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.

Learning Java

To be less of a bad game project manager, I'm learning a coding language.  I've chosen Java.  It may not be the best language to learn for game programming (we can go over the reasons that have been explained to me once I know how to code better), but as an object oriented programming language it's a good place to start.  Also Minecraft was written in Java, and it would be excellent to code mods for the game.

What resources were used to learn Java?
thenewboston.com  (Progress: Tutorial 25 of 87)
"Head First Java", full review on the way.

Minecraft Specific Resources?
Bukkit Tutorials.

Cheap game design

Hypothetically lets assume you're a gamer with an idea for a game.  This should be easy to imagine.  You want to make a game but have no money.  Once you have chosen your team, and gotten some idea of what you are building (with a game design document), and picked your distribution/coding platform, you realize that you need to keep track of a lot of different kinds of information.  Specifically bug and issue tracking.

There are many great services out there with the ability to track issues, but there is another method which is often overlooked.  You can build your own bug tracker using sites.google.com.  As we were starting the ZoRTS project the Lead Coder asked me to find bug tracker to use.  As a manager on a project with no money something with low cost is ideal.  The following video on youtube provided the answer.



Pros:

• Works with other Google services
• Cheap! As in free.
• Hand built to do exactly what you need it to do.

Cons:

• There are other methods which may be better
• Basecamp (Which the ZoRTS project would like to use)
• Assembla (Which the ZoRTS project is using)
• 50 others.

There are a couple factors left out of the pros and cons.  For example using sites.google.com as your issue tracker takes effort to build and maintain.  You have to have and idea of what kinds of things you need to track ahead of time, and how the page is going to be used.  The ZoRTS website includes an example page so that you can get an idea of the kinds of columns that you might need.  However this is a moot point as you still need to spend time and effort updating and recording in any bug tracker.  It might just take a minute or two more to use google sites.

So what do you use to provide an infrastructure for communication of issues, bugs, design changes?  Why do you like to work with it?  If you have experience in the area please leave a comment below, let us know your opinion.

thenewboston.com

As you know I'm a business guy.  Having been out of IT for 10 years, there is some rust on those old coding skills.  It has been suggested to me recently that learning Java would be a good idea.  Although  Java is not the best language for game design, it seemed like a good idea because Mojang is going to release the code for Minecraft at some point and allow people to mod the game.  Which is super exciting.  Also the more coding that I know the more help I can be to The ZoRTS Project as the project manager.  Even if we use QT or C++ to code the game with having a good understanding of the specifics of coding means better communication with my team.

We have a new coder interested in working on the Project, and he recommended thenewboston.com.  The website is so great that this special post was made to point you in Bucky's direction.  I cannot recommend the site more.  They have some amazing tutorials on every major programming language.  The Java section starts with downloading the necessary programs and coding environments.  This is head and shoulders above other tutorials on youtube, where they assume you know that already or don't think to provide assistance.  There are 87 basic Java videos, 27 intermediate Java videos, and then 30 Java game development videos!  That is just Java.  The site also offers C, C++, Visual Basic, Python, iPhone development.  Even better the website doesn't seem overwhelming.  Really important for a newbie to coding.

To supplement Bucky's wonderful website I have a couple books are on their way.  They shall get reviews once they have arrived and been read.  It's tempting to post them as Amazon Affiliates now...  But it's in better taste to plug them on a review instead of taking the lime light away from thenewboston.com.  So watch my blog for those reviews!

I would love to find a website that specifically targets people learning Java for Minecraft.  If you have any suggestions on ways to learn Java please, I would love for your to post them in comments section!  Thanks!

The Most Important First step in game design.

Just so that we get this out of the way right up front, I have never made a computer game before.  Fortunately I have made a game before (a LARP in fact, edited the 8th edition).  That puts me in the classification of Amateur.  If I ever get Zorts made, look here on this blog for a big post with lots of joy and wonderment.  I am on this step with everyone else.  My edge on this situation is my business degree from BU.

Most gamers at some point realize that they want to make a computer game.  Some game concept that they want to see, or some story that they want to tell.  You have some kind of an idea that to them makes a great game.  Hopefully you have 100 ideas, or better yet more.  Some spark of inspiration has hit and from that the beginnings of a computer game arise.  Assuming that you are an amateur, what do you do next?

Start talking about it.

Your first instinct is going to be fear that someone else is going to steal your idea.  While that may happen, it most likely won't.  And there are many reasons why.  The best thing that you can do is get over the fear that your ideas are going to be stolen.  Especially in the design doc phase.  Start finding people that want to talk about making computer games.  You will find that 9 times out of 10 they are already making their own game.  But talk to them anyway.  Networking.  Get over the fear and create a web page for the project.  This advice was provided to me from Community Management/Marketing folks at Pax.  Yes I was one of the 12 people that went to a Community Management/Marketing panel at Pax.  And it was awesome.

Ultimately there is no right answer.  For the ZoRTS Project the game design doc came next.  What do you need next?  A game design doc?  A road map?  How about a Gantt Chart?  Stay tuned folks, more steps to follow!

Notes from NERD

Notes from Getting the Dough to Develop: Video Game funding

@Microsoft NERD Center.

#NEGGamesSiG Hash tag for the night.

New England Game SiG.

• Drives awareness and growth of the New England games industry.
• Mike Cavaretta @gamelaw Lawyer specializing in the games industry.

Monty Sharma moderating.

Tim Wright: Grand Banks Capital – VC Guy, Not a game guy.

• They want to see a product with users on the product.
• Make sure the person that you pick as an investor knows something about what you are doing.
• VC's can get talented people to help work on a project. They can bring expertise to the table.
• The First VC in the door is responsible to help sell the company to other investors. To help facilitated additional rounds of investment.
• Mobile social gaming. Will be or is the fastest growing thing ever.
• Unity is an amazing way to create a game quickly and publish it to multiple platforms.
• Whatever you do, make it reproducible, make things plug in.
• Company invests between $750,000 to $2 million for %20 ownership.

Micheal Dornbrook: Board Member Common Angels 

{finds passionate people builds the product, and then feeds them to Grand Banks Capital for additional rounds of financing when necessary}

• Don't have one game.
• We're looking at the team.
• Harmonix went through 6 rounds of investment. 3 Angels who know nothing about what they were investing in.  They believed in the team and invested based on that information.
• People who invested in Harmonix waited 10 years for payoff.  ROI: 100 times investment.
• Disruptive is usually done wrong: People tend to look at whats out there and go after the big guys who are doing well.
• Just like Guy Kawasaki's advice about attacking the unfortified hill.
• Company invests between $50,000 to $100,000. But individual members of the group may invest outside of the group itself. Can even be a personal check.

Jamy Nigiri: Jagex Games Studio

• Have something they can play, playable vertical slice. Go beyond the concept.
• Passion test, is someone on their team passionate about a game brought to them.
• How are you going to monetize. Very important answer. Give a pat answer.
• Jamy says: “If you can fund your game yourself do it.”
• Jagex says: We bring a trust and user community to the deal. They have passionate users.
• They have knowledge and experience in the game world. They already know how to do it.
• Currently working with one guy in his garage. Developer friendly!
• Disruptive Opportunities: How do you get an audience that don't consider themselves gamers to get into the game? How do you get them to spend money? How do you turn casual gamers in to spending gamers?
• Likes resource gathering.
• No deal is the same, so the percentage, the valuation, the revenue on the backside is different on each deal. Would generally split things 50/50. Each group has skin in the game, each group is passionate about the project. (Where typically the developer[you] might get 15%, publisher takes 85%)

Jamie Gotch CTO – Founder of Subatomic Studios

• Plan for your audience.
• Beware of feature bloat.
• The game that I make is not the kind of game I would play.
• Understand your audience.
• If you are a hardcore gamer, your audience may not be a hardcore gamer.
• Balance between deep experience and simplicity.
• Look for people who are highly motivated folks, who will stick it through to the end.

Game Dev Story

• Play this game. A game about building games. Remarkably detailed game about the contract traps.

The job of an Analyst.

Carl Manneh, CEO of Mojang, replied to my tweet plugging this blog post.  I was in gamer/business nerdvanah.


Jspringfield211: @notch @carlmanneh Mojang Forecast, just for fun.blog.zorts.net/2011/06/minecr…
Carlmanneh: It sure is. Nice post, but I think your evaluation is a bit modest ;)


The strategy of being a business analyst is that you provide data based on calculations and reasonable expectations.  Did I undershoot the number?  Absolutely.  Because the numbers I generated are not for investors, they are internal business numbers.  There is a big difference between a number generated for internal use and a number generated for external use.  If I were making such predictions because the marketing department wanted to know its budget for the next three years, I would want to undershoot the number as well.  "Worst case scenario you have x% of this projected budget to sell ads with next year."


What I did wrong in that post was state "Were Mojang Specifications to do an IPO they could be worth as much as 50 - 70 million Euro" without the qualification that the numbers were internal.  To the untrained eye it might look like I was forecasting for a different group of people then I actually was.  Or forecasting as an investor, which I was not.  I was pretending to be an employee of Mojang.


Minecraft has no reason to EVER do an IPO and never should.  Becoming a public company fundamentally changes a company in unpredictable ways (And I don't even know the difference between a Swedish IPO and an American one).  The culture of the Mojang would be altered in a bad way.  At the moment they can take advice from fans or not as they see fit.  Pistons for example.  They are free to add or not add anything based on what they feel Minecraft is about.  In a public company situation they might feel pressure to add a 'feature' simply because the shareholders wanted it.  Or because the customers wanted it.  Even if it goes against the spirit of the game.


And besides, if things are going we well as Carl indicates...  They really don't stand to gain that much more money than they already have from an IPO.  ;)