Interview of 4 social game developers

Four social game developers (from Zynga, Playfish, Playdom and Crowdstar) were interviewed during the Flash Games Summit on March 8, 2010.

Here are some excerpts that I found interesting:

"Moderator: What are four words that are the keys to successful social games?

Playfish: Social - provide a context for meaningful interaction, Relatable, pick themes and mechanics that are understandable and aspirational; Rewarding, emotionally rewarding and socially, reinforcement schedules to keep players engaged, Emergent gameplay, easy to pick up but emergent complexity and depth

Zynga: Mass Market - if it doesn't appeal to enough ppl, it won't be as successful as you want; Invest - ppl need to be excited about investing their time in it, Express - needs to be a game that ppl want to express themselves in; Relationships - allow ppl to create new relationships or nurture existing relationships



Moderator: Why do you think those casual game companies don't experience the same success on FB?

Zynga: Guild of Heroes was a Diablo 2 clone - I joined the company as it was finishing up. The question was how is it social - and it wasn't. The team thinking was that they'd add the social afterward. And it doesn't work. Needs to built from ground up.

Playdom: I agree. So many examples of that. Lots of examples of games on FB that would be big if they weren't on FB. FB games need to be social from the ground up. Also, lots of the users in the social gaming space are REALLY casual, so Bejeweled did it right with short play sessions, accessibility. Notifications have gone away. FB is moving away from one-to-many notifications and toward more deliberate, one-to-one notifications. User to User, App to User.

Crowdstar: I think this is a pretty profound change. Makes it increasingly difficult for other companies to reach the same success we have. Will be very difficult for other companies to get where we have. Changes way you're going to distribute your game. For business people, it's something they need to look at closely to see how they're going to grow their game. You're going to have to spend more money to launch something.



Moderator: Most of you have two currencies, right?

Playdom: We have a couple PHDs helpding to manage our economies.

Crowdstar: I heard one of the Playfish guys saying they deal with a billion pieces of data a day(?).

Zynga: Zynga collects 5TB of data per day and we have a team that turns that into reports we can track.

Playdom: Very different from any other industry I've seen. I came from Google and YouTube and thought those were data driven companies, but this is way beyond that. You can make valuable decisions within minutes because everyone is logged in all the time and the quality of the info is so much higher than worrying about cookies, etc."



Moderator: Aren't these games just sophisticated slot machines?

Zynga: Farmville brings families together. Moms play with their 4 year olds, etc.


[Source: freetoplay.biz]

As mentioned, the removal of FaceBook Notifications (from apps), which is to reduce spam, will make it a lot harder for new applications to become popular without external advertising.

E3 First Look @ GameTrailers.com

The years biggest game expo is coming, E3. Here's a "first look" of some of the new information will be announced at E3.

[Source: gametrailers.com]

Interview: Jonathan Blow discusses his platformer, Braid

Jonathan Blow is the developer of Braid, a platformer that makes use of the manipulation of time to solves puzzles. The game first came out on XBox 360 Arcade, and is now out on PC.

You can download the demo from Steam, here.

It has a lot of similarities to platformers like Mario done on purpose to make it sort of a platformer parody. This also allows Braid to introduce the concept of time manipulation (rewind, slow, etc) from early in the game. For example, your character never dies in Braid, instead you are allow to rewind when that happens.

Braid trailer from David Hellman on Vimeo.

[Source: braid-game.com]

Here's some excepts form his interview with Leigh Christian Ashton of TIGSource:

"I have to admit I don’t really enjoy programming very much any more, because in order to get things done I have adopted a style of programming that makes it as simple as I can, so that it is just easy to get things done, and it only requires time and a lot of typing. So I am not really solving any difficult puzzles or challenges when programming, as beginning programmers might. On the plus side, this means I can program in a relatively efficient manner; on the minus side, it’s a less-engaging activity. I make up for that on the design side; whether I am making a prototype or a full game, it’s about exploring some interesting space of ideas. Programming is now just the implementation detail of how I do that exploration.

It’s not really about innovation so much as exploring interestingness. There is this idea of chasing innovation in game design that I used to be a big proponent of, but that I now suspect is a little bit misdirected."

"I try to encourage people to be willing to delete stuff that is mediocre or just kind of good – or at least put that stuff in a closet for some future day – so that they can focus on the stuff that is great. Many people don’t think that way, though. When it is so hard to get anything substantial done, you just don’t want to throw away any of your hard-earned progress."

"I think gameplay innovation can result in things that are interesting, but at the same time it doesn’t automatically result in something that is deep—often it’s a gimmick. I am interested in deepness and richness of game design. At the same time, I think if a designer is working on something he really cares about, and is really exploring some ideas in his own style, bringing his own particular insight to the table, then he will automatically come up with something different than most other games; furthermore, this will be a deeper, more-compelling kind of innovation."

[Source: tigsource.com]

So innovation does not mean interesting, but interesting usually mean innovation.

Also, the phrase "less is more" comes to mind when he challenges others to delete anything that is not extremely core to the experience. While this may cause a game to receive a great review, it does not necessarily mean the game will be played for a long time (and thus maximizes profitability). Will have to see how many people are still playing Braid a year from now.