Why are game ideas worthless?

Well, it's been two years since starting this blog.  Today 51 of you wonderful folks have subscribed to, read, and liked my posts.  I really appreciate it.  Thank you.  A recent twitter conversation reminded me of an old blog post, which is still relevant today.  "Until you launch something, the time you spend is meaningless" was controversial at a time when this blog had few readers, let's dust it off and see if it still is.

Thoughts on High Grounds.

Spry Fox, the creator of Triple Town, has a new deck building game out.  It's a pretty good game and has gotten a good review from PAReport.  With Scrolls coming along slowly and methodically, online collectible card games should have a good couple of years coming up.  Here are some of my thoughts on what it means to have a deck building or collectible card game in a digital medium.

Metrics Driven Game Design

Zynga has defended the idea that designing a game heavily based on metrics input is a winning strategy.   Although no one likes the idea of what the output is after that process.  The popular trope around the indie game world is a general feeling of distaste for the kind of game that gets produced by putting in more numbers based feedback rather than human based feedback.

Ownership and investing.

As a complicated person with many ideas, knowledge and experience I have an odd view point on investing in companies.  If we were to sit down and talk one on one about how to go about investing for retirement  for profit, etc. it would quickly become apparent that I am a fan of Jack Bogle.  Keep expenses low, use EFTS, re-balance every year, etc.  Invest in Exchange Traded Funds and understand regression to the mean.

Likewise as a business major I have strong opinions on when, why, and how to take companies public.  You don't.  Companies perform better when they are private organizations.  People take companies public because they think they'll make boatloads of money. Let's relate this to the game industry.  Facebook and Zynga have both had tons of problems after going public.

But I'm very interested in equity crowd funding.  The JOBS Act signed this past April, although completely up in the air, promises to allow sites like kickstart to do more then just take donations for projects.  Right now you can't buy ownership in a copy.  You pledge funds and if they meet a goal you get swag.  Equity crowd funding means those pledges buy you ownership of the project or company.  Exactly what I would talk you out of as an investor.

This is the central heart of the debate about allowing equity crowd funding.  Being a registered rep and business major there will come a time when I'll someday be involved with asking gamers to help build a game by purchasing ownership in a project or company.  At the moment I'm not sure how to resolve asking for someone to buy equity when I wouldn't advise them to make that purchase if the shoe was on the other foot.

This is all academic moral questioning right now...  But at some point this will have to get sorted out.  Not just by me, but by everyone.

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.

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.

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.

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.

4 Stages of Game Design

Some questions were raised in the post "Until you launch something, the time you spend is meaningless", about the nature of computer game development.  There are many ways that you can develop a title, so these are not the only way that such stages can be defined.  This is in no way a complete list, but meant to provide basic awareness.  It will also form basic definitions for ideas that come in future posts.

Game idea != Product

Scott McMillian, formerly head of MacGuffin Games, gave another great presentation at Boston Post Mortem Wednesday night.  It was a second showing of "Death of an Indie Studio", a post mortem discussion the rise and fall of his own small business.  There should be audio and perhaps video of the entire presentation coming along soon.  Which will be really valuable to get the nuance of some of his statements (the art and business continuum, for example).  For now you can find my notes and links to the slides.  The official post from Boston Post Mortem is now up, with more visual goodness!

Zynga needs more friends in its social network.

Some interesting news today about Zynga, just after yesterdays post about Friendster becoming a social games platform.  Apparently they are completely dependent on Facebook.  Not only has Zynga won Facebook, but they have been captured by FB.  This is exactly the kind of thing that I would worry about as an investor.  Single platform dependence is a big problem.  Anything from a temporary interruption to a permanent change in policy on the part of FB could effect Zynga's ability to provide it's games.  That dependence should worry investors even if they feel that FB is 100% reliable.

If I were looking to invest in Zynga I would want to see a comprehensive plan that explains how they are going to get themselves off a Facebook dependency ASAP.  Just because Facebook has become my main personal social network does not mean that making it the sole foundation of a companies future is a good idea.  (Only because I don't have a Google+ invite yet)  Diversification is important to investors.

This does shed light onto yesterdays post.  Zynga has huge incentive to 'play nice' with Friendster.  And Viximo for that matter.  This can act as a test of Friendster...  Managing a relationship with Zynga could really provide a lot of information about how smart the folks at Friendster are.  Knowing that Zynga has no other social networks under it's belt shifts the balance of power to the networks.

Zynga has an incentive to love and support (and maybe even provide money to) anyone that can help them break dependence on Facebook...  Er...  "Grow the user base" (That sounds much more friendly).  Does Zynga work with Viximo?  Hmm.  Maybe they should get in contact.  Zynga needs to add Friendster, Google+, and Viximo to it's 'social network'.

Friendster = Social gaming platform? Wha?

This is interesting news.  Friendster is relaunching as a social gaming platform.  They have quite the challenge ahead of them.  Ultimately any 'social media game' has to compete with users of Zynga's products (Cityville, Farmville, etc).  Tadhg over at whatgamesare.com made the point that Zynga won Facebook, and they did this by being a really smart company.  To compete Friendster would need to bring something to the table that Zynga can't provide.

Or maybe Freindster isn't trying to compete with Zynga.  Maybe they are trying to provide a new platform to Zynga and get some cash by putting new faces in front of Z's games.  This puts them into the old position as trying to provide something new that Facebook can't.  Viximo already plays in that space and is capitalizing on putting games everywhere that Facebook ins't.  We Americans tend to forget that there are some really big social networks out there which are not run by Zuckerberg. And Viximo has a big head start on taping that market over Friendster.

All this just as Google+ is happening?  We have no idea what the impact of Google+ will be on social gaming.

In any event, it seems Friendster has a real challenge ahead of them.  They are trying to solve their own problems by playing in a highly competitive space and just may be positioning themselves between a good number of rocks and a couple hard places.  The mantra of any company that wants to make money is "Find out where customer pain is, and remove it".  I'm not sure there is pain that Freindster can remove, or at least I don't see it yet.  Maybe you smarter folks can point out to me what I'm missing in the comments.

Minecraft Bonus Post!!!! Mojang Forecast.

Another week, and another bonus post.  Lucky you.  This bonus post, however, is going to be a bit less project oriented and  a bit more analysis oriented.  Which you may or may not find interesting.  Consider yourself warned.  This post started because I was replying to someone on the escapist about Minecraft.