Of course, the quality of the relationships in a given Corporation is fundamental to the experience its players get in White Stars. Most of the dedicated players have figured out how to create or join well functioning Corporations that help them get the most out of the feature. What we love seeing the most is that there’s no specific organizational structure that works the best. Some of the most successful Corporations in White Stars are dictatorships, relying on the specific instructions of one or two players on how to proceed. Others are more open, with players voting or simply doing what they think is best with their own ships. Different approaches work for different players, both in terms of getting positive results and for enjoying the feature itself. We now have some extremely close-knit groups in the game, that have gone through many White Stars together. That’s great, as this was precisely one of the main goals of the feature.<br />
<br />
On the other side, players in low quality Corporations that don’t communicate or cooperate usually get a bad impression of the feature and don’t participate again. This is expected – our goal now is to help educate players on the advantages of organized Corporations, to the extent we can.<br />
<br />
Choosing to make White Stars accessible only to Corporations has its cost. Not every player is interested in joining a Corporation, so a big chunk of our player base can’t access what is possibly the best feature in the game. Lower player numbers are also an issue for matchmaking: If we allowed teams of strangers, the player pool would be bigger leading to more fair matches. We understand the cost and happily choose to pay it in order to deliver our proper vision for white stars. For your social game, you should consider whether the cost of limiting a feature only to certain relationship types is worth it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-66385284985002686252017-07-21T09:24:00.000-06:002017-07-21T09:26:51.207-06:00Why we will never show ads in our mobile gamesIn the challenging business around mobile games, ads have emerged as a popular way of making money, especially for smaller independent developers. It’s easy to see why. They pay well, partly thanks to the success of other service-based games (many of which are not themselves ad-supported). They offer a well understood and relatively predictable revenue stream that is very easy to integrate in any game, often with minimal or no design changes. In an era where everyone is talking about confusing metrics and reworking designs so they’re more suitable with the free to play model, showing ads can be a convenient fallback that gives piece of mind from all that.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>When walking into a challenging and uncertain environment like mobile games are, it’s generally a good idea to stay flexible and keep an open mind on different approaches. This of course includes business models. Despite that, when choosing a business model for our new mobile games team, we are comfortable saying that we will never, for any reason, allow ads to be shown in <a href="http://www.hadesstar.com/play.html">Hades' Star</a> or any other games we might make in the future. This post explains why.<br />
<div>
<br />
<h3>
Service-Based games </h3>
While harder to make and maintain, service-based games (i.e. games that constantly evolve over many years of constant updates) have many advantages over one-off games on the app stores. They offer the game multiple chances at visibility and coverage, instead of just once at launch. They are better suited to building a community over time. I believe <a href="https://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/05/social-games-and-their-opportunity.html">the next generation of truly social games</a> can only be delivered by game services, not fire-and-forget products.<br />
<br />
For these and other reasons, we have decided to only build service-based games. Ads do not belong in these kinds of games.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Building trust over time</h3>
I see service based games as a long term and constant interaction between the developer and the player. If the player likes the game and there is enough content, they stick around logging in daily for months or even years. Every single time they log in, and over time, that player receives messages from the developer that tells them a lot about what the developer thinks of the game and its players. Does the game feel balanced and fair? Does it reward the time players put in over time? Do the updates address the right issues? Does the user interface facilitate the right kinds of tasks, especially ones that need to be repeated daily? Depending on the game type, there are countless little and big design decisions that affect different player's perception of the developers and the game over time.<br />
<br />
These decisions can create, solidify, erode or destroy trust between the developer and players.<br />
<br />
Operating a service-based game can be seen as a mission to build trust with players, through these constant interactions and back and forth messages. Building trust doesn't mean everything has to be perfect, or that problems have to be fixed instantly, or that developers only work on the features that the majority of the players think they should implement. It does mean showing the players that the development team is made of capable people who genuinely care about the game, listen to their community, and have a solid vision for the future. This kind of trust can be a massive driver of retention. Players *will* stick around even when a game's late content is severely broken, and even help fix things, if they have built enough of that kind of trust with the developer.<br />
<br />
Asking players to watch ads to access the game, or to progress faster, is the worst kind of message a developer can send to their players.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQiFKq7PGuhB7vtHNQPQqCb5Qr9E_qzT9V99wnWSW9Z6FpuL3TW0sMhN5ISBiCrSbSIgSuvobsyVd0dFUuy95x9LanXR4rX354oxX3kHBmW17QTE_MXqHzCme85EV_NwxeGrjCdczZpwY/s1600/incentivized_ad.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQiFKq7PGuhB7vtHNQPQqCb5Qr9E_qzT9V99wnWSW9Z6FpuL3TW0sMhN5ISBiCrSbSIgSuvobsyVd0dFUuy95x9LanXR4rX354oxX3kHBmW17QTE_MXqHzCme85EV_NwxeGrjCdczZpwY/s320/incentivized_ad.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
When I see a popup like the above in a game, I might view it to get the rewards, but the following things also happen:<br />
<ul>
<li>The game's quality has been immediately cheapened in my eyes (I always associate anything with ads as a B-list experience)</li>
<li>I doubt the game's developers genuinely care about their own game ("Who would be ok with their game showing random videos of other games or products?")</li>
<li>I am much less likely to keep playing, especially if this kind of interaction is required daily (it usually is)</li>
</ul>
In addition, ads require a huge number of players constantly watching them to work. Building long term trust works slowly over time, and is much harder to do with very large player bases that grew fast, like many successful ad-supported games have. We'd much rather build trust directly with a small, very passionate segment instead and grow slowly from there.<br />
<br />
<h3>
What about in-app purchases?</h3>
Some might argue that in-app purchases are also an annoying experience that destroys player trust, similar to viewing ads. Though in app purchases can definitely be as bad (or worse) depending on the implementation, there are fundamental differences:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>In app purchases can (and should) be hidden completely from the majority of players who are not interested in ever spending anything. Trying to do something similar with ads would cripple its efficiency: A game that only shows ads to 5% of its players won't make any money, even with large player numbers. </li>
<li>An in-app purchase is a direct interaction between a player and the developer. Ensuring an honest transaction where the player feels satisfied with their purchase is one of the most important interactions that build the trust described above. With ads, you can only destroy trust. The actual way you destroy it may vary (and you can't control that either): Maybe the ads are low quality, or players don't care about them, so they begrudgingly go through them. Or maybe they'll be really intrigued by an ad you show them, and start trusting that game's developer instead. Nobody ever built trust with their players because players remember they saw an interesting ad in their game.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
There are a lot of people whose salaries depend on every game showing as many ads as possible, coming up with reasons why ads make sense for developers. They go as far to argue with a straight face that players love viewing ads. Our inbox is full of their offers to "help". We'd rather focus on creating meaningful relationships with our players instead.<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-18244814163037103522016-10-18T22:51:00.000-06:002016-10-18T22:53:00.298-06:00The attempts to bring "AAA quality" games to mobile - and why they are failingLast year, <a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/05/the-tech-arms-race-in-aaa-and-why-im.html">I wrote about my experiences in what I saw as a tech arms race in AAA PC/console games</a>. To recap: I've gone from playing games because of their impressive use of technology to playing games because they're fun. I've slowly come to discover the obvious: The two are not corellated. I have grown increasingly frustrated by AAA's insistence on maximizing hardware use regardless of game's actual needs - an insistence that's largely responsible for out of control complexity and costs.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>For reasons I mentioned in that article, I have no doubt the arms race will continue, despite <a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-10-06-were-definitely-at-the-point-where-somethings-gotta-give">rare insider speakouts against it</a>. Already, both Microsoft and Sony have revealed their plan for more frequent hardware updates during a console lifecycle. In fear of being left behind by the competition, tech executives will mandate game teams implement features and content that pushes the new hardware to its limits. In response, game teams will complicate their technology base and overall development process even more, suffer more crunch, use more time and money to deliver buggier games, but with the usual diminishing visual improvements that we'll all be testing our vision with when staring at side by side pictures comparing how the game looked on earlier hardware.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Tech obsession on mobile platforms</h3>
Meanwhile, in the mobile games I've been working since, there is not really a tech arms race, despite the fact that phone and tablet hardware is getting closer to console quality and still advancing rapidly. That's because most of the successful mobile game companies are smart enough to see the race as a huge, expensive distraction and are instead focusing on far more important aspects of making and marketing games.<br />
<br />
Still, there have been many attempts over the past few years to bring "console quality" games to phones and tablets. Some them have been by established AAA companies. <a href="http://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/09/04/eas-aggressive-plans-for-frostbite-go">Here's an EA executive revealing a very common attitude among AAA studios:</a> that mobile games are not mature (they're not even "real" games) until they start participating in the tech arms race:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
we’re going to start making games on Frostbite Go that will be featuring things that you’ve seen in the regular Frostbite code, like destruction and those types of things. We think we can do something dramatic there, with the mobile sector, and make <em>real</em> games on those machines.</blockquote>
<div>
Some mobile startup companies also choose to go through the very expensive investment of building a custom "console quality" engine, because they believe such advanced technology (and the people who can create it) will be the key differentiating factor for their game. <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/225366/Why_Super_Evil_Megacorp_built_a_proprietary_mobile_MOBA_engine.php">For instance: </a></div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Super Evil Megacorp sees its investment in proprietary engine tech as a beacon for attracting developers interested in building graphically-intense mobile game</blockquote>
</div>
It's not just traditional AAA companies and mobile startups seeing that approach promising. <a href="http://corporate.kabam.com/fewer-bigger-bolder-kabam-is-singularly-focused-on-aaa-mobile-games/">Kabam is now betting on the premise that games with "console quality" elements will do better</a>. In an era where many other direct competitors are focusing on experimenting with finding fun concepts as fast and as wide as possible, Kabam seems to be taking a different course, going as far as to say "...we have cancelled games in development that are not AAA quality"<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
<h3>
What does "AAA quality" mean, anyway?</h3>
If, like myself, you've been paying attention to gaming culture for a long time, you probably associate the term "AAA quality" with tons of hand-crafted content, advanced 3D engines that use the latest hardware to its fullest extent, complex/lifelike/realistic particle systems and animations, etc - the stuff that's typically so expensive, only companies who can hire 300 person teams can do them. Supporting this, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry)">Wikipedia tells us</a> the term AAA is "...used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion. A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high quality game..." This is what I, and the quotes above, are referring to when talking about "AAA" or "console-quality" games.<br />
<br />
But outside games, "AAA quality" means the best quality product. If someone who didn't grow up with our definition read that Wikipedia page, they'd be inclined to believe that only the most expensive games are any good. That's a ridiculous notion.<br />
<br />
We have all been so conditioned by this that we don't even apply the term AAA to games that are otherwise generally accepted to be very high quality. Minecraft? "Sorry, too pixely". Portal? "Maybe if it had more guns and lasted at least 8 hours, then it could be AAA". Spelunky? "What's wrong with you, it's not even 3D".<br />
<br />
The fact that many of us consider "AAA" (as in "best quality") to be equivalent to technical excellency, great amount of content and complex 3D engines is a sad consequence of living in a bubble of our own making. I won't go too deep into it, because <a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/05/the-tech-arms-race-in-aaa-and-why-im.html">I covered this in my previous post</a>. People who play mobile games don't live in the same bubble, or at least recognise that there are far more important elements to what makes a mobile game high quality.<br />
<br />
When some companies say they are "bringing AAA quality games to mobile", they are primarily talking about bringing the technical excellence and amount of content AAA console games have, believing or hoping that such technical excellence will automatically translate into higher general quality of the game. But it is my position that the two are not correlated and, even worse, forcing a team to prioritize technology and content types found on console games is a bad idea on mobile.<br />
<br />
<h3>
"AAA-quality" games aren't doing that well on mobile</h3>
Judging by what we see so far on the app stores, it's fair to say that the "AAA quality games on mobile" approach is not working that well, despite support from the platform holders (Apple for example <a href="http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/9/6127259/vainglory-iphone-6-moba-game-apple">heavily showcases games that use the Metal API</a>). <a href="http://toucharcade.com/2015/09/11/ea-quietly-removes-flight-control-real-racing-and-other-classics-from-the-app-store/">EA had lots of console-like games (including Dead Space and Mass Effect: Infiltrator) removed from the app store</a> because they weren't popular enough to warrant an update to work with the latest iOS version. No game comes to mind that has found any significant long-ish term success primarily because it pushes the hardware in ways other games don't. Just out of personal curiosity, for years I've occationally looked at the top 100 grossing games and asked myself the question, "How many of these games wouldn't be as popular if they weren't using advanced 3D technology that pushes the phone to its limits?". My answer has always been 0, though depending who you ask it could be argued that maybe 3-4 out of 100 games fit that criteria. Of course, being in the top 100 isn't the golden test of success for everything, but usually investing in AAA quality technology means bigger than average teams - for those teams, being out of the top 100 makes it much less likely to see a recoup on their investment.<br />
<br />
Why are those attempts failing? There are some juveline arguments ("mobile players don't care about good games"). There's the classic arms race participant mindset that says "mobile tech isn't there yet". Better arguments note that such attempts almost always try to bring PC/console-style gameplay to mobile devices (with noteable exceptions, such as the Infinity Blade games). There are <a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-02-12-taking-console-gaming-mobile">obvious arguments</a> about why console-type gameplay is not really suited on mobile. <a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2016/01/vainglory-vs-clash-royale-and-future-of.html">I used such arguments when comparing two great games</a>, one of which didn't really fit the mobile platform.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOuF3up92hQptw1tsELV_hxE9hA6tUwopkI_CL7CHOmhJoLXcz8OPhnrwIphQP1yVrT8cJrgAPo1BW0QCPceZJ3JjPSRvQrgpNQkUFdOaAu9tJLCXh-Rd931u_c9GU7W2JzcX-qe-qqiw/s1600/oz-broken-kingdom_sc_1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOuF3up92hQptw1tsELV_hxE9hA6tUwopkI_CL7CHOmhJoLXcz8OPhnrwIphQP1yVrT8cJrgAPo1BW0QCPceZJ3JjPSRvQrgpNQkUFdOaAu9tJLCXh-Rd931u_c9GU7W2JzcX-qe-qqiw/s400/oz-broken-kingdom_sc_1.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Oz: Broken Kingdom has impressive cutscenes during and between combats - but they interrupt gameplay flow and cause excessive loading times<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I agree that attempts to bring "console quality/AAA" games usually come with baggage that's counter-productive on phones and tablets. Cutscenes (often unskippable) that completely mess up the flow when players are looking for a quick session. Excessive loading times (some times over 30 seconds!) and general sluggishness also discourage very common playing patterns. Massive content downloads on the launch that matters the most - the first one. Heavy content uses up more memory, making it very likely the game will need to do a full reload next time it is launched. Impressive "life-like" visuals sometimes make it too hard to distinguish foreground objects that really matter to gameplay.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Gn_yuYSwyzz8yBlMG4Fb2NMXkqlpl8JuMJJ98Ta_4YhquyGEhoayiAyv3Cv1sILYxxtY-NJtu0IdKDQkiwWI3vDGIYNtsHL9WsWb8RiM_c_6MGZAJ6fMvHse7gPsd5mZa1l97G61Y8k/s1600/crytek.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Gn_yuYSwyzz8yBlMG4Fb2NMXkqlpl8JuMJJ98Ta_4YhquyGEhoayiAyv3Cv1sILYxxtY-NJtu0IdKDQkiwWI3vDGIYNtsHL9WsWb8RiM_c_6MGZAJ6fMvHse7gPsd5mZa1l97G61Y8k/s400/crytek.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">The Collectables visuals were impressive, also made gameplay confusing<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div>
<h3>
Different kinds of "best people"</h3>
<a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/06/unleashing-power-of-small-teams.html">I've written before about what I think can make small teams really stand out</a>. I think those guidelines can help teams of any size, but are far more practical to implement in small teams, like the ones found in mobile games.<br />
<br />
As described in that post, many companies talk about hiring "the best people", but without proper qualification, that talk can get in the way of hiring the ideal people for a given job. Qualifying "best people" as those having deep technical expertise (as companies attempting to bring "AAA quality" games to mobile are very likely to do) sets a very dangerous starting point.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm25MoQDn-BjUEVdH3DP_WA22CTtHTtYVh0Nd__RNVx3Og88WFwCX_cGcIemE82KDfvxaMlowWjSrG7SW_M-x-4W0Kp58iZ2BVUGtZscrnHkKuSx8nz3WIjlTROxElhp6_Nk3Q7SDkQjY/s1600/t-shaped.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm25MoQDn-BjUEVdH3DP_WA22CTtHTtYVh0Nd__RNVx3Og88WFwCX_cGcIemE82KDfvxaMlowWjSrG7SW_M-x-4W0Kp58iZ2BVUGtZscrnHkKuSx8nz3WIjlTROxElhp6_Nk3Q7SDkQjY/s400/t-shaped.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
When I was working on AAA games, I thought it was slightly weird for some developers to argue that players should not be able to skip cutscenes. "We worked hard on making it", "It's necessary to understand the story", "It's really cool", none of those seemed to me like a good enough reason to not allow a player to skip that content if that's what they really wanted to do. Still, it wasn't that big of a deal. If someone is sitting on a PC or console playing a long session game, they can reasonably expect to look at 2 minute cutscenes every now and then.<br />
<br />
But seeing the same attitude on some supposedly "AAA-quality" mobile games is eye-opening. One of two things happened there: Either nobody on the team thought not allowing skipping of cutscenes is a bad player experience on mobile, or (more likely) the people who thought so were overruled. In either case, this is an example of how a tech-focused team can make patently bad decisions in the mobile space. Other decisions that are not as obviously bad can still creep up and significantly affect the player experience. For instance, not everyone is good at controlling a 3D camera. Merely forcing 3D with a rotateable camera because "it's cool" (<a href="http://www.pocketgamer.biz/asia/interview/55280/going-core-faceroll-games-on-bringing-3d-graphics-and-heroes-to-the-mobile-strategy-genre/">like this team for example</a>), is generally a bad thing because it adds complexity to the user experience (and to the development) for no good reason.<br />
<br />
This is why I believe it is important when qualifying "good developers" to start from T-shaped individuals who have wide experience, are primarily driven by making good games and understand the platform, and then look at how they fullfil technical requirements - not the other way around.<br />
<br />
When EA is building their mobile technology primarily around what has worked on consoles and delivers "destruction and those kinds of things", when Kabam is presenting their vision as "AAA-quality first" to potential new hires, when Super Evil Megacorp is using their engine to attract developers who primarily want to build "graphically-intense mobile games", they are all making it far more likely to end up with teams that are technology-driven than game-driven.<br />
<br />
People who are obsessed with technology have different goals that people who are obsessed with the game they're making. They both may understand that what the player sees is extremely important, but they'll interpret that importance and seek to achieve a good visual experience in completely different ways. People who care about the game are more likely to seek game-specific solutions (often low-tech and easier to achieve), while also keeping in mind other limitations that affect player experience. People who care about the technology are more likely to seek techniques that are expensive (both on the hardware and on development), because they see that as their mission and a way to advance their craft.<br />
<br />
With mobile teams being generally much smaller than AAA teams, having even one or two such tech-obsessed people can negatively affect the entire team. Suddenly, decisions that should be obvious turn into complex politics. Whether the game should load fast becomes a "matter that has to be balanced" with the amount of content. Whether the player is allowed to skip long cutscenes on a mobile phone suddenly needs long meetings to be decided. Concerns around the user experience are brushed aside, using prior console experience as a guideline ("it doesn't really matter if they wait to download a lot of content, it's just the first launch").<br />
<br /></div>
If you are thinking about betting your mobile future on "AAA quality" graphics, or working for a company that does, make sure the people you will be working with have the right priorities. And I wish you the best of luck in picking technology with the purpose of driving actual innovation in the mobile space, instead of just relying on the unfocused tech arms race that has worked so far on consoles.<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-246385988331929962016-07-11T20:48:00.000-06:002016-07-11T20:54:18.471-06:00Announcing Hades' Star<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, my partner and I are excited to announce Hades’ Star, an original, social, persistent online strategy game <span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">designed for mobile devices</span>. </span><a href="http://www.hadesstar.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The game’s newly launched web site</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has some initial information, and will be updated with more information over the next several months as development continues.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With this announcement post, I wanted to focus on two things. First, some personal background on why create this particular kind of game. Second, some thoughts on the current business environment on mobile platforms, including a promise of sharing any resources we can with other small studios making service-based games. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="224" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/2kC-NlNwSfvja8HiltTwDdIF9ndLyRuc9yNEcWCNQO8kDqksRNcxF15xg2CwFmo4Ymt3QFljoGObq0hA0gJu_4_US08YcBBYnOTSx-hH0Iu9uWDbC-cgpdirBSpiSPhYg8wsoAA1-izXxjBdMw" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="400" /></span></div>
</div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a name='more'></a>Why this game?</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I recently found myself in the extremely privileged position of being able to create any kind of game I want, I had little trouble deciding what that game should be. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hades’ Star will try to fulfil </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/07/improving-on-promise-of-master-of-orion.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what I saw as the promise of Master of Orion</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, one of my all time favorite games. This does not mean it’s a similar game to Master of Orion. The differences are radical: This is a game that is played over many short intervals each day (instead of hour-long sessions), it’s persistent (you never start over), it’s online only, it has no distinct alien races, and the diplomacy is mainly a chat window where human players have the option to talk to each other. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But what I am trying to achieve with these radical changes is to capture some of the feelings I had when I was playing Master of Orion many years ago, in a way that’s compatible with my current time and attention patterns. The feeling of wonder when exploring, claiming, expanding on a corner of space you can truly call your own. The suspense of diplomacy, best experienced with other human players, especially when game rules explicitly support meaningful social interactions. And the excitement of strategic decisions that carry impact, shape the world and cannot be rolled back. We will judge and keep updating the end game based on how well it delivers on the immutable goal of recapturing these feelings, with the other implication being that this judgment will happen over the long run. We are interested in creating and supporting a game that can be played for months or years, not finished in a week. We want to create a world that many people can participate in, set long term goals, and help it evolve and stay interesting for a long time. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What I also find interesting, is how different this game is today, compared to what I would have wanted to make 10 or 20 years ago. My younger self would never understand why I’d make these radical changes. </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/05/the-tech-arms-race-in-aaa-and-why-im.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He would confuse realistic graphics and other uses of cutting edge technology with overall game quality</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. He would wonder how anyone could like a game that’s not meant to be played for hours straight, that’s not meant to be “immersive”. Myself today, on the other hand, </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/04/the-time-problem.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">would probably have quit games completely if it wasn’t for accessible games</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, especially on mobile devices.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While recapturing the feelings of exploration, diplomacy and strategy is the constant driving force behind the design of Hades’ Star, the actual features and implementation details are still in flux, with many ideas already in the dust bin and many more likely to follow. Perhaps some of those rejected ideas that sounded really good on paper could make interesting future blog posts. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="223" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/vbiqvgkoppvPwag0FCqZd7Irksx43ih__Iu1li10BBH6rumPwQrRF1SL84eWdYsFjPNZKuM25bVttjfkjnFgwSeZDtVhcNVOnQCUJOxPoHobwtNgXSOezbL-n9gZDU_EejdBIc5IvcD_gLboCA" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="400" /></span></div>
</div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-7a9ce57d-dd36-bdb5-d817-34854a003df7" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our Company</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Inextricably linked with the development of the game is the creation of our company. Being intentionally very small means we are exclusively focusing on Hades’ Star, but in the back of our work for this game lays a longer term vision for ourselves. While we are building the technology base, support channels and the overall framework that will allow us to operate persistent online games, we never forget our long term goal: Viable, Long Term Independence. Independence to work on and support games we ourselves love and want to play, without starving our families. </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/06/unleashing-power-of-small-teams.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Independence to create an environment that will attract and retain small teams of exceptional individuals</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Independence to have direct, honest, meaningful communication with our players. Independence from all kinds of unreasonable expectations and pressure that plague many teams that accept outside money.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All that sounds great and romantic on paper – until we realize what we’re up against. Mobile is an extremely competitive and tough space, and I’m the first to admit I often think we are walking into a business reality we can’t possibly survive. But at the same time, the last thing I’d want to do is work on a platform I’m no longer interested in and no longer play games on any more. Nothing matches the immediacy of playing a game on mobile. It’s the perfect match for my (and hopefully others’) pockets of free time. I would hate myself if the first thing I did with my freedom is try and find a compromise platform that might be more suitable for a small team.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After launch, I intend to present numbers and lessons in an area I find there’s a lack of public numbers: a small team trying to survive on the app store making a constantly supported, service based game. I find there are lots of numbers from teams that make one-off paid games on the app store, but not as much data from constantly updated free to play games. We will talk about our assumptions before and after launch, and what metrics we use to determine if this will be a viable project to support a small team going forward. Hopefully, this data will be helpful to other teams considering making similar service-based games for mobile platforms.</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you are interested in more details about the game, or just want to follow our journey as it’s starting out, feel free to get in touch via our social channels (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/hadesstar" target="_blank">facebook</a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://www.twitter.com/hadesstargame" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">twitter</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). <span id="docs-internal-guid-7a9ce57d-dd3d-eafe-2068-29a204d9a6cf"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can also register to receive notifications for upcoming beta tests</span></span> on the first page of </span><a href="http://www.hadesstar.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">our web site</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-2688096932241011732016-05-23T13:28:00.000-06:002016-05-23T13:28:06.452-06:00My recent friction-full experiences with non-mobile games<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For reasons explained in more detail on my </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/04/the-time-problem.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">first blog post</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, I probably would have stopped playing games completely if it weren’t for mobile games. Sometimes, however, various life events and temptations cause me to try and go back to games on other platforms. Some of my very recent experiences with such games have left a sour taste, wasted my time, but also given me lots of reminders of why I love the mobile platform. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-0b5cae82-df4a-f851-a1e1-0a866991b017" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Heroes of Might and Launchers</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a big fan of Heroes of Might and Magic III, I thought perhaps I could relive some of my youth via the latest in the series I owned. I don’t remember when I bought Heroes of Might and Magic VI on Steam, or whether I played it already or not, but I was happy it was on the list and excited to give it another try. Here’s how it all went down: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="C:\Users\Andreas Papathanasis\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Word\Homm.png" height="351" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/KqU_QtMTy5_BlAOND_0Lx-WtfNXHWzo6zpdhPXawTmMSLT3_hVq2B1hBwBV9gxKVo6sWtshhYde3mAFldgH72M2JWtmh_wCzQ3FrSZz_gee6MczoNWZxgXbhGGH2Fc5HPOQueYtn9tkERTlERg" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="557" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s parse what is happening here. Steam, a heavyweight desktop app meant to manage your PC games, is launching uPlay, another heavyweight desktop app. uPlay exists, I presume, to send Ubisoft convincing metrics to validate its executives’ pre-existing worldviews, like for example that launching uPlay from within Steam is a good thing. uPlay is crashing for god knows what reason. I like to imagine it’s failing to launch HeroesPlay, a launcher app meant to manage your pre-game launch experience. Oh! If only I had a chance to experience you, third and (hopefully) final launcher. It would have made me feel closer to that magical experience of actually playing the game. As for you, uPlay crash dialog, thank you for giving me the option to Debug, but for now, I’ll put thoughts of this game aside, and wish someone would port Heroes 3 properly on the iPad. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m sure I’ll never forget the above screenshot, because every time someone mentions the awesomeness of the open PC platform, it will immediately spring to mind. And I’m certainly happy I spent 50 dollars on this garbage, instead of on some mobile F2P game I enjoy (excuse me, I meant to say a F2P mobile game that used manipulative psychological tricks to make me think I was having fun).</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mario Couldn’t Party</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few weeks ago, the neighbors came over and they so happen to be gaming fans. I told them I had a Wii U collecting dust somewhere, the only current generation console I bought for some reason I couldn’t remember. They brought over their nun chucks and a lot of fun party games like Mario Party, Mario Kart, and another one where Mario and Bowser threw away bad feelings and are playing soccer together. Putting the disc in the drive already felt like an antiquated experience, similar to VCR tapes in the 90s. But the worse was to follow: The Wii U failed to read the disk, talking about some error about location! The next 15 minutes were spent cleaning disks, scratching heads, and insinuating the neighbors must have bought those games from some shady dealer outside North America. Then suddenly, I remembered why I owned a Wii U in the first place: Because Finland was a cold and lonely place, and my wife and I wanted to play anything that involved Mario. But now I had returned to Canada, so god forbid I am allowed to play games with my neighbors on hardware I happened to buy somewhere far away.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meanwhile, my Finnish iPhone keeps playing games just fine no matter where I move.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="mariocry" height="333" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/MGDhmv1_1zzxf-pNgvGz2Oaw9JSdLCGhWAFZeFKsSKzerKc19_v8keAPuQixV6mY81QJAFt4ReSMAWFcREdQ8ixqTZ5G6sE1jAFFPYiMYbTZag6-vhTlWVgMrTO2L5_fKZRyLcFEK2YqvOgW5g" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="460" /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s ok Mario, we’ll party when you come to smartphones</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><br /></b><br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The repeating cycle of Eve</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m not exactly sure what the frequency of me making a new trial Eve account is. Probably around 6 months or so. The cycle repeats itself in perpetuity: </span></div>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I see news of an Eve Online update, a community event, or something awesome that happened in game, usually involving a large scale war;</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remind myself that it’s actually more fun to go read blog posts around what happened, instead of trying to break into an absolutely impenetrable game;</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I spend a few more months reading blog posts instead of trying to play;</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The more I read, the more I get excited about actively participating in this universe;</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After that excitement reaches a critical mass, I create a new trial account. A very long download later, I see the initial confusing screen, and go “what was I thinking;”</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I spend a couple days pretending I’m learning how to mine, trade, or do combat. The more I learn, the more confused I get. There’s miniscule overall progress, unless you count staring at confusing windows as progress;</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stop playing, repeat from step a.</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With the latest step e) happening just a few days ago, it’s all very fresh in my mind. Maybe writing this all down will help me next time I have the itch. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a simple mind, I love simple options. Especially at the beginning of a game, when I have no clue what’s going on, I really prefer it if there are never more than 3-4 clear alternatives or options on how to proceed. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eve is subscribing to a slightly different design philosophy, one that suggests that it’s ok to have around 50 buttons on screen during the first step of the tutorial. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="390" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/HDqEb8v-FzJ8oC77gnamOUdC4P-1Zm_5lApd6pEkZLNCcw48oyH5-IKG7TXSN5tvjfOZA_mWSLmtUqxspfDqHbCUNbqbXw5hmvX5VFyzOTJixZ2asedmLA4qJID-tFENdVkFv14yeolC2VdpyQ" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And if by any chance you press the wrong button, your options on what to click or look at next can go up exponentially:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="C:\Users\Andreas Papathanasis\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Word\eve1.png" height="390" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/XUcMNrsCmlSBy3VOX6cbEDzxpTNSHhoBO204CrzVXEGayUIGIZVyZfDU9JLH6xQSogQCQpGAjd2C3IYFWjm_i5-TNnHiEffdIOFuSkvx079Tul5VEJOTNs9pK073R2AlZDm2nG9NxO9sK20mgg" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="623" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">10 years ago, I would be shy to admit that I don’t have the patience, intelligence, or whatever physical property one needs to have to understand and get into a game like this. I would have thought that this kind of crushing complexity is necessary to create deep interactions between the game and other human players. I would have probably blamed myself for not being a better “gamer”.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thankfully, </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/05/social-games-and-their-opportunity.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">some mobile games have shown me clearly that it’s possible to have simple mechanics that allow deep interactions, including social ones</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. And that makes me feel better for abandoning Eve Online again (at least for the next 6 months). </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dreams of the stars, shattered after 3 hours</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stellaris is the only game I pre-ordered ever. And it delivered – at least until I realized that I will never have a chance to finish a single game, ever. Intentionally picking the smallest universe size available, I set off to use my couple of hours of continuous free time I had to see how far I could get. The answer was not very far. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Three hours into the game, I hadn’t even met another major race, and I can’t even begin to imagine how much time I’d need to approach the winning conditions. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="466" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/hex658LD5N_ODChpfFgTyNAygANB75bgqLJKmLqgSSYH0ZWrT_jaGFeCcChcrz63bhoaIQOSFIB8vFTMFYQCPLvWR_qeekuQTFjtXSL_q32eDz1EvQcybmOysyou9zkvUZ5uXFoTDaZK9luVFA" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even on the smallest map size, I have no chance of finding continuous free time to finish a single game of Stellaris</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Coming back to the same game a few days later, I have no recollection of what’s going on. I feel an urge to start a new game instead, then I remember I don’t have the time. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just out of curiosity, I also tried to start a multiplayer game. Technical issues aside, once I finally got in, I was even more overwhelmed by the size of the map and the expectation that people have to stay online at the same times to finish a game. “Don’t these people have other things to do?”, I rush to judgment, until I remember I was one of those people not that long ago. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Goodbye Stellaris, I wish I could somehow zip you up and send you to 20-year-old me.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mobile games succeed because of lack of friction</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The mobile games I am currently enjoying are ok with me dropping in whenever, wherever, and for however short a period of time to play. They don’t punish me for being absent or leaving mid-game. They are easy to pick up where I left off, even weeks later. They allow me to play with my friends without all of us being online at the same time for hours on end. They don’t need my money up front, before I even know if I like the game or even if I have the time and mental effort required to play it. They always work instantly, taking less than 15 seconds to get into, including the time to take the phone out of my pocket and unlock it. They are painfully obvious how to play, sometimes even without a tutorial. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I believe this lack of friction has been an extremely important factor in the overall success of the mobile platform in games. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The direct experiences I described above, </span><a href="http://kotaku.com/halo-collection-has-a-20-gb-day-one-update-1647626636" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">along with other things I occasionally read about</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, have really got me thinking about the amount of friction traditional gamers have been taught to endure in order to play a game – friction that has actually been increasing steadily over time. I believe this creeping friction has actively shut out a big part of the potential gaming audience from those platforms. Mobile games seem to have reversed the trend, partially because of necessity: It simply was necessary to make very simple games early on because of hardware limitations. I’m happy they did.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Going forward, I see some mobile developers missing this important factor when talking about what games make sense on the platform. They talk about bringing “real” games to mobile, and in the process see friction the same way non mobile developers do: As a necessary evil that doesn’t really affect players, or worse, not seeing it at all. They end up implementing mobile games that are dead on arrival because of long loading screens, confusing 3D controls, long data downloads on startup, login screens, server selection screens, etc. The thinking seems to be “it’s ok to do this, because console games do it”. It is the most common and obvious mistake I see on new mobile games I try. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There has been a lot of talk for years about how production values on mobile will improve and match that of consoles and PC games, especially as mobile hardware improves. These predictions have been mostly wrong so far, and will continue to be wrong as long as “higher production values” translates to “higher friction”. </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2016/01/vainglory-vs-clash-royale-and-future-of.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vainglory isn’t a better mobile game than Clash Royale</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and won’t be more successful, despite its usage of the Metal API, its ability to move the camera, or its higher production values (by console standards). </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With mobile gaming being relatively new, I am looking forward to see the next generation of friction-free experiences we can get in the years ahead. Somehow I think they’ll be very different compared to the best of today’s PC and console games – and for people like me, far more enjoyable.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-12976463496193000682016-04-17T22:54:00.003-06:002016-04-17T22:54:49.142-06:00Approaching the mobile games market as a small team in 2016<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These days, I am preparing to launch my own company focused on mobile games. As a result, a lot of the time I have to struggle with agonizing questions. A few of those questions come from other people, but most of them are from hypothetical voices in my head: </span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Isn’t the mobile gold rush long over for small teams? </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don’t you need hundreds of thousands in advertising to even get noticed?</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Doesn’t your game need a well known IP or prominent youtubers playing it 24/7 to have any chance of succeeding?</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why would your game do any better than the thousands that get submitted every single week?</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why even bother on this very difficult and competitive platform? Why not Steam? </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why not go back to work at EA?</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thanks a lot, voices. You no doubt exist because of </span><a href="http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/27/mobile-ad-costs-rise-as-marketers-pay-more-to-target-the-right-audiences/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">every</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/237811/500_games_launched_per_day_on_iOS_last_year_and_other_digital_sales_facts.php" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">single</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-10-27-the-very-low-end-of-mobile-development-is-likely-to-go-away" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">piece</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-09-21-mobile-barriers-to-entry-growing-exponentially-scopely" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of news</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that comes out of the mobile market, which seems like bad news for small independent developers. Thanks to the massive successes of a few, costs to reach an audience are going up, while at the same time that same audience has less attention to devote to an exploding number of available games. In other words, people are too busy playing Candy Crush, Clash Royale, Covet Fashion and many other established games to care about *any* of the hundreds of new games that come out each day, let alone yours. The top of the grossing charts is largely locked to established games, many of which are becoming very recognizable brands and are unlikely to be displaced from there any time soon. Every month, new high quality games come out from teams that have a long term horizon and start capturing more of the audience for themselves, for a very long time. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How can a small team hope to find any kind of success in this environment? </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have no idea. But I intend to try and find out. My goal is to build a business with a long term horizon: I’d much rather end up with a company that can comfortably sustain a small team of 5-10 people after 10 years, instead of a one hit wonder that makes a lot of money in the first few years and struggles to survive later on.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So just before I begin my journey, I thought it might be a good idea to present the thoughts, rules and guidelines I intend to use when operating my company through the mobile market. I can’t promise these will be of any use to anyone, but at least it should be fun to revisit this post in a few years and compare to how all these thoughts worked in the real world.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-727d126a-27ef-4ed0-c865-62042f4b0087" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Avoid one-off games</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are mobile games you might play for an afternoon, a week, or in some cases even a month. They are very simple games that might rely on a simple infinite mechanic, or require the player to go through limited content before you’ve beaten the game. They have non existent or very limited interactions with other players (maybe just leaderboards). They have you flipping birds, crossing streets, chopping wood, throwing spitballs. They can be extremely fun for a while, are a perfect time waster for those times you only have a minute to play, and some of them are even very successful. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For lack of a better term, I call these “one-off” games. Making these kinds of games is still very popular, because of how easy it is. </span><a href="http://www.reskingames.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are even services you can pay for “source codes”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to put such an app in the store in mere days. I’d guess quite a bit of the new games that make it into the app store every day are such one-off games. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think it’s a bad idea for a new studio to focus on these kinds of mobile games in 2016 and beyond. The reason is that with the flooding of simple games in the app store, these games are becoming interchangeable commodities. It’s extremely hard to build long term customer recognition and loyalty in such an environment, even if you do find initial success. These kinds of games are also extremely easy to clone. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="347" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/wlexwcWN8E1HmkGxfhAJKe3LwJrkXElGXPc8k-2LdXFoyHfiCODCCLIz4_LhuMsxA7kgbF5agNyfz6xsCaW4fzecqIS5PFTPz_1H3x3vsI3JYSvG4uQE76e2kwzEdXNy879i3M9g9XLSNq8Eag" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Making this kind of game may have been a viable business strategy 5 years ago, but not today</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To reduce the impact of the hundreds of games that flood the app store each single day, you need to take a number of approaches. Ensuring you’re not competing directly with the majority of them is just the start. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even if you have one of these simple games, there may be some ways to ensure it doesn’t fit my definition of “one-off” games. These are the best ones I know of:</span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/05/social-games-and-their-opportunity.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Truly social features</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: If you have a way for players to have meaningful interactions between friends and/or strangers, they are more likely to stick to your game despite its lack of depth. Community doesn’t transfer between games no matter how similar they are.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meaningful progress over time: Players who are invested in what they have gained in your game and see value in gaining more down the line are more likely to keep playing your game in the long run.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Frequent updates: Keeping the game fresh and giving the players new goals can help with building loyalty over time.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Implement your business model with the goal of building a long term relationship with your players </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you’re a small team just starting out making mobile games in 2016 or beyond, you’re presumably using the F2P model. Maybe there are a few exceptions, but I see any other approach as suicide. There is an enormous and growing amount of high quality free content. Asking for money up front for an unknown game from an unproven team with no community around it sounds like a tall order. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since it’s already 2016, we’ve all hopefully moved on from the pointless conversation of whether F2P is universally bad and evil, and into more focused discussions about specific implementations of the model. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve seen quite a few disasters from teams trying to shoehorn F2P in a game in a way that not only ends up not making them money, it also destroys trust with players. My golden takeaway rule from those is this: To implement fair F2P, you have to play and have seen value from spending in a F2P game yourself (ideally, a game you have been playing for months). If that’s not the case, you need to get out of your inner circle and talk extensively to people who have. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s two common examples I’ve seen of misapplied F2P leading to hurt relationships with players: </span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trying to be nice (“We’ll get a small amount of money from a large amount of players”). This usually involves implementing a paywall to progress, or cutting important features for non payers. Not only does this not make more money than a paid game (a big percent of mobile players are not interested in paying anything for a game, no matter how much they play it), it also leads to soured feelings. For better or worse, mobile players have been trained to have access to all content for free in other F2P games. You asking them for money to access important parts of your game doesn’t look right to them.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trying to be too aggressive: If you keep nudging your players for money, or make it too hard to progress without paying, you’re alienating the majority who have no interest in paying anything.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="390" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/9wSpjuZLSeWD5jfMiVvkr1CQx5u1wO46e1rABPWOR2J5StbZFxa69rKCWdiCD7XgQkojOYJfliS0HpBlxNBn1kGGOv4cp-ylvbU1YWo2cVrsQPfNNFb4eiDGHdvztGcn8EinmcCSmsLpS1DO3g" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Also: Destroy your childhood memories with pushy micro-transactions!</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Think about it: If you don’t understand why some (but not all) of your players might want to spend money on specific parts of your game, the items you do sell are unlikely to meet anyone’s definition of value. Making sure at least some of the people on your team understand that value is important. And instead of agonizing over maximizing the amount of spenders, you should make sure you are offering an excellent experience to people who never pay a dime. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What about ads? </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At first glance, this may seem like a very good time to have ads in your game. If you don’t like in-app purchases, it gives you an easy way to make money out of people playing your game. And the payoff is good and getting better, thanks to the massive success of many F2P games that keep pushing advertising costs up. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But consider this: Mobile games are largely in competition with each other to get a shortening piece of the player’s attention. If your way of making money now is to jeopardize your long term chances of building a meaningful relationship of trust with your players, maybe it’s better to find an alternative for making money. It doesn’t even matter how ads are implemented. In their best implementation (incentivized video ads that somehow fit with the theme of the game), they are still diverting valuable attention from your game to other people’s products and games. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Try to offer something different</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you look past what I call “one-off” games, many of the other games on the app store seem to be fitting pretty neatly in a limited number of archetypes. There’s the build your base and attack other bases game. There’s the match 3 edible objects game. There’s the grow your creature and go to battle game. There’s the assemble your deck and face other players card game. There’s the social casino game. You get the idea. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Within the archetypes, there is a variety of themes and in some cases interesting mechanics variations. But very often, some of these games are more or less clones of each other. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s a reason for this clumping of game types: They can still be profitable. Making a high quality Clash of Clans-like game, especially if accompanied by interesting changes and/or recognizeable IP, can definitely make money in 2016’s app store. </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/09/data-obsession-and-politics-of-facts.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Data-obsessed teams that use numbers to decide what game to do next</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are very likely to look at the marketplace and decide the safe bet is to make a game that is quite close to an already successful game. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a developer who wants to make interesting games, nothing sounds less appealing to me than cloning an existing game. Luckily, there’s also a business reason why this would be a bad idea in 2016: because it is unlikely to be a sustainable strategy in the long term. With a growing number of similar or identical games, I think it’s inevitable one day that even the very high quality ones among them will stop being sustainable. The ones that have a head start and a strong community will be fine: People will still be playing Clash of Clans 5 or 10 years from now. But jumping on the bandwagon at this particular moment in time strikes me as a bad idea, because everyone else is doing the same thing. I would much rather take my chances trying to explore interesting ideas that haven’t already been done.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, trying for innovative games is also extremely risky. There is lots of experimentation required, and multiple failures are likely. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Prepare for failure, aim for sustainability</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s a pretty common and scary sight: A well funded team of experienced veterans are setting up a large-ish team (for mobile standards), prepared to take on the world. They cite a lot of important-sounding market research about how they will succeed. Cool sounding and largely meaningless terms like “mid-core” are thrown around quite a bit. Then they go off trying to make it all work. A couple years later they fail, lay off everyone, and blame it on the rapidly changing market environment. They forget to mention that the fact mobile was (and is) a rapidly changing market isn’t some kind of shocking new insight: we have all known that even before the iPhone came out. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When you walk into any kind of unpredictable, rapidly changing environment, the first thing you care about is survival. If somebody forces you to enter a dark forest and says there could be a murderer and/or a chest of gold, you will first put 100% of your attention to make sure you’ve neutralized the murderer first before looking for the chest of gold. Similarly, when you walk into mobile games, the first questions you answer are: </span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What happens when game A fails? </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How will the failure affect game B? How will you change the way you build it? How will you change the way you market it? How will it change the way you create and maintain a community around it? How will specific performance of game A on various metrics affect all this?</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What happens when game B fails?</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you’re confident none of these answers might be “We will shut the company down”, you probably have a better shot than most already.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://medium.com/@michaeljmartinez/thoughts-after-juicebox-games-f2b35b7cf754#.frghgfnwg" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Michael Martinez describes the closure of JuiceBox Games</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, basically blaming the shifting market environment</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. From that we learn that Honorbound made over 2M in its first year, and reached #31 in the US top grossing list. This is a great performance for a first time game from a new company. Regardless, the company failed shortly after that, despite 8M total revenue in less than 4 years. Not only was this team not prepared for failure, they were also not prepared for moderate success. Betting that your new game will reach and stay in the top 20 in this particular market environment is a fool’s bet, regardless of game quality, team or IP. Companies that have been building relationships with their players for years have rightfully solidified their positions there, and know how to keep it. If you are to have a shot at joining them, you have to work for many years at it. And you will work at it from the shadows, not from the top of the grossing list. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="390" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/8rum0S4BSEb3hHIT8eO3CujZcdZt5e3tgjDEETa95aT7URFYiT6pVIphrdI4SAHx84maeNUkT-ZfOLLuEET6mQEUFfZ8sTJljglBTvcjd-PHqPMOgVvZRYAIsp_UMAOOGvPgqnez51qnVdxOlQ" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Honorbound: A decent game that did well, but not well enough to sustain its team</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Using some guesswork and pieces of publicly available data, I would estimate that a tiny team of 4-5 people can be sustained by having a game in the top 200-250 grossing games in key markets. Aiming for the top 250 games is now a completely different proposition than aiming for top 20. It’s still by no means easy, but it’s certainly at least an order of magnitude more realistic of a goal. Moreover, sustaining the team for a few years gives them the opportunity to plan longer term, and think how they may upgrade from sustainability to success. They can continue their conversation with existing players, and start looking for new players. They can show they care about player feedback, either via regular updates or new games. They wouldn’t be able to do any of that if the company had run out of money in the meantime. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pick carefully who you work with</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I mentioned above that a team of 4-5 may have a somewhat realistic shot at being sustainable on today’s app store. But is that enough people to make a high quality game that can sustain itself, market it, and build an ongoing relationship with players?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">People are funny business. Very often, we agree that each individual is unique and that an exceptional person can have orders of magnitude more impact compared to an average person. But then when we plan, we exchange those unique creatures with numbers. “I need 10 programmers to build this important-sounding server infrastructure”. If you go seeking funding, you may be asked why you have less or more people than X successful team, and the difference may be seen as a weak point. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When talking people, I think all of that focus on numbers is garbage. I outright reject the premise that a team on any platform needs a specific number of people to become successful. It has been proven before that exceptional individuals can create excellent experiences of all kinds, that can also be commercially successful. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I do want to set a maximum amount of 5 exceptional people for my company, until we are proven sustainable. There is a certain magic that happens from severe limits on people. Certain extraneous features get cut, and everyone focuses on the absolutely essentials. Communication is far easier. Achieving chemistry happens almost automatically – bad fits are extremely easy to spot.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A small, completely independent team has the added benefit that it can define success in a more flexible way than VC funded teams. I personally couldn’t care less if my team stayed in mere sustainability forever. If we can make respectable salaries while working on the kinds of games we love, that is already success for us.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My personal view is that you can absolutely have a high quality game with 5 or less people, developed on a reasonable timeframe with no crunch whatsoever, </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/06/unleashing-power-of-small-teams.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as long as they are the right people in the right environment</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I’ve seen it happen with small teams when they were part of larger companies, and I think it can happen with a completely independent small team as well, as long as it has proper support structures.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Have the right support structures for your small team</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Making good games, marketing them, evolving them over time, building and supporting a healthy community of players requires a lot of specialized skills. No matter how good the people, because of the small size the team as a whole is likely to have blind spots and lack of expertise in some of these areas. Big companies, for all their myriad of problems, have this covered: a small team that’s part of a big organization usually has solid support structures. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But a fully independent small team doesn’t come with any such built-in support structures. It has to create them from scratch. My approach for doing that is reaching out to other developers in a similar spot, and helping each other out when and if it makes sense. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You see, this blog post was kind of a Trojan horse. If you’re still reading carefully up to here, maybe you are also building a mobile game and thinking about similar things as me. Maybe you’re on a small team and are overwhelmed with everything you have to learn to make your game, market it and provide proper support for your players. It’s daunting. If you agree about the need for support structures, maybe you’ll see value in reaching out to other developers such as myself. Maybe we can stay in touch for a long time, and if and when it makes sense we can help each other out in small ways. It could be sharing tricks in Unity, discussing when or how it makes sense to buy ads for our games, sharing the contacts of good freelancers, or just playing each other’s milestone builds and offering feedback.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’d love to hear from you. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ask yourself if it would still be worth it in case of total failure</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">None of the above is meant to make me or anyone else feel better about their odds going into the mobile market. The odds are clearly not in our favor, and massive failure is a very likely outcome. Take a moment to ask yourself: how will you feel in the case of total failure? How will it affect your personal life, your relationships, your desire to make and play games? Are you OK with that outcome?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This, in the end, is the main reason I am so excited to be entering the mobile games market. Because at this point, the first time in my career I am truly free to do whatever I want, there’s nothing I’d like more than focusing on the platform I love. </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/04/the-time-problem.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If it wasn’t for mobile games, I would probably have stopped playing games completely</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. And I know that no matter what happens, I will survive the ride, no matter how bumpy. Maybe I’ll even enjoy it. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To my future self reading this, I will say the same thing I say to the voices in my head: I regret nothing!</span></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-11929738181386043122016-03-22T13:38:00.000-06:002016-03-22T13:38:31.233-06:00Subterfuge was my favorite game of 2015, but I never want to play it again<b id="docs-internal-guid-089f475f-a00b-0cf9-5f89-a05d7b339629" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="216" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_6T0gHnPLFUD6eGRvr6yQsRCgo15FD1pL2sC7TgvMLbID0KpgAu84vV4_uJ-GXVPXg7MtfZpiBI5Vn-Eo0aCEzkKwE3bIq4s0ToXOWVa-SSNiL0UTrHAzsNrmHEkIQOOUmxe_uEMjshI3AuTRg" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="400" /></span></div>
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On paper, </span><a href="http://subterfuge-game.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Subterfuge</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is the perfect game for me. It’s an excellently balanced strategy game with rules that are simple to understand but hard to master and offer a lot of depth. It’s a mobile game that greatly fits my free time patterns, which its </span><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RonCarmel/20141124/230741/Quality_of_Life_in_Subterfuge.php" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">developers understand first hand</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. In an era where the term “social game” can still be grossly misused, it’s an experience that relies a lot on human player interactions and offers amazing </span><a href="https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiLvse9lNDLAhUEvZAKHcKTBOQQFggbMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lostgarden.com%2F2011%2F07%2Fshadow-emotions-and-primary-emotions.html&usg=AFQjCNEPzDUvoAxhdxcFeqE-1YJNxw0Tbg&sig2=APgO1JGWGZqDeYAUTTEikA" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">primary emotions</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of success, despair, betrayal, guilt, hope, revenge, overall accomplishment, in almost every single match. </span><a href="http://www.polygon.com/2015/10/22/9593670/subterfuge-is-the-most-cunning-game-on-ios-right-now-heres-how-it" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Polygon has called it “the most cunning game on iOS”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and the only change I’d make is to add “by far”. Its potential has influenced me deeply, both as a player and as a developer. If you haven’t played it, you should stop reading this and go download it (it’s free).</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite all that, the game has failed to keep me playing for more than a few weeks, and I don’t see myself starting a new game ever again. I can say this now with certainty, after a few months of gradual disengagement that consisted of me starting up the game less and less often, and just staring at the Open Games screen, too afraid to click Join. On this post I want to examine potential reasons for this contradiction, and maybe uncover guidelines for what can make a truly social game better stand the test of time for myself (and perhaps other players who may be experiencing something similar). </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-089f475f-a00b-3f50-3890-89aeb8353794" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When a great Social Diplomacy system fails to create any sort of positive bond between strangers</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where many other 4x strategy games (especially the ones that descended from single player experiences) offer a computer-enforced, trading-like system where two sides banter and exchange fixed goods and treaties, Subterfuge and the social games that inspired it rely on open-ended communication between human players – communication that is usually private to other participants. This diplomacy system, made interesting by specific game rules and the game’s state, results in a need to constantly read the situation and motivations that apply to other human players. It’s a vastly superior system if you care about meaningful social interactions. Understanding and manipulating the web of social relations between all players is very satisfying and offers near infinite replayability. When you add the unpredictability of how a human can react to challenging situations, this system practically ensures no two games will ever be the same. In my last game of Subterfuge, convincing the 3 players ahead of me to fund me until they all realized that was a mistake, resulting in me taking the first place, was one of the most exciting moments I experienced in any game ever. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the actual interactions with other humans I’ve had in Subterfuge, while interesting over the course of individual games, are a negative for making me want to play the game long term. I’m sure things would have been different if I played the game as a board game, with people I know. But I didn’t: I only played with strangers, and that’s where things began to break down.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My intentional attempts to create long term relationships in Subterfuge have ended in disaster. And that’s even though the game’s community is visibly higher quality than the average online game, especially on mobile. The end goal guarantees there can only be one winner, so most people know any sort of agreement will always be short term. For some reason, I didn’t feel like breaking those agreements early, and took it really personally when other people did so with little apparent reason. On my last match, I was really hitting it off with this random internet person, commenting on other players and even making obscure TV show references. A few hours before the game ended I even commented about how we had unguarded mines close to each other, and that I’d never thought I’d see the day in this game. A little bit later, that person attacked me, not because he had any chances of winning, but because of “due diligence – I need to come as close to winning as I can”. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Clearly, I was playing the game wrong. “It’s called *SUBTERFUGE*, you idiot” was thrown back at me on more than one occasion, while I was trying to understand why people were behaving the way they did.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet in most other truly social games I’ve played, even competitive ones, I have gone through at least a couple meaningful interactions with strangers that have made me consider them “friends” in the context of the game. Yes, it’s a different form of friendship, severely limited both in context and means of communication – it only exists within the game, and the interactions are usually limited to text messages. That doesn’t make it less real, only different. I personally value these kinds of interactions with such friends. Over time, they become part of my routine within the game, and a big part of why I keep playing. Subterfuge had none of that. Some other competitive social games even made me find interesting “nemesis” players – not friends, but people that hurt me and I could find again in some form in an attempt to settle the score. Subterfuge has none of that either – just bad memories of interactions, which all seem to come back to haunt me every time I think of starting a new game.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even with the rigid “only one winner” end rule, the game could still encourage long term bonds with formal facilitation of alliances, i.e. groups of friends playing against other groups. I haven’t found any such facilitation within the game – in fact, the rules mention that no alliance agreements can span more than one game.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Time investment and the lack of safe space</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Subterfuge is an intense game. For all the talk of “it can be played a few minutes a day”, I found myself very emotionally invested in the outcome. This resulted in returning to the game tens of times a day and, in some cases, having very frequent discussions with other participants. Because of the power of the specialists, I didn’t feel like settling with a plan in hopes of finding a better plan a few minutes later. This pattern was reinforced by a few really effective moves I wouldn’t have come up with without thinking about them for a long time. In addition, some specialists owned by the enemy create the (perceived or actual) need to be online as often as possible to see what they’re up to. (This is especially true of the Martyr). But over the course of 10 or so days, the amount of time an average game lasts, this constant thinking and socializing becomes a very draining process. While the game is not persistent in an MMO sense, the long duration of each match makes it feel somewhat like a persistent game that is a part of your life. Other persistent games have some concept of safe space and down time - a player can retreat and not play at all for a couple of days, without completely abandoning their goals. But because of its nature, Subterfuge does not offer such safe space. You are either playing the game or not, and stopping for a day usually means the entire game is lost. This makes selecting the “New game” option after a game especially hard, at least for me. To select it, I must overcome all the negative prior pressure I felt over the course of the previous games. I know if I start, there will be no safe space, no down time. The only safe space I can find is “Not playing Subterfuge right now”.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My takeaway questions for social games with longevity</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After my experience with Subterfuge, I will be evaluating any social game design by asking the following questions. I believe answering these questions sufficiently is important for building any social game that is meant to be played for a long time, regardless of how good the core game is.</span></div>
<br />
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How does the game encourage positive long term relationships between strangers?</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What kind of </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/05/social-games-and-their-opportunity.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">social structures</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> does the game offer? What kinds of short term and long term interactions does each of those structures drive in the game, both internally and with other structures?</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is the safe space in the game? How does it handle people who, for whatever reason, don’t want to dedicate many days in a row to intense interactions with the game and its other players?</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-69385773139778098262016-01-19T13:36:00.001-07:002016-01-22T13:31:58.857-07:00Vainglory vs Clash Royale, and the future of “hardcore” games on mobile<br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few years ago I came across League of Legends. I thought it was a relatively simple game that was quick to learn but hard to master, with multiple levels of strategic thinking that made for a deep and fun experience. Not only did you have to learn the quirks of your hero and how to deal with specific micro-level situations across the level, but you also had to keep an eye on the larger picture of the map, be aware of what is happening on each lane, while at the same time coordinating a high level strategy with your teammates. Even though I spent a few weeks playing some matches here and there, it never became a habit. The reason is that </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/04/the-time-problem.html" style="line-height: 1.295; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">life got in the way</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: without enough continuous time and attention, I was struggling just to finish a few matches a week. At that rate, I could never get past the top layer and delve into deeper levels of enjoyment that required organized groups, being online at certain times, coordinating strategies with other people, etc.</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Still, the experience of that game has stuck with me. Most of my gaming since has been on phones and tablets (a direct consequence of my free time patterns), so I have been actively looking for something that can replicate some of that exciting MOBA-style experience on my phone. It seems developers have been thinking along those lines too, since there has been no shortage of MOBAs for mobile devices on recent years: Fates Forever, Solstice Arena, The Witcher: Battle Arena, Legendary Heroes, Vainglory, to name a few of the ones I tried more than once. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-c9672fa5-5b98-d752-8b6e-3b533056066b" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-left: -5.75pt;">
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none;"><colgroup><col width="313"></col><col width="311"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr style="height: 177px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="153" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/neQarstETbj_5yW6O5FQXZgpLX3lzgSlsxthgDnNobymnBmH9vo3R3BmXbZylA3g1weLQgu3EcNn6Yk9Vny6XFpIs5Vtg7cB8ce_4FrysHreRQXFbLuG8CVAY6e0CwEHgUzR_X5NkMFna8EG" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="293" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="156" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/458OvVD_w65cYvFYCnn0JpF3Movw8j2XCTVlfSZj8frCQx_cHKxSFcipa5lmUEuM-l28OrSWricNNMfl0jm20wqw1kPm1RKznuAcOZp85cTAMPk4N85XtD6ps4TMEnGrxcWkBNPKdZFbQSVv" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="276" /></span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="170" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/0SOl5TsHTizTCkOtRw-sNvKRDXZ3SiBn6MkAi1JrBS_VpOzvrS_V9GZHJxSEoNnR73jJ2JBnbho0eF64kUVLUdLbfWkSRm_t6J07fUbnQVMwGCZczgxilWjN5C2vEwVtgLJBFCgO74ZAACKg" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="290" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="153" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/tI1s0Bk8F27Wggj_q8fFusfO9Mq0__Gr2pqkTYgS6n1fsdgqSJUsXLAMJerFqaNFEeWGe7qMdGVF9J31uvKx63RPfdlZ2EaUWqp8GVq_sYS6xQAXMkecBLVD4A6OiY9x7mThbJYTMZUbDshl" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="271" /></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most mobile MOBAs are more or less the PC experience, shrunk for a mobile device</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">None of these games would be called a breakout success, and many have in fact shut down already. As far as I know, Vainglory is the most successful of the mobile MOBAs. That’s because it’s a great MOBA game: it has interesting heroes and abilities, a good map with strategic capture points that give different types of advantages, great pacing, good balance. Unfortunately, it suffers from similar symptoms of all other (more or less) direct MOBA translations from the PC: it is completely unsuitable to be played on mobile devices. In my view, mobile MOBAs and especially Vainglory offer a fascinating case study that disproves many of the theories I’ve been hearing for years about what the successful “hardcore” games will look like on mobile as the devices themselves become more powerful. </span></div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A long living fantasy: “mobile devices will become equivalent to PCs and consoles for gaming” </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When Vainglory was released, every article I remember reading was how the time of the “hardcore player” had finally come on the tablet. There was lots of glowing about how Vainglory is finally “a real game” you can play on a mobile device. The reason? Impressive (at least technology-wise), console-quality 3D graphics, and gameplay that was perceived as not “dumbed down” for mobile devices (translation: gameplay that is almost identical to what you’d find on a PC or Console MOBA). </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This wasn’t the first time I heard “true games” on mobile being equated with PC/Console-style mechanics and technology. While I was part of the AAA industry, I saw many express their confidence that once mobile devices can support the types of games PC and console hardcore gamers prefer (mainly through technology, but also via more complex controls that allow more degrees of freedom), all of the successful mobile games would suddenly become identical to the ones found on those other platforms. They would have complex 3D engines, hours of hand crafted content, life-like graphics and visual effects. </span><a href="http://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/09/04/eas-aggressive-plans-for-frostbite-go" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s EA publicly stating what I kept hearing almost daily back then</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333435; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we’re going to start making games on Frostbite Go that will be featuring things that you’ve seen in the regular Frostbite code, like destruction and those types of things. We think we can do something dramatic there, with the mobile sector, and make </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333435; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">real</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333435; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> games on those machines.”</span></blockquote>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Those types of things” means things you can do on next-gen consoles and PCs, and “real games” means PC and console games (i.e. the exact kinds of games those companies knew for years how to make). What a comforting thought: “This new, confusing mobile market will one day become the same as the markets we’re on top of now, so we don’t have to change or learn what players on those new platforms actually value”. For some in the industry, mobile devices were (and perhaps still are) held back by their inability to offer the exact same game experiences consoles and PCs do – either because the chips are not as powerful, or because they lack a “proper” input mechanism. When and if the technology catches up, the thinking goes, then those machines will become real gaming machines, and “hardcore” games (by PC and console standards) will suddenly become very successful on them. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vainglory is in my view an example of this absurd kind of thinking. The team, which I have no doubt is very capable, has made an excellent game by PC/Console standards, and they expected that would be enough to dominate competitive games on mobile. Its failure to do that so far, I believe, has nothing to do with “hardcore” players not wanting to play games on mobile devices. I believe it is a symptom of the game not respecting those hardcore players enough to make playing the game suitable for their platform of choice. Let’s look at the evidence. </span></div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Touch Controls like nothing you’ve ever used before</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I first launched Vainglory and went through the training video, one of the first things I was told by the game was that “pro players play with their tablet on a table and use the index finger on each side to tap nearly simultaneously”. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So if I’m a hardcore player wanting to compete, I first have to set my tablet on the table, losing any benefit of this being a mobile device. Then I either have to get a stable angle stand for my iPad or risk a neck injury looking straight down. I have to play this game in a way I’d never play anything else on my device. The map itself is made of multiple points of interests, all at different places that I have to scroll to using a pretty clunky map, in order to keep track of what’s going on in the game. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s be polite here and not even mention the possibility I may want to play this on the phone. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While I was able to play a few matches of Vainglory on the tablet, the experience was full of “Why am I doing this? Why is this not on the PC? What exactly is the benefit of playing on a tablet, aside a “wow, that’s cool” factor in the first 5 minutes?” Here’s what most user-uploaded images looked like for an event the Vainglory team ran, </span><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23howiplayvainglory&src=typd" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">asking them to tweet how they play</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. You’d be excused to think we’re talking about a PC game. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-c9672fa5-5b99-a343-847d-f11c4d667a0d" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-left: -5.75pt;">
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none;"><colgroup><col width="312"></col><col width="312"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr style="height: 220px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #ffffff 0px; border-left: solid #ffffff 0px; border-right: solid #ffffff 0px; border-top: solid #ffffff 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="197" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/FtyMG7xRNA4ES7VKUeqENCNMStoLLHk_N0uUpqmp1B5YGuej8pOVnzBuabMkfdLnW-IPRuGci7IxYJdMxhWeMCGhES6ZQYFiGcHaOiSrXQxxgJ7Augfq15QpQYe7vfoWrtIpDDCqSHr1BYfT" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="263" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #ffffff 0px; border-left: solid #ffffff 0px; border-right: solid #ffffff 0px; border-top: solid #ffffff 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="198" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/JoAjukNmab1xp4NX18oFRs7n5hNcIDJ9vzNu6M-SORSXwK8PQOQRGSnUne2V0IxesXDTqMnewHLsqdyew6B_YI7dnG9E-Cyb6PPionsLRfSO1svrCletbmqIrO-RxmE3nGdpD3q80RcheXfu" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="265" /></span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #ffffff 0px; border-left: solid #ffffff 0px; border-right: solid #ffffff 0px; border-top: solid #ffffff 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="341" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/3PaKnzpbl8XG1kB1eMf5EOG6x3hQtkVjpn3dRnTTonGUOwYmiyAsxlKiPz6jmi9XgSDq9wvcg2W2FufPonDNWxJzX0beXWS6xEV1T_xMvfqigK20PuxdjgwbNKArk_czQzcMIh3Omd3dtYGo" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="256" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #ffffff 0px; border-left: solid #ffffff 0px; border-right: solid #ffffff 0px; border-top: solid #ffffff 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unreasonable Time and Attention requirements</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Clunky controls aside, the thing I could barely believe when I first tried Vainglory was the duration of each match. I completely abandoned the game after my 4</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 8.799999999999999px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">/5</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 8.799999999999999px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> match, despite all the promise I was seeing in some of its innovative features, because I honestly had to leave the house after spending 27 whole minutes in a match. I couldn’t even comprehend the possibility that a mobile game would require my undivided attention for such amounts of time. If I had that much continuous free time every day, I would have stayed with League of Legends in the first place. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Traditional developers from the PC/Console world frequently fail to understand this point: Mobile games can allow, but never require, the player’s attention for more than a few minutes at a time – especially if we’re talking about requiring their undivided attention. Such developers will then blame the failure of their mobile game on “casuals”, who are dominating mobile games and have tainted the beauty of games that take you into another world for hours at a time. Some of the same developers believe that, as mobile platforms mature, the “play focused 100% on the game for hours” pattern will become more accepted on mobile platforms. This may be somewhat true of tablets, especially if they keep becoming bigger and less portable, but even there, it’s important to understand that if you demand the player’s complete attention for long periods of time, you are working against the platform. The success of mobile devices is partially because you can integrate them into your everyday life and access everything, including games, instantly to fill pockets of free time. Even for someone like me, who spends less time than average outdoors, I appreciate the fact that I can move around the house with my device and use it or play while doing other things. I understand that for some people, this sucks, and it may be contrary to their understanding of what games are about. But that’s what I, and many other players on mobile appreciate about such games: The way they integrate with our daily lives and become a habit that we can experience instantly whenever we have a few minutes of free time. You are free to join the other PC/Console hardcore players who vow never to touch mobile games because of timers, or because they can’t play for 2 hours straight. But if you do choose to make a mobile game, you can’t afford to ignore this very important fact about what we expect out of our mobile game experience. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A hardcore mobile player isn’t someone who wants to play a PC game for hours uninterrupted on their tablet or phone. No - that’s a hardcore PC gamer who may occasionally enjoy playing PC games on their mobile device for a change. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Going back to Vainglory, it’s obvious that a hardcore player of a competitive game would want to be as good as they possibly can be on their game of choice. If the game itself puts barriers to achieve that, either because it requires them to pay extreme attention to the game for more amount of time that they have available, or because it forces them to play in an unintuitive manner for the platform, then hardcore gamers will ignore that game and move to other games on their platform that don’t have those flaws. This is just common sense. You can’t seriously say “If Vainglory doesn’t attract hardcore gamers on mobile, nobody will” (a sentiment I kept hearing from all kinds of sources), completely ignoring the fact that Vainglory is barely playable on mobile.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Clash Royale smartly offers more with less</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My personal quest to find a game that captures some of the excitement of MOBAs, but in a way that is suitable for my free time patterns and my platform of choice, ended a few weeks ago with the </span><a href="http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/04/supercell-soft-launches-clash-royale-a-card-battling-take-on-clash-of-clans/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">launch of Clash Royale</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="426" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/0Q9MVpSaspV4KgTFkQk3AR8GuAFzd3G10YHz4-weKE7tfPGp3_C1RNLy_hpmW1m3mcN1DWfMlnrtrI9dtJAt5AXjz41FzjZHMP-cvtBAiQrI9XdoiwggwJiOZ9INYWsUL0N8707QRlu8AP5k" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624" /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Clash Royale is a game inspired both by MOBAs and collectible card games. It has been on soft launch on select countries for a couple weeks. Each game lasts around 3 minutes with a well-defined upper maximum of 4 minutes. The match takes place on a simple, non scrollable map with 2 lanes. Each player has a tower on each lane, and on their side of the map they also have their main keep. Whoever destroys the other player’s keep wins, or if nobody accomplishes that by the time the game ends, the winner is determined by who destroyed the more towers (a draw is also possible). Each match is a frantic experience where each player spawns units or buildings on the map (using drawn cards on their deck), trying to counter the enemy’s units, moving frequently from defensive to offensive combinations as they see fit. The game is already very well balanced and extremely fun. There is great variety of unit and building types (air, ground, splash damage, tanks, hoards of weaklings), making for countless combinations and strategies. Furthermore, even good deck combinations in theory can be messed up in the actual battlefield, where placement and timing matters a lot. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Clash Royale is so fun, it has to be played to be believed. A big part of the fun comes from how natural it feels to play on a mobile device. The mere act of placing units and buildings, using just one finger, is extremely fun, and perfect for a phone. I bet its pro players play just like you or anyone else who owns a phone: With their thumb, holding the phone in the upright position. They don’t even have to rotate the phone on its side. The time duration of 3-4 minutes is perfect for fitting matches whenever someone has free time, but also allows uninterrupted play for much longer. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The thing that is the most striking to me about Clash Royale, is how it managed to be so good by doing so much LESS than what Vainglory did: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Clash Royale is all playable on one single screen. Both lanes and each player’s two guard tower’s are always clearly visible on a phone. There’s no need to scroll or look at a minimap to see the status of the game. This makes it super easy to understand what’s going on at all times. The game’s few simple rules are efficiently communicated to the players visually (i.e. the fact that the central keep activates extra defences when a guard tower is destroyed). </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The tech is dead simple: Just Pre-rendered 2D sprites on a static screen. Compare that to Vainglory’s excellent, Metal-driven 3D tech that everyone, including Apple, loved to talk about (as if that makes any long term difference in the experience after the initial “wow, this looks cool”). </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some Console and PC hardcore gamers (and even developers) would laugh at this kind of simplicity and think it would be ridiculous to make a “real” game with depth that doesn’t even have a scrollable camera. Hardcore mobile players on the other hand care more about being able to actually play the game on their phone than artificial details that add unneeded complexity. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though it’s early to tell, it’s evident to me that Clash Royale is attracting some extremely hardcore competitive players (via publicly available info such as app store chart positions, global leaderboards, community/youtube reactions). I have no doubt that once it launches globally, it will do much better than Vainglory and all other mobile MOBAs released so far on any metric that matters. And I think that will happen because it is both an excellent game, and suitable for the platform it’s played on. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More challenges ahead for mobile developers</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are all correct to worry that the trend where success on mobile becomes more elusive will continue. But I disagree with most who believe that’s because game complexity will go up, or because mobile games will need fancy 3D tech that can only be built by teams over 100 strong, or even because success requires an unreasonable amount of marketing money. I believe the increased difficulty will mainly come from experienced teams of all sizes (including tiny teams) of extremely skilled developers who </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/06/unleashing-power-of-small-teams.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">operate in the right kind of environment</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that allows them to create long term experiences so elegant, fun, and suitable for the platform, that they will make a large amount of players not even care to look for other games to play over many years. I expect Clash Royale, or a similar MOBA-inspired (but not direct MOBA clone) will have such an effect on competitive MOBA-style games. Then, the risk is, the rest of us will be participating in an irrelevant, futile, <a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/05/the-tech-arms-race-in-aaa-and-why-im.html">AAA-style arms race </a>trying to compete for a tiny remaining percentage of the overall mobile player’s attention. Because we won’t know what else to do, we may even convince ourselves our only way to compete is to build superfluous tech and systems that don’t actually make sense on mobile.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-48536820614172139012015-11-15T20:04:00.002-07:002015-11-15T20:10:47.267-07:00The strange double-standards around F2P ethics discussions<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<a name='more'></a></h1>
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.295; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over the last few years I’ve witnessed and participated in quite a few interesting conversations between developers who, like me, are struggling to understand and adopt to the rapidly changing landscape, especially with respect to mobile.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.295; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Within this sea of change, we all want to get paid for our work, and most, if not all of us also have ethical concerns about how we go around doing it. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I consider myself an ethically minded developer. For example, my personal moral compass will ensure I never work on a gambling game. I’ve seen how the fake illusion of “it’s possible to strike it rich, if only I spend 10 more dollars” can ruin people’s lives. That’s not the kind of “fun” I want my games to offer. Other people have different moral compasses and would work on different kinds of games than I would. Many will reject working on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">any</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> F2P game that allows players to spend a lot of money, while I won’t. This is all good and fine, and not really the point of this post. Everyone has the freedom to define their own morals as they see fit.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The point is that when I observe or participate in F2P discussions with other developers who consider all no-spending cap F2P evil, I often see what I consider severe inconsistencies and double standards in their ethics arguments. This doesn’t mean their arguments are wrong or that their sense of morality is misplaced. But I did want to talk about these inconsistencies, because I believe they hide deeper, often hidden opinions, convictions, and fears that perhaps even the people who run into such inconsistencies haven’t truly understood themselves. The goal is not to change anyone’s mind about F2P, but I do want to pose open questions to developers who are universally against any game that allows a player to spend a lot of money in a short amount of time. I believe pondering on those questions would be good for them, and it may help them to discover something new about themselves. Similarly, I would love to receive similar questions that may challenge double standards I may be blindly falling for, as someone who does not consider all “unlimited spending cap” games automatically evil.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“F2P is evil, but ads aren’t”</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of the same developers who consider no-cap F2P evil choose to implement ads in their games as an ethical alternative to avoid the evilness of in-app purchases. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we can agree that ethics in our context means caring about where your revenue is coming from, and that being ethical means avoiding sources of revenue that support behaviour you judge evil and unethical, then it becomes immediately clear that this position is inconsistent. The rising advertising revenue in mobile that supports ad-enabled games comes largely from the success and effectiveness of F2P games with “evil” in-app purchases. If you have an ad-supported game, your revenue is coming from people who pay in-app purchases. Sure, there’s an extra degree of separation: You don’t collect the money directly from the players, you get it from the companies who collect it in initially. Does that make it ethical? </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I point this out, I usually get this response: “Well, my game is very small, and me showing ads doesn’t really make a dent in how successful top F2P games are – they’ll be successful regardless what I do and keep on going about their evil ways”. This is similar to arguing “I believe selling drugs is unethical, BUT, there’s so many huge drug lords out there, that me slightly supporting some of them really makes 0 net difference, so you see my behaviour is kind of ethical after all”. The magnitude of the effect the action has on the overall environment has nothing to do with the morality of the action itself. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The willingness of many ethics-minded developers to implement ads just so they can avoid any in-app purchase system was particularly puzzling to me. I have been thinking a lot about why someone would implement such an intrusive, completely immersion-breaking feature that breaks the player’s attention to talk to them about other games or products. Even in their best implementation, incentivised ads are still a chore for the player, a regular ritual someone has to go through as part of their game, something they wouldn’t miss if it was gone but still go through it for the rewards. Why are those developers forcing people who potentially love their game into this awful path, instead of building trust with them by offering them a game that’s fully enjoyable for free, while optionally allowing them to spend money if they want and are able to? </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After all these conversations, I am convinced the reason ads are so much more desirable to certain developers from an ethics standpoint is this: They only extract, at best, a very small amount of money per player. I’ll return to this in a bit. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Addiction argument, selectively applied</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Against </span><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131382/designers_notebook_stop_calling_.php" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ernest Adam’s advice from a long time ago</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, I’ll go ahead and declare that video games can be addictive. I mean, if a guy can </span><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/taiwan-gamer-death/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">die after playing for 3 days straight</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, then I don’t know what else to call them. Sure, it doesn’t happen to everyone, but it has happened to a tiny few. To me, the approach of “this happens to only a few screwed up people, so it’s not my problem” doesn’t seem very ethical.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Addiction can drive bad behaviour in people, especially people who are vulnerable to it. Some people can and do become so addicted, they make poor life choices. Addiction in F2P games has gotten a lot of attention in recent years and has put forth a developer discussion on ethics on those types of games only. Note that within the developer community, we have largely decided that we are being ethical with non-F2P games, regardless of their content. For instance, the moment some outsider dares question whether violence causes any kind of unwanted behaviour in teenagers, we will jump on them without even trying to understand the particulars of the case they are talking about, as if we know everything about the human psyche and that all past research applies equally to every individual that is or ever will be born. By using our own experiences as a base, we often declare that either violent games can’t negatively affect anyone, or if they do, it’s the responsibility of someone else and not the people who are making the violent games to do something about it. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the other hand, many of the same developers who make this judgment are quick to pick up their pitchforks whenever someone presents evidence of F2P games having affected negatively some specific players. </span><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/195806/chasing_the_whale_examining_the_.php?print=1" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s a representative article</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. By its own author’s admission, it is focused out of proportion to people who were addicted to F2P games and made bad choices that in some cases ruined their life. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But what would our reaction be to similar situations with traditional games, the kinds of which we all grew up and have played for decades? Let’s make a thought experiment. Let’s assume that, similar to these pathological situations with F2P, there also exists a person somewhere that’s making poor life choices with pay up front games. This person spends thousands a month on console and PC games. They are so addicted, they don’t realize they are ruining themselves financially by buying so many games they can’t afford. One of those games they bought is your game. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Questions: </span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Are you unethical in the first place for allowing such behavior?</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is it fair for you to be asked to cease development of all paid games, to avoid pathological situations like this one? Are you being unethical if you refuse?</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Should you go out of your way (at significant cost to you and your company) to find and refund this person among thousands of other satisfied buyers?</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Are you in favor of enacting government regulations to dictate what features you can and cannot put in your paid games, in order to avoid such addiction cases?</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve observed that many of the ethically minded developers who are against all forms of F2P have very different answers to these questions compared to their answers to the equivalent questions around F2P. The “F2P relies on this kind of addictive behavior to work” argument comes up some times and is just an emotional fabrication, not supported by any kind of </span><a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-04-01-free-to-play-whales-more-rational-than-assumed" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">research</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, real world data I’ve seen, or any of the high spenders I’ve talked to. The other more reasonable argument I hear on why F2P should be treated differently is this: “I only accepted $60 from this person, so my responsibility is limited”. This is quite similar to my conclusion of why many developers prefer ads to F2P for ethical reasons: The absolute amount of money involved per player. The pattern is clear: To many ethically-minded developers, the idea of having a single player spend a large amount on a game is offensive and immoral, regardless of context.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The elusive concept of Value</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The vast majority of developers and many players, especially the ones who have been involved in games for more than a decade, have been well trained to think we are all very similar when it comes to extracting value from games. The nature of the paid games has drilled into our brain that</span></div>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A given person is either interested or not interested in a game;</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those who are interested should be getting similar value out of the game, the equivalent of 60 American dollars. A game either meets this value or it doesn’t, for everyone involved, as determined by voodoo metrics such as overall playtime or quality of the story or whatever psychological mood the reviewer happened to be on the week they played it</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132707/the_designers_notebook_selling_.php" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s Ernest Adams</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, revealing the very common impression that a game’s value equals the amount of time someone plays it:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The players paid $6 an hour -- ten cents a minute -- to play RabbitJack's. In retrospect I think it was the most honest business model the game industry has ever had. As long as we were entertaining people, we made money. When they logged out, we stopped making money. People paid for exactly as much entertainment as they got, period.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is effectively saying if you’ve played a game for 20 minutes, you had exactly twice as much fun (or “entertainment”) as someone else who played the game for 10 minutes. This idea is at the core of many ethical developers’ disgust with accepting a lot of money in a short period of time, like the most successful F2P games do. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But my personal favourite example of this way of thinking comes from </span><a href="https://twitter.com/georgeb3dr/status/633232715391733760" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">developers ridiculing players who give bad reviews to paid games they played for a long time</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. There’s even a </span><a href="http://steamreviewwatch.tumblr.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">website</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> dedicated to easily ridiculing more players in real time as they commit the sin of playing a game far too long and not liking it.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So these developers believe that a long play time equals having fun, and valuing the overall experience - no exceptions. Sounds weird to me, but that’s fine, it’s their opinion. Would those same developers also think a person who spent a lot of time playing a mobile F2P game also had fun with it and isn’t allowed to say bad things about the whole experience? Would the same people also ridicule the author of </span><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KristenRutherford/20151109/258856/One_Players_Story_Of_Obsession_Is_Also_A_Salutary_Lesson_For_Developers.php" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this piece</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? I seriously doubt it. The ones I talk to definitely wouldn’t. So that model is conveniently abandoned once those developers start talking about a game they personally don’t like, or that they think is immoral. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another very interesting confusion around value I’ve seen from other developers is the one that dictates that the value to the player is in some way proportional to the effort that went into making the game in the first place. This is something I’ve uncovered from numerous conversations with AAA developers. Many in that field believe that it’s obvious that GTA-V provides more value to a player (*any* player) compared to e.g. Candy Crush Saga, because the first has massive amounts of content, a massive story and various characters, and even a new engine that people worked on for years. In contrast, Candy Crush Saga is cast away as a Bejewelled clone that must have been very easy to make, and can’t possibly offer value unless to people who don’t know any better than to play it.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This type of confusion is especially interesting, because I think it’s what’s keeping many developers from allowing players to pay over a certain limit in their games. Most of the capped-spend limit F2P games I’ve seen and talked to have implemented the cap not because of lack of content, but because their game doesn’t </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">deserve</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> an individual player paying more than a certain amount. More than one person that I’ve talked to have presented a utopian model of “ethical F2P” where everybody spends $5, instead of relatively few people spending a lot of money. Those developers have picked a max dollar value of what the game experience they are offering is worth, using arbitrary standards like other AAA games or how long they’ve been working on the game, and ruled according to their ethics code that nobody else can possibly extract more value than that. The same developers, rather expectedly, claim that F2P games with no caps are immoral, and don’t deserve to receive thousands of dollars from a single player. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A common pattern with these developers is that they always project their own sense of value to everyone else. “This is worth x dollars of value to me, so it should be worth the same to everyone else”. In a very representative example, </span><a href="http://www.emcneill.com/exploitative-game-design-beyond-the-f2p-debate/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">E. McNeil writes</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #575757; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"But the real issue with exploitative design techniques is that they are used to divorce perceived value from actual value (as the customer’s “best self” would judge it)"</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many use the concept of “actual value” to mean basically what they perceive to be the value. But this particular piece goes one step further, and uses the concept of the customer’s “best self”, which it defines as: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #575757; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"a hypothetical version [of the customer] with perfect knowledge, willpower, rationality, and judgement. Without any weaknesses affecting their decision, would your customer still consider your offer to be a beneficial exchange? If you don’t think so, then you shouldn’t make that sale"</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Regardless of what good intentions may be behind it, this mess of a definition reveals its ugliness when it comes to deciding who exactly is the judge of what this “perfect hypothetical human being” would like and not like. It becomes a judgment device some use to enforce their own sense of value to others, while maintaining an air of superiority: “<span id="docs-internal-guid-ee826dc1-0e45-2a68-7b5f-e263c27a7ac8"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">No sane person would ever choose to spend money on Clash of Clans, unless one of the following is happening: they either don’t know better games exist on console or they don’t have the willpower, judgment or rationality to realize, like I do, that paying money on this game is bad value.</span></span>” The frequency I hear things like this from game developers, a discipline that’s otherwise trained to talk to and understand their audience rather than dictate to them the proper way to play, is nothing short of embarrassing.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite the comfort hard numbers always provide when dealing with an unknown, hard to measure quantity like value, hours of play time or cost that went into making a game have nothing to do with what actual players find valuable in a game. This value is not only extremely hard to measure, it also depends on uncontrollable external factors and varies widely from person to person. The Last of Us was a terrible experience to me, for reasons I’ve described </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/05/social-games-and-their-opportunity.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">elsewhere</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and very bad value for the money I paid for it. If it were a movie-format, 2 hour experience instead of 15 hours, it would have been much better value to me. But there are also countless players who loved it and wouldn’t think twice to pay more money for a special edition or buy it again on another platform. Absolute dollar amounts are also meaningless to measure value, because $60 means something very different to different people. Accepting $1000 is deemed immoral by many developers, while accepting $60 is moral, without even a pause to consider context. My view is that context matters. Accepting $60 from the hypothetical addicted person described above would be questionable for me, and I’d try to avoid it if I could. But a rich lawyer is welcome to spend $1000 in my game if they’re enjoying it and seeing good value, with the side effect of supporting many other players playing for free. If you take offence to that, consider this question: Do you also have similar objections when a wealthy person pays tens of thousands for a vintage video game, game collection, or to </span><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3116812/The-ultimate-man-cave-Father-spends-three-years-50-000-creating-fantasy-basement-complete-sword-rack-suits-armor-secret-passage-bookcase.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">redecorate their basement after their favourite game</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? Or will you try to explain the discrepancy away by presenting how your definition of what has actual value is the one that matters? </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As an ethically minded developer, I actually feel more comfortable and in control of my conscience with the F2P model. Consider this: Earlier in the piece, one of the questions I posed on the hypothetical scenario of “addicted person spends too much on paid games”, one of the questions was this: </span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Should you go out of your way (at significant cost to you and your company) to find and refund this one person among thousands of other satisfied buyers?</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My personal answer is “Yes”, regardless of whether it’s a paid or F2P game. But if I was working on a paid game, I wouldn’t even know where to start. There would have to be some kind of industry-wide coordination, which would never happen for obvious reasons. Consider this same question in the context of high spending within a single F2P game. Finding and refunding or cutting off obsessed players who are spending beyond their means in your game is far easier and less costly assuming you are an ethically-minded F2P developer. And even though I highly doubt such an ethical business would see any significant effect to revenue, I would gladly take any such hit because it’s the ethical thing to do.</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More on this, and other ways I personally deal with ethical questions around F2P games, in future posts, as I keep developing and operating F2P games.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-77980043980691773042015-09-07T22:45:00.000-06:002015-09-07T22:45:00.155-06:00Data obsession and the politics of facts<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The use and abuse of data of all kinds in the games industry is a fascinating topic for me. As developers, we naturally need to consider a wide range of data when working on any project: data on our players, our game, our development process, our industry trends, our competition, and many more. With technology improvements we now have access to more data than ever before, but also more noise to dig through. Many have pointed out that immediate access to data can help focus and democratize development. Where before you may have had a political environment where the ideas that won were that of the person who is the most senior/loud/ charismatic/well connected, now it’s possible to evaluate ideas using data and have the best ideas naturally win. Or at least that’s the theory, and like many theories it works under certain contexts and fails in others.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On this post I’d like to talk about situations I’ve seen where the excitement about the potential of data can cause multiple issues on otherwise good teams, including the support of the bad politics environment they are supposed to prevent. From observations and conversations with colleagues, I believe such issues are relatively common in the industry overall, and thus worth talking about. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-9ab4c79d-ab3f-b14e-3e48-58de45f486b1" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 21.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Data obse</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 21.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 21.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sion pitfall #1: Relying exclusively on data to decide what to do next</span></h1>
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.295; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.295; white-space: pre-wrap;">"We don't want opinions here. We just want facts."</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The above phrase will always stay with me from my time in the games industry. I heard it from the moderator at a high profile series of meetings, where a mix of executives and developers were discussing whether it makes sense for the company to start making games for a new platform. It was a completely unexpected response to my suggestion that we should have everyone openly state and support their opinion. As a result of this mandate, during the rest of those meetings I witnessed an often comical attempt by everyone to pretend they are being “objective” by leaving out personal opinions and preferences and presenting random pieces of data that would somehow magically tell us what the right answer was. The presented data had to be hard numbers or generally accepted truths (what the quote is referring to as “facts”), otherwise it would most likely have been disqualified as an opinion. So if someone said “There were x# of companies last year releasing games on this platform, and they made y# of dollars in revenue,” that was a good data point/fact that was considered progress. On the other hand, saying, “We shouldn’t go into this platform because we have nobody on the team who understands it” would have been an opinion, and those were explicitly judged irrelevant early on. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No matter what good intentions may have been behind it, this attempt to find the truth by promoting data and supressing the expression of opinion was a true disaster. The motivation for doing such a thing is usually to ensure everyone maintains “objectivity”. But the idea that there is a single well defined “objective” attitude in questions that involve high uncertainty in a dynamic and complex environment, like the question we faced in that group, is a faulty one. Similarly faulty is the idea that once all data related to such a complex question is available, it can be dissected in a standard way to give a single “correct” answer. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I define bad politics in the workplace as any attempt to promote personal or department goals at the expense of the overall project or company. I’m not looking to demonize anyone with the term. Of the bad politics I’ve seen, none were caused by genuinely evil or manipulative people. But for complex reasons, it’s possible for various people on a team, especially bigger teams, to prioritize goals that simply do not benefit the team. An environment that suppresses opinion in favor of “facts” is the worst kind of environment for addressing this kind of bad politics. Whether they know it or not, most people in such an environment are still biased by their opinions, and this affects how they present and discuss data. This causes a mess of issues: </span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The people who are causing bad politics are free from having to actually explain anything about their behavior. They just cherry pick the data that supports their goal. Without an open discussion of opinion, there’s no hope of uncovering unhelpful biases. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some people, worried that their opinion may cloud their judgment, overcompensate by presenting data just because that data is opposed to their own opinion, even if they don’t think that data is as relevant. By legitimizing such data by presenting it as relevant, other people not as familiar with the problem will give it too much weight</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In hopelessly number-obsessed cultures, people ignore data points that cannot have a number associated with it. (i.e. when judging the quality of people on a team). Just because you can’t measure something, that doesn’t automatically mean it’s not important. </span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The biggest tragedy of this “data is king” attitude is that numbers are put ahead of people.</span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/zynga-says-rival-stole-its-secret-sauce-sues-2009-9" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Zynga is referring to its process of making data-driven decisions as its “secret sauce”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a proprietary method of making successful games by following some sort of predefined steps. Think what that means for the people who work there: They are only hired to dig through the data and perform this magical ritual that will lead to success. As long as they can do that, they are completely interchangeable. It’s a dangerous way to run a company that aims to eliminate any kind of diverse thinking that strays from the recipe.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I understand that the notion that there’s some higher truth that will tell you the right answer if only you work hard enough to find hidden patterns in the data must be comforting in environments of uncertainty, as is any creative endeavor. Don’t fall for it. In any creative industry, there are risks. Instead of blindly following where you think the data takes you, and pretending that practice removes the risk, you’re better off using data as one of many councils to face those risks in a calculated way that won’t be fatal in the likely case of failure. Unfortunately in some companies the political environment doesn’t tolerate any kind of risk and failure in the first place, causing everyone to take cover behind the comfort of data. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 21.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Data obsession pitfall #2: Losing focus and wasting time on small data-driven improvements</span></h1>
<br />
<span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.295; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwpyR_GqLYI" style="line-height: 1.295; text-decoration: none;">Jesse Hull talks about a pretty common idea</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, especially in social network and mobile game companies: That A/B testing can be used to grow your business to levels of success that would not have otherwise been possible. And a requirement for that is that such A/B testing is “holistic”, meaning everyone in the organization is focused and in the mindset of doing such tests all the time and around every intended feature big or small. A particular example given is that if you manage to find 10 ideas that each improve a key metric by 4%, you end up with a big 50% improvement.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This idea has become so common that many developers and press have adopted it as the one truth that is so obviously true it doesn’t even need debate: Everybody seems to just know it and present it as the truth. Some random examples out of many: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/01/features/test-test-test" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/01/features/test-test-test</span></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Wooga is a new type of game developer, one that emphasises metrics over creativity. Its core discipline is A/B or split testing, in which new features are introduced to a selection of users, and their reactions measured. Features remain only if users engage with them. If they don't respond, Wooga tries new features until they do.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eli Hodapp from TouchArcade says in a Time magazine interview:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"A lot of the games that make the most money are quite literally scientifically engineered with the help of actual psychologists to design things down to the color of a button, which is then A/B tested based on what makes the most money."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I ask for more clarification, </span><a href="https://twitter.com/hodapp/status/612780980135436288" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">he expresses the belief</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">any game</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> near the top end of the top grossing charts is there because they A/B test </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">everything</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, including trivial details like the color of buttons (emphasis mine).</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The shape and color of buttons seems to be a popular example, as it’s also found in </span><a href="http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/13065280/video-game-data-science-profit" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this ESPN report</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Employees with job titles like "data scientist" study whether a player is more likely to click on a button if it's square or round”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It continues: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The tiniest improvement can have fortune-changing effects for a game studio. “If you can make a change to, say, a menu color that results in your 10 million players spending an average of just a penny more every month, it adds up fast," one analyst tells me.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I consider myself extremely lucky to have been given an opportunity to work with some of the most successful teams in mobile games, because that experience allows me the clarity to see all the above statements as the garbage that they are. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After I joined the Clash of Clans team, one of my first questions about A/B testing received the following answer by the team lead: “I don’t believe in A/B testing. Just do what’s right for the game.” I was also informed that no A/B test was ever run on that game. This was in late 2013, when the game was already so popular that it was hard for many to imagine how it could possibly get any more successful. For many other data obsessive companies, the answer would have been simple: We A/B test trivial details like colors of buttons, slightly different gameplay, or tweaking virtual currency prices on the massive user base. To use the ESPN report line of thinking, even a menu color change that would result in the millions of players spending a penny more every month would have been a meaningful improvement to the game. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead of doing all that not very fun-sounding work, the team instead chose to focus on Clan Wars, a new, relatively complex feature that they believed would make a significant improvement to the overall experience. During the time that feature was under development, I didn’t see anyone make a decision solely based on the wealth of available data on existing player behavior, though such data was sometimes used on-demand to validate assumptions (mainly around clan sizes and play patterns throughout the day). While all of us were excited about the feature as something we’d want to experience ourselves with our clan mates, none of us really knew if it would have been successful or not. Having come straight from the highly political environment described in the opening section, I couldn’t help but think that such an effort would never get any support in many other companies. Why risk messing with something that works, especially when there is a total absence of data that would confirm that the new feature will indeed be successful?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="459px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/iEkjkhiz_0pjNXZaA7fCinS0O1SnXeMXeZ92cyvN8J6dwviQh_0wv9sLStBOuTZChVXUFjNvuRcDbjo6S1ElpEtcc3oCm4kwq_72W_Q1ewKILRP8kMJwfhr8VOU3CP3y-VrfXunn0SkrtA0H" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624px;" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Against popular belief, not all successful mobile games run A/B tests</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After Clan Wars came out, it was a massive success. But let’s do a thought experiment and imagine the team instead had opted to put all of that work on a robust A/B testing framework that allows them to A/B test anything in game (yes, including the apparently very important shape of buttons). After months or years of figuring out small experiments and collecting data, they may have gotten lucky and hit the 10 small changes that each increased a key metric by 4%, for a total improvement of ~50%. Everyone would pat themselves on the back for being so data driven and celebrate the big improvement. The massive opportunity cost of not implementing Clan Wars would have been completely missed: No kind of data anyone could collect would tell them what they had missed out on. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It would seem to me that in this case, ignoring all the orthodox advice about A/B testing was exactly what led to huge success.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have no doubt there are creatively bankrupt games companies that are obsessing over whether a square or round button is better for monetization, or rapidly shoveling shoddily made games they don’t actually believe in into their A/B testing pipeline. And I have no doubt some of them are extracting short term benefits from this approach. But I know for a fact that suggesting that such obsessive data usage is the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">only</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> way to achieve any meaningful success is a lie. Make sure you recognize it as such when you see it. If you make the choice to work for a company that puts data before anything else and painfully A/B tests every single detail, make sure you’re not doing it because you think that’s how everyone does it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 21.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Data obsession pitfall #3: Not understanding the short-term predictive nature of most data</span></h1>
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Zynga has been famously driven by numbers. That’s pretty easy to see for any outsider, from their CEO’s infamous way of thinking about </span><a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-money/valuation/the-five-words-that-destroyed-zynga/article23685465/" style="line-height: 1.295; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">achieving numbers by any means possible</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, to their </span><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904823804576502442835413446" style="line-height: 1.295; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">open admission that they care more about numbers than games</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Though I don’t have firsthand experience, I’ve heard stories about how their teams wouldn’t consider important tasks done until they deploy the change and see the desired change in numbers in real time. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A lot of the data analysis we do in games is predictive in nature. “If we implement feature X, we expect to see a Y% improvement in retention.” “If we add multiplayer to our game, we can expect it will have a longer lifetime.” When done properly, an A/B test will successfully predict the aggregate behavior of millions from a much smaller sample. But what does that tell us about the how sustainable this behavior is over the long run? Not much.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyone involved in such predictions should understand that predicting the future is hard. The further out in the future you try to predict, the more inaccurate your predictions will be. Having a lot of data helps make more accurate predictions, but the amount of data (not to mention the complexity of the analysis) that you need to make predictions even weeks ahead, let alone months or years, grows exponentially. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This isn’t such a hard concept to get, and isn’t specific to games. It’s the reason the weather man can’t seem to ever get right what the weather will be like 6 days from now. In that light, I am not surprised at all that a company like Zynga, who relied almost exclusively on data to grow, had very good short term results but is struggling to sustain that success in the long run. What is very surprising is how often I still see developers assume that Zynga-style short term improvements will naturally extrapolate indefinitely into the future. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good developers know that the long term effect of any data driven change is not necessarily tied to its short term performance. The long term effect needs to be evaluated separately, and very often, it’s very hard or impossible to do that evaluation using hard numbers. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the most obvious reasons to reject a data driven change, regardless of how enticing its benefit may seem, is because such a change is actually degrading the player experience, while focusing on improving revenue or another company-focused metric. Yet there’s many examples of companies not culling such changes: Zynga-style virality in the early Facebook days did nothing but frustrate existing players but was really good for getting new signups. A full screen banner with a special offer is very annoying to the majority of the players that are not interested in the offer, regardless of whether revenue may go up after such a change. A UI change that causes the users to accidentally spend more premium currency will obviously increase statistics around premium currency usage but is hurtful to building trust and getting loyal long term customers. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="562px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/UJ64lDMXgKyIXiveYLHSdAzHWqk70De3PM_Tp2zsJEBn-37YDd5tNnUDg1kZ2XDuQPStFqNi31hvucREaODHXfxdU5xFMfM5tXkIaazSWIoKTSzf86-cfx_i7xAD3fhh9TLoN4MoRsqFVN7V" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624px;" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This doesn’t seem like a particularly user-friendly feature</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a political data-driven environment, it’s very hard to speak against such changes. If you do, you will be asked “Where’s your data?”, and your numbers-free answer about the long term will be marked as wishy-washy, easily defeated by the hard short-term numbers the data driven change has to back itself up.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unless you are a company that wants to make a quick buck any way possible, you want to be successful in the long run. Many teams say they only care about the long run. The ones that actually mean it will never implement any kind of change suggested by the data, unless they are certain they can be changes that bring success in the long run. If they are not certain of this, they will not focus on such changes, no matter how enticing the short term benefit might seem. So when making any changes inspired by data, make sure to evaluate the potential long term effects of such a change separately. Often, you have to rely solely on the good judgment and opinions of the people you hired.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 21.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Use data to support your passion for games, not the other way around</span></h1>
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.295; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.295; white-space: pre-wrap;">My biggest concern with the obsessive data focus that is taking over some companies is that we may be growing an entire generation of game developers to believe that the only way to make successful games is to forget everything they are passionate about and focus instead on collecting, overanalyzing, tweaking, obsessing over numbers, until they get the desired result. I regularly see new developers who are just now entering the gaming industry go straight into such environments, growing in the echo chambers of their data obsessed employer. The way they think and talk scares me. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.295; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My prior experience working with successful teams has given me a big advantage: proof that obsessing about numbers is not a prerequisite to success. I am planning to use data to support my passion for the games I want to make, not replace it. I will use data to reduce the risk of those games in today’s very uncertain landscape, not to tell me what games to make in the first place. I will use data to test important features and validate key assumptions, not waste time playing with different menu colors or shapes of buttons. I will never let data get in the way of a good user experience, even when such data may indicate that what my game really needs is a full screen ad banner. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I hope others will do the same.</span></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-66420775292548812632015-08-16T21:59:00.000-06:002015-08-16T22:06:25.810-06:00Can crunch ever be fixed in the games industry?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8YgnNxO2dcfenJdGWejZiCAx9CW0oHNfOE-Dx23ZyHmH7N51t_glIwKPTEuYTP-Jp_TyKKFeB0qc-ZMdYzmgHf_UPpoQ5mbPmeNcC__gsrBxh4PHUP3U26pIUey5rXzcP8oIPdiaCzWY/s1600/crunchie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="157" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8YgnNxO2dcfenJdGWejZiCAx9CW0oHNfOE-Dx23ZyHmH7N51t_glIwKPTEuYTP-Jp_TyKKFeB0qc-ZMdYzmgHf_UPpoQ5mbPmeNcC__gsrBxh4PHUP3U26pIUey5rXzcP8oIPdiaCzWY/s400/crunchie.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<a name='more'></a>Crunch and the long term view </span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the puzzling attitudes I've seen in the games industry is companies talking about focusing on long term success, yet not taking a firm position against crunch. This doesn't make much sense to me. The only coherent argument in support of crunch I've seen (that it can provide a short boost in productivity that's useful for meeting a critical deadline), is clearly a short term benefit. No game developer who enjoys the respect and admiration of their fans are in such esteemed position because 10 years earlier they hit a deadline or kept their original release date. They are respected because they put out consistently high quality products. It's why the "we'll release it when it's done" attitude works. In the long run, nobody remembers a game that slipped, but everyone remembers a disappointing game. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyone thinking about what it would take to create a strong team that is equipped for long term success ought to give special consideration to crunch. Like other easily measurable short term performance boosts, crunch can and does have hard to measure long term negative side effects. There is no formula I know of to model its long term effect of driving away some of the most valuable developers - the ones who will never be happy obsessing over a single hobby and throwing their entire life away for certain periods of time, no matter how much they love games. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For managers who are genuinely committed to long term results, this kind of dilemma (do we encourage crunch for short term gains, at the risk of long term loss?) is a no brainer. They never risk any long term negative side effect, no matter how enticing the short term gain might seem. They do so even at the face of missing data about the potential long term side effect, against readily available and very measurable data about the short term benefit. As long as the team can survive without the short term benefit, the choice for anybody focusing on the long term is easy. The crunch problem then becomes clearer: many developers have no choice but to force themselves to crunch, because they can't afford not to. Being in a relationship with a publisher that holds all the power to fund and make last minute requests, for example, is such a situation. Working for a public company, where the investors typically have a very short term view and will punish any date slips is another. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The question of whether crunch can ever be fixed cannot be held in isolation from such pathological but very common situations that force teams to take a short term view. But the first step for making any progress whatsoever against crunch is to address the myth that good games cannot be made without it. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-330ab200-39cf-43a4-2b33-5c06d83a76b9" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eliminating Crunch is hard - but not impossible</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-10-23-game-devs-when-does-crunch-cross-the-line" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Warren Spector has this to say about crunch</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"What I'm saying is that games - I'm talking about non-sequels, non-imitative games - are inherently unknowable, unpredictable, unmanageable things. A game development process with no crunch? I'm not sure that's possible unless you're working on a ripoff of another game or a low-ambition sequel."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This kind of thinking is rampant among the developers who have been well trained over the years to uncritically reject any thought that crunch might actually be a problem that can be fixed. Imagine a young developer going to work for such a studio as their first job in the industry. What they are hearing from senior management, perhaps including industry legends like Spector, is that crunch is a feature, not a bug. Making games (the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*good*</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> games, at least) is impossible without it. Watch the logic in the above quote, because it's typical. It's implying that if you don't crunch, you must be making some terrible game: a low ambition sequel, or cloning someone else's game. Who in their right mind would even suggest eliminating crunch in such an environment? </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And then it gets even worse. Trapped inside the echo chamber where everyone is quick to point out how unavoidable crunch is, some brave souls go even further to prove their dedication to the cause. They start questioning whether crunch is such a bad thing to begin with. Surely it must have </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*some*</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> advantages. For example, many developers agree that "</span><a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-10-23-game-devs-when-does-crunch-cross-the-line" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">working through adversity helps bring team members closer together</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">". Going through hard times, they claim, creates long lasting bonds. It's easy to fall for such absurdities when you're working on such a team: of course when you spend every waking hour with other people, it's possible you'll get to know them really well and maybe even like some of them more (just as you may also dislike other people you don't get along with but are forced to work with all day long). That doesn't make the idea that torture is the only or most efficient way to bond with your team any less silly. Another common suggestion is that </span><a href="http://www.zenofdesign.com/in-defense-of-crunch/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"crunching in small doses can actually stoke the creative fires"</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, ignoring both that crunch most of the time ends up being chaotic firefighting where nobody has time to even think of anything creative, and the fact that </span><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mental-downtime/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all sorts of research indicates that creativity works in the exact opposite way</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So basically, anyone who would dare speak up against crunch in such teams, would sound like someone who doesn't care about whether the game they're making is any good, doesn't care about his team mates, and doesn't really want to be too productive or creative. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But it's not just many development teams that fall into that mode of thinking: it's outside observers, too. The press has a lot of incentive to contribute to this impression that crunch is unavoidable if you want to make good games, or even any kind of games. Teams that experience unreasonable crunch often are targeted and exposed to become public spectacles, disaster stories not for everyone else to learn from, but to entertain, all the while pointing out how ingrained the practice is in game development culture. </span><a href="http://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such-insane-hours-1704744577" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From this Kotaku article</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"From multimillion-dollar blockbusters like Call of Duty to niche RPGs like Trails, just about every video game in history is the net result of countless overtime hours, extra weekends, and free time sacrificed for the almighty deadline"</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Just about every video game in history"! Not sure how you even fact check a statement like this, but maybe the thinking is that if it's attention grabbing and dramatic, it must also be true.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do you remember the last time Kotaku or any other press covered a well-made game, focusing on how smooth things went and crunch was minimal? Neither do I. To be fair, that article would probably be extremely boring even to me. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And in this way, the myth that "crunch is here to stay" perpetuates. After all, even when those junior people become senior many years later, and after having put in a large amount of overtime themselves, it would be very uncomfortable to admit that all that pain may have been for nothing. For the ones who did enjoy the pain, it's even worse - they would never let anyone question their badge of honour.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don't think most developers are perpetuating the "crunch is unavoidable" myth on purpose in order to maintain the crunch status quo. They are instead generalizing certain limitations that have applied to them for the entire time they've been making games. Some of these limitations do make crunch very hard or even impossible to avoid - i.e. hard deadlines, enforced via live-or-die funding rules by occasionally unreasonable publishers who are happy to change requirements just before such a deadline. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So these people are basically arguing that, because their entire development career has been subject to such limitations, there *hasn't been* and there can *never be* any process that creates good games and avoids crunch.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why is it so hard to understand that it's perfectly possible for a team to create an extraordinary game with zero crunch? What is it exactly about the well-known uncertainty and need for iteration in games that makes crunch required? Why can't we instead embrace that uncertainty with a mix of more flexible milestones, longer development cycles and better complexity management? What's the inherent factor that guarantees there can never be a disciplined team that can schedule more time and deliver a game at the same high quality that so many teams have already delivered with crunch? And what's the inherent factor that would forever prevent all investors from believing in such teams and funding them a bit extra for the additional amount of time? There are no such inherent factors. It doesn’t matter that many developers have never worked with such disciplined teams, or such long term view investors - they do exist, and will hopefully become less of an exception as the industry matures. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The small first step against crunch</span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The very sad part of this entire situation is that it would take people exactly like Spector to fix crunch. While outside observers and investors keep being told by both prominent developers and the press that all good games require crunch, they will not only </span><a href="http://www.develop-online.net/news/unpaid-crunch-deserves-no-sympathy-pachter/0109838" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">keep parroting those statements</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, they will also have no tolerance for developers that are up front with them about the inherent unknowns in game development. They will keep seeing any pitch that includes uncertainty as a sign of an incompetent team, or at least a team that's not as good as those other "better", more “confident” developers who promise better timelines and then risk killing themselves to achieve them.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While I don't see the established industry at large making progress against crunch this way, other strong forces of change bring alternatives for developers who want to make good games but will no longer tolerate an environment that encourages crunch. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">15 years ago, by far the most common way of publishing games made things very hard even for teams that wanted to choose the long term benefits of not crunching. Traditional publishers had all the leverage to dictate features and release dates. They would withhold funding when a milestone was missing features or if they decided they were not implemented to a high quality. Such funding was often necessary to keep the development team afloat. It's understandable that in such an environment, developers would see all this "long term negative" crunch discussion as hot air, even if they had time to think about it amidst all the crunching to meet the next deadline. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While similar situations still happen to a large degree today, the digital distribution trends have made it more feasible for teams to skip publishers completely and rely directly on their fans to sustain themselves. Sometimes they are self-funded (lowering cost of entry is another powerful force that assists with this), or they may work with investors who have more tolerance for uncertainty (because it's much more evident in the kinds of games these teams typically work on). Because they are completely out of the spotlight, they're not subject to the same outside pressures to make a specific date or have a presence at a conference. These teams have more freedom to focus on the long term and are more likely to attack and fix the forces that make crunch unavoidable, if they choose to. Who knows, maybe if they start scaling up and can maintain these good practices, maybe the big guys would start noticing.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you're interested in fighting crunch today, there's a small change you can start with. If you've fallen prey to the myth that crunch is unavoidable, get out of it. Whenever you see someone talking about crunch as if it's some constant of the universe that can't be changed, point out they're over generalizing their particular situation. When you see someone bragging about the fact that they crunched, and how it was an absolutely crucial part of their success that nobody else can ever possibly meet unless they also torture themselves, tell them to meet more people. Tell yourself, and every supporter of "crunch is impossible to fix" that if they must, they can replace "impossible" with "very hard". If you are in a management position, don't tell your team "this is how things are, making good games requires crunch, don't even bother trying to change it". Instead, put them in the right problem-solving frame of mind by telling them, "crunch is a very difficult problem to solve because of very strong forces at work. We will try to expose to you those forces as they happen, so you have the full picture. Like other very hard problems on the job, we hope you will help us fix it." </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, understanding that crunch </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*can*</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> be fixed is only the first step. On future posts, I'll address in more detail factors that contribute to crunch becoming a necessity, and how teams can set themselves up to defend against them. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-46075411787684126332015-07-14T20:30:00.001-06:002015-07-14T20:32:22.322-06:00Improving on the promise of Master of Orion<b id="docs-internal-guid-0e4b1a9c-8f8b-898f-bd6e-a6afa8ad4f91" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="353px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/WUrMr6VKLhS5wnMJG-jYYWXQLsQJT20AOeLLD2xnx02gPK3NjuGn6PYKv50xFl2EZyyjpgxyUbpz5AYyKnb5s7i7XpNuoKEdQeb2VAcvS72TqnXhC-_leVytC_moqTFhbhM3j7u5RGPz_9KO" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="307px;" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Master of Orion was one of the most influential game I played in my teens. Fueled by my love for space exploration and adventure, I spent countless hours planning the expansion of my empire, working with and against other factions, coming up with plans and strategies to end up at the top when each game session reached its end.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am not alone in my love for that game. A relatively small but passionate community has formed around the first two games (especially Master of Orion 2), and it has lasted and evolved to this day. This community has enabled a number of inspired games and successors to be viable on the market. Like many people in that community, I cherish the memories of the original and have been trying for almost two decades to find another space game that can recreate some of that experience, without much success.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This "find a worthy successor" quest has taken quite a few weird turns, and a few years ago ended in an important realization. The fact that no other game has filled the void Master of Orion left has more to do with how I've changed in the meantime, rather than the quality of follow-up games in the genre. I came to that realization after replaying the original and found it's no longer as appealing as it used to be. I had the same trouble getting into Master of Orion 1 and 2 as I had with other successors, games like Endless Space, Stardrive and Galactic Civilizations. My next step, then, was to find out why that is. My passion for slow-paced strategy games and space as a setting is still intact after all these years. What has changed in the meantime and why can’t I get the same entertainment and excitement as I did in the 90's?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Discussing this with other Master of Orion players has not helped much. In talking with the community, I can't help but shake the feeling there's a strong conservatism at play. Many of the players there will tell you that Master of Orion 2 is as good as it gets in terms of gameplay: Nobody should be trying to mess with the classic, except in peripheral improvements (better graphics, better AI, bigger playing field).</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Further proof of this attitude, in my mind, is </span><a href="http://wargaming.com/en/articles/news/general/master_of_orion_announced/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wargaming's recent announcement of the Master of Orion reboot</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This announcement commits to not making any radical changes where it matters the most ("the game will be staying true to its classic 4X gameplay"), and then goes on to make a more detailed list of superficial improvements (enhanced visuals, new voice overs, revamped user interface, more races). </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Based on my recent experience replaying the original, I can't relate to this conservative attitude, though I can definitely understand it. What developer in their right mind would go against what seems to be the promise of the franchise for a large, vocal part of the community?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I would still like to do a thought experiment. For a moment, let's assume we can survive the fan rage and pitchfork crusade coming after the developers who announce a radically different Master of Orion experience. Let's assume we can freely evolve that 20 year old game design in whatever format, gameplay direction, platform, or business model we want, using whatever experience we have gained as developers, taking advantage of any aspect of modern technology, and in line with how we ourselves have changed in the meantime. How can we improve the original Master of Orion promise if we were unrestricted to change anything we want?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This post is about what that thought experiment looks like for me. But before I talk about specific changes I'd make to it, I want to list what I see as the promise of the original Master of Orion. Delivering on this promise better is the foundation on which I build my proposed changes.</span></div>
<h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1e4d78; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The promise of Master of Orion:</span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Progression</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Explore an interesting galaxy, and make part of it your own. Over time, grow your assets, including population, fleets and technology, in order to become a formidable, respected force in the galaxy. “Build an empire to span the galaxy”, as the game’s box promised.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Diplomacy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Lead your civilization into a prominent position among other peer civilizations, in a highly political environment that involves friendships, rivalries, unholy alliances, betrayals, unlikely allies. You can choose whether to participate in cutthroat politics or stick to predefined ideals.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Strategy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Using information the game provides (sometimes incomplete), make exciting strategic decisions, choose using your own moral compass, and set priorities that affect how your civilization grows, expands, and affects other civilizations</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In case it's not obvious, this is what I personally see as the promise of the game. Other people can disagree or argue that I left out important parts of the promise. I expect many would shape the promise around the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4 x's</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which I am deliberately avoiding here. For instance, the concept of extermination doesn't sit well with me; it leads to zero sum experiences that has players focusing on exterminating or dominating the other participants. When I think of Master of Orion, I don't immediately think, "Oh, that game that allows me to terminate other civilizations!" That's not part of the promise for me. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Keep my definition of promise in mind as you're reading the rest of this. Any disagreement on the promise will also lead to disagreements on where to focus potential improvements. That's fine! In fact, I'd love to hear from other people who have played the game, what the promise is for them, and how they'd improve the original design to better deliver on that promise.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So with all the disclaimers out of the way, here's how I'd go about improving the Master of Orion experience in the modern age. I'd look to improve the impact of Progression and Diplomacy, while keeping the strengths of the Strategy promise intact. And in order to accomplish that, I'd focus on three somewhat inter-related fronts: A persistent universe, Truly social diplomacy, and better Time management. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Persistent Universe</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Exploring an interesting galaxy and growing your empire to expand to that galaxy is a big part of the Master of Orion promise. But the fire and forget sessions reduce the impact of this aspect. After a few hours, when the game session is over, the generated galaxy is gone forever, and we can't go back to it. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="389px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/RBY8ddFfW7lmzfYXQWjoed2vPg0pJF-WHv9aaST5iOwG6SQwQ2I68M_ba03tg2H-WHFpPzagiRD4L99AO7tHv4YCb-hgk0XbAPiqeQlN6rkI028xfVZy_FKyv_AFiXTcuJabYsXl4gUhSzyL" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624px;" /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here's a snapshot from a recent game I was having. System Pollus at the edge of my empire was at an interesting situation, located at the intersection of my empire with 3 other civilizations, 2 of which I was at war. As it is, I may feel the urge to defend that location because of its strategic location, or I can choose to abandon it to better defend my inner systems. Once this game ends, no matter what happens, I'll forget about this particular geopolitical situation, and move on to whatever the random number generator prepares for me in the next game. Over time, my overall memories of playing countless similar sessions is a random mess of star systems and ships flying between them. I can't really point to a single concrete thing I helped build or progress over time. Sure, I gained experience personally playing the game and now I'm better at it, but that's all.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But what if this exact situation was part of a persistent universe? What if there was a deep history of how I came to own Pollus, that goes back weeks or months? Maybe I had stolen it from another player who actually developed the system first, and had unresolved feelings about my repossession of the system ever since. Maybe I had managed to defend it over a long period of time against all odds and then lost it tragically when other players ganged up on it which left other areas I wanted to get to unguarded. Under a persistent universe, the playing field becomes more than a strategic board and gains history and life of its own, making the entire experience more meaningful and interesting. Strategic choices are influenced on a whole new level from emotions brought on by the history of how I came to own specific parts of the universe.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A game where I log in and continue from where I left off last time has huge benefits for delivering on the promise of Progression. Instead of starting from scratch each time and going through the regular motions (research the same technologies, expand using the same strategy, produce the same kinds of ships), it allows me to always make decisions that are novel, depending on my current situation. And after playing for a while, I can look back, consider where I started from, and see how far along I've progressed. Spread over time, this feeling of progression is much stronger than an 8 hour session, especially when shared with other people (see next section on Diplomacy). </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://us.ogame.gameforge.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">OGame</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a good example of an online, persistent space game that does Progression well (though Diplomacy and Strategy are weak). So far I've expanded to and developed 5 planets, over the course of 2-3 months of playing. Some of the planets are in different solar systems, have unique advantages and threats, and despite some throwbacks, my empire is progressing even during times I don't have all the time in the world to play. Looking back how far I've come in the first months is a source of pride, and I can't wait to see where I'll be a year into the game. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="426px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/r6HiEZdrhlbvPBDfuhQ5UKVp4HM9Zb8mn3kOPTGx7fas61bS1vbhV0vSPBt1EuJ-k8RKPnpSso7ApJO6A9KKkPOD2W1NP_fj-T5GfRzYjj0IKYgkj847JhsHPV5uTTrA58_3MZfYWd30Y2tH" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="600px;" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">OGame</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are of course many far-reaching side effects of replacing the game board with a persistent universe. The game would either never end, or if it does, it has a lifetime measured in weeks or months, not hours. There's no concept of "reloading" an old game; decisions made cannot be taken back, and you can't reload an old game to see how a different decision would have played out. A player who has made a lot of progress over months may need to be somewhat protected from losing all that progress from a single mistake. And a turn based universe that exists regardless of whether a given player is logged in or not poses many design questions on how to handle player input and progress the turns.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But none of these side effects violate Master of Orion's promise to me. Some of them actually help the promise, as discussed in the next sections.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Truly social diplomacy</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another powerful promise of Master of Orion is the political ecosystem that consists of other civilizations. In the original, those other races were controlled by the computer, but in Master of Orion 2 and many successors, more than one human players can pick a race. Regardless of whether the participating races are controlled by the AI or a human player, I consider the diplomacy part to be weak both in the originals and in many of the follow-ups they inspired.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="418px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/zGodTFIvrRXuWegAkfA3MVyEeIhfbN_Sg5mOgui9gg2S-gRFJ7JlP8Ebh0mAqUNuRb8n9Pn9XlmSp75dhu24zpXyAqoNMBgfYhADr2AvW-K2ZZNZVxoOQJ61PwIEXRorcdl0KoU8CNXL6W5X" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624px;" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is the diplomacy screen from Master of Orion. When talking to another leader, we have the option to give them some things, in exchange for some other things, in a way that leaves us both better off after the trade. There's also a "how much do I like you" slider that trivializes the relationship down to a single number between "I hate you" and "Have my space babies". Any potential deals are immediately enforced by the computer: there's little opportunity for someone to promise to give something and later refusing to do it (unless we're talking about the over-used, easily predictable and therefore boring strategy of "let's make peace now while I build up my strength so I can come full force for you later"). </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This format of diplomacy can create a certain number of interesting situations. But it closes the door on the far more interesting opportunities for deeper diplomacy among human players. The kind of diplomacy that allows any kinds of deals, on any time horizon, and within the context of more complex inter-player relationships. The kind of system that enables complex politics to surface over time, instead of making diplomacy interactions just a tool someone has to decide when and who to go to war with.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's obvious why the original Master of Orion focused on a diplomacy system that makes sense for AI opponents, since it was released with no multiplayer mode in an era when many of us didn't even own a modem. But seeing so many successors in the last decade concentrating on improving this AI-based system, even for games that do allow multiplayer, makes me wonder why there is not more effort to focus on unique advantages of human to human interactions. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://np.ironhelmet.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Neptune's Pride</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is one such game that offers direct, unrestricted diplomacy between human players. It offers gameplay loosely inspired by Master of Orion, where each of the human players can produce, research, explore and expand into the star system. The universe is persistent during the 10 days or so that each game session lasts. The goal of the game is to capture more stars than other players. Players are expected to cooperate in groups to proceed- people who ignore diplomacy completely will likely end up getting attacked by all sides, and that’s impossible to defend against. Players make short lived alliances in their effort to become more powerful (but not too powerful early in the game so that everyone will come after them). The diplomacy screen is a simple chat window, where a player can talk to one or more of the participants in the game. Even with such a simple screen, the diplomacy runs quite deep thanks to game features designed to support it. For example, a weaker player may be able to convince more than one contesters that they can help them win the game, only to benefit from their indirect support and become themselves contesters for the top spot later in the game. There are more exciting examples of how diplomacy between real players can work out in such games (for examples see </span><a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01/02/neptunes-pride-the-complete-epic/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><a href="http://gamasutra.com/view/news/226675/10_days_with_the_deepsea_bluffing_game_Subterfuge.php" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="390px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/W-obGs-xHx9HBA3U1VZU33il7zZOse2T0OSzvlRMGcHK_Udk1exBQV0XN7Vg4WvnnaH1i7-Qt79mu1-LNW9HahqDQdKF0zze58R7RPXYq_d2_Ns1zGizw2_yhMRvBfpOHTtOVAfFuZuaoTUm" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624px;" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Neptune’s Pride</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All this is good, but in my view, Neptune's Pride’s end game goal is an obstruction to meaningful, long lasting diplomacy. No matter what, a single player will sooner or later capture half the galaxy and win the game. Everybody knows this, and it affects everyone's behavior. The chance to create meaningful, long lasting bonds is diminished. Instead, players are incentivized to manipulate just for manipulation's sake. I don't consider that ideal social gameplay. And it's not hard to imagine how this simple, unrestrictive diplomacy system could go much further in a persistent game that contains less defined end goals or does not really end at all. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/05/social-games-and-their-opportunity.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I've written before about some potentially interesting social structures in games</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Some of them would fit perfectly in a Master of Orion-inspired space strategy game, especially one set in a persistent universe. These social structures, combined with supporting game features and Neptune Pride's free-style, chat-based diplomacy system, could offer very interesting diplomacy scenarios not possible in the original Master of Orion. Random examples:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- Two players at war are presented with a common, urgent threat. Whether they join forces and under what terms may depend a lot on their history and faction allegiance.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- An alliance of players has just discovered that one of the highest contributing members has a history of interacting with an enemy alliance. How do they react?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- Legislating social structures could allow players to vote on contentious issues, like sending assistance to the weaker side of an ongoing conflict. How certain players voted can be a matter of record and have repercussions with other players long after the conflict is over</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I respect the efforts of many strategy games to improve AI using modern technology. But I can't get excited about such efforts, not when we have so much unused potential to explore between real player interactions. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My final comment about the AI-based diplomacy of Master of Orion and successors has to do with the look of the alien races. I'm not sure if it was Star Wars and its liberal use of weird looking alien life forms that inspired the original Master of Orion designers to include a myriad of strange looking races in the game. Or maybe it was a misguided attempt at realism (there must be other races in the universe, and they can't all possibly look like us). But especially now, as I've grown older, the look of the alien races in many of these games is an active turn-off. Here's a random assortment I could find on google - only one of these is not from a space strategy game:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-left: -5.75pt;">
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none;"><colgroup><col width="156"></col><col width="156"></col><col width="156"></col><col width="156"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="133px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/azDj-b9idfQG11GqBAB7Hry4ssQ7WgTPjvF1e4aTIDp_RE_mKvCdRM4eGqZ3-6ZEiIOGEmvjF-iVLgu7atAnYOsOhVjmC0RYVNgIHVyvkZyIphlYtR0uNXWO9r3fkb0bmMsLmI6F77ju4MIa" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="134px;" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="133px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/y333VyG2V25JmTv1dd6tJPlGoPmbm3eIgn2b4RXnBcPvT0L-WYFirwEeffjKkoIU0tBCTFrX7RVRmgjrKQwqYziLP_o5efK_gxbS1TXZTRju1ewMBHMeXpGZFn_JLnwyXRhxJWF8PWYZrBBP" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="133px;" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="133px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/qG7M42TO7XcHLtEfblWvFtkAHU2yWe6Gj2Eijz7HrlW1Dlt_FyYKwirSk_uHtr1hgBZK8tepQDyhld6pNfHvqeIRydbBo61WmxFBhIB_u9fpdY6o2yAJQCRt1nu08VafVAqgRVAODzq1AXAM" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="133px;" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="132px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ufw94HO-srt_QzIcYgnf5w1k9zO982MgFx1p9Iq3DnUnPlh0E3KHAJ7aScRwauOnJ1yxr0gYTUW2bUZHJsbdMXQJidnnhsdhAuED65mfWIek63YAUCAFntWBybRobtBzVmAeeSABS5v24tgq" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="134px;" /></span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="132px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/D7r1RkM5kbumP2Iv1m1rvrULhez4OHJK_irbZmsOQMsVJL6XR_G8KE12Adg3rdKDIC_7E1Eia2oVfifAB_IVOPkbz3vRmU3NEEvweQIZd9KCTpzjEoh0ODgi0FACCIMDqLj3VjDPvPVUXlkW" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="132px;" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="133px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Kv0CbP_71CbKb4_y7yAV_sxAIY3dDP4MQ0IrIDOgsKx_CXOboeIKBGNkmh-PEoAxlAjc8OfmeqDOE12wMKcXp7ug0H6JdC4rYxatXS18SWbAyIpffatqsq0ITznULebdoWYit_WPo11k6Gkk" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="133px;" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="132px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/fArd9C14jCZWpVglQinYOcXPoUt6P_0tWGc_467KO9369BhZd8G6tEL6bAD8jOI-eVbikOMWFSH7FuFNktAaPnTv1OJVe6inUJSTMS6dUz4u0CsxNszCL5KZWSyvJpyWQorOtOD821pgZAD0" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="132px;" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="131px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/lXn9bJ-H_EDK3f1ZI0660WAEMzR3LR9x2SC3Q3bxbzAVKqWPHtAPuoou8iAqThhRKkPhN6zaA_t-W8ZOfh8q9ywQ16-7fOX2fKQLsaoLtQs_2jr3UaVE8-cP5SdksWYobx5uofy7mnxoD01Q" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="131px;" /></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Allowing the player to bond emotionally with the race they are leading, even the races they are allying with or fighting against, is not optional to the experience. When I look at most alien races in space strategy games, I'm more likely to think "Did I feed the cat?" than respect them. Humans are already pretty diverse, why not use our own, already relatable, race for depicting alien race leaders? </span><a href="http://subterfuge-game.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Subterfuge</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (a strategy game inspired by Neptune's Pride) is doing a terrific job of creating an interesting profile of an underwater civilization, using human based portraits. Observe and contrast with the above, and also note the distinct lack of fish people: </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-left: -5.75pt;">
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none;"><colgroup><col width="137"></col><col width="120"></col><col width="122"></col><col width="122"></col><col width="122"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="118px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/j0SZ_99hk_Em6mqkgwNFvYKygFKhFaKDftY-YBecc9Z85RBS8G2QB69gqO0jJCHcknRF1kbMYFPDx-WHuKShIwyF9zlRcjfJsy9C95fFwXHgPahfCdI9T0PETm36BmPEoHNzHyM6cQ_9r4dd" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="137px;" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="118px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/h7eUfyqM7qA945TSBt88PHocUGIcwipFVF5l51qvJFc0xn-89-UKJmO-uyHUhbSupHjmBrfkwHUnKJUwWfJLYVxomOKIzz1M1dmiOrROfFp5FPxq9DcRhVIcwKI64w4Azs_viKhDR3usYTHQ" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="118px;" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="120px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/X-gCUJOQf7pJpms0_6lj0YWI2cCXBdxbNfWrosevOtnLKCCShzgUTOLduQIXZJbpiT6aZ-TnN_CC49389UDsqc1J-4MXdKERN5YPFQQUGs0qUjIAh4Xndmi_Al2CL_Xtuak7iDepLV-bTee0" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="120px;" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="119px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/tak4ajYTZxAAKXk3SNASzqfKDHCR5inR0KdTL-Wj02EuZK2phoGPlThb4a32SSRfjXBPNkVgfGhlX5L96FD2x3c469-kGE0vHRsfLgnW6pV8_ghvxv0Z7Q532_usy6GkHsdgqfSxqDJmTtDb" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="120px;" /></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 0px; border-left: solid #000000 0px; border-right: solid #000000 0px; border-top: solid #000000 0px; padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="120px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/faniUj12yppqFu8iRgewB73GCpOX7GCvqWoEuTnUISt2q9nze3hMAt9TpKBEUmY-FawaACFQLeroxdEowaHn9ylYqLgxdkmnSV0PBnHpKtZWUqT5cnkCGwwmexzbVm_6hX1djYHS5Dn21OHJ" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="120px;" /></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2e75b5; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 17.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Time management</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/04/the-time-problem.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I've talked before about how my lack of continuous free time has affected the way I play games</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Master of Orion is one of many games I can't enjoy anymore, because I rarely have continuous hours to put into them, and they are simply not enjoyable in disconnected 15 minute sessions at a time. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Can the promise of Master of Orion be fulfilled by a game that can be fully played and enjoyed in short sessions (5-15 minutes at a time)? A game that allows, but in no way requires the player to spend continuous time in longer sessions? I believe so. This belief is based on fragments of proof I've seen in other games with similarly short sessions.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Progression can happen over the long run, even if someone only has a few minutes to play each day. Games like OGame are a perfect example of this. Even during periods where someone does not have a lot of time to play, logging in for a few minutes a day, checking up on plans, and adjusting orders will ensure some progression that adds up over weeks or months. This does require a persistent game world - otherwise, the 5-15 minute session will often be wasted doing setup work. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meaningful diplomacy and Social interactions can easily happen asynchronously. Neptune's Pride diplomacy is specifically designed so not all players have to be online at the same time. But it also optionally allows players to chat in real time if they do happen to be online.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As for maintaining the integrity of the Strategy promise under a short session based game, again Neptune's Pride and Subterfuge prove that it can be accomplished. Both these games can recreate the best tactical scenarios from Master of Orion, without requiring the player to be online for any significant continuous amount of time. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even though a game that maintains the strategic depth of Master of Orion while still being playable 5 minutes at a time could work, it probably sounds like sacrilege to many people who grew up with the original. And I can understand their arguments, because for a long time they used to be my arguments, too. “Sitting down for continuous hours at a time, getting lost in a faraway world, forgetting everything else about your life outside the game is good for immersion and maximizes enjoyment”. But I don’t see things that way anymore. The best chunk-based games I played over the last years on web and mobile platforms have shown me that using my pockets of free time with good, persistent games that get straight to the point is also very enjoyable. The way the best of these games become part of my routine is a new, positive experience that I didn’t have in my youth. Maybe there’s a way to combine the best of both experiences.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I understand that a game that integrates all the above suggestions would be something very different than the original Master of Orion. Currently all I have is this theory that such a game might re-ignite the spark that made the original so special for me, 20 years ago. I could be very well wrong. As far as I know, there's no such game - though I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this. </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you also love Master of Orion, and have your own radical or not so radical ideas on how to improve it for this day and age, please get in touch.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-4264839833461001122015-06-22T07:37:00.003-06:002015-07-14T20:32:57.020-06:00Unleashing the power of small teams<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For many years around the turn of the century, some of us (myself included) used to believe that the best games can only come from big teams. We were tricked into thinking this because it was the status quo. The gatekeepers, who back then largely controlled what gets released to market, only considered specific kinds of games that met certain criteria - a growing list of "back of the box" features that the publishers and their marketers decided the market wants. In addition to implementing those features, game development teams had to push constantly improving hardware to its limits, and they had to feature a large amount of content to justify the $50-$60 price tag. Naturally, those games need big teams to make them. For big AAA games, team size has kept increasing on each subsequent hardware generation.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The revolution of digital distribution methods and the widening of the gaming audience brought on by Facebook and mobile games has changed all that and put the work of small teams into the spotlight. Freed by the tyranny of the traditional publishers, good small teams were able to focus on what really mattered to them, without having to check off any artificial bullet point features, and get direct support from players who were interested in their work. Very often, they were able to become critically and commercially successful exactly because they filled a gap that big productions could never fill. Yes, those games did not match all features of the big team games. Braid was only a few hours long. FTL didn't have any sort of multiplayer mode. Gone Home had no character models. So what? Smart small teams managed to turn their lack of resources into a strength by focusing on the one thing they needed to do well, and made their lack of features in other areas irrelevant.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The dynamics that brought the work of small teams</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> into the foreground are not going away any time soon. Small teams will keep having avenues to talk directly to their fans about what's important to them - in fact, those avenues are likely to become broader and cover more platforms than before. This does not mean that their work is becoming any easier. With lower barriers, small teams are facing increased competition from everywhere and need to produce very high quality games to stand out. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My personal goal is to help such small teams stand out. In the past 15 years, I've worked in good and bad small teams and good and bad large teams. I worked on games that had anywhere from 5 to over 300 people on their credits. Some of the small teams (and even the large teams) were part of and interacting with a much larger organization. I have worked for companies that understand the power and advantages of small teams, and for companies that believe that big value can only come from big teams, so the only point of small teams is to one day grow to be a big team. Through various observations over the years, I am convinced that small teams, when structured properly, have massive advantages. There is, of course, a lot of personal bias in this. It is reinforced by prior experience that a good small team is more productive, more rewarding, and more fun to work in than a good big team. It's also reinforced by the kinds of games I like to play. Over the past few years, small teams have almost exclusively produced the kind of focused experiences </span><a href="http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.ca/2015/04/the-time-problem.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have time for</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. They have also given me the kind of unique experiences that big teams are too risk-averse to experiment with, like Papers, Please, and FTL. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Given my dedication to continue working with small teams, this is my attempt to start a list of factors that maximize the quality of such teams, specifically in games development. Many of these practices are not specific to small teams - they would benefit teams of any size. But as I'll explain in more detail, as the team size grows, so do the obstacles to implementing some of them. After a certain size, the practical obstacles can become insurmountable. Small teams need to understand that they are at a better starting point for implementing these guidelines and ensure that they take advantage of them. I've seen big companies spawn small teams that failed exactly because they were overrun by big team mentality. I've also seen developers leaving AAA who are stuck in the mindset of a big team, and fail to use the benefits of being small.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I plan to keep this list handy for teams I work with next, and update it as needed. I'm making an effort to keep the list realistic and achievable: everything I describe should be based on things I've seen work in practice in other great teams. If you have any feedback or further items to add to the list, please get in touch.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-6d8a51f9-1b71-ac64-7d4e-2b73c63fe35a" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<h2 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Great small teams hire and retain the right T-shaped individuals</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hiring good people is rightfully on the top of the list of any decent team, large or small. But the question of what good means deserves more attention than it's getting. I've seen many managers say "We hire the best in the world", without further explanation of what exactly that means. Without clarification, this declaration loses most of its meaning and creates confusion because "good" works on multiple, often conflicting levels, and no one is perfect at everything.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In their </span><a href="https://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">employee handbook</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Valve describes the T shaped employee, which is a great starting point when discussing any staffing needs. The horizontal part of the T represent all areas an individual is interested in and knows something about (not just areas related to game development). The vertical area is experience and knowledge in their specific discipline. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="320px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/zljATCkwWDFkH2-Vfsfzazld29upZy9tyDYo0d_0ZsWURQ9nWvx13mq8sXGCTb9jFCfxIHIPNJp8RPsXMjaGTyGsbKCaS7ddRb9sA5S3lwU4ced0Vy7wOgJh5VkXy8K285huFOX5xwiepaEW" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="508px;" /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Framing the discussion in terms of the T shaped person immediately reject two kinds of people who may have otherwise been mistaken for "the best in the world": </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- someone super-skilled in their own discipline that does not understand anything else, including what kind of game you are making and ends up isolated from the team, creating art, software or content to match their own idea of how to advance their discipline, often at the expense of the game itself;</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- someone who knows a little bit about any topic mankind knows about, but not enough to contribute anything concrete</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The horizontal part of the T is critical for a small team. Because there are fewer people on the team, you need good coverage and overlap among the disciplines. Practically speaking, determining someone's quality and skills at the vertical part of the T (the skills in their specialized area) is very easy compared to determining their fit for the horizontal part. If you are in a small team and you are finding you are spending most of your interview time on evaluating specialized skills, that's a bad sign.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nobody is a perfect T. Some people will have developed either the horizontal part or the vertical part more. The quality of the vertical part will vary even among very competent people. The range and depth of the horizontal part will also vary widely. There is no hard and fast rule about what kind of T shaped employee will make the best contribution to your small team, because the best fit heavily depends on context. What kind of game are you creating? What kind of business model? What type of players are you trying to appeal to? How will the game be updated and evolve over time? What kinds of areas is it likely to expand to? What kind of developer will be interested in developing and playing this kind of game in the long run? What kind of specialized skills do you really need, and at what depth? All these and a million other questions will affect the impact different people can make on your team. Defining them and discussing them openly both with existing and potential employees is critical. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having the right individuals on the small team matters more than job titles. Whether they have informal job titles or not, good small teams know that everyone contributes wherever they can, depending on the project needs at the given time. Because they have developed the horizontal T part, they understand the ins and outs of all other disciplines, always see the big picture, and can sometimes jump between disciplines. An artist may become a tester on the few weeks before release when all content is complete. A server programmer may become a designer during a quiet period where all services are working as intended. And because all team members are primarily motivated by the kind of game they are making, they always contribute meaningful discussions on the experience the game offers and how it can be improved. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s one thing to hire the right people on the team, and another to retain them in the long run. Many of the following guidelines apply both to getting the most out of individuals, and creating an environment that can keep them happy in the long run. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<h2 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Great small teams rely on trust, not process </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In their </span><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Culture presentation</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Netflix described the introduction of Process as a management tool to control complexity when the team size increases. An assumption is that as team size grows, the percent of high performance employees is often decreasing (red arrow in the graph below). This is true more often than not, as the pressure to grow often results in sub-standard hires, and high performance T-shaped employees are at least an order of magnitude harder to find than the average employee. As this diagram demonstrates, at some point the percentage of high performers isn’t high enough to manage the complexity. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="305px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/XUnoGtT4cYBGxhLAhCIU1yydwFJwAr6M6OYSWiFE8_BCaZwCZ1XWzHYe-Y7ojJ1j8GFW6Aljzbs7Z7ERSPJdmQdUGeOJlWS14Ub83cQMyfVSBU2gpzF0HjZnknbFc8WKeHgFc1ov4PFLZhrt" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="406px;" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At that point, Process becomes the middle manager’s favourite tool to manage team growth. As mistakes start to happen, process is formed around those mistakes to try and reduce damage and inefficiencies. Examples of such process can be: </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You need to get approval from X and Y before starting to work on feature Z."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Every morning at 9 AM you have to attend a stand up meeting."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Every code checkin has to go through a code review."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"You can never do any project related work from your personal laptop."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"You must attend this all day legal presentation."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"You have to work at least 8 hours a day and take no more than 5 weeks of vacation a year."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The problem with this kind of rigid process is that it's focused on reducing damage to the team from bottom performers or untrustworthy people, at the cost of increasing barriers and friction for the top performers to make unexpected positive impact. This is the exact opposite of what it should be. A basic principle of performance and productivity management is that the biggest impact will come by taking advantage of one's strengths, not eliminating their weaknesses. The same applies to a team.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A great team hires good people not because they can perform X amount of work in Y amount of time, but because they can bring good judgement and unexpected positive change. I have seen good people who needed to go against process in exceptional circumstances in order to bring positive change to the project. Even in the cases where they managed to do it, having their good judgment second guessed all the way through takes its toll. Teams frustrate, demotivate and lose good people that way all the time.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead of formal process and rigid rules, good small teams rely on trust. Hiring good people brings good judgment, and it would be foolish to throw that away by establishing rules everyone has to follow blindly. If you are finding you need to have process and rules similar to the above on your small team, take a moment to think who exactly you need the rules for, and if they're worth the extra hassle to hire or keep around.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<h2 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Great small teams avoid unneeded complexity, or eliminate it very early on</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are many forms of complexity on any project of any size. Because some complexity is always needed depending on the game type and the project's needs, it's easy to resign to its existence and call any signs of complexity a "necessary evil." But good teams manage to have orders of magnitude less complexity than other teams of the same size. And good small teams manage to have so little complexity that they can produce results in speeds many big teams think is humanly impossible.</span></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">People complexity</span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By definition, a small team understands and avoids the complexity that comes from a large team – even a large team consisting exclusively of capable people. Going through a lot of stakeholders, managing the communication channels, ensuring everyone has something to do, all these things slow progress down and diffuse focus. </span></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Product complexity</span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being resource-constrained, as small teams often are, is a blessing in disguise for maintaining laser-sharp focus. Small teams have to figure out the most important features of their game, validate them quickly, and focus exclusively on revising them as many times as they need to. Having unrealistic scope or allowing feature creep is less likely to be a problem for a small team, as long as the team is good enough to realize the best use of limited resources is to assign them on a narrow area where they can make the most impact, and avoid unnecessary exposure to other areas. </span></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Technology complexity </span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps I’m biased because of my tech background, but I believe tech complexity to be one of the most dangerous types of complexity on a games team. That’s because regardless of their other skills, non-technical people do not and cannot react efficiently to its existence. A bad technical director saying “I know this slows down the team, but it is what it is,” followed by some incomprehensible technical terminology, is enough for the most capable project manager to resign without further questions. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the most defining moments in my career as programmer was witnessing the unreasonable complexity around online systems in a big games company. Conceptually simple systems like account management, achievements, and matchmaking ended up horribly over-engineered, slow and unstable. The (relatively big) central team that was supposedly helping game teams implement and host online services ended up becoming an obstacle: It would have been far easier, cheaper and faster for individual game teams to separately implement their online services on AWS or something similar. But the big team was completely resigned to the existence of this complexity. An unreasonable amount of programmers had to be deployed working on game-specific online services, even with the existence of the central team that was supposedly helping. I kept hearing the phrase "this is how enterprise software works" so often, I started thinking maybe it was actually true. I had to actually see a small team that had implemented the same services in a far less complicated manner and in a way that allowed the team to iterate on them with a small fraction of the people in the big team, to fully appreciate the power of uncomplicated technology to amplify the efforts of small teams.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s a common property about most types of complexity. Once allowed to creep in and grow, it's very hard if not impossible to eliminate without extreme pain. Large teams won't become small teams. Complex technology won't simplify itself. The people who are emotionally invested in their features and have been working on them for months won't like to hear they are all being cut. Small teams know this, and consider the long term complexity implications of every decision they make. They are also on the lookout to identify emerging complexity and make it a priority to root it out. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<h2 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Great small teams are primarily motivated by passion for the game they are making</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What are the primary motivators that cause your fellow developers to come to work every day? By primary motivator, I mean something that would cause them to quit if it ceased to exist. Obviously, for many people salary is one. Other primary motivators can include a passion for one's discipline (creating great art or greatly architected software), recognition and feedback from the fans, or simply habit (not knowing what else to do with one's time).</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In any team, having members who do not have "passion for the game we are creating" in their primary motivator list is a cause for concern. This is very easy to determine: are the developers playing the game as they make it? Would they be playing it even if they were not working on it? Would they quit if you suddenly changed the game type to something they are not excited to play themselves?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because of extreme specialization and the need to staff up, big teams measure that kind of engagement in percentages well below 100%. It's not uncommon to have big teams where the number of people actually excited about and playing the game is 50% or less. Small teams have the unique advantage where it is actually possible to have that percentage be exactly 100%. It’s far more likely to find and maintain a team of 5 people building a game they are passionate about, than it is to find and maintain 100 such people. And because of the increased sense of ownership, people who are drawn to small teams are already more likely to have that kind of passion to begin with.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teams where everyone is primarily motivated by a passion for the game enjoy unique advantages. Bad politics (i.e. individuals pursuing personal interests at the expense of a project's interests), are far less likely to materialize compared to teams where some members are primarily driven by personal goals. Team members respect each other, even through disagreements, because they know everyone has the good of the game as their primary goal. Planning and executing many of the features doesn’t need any formal process because all team members have an understanding of what makes the game enjoyable, so there is often agreement on what needs to be done next.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good teams can also distinguish between a healthy passion and obsession. Often in the industry the term "passion" is abused to subtly force people to crunch or work for less money. But people who are obsessed and only live to play or work can never develop a healthy horizontal part of the T, hence are not good team members despite their passion.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Great small teams openly share all data and details around the business</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most big teams compartmentalize sensitive information on a "need to know" basis. There are many reasons for this, some of them legitimate. For example, public companies have legal obligations that make it extremely hard or impossible to share financial details in real time. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good teams always use important information to inform all kinds of decisions. Financial and product usage information, especially broken down in regions and demographics, is one such important piece of information to understand the reach of the game, who plays it and why, and how that's changing over time.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But there are other advantages to the open sharing of information, beyond this obvious one. Good people who are entrusted with sensitive information feel more ownership in the company and the product. They feel like trusted co-owners instead of pawns who get told what to do without having the full big picture. They do not make up stories about how successful or not the company is based on rumours they heard around the water cooler. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is no excuse to not share this kind of data in a small team. The risk from potential leaks is small. Small teams intentionally share or have information leaked all the time, and they still manage to stay in business. The bigger risk is blindfolding the people on your team, giving them a reason to mistrust you. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Great small teams have complete freedom and are protected from outside intervention</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There can be a lot of sources of outside intervention for a small team. If it's part of a big company, executives may want to intervene for many reasons. If it's externally funded, the investors may decide the best chance of getting their money back on the desired timeframe involves them making some decisions for the team. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being shielded from such external intervention allows the team two fundamental advantages: permission to fail, and the ability to focus on long term benefits. And because a good team is made up of capable, passionate people with good judgment and intimate knowledge of the game, there is no better outside authority for deciding how to pursue the long term benefits. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Making games is certainly risky. Smart teams know that. They also know there are </span><a href="http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-success.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">techniques to turn the odds in their favor</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. But like any field where there is uncertainty and risk, those techniques involve failing, frequently more often than succeeding. The last thing a good team needs is having the threat of termination or other side effects each time things don't work out. If they are in such an environment, that would affect the quality of the work of the team and, as a result, make it similar to the work of big teams: risk free, boring, and still likely to fail.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are also strong factors that can pressure teams into sub-optimal decisions that bring short term benefits, at the cost of losing bigger long term benefits. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Financial pressure can easily force a team to release a game before it's ready, bringing in revenue a bit faster at the cost of longer term loss of reputation, goodwill and revenue. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Crunch might become a compelling argument for making the milestone right around the corner, at the cost of frustrating and burning out good employees who won't stick around in an environment that makes such poor decisions. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Certain patterns of data-informed decisions are also short term boosts at the cost of losing longer term benefits, and they are particularly dangerous, because people wielding data usually end up gaining credibility with detached executives who don't have a long term view of the game. In the dawn of Facebook social games, good small teams knew that spamming one's friends for progression was a bad idea in the long term, despite what all the numbers back then said.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good small teams have leadership that sets up the team in a way it can take creative risks while reducing the risk of catastrophic failure, and set up a long term view that's not distracted by fake short term benefits. In the process, they also shield the team from outside intervention that could mess all of this up.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Great small teams exist within a larger external ecosystem that provides crucial support</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This may seem at odds to the previous point, but it isn't. While direct outside intervention is bad, having a good ecosystem that provides advice, help or resources as needed is important. The key point is that such help is needed and welcomed by the team and is not masquerading as help in order to exert control over the team externally.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even if they have great T-shaped people, small teams usually don't have the diversity of good bigger teams. Feedback from people with a more detached view is limited. Or perhaps despite the skilled people on a small team, there's simply not enough of them to cover a specific area of expertise and they need outside help. While it's always possible to hire temporary outside help or council, it's far better to have such help available at any given time. The best small team I've seen was part of a bigger company with a deep bench of talent. Even though the team was completely independent, it would regularly receive outside feedback that the team recognized as extremely helpful and would regularly incorporate into their product. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being part of a bigger company is not the only way for a small team to be in a useful ecosystem of external support. Certain indie companies and teams have very healthy attitudes of helping each other, sharing ideas, feedback and expertise, which can have a similar effect. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-7863206952669605272015-05-31T12:29:00.002-06:002015-07-14T20:33:18.665-06:00The tech arms race in AAA - and why I'm abandoning it<h2 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
</h2>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.295; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I was 13 years old, my dad finally fulfilled my dream of owning a PC. He brought me a woefully underpowered 10MHz MHz 8088 box, but with an upgraded VGA card and a color monitor. I was too excited to care about the comically mismatched package: I could finally play games in my own house, just like many of my friends and cousins were doing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.295; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.4249992370605px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.4249992370605px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately for me, I couldn't find that many good games to be played on that machine. This was already well into the 90's, and all the games that were coming out then needed a faster processor to run. After quickly getting tired of Tetris, Prince of Persia, the very early Sierra adventures, and unable to afford a better PC, I found myself playing less games and instead browsing magazines or visiting friends with better PCs, to get a glimpse of the latest games I couldn't run. Those games were impressive at first: I'll never forget seeing Doom run for the first time.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.295; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.295; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those magazines I was reading came with a huge amount of full page ads, showcasing the latest processors, video cards, hard drives. Their message, combined with the overall tone of the reviews and other articles I was reading at the time, was clear: You absolutely need the latest hardware or you are missing out on games. How could that be false? I was seeing it first hand: I was stuck with a weak machine, and as a result I couldn't play any of the great looking games my friends were enjoying. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.295; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The possibility space enabled by my original PC box was pretty limited. By possibility space, I'm referring to all the potential games that could run on the hardware, whether those games were actually made or not. On that computer all games were very simple 2D games, with very few sprites on the screen, usually played on one static screen at a time. While there is still a huge amount of games that could be made within these constraints, the overall space is small compared to what today's hardware has enabled. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Funnily enough, some 3D games did run on that ancient PC. They ran terribly. I vividly remember Test Drive 3: </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img height="386px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/ZEFRjLoJNRKh3Zqx2FJzLfD8E9mLMIC-xaS2osFNDyPZfSHyd2ni6XPqYRet0SZvg0_ipnE7hS8rmojZI173gG4DAPw5XeE-S2gefaX3fFqLTaT9kY45n5rXbA_XverWgzJuUPSBH1mAEOA6" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624px;" /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The first 3D game I played. I didn’t care whether it was any fun.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This kind of primitive 3D graphics ran on that computer at around 5-10 seconds per frame. Yet young me was still having actual, non-ironic fun. Not with the game (it was unplayable), but with the glimpse of what "actual" gamers get to enjoy. My enjoyment of it came because I was cheating the possibility space enabled by my PC. I got to "enjoy" something *better*. I was right at the edge, and even a little bit beyond, of the possibility space my PC offered, and it felt great.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All these experiences led me to conclude from very early on that good games live right at the edge of the possibility space. "If a game does not take advantage of all the processing power, it must not be good, or at least not as good as it could have been", I thought. It was a fundamentally wrong conclusion that would take decades to be challenged.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What I was blindly ignoring back in my teen years was games like Elite, Ultima IV, Zork, MUD - games that fit just fine on the tiny possibility space my original PC enabled. I didn't know about them, and my overall environment didn't encourage me at all to seek them out. I was instead encouraged to seek the latest tech fix, and in my mind, that would automatically give me the optimal gaming experience. As a result, I missed out on one-of-a-kind, ground-breaking gaming experiences that could have helped me better understand what actually makes a good game early on.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Fortunately, later on, with an upgraded computer, I was exposed to games that I kept playing for a long time, not because of their tech specs, but because they were fun. Games like Civilization, Warcraft, and Master of Orion. But even as I was enjoying those games for their gameplay, my tech bias still creeped in. While playing Warcraft, I couldn't help myself thinking "How much better would this game be if they had thousands of units on the screen?” In my mind, the lack of more units on screen was always caused by a tech limitation. The only valid reason why they don't have more units is because they can't technically achieve it - if they could, the game would automatically be better off for it. The perfect balance of number of units with the amount of things a player's human brain could possibly track at any given moment was completely lost on me. So even though I enjoyed those games for their gameplay, I was still not truly understanding what made them so good.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My early obsession with technology largely shaped how I got into the gaming industry. For years I would teach myself programming, constantly working on some demo or prototype. But instead of looking to find any sort of fun in those prototypes, I was focusing on technical details like how many sprites I could simulate without the framerate dropping, or yet another infinite terrain demo. For some reason, the question of how to fill that infinite terrain with interesting things to do seemed less important than generating the peaks and troughs. I'm not quite sure why I had this ridiculous attitude. Obviously, I wanted to make games, and in a game, it's more important to do interesting things than stare at an infinite terrain. So why did I focus on the wrong things? It's an interesting question that I can't answer fully, but I suspect the answer is closely related to my tech obsession. Filling the terrain with interesting things seemed like the "easy" problem that could probably be done in a day. No, the "interesting" problem was how to use the processor efficiently to create a giant world, and then everything else would somehow fall together magically.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">During my first years of working at AAA, this skewed notion of what’s important in good games was not significantly challenged. Both my studio and other studios I interacted with, at least their technical departments, had very similar ideas about the need to push hardware to its limits and drive technical innovation. The isolation between departments that tends to happen as team sizes get larger also contributed to this: I was mainly exposed to similarly minded colleagues, who viewed their job as making sure there is further technical innovation on each game. Making the game fun is some other department's job. As long as everyone does their job, the thinking goes, things will work out ok and the game will be better off on all fronts.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 17px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The first doubts</span></span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My "better tech makes better games, unconditionally" theory came under the microscope much later, from observations I made outside the AAA industry. If I had to point to a single moment where the theory started falling apart, it would be the Sims Social moment. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I always liked The Sims series, and played all the PC iterations up to the 3rd. In 2011, The Sims Social came on Facebook. I was never a big fan of the "spam your friends to progress" social "innovation", and the content seemed light compared to the PC versions, but nevertheless tried it and quickly saw a golden opportunity to introduce my wife to the world of the Sims. Since she likes decorating houses, it should be the perfect game for her, my theory went. It worked like a charm! Soon enough, she was running a full scale operation with her main Sim being helped by 3 other secondary accounts made for each of our pets. (An annoying hack to get around the atrocious, anti-social "help me out" mechanics of Zynga-style games).</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img height="446px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/mKCLJIUJsmRd_DFqkv6rI0Sm-04KQxL7qXuRYLuisKCAZTdKbbFCAK4nMI10lfliIC67DTnaFKVVT7zwtKQgfZM-B5s7c0uqczfG53ZuMtbW1v6vF_bqaMwg42GLI6vpITG2qUvv-6Fhc54x" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624px;" /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Sims Social</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Very pleased with myself, I proceeded to Step 2 of my master plan: Introducing my wife to an honest to god REAL video game! The hard part was already done, there's no way I could fail now! Quickly, I brought out the big arguments.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"The Sims 3 is kind of like what you're playing on Facebook, but so much better in every way!"</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"There are so many more options in house types, furniture, sims personalities, neighbours!"</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"You can build multiple houses in many lots and walk around an entire town you helped create!"</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"The graphics are so much more realistic!"</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"It's 3D!"</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There was no doubt in my brain: No rational person would ever prefer any aspect of The Sims Social over the Sims 3. So after the initial shock, I used my wife's immediate and unconditional rejection of The Sims 3 as an opportunity to understand a different way of thinking about games. Let's look at her arguments in detail.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"The 3D graphics are UGLY - compared to nice hand drawn 2D the Sims Social has". </span></span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I got that one immediately. Apparently, growing up with an obsession for 3D graphics had made me oblivious to all kinds of artifacts like polygonal edges, aliasing and texture stretching. And despite all the progress we continue to make, the free-form rotate/zoom camera ensures there will be angles from which even pretty games can look ugly. In contrast, a simple 2D engine and a good art director can create something really consistent and beautiful throughout, by using well established offline tools. And if the art style calls for it, the 2D engine can even use pre-baked techniques like soft shadows and detailed lighting that are prohibitive in real time for certain hardware. Simple technology, beautiful results. And what does a game like the Sims lose, gameplay-wise, by abandoning 3D altogether? Does the house really look that much better if you can rotate and look at it from all possible viewpoints? On the contrary - rotating and zooming the camera adds complexity and creates more potential views from which the art looks ugly.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img height="308px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/4fH0eEzJ8xXh8AOzVm5REt6Xqf8bG8kWrWVT1AJh-OqUbNRYmP-sUX6lq0kjHYT6Le_gfAtNsTrBnog_RzfF0oVMfCoyLf7ErzFZtMGIDMok4yPy3Qn0l_i2FiKygh4gl1dTyt7qF3i_BzQK" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="547px;" /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Sims 3</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I really don't like that in most AAA studios, the decision to go 3D is pre-determined, instead of letting the team decide what makes sense for a given title. And this is just a simple example where pre-determined, "must-have" tech components take flexibility away from the team and add complexity.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This culture of "3D makes things better" is so ingrained in some developers, that they’d never challenge it even when they have complete freedom to do so. </span><a href="http://www.pocketgamer.biz/asia/interview/55280/going-core-faceroll-games-on-bringing-3d-graphics-and-heroes-to-the-mobile-strategy-genre/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From an interview with Faceroll games</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Clash of Clans is a beautiful game. I understand that using 2D sprites of 3D models allows the game to run smoothly on older devices."</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Like young me, these developers would never even consider the possibility that the 2D choice was intentionally made to make the game better looking, easier to play, and even more fun. They think it must have been a decision the team grumbled through, because of technical limitations.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">From the same interview: </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Also, the 3D approach allows us to do things that are not possible in 2D games. One feature that really impresses a lot of people is the ability to be able to rotate the camera around the base and the action. Aside from the strategic gameplay benefits, this feature gives the game an extremely immersive experience, almost like you are looking into a three-dimensional snow globe on your mobile device."</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is basically saying "The 3D approach makes gameplay better/deeper. I won't explain how. But it certainly is impressive. There are also strategic gameplay benefits, which I won't get into. Again, it looks really cool." This flow is very representative of other conversations I've had with technical people, over how specifically some advanced features will help gameplay. Very often, they won't.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"The animations are not as cute"</span></span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How can a few frames of cartoony animation possibly look better than 30 FPS, 4-bone skinned meshes with a skeleton that has at least as many bones as the human body? Easily. The abstract cartoon animation has a completely different frame of reference, and unlike the hyper-realistic version, is never compared to real life animations. The question of how to make an appealing/cute/memorable animation has everything to do with art direction and almost nothing to do with technical details. Creativity matters, knowing the audience matters, consistency matters, realism does not matter. </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"It's too complicated. There are too many buttons. And why do I have to go out in a city? I just want to make my own house pretty."</span></span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's funny how much you take for granted in games until you watch a non-gamer try to rotate a 3D camera. And it's also funny how The Sims 3 trying to do everything (no doubt many man years of work), has turned away my wife as a potential player (and possibly many more). Sure, the extra features might be a response to the established audience's needs, and I have no doubt many people would similarly stop playing if the game became too simplified for them. But why can't AAA studios experiment more with simplified versions of their franchises, trying to appeal to gamers of different tastes? (No, the Sims Social doesn't count as experimentation. The decision to simplify was an attempt to take a quick profit by cloning Zynga, and was abandoned quickly at the first sign of trouble. Interestingly enough, the good looking 2D art style of The Sims, and even more of Simcity Social, were abandoned on mobile because there was no reference of a successful game on those platforms yet. So these two franchises naturally fell back to the AAA way of 3D graphics – which on mobile platforms are extremely ugly compared to their 2D social versions).</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 17px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Strategy games and the “less is more” approach</span></span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Soon after, I started playing League of Legends. It was fun. It was also another clear indication of how wrong I had been when I was playing Warcraft so many years ago. While I was obsessing with numbers of units in RTS games, and thought the obvious way the genre can become better is to have more units on the screen, smart teams at DoTA and League of Legends distilled the experience to its basics and created a true evolution of the genre that has appeal not because it is using the hardware better, but because it removed all the complexity and doubled down on the essentials: simple, fun strategic gameplay that is made orders of magnitude more effective through their multiplayer and social nature.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img height="352px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/JoVdmlHscCkhLr_FlZKpSDTmCMBRLY3w0TxI0JTgEe7O8cKKrq2WA87iTZZ1uafz7Wk56_x1ZsACMesPkFd0XNXMtE70WjvaJWJAKRCGuStfd8PTWwhNAU0ZtC0MXj50S7vbQAH5hzxzqEpM" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624px;" /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">League of Legends</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This again led me to rethink my previous assumptions. Why are more units in an RTS game automatically a good thing? Sure, it might look spectacular, and it might create a sense of awe the first time someone sees a very large scale battle. But does it actually add something significant to gameplay, or something that will keep players playing for longer? Isn’t it harder for the player to keep track of so many units, adding complexity and frustration?</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I haven’t been able to find a good argument to support my old “more units is better” thesis. Very often, the assumption of tech-focused teams is that more units makes the game fun automatically and without further explanation. </span><a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-03-05-how-natural-motion-is-leading-zyngas-quest-to-be-1-on-mobile" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s Natural Motion</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"We challenged the team with the following: Are you able to create battle scenes with thousands of characters on-screen at the same time, in real-time, with you having full real-time touch control over all of these troops, and make all of these battles resolve within thirty to sixty seconds?" Reil recalled. "And they said no, that's not possible." He laughed as he launched into the game. "Eventually we managed to get it to work."</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The suggestion is clear: They just knew that having battle scenes with thousands of characters on screen at the same time would be fun. They knew this even before they implemented it. The only thing that could possibly ruin this were technical limitations. The word fun itself is never mentioned in the interview, though it’s heavily implied that the technical achievements are a big part of what makes the game fun.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 17px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Rethinking what was taken for granted</span></span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I remember the Sims Social incident quite well, because at work, at that same time, I was going through a long, brutal, foolishly self-inflicted crunch period. I worked very hard in order to perfect a new rendering feature. A contribution that largely (and rightfully) went unnoticed by the vast majority of players, for whom incremental visual improvements just weren't that noticeable or important to their experience. Having spent so much effort on this feature, on a game that could have used a lot of attention in other areas that did affect players experience significantly, was another sign that I needed to rethink my priorities and the model of what makes a good game and a good experience for players. This was the best example of the "work smart, not hard" rule having been violated. I was let down by my obsession on the tech side.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Shockingly, I was alone in this conclusion. The feedback from my contribution to the game was positive and encouraging at all stages. The other areas that I could have helped with instead were brushed off as something outside my area of expertise - I was a graphics programmer, and I had done the best I could from my position to make the game as good as it could be. As comforting as the thought was, I gradually rejected that view over the next few years. No excuse can change the fact that my effort was wasted, and it could have gone towards something useful. Obviously, I needed to do some rethinking. What do you do when you suddenly realize the specialized skills you have been developing for years are largely irrelevant for making good games? Part of this rethinking involved re-parsing everything I was taking for granted all those years. At the top of the list, one of AAA's biggest arguments for pushing technology: the "Believable world", plus variations (Immersive world, relatable characters, etc.)</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The self-stated goal of many games is to create a "believable" world. For years the AAA argument for pushing the tech envelope has been that the bigger, better looking, better sounding, more detailed our worlds are, the more believable they are. But is this true? Good books have created believable, immersive worlds and relatable characters for centuries, without a hint of audio/visual stimuli. Even in games, is the world of Grand Theft Auto more believable than the world of Bastion? To me, they are both similarly believable. Even though I find both equally believable, Bastion’s world is much more interesting to me compared to a boring contemporary setting thanks to its backstory, unique visual appearance, and the narrator. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For believability, consistency is far more important than literally matching what our senses would experience had we been in that world. And for making a world interesting, realism is similarly of secondary importance.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Even though good AAA games do use good art direction to make their world interesting, most of them put more effort in high quality visuals and audio than consistency. This obsession with the senses does not make sense to me, if we’re talking about games. What happens when extremely high quality visuals and audio are not fully consistent? As the tech bar goes higher, it becomes easier for inconsistencies that kill believability to creep in. There's nothing worse for believability than playing a great looking game, then at the corner of level 8 see something like this: </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img height="261px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/xPADSMz-Zvdy6yYdSJa8oQqVdVCwUXEGYxaY8RZch_ZvqPylEJwK4yVKY9qihjQZLvnQ56ovcerOjG5F1JtBfOiebAzgOZEN05iXZ48uJSiSL63qBPIBChHNJTM_ATyrbPd4q_oQczo4YXCt" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="464px;" /></span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/11/buggy-games/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bugs like these are increasingly common</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and are largely a direct consequence of the increased complexity we're subjecting our development to as a result of the tech arms race. But on the other extreme, if you look at good MUDs, they too can have believable worlds, without this kind of inconsistencies. There must be a better way than the brute-force appeal to the senses.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(An aside to this focus on senses: if VR goes down the realism path, then at some point I'd expect AAA VR games to keep pushing for other senses, too -- smell, touch, taste -- when hardware allows. All of this, of course, assuming the race to cross the uncanny valley doesn't bankrupt them in the first place.)</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 17px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The tech arms race in AAA</span></span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If someone looks at the rendering improvements we got with each new console generation, a clear pattern emerges. The improvements are becoming marginal. In certain cases for the last console transition, you need still side-by-side screenshots and a magnifying glass to see the difference. However, the cost to achieve those improvements is constantly going up, at an accelerating pace. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img height="351px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/6Xlpuca2_sYbMuGsmLfx7E2p3yalTHrCLwjjgKNzNKcgSzBxgzYMOM6qXCdt_3rRYM7jBCvDNaEJWsqSe9r4i_7MynP_E27JoIjhDQpmNPQGSRGApxv6VL7iVfiZf6wLmU6G7NIMS_Ww-eKm" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624px;" /></span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some AAA studios seem happy to ignore these increasing costs with decreasing payoffs in terms of visual and audio fidelity. They will try to outspend their competition and call any exclusive marginal improvement a “competitive advantage.” Like a literal arms race, the tech arms race is very expensive as other companies’ progress force everyone else to increase their spending. It is also likely to cause a bloodbath, when companies who are forced to spend too much end up releasing a game that doesn’t become a hit. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Even though people understand the escalating costs of chasing marginal tech improvements, I don't think there's any chance the tech arms race will stop any time soon. There are many reasons why many AAA studios will continue participating:</span></span></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Because of the politics of numbers</span></span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Many large organizations, despite their best intentions, fall prey to bad politics (which I define as certain individuals pursuing their personal interests, or their department's interests, at the expense of the project's best interests). In politics-heavy environments, there is nothing more effective in pursuing a personal agenda than using "facts" and numbers - even when those facts and numbers are hand-picked to support a certain story. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For tech focused projects, it's very easy to find impressive-sounding numbers. "We've improved the number of polygons on the screen by 20%." "We have a competitive advantage against this other company because, unlike them, our engine is using all SPU power." The underlying suggestion is that the game itself has become better because of these improvements.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tech-focused people will often use such numbers to either justify the large cost that went into achieving them, or to defend themselves, depending on sales of the final game. If sales are good, they were good because of the improved technology. If they were not good, it must be someone else's fault -- the technology, after all, was demonstrably better than before or better than that competing game that did better.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The simplicity of numbers gives great peace of mind to technically minded people. They don't have to bother themselves with messy, subjective, uncomfortable questions of what actually makes a game better, what provides actual value to the players. They can focus on their little corner of making tech slightly better, at a huge expense, and point to small but tangible, measurable improvements when asked about their contribution.</span></span></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Because of the perverse incentive structures</span></span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">AAA games are a risky business – the budget is high, and so the cost of failure is also high. The incentive for everyone on the team should be to reduce cost and therefore risk to the project. However that does not always happen in practice. Often there is a competing personal/department incentive to increase spending within the department, to shield it in the case of failure. </span><a href="http://www.gamesbrief.com/2013/09/the-number-one-rule-of-risk-and-why-it-matters-to-your-games-business/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nicholas Lovell describes this well as operational vs financial risk</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Because it's always been done that way. </span></span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">During the 90s and early 2000s, the publisher gatekeepers had all the power in choosing what gets released in the market. With heavy marketing to promote ever-improving hardware, they convinced many players and themselves that only games that push the tech envelope can ever be good. In a self-fulfilling prophecy, they only published such games. Of course, games like Minecraft could never have been a success back then, because nobody would ever pick them to be published. So if they've always believed that games need to use ever-improving tech, why stop now? Radical change is usually very hard to push on large organizations and any attempt is likely to fail at the first sign of trouble. </span></span></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Because they have too specialized people in the area</span></span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The skillset of existing employees, and often their inability or unwillingness to specialize elsewhere, limits the kinds of games AAA studios can potentially make and forces them to deploy those people in tech improvements regardless of their priority. </span></span></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Because of an existing audience that demands ever-increasing visual fidelity</span></span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many tech-hungry PC and console players sometimes seem to care more about using magnifying glasses to prove the game looks better on their platform, than actually enjoying the game. They will definitely buy the next Call of Duty and the next Battlefield just because they offer incremental rendering improvements. </span><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BrandonSheffield/20150128/235189/Trailer_Trouble_Dealing_with_Pixel_Art_Backlash.php" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They will even complain loudly about the mere existence of low fidelity games on their platform.</span></a></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But outside of certain established franchises, it makes little sense to go after expensive incremental tech improvements just to satisfy a vocal minority that plays games just to get a short term tech fix.</span></span></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Because of the ongoing pursuit of Hollywood</span></span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some AAA studios subscribe to the idea that games can deliver the maximum emotional impact in a similar way Hollywood does: By using actors in heavily scripted sequences to tell the story of someone else that the player/viewer relates to. Instead of playing to their medium's strengths, these studios go through great pains to emulate what Hollywood gets naturally: emotive characters, good looking lighting, spectacular locations. It's a very literal attempt to imitate another established, successful medium, and because it gets some results, it's popular, despite the fact it's very expensive and brushes aside many of the benefits that games get naturally. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 17px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Problems that can occur from tech focus</span></span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Like my personal failing with the rendering feature, the tech arms race can cause issues that affect the project at large. The escalating, often out of control budgets is an obvious one. But there are others. Very often the team is subjected to unstable technology bases and engines for far too long, severely limiting their ability to iterate and experiment when it matters the most: early on in the project’s lifetime. In such an environment, innovation can be mistaken for incremental technical improvements, leading to the same games over and over with slightly better graphics. Because of the increasing pressure to create more content at a higher quality bar, team sizes get larger, and there is often pressure for the growth to happen very fast. When there is pressure to grow fast, any good team suffers: shortcuts will be taken, non-optimal people hired, and process will creep in in hopes of keeping things under control. The end result is a much more complex environment, both technology- and process-wise, which is less efficient to get things done in, and also much less fun to work in.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But if I had to pick a single problem that worries me the most about tech-obsessed teams, lack of focus would easily be at the top. During the PS3/360->PS4/Xbox One transition, I watched teams forcibly lose focus and work on features like motion control and companion apps, not because they made any sense for the game, or because the developers wanted to try them, but because tech executives were nervous of what might happen if those features ended up catching traction and they were left behind in the race. (Interestingly, </span><a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/here-s-why-assassin-s-creed-syndicate-won-t-have-a/1100-6427650/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">when the execs are happy they are safe from such a threat, they are happy to announce that the team itself wants to focus away from such needless features</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). And this is nothing compared to internal team arguments about whether the game really needs that shiny new feature that will make it look better and have no impact on gameplay. The number of meetings and stakeholders one has to go through is frustrating, even when it seems there’s a clear cost/benefit argument. </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 2pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 17px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are smarter ways</span></span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">While there's no doubt many AAA companies will continue participating in the tech arms race for the above reasons, smaller teams would be foolish to follow suit. Whether it's the pursuit of realism, or any other manifestation of the "more is more" attitude (more sound channels! More sprites! More explosions!), the tech obsession is destructive. Not only because it is expensive, but also because it hides smarter ways to achieve similarly powerful, or even more powerful game experiences. Examples are everywhere. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Minecraft has obtained fanatic players that keep playing for years, even though it didn’t create a high fidelity audiovisual environment. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Transistor offers an excellent, memorable audio experience, even though it didn’t use more sound channels than the average AAA game. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Papers, Please creates an extremely close personal connection between the player and their in-game family, without even showing the names or pictures of the family members.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Neko Atsume evokes extreme emotions in cat lovers, even though it doesn’t have high fidelity models or animations of cats. </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img height="520px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/UqFVlefZhadCiKxILGvvB3C9tdLxaQojBHBH_jyqimMopSRI-7yEvGD0KuuLWT5wwLoDikNAClRbQE7WjIqqG1tV4GW1x4GpOCOnUY8hpLMTvFxs9uMPOvX0givJS2AWLJjygvmrn73QzLNj" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="293px;" /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Neko Atsume</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">MUD games in 2015 still have a dedicated audience that has played them for decades, even though they are all text.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One final realization about games that only have good technology to offer, is that they are inherently short-term experiences. Are many people still playing Ryse: Son of Rome? Do they fire it up every single day just to look at its pretty environments and hyper-realistic character models? No - they've gotten their tech fix from the title and moved on to the pursuit of the next fix. I know, because I was exactly like that 10 years ago, moving from FPS to FPS, playing the single player campaign on easy mode, mostly just staring at the pretty scenes. What are the games that people play for years that only have pretty environments or another form of impressive tech to offer? I can't think of any. Reversing the question - are there games that people play for years despite outdated technology? Absolutely, with far too many examples of both mainstream and niche games. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We are already at a place where we have the technology to display gorgeous images with more colors and at a higher resolution than the eye can distinguish, even on devices people carry around in their pockets. Instead of blindly maintaining the arms race momentum, maybe it makes sense to think about what we can accomplish with mature tech instead, and free ourselves from the tyranny of “We have to use 100% of the hardware we’re running on”. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For me personally, the problems in game development that I want to focus on going forward are completely unrelated to technology. All the games I want to make fit perfectly fine within the opportunity space of current hardware. I am more interested in approaching problems like: </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">- What are the qualities of games that will keep both players and developers interested in the game in the long term (not weeks or months, but years to come)?</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">- How do we create interesting, consistent worlds and characters that give the players just enough motivation to spark their imagination and fill in the blanks left behind by the lack of super-detailed models and the inability to look at every corner of that world via a 3D camera?</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">- What is the one single thing that our game will be remembered for, and how do we focus the entire team around that concept?</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With this post, I am now leaving behind my frustrating obsession with tech - an obsession that cost me a better gaming experience during my youth, and the opportunity to make better AAA games. And after admitting all this, I am finally free to continue learning and experimenting with what makes truly great, long term game experiences. The next time I hear someone telling me, "Games will be SO AWESOME when cloud computing is realized and allows millions of explosions and objects flying around you!" I’ll make sure to ask, "Why?"</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-6750662930810850962015-05-10T09:57:00.004-06:002015-05-10T09:58:23.660-06:00Social Games and their opportunity frontier<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I first downloaded Clash of Clans, I deleted the game a
short 15 minute session later. Despite the cute graphics and sleek interface,
the city building and battle elements seemed too shallow compared to the deeper
games I grew up playing. It wasn't until a few months later that I started
playing again, with a clearer goal: I needed to unlock the clan castle so I
could join the clan my coworkers wouldn't stop talking about. I’m happy I did,
because I've being playing for two years and have discovered a fun game that
takes many months to expose a surprising amount of depth. But had it not been
for the social element, I would never have given that game a second chance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Later, when I started working for Supercell (the developer
of the game), I was further exposed to a fascinating amount of social activity,
both inside and outside the game. What stuck the most with me was how a small
amount of dead simple game rules encouraged and shaped a wide variety of social
organization and behaviors. I spent an entire summer moving somewhat randomly
from clan to clan, in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the social
dynamics that drive the game. What I found was a varied collection of
"societies", many of which had structured their own habits and norms
in profoundly distinct ways. I found myself in some "my word is the
law", strong leader dictatorship-style clans; in some "we're just
here to have fun, no pressure"-style democracies; and a lot of complex political
variations in between. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
<h4>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What, exactly, is a
social game?</span></b></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At the end of the last decade, Facebook games somehow gained
the right to be called "social" games, possibly as shorthand for
"social network" games. The "social graph", the vast,
interconnected list of relationships between Facebook users, was touted as the
next frontier for designing new, unique social experiences in games. By getting
access to a person's real life relationships, the thought went, we can design
meaningful game experiences around those relationships. What happened in
practice was very different. The vast majority of developers who flooded into
the scene were blinded by Zynga's wild early success, making copycat games they
would never want to play themselves, using extremely short-term metrics as their
gospel, and abusing the social graph so it served their own virality needs, rather
than providing any sort of value to the player. This all led to the well
documented decline of Facebook games (<a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/203912/with_the_luster_of_social_games_.php">http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/203912/with_the_luster_of_social_games_.php</a>).
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But to call the decline of Facebook games as a general
decline in "social" games is a mistake. Defining a "social"
game as a game that is played on Facebook sounds to me a little bit like
defining a "platformer" as a game that is played on the Nintendo NES.
Since I will be using the term frequently both in this and in future posts, I'd
like to clarify what I think of as social games. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A social game is a
game that provides at least one type of social structure. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>A social structure (within
the context of a social game) is a persistent, dynamic, well-defined group of
human players that can interact and participate in meaningful in-game activities
together, either synchronously or asynchronously. </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Persistence is an important element in my definition, and is
one of the key elements I use to distinguish between social and merely
multiplayer games. A social game to me is something that supports repeated
interactions between players in the context of the social structures they
belong in. An RTS game with only a lobby where you find random opponents to
play with each time is therefore not social, just multiplayer. However, in many
cases players can and do form social structures even if not supported directly
inside the game (i.e. Clans in the early Quake years). The more such social
structures are encouraged (both in game and outside of the game), the more
social it is under my definition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Guilds, Alliances, Clans are the most obvious and common
in-game social structures. A game like World of Warcraft is a social game,
since a guild is a social structure and raiding is a meaningful in-game
activity in the context of that structure. The early Facebook games may or may
not be considered social under this definition, depending on the kind of
interactions they allow between friends, and our definition of
"meaningful". <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With the definition out of the way, the next questions I'm
interested in answering are: what makes a *good* social game, and what how do
we keep improving the experience in future social games? Here are some of my current, still evolving thoughts
on these questions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A good social game uses
the appropriate channels to discover other human players in a way that maximizes
the chance for meaningful, long-lasting social bonds</span></b></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Among the people who saw promise in the Facebook social
graph were some prominent game developers who I think genuinely thought about
the problem, and tried to provide value to the players by using their real life
social connections (instead of abusing those connections for self-serving virality).
Despite those efforts, I have not seen a game that uses the real life social
graph in a ground-breaking way, that provides real, never-before seen value to
players (if I missed them, please let me know and I’ll be happy to add such
games here). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This does not mean that it is impossible to achieve player
value by using their real life social network connections in game. But it does
mean it is very hard. It also means that not all game experiences benefit from the
social network connection – I actually think that many of them not only don’t
benefit, but actually are hurt by them. Here’s a screenshot from Empires and
Allies:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMND1cDNquN9Kh5MGQFyA7owK8gh0aqKXvZgNoYbbxSqtHoY_bRccCQV9Htyz9IoLqBH8ThPDxOT7PGADxM5bXQocQB2RnKiNYQc92gC0FvQ9gY0Js8NZWMQmsbKqAEZ3jrqMknG9q-rY/s1600/eallies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMND1cDNquN9Kh5MGQFyA7owK8gh0aqKXvZgNoYbbxSqtHoY_bRccCQV9Htyz9IoLqBH8ThPDxOT7PGADxM5bXQocQB2RnKiNYQc92gC0FvQ9gY0Js8NZWMQmsbKqAEZ3jrqMknG9q-rY/s640/eallies.jpg" width="360" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype
id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="75" o:preferrelative="t"
path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f">
<v:stroke joinstyle="miter"/>
<v:formulas>
<v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"/>
<v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"/>
<v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"/>
<v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"/>
<v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"/>
<v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"/>
</v:formulas>
<v:path o:extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect"/>
<o:lock v:ext="edit" aspectratio="t"/>
</v:shapetype><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_1" o:spid="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75"
style='width:321.75pt;height:572.25pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Andreas\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.jpg"
o:title=""/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don’t know about you, but for me, even if my real life friends
were actually this cool and good looking, I would still find it awkward that
they have to invade a fictional game world in this manner. Seeing my mom, my
baby cousin, my University professor, my accountant, and that guy I met once at
a conference and never really talked to after, being an actual part of the game
world, not only does not help my game experience in any way, it kind of ruins
it completely. Why are those people there in the first place? They would never
be interested in such a game anyway.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For most people and games, the optimal in-game social graph
(i.e. the lists of connections to other players that provides the best in game
experience) will have little overlap with the real life social graph.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So what would a good primary mechanism be for discovering the
players in the game that make up this optimal in-game graph? This, of course,
depends on the game itself. We need to think about what experience we are aiming
for our players to have in the game, and then follow up with more thought and
experimentation on how to enable them to find others that will enable that
experience. Some games rely a lot on randomness: you are thrown into the game
world, along with everyone else, and given the tools to communicate with them.
Who you interact with first will depend a lot on random factors like where you
are placed in the world and who happened to be near there at the time. While
that’s a reasonable starting point, we may be able to do better with both
in-game and out of game tools that assist our players find exactly the kind of
people that would enhance their enjoyment of the game. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The real life social graph can still be very useful in-game as
a secondary discovery mechanism. It can help which of my real life friends are
already playing the game I’m interested in. That reduced form of the graph is
the simplest, most practical and useful application of it I’ve seen so far. In many
games, teaming up with or fighting against people I already know is more
exciting than doing so with strangers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A good social game uses
social structures and game rules in unison, in order to create deep, meaningful,
primary emotions </span></b></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">During the summer I was visiting various clans in Clash of
Clans, I experienced one of the most intense feelings I had while playing any
game. I was preparing my troops for a crucial war attack and chatting up my
clan members who I had a rocky relationship with (apparently joining the clan
and immediately telling them they're wrong about what troops are good for
defense was a social faux pas). Regardless of our petty differences, I liked
some of the members of that clan and considered myself close to them. Besides,
shouldn't we all be worried about the other clan who was, up to that point, winning
the war? A couple other guys and myself were formulating a come-back plan and
felt pretty good about our chances. And then, during a chat exchange where I must
have been slightly more snarky than I should have, the combative elder who was
against me joining them in the first place, kicked me out of the clan. To my
surprise, that felt extremely devastating. The next hour was filled with wild
thoughts that maybe the other elders who liked me a bit more would reverse his
decision and invite me back before the war ended, so we could win that thing (I
was pretty high level, and because of how wars work in Clash, they had no
chance if I wasn’t able to do the attacks as part of the clan. And winning a war
is a significant time investment for the Clan, most of them consider it a big
deal). But... no such luck. The “Come back” message I was expecting never came.
The feeling of betrayal was real, and it stung. I caught myself thinking about
the incident for days after, and even tried to return to the clan for a quick
chat to get some kind of closure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've had similar moments and feelings in other multiplayer and
social games like Neptune's Pride and OGame. No single player game has ever
come close to generating the same intensity of feelings, including the ones that
have carefully crafted stories specifically intended to bring out similar feelings.
The difference in intensity is pretty clearly caused by the fact that in the social
games, I am personally the one being affected by the game events. In Clash, I
myself was betrayed and kicked out of the clan –not my in game avatar. I had
worked hard to give the team a fighting chance in the war, and instead of a
thank you, I was backstabbed right at the end. This is a completely different
thing than seeing your in-game avatar get betrayed in a scripted single player
story (even on the ones where you don’t actually see it coming). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Daniel Cook has written on the difference between such
"primary" emotions (caused by things that happen to you), and
empathy-style emotions (caused by things that happen to someone else you relate
with), here:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.lostgarden.com/2011/07/shadow-emotions-and-primary-emotions.html">http://www.lostgarden.com/2011/07/shadow-emotions-and-primary-emotions.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Like Daniel, I would love to see our industry focus more on
these "primary" emotions, because they seem to be something that is
making our medium unique. No movie or book has ever reproduced the intensity of
such emotions for me. The only thing that came close, the Red Wedding, was likely
similarly intense only because it was elevated to a primary emotion because of
the fact that my wife was 9 months pregnant at the time I watched it. Worse,
the storytelling techniques we seem to be disproportionally borrowing from
movies and books can backfire badly in an interactive setting, where the player
is supposed to be in control of their agent's actions. The Last of Us was
completely ruined for me because at the end, I was forced into multiple decisions
of vast consequence that I would never have done had I been in the
protagonist's shoes. If it was a movie instead, I would go "ah, I get why
he did all that, poor guy," think it was a pretty good movie, and move on.
Now, I’ll never forgive the game because it severely violated my sense of
agency with that character.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My own experience has been that the "primary"
emotions we can experience in games, the feelings of gain, loss, betrayal, desperation,
hope, are greatly amplified in a social setting. This is not always a good
thing for the game developer. Very often, the emotions are so amplified that
people are actively driven away from the game in shame, anger or frustration. I
witnessed a lot of people quit Clash of Clans completely because they couldn’t
handle the social pressure of having their war attacks watched and judged
publicly as they happened. Regardless, I believe more research here is an area
of opportunity, especially for niche developers who don’t care about appealing
to the mass market. An intense social feeling that may be a turn-off for most
players could be the unfulfilled desire for a particular niche. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A good social game does
not require complexity to drive depth</span></b></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The social experience I discovered in Clash of Clans and
described in the opening paragraphs was, of course, nothing new. Good social
games, many of them MMOs and MUDs, have been growing these kinds of varied
societies for decades. But what was news to me, what I was not expecting, was
specifically the amount of variety that was enabled by Clash of Clans’ very
simple gameplay and rules. Compared, for example, to Star Wars Galaxies, a game
where the depth of the social interactions are largely driven by the complexity
of the game's locations, professions, races, factions, in Clash, the very
simple Clan Wars feature, was enough to also create social interactions with
depth. Being able to observe the kind of social interactions that occurred in
clans, before and after the Clan Wars feature was implemented, was very
enlightening. Rules and game context shapes social behaviors, and this was my eye
opening moment where I witnessed a relatively simple game feature completely
change social dynamics. It certainly got me thinking about what other behaviors
we can drive as game developers, what other distinct social game experiences we
can create, without piling on complexity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What will the next
generation of social features look like?</span></b></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I would love to see our discussion of social games move
beyond the social network platforms and meaningless terms like casual/mid-core,
and start talking about the social structures themselves. How can we enrich the
experience in existing social structures, by adding new or different rules and
interactions with gameplay? How can we create all new, interesting social
structures, and what do they look like? How can we incentivize players to
create their own types of informal structures? How can we manage our
communities in order to drive positive behavior in these in-game social
structures? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In an effort to move the discussion towards that direction,
I am providing my list of social feature ideas that I’ve been developing over
the past few months. These are semi-random thoughts on features I would
personally like to experiment with, both as a developer and as a gamer. Where
applicable I list games that I think have adopted these features to some
extent. I’m sure I’ve missed many, so please let me know of other ones you know.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Government Types</i></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Alliances/clans/guilds/neighborhoods are a key social structure
and we should always keep looking for ways to make them more meaningful,
interesting, and diverse. One such way could be to allow the clan to choose
between predefined governments, with different options allowing different
trade-offs on how the clan is operated, what roles it offers its members, what
kind of benefits the members get, and how the clan progresses and gathers fame
within the game.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For example, familiar government types could work in some
games: Monarchy could boost the participant’s army strength at the cost of
higher taxes, or democracy could allow higher resource production but weaker
defenses. The choice of government type could also be a status symbol for the
clan, telling the rest of the world what the clan’s worldview is in the game.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Governance of the entire game world</i></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Single-shard games can take advantage of their non-compartmentalized
world by allowing a very powerful Social Structure that can affect the entire world
for all other players. As a very simple example, each season, the top X players
in the world could be assigned to the Senate, where they can vote among a set
of proposed boosts that will apply to every single player in the game for the
next Y amount of time. This is interesting and engaging not only for the top
players who compete to enter the Senate, but also for the other social
structures the Senate members belong to (other players or groups will want to
approach Senators and influence their decision, perhaps via incentives the game
allows them to offer).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Secret Societies</i></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The feeling of belonging to a “secret” organization is very
powerful. A game could evoke very unique bonds and excitement by allowing the
creation of either formal or informal secret societies that are separate from
other regular social structures. These secret societies could have their own
agenda (which could lead to some very interesting combinations with other
social structures, i.e. the Senate discussed above). The Secret Society would
seek to spread fame of the organization among regular game members, while
concealing the identity of its members. Other non-members could be given the
incentives and tools to try and expose the secret society members - especially
high ranking members. Some would try to infiltrate the Secret Society in order
to spy on them, adding to the overall drama and excitement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Role Conflict</i></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Roles are important in any social structure, as they give
meaning and purpose to all members of the structure. A good social game focusing on
roles </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">reinforce
certain social roles by making them more desirable via game rules; </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">promotes diversity by making social roles balanced (so people of different skills and
interests can be happy in different roles); and </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">provides guidelines on appropriate behavior for each role (even though it's sometimes
perfectly acceptable for some of those rules to be broken). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Role conflict can add an interesting twist here. Any game that allows an individual to hold an
important role on multiple social structures can create interesting
dilemmas/conflict of interest type situations. For instance, a player who is
part of both an Alliance and a Secret Society could be thrown in Alliance War
against a member of the Secret Society. How will they react?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Diplomacy</i></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Traditional 4x strategy games owe a lot of their depth to
interactions between the player’s faction and other AI- or player-controlled
factions. Social games with mechanics that support players or groups of players
playing cooperatively or against other players/groups may benefit from the
ability for both sides to be able to communicate with each other and negotiate
terms for war/peace/assistance/betrayal. The communication functionality itself
could be as simple as in game chat, but the game must support potential
negotiations with the appropriate features such as donating units, releasing
captured units, exchanging tech, or ability to surprise allies and enemies with
concealed actions. Supporting such diplomacy features between actual players is
a huge untapped area and vastly more promising than diplomacy between a human
and an AI - humans have the ability to surprise, remember, hold grudges,
scheme, in a way no AI will achieve any time soon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Neptune’s Pride and Subterfuge are two games that provide
extremely deep diplomacy using an extremely bare-bones in game chat screen. The
depth comes from in-game features designed to support diplomacy (i.e. gifting
part of your army, directly funding weaker players, freeing enemy heroes taken
prisoner in battle). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Ad-hoc groups/Social Events</i></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Most social groups are intended to create long-lasting bonds
between their members, and so naturally are intended to be permanent. For some
kinds of games though, creating groups in an ad-hoc way (perhaps as part of an
event) could mix things up in an interesting and fun way. These temporary
groups can also create bonds, especially if it leads to the formation of another,
permanent social structure. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For example, imagine an event-based strategy game. As part
of an opt-in event, certain players are put in a group (Defenders) and are
required to defend their bases against a much larger group (Attackers). After
the end of the event, and regardless of the outcome, it's likely some of the
defenders or attackers who liked each other will form separate, permanent bonds
(i.e. join the same alliance). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’d love to hear more from other developers on the subject. What
are your favorite social games? What’s the most exciting moments you've experienced as part of a social structure? What are the areas you’d like to see
further experimentation in social games? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3009341419836245885.post-9523530581086291202015-04-25T21:21:00.002-06:002015-04-25T21:56:57.528-06:00The time problem<h3>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What do you do when you no longer have enough continuous time and attention to enjoy the games that you love?</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am currently typing this on an iPhone sitting on my couch, while I'm supposed to be watching this very active baby that has just figured out how to crawl and climb. Typing on this device is pretty cumbersome, but the convenience compared to carrying a laptop around makes it worth it. Especially since every couple of minutes she will start climbing someplace potentially dangerous and I have to go bail her out. As this playing/blog typing activity of ours moves around the house randomly, I need a super accessible, mobile device with me. If I didn't have one, I wouldn't be able to use these little pockets of free time to do this post.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is a single example of various life events that have happened during the last 10 years or so and have radically changed the structure of my free time. I have to finally accept something I was fearing for quite some time: I no longer have the continuous free time or attention to enjoy my favorite kinds of games.</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a name='more'></a><br /></span></h4>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some games demand continuous free time</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I was much younger, I had countless uninterrupted hours to spend playing games like Civilization, Master of Orion, Heroes of Might and Magic, SimCity, Starcraft. From sneaking into the computer room at 6 am on Saturday mornings as a teenager, to skipping most classes at university, I always managed to find the continuous time these games demanded to be enjoyed. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Fast forwarding to today, the experience all these games offered is still there even better, either through good sequels, worthy spiritual successors, or interesting spin-offs. And as much as I want to, I can no longer play any of them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Why not? Here's how it usually goes when I try, in Civilization IV for example. Creating a new game, choosing all starting parameters, doing the initial exploration of the map, and building the first few cities takes at least 30 minutes. This process is boring, because it's very similar between every time I start a new game. Sure, there's some uniqueness depending on the map, but the ratio of interesting decisions/minute at the beginning of the game is very low. It takes at least a few more hours of playing to get to the interesting stuff (meeting a lot of other nations, developing complex diplomatic relations, choosing who to ally with and who to attack, making meaty tactical decisions on a map filled with friendly, allied and enemy units) can easily take hours. It's after going through the motions that the game usually gets exciting. The early hours are meaningful as setting up the stage for the later gameplay, but other than that are not that interesting to me. Worse, in some instances the anticipated “later stage fun” may never come, because of random events than unbalance you from the competition, making it too easy or too hard to win. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I was young, spending a few hours to get to an interesting map was not a problem. I knew I had 8-10 hours just that one day to play, and the intro hours offered a low pressure "ease-in" period, and built up anticipation for what happens later. Now, with a fractured schedule, I can never seem to get to the interesting stuff. While it is possible, in theory, to keep chugging at the game for 20 minute intervals at a time, in practise I find I lack the patience to do that kind of context switch all the time. When I come back to an old game I very regularly feel like I don't remember exactly what happened, and I feel disconnected from that game instance. Funnily enough, I feel the urge to start a new game instead, as if that's making the whole situation better. I'm not sure if there's a psychological reason for all this, and this thinking process fascinates me as I try to analyze it somewhat detached. But, it's not something I feel like I need to "fix": fun either happens or it doesn't, and beating myself up for "not having fun when I should be in theory" doesn't strike me as healthy thinking.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0zkXXr6CQj8spir2EwZ31Pypk0OWqTkwuGiCZbnlGWW-KPXLRI5AuPICSMFs5yTOtJVBbSoebXMNULAc8fiJRT6as6vEGf2R7RN4cSyebWkilfWQqz24BgvV4jjxPmphUFlm_7rPjrLY/s1600/civ-1-big.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0zkXXr6CQj8spir2EwZ31Pypk0OWqTkwuGiCZbnlGWW-KPXLRI5AuPICSMFs5yTOtJVBbSoebXMNULAc8fiJRT6as6vEGf2R7RN4cSyebWkilfWQqz24BgvV4jjxPmphUFlm_7rPjrLY/s1600/civ-1-big.jpg" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Spending 6 continuous hours to get to the good parts in Civilization was never a problem when I was 14</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is hardly unique to Civilization. The initial hours in any 4x space strategy game I've played are extremely boring. I'm sorry to all the hardcore fans out there, but researching the same technology for the millionth time so your initial fleets can jump a bit faster in the new game’s map gets old pretty quick. If I spend my limited time on something, I would really rather spend it on things I haven’t done before.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is all about the single player experience. On the multiplayer side, it's even harder to have a decent experience with these kinds of games, and I have all but stopped trying any more. Playing a multiplayer game of Starcraft 2 requires an open ended amount of time, usually from 15 minutes to an hour, during which you have to dedicate your attention 100% to the game. Now I might be ok with finding 15-20 uninterrupted minutes here and there, but the fact that it's an unknown amount of time really kills it for me. Finding time to coordinate and play with my friends is rare enough these days, I don't need the extra stress of having to explain to them I really only had 20 minutes to dedicate to this game so now I'm quitting mid-session. This is all pretty sad because I have always felt the multiplayer aspect is vastly more interesting in these kinds of games. Beating the AI in Master of Orion 2 for the millionthtime feels OK, I guess. But there's a whole other feeling to interact with a live human opponent, and I suspect it doesn't solely have to do with the fact that a human is smarter/more unpredictable. Playing with or against someone I have history with (both in game, or in other games, or in real life), someone who has been a friend but now betrays me or vice versa, awakes certain feelings that no AI can possibly recreate. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some games demand too much learning and attention</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A few weeks ago I decided to look for a space strategy game on Steam, secretly hoping there may be something more modern out there that could be a good alternative to Master of Orion 2. I don't remember the name of this game, but it did come with good reviews. This is one of the first screenshots it came with: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3gT0TkCwDODoTPSK5mIsMuRjtZscxi2iNfCP6J2op5QOtJANp5437-hMXTn5ytM81lDohn4Pndzaum6w7PEGYjLknAVjKJQlG3XJw0xoV0qDUB0k2hMEWvTaCE65S6ClX2_CEdo8pa_0/s1600/spacegame_complex.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3gT0TkCwDODoTPSK5mIsMuRjtZscxi2iNfCP6J2op5QOtJANp5437-hMXTn5ytM81lDohn4Pndzaum6w7PEGYjLknAVjKJQlG3XJw0xoV0qDUB0k2hMEWvTaCE65S6ClX2_CEdo8pa_0/s1600/spacegame_complex.png" height="362" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't mean to pick on this game. This UI and systems complexity is pretty typical for many space strategy games. It is even a feature for many players (especially on PC) who view this kind of complexity as necessary for the game to have depth. I am not one of these players. I've seen depth in very simple games. Even if I was attracted to this kind of complexity, I simply wouldn't have enough time or energy to dedicate to learn it, just for the off chance the game is good. I'd rather invest my free time on something I can decide quickly if it's for me or not. In this particular game's case, the screenshot was a huge turnoff.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The learning curve, time investment and mental effort required to understand how to play a game has ruined many other experiences that would otherwise be perfect for me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Eve Online is a good example of this. In theory, it’s the perfect game for me. It expertly fulfills the promise of being a small part in a vast universe shaped largely by other players actions. It’s even relatively friendly to my time schedule: you can go online for 10-20 minutes, and have enough time to manage your skill progression, continue the trip to your destination, maybe even do a mission. It has extremely deep, almost unique social structures. I can make new friends within the game and form complex relationships that lead to excitement, drama, heartbreak, etc. All of this is great. In theory. But it's no good to me if I am completely unable to understand half of what’s going on the screen at any given time. My honest efforts to penetrate the black box systems have all ended in frustration.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I mean, I don't even know where to start looking when I am constantly presented screens like this within the first hour into the game. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzhUQEa9DmOT4v9-bFqc2BQwbFlpCesqcpJSUfO8GDGJbtjXfwubGOkJyPbPaReM45ssBvgUCVhTPkjQlswrqfuvNXLGvpT0VB2MvDPRY0S5uZesK6BEYl9JOxPXWsTUdU-_gGkW7k8SY/s1600/eve-screen-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzhUQEa9DmOT4v9-bFqc2BQwbFlpCesqcpJSUfO8GDGJbtjXfwubGOkJyPbPaReM45ssBvgUCVhTPkjQlswrqfuvNXLGvpT0VB2MvDPRY0S5uZesK6BEYl9JOxPXWsTUdU-_gGkW7k8SY/s1600/eve-screen-2.jpg" height="384" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Again, when I was young, this wasn't much of a problem. Even pre-internet, there were many resources I could turn to, spend continuous hours studying magazines or learning the games' ins and outs by trial and error. But these days, I can no longer do any of that.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW4XFRGjrDSWvegCKJR_pNV2fhpsoOap-f5GvjBera1lUMzjYaQSWSuMDcmawKOfwKPJOlxo6ltBgELfYzd_x_KCVE9qW3j57xUo7m_DrpbTJqL-w9d5N2b4ChhjTeUyqJZ-4jmajrfaA/s1600/LearningCurve1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW4XFRGjrDSWvegCKJR_pNV2fhpsoOap-f5GvjBera1lUMzjYaQSWSuMDcmawKOfwKPJOlxo6ltBgELfYzd_x_KCVE9qW3j57xUo7m_DrpbTJqL-w9d5N2b4ChhjTeUyqJZ-4jmajrfaA/s1600/LearningCurve1.jpg" height="388" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I am happy I'm not the only one who thinks Eve is impenetrable.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">OK, who am I kidding. I'm sure I'll sign up for another free trial a few months from now, after I read some blog post on how a corporation deviously destroyed an entire alliance from within after infiltrating it with spies. I just wish Eve could deliver on its vast promise without all this impenetrable (to me) complexity.</span><br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What about games that demand neither?</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's no accident that most of the games that are addressing these problems head-on are on very accessible platforms: web, tablets and phones. All these offer almost instant access to games (through very fast or non existent downloads, no payment barrier, very quick to learn rules). Most of the players on these platforms don't have all the time in the world to play or learn how to play the games they download. So in order to survive, developers on these platforms understand that they need their games to cut away all the fat, put the player straight into the interesting parts, create interfaces so simple that anyone can understand how to play within seconds, make the games fun to play in very short sessions while also optionally allowing longer sessions. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But for me personally, it's only a subset of these games I'm particularly interested in: the persistent ones, that allow constant progress over time. The Civilization issue I mentioned above (spending 30+ minutes and having nothing to show for it in the long term, and even being tempted to start a new game instead if I revisit that session days later) does not exist with persistent games. Persistent games allow short sessions to still contribute, little by little, to long term progress. Two years into Clash of Clans, I feel a great sense of progression that came piece by piece from multiple short but fun 5 minute sessions each day. Multiple months into OGame, I have expanded my empire to many new planets, which will be there forever. If and when I choose to come back, I will still have a fresh experience compared to starting a new game all over again. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A great side effect of such good persistent games is that they can be played for months and still provide fresh, new challenges. The best ones become part of my daily routine. I don't have to keep searching for a new game to finish every few weeks, like I used to do when I was playing console games. That search mentality and the constant searching of the next good game is not very compatible with my schedule any more, and I simply don't have the energy to keep doing it. The mere act of trying a new game has a high barrier, especially when I know most of the new games I try won't stick.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What if we could have the best of both worlds? </span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But as fun as some of these simple-to-learn, persistent mobile/web games have been, I still feel we are missing experiences that provide the depth of the evergreen classics I was playing in my youth. Amidst all the discussion about the overflood of games in the app store, I cannot point to a single persistent strategy game that provides any experiences close to what Master of Orion, Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic offered. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What if we can have games with a lot of the depth, but little of the UI and systems complexity typical on PC and console platforms? Games that are friendly to any time schedule, and can be played among all kinds of distractions? Actually social games that allow keeping in touch with real life friends, and making new friends in-game, without mandating our schedules match exactly? Games that can be played for months or years, become a part of the more dedicated players life, and provide great sense of progression over time? Those are the kinds of games I would really be interested to play. I do believe that we as an industry have a lot of potential space to explore there, and that's something I want to expand on future posts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As I am now lucky enough to be able to work on my own games, the above thoughts weigh heavily on what kind of game I want to make. This first post is first a way for me to collect my thoughts, help me realize why I am doing this, what I am passionate about, a sort of compass to help make decisions far into the future. But it is also a shout out to developers who may feel the same, and are passionate about building similar games. Teaming up with a passionate team of developers who are making a game for themselves first is the only way I know of to make something other people are also going to find worth playing. And while there are no guarantees of success, at least this road is less likely to create regrets 40 years from now (I doubt there's any chance the old man version of me will be thinking "I wish I hadn't tried to do the games I loved back then, what the world really needed was more Candy crush clones"). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am looking forward to recording my journey as a developer and gamer over the next several years. If you have any feedback on this or upcoming posts, please get in touch.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10447609893446311555noreply@blogger.com1