Define "Casual"

Casual games have the reputation of being the current 'in' trend in video gaming. With the Wii, success of Popcap and other online puzzle makers, and kids sites, it's easy to see how the market is growing. The barriers to entry on this type of gaming activities have never been lower. The games are available, easy to play, free or extremely inexpensive. One other defining characteristic is that established hobby-type video game players resent this trend.

I think they have a valid gripe. Talented game designers are being tapped to create these games to the exclusion of other, more traditional 'hobby' type games. It's an easy choice for publishers to make, as their profit margins have the potential to be great.

I was going to predict what this meant for the industry, but honestly I'm not sure. I guess I'll just leave it as an observation.

Does this mean anything to the future of the hard-core video game player and/or publisher?

-Adam

Red Mario

Much thanks to (the recovering) Wil Wheaton for bringing this to my attention.

The People's Mario

I don't remember communism being so stylish.

-Adam

Battlebots - ESPN

It's been a pretty exciting day for me. In addition to a job interview at an amazing company, my favorite show (ever?) may be returning to TV.


If you know me, you know I'm a combat robot enthusiast and fan. This is way cool.

I may not be building a heavyweight, like what would compete at Battlebots, but TV exposure is likely to be a huge boon for our local robotic combat club, WAR and I am all over that.

I've already contacted Battlebots and asked what our club can do to help support their new event. IMHO, combining the power of TV exposure with the infrastructure of the existing hobby clubs is the key to a level of success the sport/hobby hasn't yet enjoyed.

Fingers crossed & Weeeee!

-Adam

Go with the Flow

In my week-long search to remain an industry insider, I've already had a couple of job interviews. I try to remain calm at these things, but when the outcomes of these meetings are determining the future security of my family, well, nerves do set in. Hopefully I represented myself well.

The first was on Monday with Wizkids, which was cool. I like their products and I love how they have opened up the gaming market with new genres. In fact, that they've done it twice is remarkable. Pre-painted plastic miniatures, first. More recently with the die-cut plasti-card games. In my opinion, innovation like that is how you succeed. Being a part of a company that shares my vision on the path to success is extremely appealing.

Today's interview was with Flowplay. They're an online gaming service and I have to say I was mightily impressed. I'm really hoping they were half as impressed with me as I was with them.
Derrick, if you read this, I loved your hat. With our without me, I think they have a great shot at success. Of course, with me, their chances improve by at least 10%. =-)

It'll be a week (at least) before I hear from either of them. Wish me luck!

-Adam!!!

Free Content Model Examples

This time from Wired How-to Wiki

* '''CPM ads''' ("cost per thousand views"; banner ads online and regular ads in print, TV and radio)
* '''CPC ads''' ("cost per click"; think Google ads)
* '''CPT ads''' ("cost per transaction"; you pay only if the customer brought to you from a media sites becomes a paying customer. Here's [http://seekingalpha.com/article/12247-ebay-s-ad-network-ready-to-launch-ebay-goog an example].)
* '''Lead generation''' (you pay for qualified names of potential customers)
* '''Autoresponder Memberships''' (people pay for email; [http://FreeBusinessModel.com watch this free video])
* '''Subscription revenues'''
* '''Affiliate revenues''' (e.g., Amazon Associates, [http://imsimple.com/cb Products + Clickbank])
* '''Rental of subscriber lists'''
* '''Sale of information''' (selling data about users--aggregate/statistical or individual--to third parties)
* '''Licensing of brand''' (people pay to use a media brand as implied endorsement)
* '''Licensing of content''' (syndication)
* '''Getting the users to create something of value for free and applying any of the above to monetize it'''. (Like Digg or our own Reddit)
* '''Upgraded service/content''' (ed: aka "freemium")
* '''Alternate output''' (pdf; print/print-on-demand; customized Shared Book style; etc.)
* '''Custom services/feeds'''
* '''Live events'''
* '''"Souvenirs"/"Merchandise"'''
* '''Co-branded spinoff'''
* '''Cost Per Install''' (popular with top Facebook apps who can help others get installs)
* '''E-commerce''' (selling stuff directly on your website)
* '''Sponsorships''' (ads of some sort that are sold based on time, not on the number of impressions)
* '''Listings''' (paying a time based amount to list something like a job or real estate on your website)
* '''Paid Inclusion''' (a form of CPC advertising where an advertiser pays to be included in a search result)
* '''Streaming Audio Advertising''' (like radio advertising delivered in the audio stream after a certain amount of audio content has been delivered)
* '''Streaming Video Advertising''' (like streaming audio but in video)
* '''API Fees''' (charging third parties to access your API)

Honestly, I dislike most of the listed 'solutions'. I want a site where game designers can contribute to the site and profit directly from their contributions. A free model may not be appropriate. Some amount of free content will be essential, however.

-Adam

Urge to Kill...Fading

The Comedy Central site says there will be new episodes starting tomorrow.

Breath. I...can...make...it... Breath.

-Adam

OUTRAGE!

Warning: Not game related.

What the hell!?!?!? The Daily Show is STILL in reruns? Last week was a holiday, and Stewart had to get ready for the Oscards, sure. I was distressed, but I handled it.

The writers strike ends and they go back to work for TWO DAYS? TWO FREAKING DAYS?

I'm dying here. I had hoped a blog rant would help. It hasn't.

I NEEDS ME SOME NEW DAILY SHOW AND COLBERT REPORT!!!!

-Adam

I want to make money by giving my games away.

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, is working on a new book about the economy of "free". His views on how business works totally jibe with what I want to do, but I can't wait until 2009 to find out what he says.

I want to:

• Build a website with PDF downloads of complete, ready to play, card games.
• Give the games away for free*
• Invite other game designers, including designers of out of print games, to do the same.
• ?
• Profit

Ideas, anyone?

* My current plan is to charge for the downloads, but if there's a model that allows me to support the site, and myself, without charging, that's the way to go for sure.

This is the article, about the article, which will be in the next (current?) issue of Wired.

-Adam

Scorched Earth

Collectable-type games have emerged as one of the most profitable genres in tabletop gaming. Probably THE most profitable. Unfortunately for game publishers, it seems to be getting harder and harder to succeed with this model every year. Now, it was always hard, but lately nothing seems to have legs. Remember the World of Warcraft TCG? I'm told it was huge. It's probably still a good seller, but huge? No. I thought the new Pokemon Collectible Minis game would be a big hit with the younger players. It wasn't (discounted at my local games store.) It may be that Pokemon has finally worn out its welcome, but I really think there's something else at work.

1) Established brands (Magic, Clix, ect.) still dominate. There's simply no room for any other brand to get significant traction.
2) Slow economy. Other forms of entertainment, particularly electronic, provide more entertainment for less money.
3) Scorched Earth. Greedy rarity schemes and failure to successfully promote secondary markets have created an industry with a reputation for ripping its customers off, one $4 pack at a time. This mindset, more than anything (IMHO) is preventing quality collectible games from reaching the fan-gamer. These games are now being dismissed by gamers out of hand.

Whether or not a collectible game can overcome this stigma is hard to say. My guess is that it won't, because I don't know of any publisher whose willing to sacrifice short term sales to create a stronger product overall. I've never worked for one who would.

Rares sell packs, they say. To much crap in the pack kills games, I say.

-Adam!!!

A true American Hero

Wizards of the Coast artist, Todd Lockwood brings us a masterpiece...


Stephen Colbert, american hero, legend, dare we say it...demigod?

Much thanks to Laughingsquid.com and Nick Douglas for posting this.


-Adam

I want to be Will Wright when I grow up.

Will Wright talk at GDC

It's about a 1/2 hour, and all awesome.

-Adam

Finally an MMORPG to be excited about!

Champions MMORPG

Sure, I played D&D back in the 80's, but Champions was MY GAME. It's the last game I played regularly, and I while I could sell my D&D books and not shed a tear, I couldn't stand to lose my beloved Champions books.

I...can't...wait.

-Adam

Zero Punctuation iz da bom!

If you haven't seen Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's Zero Punctuation video game reviews, you're missing out. They've become a weekly feature on the Escapist Magazine website and a highlight of my week. New episodes are posted each Wednesday and while the quality of each one is the subject of massive amounts of debate, the fact that they garner such debate is clear evidence of success.

Note: The reviews are wonderfully crass and Yahtzee is not the least bit afraid of using words like F***.

If indeed I still have regular readers (which I sort of doubt) you've probably noticed how I've started talking more and more about video games. Well, I have. There, I said it.

-Adam!!!

Life's Little (and Big) Detours

,As of yesterday I no longer work for Hidden City Games. I was laid off in a round of down-sizing that included not just me, but several people including some others who've been working at HCG since the Clout days.

While I'm sad about leaving the best job I've ever had, I'm optimistic I'll be able to get either another game developer job or get my own gaming business off the ground. Both are long-shots, but I've got a little time to explore both options. As these things go, the timing isn't terrible.

I'd also like to publicly thank my dear friends Jesper Myrfors and Paul Peterson who actively worked to keep me on. I know that if it were their decision, I'd still be there, and that means a lot to me.

If any of my Seattle area friends read this blog and need my services, I'm free to do whatever you need done. After working on pink horses for little girls (not a bad thing!), I'm basically ready for anything. Even so, the more robots and zombies, the better.

My HCG e-mail address still works, but I can't say for how long. To reach me, your best bet is conusa <> comcast <> net

-Adam

I can't think of a better way to remember my friend!

Written my other friend, Mike Selinker, on Paizo Publishing's Blog

If you like, you can buy the game there, as well.

-Adam
Paul Randles' Final Game: Key Largo
Tuesday, February 12, 2008

In February 2003, Pirate's Cove designer Paul Randles died of cancer. That
story didn't have a happy ending. This one does.

A year earlier, Paul drafted a deep-sea diving board game he called Treasure
Hunt. Players would salvage treasure from shipwrecks off the Florida coast.
The game had pop-up boats, and little cardboard shipwrecks with treasure
disks. Paul wanted a European publisher to publish it, but it wasn't good
enough yet. A solid 6 on the scale of 1 to 10, he said. It better at least
be a 9 before it hit the street.

Then he got sick. I didn't know how to help. My wife did. Evon suggested I
ask Paul for Treasure Hunt. I'd develop the game with him, and then find a
publisher to put it out. For the last months of his life, we worked on the
game together.

I gave him a 21-Nerf-gun salute at his funeral, and told the legions of game
industry folk there that I was shopping Treasure Hunt. It was a pretty good
game by this point. Maybe an 8.

At an Ohio convention, I met Bruno Faidutti, the French designer of
Citadels. He knew of Paul and wanted to help. Within a month he had
restructured the game he was now calling Treasure Island into a great game.
A 9 for sure. Gone were the pop-up boats and the cardboard shipwrecks,
replaced now by full-size boats and card decks of sunken treasure. Now we
could find someone to publish it.

Every publisher wanted to see the game, because Paul had a lot of friends. A
major American board game company wanted to convert it to a dungeon-crawl
game. I thanked them and declined. (Side story: Based on this, I did design
that dungeon game, with my co-designer James Ernest of Cheapass Games. That
game, Dungeonville, came out from two more publishers, Z-Man Games and
Pegasus Spiele. So Paul's game has a son, and he's bilingual.)

Then Tilsit Editions of France made an offer, which Bruno, Paul's widow
Katty, and I accepted. Editor Nicolas Anton proposed adding people you could
meet on the island, the last thing the game needed to become a 10 out of 10.
Tilsit renamed it Key Largo, gave it a fancy cover and a modular board, and
released it in 2005 in German, Italian, and French. Which was great, except
I don't speak any of those languages very well.

But I do speak English, and I do know Lisa Stevens, the CEO of Paizo
Publishing. Lisa was looking to start a new line of board games, which
eventually I helped forge into Titanic Games, the publisher of the color
version of Kill Doctor Lucky and Stonehenge: An Anthology Board Game.
Titanic needed a third game, so I looked at the name of the company and
said, "How about one about sinking ships?"

How about it indeed, she said. And so, in February 2008, five years to the
month after Paul's passing, Titanic Games will be releasing the full-color
English version of Key Largo, with all-new art and all-new components
delivered by graphic designer James Davis. The English edition has a large
one-piece board, nice wooden boats, fifteen delightful divers, and beautiful
cards with art from Ben Huen and Andrew Hou. Everyone we've shown it to says
it's a work of art. I like those people.

The game has undergone a lot of facelifts since Paul's fun little prototype,
but there's something unmistakably Paul-ish in the final version. That's why
the money in the game bears the inscription "E Paulibus Unum," which I can
pretend means "In Paul We Trust."

I can't play Key Largo with Paul, but now I can play it with you.

Mike Selinker

Endless Ocean again? - This time a real review.

,Wildcard’s Score Card - Endless Ocean

Overview

Endless Ocean is a leisurely paced exploration game for the Wii. While there are certainly tasks offered up for the player to complete, most of my sessions have been spent simply swimming around, looking for new fish, seascapes, and hidden treasures.

Strong Points

The seascape and creature design is fabulous. It’s very easy to let yourself be immersed in the game, focusing on its beauty and serenity. As been pointed out in every review, both positive and negative, the game is extremely tranquil and relaxing. What’s more exciting to me is how different Endless Ocean is from standard game fair. Somebody took a big risk with this, but the Wii’s casual audience and Nintendo’s commitment to providing unique casual gaming experiences created a perfect situation for a game like this to flourish. On a previous gen system, titles like this would be released and whither into obscurity, but on the Wii it has surfaced as a potential hit…or at least cult hit. I purchased it specifically because I wanted to support these sorts of games. I’ve spent the last four nights playing nothing else because the game is so darned good.

Weak Points

While the graphics are gorgeous, they are limited by the Wii’s power, and occasionally something will look awkward or move poorly. Because the game focuses totally on the experience issues like these that would be nothing on a standard action-type game are distracting in this one. The above water graphics are relatively crude, but also irrelevant. Your human partner in the game, a biologist character, has some personal issues in the storyline which I found annoying. In a game that is essentially stress-free, having an in-game character with personal problems was distracting to me. You have to ‘talk’ to her to find out what’s next in the story-line missions, but after a short while, I really didn’t want to. While I wasn’t talking to her, the plot-line (unessential as it is) stalled and I found myself getting bored with the game. Once I realized what I needed to do next, the enjoyment level jumped back up again.

Audience

Anyone who has complained that video games are in a rut, recycling the same ideas over and over again, should check out Endless Ocean. That said, it isn’t for everyone. It’s obviously a casual game, so people who only like high-octane action/strategy-fests will find little to stimulate them. For those of us who enjoy more sedate experiences, Endless Ocean delivers exactly what it promises. In other words, if you think you’ll like it, I think you’ll love it.

Wrap Up

Endless Ocean is a bargain title at only $30. I’m hoping it’s a hit so more EO titles, with enhanced graphics and even larger areas to explore are released, and more games like EO are created. This game, rendered with the power of an Xbox360 or a PS3 would be unbelievable. Even on the Wii, it’s wonderful and remarkable. What shortcomings the game does have are largely unrelated to the core activity – exploring an amazing undersea world. While they lower the scores on mainstream game media reviews, they have very little impact on the overall game experience.

Grade: A

Game Submission Guidelines

Most game designers would like to design their game, show it to a publisher, and let the money start rolling in. Everyone knows it doesn't really work like that (except for me, one time) but it's still how we all wish it would work.

I think the future of game publishing, from a designer's point of view, is in self publishing. It's a lot harder than the 'fire and forget' system of getting an established publisher to make your game, but your chances for success are vastly, VASTLY, improved.

If you ignore those odds and want to submit a game anyway I suggest the following:

• Make sure your prototype is ready to play*. If I can't play it, I can't evaluate it properly.
  
• Make it look nice. Art isn't required, but clip art is easy, free and will add a lot to the presentation.
  
• Don't go crazy with art. Art directors will always want to redo everything anyway.
• Do go crazy with rules. Clear as crystal. Keep typos to a minimum. This isn't a resume', so a lone spelling error shouldn't disqualify you. That said, if it's too hard to read or we can't figure it out, we're not interested.
• Don't worry about marketing, pricing, or presentation. Like art directors, marketing and sales directors have there own ideas about those sorts of things.
  

* Prototypes need not be full games. Just enough to experience the core mechanics. If it's a card game, include enough cards that a few turns can be played. I use printer-ready buisiness cards to print my card-game prototypes. It's worked really well (until my printer pooped out on me!)

In all honesty, it doesn't hurt to try and get feedback from companies on your games, even if you know they aren't going to publish it. The more comments from people outside your circle of friends, the better your game will be. If you can, take it to conventions and try it out there (easier said than done, I know.)

Hobby game designers have this notion that their ideas are special and that if too many people see it, the idea will be stolen. For the most part, that's rubbish. The more people that see your ideas the more valuable feedback you're likely to get. Also, everyone thinks their ideas are better than yours, so stealing ideas isn't on most people's to-do list. The best way to prove them wrong is to turn your idea into a reality. That's where the value is.

-Adam!!!

Endless Ocean - If it's fun, I guess it's a game.

It's rare that I purchase a game for my Wii on impulse, yet when I simultaneously read about Endless Ocean on Kotaku's new release post and Penny Arcade's Blog I decided I like the look of it and I wanted it.

Endless Ocean is a scuba diving simulation. Good God, it is sooooooo relaxing.

Conflict - None
Danger - None
Difficulty - Easy
Pace - Slooooooooooow
Graphics - Purty

What do you do in the game? You swim. You look for things. "Missions" consist of people asking (nicely, with no obligations) you to help them find specific things. No hurry, just if you feel like it.

In my first few hours of play I:

* Saw and swam with a whale
* Helped a dolphin stuck in a lagoon, it became my friend.
* Found a lost medal and part of an old compass on the sea floor.
* Swam with hammerheads.
* Saw sharks, not the hammerheads, spawn (I guess, they mostly just sat there.)
* Helped two tourists find a particular fish they liked.
* Populated an aquarium tank with fish I'd discovered.
* Petted three kinds of penguins.
* Stayed up nearly an hour later than normal because I didn't want to stop playing.

My current unfinished 'task' is to take a picture of a particular fish...a blue something. No problem, they're pretty common.

Does that sound boring to you? Some people find it boring. Heck, after a couple more hours I might find it boring. For now, however, I find it memorizing and I've spent all day at work just waiting to get back home to it.

One last feature, it's only $30.

-Adam!!!

Spectromancer Beta

For all you PC users out there (sorry, no mac version) Hidden City Games has just released its latest computer game offering for beta testing.

Check out -

www.spectromancer.com

Enjoy!

-Adam

Hasbro is at it again...Cease and Desist!

Hasbro is threatening to shut down one of my favorite online activities, Scrabulous from Facebook.

I believe this is Hasbro shooting themselves in the virtual foot, once again. The idea, it seems, is to use legal pressure to remove Scrabulous from the picture so their online version/s of Scrabble don't have the competition.

There's no point in arguing whether or not they can do this. Of course they can. I will continue to argue that they SHOULDN'T. I believe:

* Scrabulous increases the number of Scrabble players in the world, and Hasbro directly benefits from this.
* Hasbro's 'official' Scrabble game should be good enough to make people switch, if is a zero-sum situation. If it's not good enough, it'll fail with or without Scrabulous in the picture.
* Evergreen games like Scrabble, Monopoly, Yahtzee, ect. are going to be more and more difficult to 'own' as more and more fans want to play online. In place of an official version, these home-grown efforts (both for profit and not) are going to keep popping up.
* I play Scrabulous because it's a Facebook app. If Hasbro's isn't and I really doubt it would be, then I'll simply find another free game to play on Facebook and never think about Scrabble again (which I hadn't for years before I started playing Scrabulous.)

-Adam!!!