Stricter Comments...

Someone has decided that this blog makes a good place to post spam back-links to their products.  I've turned on higher levels of security to prevent comments which don't help people from being made.  Unfortunately that makes is a little harder for people who want to use the site to leave a comment, but it means that it wont get overrun with spam.

Overgrowth

This game recently came to my attention via Reddit.  You many have seen Lugaru on the Humble Indie Bundle.  Here is a link that is a two for one: a discussion of Overgrowth via Indie Game: The Movie.  The video describes what they have been up to better then I can.

The development team has done a lot of things right during development of Overgrowth.  Check out Wolfire Games and you can read blogs on their opinion of open development.  More than just talking about development of their own games, the blog has 'design tours' of other games.  They discus the game from a development standpoint.  They are really post mortems of other peoples games.  There is much to learn from Wolfire Games, and fortunately they are will to openly share just about anything.  If you are developing your own game, drop them a line.  Ask them a good question and I bet you'll get an answer.

D3 Gold Experiment

My previous hypothesis is that each 1K of gold is going to effectively become it's own market due to the buying behavior of the players.  1K will have the highest purchase frequency.  2K lower frequency.  10K the lowest frequency.  There could be weird spikes in demand or supply at price points that correlate to gold values that players need to spend to purchase upgrades (the stash for example).

My first test of this hypothesis was to create a few auction to see what happens. 2 1k auctions at a fairly high Blizzard Buck (temporary place holder for real money in the beta) value.  1 2k auction at a slightly lower rate then the 2 1k auctions.  It would be more cost effective for the purchaser to buy the 1K auctions.  Now this doesn't really prove all that much, because there is a system behind the scenes which makes it so that if someone asks for 3K they would get all my auctions (odd numbered values are why I think 1K will sell most frequently).

Can I login to check the status of these auctions?  Unfortunately no.  Error 37 blocks my way.  I have no idea what that means...  Just that it prevents me from logging in.  I should find out tomorrow (Monday morning). So you may not even see this sentence.  Perhaps I'll just have some results.

--Update--
I can view the auctions now.  Two of them have sold, one of them has not.  Unfortunately as this is the beta, the 'Completed Tab' of the AH reads 0 for all information.  There is no way to know right now which auction sold and which one didn't.  The total number of Beta Bucks has increased to 66.  So that's working...  But nothing else is.

Winding down...

Studying to become a Financial Planner is taking up a lot of my time.  It's rewarding and interesting as personal finance is a hobby of mine as much as game design.  While I would love to continue to do both, only one is going to allow me to pay the bills.  This blog, and game design in general is not the one I can continue with.  I wont remove the blog or the posts.  Please feel free to link to them, comment on them, email me.  I want to be engaged in the conversation about games and game design, I just can't devote a lot of time to it lately.

So to keep you entertained here are some statics about my blog. From April 2011 to now I almost 20,000 Pageviews.  That accumulated about $110 until I turned off Ad Sense earlier this month.  Most of that was from a few kind folks who clicked on ads while visiting the site.  If you did, thank you!  I'm going to buy a new monitor because this one is going to stop working very shortly.

Most folks found my blog from my posts on Reddit.  Which is a really great place to drive traffic from.  There are many ways to suggest to Reddit viewers that they check out your page.  My suggestions are pretty blunt methods.  But you should check them out if you want to drive traffic to your blog.

Finally here is a list of my most popular posts. 

Posts

Game idea != Product

Jul 15, 2011, 4 comments                          2315 Pageviews

198+ Game Design Resources

Sep 19 2011 8 Comments                         1,599 Pageviews

3 Business Models for your Mobile Game

Aug 29 2011                                             1,127 Pageviews

1 Free Business Plan for your Computer Game

Aug 14 2011                                                 901 Pageviews

Cheap Game Design

Jun 27, 2011                                                 891 Pageviews

If you want to keep reading about game development and gaming in general I highly recommend checking out Technomancer's Blog, lightspeedgaming.  He's starting to build up a good blog there, and has some interesting things to say.

I hope you learned something about game design.  Hopefully this blog continues to be a resources for you.  I hope you had a good time.  And I hope someday to be able to post back here about games and game design.  But until then, I am super busy learning the ropes of a new game; Financial Planning.

Thanks!

Diablo III

If you have been following my Tweets, and likes on Google Plus you'll notice that Diablo III comes up frequently.  It is going to get a lot of my attention when the game comes out.  Why is that?  The Real Money Auction House (RMAH).  Having play World of Warcraft for many years the thing that kept my attention the longest was the economy of the game world.

The RMAH really excites me because it means that I can attempt to return real money from playing Diablo III.  I don't have lofty goals such as quitting my day job.  But I want to enhance the fun that I have playing D3.  My goals for the RMAH are simple.  1.) Recoup the cost of the game.  2.) Attempt to make some profit (any amount will do).

--Update--

A few weeks after making this post, I received a Diablo III beta key!  Woot.  This happened to arrive during the week in which I started studying for my Series 7 exam.  Boo.  Why Blizzard?  WHY!?!

My first play through was with the Wizard.  Which was quite enjoyable.  Will most likely end up being the character that I play the vast majority of the time.  Second play through with the Witch Doctor, which was ok.

The Auction House is really wonky  at the moment.  I made blizzard bucks by simply flipping my first 2000 gold.  Posting it for a high (but not outrageous price) and then buying it back at a lower asking price.  I made 1.65 BB on my first transaction (fee's included).

My initial thought is that buyer's behavior is going to make each 1K gold amount it's own market.  There is going to be a frequency of purchase associated with each level of gold.  The higher the gold amount the fewer people are going to want to purchase at that amount, and therefore the 1000k market will be fast, with little premium.  While each successive thousand will have a lower frequency of trade and therefore a higher premium.

And that is going to effect how you buy and sell gold.  The possibility exists that you might be able to arbitrage between the gold amounts.  For example you could buy at the 1000 gold level, and resell for higher amounts at the 2000, 3000, 4000 amounts with an added premium.

This is merely a hypothesis at the moment.  The beta is extremely shaky at the moment and it's very difficult to regularly check on auctions or even get into the game.  Markco has asked that I research the auction house fee's, but unfortunately I haven't posted more then the weekly low cost trades.  Once I can do some more research I can test this idea.

Towns

How do you review a game that is not completed yet?  You don't. Fortunately this isn't really a review it's a heads up to my readers.  Towns is a neat game, in the vein of Dwarven Fortress, but easier to understand.  The game is graphic, instead of text based and very basic at the moment.  Currently a city builder/management rts game, but who knows where it will go in the future.

Xavi Canal is making this game, which is progressing nicely, and is a really approachable guy.  Check out his blog, at the moment he has time to reply to comments, questions and requests for help.  New features are appearing in each build.  This is a great solution for folks who attempt to play Dwarven Fortress but just can't get into it.  I've tried a number of times to play DF, with mods which make the game easier, to no avail.  I just can't get into it.  Towns fills a niche within a niche.

Check out the Let's Play series on Youtube.  Or learn a bit more about town layout.  For the full playlist of uploaded videos go here.

I'm curious to see where Towns goes, and what it becomes.  Will the game be inherently less intricate than DF because it's based on graphics?  Will it be a nice compromise for folks who just can't get into DF?  Will this game follow the same business model of Minecraft?  Will it have the same underground following of developers as Dwarven Fortress?  Only time will tell.  I am however very interested in seeing how things play out.

The Price Of Making Your RTS “E-Sports Friendly”

Recently Technomancer from Light Speed Gaming contacted me about replying to my eSports opinion. I'm really excited to have his follow up post about design options lost when deciding between making a classic RTS and an eSport. His interest in the topic is very timely as Joseph Burchett and Devin Becker tackle the same topic on Game Developers Radio. Technomancer adds some interesting points to the eSport discussion below the cut.

Wireframing for Game Design

Dave and Ralph over at The Tap Lab created an awesome game called TapCity and gave a great presentation about it at Mobile Monday Boston #momobo.  They also talked game startups at Boston Indies. But before building TapCity they built a binder called BigCity. This binder is a 'wire frame' of the game. The intention was to be able to sit down with the binder, and like a choose your own adventure game, play TapCity.  Of course like all projects, the scope had to be reduced to get things moving.  Unfortunately BigCity did not turn into a playable iOS prototype. Despite not being what they dreamed, BigCity is a tremendous resources and is worth learning from.

This post has some rather large graphics in it.  More after the break...

"Head First Java" by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates

"Head First Java" 2nd Edition
by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates

The 'Head First' in this book has a double meaning.  You are diving into Java head first, but you are also considering how the mind works.  The authors know how best to teach people about a topic which can be occasionally less than interesting...  By leveraging the way our brains process information.

Applying knowledge of human behavior to any topic is interesting to me.  Combining two geeky topics is always a winner.  With the background information, the pictures, and lots of 'why' as well as what this is a great book to learn Java from.  The exercises never feel like a burden, many of them had me running to my computer to test them out.  They also switch things up with puzzles, crosswords, and matching games to keep anything from getting repetitive and boring.

This book is definitely not written like a text book.  Although it would make a great text book for any Java class.  To supplement the information in this book head over to thenewboston and watch a few of Bucky Robert's tutorials.  Overall I am very pleased with "Head First Java" as a first book on the topic.

Next week's post is a great write up of wire framing a game design!  Stick around, its a great post.  On the fourteenth we're going to have a guest poster.  If you would like to guest post contact me.

RTS eSports Opinion

Most RTS titles from the big game companies are attempting to move in a direction of eSports.  This is somewhat similar to the arch of Magic: the Gathering.  If you are not familiar with M:tG it's the classic CCG that came out in the early 1990's.  When first released most players were hardcore table top RPG nerds playing classic Dungeons and Dragons.  The draw of the game was being able to cast spells and magic away from the D&D table.  Eventually it became about competitive winning at the pro tour.  Creating the DCI (Bonus points if you know what DCI stands for) was an amazingly smart and forward thinking move on the part of Wizards of the Coast.  However the tournament scene caused the innovation and the refinement of winning deck design to take over the community.  There were really two different games running simultaneously.  The people playing 'just for fun' and the people playing in the Pro Tour.

The RTS genre is going through a similar change.  Warcraft was originally about fun and storytelling.  Dark Reign was also a very entertaining, although buggy, RTS game.  Blizzard has, however, moved the genre towards entertainment by way of competition.  Whether you claim they are learning from real sports, or M:TG or getting their ideas from somewhere else, proponents of esports are definitely aiming to keep players attention by making them compete with each other.  It's an interesting solution to the problem of longevity in AAA title design.

On the other end of the gaming spectrum we have the absolutely amazing success of Minecraft.  Some people may say they have gotten a 'lucky' hand dealt to them at just about every turn. I think they have tapped something altogether lacking in most game titles.  There is no real sport to MC.  Not at the moment at least.  I personally doubt that Spleef or any other Minecraft activity will ever dwarf the amount of time people spend simply expressing their creativity.  At least I hope that is the case.  The game is about expressing one's creativity and has tapped a deep seated desire to create and control a world.  The replay value of the game comes not from competition with others, but rather through expression.

Competition is not inherently worse than creative play.  It's just not what everyone is into.   The major game labels are missing out on an audience that is looking for creative sandbox play.  There are plenty of eSport RTS games out there (Starcraft II, Firefall), but it would be nice to have some more titles out there like Dwarven Fortress, Minecraft, Dungeon Keeper, where yes it is real time, and yes it is strategy, but it also provides the opportunity for creative play.

Orcs must Die!

And they are!  By the thousands!

Taking the blog Ad Free...

You may have noticed some of my last few posts have been 'filler'; not stellar resources.  Well an unfortunate thing has happened recently.  I have maxed out the time that I can spend searching for the 'dream job' in game design.  I have had to spend time getting 'a job'.  Fortunately a great career came along at just the right time.  I have accepted a job with New York Life as a Financial Adviser.

Most of my professional experience has been in financial services.  First as a Credit Analyst, and later working in the Transfer Agent at a mutual fund company (for those not in the know, a transfer agent is the department that processes buy and sell orders for brokers, dealers, and shareholders).  Being a financial adviser would be a great opportunity to talk about money with people who need advice...  And these days everyone seems really willing to talk about finance in ways they were not in the past.  The recession has opened the culture to want to discuss personal finance.

Additionally I found a volunteer program at Action for Boston Community Development, where I would be taught how to file taxes and volunteer to help low to low middle income families file their tax returns.  Both positions would add value to the other and are really great opportunities.  So much great stuff to learn with much potential to be lucrative in the long run.

What does this mean for game design?  Well for the next five years or so I really will not be able to focus on the industry that I am passionate about.  I do intend to keep going to the conventions, the un-conventions (GameLoop), the community events, and keep making games...  Just a lot slower then before.  I still want to be a part of the community of game development.  Networking with folks in the game design industry and just generally being helpful is fun in and of itself.  I do not intend to stop doing that.

The Contracts signed by my new employer state that I shall focus on learning their trade.  I should have no other job (it's going to be at least a 40 hour a week job, maybe more).  None of my contracts say that I have to stop blogging.  I feel that it's within the letter of the contract and the spirit of the contract to keep the blog open and keep writing, but to turn off adsense and to stop the affiliate program.  In other words this blog is going ad free!  You might also notice less frequent posts, and some changes in content.  For example it might become more about game reviews.  Or more about reports from the various events in the Boston Scene.  I want to keep bringing information that helps developers, but talking about game design when you aren't actually experiencing it is not truthful.

For now this blog is going to change to better suit my current career.  Who knows, five or seven years down the line I might make a really great Chief Financial Officer at a start up game company.  So you all better get cracking making a kick ass company to entice me away from Financial Planning.  ;)  In the short term it also means that my day to day activity be involve advising small business about financial concerns.  I would rather build my business helping this industry...  because I love it, but also because quite frankly game designers need a lot of help when it comes to long term financial decisions.

I'm clearing out a couple blog posts that have been sitting around for a while.  A piece on RTS eSports, then a book review on "Headfirst Java".  After those two posts comes one that I'm really proud of.  I had a chance to sit down with Dave and Ralph at The Tap Lab and talk with them about the wire frame version of their game TapCity.  Paper Prototyping of games was on my mind a lot before my interviews with New York Life and I put together a great post on wire frames and paper prototypes.

Tips for being useful on Reddit.

Reddit is a great tool for driving traffic and interest to a game project, blog, or website.  There is a thriving community there.  You can also earn Karma for posts and comments, making Reddit a kind of a game.  Don't get distracted by Karma though, remember this is about connecting redditors to useful information.  Then every so often driving it to you. The title on this post is 'Tips for being useful on Reddit' because that is the best strategy to 'winning' on the site.  Be useful to others.

Being helpful to the Reddit Community can drive traffic to your site, and give you practice in dealing with some of the roughest comments on the web.  Feedback can be brutal, as well as snarky and you'll get a down vote before a helpful suggestion.  But learning how to deal with the community and how to provide Redditors with information that is useful to them can bring you rewards.  For example traffic spikes of 500 to 1000 hits for a single post with 50 up votes placed in a strategic subreddits like r/game, r/indiegame, /r gamedev.  Some posts on reddit get as high as 2000 up votes.  That's some serious traffic.

Too much Imgur.
Far too many people take screen shots of things and link to that image on Imgur.  For example a screen shot of a tweet, instead of a link to a tweet.  This is lazy redditing...  But also oddly enough it takes more time set up then to link to the thing you took a picture of.  For example if someone announces that Desktop Dungeons is about to go Beta, links to a screen shot of the tweet, they are missing out on driving traffic from Reddit to the twitter feed in question.  That's a lot of people who could be retweeting this great news.  Also smart Redditors get upset at dumb ones and leave nasty comments.

Bonus points if you notice who made that mistake.

Dealing with the emotional damage.
So you made a mistake.  And people were nasty to you.  They leave mean comments.  How do you prevent a flame war?  When you legitimately make a mistake, fess up.  Explain why you were dumb and how you plan on correcting it in the future.  Then actually change your behavior in the future.

Don't do what I did and link to screen shots of tweets, link to the tweets themselves.  That way Redditors can follow the people who made the tweets and get the information in the tweet as well.

TL;DR
1.) Find you community on Reddit and learn what it needs to know, and how fast it finds out.
2.) Be helpful to everyone, even the trolls.  Even the down voters.
3.) Ignore Karma, measure Hits.
4.) Link directly to things.
5.) Post your only your best blog posts to the appropriate subreddit.

Tips to drive traffic to your game with Reddit.

Reddit is a cool way to get information about just about anything on the web.  It can also drive a lot of traffic for your blog, website or product. It's especially good for driving traffic in game related markets.  How much upside is there?  Well let's use blog.zorts.net as an example.  My first post on Reddit increase my new visits by 96.31%.  My second post on Reddit returned 92.80% new visits on top of the first post.  Those posts scored 14 up votes, and 51 up votes respectively.  Very few people voted my posts up, but tons of people clicked on them.  Other peoples posts on Reddit can get 2000+ up votes.  That is a lot of possible traffic.  So how do you actually capture some of that traffic?

First you need a Reddit account.  Very easy to set up.  Much like guest posting on other sites take a moment to set up a good reference to your own blog.  You can't link your profile to your site directly, but make your profile work with what you have already built.  Make sure that when you leave a positive comment it ties to your content.  Unfortunately on Reddit backlinks are not quite as important or acknowledged as the all important 'timely post'.

Next we need to think strategically.  It might be really tempting to start putting all kinds of links up on Reddit right away.  Instead spend your first week or more figuring out where everything is.  Actually read Reddit!  Do some searches for content that is relevant to your blog.  Figure out where the subreddits are that contain what you are interested in.  Some good places for a game designer to start are:

/r/gaming 622,787 readers
/r/gamedev 11,461 readers
/r/Indiegaming 9,645 readers
/r/GamingNews 6,179 readers

Third, Reddit can be a double edged sword and you should treat the sites readers with respect.  By posting your own game there you are asking for their patronage.  Respect the readers time, and have something new to say.  Not every blog post should be linked to on Reddit.  Be an actual and authentic participant on Reddit.  If you have blogs that you follow, promote them as well.  Give them a +1 if they are already Redditors.  Much like on blog posts leave a positive comment which adds value to their posts.

When Markus "Notch" Persson first created Minecraft he used Reddit to get the word out.  And the game exploded.  There is even a /r/Minecraft with 65,408 readers (as of writing this post).  Over the course of development Mojang has spent next to nothing on marketing their products, but continue to leverage social media to get the message out.  They did this not by going out and targeting the site specifically or by doing research.  Makrus used Reddit because he was on Reddit already.  It was an organic thing.  That's the best strategy for viewing your presence there as well.  Not only does Mojang make really fun games, but they also are extremely savy at promoting those games online because they are really savvy about being online.

To get the most out of Reddit what you really need to do is provide value to others.  You have to be useful.  Do you have any other popular methods of using Reddit?  How do you deal with down voting?  How do you deal with others posting the same links?  Is your game the next Reddit Success?  Share any tips for discussing things on Reddit in the comments.

Blogging is a neat game.

This blogging thing is a neat game.  But what does social media have to do with game design?  When creating a computer game you must "Learn and Respect Marketing" and start talking about your game!  BTW: The book "Inbound Marketing" has been critical in my learning the marketing of a blog.

The Infrastructure:
Obviously I recommend Google for your blogging infrastructure.  Turn everything on, and hook everything together.  A gmail account is easy to obtain.  With that same login you get a blogger account.  Create a webpage to support the blog at sites.google.com.  If you get stuck hooking them together you can turn to youtube for a tutorial (also a google site, btw!).  Turn on Analytics and Adwords.  The Adwords account has a keyword tool which is fun to play with  even if you don't intend to spend any money.  At least play with the Keyword tool in the "Reporting and Tools" section.  It will help you pick keywords for your posts.

You may get lucky and receive a coupon for $100 in Google Adwords.  I tossed in an extra $10, and that has been the entire ad budget for this blog.  It also netted me an entire series of posts called The Adwords Experiment.  I turned those blog posts into a free step by step document called "The Cheap Fast Guide to Google Adwords".  It's a great place to start for a newbie to marketing looking for some help.

The loot:
Google Adsense provides the loot. Sort of.  The higher your numbers, the more readers and viewers and clickers you have the more actual money that you make.  This reward makes you pay attention to your Google analytics information.  It makes you want to drive your numbers higher.  But you will quickly find out that they really don't pay you very much.  Check out thetrafficblogers forum board for tips and ways to make money online.

The Prestige:
The Google Analytics numbers are fun to make go higher without the reward of money.  Seeing the %Change column with a green up arrow makes you happy.  Much like an up arrow on a ticker symbol on the stock market.  Seeing a red down arrow makes you sad.  They provide emotional feedback to the user which inspires better behavior.

Literally a Game:
By the time this blog gets posted I will have been on Empire Avenue for a couple months (I have a large backlog of scheduled blogs).  EA is a wonderful intersection between social media, finance, and games.  It runs like a stock market, based on your social media activity, with achievements, leader boards and other game mechanics.  EA really peaked my interest lately.

The Source:
Reddit makes a good source for traffic for your site, your game, or your blog.  As 'the front page of the internet' it can be a powerful tool for finding folks who are interested in your game idea.  Redditors are very vocal and can be great for feedback, QA, suggestions, tips, etc.  You can even find CC artwork, coders, and others who are interested in working on your project.  We're going to discuss Reddit a bit more over the next couple weeks.  Check out my next post about driving Traffic with Reddit.

The game designers "Hello World".

I made and published a game tonight.  It is just slightly more innovative than the tutorial that taught me how to make it.  Thanks Joseph for the link to StencylWorks.

198+ Game Design Resources

The best way that I can help you get started in game design is to assist in finding resources.  I don't have all the answers, but I do know where to find some of them.  Occasionally knowing where to get an answer is just as good as knowing the actual answer.  My goal is to provide you with links to 101 game design resources...  Ready?  here goes:

1 - 35.) Joseph Burchett

That one link contains a list of 35 resources for game designers.  I could copy all the links and claim they were my own...  But I won't do that, because its actually better for you to know Joesph.  He is the host of GameDevRadio.net.  And you should be paying attention to him.

36 - 97.) Learngamedesign.org Has moved to http://gpwiki.org/

This page is still in it's infancy.  I have even added a few links to coding resources to the Wiki myself, with all these links being added in the future.  The creator of this site has big plans that start with a wiki and end with you learning game design.

98.) Top 50 Game Design Blogs

I'm not sure what being a computer technician has to do with game design blogs.  But hey it's still a great resource.  Maybe this one should raise the count by 50?  Nah...

99.) Game Development Blogs

Along the same lines as number 98, but with some really esoteric heavy math/coding blogs.  Collision detection is not something that every gamer is going to want to read a blog about...  But a few of you might.

100.) Game Dev Map

Lets say you want to work for an existing game developer and you want to find out where they are.  Here is a comprehensive map of game developers world wide.  This website tends to link to medium large companies.  Scanning the Boston entry I can see a lot of the smaller design houses missing.  So this may not present a complete list.  Searching your local community may be helpful.

101.) Reddit.

No, really.  Reddit is an amazing source of information on games and game design.  If you can get past the attitude and the name calling and the Karma, you can find some really great stuff.

102 - 198+.) Amit's Game Programming Information

The count stopped at 198.  There are a lot of links on Amit's page. Mostly geeky and esoteric information, but all interesting nonetheless.  I have not clicked on every link on this site, which is why it's after the 101 links I promised.  Most of the sources are older, some are even links to the internet wayback machine, but they all have quality information.

I apologize for making you click a link to click a link.  It would have been a lot more impressive to list each link out, and would have taken very little time to make a super impressive wall of links.  BU taught me to cite my sources and a lot of these links are not my own.  It would have been easy for me to make it look like I had found them all on my own.  There is, however, a big problem with listing 101 links on one page.  They can become overwhelming very quickly.  So take them in bit sized chunks.  Need more?  Check out these podcasts.

Mzo has plans for learngamedesign.org

@jspringfield211: What are your plans for Learngamedesign.org? May I ask a couple questions and blog about your plans?

@mzo: I have kind of a 3 phase plan for the learngamedesign wiki at the moment. 1) Collect resources, mostly in the form of urls.

2) Organize everything in a very step by step format to act as an alternative to books/schools for everyone to learn freely

3) Turn the entire thing into a game itself. Still brainstorming but ill use the wiki itself for a design doc!

Last but not least I'm looking to add a chat/forum to the site to increase involvement, trying this: convore.com

Do you have an inspiration about that you want to base the site on?

gameful.org has been a big inspiration. I like some parts of Khan Academy. This online hypnosis course.

Do you consider learngamedesign.org to be a 'project'?

Absolutely, one in which I hope to engage others to contribute and mold. It was created to empower. An iterative approach.

Do you have any kind of strategy laid out, or timeline to implement your ideas?

In doing the most recent Exploring Design podcast I realized I should make a good resource as a school alternative.  I'm taking the same approach I take with game design. Focusing on the core mechanic and iterating. Timeline is "ASAP".  The core mechanic is providing the resources and guidance for dreamers who don't know how. Game design is for everyone!

I plan on getting at least the core wiki stuff "finished" by the end of the month. That means collecting and organizing.  I'd like to use the wiki itself and chat/forum to keep everything I'm doing as transparent as possible to elicit feedback.  Part of me would like to take the "Would you guys like to see from this?" but that often leads to a lot of nothing. Vision!

Right! Avoid a 'design by committee'. There is no reason to think of this project as a 'fire and forget'.  Curate the resource after 'launch'.

that was supposed to be the "What would you guys like to see from this?" approach lol ;)

Exactly. I'm a big fan of the "release early, update fast" approach. The wiki is the prototype. Gamejamhq is a similar idea.  Twitter itself is a good example of a community helping steer a minimal product. RT's, hashtags, etc.  A wiki offers enough flexibility to act as a minimal way to flesh things out. I'm a web dev so I can build custom later.

I could have spent a lot of time "pondering" what to build. Instead I used my iPhone at a bbq to setup the domain & wiki!  Which speaks to how I feel about game design. STOP HESITATING, JUST MAKE THINGS! Can't steer a docked boat! Rather than worry about "competing" with similar sites I'm simply incorporating what they have. Pixelprospector for example.

'Pretotyping' fits really well to that philosophy, because you can just jump in and do it no matter your experience level.

Yeah! Keep index cards in your back pocket like I do. I'm considering creating a "pretotyping" kit for EveryGame for iPhone

Who out there in game design land would you love to have input from on this project?

Self taught indies, educators ( http://q2l.org/team ), consultants, gamejam vets to name a few groups that could help.

Thank you so much for chatting with me! I'm really excited to see learngamedesign.org get up and running!  I'll make sure to plug it with the Boston Indies crowd.

Thanks for being interested and excited! Don't think I haven't seen your contributions to the wiki, you rock! :D  Fantastic! Boston seems to have a great scene especially for jams. Keep up the good work on your blog as well.

Ha!  I certainly wasn't trying to be sneaky about it!  I've already written up a blog post about it 101 Game Design Resources.  It's scheduled for next Monday and we can certainly add more to the wiki then.

Minecraft 1.8 Valuation

I have noticed something odd while running my Google Adwords Campaign.  A lot of people click my links to look at my Mojang Valuation post.  Way more than anyone clicks on my other Google Ads.  So let's see if people are getting what they want out of my blog.  This calls for more Minecraft!

On 9/7/2011 Minecraft had

12,970,119 registered user
  3,373,290 purchased



On 9/8/2011 Minecraft had

xx,xxx,xxx registered user
  x,xxx,xxx purchased



On 9/9/2011 Minecraft had

xx,xxx,xxx registered user
  x,xxx,xxx purchased


On 9/10/2011 Minecraft had

xx,xxx,xxx registered user
  x,xxx,xxx purchased

Don't mind me I'm just recording some information here for a future blog post.  : )

I want to chart the sales of Minecraft...  All of them.  And I have sneaky and devious ways of gathering that information.  I'm making a spreadsheet with sales data for Minecraft over 2010 and 2011.  Once the data has been collected and pretty chart will be made.  After that some kind of sneaky integration with either this blog or my website.

A live updated chart or graph of Minecraft sales would be really awesome.  I would need some kind of super awesome web code Guru to help me out with that.  I know a few people to contact directly but any Minecraft loving web code junky volunteers?

The new stage of game design to do first...

There is nothing new about Pretotyping except using the word.  At Gameloop Boston #gl11, during the Prototyping panel professional game designers discussed the various methods they use to prototype a game.  Flash, Game Maker, Unity are all the rage right now in big design companies to get their ideas down into a playable form before coding a new game.  And then there was one guy at the panel whose main prototyping experience was using a D&D dry erase battle mat before ever coding anything...  Yeah, that was me.

Closing Market and economics thread of posts.

The posts for gamers about real world markets, got little to no interest.  Only one person commented, and his suggestion was 'skip it'.  So we're going to discontinue that line.  Diablo III is coming up soon, and I do love Auction House action so perhaps instead of discussing a real market, we can talk an in game economy.  I think I might track particular items prices over time in the AH as an experiment.  Instead of writing about general D3 AH tips and tricks, like Markco, I'll do some specific research and see if there is any value in it.

For right now take a look at the Diablo 3 Gold Guide.  Written by the Author of Just My Two Copper, Markco Polo.  It should grow into a really great community.

3 Business Models for your mobile game.

The topic of business models happened to come up at the GAMBIT event at MIT titled "Indies will shoot you in the Kneecaps".  Eitan of Firehose Games, Ichiro of Dejobaan Games, and Scott of MacGuffin Games and now of Viximo, talked about working for Indie Start ups in all stages of operation.  The moderator was Alex of Owlchemy Labs who stepped out from behind the lap top to answer a question himself.   For PC games check out a business plan for a computer game...  But let's shift focus to mobile games for a moment and take a look.

Some of the MIT students had questions relating to the business model for releasing games as apps.  They were concerned about spreading the game while also recovering some money.  The price point of most games needs to be low in order to attract an audience.  Competition is fierce to drop the price and get more players.  But development costs need to be recouped.  How do you make sure to have some kind of return on investment while still attracting an audience?  From that discussion came these suggestions about business models for your apps.

The Long Game: Give away your app for free to build a fan base.  Worry about recouping development costs later.  This method works if you are in college and have the time to really focus on community development.  In college you have time and a roof over your head to make games which build a name.  This is not a great option for those who do not have resources to cover their expenses up front.

The Guilt Game: Give away low cost of free app, have in app purchases.  This requires using a system that allows for in app purchases.  Which apparently completely excludes Microsoft products.  Some players may have negative attitudes towards in-app or in-game purchases, and this may drive some audiences away.  Many times gamers feel that a free game should be completely free.  They erroneously believe that games appear as if by magic, and there is no cost associated with the production of said games.  Free to play games are slowly eroding that stance.

The Twin Game: Release a free version of an app that contains ads along side a paid version of that app which contains no ads.  This requires more work, and more development time.  Not only do you have to code a version of the game which contains some kind of ad support, but you also have to code one without.  While this may not exactly double the amount of work you have to do before launching a title, it will require more resources.  However, it will allow players to self select into the kind of game experience they prefer.

Have you launched any games under these models?  Mobile or otherwise?  Any horror stories about a method that you will never use again?  If you know someone that can use this information don't forget to +1 the post!  Or share with them directly through twitter.

Razer Blade: Disruptive Technology that has missed the mark.

Razer released a full page Wall Street Journal ad telling us all the obvious. PC Gaming is not dead. Thanks. Mojang and I agree with you Razer. They made that claim as a teaser for the release of the Blade. A very thin, very portable gaming laptop. They must not have done much market research as they touted it as "the world's first true gaming laptop." Or perhaps they just don't feel that Alienware machines are up to par.

Gaming the stock market: PVP your own investments

Picture from Finance.google.com 8/5/2011

Here's a tip.  Find two investments; one that gos up at the same time the other goes down.  Make sure to buy the low one, and sell the high one.  You have just pitted two investments against each other in a PVP grudge match.  When one drops, buy more of the lower.  When one rises sell more of that one.  Wait for the cycle to repeat.  Sounds as simple as waiting for Gold Farmers to post their daily auction house items, right?

Now the practical side of that statement, it is very hard to do that.  Professional investors seek out that kind of thing, and occasionally find them.  Personally I have never found a relationship like that...  You would find it by looking at an industry or two that when one does better, the other does worse.  So what's a gamer to do?  Well the next best strategy is to find an investment that goes up and goes down, and find one that doesn't fall very much or at all.

Lets try that on Easy Mode.  The Stock market goes up and down all the time.  Daily volatility is impossible to get any kind of decent return from, but over the long term you can expect 8.28% per year.  Here is a neat little calculator that shows this.  That includes recessions.  But what about those recessions?  What if you are trying to maintain value during those down times?  The best place you can keep your cash right before a market down turn is a Money Market Fund.  Here is a link to a chart of the Vanguard Money Market Mutual Fund performance over time.  I'll save you the click.  It's worth $1.00 a share.  The chart is really boring, it's a straight flat line.  When the market is crashing, a straight line is a beautiful thing.

So to implement this strategy start buying shares in an Exchange Traded Fund, like we talked about.  Right now, because the market is very low.  Make sure that Etrade, Fidelity, or whatever brokerage you use allows you to exchange ETF shares into a MM fund.  Set up an automatic purchase plan and keep buying more (this is just good advice from The Intelligent Investor).  The market is going to steadily climb out of this recession.  If it looks like things are going to crash again, switch the money out before the fall to a Money Market Fund.  A few weeks later, switch back.

There is a lot to be said to buying more when the stock market crashes.  But we're going to save that for another post.  Additionally more elaborate plans can be made based on that simple beginning.  Remember I don't advise playing a particular stock.  Timing the market as a whole is slightly easier than VVVVVV.  Timing one stock is damn near impossible.  Also this takes guts.  Everyone in the rest of the market will be shouting "SELL, SELL, SELL"!  But gamers have guts and smarts.  We know that grouping behavior is bad in FPS levels...  And guess what, it's bad on the stock market too.

An interview with the Coordinator of Everything at Harcos Labs

Every company has that person behind the scenes that does it all. There are the innovators, the founders who have the big ideas that turn into products. Most stories focus on those few crazy individuals who have zany ideas. But there are also the unsung hero's of the business world. The people who come with 1000 great ideas about making a business run. Today we have an interview with just such a person, and she's a gamer.

The Cheap Fast Guide to Google Adwords.

The Cheap Fast Guide to Google Adwords has been released!  It's cheap because you pay with a tweet! It's fast because it will save you time in creating your first Adwords Campaign.  It also is a bit less spread out then my blog posts, so you will save time learning.

This guide condenses my blog posts on the Adwords Experiment.  It also contains one or two new suggestions that were not mentioned in the posts.  Expect that number to rise over time as the guide will be expanded over time.  The current revision is 1.0, keep checking back to the Guides page for updates.  You will always be able to pay with a tweet.

If you just want to learn about how Adwords works, my guide is the perfect place to get a start because it's from a beginners perspective.  If you need someone to put the guide into practice, but don't have time yourself?  I'd be happy to help out with that as well.  I love helping out start up game companies and first game projects, as you may have gathered from the rest of my blog.

"Rules for Revolutionaries" by Guy Kawasaki

"Rules for Revolutionaries"
By Guy Kawasaki

This book was assigned reading at Boston University, and should be assigned reading for any game business start up or even a first project.  One of my professor, who is a serial entrepreneur and sits on the boards of start-ups, wanted us to read this book.  It's a short book, a quick read, but the rules Guy has put down are critical.  You can get the same general information by watching videos of Guy present his talks...  But they always change a little bit.  If you want all his ideas in one place this is the place.  Here is a youtube video that gives you a flavor for the man and his ideas.

Anyone with a business, a game project, a product, or a service  can benefit from understanding the philosophy of Apple Computers.  If you are an Apple fanatic and wonder 'how do they do it', this is how, written by one of the guys (ha) that helped build their corporate culture.

If you have talked to me for any length of time about business development or game development I have quoted two of Guy's rules.  "Don't worry, be crappy!" and "Churn, baby, churn!"  they are fundamental tenants of how I go about things.

Game Design + Project Management = a new kind of certification?

When you study Business Administration one of the main components is learning Project Management.  I had a great project manager at Boston University.  He has tons of years of experience in manufacturing and business project management, and was an absolute sage when it came to helping any project of mine.  But when I suggested a project based on a computer game, he shrugged his shoulders and politely suggested that I pick a different topic.  I did pick a different topic (a comparison of Call Centers including a new kind called a "Distributed Call Center") but kept working on my own project that became The ZoRTS Project.  Effectively doing two senior projects...

Keith Fuller has been writing blog posts on #ALTDEVBLOG about his Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Scrum Master (CSM) certifications.  These are things that I was encouraged to get, and have thought hard about getting.  His recent posts have convinced me that learning more about them is a critical step for my future in game design, but actually getting the certifications may not be.

The issues that he's addressing today is more along the lines of creating a new certification specifically for Game Designers, born out of the same place as the previous two.  I am VERY interested in this concept.  PMP or CSM certification specifically for game design would resolve my "should I, shouldn't I" debate instantaneously.  The question is how do we move things forward?  I don't know the answer to that.  I actually only have more questions.

Are there any other break away certifications?  Have they succeeded or failed and why?  More gamer's who are learning to be game designers need a familiarity with CSM and PMP ideas.  Folks already established in the industry need more familiarity as well. We should find more folks in the Community who are very familiar with project management and get their advice.  Perhaps everyone interested in this idea should sit down face to face and talk about it.

This has already been brought up to with Scott Macmillan of Boston Indies in a casual way (a quick tweet).  But the Boston area has some great resources to start talking about this in a more serious way.  I think it's time to rally the troops and give this some serious talking time.

Gaming the Market: Where do you learn about this stuff?

So we know that understanding whats happening in the world is important...  Right?  Just like understanding the latest patch notes from Blizzard.  So where do we get the patch notes for the stock market?

We've already linked to a great one.  My financial education started there, and its the place that I return to when learning more. The Motely Fool.  Additionally I love the Planet Money Podcast on NPR.  This American Life covered the economic crisis better than anyone else, and spun PMP off from those endeavors.  Around the house WBUR gets streamed almost all the time.  It is the best NPR radio station in the country...  And broadcasts from BU.

Of the various books out there two great books are worth recommending.  Follow the advice from just these two, and you'll do better than most folks.  If you are a business persona already grab a copy of The Intelligent Investor.  This is basic guide and primer to investing.  It's like a game guide for the market.  It has both 'in depth' and 'in general' advice.  The second book I recommend is The Boglehead's Guide to Investing.  Geared towards folks not as familiar with the stock market, the bond market, and investing in general it would be a really great place to start if you are not as business savy.





The next tip is going to be an analysis of which kind of game the market is and how best to play it.  What do you think?  Is the market more like an FPS?  More like an RTS?  There's the real answer, and then there's my answer. Check back for future tips and as always post questions, comments, or follow the RSS.

The Adwords Experiment: Week 4

In the fourth week of The Adwords Experiment things really started 'moving'.  But it took that long and a lot of trial and error to really learn the system.  Which is actually much longer than originally thought.  On the outset it seemed like a week to learn and then three weeks to collect data.  But in the end...  Not so much.

Week 4 recap:

Overall project.

So eight clicks over a month.  Not exactly what we were looking for when we started the project.  And from the amount of money needed to spend it is pretty clear that we cannot get 10,000 hits out of $100...  Clicks would have to sell for the one penny starting bid.  But here's what we did get...  10,000+ impressions.  The name of my blog was seen over ten thousand times.  While there is no tangible benefit to that, maybe they will think more favorably of me in the future.  Who knows?

First Hypothesis: Dis proven!
There is no magic number that can bring you enough clicks to pay for your Adwords bid.  You cannot game Google.

Second Hypothesis: Dis proven!
There is no magic number that will bring you a profit on your clicks.  And that makes sense.  If you could they would run out of money and wouldn't be able to do things like buy Motorola.

Conclusion:
That does not mean that using Google Adwords to 'sell your product' is a bad idea.  This conclusion just means that it's not a money machine.  Using Google Adwords to sell your product is a good idea...  As long as you have learned how to do it at the least possible cost.  Being efficient is the way a company makes money with the revenue it generates.

On the plus side the whole experiment cost .33 cents.  That's a great value for the learning experience.  Hopefully from your standpoint, these blogs are worth way more.  The cost to me personally was only $.33, but a company would be facing opportunity cost, plus incurred expenses during such an experiment.  Paying someone to do such an experiment, or learn this 'new technology' would cost a company much more than it does me.  A big thanks to Google for financing this whole experiment!

Now the thing to decide, is do I keep the campaign running and go for more hits?  Or do I save the money in the account until another project needs it?  What do you think?  What I will definitely be doing is writing up a guide based on all the little tricks discovered during this process.  Its going to be short, sweet, and to the point.  The goal of the document will be to save you the learning time I had to spend to get the Adwords Campaign up and running.  This document will cost you...  Nothing.  That's right, I'm going to give it away.  It will be short, more of a checklist and therefore quick to write.  So I won't charge you for it.  More information about that soon.

1 Free business plan for your computer game.

What happens if while making a game you run out of money?  Do you have a plan in place if that happens?  Is there a way you can get funds while still developing?  Let's face it, if we're in the game making business we have to think about the business part of things.  Development is a giant Expense so you need Revenue to pay for it. There is a business plan that you haven't thought of yet, that will get you at least a little Revenue during each stage of the game design process.  Which could make the difference between closing a game project, or continuing to develop.

(I couldn't help putting that old South Park gag in there).

This suggestion is based off an older post about the 4 Stages of Game Design.  Check into that if you don't know what the four stages are yet.  At GameLoop 2011 this weekend a fifth new 5 step that some dev teams are implementing was mentioned.  Look for that post coming up soon.

1. Prototype: distribute freely.  That's right, give it away.  It acts as your demo.  Maybe use something like paywithatweet.com to get the word out.  But don't forget to ask for donations.  Gamers can be really generous when they like a game.  Use these funds and the feedback to rev the game into Alpha.  
2. Alpha:  charge a low amount for the alpha version of the game, promise that if people buy it now they will get all upgrades included with this price. Suggestion: 1/4 of the Full Release price.  Use these funds to rev the game into Beta. Make sure people know that the price is going to go up if they wait.
3. Beta: charge a higher amount for the beta. Suggestion: 1/2 of the Full Release price.  Use these funds to rev the game into Full Release.
4. Full release: Once the full release of the game is ready, the price should increase to the full amount.  You need to set this price first, and then decide what the others will be.   Tell everyone what these numbers are going to be ahead of time and stick to them.

If you think this business model sounds familiar, you're right.  This is really a recap of the sales of Mojang's first title Minecraft.  More recently QCF Design was inspired to use this model to release Desktop Dungeons.  They released a freeware version of the game, then charged for Beta, more for Alpha following in Mojang's footsetps.  Notch and crew didn't have the benefit of hindsight or success to think of this as a good publishing methodology, but I bet they had a good idea it would work.  Given the right set of circumstances it could work for many independent games.

A word of warning: this would not be a good strategy for developing a console game.  At this stage asking console users to download many small chunks of data, getting them all vetted through the console makers, etc would be a huge hassle.  For a game on Steam or self published it could do alright.  Additionally restrictions in how games are published via app stores might also make this a bad business plan for an app.  We're going to cover three great business plans for apps in the future.

Is this business model going to work for absolutely everyone?  No. So what should come from this post?  Hopefully a good conversation on your team.  If you haven't even thought about business development yet (and most beginning developers don't), then use this as a jumping off point to explore the idea of monetization.  You might not have a business guy on the team.  But you still need to spend some time considering 'business' aspect of game design.  Most game developers come from the coding or art world.  Tweet this to a fellow team member and take this as an opportunity to walk for a moment in the business world.

If I could ask Carl Mennah one question it would be: "What are the steps to building the infrastructure through these stages?"  This is something they had to piece together themselves.  Some of their trials and tribulations were rather public (IE issues with Paypal).  Some decisions were private and that insight would be valuable to future attempts at making this method work.  If anyone has an opinion on that, please comment.

*** Edit ***
There is some great discussion about this topic over on Reddit.  If you like the post, head over and give me a up vote and jump in the discussion!

Know the playing field.

A good PVP player will tell you that success requires understanding the terrain.  Knowing what your goals are in Arathi Basin  and where to go to achieve those goals are key to getting your honor points at the end of the day.  (Am I dating my time in WoW by mentioning Honor Points?  Most likely).  Also understanding how other players react to the field is important as well.  Where are the hotspots?  Watching out for repetitive behavior is key to understanding a PVP match.  This concept is also key to doing better in the market.

There is another side to this coin.  If you don't understand something, don't expect to play it well.  As the example in the intro illustrates: I didn't understand the market forces which lead to the collapse of the industry, and lost money.  The same will happen to you.  If you are a gamer looking to start investing the first advise is to learn as much as you can about what you are going to invest in.  It is actually far easier to stay on top of the market as a whole.

Advice #1: Play the market, not the stock.

Unless you really know a particular company very well (say Activision Blizzard for example) don't try and play just one stock.  Instead look for things called Exchange Traded Funds (ETF).  This kind of fund should have very low costs, because a human doesn't get paid to manage it.  If you find one with high costs, run away.  Find a different one.  An ETF just tracks the market.  That's all.  Instead of paying attention to one particular stock now you just have to pay attention to what's happening overall.

Advice #2: Collect Good Information.

For weeks NPR has been talking about troubles in the market because of the stagnation on the rise of the debt ceiling.  And the market slipped a little bit more each day.  Were you paying attention?  Were you taking action based on that information?  This is like a big red zone in the heat map.  The thing to pay attention to is 'nervousness' when investors are nervous the stock market drops.  In this post, lets avoid the issue of what to do when the market drops, we'll talk about that in future posts...  But for now simply understand that although you cannot predict specific behavior in the market, at times you can really get a great idea of the increasing likely hood of a drop in the market.  Last weeks "Market Meltdown" is a great example.

I'm going to apply more gamer strategies to business over time, but for now, lets keep this post to that one tip.  So now that we know we need to pay attention to something, where can we find great places for that information?  Preferably places that don't include a lot of craziness.  Some great suggestions come up next week!

The Adwords Experiment: Week 3

The Adwords Experiment is up to week 3! Actually going through this process has taught me a lot about using Adwords.  If you are going to run an adwords campaign that uses many low competition keywords, you have to create an ad group for each keyword.  Ads must have the keyword in the text of the ad.  Learning how to do this is like learning how to walk.  Clever bidding is like learning how to run.  The first two weeks of this experiment was definitely running before walking.

At the end of the third week we see stats that are pretty close to the first two.  Something is not right, so more drastic changes need to be made.  In week 2 we started seeing Adgroups increasing the effectiveness of each ad...  But at the end of Week 3 going into Week 4 its time for a complete overhaul.

During weeks 1 and 2 more Ads in my campaign were created and polished enough to become 'eligible' for inclusion on the results for the keywords in the campaign.  But not many people were seeing them.  And no one was clicking them. The campaign now contains 23 keywords and 19 adgroups which support those keywords.  Ads no longer double up on the keywords, which seemed fine at the beginning of the process.  There are multiple copies of ads in each adgroup if multiple keywords happened to be used in the same ad.

Going forward each Ad Group will have one Keyword.  Even if it has multiple ads.  Operating under the assumption that whatever algorithm Adwords uses is smart enough to use multiple keywords with multiple ads in a single Adgroup is apparently not the case.  So some major time will be spent resorting the Adwords Campaign, and rewriting the rough draft of the guide.  Getting that guide is going to save you so much time.  It will even be better then reading about all these mistakes and corrects as I make them.

Till next week!  Keep Experimenting... Share your results if you have any! Oh and keep an eye out for my ads.

5 Great Ways to Find an Artist for your Game Project.

 For the ZoRTS project finding Artists seemed to be the biggest challenge.  There is just something about artists which makes them really hard to find.  Maybe there aren't many out there at the moment.  Maybe Artists are looking in traditional media instead of game design.  Or maybe working on a project for no pay is not very appealing.  Regardless of the reason for a difficult search here are some of the strategies the ZoRTS project has used to find Concept Artists and Sprite Artists for The ZoRTS Project.

1.) Trade Shows/Conventions.  While attending Pax East 2011, I went to every panel for art.  Not to attend the panel, just to talk to the Artist lining up to listen. At a big convention you have an hour long wait for the room.  Two words: captive audience.  You can talk up your game, get business cards, or just chat with art folks.

2.) Art Schools.  One of those Pax East Attendees was a representative from an art school.  They are always looking for 'internships' and opportunities for their students.  They even have offices set up to help find projects that are looking for artists.  You may want to avoid the fine arts colleges, and go with ones that have game or programming curriculum...  But don't limit yourself if you are located in a part of the country with only a few colleges.

3.) Go to Kongregate.com.  Many of the games there have art under a Creative Commons License that will allow you to use the art for free, as long as you mention the artist.  This pack of art may be all you need for a prototype, or it may be a place to start and build from.

4.) Build a website!  If you are laboring in secrecy there is no way you can get the word out about your game.  Polish those inbound marketing skills, or contract me to do it, grab some free Google webspace and start telling us about your game.  Use this to attract the attention of the artists that you need.

5.) Reddit!  Use the /r/gamedev, /r/indiegame or similar subreddit.  And there are other more appropriate boards there as well.

In fact this blog post was inspired by a reddit post.  Check it out here to find out if they have added any new and useful comments.  What ways have you used to look for artists to work on a game?  Any 'war stories' about trying to find that great artist?  Next week it's finally here, 1 Free Business Plan for your computer game.  It was held back one week to tweak it and make sure it's perfect!

Late to the Debate...

I like to think about things for a while before posting about them.  This Gamasutra article about Canada helping game designers reminded me of an opinion about our own debate about tax incentives for computer games.  This post is basically a rewrite of a comment Caroline's post on the Fire Hose Games website. Give it a read and leave a comment with your opinion.  Also it would be great to catch up with the current state of this debate, so if you know of any locations where it's being talked about online, link them in the comments section.

A Gamer's Advice for playing the Stock Market.

Could looking at the market from the point of view of a gamer shed some light on preventing terrible losses in the real stock market?  Does being a gamer provide helpful insight into 'the market'?  Can we gamers prosper by looking at the elements of the stock market as we look at the elements of games?  Lets explore those questions with a new series of blog posts.  These posts will get released on Fridays.  If this kind of thing seems interesting, let me know in the comments below.

Economic downturn.  It scares everyone who is trying to 'play the market'.  Scares them more then their first Creeper attack, because a downturn is long and drawn out, not sudden and explosive.  Watching your portfolio shrink is the creeping fear of disaster, not the sudden death of a gunshot.  In my time I've worked at a Mutual Fund Company and a Private Student Loan Company.  My investment education started at the height of the market in 2008.  An employee purchase program sounded like a great idea.  A few hundred dollars set aside from my paycheck went into a $45 dollar stock, which  promptly fell to around a $1.00 over the next couple months.  The official toll: 96.96%.  My advice comes from my experiences, my business education, and reading about investing.

If there are any topics that you would like to look at through the lens of gaming, leave a comment.  They'll get written up in this series.  So post them now to get your burning questions in.  Oh, and I am not a professional so please consult with a trained financial professional before making any large stock purchases...  Or even small ones.  Next Friday we going to talk basics of investing for gamers.  First Strategy: Know the playing field.

One really exciting thing coming up is the release of Diablo III.  There have been a few ruffled feathers from
gamers of late about some of the protection surrounding the game.  I for one am going to be thinking more about the in game economy.  Diablo III will allow players to auction off goods in either gold, or real currency!  There is major opportunity for applying lessons learned on the real stock market to the virtual one, and vice versa.  One great resource is The Diablo 3 gold guide.  The guide is written by Markco Polo who wrote the amazing Just My Two Copper blog, and also The Traffic Blogger.  Markco does a ton of research and experiments into the best ways to make gold, and now real money in Blizzards Games.  Hopefully this series of posts will have good crossover and we'll be able to highlight some real world economic effects using the games economy!

The Adwords Experiment: Week 2

This week on the Adwords Experiment the bid on each keyword has been kicked up to 2 cents per click.  There was some additional tweeking which many help the ads come up in keyword searches.  These tweek's were necessary and should have been done before the experiment started.

Remember before you start an Adwords campaign, make sure that your ads actually contain the keywords they target.  Google uses relevancy and bid amount to determine if your ads come up in searches.  Apparently they wont let just anyone bid on any keyword with an unrelated ad.  To make sure your ad actually comes up, polish the ads to be meaningful and contain the keyswords relevant to your site.  For this reason the 'shot gun' approach is most likely not a successful one.

Fortunately Google lets you have multiple ads per campaign.  Which gives you an opportunity to create ads which target those keywords.  This has been a classic example of learning how to run before learning how to walk.  The experiment may be in trouble simply because time hasn't been spent perfecting the ads.  But on the bright side it won't cost anything to keep going...  So the experiment can be rerun at a later date.

For Week 3 the keywords and ads are narrowing down into 'Ad Groups'.  There will be six ad groups each with between 1 and 3 ads.  They will end up having 3-4 keywords each.  You can save yourself a lot of time and effort by setting this up ahead of time.  For me this is a fun experiment, so the trial and error approach is fine.  But if you are doing this for real money, at a real company, make the Ad Groups ahead of time.  You know you are doing it right when Google starts suggesting additional keywords to go with your ads.  For me that took till the first day of week 3.  If you group well it should happen almost immediately.

There isn't much reason to post pictures of the graphs...  They look exactly the same.  Same number of clicks, same cost.  But the impressions are rising.  So people have been seeing the ads.

This week was pretty much the same as the first week. Which is disappointing, although informative.  It means that the amount that you bid is not the only relevent factor in using Adwords.  I'm preparing something really special for you guys based on what I'm learning.  Anyone who wants to run a good Adwords Campaign is going to want to take a look.  Check back with Week 3.