Facebook Ultima?
Maybe not by such a name...

But Richard "Lord British" Garriott hints that his venture into casual portal-based games may still have something to offer the ol' hardcore RPG faithful...

"Today we're talking about the Portalarium," Garriott said. "We have yet to announce quote-unquote my game.. what motivates me is to go back and make Ultima-esque, familiar Ultima-esque games. But I believe the right place is to do that on this platform."

Braced for the Skeptics, Richard Garriott Challenges Gamers and Teases What's Next...

Labels: casual games, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:56 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Lessons Learned From Bejeweled Blitz
I thought it was strange that I own a copy of Bejeweled 2, yet I find myself more often playing the free Bejeweled Blitz (as have a lot of people). Apparently, there are some real gamer-psychology lessons to be pulled out from this game:

Veteran Game Designer Jamie Fristrom Talks About What Makes Bejeweled Blitz Work

Enjoy!

Labels: casual games, Game Design

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:48 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Guest Post: Facebook Game Addiction
This is a guest post from Jena, who has contributed to Tales of the Rampant Coyote before. She's been a professional game reviewer (hey, she was young and needed the money!), but lately her gaming tastes have taken her in a different - but hardly unusual - direction:

Hi.

My name is Jena, among others, and I’m a Facebook Game Addict.

The whole thing started so innocently. I never imagined what it could grow into. I guess you never do when you start. I had a rational reason for joining Facebook. It seemed like an easy way to keep track of friends and family. Not to mention I had to do some job stuff out there. Besides, I claim to be an internet savvy kind of gal and there’s a lot of opportunity for promotion and blog links and all kinds of things. Reach that casual reader, casual gamer…and tell Grandma about your successes all at once. Yeah, it means you have to post Grandma friendly content, but I felt safe.

Thinking on it now it may have been that very safety which lead to my downfall. The first one was simple, the way all these things are. I had an invitation from a friend. This was someone I knew. Someone who I thought loved me. “Click here to join my Mafia Family”. It was so innocent sitting there next to their smiling picture. What could it hurt? Just one little click.

The first one is the easiest.

The first one is always free.

Okay, it’s Facebook, they’re all free…ish…

Quickly it becomes an obsession. Use up all your energy. Complete jobs. Whack the mobster who is after you. Wait impatiently for your stats to refill. Cuss the @(*#&$ who robbed all your casinos and put you on the hitlist! Grow your mafia…spread the disease.

But it doesn’t stay contained once the obsession starts. There’s another message from another smiling face. “Here’s a tree for your Farm.” I don’t have a farm…

You will.

Oh yes you will…

A farm, a mob, a vampire, a dragon, a castle, a restaurant, a fish aquarium…

The hours flutter away.

The pretty graphics.

The big numbers

Some quit it cold turkey…some get sucked in even further and start exchanging credit card numbers for just one more favor point, a little more farm cash.

Me…I’m stuck in the middle. I’ve walked away from some of the games, but others hold me in their iron grip. If only you could bottle this stuff.

Then again Facebook is making money they say. Big profits on little games.

Something to be learned here?

First I have to feed my virtual fish.

Labels: casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:49 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Indie Game Prices - The Streets Run Red
Jeff Vogel once again weighs in on the price wars that are pretty much killing the casual game developers (which includes a lot of indies):

Indie Games: Still Too Cheap, and Getting Cheaper

There's a key term he uses there which I have to agree with: "Unsustainable."

I mean, it's a pretty good deal for the portals (including consoles and iPhone). While they do have SOME costs associated with adding a new game to the library, for the most part the developer is shouldering the burden of cost, and the portal is getting it for somethig close to free. So their profit is completely independent of the content. For the big game portals, now, it's even more extreme. They don't have to convince users to even buy the games - they just gotta sign them up for a subscription, and sit back and rake in that nice, regular revenue stream.

The price-fixing screws the hell outta developers, though. Even the formerly super-successful ones. It's actually a pretty old story. The middlemen take home the cash, while the producers take home their personal belongings after clearing out their desk.

It would be another story if the developers were actually seeing at least 3x the sales for taking home 1/3rd of returns. Maybe that's happening amongst the very best-selling games, but the grumbling I'm hearing from the rank-and-file indicate that's not even close to what's happening. After a brief surge in sales with the price drop, their volume is returning to not much above the previous levels.

Ultimately, the one-size-fits-all "lunch-money" price point is unsustainable for the broader indie market. Or, put another way - there is only a limited class of games which can be made to work at those prices. If you are forced to sell a game for the price of a ringtone, then you need to be able to make a game for the same cost as making a profitable ringtone.

Good luck with that.

I think what we're seeing on the casual-portal side, at least, is a consolidation of an industry that has expanded much faster than demand can sustain. This happens in every new industry. Once upon a time, we had a dozen American automobile companies, too. But eventually, the streets have to run red, and the armies of suppliers have to duke it out until only a few are left standing. The others must die out or be absorbed.

And then, once the dust clears, things stabilize. The market re-calibrates and finds some kind of equilibrium. And yeah, prices rise, now that the supply of competing producers is no longer near-infinite.

In the meantime, since it is largely a battle between the big portals, some indies are just avoiding the fight and hoping to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. Others are making necessary adjustments to survive (like Amaranth Games, breaking their "casual" RPGs into smaller, bite-sized episodes that can be sold seperately by the portals). Unfortunately, a lot of developers - like Gamelab, which was heavily dependent on the portals - are going to disappear.

Labels: Biz, casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:48 AM (Permalink) 10 comments links to this post

 
EA Merging Sims and Casual Divisions
Casual Gamer Chick is reporting that Kathy Vrabeck, President of EA's Casual Games Division, is stepping down, and that EA has decided to merge their SIMS division with Casual Games.

Casual Gamer Chick: President of EA's Casual Games Division Steps Down

My thoughts: Interesting move on EA's part. This implies (to me) two things:

#1 - EA considers the target audience for The Sims to be very similar to the Casual Games audience. I don't think they are wrong here.

#2 - EA doesn't believe the traditional difference between casual games and their SIMS line - namely, budget - to be a significant factor. This is more interesting. It's true that casual games have become much more expensive over the last several years, but still the design / development process - by my understanding - has remained pretty distinct between "modern mainstream" development, and are profitable mainly for having a much smaller overhead.

However - the evolution (devolution?) of casual game development hasn't been all that different from mainstream video games if you go back to the late 70's / early 80's. Can it be that EA believes the profitability (and competition) of casual games warrants their assimilation into a more mainstream process?

This latter point is more interesting in that certain business units, like Pogo and their mobile casual games group, may go elsewhere.

Labels: Biz, casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:13 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Wow - An Outpost Kaloki Review
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to review sites again - Jay Is Games has reviewed Outpost Kaloki.

Jay Is Games: Outpost Kaloki review

An excerpt: "Outpost Kaloki may be four years old, but it is by no means ready to be put out to pasture yet. The gameplay is solid, and the difficulty curve feels about right. The game never really seems to change much from one level to the next, but the setup, graphics, and goals are different enough to make each level as enjoyable as the previous one."

Curious? That's my mercenary ulterior motive. You can check out Outpost Kaloki here. Or you can try out NinjaBee's newer tactics strategy game, Band of Bugs, here. The demos are free, and the games are cheap. And hey, I'm in the credits - I think. In the "Special Thanks" category, if I recall. Yeah, that was me. I think I paid for half the pizza during the beta test party. Hard, back-breaking work, but someone had to do it.

While I worked at NinaBee, part of my bonus was based on the royalties on Outpost Kaloki X, for the XBox 360. Which I never worked on. So I guess they even paid me back for the pizza...

What's interesting to me is that reviewer FunnyMan refers to it as a casual game. You know, while I think it's a friendlier game than most "tycoon" games, I don't think of Outpost Kaloki as being casual at all. It has sold much better on the 360 than on the PC, which could lend evidence to the opinion that it's more "core" than "casual." But - there are a lot of factors involved there.

And frankly, as time goes on, the definition of "casual game" is getting more and more loose. What I thought I could use to describe a casual game three years ago doesn't feel like it applies anymore. Some of the best-selling casual games right now aren't too far removed from the hard-core arcade games of the early 80's. The gaming landscape continues to change.

But it's nice to see Kaloki is still getting some attention.

Labels: casual games, strategy games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:08 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Bejeweled Franchise Sells 25 Million Copies
In a press release Tuesday, PopCap announced that their flagship casual games Bejeweled and and Bejeweled 2 have now collectively sold over 25 million units across all platforms, generating over $300 million in consumer sales, and generating tens of millions of dollars of ad-based income.

Jason Kapalka mentions that they originally tried to sell the game outright to game publishers when they started around eight years ago. Even after lowering the price to a mere $60,000, they had no takers.

There are so many interesting points here it's hard to know where to begin. First of all, the $300 million in consumer spending doesn't equate to take-home profits by PopCap, as there were a lot of retail copies sold, portals taking their share, and bundle deals. Still, even if you assume only an average of $6 per copy, that's pretty impressive.

This is also across an immense number of platforms - including PDAs, cell phones, consoles, and computers. I don't know if any game besides Tetris has been ported as extensively as Bejeweled. Or cloned as extensively.

And though they have been really kicking butt lately with Peggle (after spending a ton on marketing), the success of Bejeweled has proven very difficult to match. For a while, Bejeweled's popularity was seen as a signal that casual gaming was a license to print money, but the market is now getting pretty saturated and challenging - even for PopCap themselves.

Still - the best take-away I see from this story, as an indie game developer, is how important it is not to underestimate the value of owning the rights to your game. They tried to sell that, lock, stock, and barrel, for probably far less than 1/1000th of its true value. They had to work their butts off porting, promoting, and building sequels to squeeze that value out of it, and this is a truly exceptional case. But the truth is that developers (not just indies - or I should say, especially non-indies) do not generally know how to exploit the value of their properties, and therefore greatly undervalue the IP rights to their games. And publishers are often just too happy to take ownership of those rights for the pittance the developers think it is worth.

(On the flip side - aspiring developers seem to greatly over-value their ideas for games. But that's a whole 'nother problem. Rule of thumb: If it's something you could sell almost immediately with very little effort, it's worth several orders of magnitude more than something you couldn't.)

Ultimately, with all the stories of failed game studios and the woes involved in the videogame business, it's always nice to hear success stories like this one. Congrats to PopCap on a job well done.

Labels: Biz, casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:45 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Fantastic Contraption
During one of our (many) late-night sessions here at the office last week, some of the guys were passing the time between builds by playing this game. It is evil.

Fantastic Contraption

If you are familiar with other puzzle games where you construct devices or systems to solve the puzzle (Crayon Physics, The Incredible Machine series, Lemmings, etc.), then you will know what to expect from this game. Fantastic Contraption is a physics-based puzzle game where you construct a machine to meet the goal condition out of wheels (some self-propelled), connecting rods, and a lot of help from gravity and momentum.

It looks simple, but it's not. There are many (infinite?) solutions to each puzzle, but inventing a viable machine can be far trickier than it looks. As I said, it is evil. It begins deceptively simple, but gradually moves to serious head-scratching levels. The demo version is available for free on the web, and a full version is also available with undoubtedly far more fiendish puzzles.

Labels: casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:20 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Episodic Adventure Game Site Launches Soon
Touting itself as a "channel of episodic stories," the new website Identifiction opens on October 15th. They are committed to producing weekly, browser-based episodic gaming with heavy story-based episodes that are as immersive and innovative as any television series.

The first game available on the channel is a science-fiction / adventure entitled "Aosphere." It involves the crew of starship called the Icarus (I can't hear about a space ship by that name without thinking of the Babylon 5 storyline, but that's just me...), one of several ships sent out with a mission to find and settle habitable worlds in deep space. The crew is supposed to be in cryogenic suspension during their 22-year voyage. I would expect, in the first episode, that something goes wrong... :)

Two more series are planned in short order, and will be available in multiple languages. Each episode is geared for adult (meaning "grown up") audiences, inexpensive to play, and will be relatively short in length - something you could play through on a lunch break.

If you are interested, there's a beta sign-up available now. You have until September 5th to apply.

I have to admit, I'm intrigued. Intrigued enough that I would like to try it out, but probably not for the beta. I think this a really good chance of being one of many, many gaming start-ups that shrivel up and die within the first two years. It sounds like they have plenty of big dreams and high aspirations, but the question is whether or not they have the professionalism, skill, and marketing expertise to pull it off. However, it also possible that this could turn out to be pretty cool.

Check out Identifiction.

Hat-tip to CasualGameChick for the heads-up.

Labels: Adventure Games, casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:17 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Casual Game Boom Now Over?
Maybe my powers of prediction aren't quite so off as I thought.

Last September, I talked about a potential "bust" in the casual games market. It was met with a storm of controversy. Well, okay, not really. I think it was met with a collective "Like, Duh, what rock have you been living under?" The next thing you know, I'll be predicting that Microsoft is going to be releasing a successor to the XBox 360 sometime in the next few years.

But last Friday, Forbes released an article called, "Casual Gold Bust," where it reports that the market for casual games is becoming glutted and that the "gold rush" is over. This is probably not news to anybody within the industry, but I guess it is now becoming common knowledge. In particular, they talk about Peggle - which yielded poor earnings until a very expensive marketing blitz by Popcap turned it into a hit.

"Casual game developers are finding that you need money to make money. PopCap was lucky because it could throw significant marketing dollars at 'Peggle,' but smaller developers don't have the budget to promote their games. As a result, large gaming companies like Electronic Arts can move more aggressively into the space. "

Okay - while I agree with the sentiment - this always happens when a market matures. But seriously, guys... EA?

Labels: Biz, casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:11 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Study Reveals Casual / Core Gamers More Diverse Than Believed
A joint Big Fish / NPD research study was unveiled at Casual Connect 08 and in press releases earlier this week. Their findings reveal that commonly held wisdom about core and casual gamers are not necessarily supported by reality.

According to Paulette Trimmer of Big Fish Games, "The study is significant as it shows gamers can no longer be classified into the traditional archetypes of core and casual fans due to the rapid diversification of the demographics, game styles, business models and platforms in the U.S. games market." My personal opinion is that "can no longer" should be translated as, "never should have been." But that's me.

Further findings reveal a few interesting tidbits:

* The line between core and casual is blurry. There's more crossover than expected.

* Conventional wisdom previously held that gamers of either camp stuck with their favorite game genre. That doesn't hold either - while players definitely favor their preferred game style, there's a lot of crossover. Shockingly enough, core "action gamers" also demonstrated a preference for hidden object, word, and match-three games. This comes as a complete non-surprise to me, but I'm someone who has a broad range of gaming interests.

* The time commitments assumed by casual and core audiences have been miscalculated as well. Fans of certain casual game genres spend more time per week, on the average, than core action gamers. This also doesn't surprise me, as someone who has spent way too much time hooked on certain sim-style casual games.

You can check out more details of the study here.

The NPD Group will be publishing a report detailing the survey and its findings.

Labels: casual games, Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:48 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Russell Carroll on Understanding the Casual Gamer
Russell Carroll, marketing director for gaming portal and developer Reflexive, as well as the editor-in-chief of indie game review site GameTunnel.com, has an article up on Gamasutra on casual gaming:

Russell Carroll on Understanding the Casual Gamer

In it, he points out how the stereotypes and generalizations fail to hit their mark, and how casual gamers place different values (or benefits) on their games than your typical core gamer. And apparently, how being embarrassed about buying Wiis for themselves isn't stopping them from standing in line before a store opens to get their hands on one.

Labels: casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:14 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Impressing My Wife With My Gaming Expertise...
I'm a gaming geek. And as much as I like to show how inaccurate the stereotype is, I'm unfortunately not too far off. Oh, I'm a social gaming geek. I think I crossed from marginally introverted to marginally extroverted a couple of years after puberty. I don't live in my parents' basement, I'm not 18 anymore (dang it!), and I don't own all the current-gen consoles.

Okay. So maybe I am not quite a stereotypical gaming geek. But --- there are times when my lack of traditional manly expertise bugs my wife. Particularly when it comes to things like household repairs or natural handyman tendencies with machinery. I often get calls asking my opinion on things like "Why is the air conditioner not working?" or "Can you see why the sink is backed up?" or "Do you know why the garage door opener is on fire?"

Now, she's an intelligent and talented lady, so at one point I tried to answer such questions with a response to the effect of, "Well, you can look it up and find out as easily as I can!" I mean, it's the honest truth - she's as smart as I am, and I'm as clueless as she is when it comes to some of these things.

You know how in video games, sometimes a boss enemy will telegraph that they are about to unload a whole mess of pain on you, filling the screen with flames and rockets and death-rays, so you know you have about one second to dive for cover before you are insta-gibbed? Well, I learned that this was the response my wife gives when I tried to answer her this way. I've learned to avoid this boss attack. So I try to avoid answering in this manner.

See? Video game skillz really can help you in real life!

So I have to pretend to be the handyman that she wants me to be, and I look up how to do things, do a terrible job of it, and then end up shelling out the big bucks to some professional to fix what I screwed up. But occasionally I get the job done right, and my wife gets to feel that yes, once in a while her gaming-geek man can actually repair a toilet.

Every once in a while she throws a soft pitch at me, like, "The Internet connection is down." Ah-hah! Yes, that one I can usually handle, or at least step her through the process if I'm at work.

But the best one of all came yesterday around lunchtime. She messaged me with a single statement - "I need to find a new game to play." She'd apparently gotten bored with all fifteen BAZILLION or so variations of solitaire that come with the mother of all solitaire programs, the (indie!) game "Pretty Good Solitaire." I picked that one up for her for Christmas a couple of years back, and she plays it a lot. One game for two years --- yeah, I'd get bored with it too, I guess. She's got others, but she was looking for something new to try.

Would I possibly know a game that might appeal to her? Maybe some small, downloadable or web-based game out there that she might enjoy.

Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, I might... :)

Those years of being being involved in the indie games scene (and it's cousin, the casual games scene) finally paid off in one glorious instant!

Now I just gotta hope the garage door opener doesn't catch fire for the next couple of weeks...


For the curious, my picks for her included:

• Desktop Tower Defense (Which was the one that hooked her yesterday. I could tell when I called her later and she sounded distracted and I heard the tell-tale sounds of high-pitched creeps saying, "Let's Go!")
• Cake Mania and Cake Mania 2
• Virtual Villagers: A New Home and Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children
• My wife is a fan of adventure games and RPGs, and she already knew (and suggested herself) Aveyond and Cute Knight.
• I also recommended the (now FREE!) Sam & Max episode Abe Lincoln Must Die.
• And - duh. Anything at Popcap.com. She's been a Bejeweled fan for years.
  

Labels: casual games, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:43 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Are We Headed Towards a Casual Games Crash?
It depends on how you define "crash." As a total bottom-falling-out type deal, maybe not. But the casual gaming boom can't go on forever, and there are signs that its coming to an end.

Casual gaming has been the big subject in the video game industry for the last three years or so. That was the point where a few whitepapers came out and revealed that one of the largest areas of growth in the market was in the "casual games" area, neglected by the big publishers, and populated by a neglected audience --- principally women over age 40.

The growth has been nothing short of explosive over the last few years. The major players have emerged (though there's still plenty of jockeying for position to be had). The big publishers have started paying attention, and have created casual games divisions. The market is being saturated with product, with portals like Big Fish Games advertising "A new game every day." And the mainstream media has picked up on things, "suddenly" discovering that the gaming landscape has expanded.

Portals have started slashing prices to compete with each other, offering "memberships" which result in steeply discounted prices. And they have become more and more dependent upon ad-based revenue - which may or may not trickle down to the developer. And sites like Kongregate which are entirely ad-revenue based, offering free games to consumers which, like it or not, do compete with the pay-to-purchase games. Many of the established portals now have internal development teams - and they naturally promote their own stuff ahead of that of third-party developers. All of this spells weaker returns to the developers - though what else is new? Add to this the fact that the cost of development of "competitive" games has been increasing substantially in this space, and there's clear signs of danger ahead.

While these could all just be growing pains of this exciting new segment of the market, they may also warning signs that the music is about to stop in the not-too-distant future, and everybody involved had better make sure they've got a seat. The "explosive growth" phase may be at an end, and we may be entering the "maturity" phase of casual games. At this point, things will level off. That's not quite the same as a crash, though if you have built a business plan around the belief that growth is going to continue as it has over the last three years, it'll probably feel like one to you.

It's inevitable, really. The casual games market grew by 20% last year. Even if it grows at the same rate this year (and there's plenty of growth opportunity left, don't get me wrong), it seems to me - from my admittedly mouse-eye-view - that the supply side of casual games, casual game sites, and casual game developers have increased quite a bit more than 20% over the last three years or so. When supply gets to the point that it exceeds demand, the market corrects itself, and its not too pretty if you are on the provider side of things.

We indie developers who don't specialize in casual games ought not feel secure, either. We're probably going to catch our share of the "leveling out" fallout, too.

So - am I just paranoid and talking gloom-n-doom? Or are we going to look back on 2008 or 2009 and say, "Ouch, that one kinda hurt?"


(Vaguely) related paranoia:
* Downloadable, Casual Games Gain Momentum
* The Casual Game Industry Sucks, Two?
* Will 2007 Be the Year of the Downloadable Game?
* The Casual Game Industry Sucks, Too!
.

Labels: Biz, casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:00 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Ten Days With Castaways: Virtual Villagers 2 Playthrough, Part 5
Over the last couple weeks, I have decided to chronicle my experiences with a group of villagers in the hit game, "Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children" (AKA Virtual Villagers 2) by Last Day of Work (and available from Rampant Games). Of course, me being who I am, I couldn't help but inject a little bit of role-playing and my twisted imagination to abuse the game a little. Or a lot.

Since the game allows you to rename your little villagers, and you begin with seven... stranded castaways... So here's the story of ten days on Gilligan's Island, as simulated by Virtual Villagers 2.

Day 9: The Island Survivor!
Aw, man. The Skipper, the first Esteemed Elder of our tropic island nest, kicked the bucket. His bones littered the village center when I logged in to check out how things were going. Old age finally caught up with him. At least he won't be smacking Gilligan around with his hat anymore.

Aside for a brief funeral procession, life in the village proceeded pretty normally. More than half of the original crew of the S.S. Minnow have gone back to that tropic port in the sky. I have two collections from the kids now that are shy of only one final item to fill out. The food table is overflowing, with over 10,000 units of food, so starvation is just not an issue anymore. We can just about neglect the farming at this point...

... And they do. The villager, left on their own, are gravitating towards research or fishing. Or rain-dancing. Or doing laundry. Or playing in the pond. Our little survivors now have lives of leisure!

Ellie May, however, will have none of it. There's not much to build these days, so she's not able to apply her "Master Builder" talents. She swaps between research and farming, and is soon an expert in both skills. This earns her the "Esteemed Elder" title, and another ugly-but-colorful totem to go next to that of the now-deceased Skipper and Gilligan.

Near the end of the day, both Gilligan and Mary Ann have died. Another funeral procession takes place. Since just about everyone left on the island was either a direct result of their... oh, shall we say, productivity... or partners in the same... I imagine there is much mourning for the Esteemed Elder and his sometimes-girlfriend.

Eunice "Lovey" Wentworth Howell is the sole survivor of the original crew of the S.S. Minnow. I guess she's supposed to win the million dollars, but as she and Thurston often found, there's no place to spend it on the island.

Day 10: Now This is the Tale of our Castaways, They're Here For a Long, Long Time...
I'm just getting used to seeing skeletons to clean up when I first log into the game. As expected, Lovey didn't survive through the entire night. Game Over for the original crew. But at least she survived into Day 10.

Bob and Ellie May, the first children born to the island of the original crew, are now elderly as well. However, we achieve a breakthrough in modern island medicine (due in part to the tireless efforts of our two elderly master scientists), and they miraculously go from being elderly to being healthy! All the villagers rejoice!

A parrot flies into the village, and all the children learn to treat it like a pet. Apparently, this gives them parenting skills. So that one day, they can hope to be as productive as their ancestors, Gilligan and Mary Ann, one day.

A very strange thing happens at the end of the day. I get a message that says one of the children remembers something of the mystery of the island and the original villagers (crew). I guess this is some kind of collective unconscious thing, because the last child who'd have remembered anything died this morning. A ghost, maybe?

Or maybe my island villagers may develop some kind of voodoo cult! That'd be cool!

As the day closes, my village's population is 21. We've got a little over half of the puzzles solved, two technologies maxed out, no collections completed, and the whole worrying starvation thing licked. The original castaways have passed on, but their legacy is in really good shape.

Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children Thoughts (Conclusion)
Well, there you go. Ten days, playing approximately four sessions per day, ranging from 5 minutes to 30 minutes per session.

At the time I did this writeup, another week has gone by from day 10, and the SS Minnow Tribe has grown to nearly 70 people. We've got somewhere over 100,000 food, so the villagers don't need much work. All technologies have been finished long ago, so the tech points are mainly used for changing outfits at the clothing hut (something I didn't mention in the write-up, as I never used it after it was completed).

While I don't consider myself much of a "casual game" fan, I am a "Sim" game fan. The unique feature of the Virtual Villagers games is that they are designed to be played in short segments - often no more than 10 or 15 minutes per day. Things got a little more insane during the close-to-starvation segments of the game.

I won't pretend I came anywhere close to picking an optimal path for my villagers to progress. If you happen to get all hardcore over this game, there is a built-in, online leaderboard so you can check how you fare against other players. I'm pretty close to the bottom percentile in all categories.

But as you can tell, I had a lot of fun with it. And that's what it's all about! Congrats to Last Day of Work for a great game!


(Vaguely) related island wackiness:
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 4
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 3
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 2
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 1
.

Labels: casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:00 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Google Plans "AdSense For Games"
We've had AdSense for websites for a while now. But with the explosion in the casual / downloadable / web-games space over the last couple of years, good ol' Google is soon launching it's advertising technology for games.

This could be an interesting source of revenue for game developers specializing in free web-games, like Flash games.

This could also usher in an era of games choked with advertising and commercials. Right now, we don't know.

But here's the story so far:

Google Takes Its Ad System to the Video Game Market


Hat tip to A Shareware Life for the link!

Labels: Biz, casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:17 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Ten Days With Castaways: Virtual Villagers 2 Playthrough, Part 4
Over the last couple weeks, I have decided to chronicle my experiences with a group of villagers in the hit game, "Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children" (AKA Virtual Villagers 2) by Last Day of Work (and available from Rampant Games). Of course, me being who I am, I couldn't help but inject a little bit of role-playing and my twisted imagination to abuse the game a little. Or a lot.

Since the game allows you to rename your little villagers, and you begin with seven... stranded castaways... So here's the story of ten days on Gilligan's Island, as simulated by Virtual Villagers 2.

Day 7: Gilligan and Mary Ann - Swingers!
In case it you haven't read the reviews, the Virtual Villagers games process time and events even when you are not playing it (unless you pause it). This means that things can go out of control while you are asleep or off at work. So you need to be careful when you set up commands (or you need to pause the game, or let it run at 1/2 speed while offline). And if you neglect to take the game off of double-speed... well. This can happen to you!

I thought one more kid would be useful. Help around the island, stuff like that. Gilligan and Mary Ann were putting in the effort, with my encouragement, but nothing was forthcoming. I had stuff to do, so I clicked on "Parenting" as their skill to work on, and went on to do stuff for about three hours. I'd neglected to reduce the game speed down from double.

When I check it out again hours later, Gilligan the sex-fiend has managed to seduce most of the women over 30 on the island. He's got three children. Mary Ann is in the middle of getting the now 27-year-old Jethro to come hither into the ol' wedding hut, after having two children of her own from different fathers. I break that off in a hurry, seeing my population already pasty the danger threshold. How am I going to feed all these kids... Wally, Betty, Veronica, Archie, and Jughead?

Sure, Ginger and the Professor may be getting up in years, but they are still healthy. The Professor has been furiously working on new technology. But now we're faced with a very tough decision. Do we put that technology into medicine right now, extending the lifespan of our two elderly castaways by perhaps an extra five years? Or do we keep working on increasing farming, so that we can maybe feed this excessive population courtesy of the irresponsible Gilligan and Mary Ann?

In the end , the sacrifice is made... the older generation must give way for the younger. We keep working on farming. The Professor toils away, trying to figure out better ways of feeding the village.

Day 8: The Castaways Begin To Depart
The village is starving when I next check in on it, many hours later.

The Professor died near his post, a victim of old age and malnutrition. The villagers gather up his remains, bury him in the graveyard with a nice tombstone and flowers, and then go back to worrying about food. There is still nearly an hour left (1/2 year in villager time) before the crops will come in. Many villagers' health levels are dropping from hunger.

While I set the kids to hunting mushrooms once more, I find that the Professor left his legacy for the village. With enough tech points now, I buy the final level of farming. That enables the villagers to discover a solution to the algae-choked lagoon (and no, I'm not tellin'). Putting the entire village to work, we manage to clear the algae, which allows us to fish once again.

An... unlimited supply... of fish! The entire village dives in - literally - and returns with fish and shellfish of various kinds. The food supply quickly builds up to ample levels, and the threat of starvation is now forever removed from the tribe.

During this time, Gilligan also becomes an Esteemed Elder, his big ugly totem now joining the Skipper's. He's a master farmer, builder, scientist, and he's also ... apparently... a very skilled parent. He also knows a thing or two about healing. A true renaissance man, that Gilligan!

At the end of the day, Ginger joins her beloved Professor. A skilled doctor, researcher, and a master farmer --- not to mention famous movie star --- she is mourned by all, especially her son, Bob, who is now the preeminent researcher on the island, currently working on a cure for cancer using fish oil and coconut tree leaves.

Their legacy lives on....

Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children Thoughts After Eight Days
I have spent over a week of real-time on this village now. A funny thing happens with these Virtual Villagers games --- you have to spend so much time with the first and second generations of villagers just helping them survive that you do get a little attached to them. The game loses something when they start to die off.

Although it also loses something when the main threat to their survival - starvation - is removed. The game remains interesting - there are tons of goals and missions to be achieved still - but with that challenge overcome, things do become a lot more laid back and less compelling. You don't need to "play" the game anymore so much as just check in on it and guide it. Which is probably about right for a casual game of this kind... after all, it has been over a week.

(Vaguely) related stupidity:
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 3
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 2
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 1
* Dead Villagers
* Virtual Villagers 2 Developer's Diary
.

Labels: casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:00 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Ten Days With Castaways: Virtual Villagers 2 Playthrough, part 3
Over the last couple weeks, I have decided to chronicle my experiences with a group of villagers in the hit game, "Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children" (AKA Virtual Villagers 2) by Last Day of Work (and available from Rampant Games). Of course, me being who I am, I couldn't help but inject a little bit of role-playing and my twisted imagination to abuse the game a little. Or a lot.

Since the game allows you to rename your little villagers, and you begin with seven... stranded castaways... So here's the story of ten days on Gilligan's Island, as simulated by Virtual Villagers 2.

Day 5: No Phone, No Lights, No Motorcar... Not a Single Thing to Eat!
Even without the birds, things do get a little tight between harvests. We're now up to 11 villagers from our original 7. Ellie Mae was born to Skipper and Lovey, and Gilligan and Mary Ann once again have a child... Beaver.

In retrospect, this might not have been the greatest idea. Our food runs out when there is still 90 minutes left to wait for the next harvest. There are only a handful of coconuts that have re-grown. Once again, the children are attempting to save the entire island by scouring the shore for mushrooms. We are constantly running out of food.

I put the villagers to work again, hoping to take their mind off their hunger. It seems that the villagers will do things like stop gathering food to worry about food. It sounds dumb, but then I think of the counterproductive behavior people often exhibit when under stress. You know, this is a smarter sim than I originally thought...!

We discover a gigantic gong stand. It should probably come as no surprise to anyone who's looked at the collection menu or the puzzle screen that at some point some big gong is involved, so I'm not going to treat it as a big spoiler or anything. There's a gong. It's what every village needs. It came with one quarter of a gong. I imagine there is small writing at the bottom that says, "Some Assembly Required. Some Pieces Sold Separately. Made in Hong Kong. It's a Hong Kong Gong."

Okay, I apologize for that one. I was reaching, wasn't I? Moving right along... I'm really looking forward to the professor inventing an arc-welder so we can weld the other three quarters together. Whenever we find them.

I personally supervise the next harvest. I am reminded that the villagers have incredibly short attention spans --- in the middle of harvesting the crop, they keep trying to rush off and grab coconuts which have finally grown back on the tree. The coconuts will keep, you stupid villagers! Worry about the harvest! There'll be plenty of time to pick coconuts later! They won't migrate or be carried off by swallows or anything!

Day 6: Skipper Levels Up In Their Tropic Island Nest
We build a new hut type, and start work on a sewing hut. Once again, we're running out of children, who do half the work around the island! So I encourage the villagers to take advantage of the honeymoon shack, and two more children are born - Wally and Veronica.

After building a new hut, we are finally able to open the crate on the beach and retrieve a gong piece. Go team us! We have half a gong now. The bottom half. We can now have big parties with Gilligan jamming on the gong, the Skipper on bass made out of coconuts, Mary Ann on keyboards made out of fish bones (assuming we ever get fish again), and Ginger on vocals singing, "I wanna be loved by you... boop boop, dee doo!"

The original cast is getting into their 50's. Still healthy, due to decent medicine research, but I begin to wonder how long it'll be before they go to the great desert island in the sky. Ginger and the Professor are already elderly. Maybe Ginger ought not to do the vocals anymore, after all.

Speaking of elderly, however, the Skipper has become an Esteemed Elder. He's a master farmer, master builder, and a master researcher. A totem of him was built right out in the field to commemorate his being the most respected man on the island. It's a big ol' ugly thing. I wonder if future generations are going to worship it as a god, and sacrifice virgins to it in the volcano or something?

Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children Thoughts After Six Days
It's still a battle for survival, with food supply being the single greatest factor in all my decisions. The fast and easy technology levels have been researched - which has been nice, as new technologies usually bring about new things for the villagers to do. But as that slows down, so does the new tasks, putting everything into a more regular rhythm.

I'm still putting much more time into the game in the course of a day than I did with the original game. It's still a pretty laid-back game overall (would that be an accurate description of all casual games?), but there are just more tasks to consider and a few more things to experiment with than before.

You can try out these games for yourself here - the demos give you a total of an hour of play-time to check it out:

Virtual Villagers: A New Home
Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children


(Vaguely) related stupidity:
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 2
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 1
* Tamagotchi Villagers
* Virtual Villagers 2 Developer's Diary
* Virtual Villagers 2 Is #1
.

Labels: casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:35 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Ten Days With Castaways: Virtual Villagers 2 Playthrough, part 2
Over the last couple weeks, I have decided to chronicle my experiences with a group of villagers in the hit game, "Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children" (AKA Virtual Villagers 2) by Last Day of Work (and available from Rampant Games). Of course, me being who I am, I couldn't help but inject a little bit of role-playing and my twisted imagination to abuse the game a little. Or a lot.

Since the game allows you to rename your little villagers, and you begin with seven... stranded castaways... So here's the story of ten days on Gilligan's Island, as simulated by Virtual Villagers 2.

Day 3: ...If It Hadn't Been For You Kids!
The castaways exhausted the supply of coconuts! Now the professor has nothing for his experiments!

Actually, the Professor continues his research just fine. If it wasn't for the likelihood of everybody on the island starving to death in a matter of hours, I'd have nothing to worry about. The adults are pretty much incapable of doing anything to feed themselves at this point. They can research new ways to produce food, but that's not going to feed them in the short-term. Or they can wait for the coconuts to regrow. I think the coconuts can support a population of two. If they don't eat like the Skipper.

The Professor does make a discovery! Minor spoiler (highlight the text to see): They discover irrigation. I send everybody but the Professor and Thurston to work on building up the dam to irrigate some farmland. But it is going to take too long to save them!

So now it is up to the two children of the island... Bob and Ellie May (yes, I've run out of character names from Gilligan's Island, so I'm borrowing from other sources) ... to save the entire village! They scavenge mushrooms. In the process, I build up a small collection of shells and butterflies - but it is the mushrooms that are key! The supply of food is still dwindles, but not quite so fast. The villagers complete the project, and we now have some farmland. Half the villagers turn to growing crops while the other half finishes repairs on another hut. The hut takes longer than the entire growing season... who thought huts were so complicated? I guess its a nice 3-story split-level hut with an automatic garage door opener and stuff.

The kids keep hunting mushrooms, and the village runs out of food while waiting for the crops to come in.

Then something weird happens. Thurston hears voices in the forest. I send him to investigate. He is never heard from again. We all prefer to believe that he found rescuers, and was finally able to leave the island. He just... ummm... neglected to inform the rescuers of the rest of the castaways on the beach. It must have slipped his mind.

Bob picks up the task of assistant villager, though he has a long way to go before he matches the Thurston's expertise at turning coconuts into vacuum cleaners.

The crops finally come in, and that eases the pressure of food significantly, but then the villagers have problems with birds eating many of the crops before the villagers can harvest them all. Something needs to be done about the birds! I personally favor the professor inventing a bow and arrow so the villagers can get some extra meat on their table... but that doesn't happen. Maybe later in the game...

Day 4: Good Thing We Had A Movie Star ...
The children are growing up. Considering how children have been the ones putting food on the table (and greatly increasing the rate of technological improvement with their little discoveries), I figure we need more young'uns. Gilligan and Mary Ann get busy again, and have a son named Biff. The Skipper gets together with Lovey, and the two have young Jethro.

Ginger has now become a master farmer - she probably learned some of it from having been in a movie about farmers once. As a master farmer, she manages to devise a way to keep the birds away from the field (I won't say how to avoid spoilers). With the villagers at a fairly low population (10), it seems they can at least keep alive with the regular rate of harvesting crops (and no interfering from birds, I hope).

The Professor (along with the teenaged whiz-kids Bob and Ellie May) has been focused on developing cold fusion using coconuts. However, as an interim project, they discover edged hand-tools.

Day 4 finishes up with Ginger, Mary Ann, and Lovey creating a very delicious stew. Tired of eating just coconuts and berries, the entire island had a celebration. The professor broke out the coconut-and-berry wine, and everyone got good and drunk before heading off to work again. Okay, I made that last part up. There's no alcohol, but there is stew.

Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children Thoughts After Four Days
Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children, just like it's predecessor (Virtual Villagers: A New Home), gets really busy after the first day or so with just trying to help the villagers survive after the first food source becomes exhausted. It's kind of amusing to see that the children are the keys to the survival of the village. In the second game, the addition of collectibles gives the children an even stronger role, as they also contribute significantly to the technological advancement of the village.

I skipped a few of the random events that occur in the village, only touching on a couple (including the one that removed poor Thurston from the game). Many of them require a choice - you can play it safe or take a risk. I tend to go for the riskier options.

You can try out these games for yourself here - the demos give you a total of an hour of play-time to check it out:

Virtual Villagers: A New Home
Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children


(Vaguely) related stupidity:
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 1
* Tamagotchi Villagers
* Virtual Villagers 2 Developer's Diary
* Virtual Villagers 2 Is #1
.

Labels: casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:43 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Barbie Takes Over the World... of Warcraft?
Okay, this is shameless promotion on the part of Mattel by comparing apples and oranges, but it's still amusing:

Could Barbie Girls Become the Largest Virtual World?

Now, there's a huge difference between 3 million free-account signups in the first 60 days of a launch, and 6 million active PAYING subscribers three years into an MMO's lifecycle.

Still... more fuel to feed the casual gaming fire, I guess.

Labels: casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:34 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Ten Days With Castaways: Virtual Villagers 2 Playthrough, Part 1
Over the last couple weeks, I have decided to chronicle my experiences with a group of villagers in the hit game, "Virtual Villagers 2" by Last Day of Work (and available from Rampant Games). Of course, me being who I am, I couldn't help but inject a little bit of role-playing and my twisted imagination to abuse the game a little. Or a lot.

Since the game allows you to rename your little villagers, and you begin with seven... stranded castaways... hmmm. That gives me an idea...

So here's the story of ten days on Gilligan's Island, as simulated by Virtual Villagers 2.

Day 1: So Sit Right Back, And You'll Hear A Tale...
I start with three (consenting...) adults and four children. The tribe is named "S.S. Minnow." The adults of the tribe are Mary Ann, Ginger, and Professor - though Mary Ann is only barely an adult. The oldest children - both male - are Skipper and Gilligan. Then there's little 9-year-old Thurston, and young Lovey.

I set Mary Ann to fishing duty right off the bat, as I figure not starving to death would be a good start for the game. The Professor (who's name - never mentioned in any re-run I recall - was "Roy") I naturally set to doing research. I assigned Ginger the duty of gathering firewood. She grumbles, but recalls playing a cave-woman in a movie once, and quickly gets into the role.

After making sure the jobs have "sunk in," I scour the island for collectables and mushrooms, and set the kids to gathering them up. I manage to score a rare, collectable butterfly right off the bat. Go Gilligan! He's making himself so useful. His mother would be proud. (Incidentally, according to always-reliable Internet sources, Gilligan's first name was "Willy." Uh-huh. O-kay.)

After a little while, the Skipper (who's name in the show is reportedly Jonas, not that I ever heard that without looking it up on the Internet) has his 14th birthday. This is good, as he can now contribute to the tribe as an adult. Unfortunately, as an "adult" now, he can no longer hit Gilligan on the head his hat, as that would be child abuse and would probably give this game an "M" rating, not to mention causing Family Services to come to the island and remove Gilligan from the home... oh, wait, I think I have just found a way off the island!

Right about this time, the Professor and Ginger get it on. The only place they can get any privacy is a horrible little broken-down hut on the beach, with a sunken ceiling and the walls caving in. I am not even going to speculate what caused the "honeymoon hut" to be in such a state! The Professor says, "Thank you, ma'am." and goes back to trying to figure out how to create cold fusion with palm fronds and coconut milk. Ginger emerges from the hut with a baby in her arms, after a grueling one-second pregnancy.

With Ginger now out on maternity leave for four hours (two years of game-time), the Skipper takes over her taxing firewood-gathering duties. After the fire is going, he sets to work building a new hut. Probably for him and his little buddy. For parties with Thurston, Lovey, and Mary Ann while Ginger and the Professor are having horrible arguments over finances.

We do have a couple of mishaps. All that diving into the ocean to throttle fish has given Mary Ann a case of the sniffles. I really don't see the Skipper as the healing type, so I pull the Professor off his normal research duties to try and play doctor. I mean, to act as a doctor. He manages to cure Mary Ann, so she happily rushes back to the ocean to go wrestle more fish for the tribe to eat.

Little Thurston likes running around the island. He's the best runner on the island. He asks to organize a race against everyone on the island, and I agree. Unfortunately, he sprains his ankle very bad, and decides he no longer likes running. Now wherever Thurston goes, he is... not running. Hmmm. He was always a lazy millionaire off the show. He's now got the lazy part covered!

Finally, another opportunity that presents itself. A crate washes up on shore, at the Professor's feet. I tell him to go ahead and open it. It is full of gears and cogs, and ups my tribe's technology
rating significantly. I use it to increase farming technology. So they don't have to rely on fish and coconuts so much.

Day 2: Gilligan's Love Child...
Thurston's a grown up, and he's a lazy drifter. Not like Gilligan, who is similarly useless but energetic drifter. The two of them are just bumming around the island. I set Gilligan to the task of picking up driftwood, which he pursues for a few minutes, and then gets bored and quits.

Thurston, on the other hand, I set to work as a healer. If he's not going to move fast, he may as well be of use standing still. I set him about the task of cataloging all the strange plants on the island. It takes a lot of babysitting to get him to do it, but eventually he succeeds and I get a reward for identifying all the plants on the island! On top of that, Thurston is now an "adept" healer. Good for us!

The sea is now choked with algae, and there are no fish to be found. I set Mary Ann, Ginger, and Gilligan to harvest coconuts. They get pretty good at it, and harvest plenty of food. The Skipper keeps on building. That's what he does - he builds. He gets the new hut completed, and is now working on fixing up the "honeymoon hut" to make it a nice place to take a girl. Or at least a more sanitary place.

I encourage "Willy" Gilligan and Mary Ann to get together. They don't need much. Hey, you always KNEW that was going to happen eventually on the show, right? Within minutes, Mary Ann is carrying Gilligan's love-child. Carrying, literally, in her arms. Must be something the professor invented to speed up pregnancies. Either that, or the "honeymoon hut" is actually a dicount baby-warehouse, and I've got villager sexuality figgered all wrong.

Our seven stranded castaways have now grown to nine, and Gilligan's Island is a happy, fun place to be and to have children. An island paradise.

Until day 3, when the dream becomes a nightmare!

... To Be Continued.....


(Vaguely) related uselessness...
* Tamagotchi Villagers
* Dead Villagers
* Virtual Villagers II Developer's Diary
* Virtual Villagers 2 is #1
* The Return of the Villagers: Virtual Villagers 2 - The Lost Children
.

Labels: casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:30 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Indie Versus Casual --- What's the Difference?
Indie versus Casual. Not quite as big news as "Hardcore versus Casual," but it's still a heated topic. I'd planned on writing on this topic after Thursday's Utah Indie night, and then Patrick Dugan went and took my main point. Only he says it better than I would have. So I just get to elaborate on some bits.

What's really silly is that outside of our tiny little subculture of "non-mainstream" game developers, nobody really sees or knows the difference. In fact, most people I ask tend to think that "indie" and "casual" games are the same thing. That misconception pisses off those indie developers who do not make casual games, and is one of the causes of some of the heated discussions going on over at the indiegamer forums.

The rise of the "casual game" as a major game category in the last five years has caused a big ol' change in the industry and marketplace. As the indies have historically dominated that category, it's naturally caused a cultural rift in the (formerly) tiny indie games community. The numbers have swelled with newcomers whose universe begins and ends with pleasing their portal masters. Meanwhile the "real indies" sound like cranky old fossils whose ideas are soooo 2002, and who aspire to embarassingly low sales numbers.

Why the Animosity?
Why has the indie game community become so segregated? Besides the usual culprits of jealousy and elitism, the primary issue is the role of the portal. The game portals entered the playing field as a neutral entity. Many indies were pleased by the prospect of another venue to sell their games. But from the (non-casual) indie game developer's perspective, things gradually grew worse.

As time went on, the game portals followed the money to the explosive growth of casual games. And they became a larger influence. In the minds (and checkbooks) of many indie developers, the portals began taking away the traffic and customers that had once been their own. Big Box Mart had come to cyberspace, squeezing out the little Mom & Pop indie game stores. What's worse, where they had once been friendly and offered great deals to developers, the portals had begun to cop an attitude (at least, it was perceived that way in a couple of conferences they attended) and were offering "take it or leave it" deals that were far less favorable to the developers. Developers quickly found themselves earning half - or less - royalties on far fewer sales, in spite of the increase in the market.

Indie game developers now report many portals acting a lot like miniature publishers - even demanding publisher-level cuts of the profit in spite of the fact that they did far less than a publisher (no initial funding / risk, very little marketing, no manufacture or distribution of physical retail product), and were instead functioning more as a store. Their power lay in their size, a success story which begat itself, built on strong initial investor funding and upon the backs of the game developers who bowed to their demands.

In other words, in some ways they have become worse than the system the indies became indies to avoid in the first place.

The animosity arises from the belief that the casual game developers are empowering the portals. They see their own power and economic viability diminish as the portals become stronger every month. Russell Carroll, who still runs GameTunnel.com in spite of being the marketing director for a casual game portal, notes that the "casual" games on the indie games website do far better with almost NO marketing than the more "indie" games that are actively pushed by the site. And it's getting worse.

Can the Wolf dwell With the Lamb?
Color me naive, but Russell Carroll confirmed my belief last week that the portals are not necessarily "the enemy." He noted that many casual game developers really were "doing it wrong." I already talked about those mistake in the Utah Indie night article, so I won't go back into them here.

But the bottom line is that while the portals are definitely gaining the upper hand, there's a fundamental difference between how they can position themselves as "gatekeepers," and the role of traditional publishers in media in the 20th century. They don't have economy of scale and a lock on distribution like their media-mogul counterparts. What they have is money and big customer lists - two factors which definitely enjoy a positive effect on each other. But because the barrier to entry is so low, they can't ever enjoy an overwhelming monopoly.

And even though many portals have their own internal development teams, they are still dependent upon external developers. And they depend on good games that will sell. It stands to reason, then, that portals will compete (to some degree) for the affections of game developers - particularly the successful ones. That gives devs some bargaining power that I don't see going away.

With the big publishers jumping into the casual game arena themselves, the landscape of "casual games" is going to get even more confusing and varies. The arguments will increase, but hopefully so will the opportunities for communication and sharing of information. As Dugan puts it, "The truth is, indie developers and casual developers have a lot to learn from each other, the first thing being there is no meaningful difference between them, and the last thing being how to leverage good game design with good production execution and make games that are worth making and make money. This goes both ways, the casual scene would benifit from an indie approach to IP creation as well as more refined and diverse designer patterns; the indie scene would benifit from the casual approach to accesibility, interface design, and making the rules and fiction harmonize to a recognizable metaphor. "

Amen. I think there will be a never-ending supply of naive new casual game developers joining the fray and jumping at the chance to be taken advantage of. No amount of ranting and gnashing of teeth is going to stem that particular tide. What's important is that we, as a community, avoid segregating ourselves over arbitrary differences, and instead work together (or at least communicate) to best exploit our competitive advantages.


(Vaguely) related digital crapola:
* Utah Indie Developer Night, Summer 2007
* Downloadable and Casual Games Gain Momentum
* The Casual Game Industry Sucks, Too.
* Earnest Adams: Is It Time to Dump EA?
* I'm a Gamer?
* Why the PC Game Industry Figures are Baloney

Express Yourself on the Forum!

Labels: casual games, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:00 AM (Permalink) links to this post

 
Utah Indie Developer Night, Summer 2007
Normally we have the Utah Indie Game Developer Meet later in the month. We decided to hold it earlier this month in order to have Russell Carroll - who was back in town this week - join us. Russell is the owner of GameTunnel.com - the indie game review site. He's also (more recently) the marketing director for Reflexive.com - a fairly major casual / indie game portal and developer.

As usual, I didn't see everything there was to see, or talk to everyone I wanted to talk to. I get into these big, long conversations with people that end up taking a quarter of the night. So I can only offer some snippets of conversations and the two games I saw out of the six (I think) that were showing.

Casual Versus Indie
Russell explained that his time with Reflexive has turned him from an energetic young indie game fan with no clue into an energetic young indie game fan with some actual experience now. He notes that he's really confused by the rift between "indie" games and "casual" games amongst developers (Joe Gamer often doesn't see a difference, from my perspective). There are a lot of indie developers out there who are full of ill will towards the casual game movement - and more specifically the role of the portals.

Russell told me that on his site, the indie game reviews and monthly indie game round-ups collectively only account for a small percentage of game downloads and sales from GameTunnel.com. Curiously enough, the "Free Game Downloads" button which takes you to the casual games section - which doesn't get pushed or mentioned on the site (it's just THERE) - accounts for 80% to 90% of the game downloads and sales on GameTunnel.com (and their returns have been DROPPING). I detected a hint of frustration there. When pressed, he suggested the following reasons (none definitive, just his ideas):

1. The spread of blogs has decreased the value of written-word reviews

2. Google rankings have been screwed up for a year - they tend to give the top spots to bigger sites which have tons of reviews ... but none for the specific game in question... pages ahead of an actual REVIEW for the game. They also tend to send the link to the main page of GameTunnel.com instead of the review itself.

3. The audience - which is still sizeable - may just not be the same audience that is looking for games to buy / play. A lot may be other game developers (like me) looking to see what's going on with the competition for the month.

Mistakes Indies Make With Portals
Russell also reiterated things that he said in his "Marketing For Indies" talk at the Independent Games Summit. Interestingly enough - both then and now - he's not saying things that necessarily serves PR for his own company (and I have to hand it to them - this isn't unique of Russell. Everyone I've heard from at Reflexive - in emails and forum posts - has been pretty straight-shooters).

One of the top mistakes indies make, according to Russell, was to jump in with a "publisher" for digital downloads. There are certainly times and places to go with a publisher. But Reflexive - and most other portals - often work directly with the developer, and the only difference the publisher makes from their perspective is who they make the check out to. (In his talk, Russell have some examples of where a publisher IS a good idea - such as taking a game into foreign markets, mobile devices, or of course retail).

One of the other big mistakes indies make is failing to follow up with inquiries and submissions. The squeaky wheel definitely gets the grease. Too often developers submit a game, and then just wait forever to hear back from the portal / publisher / whatever, and never bother to follow up with a second email or phone call, content to just sit back and wonder what's taking so long. True, some portals might not ever get back to you. But usually they are swamped with work and submissions, and it just takes the second (or third) contact to remind them to get back to people.

Another mistake indie developers often make is failing to take advantage of the portal... in all senses of the phrase. True, almost all major portals now demand that you remove your website URL and any direct links back to your site. They don't want you to steal their customers and traffic that easily. But you are still able to steal their traffic. The portals know this, and expect this. But indies don't take advantage of it. That's how Reflexive got THEIR traffic in the first place. All it takes is offering free levels or hints / tips "online" for the game... and make sure that your own site has the top ranking for searches for these things online. As he said in his talk - you are losing money by not abusing the portal.

One other thing we discussed was the commoditization of portals. One of the things indie developers complain about regularly is how they are being commoditized by the portals. But the truth of the matter - and Russell agrees - is that the portals can be commoditized by the developers just as well. In fact, one developer of a successful series of casual games has specifically done just that. He offering his game first to portals that treat the developer the most fairly. Specifically, he made the portals that offer the deeply discounted games in exchange for paid memberships (a practice that greatly favors the portal at the expense of the game developer - though arguments can go either way) wait a couple of months before selling his latest game.

The thing is... if you create good games that can sell... you are in the driver's seat maybe more than you realize. The portals are obviously going to push for their best advantage in making a deal with you. Your JOB as the developer and holder of the rights to your game is to make sure that it is to the greatest MUTUAL advantage.

Games Games Games!
One last bit from Russell - he stated no less than three times that he is committed to making an indie RPG himself. Hmmm.... I wonder who he will get to review it for him on his own site...? :)

I also had the chance to speak with Ron Lowe and Tom Jensen of Game Crafters. They had a successful graphic adventure game about... oh, fifteen years ago. They wanted to do a sequel back in the day, but their company imploded. Now that the legal issues have been sorted out, they are looking to get back into games and create the long-awaited sequel. In fact, they have the engine and design done for the sequel. They are mainly hunting for artists and some kind of idea of the "lay of the land" in the indie game development arena.

I spoke with Adam Peterson and Mike Rimer of Caravel Games (the creators of the very successful "Deadly Rooms of Death" series). After having left it on the back-burner for a year, they are back in active development of a Strategy / RPG spinoff of the Deadly Rooms of Death series. There is a lot more to say about this one (I interviewed them at some length, and played through several minutes of the game), so I'll save this for a later post. It'll be "Big Preview" time. I couldn't get them to commit to any kind of release date (like what indie really COULD be pinned down to a release date?), though they joked it'll be out on April 1st. What YEAR, they won't say (though they really, really hope it'll be out within the next 12 months).

Herb Flower and Paul Witte of Mythyn Interactive were there to show off the latest version of their Massively Multiplayer RPG, LinkRealms. I gotta say... this game is looking really awesome. Paul said they hope to go into closed beta in as little as 2 months. Herb and I chatted at length about the game. The big thing for LinkRealms is that it will emphasize user-created content (including lack of censorship) and actual *gameplay* in a medieval-fantasy environment. Sort of an Ultima Online cross-bred with Second Life thing.

I got the chance to speak briefly with some other folks, but unfortunately wasn't able to see everything. I'm especially disappointed that I didn't Victor's latest Flat Red Ball project... which apparently was the best of the lot so far. He's set a goal to bring a new game (using his Flat Red Ball engine) every single indie night... and I think he's only missed the goal once. So Victor - if you happen to be reading this - could you send me a copy of the demo pretty please? jayb at rampantgames dot com would work great :)

All in all - the night was loaded with awesomeness. It really felt way too short to me.


(Vaguely) related stuff with words and occasional punctuation:
* What Game Portals Want
* The Casual Game Industry Sucks, Too
* The Casual Game Industry Sucks, Two
* Utah Indie Developer Night, Fall 2006
* Utah Indie Night, Spring 2007
.

Labels: Biz, casual games, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:14 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
More Pathstorm Tips & Tricks...
More tricks to wrapping your brain around the delightful logic-puzzle of Pathstorm, here are a few more hints from Brad Edwards, one of the developers from CaveBug (you can check out the previous tips here):

• When rolling a ball from a completed path's exit, sometimes you get lucky and see the ball roll through incomplete portions of the level.
• Pathstorm is a game of timing. Master distances early on. Get a feel for the ball's speed by watching it roll through a completed path.
• Being able to feel timings for objects spaced 1 to 3 tiles away is critical to your success, especially for Intermediate and Expert levels.
• If you're not sure how many tiles away a hidden object is, roll the ball on other completed paths and compare distances between hits.
• Any level in Pathstorm can be saved in-progress for later.
• When a ball hits a Bouncer, Shifter, or Twirler, sparks fly away from the direction the ball hit.
• The flasher bars flash yellow for Bouncers, green for Splitters, purple for Shifters, and blue for Twirlers.
• Got a non-gamer at your house? Pathstorm is a perfect fit. Get your non-gamer to play, and watch them get hooked!
• When you reset a difficulty track on the Journey map, new levels are generated.

So there you go. Some tips for storming Pathstorm!

Labels: casual games, Game Announcements

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:18 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Pathstorm Hints & Tips
I managed to get Brad Edwards, one of the developers of the indie game Pathstorm, to fess up on some strategies, hints, and secrets about their game. Read on for winning strategies!

Brad also tells me that the newest version of the game is now available, which includes (for those who own the full version) a level editor and the ability to share levels with friends and the community with an email utility. Way to make the game even more of a value!

If you are stuck in Pathstorm, or could use some tips to nail the higher-difficulty levels (and there are TONS of levels), here are some hints:

• Tutorials are available at the village on the Journey map.
• Press the Right Mouse Button to mark individual tiles for your reference. What you use markers for is up to you.
• Try marking tiles (with the right mouse button) where no objects exist to help narrow the location of idden objects considerably.
• Create new profiles for other players in your house from the Main Menu.
• When you create a new profile, you can turn Magic Balls Mode on. Balls are always on, but there is still a lot of challenge!
• Rolling the ball from the exits is a very useful strategy. Don't forget to use it often.
• When the ball rolls over an X, the X briefly lights up.
• Sometimes a miss can help narrow down the location of a hidden object.
• If a path has 2 or more hidden objects on it, it is usually best to just move to another path.
• If you have trouble distinguishing quick, successive sounds, watch the object icons along the top to see what is being hit.
• When launching a ball, use the Click-Click technique to cause the ball to find its way to the exit instantly.
• Pressing the Space Bar launches the ball from the last clicked path entrance. Press the Space bar again, and the ball exits instantly.
• Use Switchers to your advantage. Before exposing the Switcher, roll the ball a number of times to discover other hidden object locations.
• Use Scramblers to your advantage. Flip them to discover hidden objects.
• You can roll the ball more than once for a path without penalty.
• The trick to all-Splitters levels is marking tiles and rolling from exits. Mark everywhere you know there isn't a Splitter.
• Clicking any cave automatically selects the appropriate path for that cave.
• The Magic Ball power-up button in the upper right corner gives a brief glimpse of the ball through uncovered tiles.
• The Magic Ball power-up becomes available 45 seconds from its last usage. Watch for it.
• The All Scramblers Mode button turns every Bouncer, Shifter, and Twirler into Scramblers. Flip them to determine other object locations.
• The All Scramblers Mode button is available 20 seconds from its last usage.
• When you turn All Scramblers Mode off, the level goes back to the same state as when you turned it on.
• Stuck? It costs 3,000 points, but the Hint button highlights the next hidden object on the path.

Haven't tried PathStorm out yet? Give it a try for free: Pathstorm.

Labels: casual games, Game Announcements

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:32 PM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Challenge Versus Engagement
Over at Making Casual Games, Eric talks about the difference (which is getting fuzzier each month, IMO) between a "hardcore" and "casual" gamers. His first criterion is whether or not the player prefers to be challenged or engaged by a game.

That's a very interesting question. Honestly, I think I fall more on the "engaged" side of things... and I always have been, even in my truly hardcore gamer days. I like enough challenge to give me a real chance of failure, enough struggle to keep things interesting, but I have a pretty low tolerance for getting my butt kicked, or re-playing levels until I manage to finally "get through" them. I think I ended up leaving Return to Castle Wolfenstein (the 2001 one using the Quake 3 engine, not the pre-Doom one or the Apple II one) for about two years because one boss encounter was just too frustratingly hard. And I was too proud to switch the difficulty level back down to "easy."

I tend to up the difficulty level of RTS games only after my current difficulty level has proved TOO easy. If I'm winning every single game, I'll probably bump it up a bit. But if I'm losing even only half the time, I'll tend to back off. Something like 70-90% victory rate is the point where I feel that the game is "fun" without being too stressful. I enjoy playing City of Heroes these days, where the prospect of failure (and "XP debt") is more of a spice to keep the game exciting than a common (or punative) event. And I've long been fond of jRPGs (like the Final Fantasy series), where the average 2-hour gaming session only occasionally ends with a party wipe.

But I still rise to a hint of challenge. Like taking on "impossible" odds in Rise of Nations. Or sucking up a nasty game-threatening random surprise in an RPG (though that one is a bit older, from my more hardcore era).

So am I a casual gamer, or a hardcore player who's just backed off a little to get a real life?

(Vaguely) related meanderings through neural pathways best left unexplored...
* RPG Design: The Brute Force Problem
* Why I Gave Up On D&D Online
* What Makes a Good "Casual" RPG?
.

Labels: casual games, Game Design, Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:21 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Pathstorm Storms Rampant Games!
New Game! New Game! New Game!

Pathstorm is the first release by local (to me) indie game studio Cavebug Games. If you've ever enjoyed Sudoku or Minesweeper, you know how very addictive and fun logic-puzzle games can be.

The core of the game (and there are TONS of variations, so this doesn't hold true for every level) is fairly straightforward. You fire a ball from one point into an obscured playfield. It may run into obstacles in its path which alter its course. Sounds and blinking backgrounds indicate what the ball has hit and how many obstacles it hit. Then the ball exits at another point. Your challenge? Figure out what and where the obstacles are in as few shots as possible.

These aren't just simple obstacles the balls bounce against, either. There are twirlers, splitters (which split the ball into multiple balls that fire in all directions), shifters, bouncers, and more. It starts out fairly easily, and I haven't come CLOSE to completing something like the 200+ levels in the game, but I can say the challenge ramps up gently and has remained fun and challenging without getting frustrating.

The game includes a campaign mode called the "journey" which has you travelling across a map tackling different types of challenges and earning trophies. One variations reverses the gameplay, and involves you placing the obstacles to make the balls land in particular locations. If you like doing that, the game also includes a full level editor.

About the Developers
The Cavebug guys have been coming to the local Utah Indie Game Developer's meetings. I'd never met Josh Jensen, but Brad Edwards is a fellow Singletrac veteran from the beginning. We've done quite a few lunchtime deathmatches together, and have the same stories of working on Warhawk, Twisted Metal, and Outwars. He went on to Microsoft games from there, doing some titles for the XBox 360.

These two mainstream industry vets decided last year that it was time to make a break from the publisher treadmill and go indie. They are very excited about their first title, which definitely shows their attention to detail and quality in graphics, animation, and gameplay. It sparkles (literally, at times!). I can't wait to see what will come from them next!


DOWNLOAD THE FREE TRIAL OF PATHSTORM HERE


(Vaguely) related plugging:
* Chicken Invaders III (Awesome and silly shoot-'em-up)
* Virtual Villagers II: The Lost Children (Build a culture on a Pacific island)
* Fastcrawl ( An RPG Playable in under an hour)
* Democracy (Strategy game where you run a real-world country)

Labels: casual games, Game Announcements

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:18 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post