January 2010
20 posts
Ethical Design: Are Most Social Games Just Virtual...
Alan sent me a link to a curious new game on Facebook the other day called Warstorm. The idea seems to be that of a card game in which you select heroes and troop units and fight battles. At first I thought it looked interesting, with comparatively high graphical polish compared to most and even some reasonably stirring music. However, after taking time to choose cards and build a squad etc, the...
New SGN CEO on the Future of Social Gaming. →
The coming Facebook games price war (#socialgames)
Long anticipated and dreaded, Facebook is essentially going to turn off what has been effectively free banner advertising for game developers like Playfish or Zynga for a little over a year, and it’s absence will be noted. Notifications are dead.
It seems likely (anecdotally) that the major developers are all serving at least one Notification per day to every user who has their app...
Bedtime thought: Will the end of Notifications in Facebook lead to a price war in game ads?
Twitter Fail Whale is back. I blame @BillGates joining today.
Steve Blank: Rethinking the Product Development... →
Facebook Platform Email API Going Live Today;... →
Players are for life, not just for Christmas
Probably the most critical problem that most game makers share is that of not understanding their customers. Publishers often throw huge resources into developing and publishing a game, advertising it, and doing PR for it etc, only to have it fail in the market. And then they blame external forces for this (market conditions, piracy, the recession, whatever).
The mistake that they are making is...
Ribbon Hero: Microsoft Office becomes a game.... →
The fail whale is all over Twitter this morning.
Hilarious FarmVille Parody Ad Tells It Like It Is... →
Gangster City: #playfish makes a Flash-based mafia...
Here’s the game.
I came across this game in my RSS reader this morning (via Inside Social Games) and their generous review (they’re nice guys, maybe a bit too nice sometimes) makes the case that it leaps forward the standard.
I can’t deny that the game looks lush for a Facebook game (and who would want to anyway) and has a nice Grand Theft Auto box-cover flavour. But on the...
The Dog Days are Over. My anthem for 2010 to say...
Gamasutra - News - Opinion: The 99 Best Free Games... →
December 2009
24 posts
The 21st century begins now.
After the ten year 20th century revival that was the noughties, it’s nouveau temps.