Posts Tagged ‘accessible games’

It’s like blood in the water.  People with initials after their name like CFO and CEO can hone in on it across vast expanses of space and time like a great white shark senses a dying fish.  What is it? Some call it things like “net profit before depreciation”. Whatever you call it, the people who invest in games call it…

The bottom line

Unlike sharks, investors don’t like dying fish. No, they like that bright shining fish that can be spotted before anyone else does. But once the fish is spotted the sharks start circling – and the particular bright shining fish that game developers and publishers alike seem to be circling these days are “social games”.   Scott Hartsman talked about them on on shows 41 and 42 but he called them “accessible games.” No one would be foolish enough to try and take on companies with names like Activision or Blizzard and expect to come out on top.  Oh a few have tried it…tried and where unsuccessful . This is not the case, however, with some of the biggest names in social game development.  Zynga may indeed be the next 800 pound gorilla of social gaming, but they are certainly not unassailable.  In fact they were sued for copyright violation just recently as well as advertising practices.  Still, they are even big enough to catch the attention of Time Magazine .  And the bigger they get, the more they grab the attention of other developers.

Social games where one of the trends discussed at this year’s Game developers Conference, and the subject of Gareth Davis’ (Facebook’s Platform manager) key note speech.  There is no denying that games with names like Farmville, Mob Wars, and Mafia Wars (all of which I have played) can turn a profit, but there are still no indications whether or not that will be a fast buck or something with staying power.   No matter how it turns out, there are always those who look at any social trend from the outside and shake their heads with dismay. Back in the 1960s people with names like “Buddy Holly” and “Elvis Presley” where people that then conservative elements of society would consider “radical”; now they are the kind of guys you would take home to mom and dad.  While those of us who owe our gaming allegiance to console games or online games may consider social games as little more than mindless button pushing, there is no doubt that  such games attract a massive audience.

Bad RPG?

As we always do, this last Easter we had some friends over for dinner, and with them came a one year old child.  As soon as our Boston Terrier took note of the youngster she started her ear shattering “get out of my territory” bark.  Our guard dog, on the other hand, could care less about the child. We had welcomed all the visitors into the house, and as far as he was concerned they all belonged there.  We pondered the situation for awhile then it dawned on us that out faithful terrier had never seen a baby before, and considered the child to be competition – another dog.  After all, she had seen the little tyke crawl around on all fours.  In our dog’s mind, apparently, even if someone had shaved all the fur off this strange dog, with the exception of a small spot on top of his head, he was still a dog – albeit a bit of a funny looking one.  Upon closer inspection our small Boston examined this new dog in her territory and noted that it had the flattest muzzle she had ever seen. Yes, she seemed to decide, this house guest made a lousy dog.  It took awhile before our terrier realized that while the one year old newcomer made a lousy dog he made a fantastic one year old little boy.

And so it is with social games – while they make lousy role playing games (that may change but more on that later) but they are great at being what they are…

Whatever that is

See you online,

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team

Good Karma and Good Business

Welcome to the mark of excellence edition…

What, you may ask yourself, do a wheel chair, video games and excellence all have in common? The answer quite simply is when a video game is accessible to everyone and we mean everyone. Two discussions on making games accessible recently drew our attention to the matter. The first is the source of the logo at the top of this article. The link points to an english language section of a site that is not in english. It is, as you can no doubt tell from the logo, a web site about making video games that really are accessible to everyone.

The second discussion was an article in the local paper entitled “Senior Tour”.   This particular senior tour, however, was not sponsored by any professional golf association. No, this senior tour was part of a game that has caught on in some of the local senior communities – Wii Bowling.  In fact you can find an interesting blog entry on a local Wii Bowling tournament here.  We could tell you all about virtual bowling tournaments but Jack Roche, who apparently was part of one of them, can do a much better job of it than we ever could.  Go read the blog entry, we are nuns and we have rulers…that’s an order!

We have discussed much on accessible games of late on our show, but most of it has been in the area that we discussed with Scott Hartsman; games such as those on Facebook made by Zynga.  Beyond Facebook games there are games that are more accessible for a far different set of reasons…they are accessible to gamers with disabilities.  Game publishers always seem to be looking for ways to expand their market and what better way than this?  Beyond the good karma it brings by benefiting disabled gamers (such as some of the players in the virtual bowling tournament) it is just good business. 

This is also a subject that is near and dear to the hearts of the No Prisoners, No Mercy team as Julie was raised by a mother with cerebral palsy and that both Fran and Julie took care of Fran’s disabled mother for five years.

And while we are on the subject of marks of excellence…

Now THATS a GM we like!

We have all had the chance to interact with gms (those staff members behind any game that unstick those who are stuck in the game in some way).  Some are good, some not so good.  We have played mmos where the GMs have taken several days to answer.

Recently Julie had a chance to interact with a GM that stood out head and shoulders above the rest and that is GM Carlin from Fallen Earth and the Icarus Studios.   When a member of her clan (guild for all you WoW players) paged a GM, the answer was swift: it took about 30 seconds to reach GM Carlin.  The GM solved the issue in less than a minute,  and waited until all players got credit for the quest with a slight glitch. 

But here is the part that stands head and shoulders above the rest…

Several days later when Julie Logged on again, she received a message from GM Carlin who wanted to make sure that all of her questions had been answered.  So here is a big salute to Icarus Studio’s GM Carlin:

A big salute to GM Carlin from Icarus Studios' Fallen Earth

 See you online,

The No Prisoners, No Mercy team

Are these the online games in our future?

Tommorow’s article today – my fingers are itching to talk about this one, so here is tommorow’s article today:

EA just announced another round of lay offs, and Mythic  sadly is feeling part of the bite of the axe (we hope it isn’t really true) Sort of Ironic as “Broken Toys” (one of our “must read” sites) pointed out considering they just spent $300 million for a Facebook game developer. The particular pause that this gives me thought for is about accessible games – something we discussed with Scott Hartsman on an earlier No Prisoners, No Mercy show.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of thousands, I will use a game that I used to play as an example: Eve Online. 

Anyone who has ever played Eve Online, or attempted to, knows that it has a steep learning curve. So steep, in fact, that generally it requires a requires a team of Sherpa guides to reach the summit (read “master the game”). Now, in the last year or so the good folks at CCP have made strides in this area.  Still, this is the same game that merited hiring a full fledged economist to study it’s virtual economy.  Without any solid knowledge about subscriber numbers, it is at least easy to say the game is successful. It is either a case of a steady stream of new customers replacing the old ones, or keeping their core market happy. If we consider the learning curve with where EA seems to be putting their dollars these days a key word comes to mind…

“Accessibility”

Accessible games are an issue we discussed with Scott Hartsman on a previous No Prisoners No Mercy show. One such application is Farmville (one of those Facebook applications like Mafia Wars). Recently they hit the 60 million users mark. Obviously this doesn’t all translate into cold hard cash, but the investment needed to create such games is (at least as far as Mr. Hartsman indicated) negligible.  Now obviously we aren’t all interested in pretty ponies, virtual farms, or bunnies dancing around with toilet paper (the last being a Rod Serling quote). Still, it seems that the growth market lays more with the accessible games.

All things considered, it leaves me wondering  about games that are developed with such a steep learning curve, and the gamers that play them (considering I was one of them). Why develop or play a game with such a steep learning curve over something that takes the middle road, such as an Everquest or World of Warcraft?  Is it the thrill of playing a game where you can lose everything in a moment? Is it the virtual equivalent of an adrenalin junky? Perhaps instead it is the idea of putting up with the drudgery of staring at mining lasers for hours on end, staring into space watching the game play itself, so that  you can one day proudly announce yourself to be a “captain of  Eve Online Industry”?

A more important lesson in what seems to be a move toward more accessible games should be that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. MMO gamers seem to have a tendency to complain loud and long about those games and developers who don’t cater to their particular whim.  It may certainly be true that these are those gamers who are, as I have described them, the “un-silent minority”.   Aside from a sincere hope that the news EA “released” today isn’t true, I hope the un-silent minority takes the hint to wake up and smell the coffee, as grandma used to say. If the squeeky wheels that are used to getting the most grease keep it up there may come a day that the only online game we have to play will be “My Pretty Pony”

See you online

Julie Whitefeather