What Games Are: Game Design, Development, Publishing, Marketing and Art

Your Game Is A Graph

Forget everything else for a moment and consider that your game is just a graph of users over time. There is more than one kind of viable graph, but knowing which kind you are aiming for is important. It should affect every strategic or marketing decision that you make. This week's news that Draw Something's user numbers have already dropped by 30% is significant, for example. It makes Zynga's purchase of it look like a lot of money spent based on misunderstanding that game's graph.

Do you know which kind of graph you are creating, and are you making the right choices to improve it? Are you targeting your monetization strategy in the right way, or are you basing it on a faulty understanding of its likely graph?

Why Not Brandification Instead? [Gamification]

My sense is that brand managers are approaching games in the wrong way. A few years ago they were all into creating virtual worlds but that didn’t really work out. More recently they went through a phase of creating social games, but again no luck. Now they’re keen to commission digital agencies or game developers to create gamified sites or software for brands, which will inevitably become coupon schemes, badges and leader boards.

The vast majority of these projects are utter failures because they end up creating vapid digital services with no soul. The ones that do succeed often do so accidentally (for example, because they were unexpectedly fun). Games are a cultural product, and like any other culture there is a line where commercial relationships become nakedly self-serving, and no customer finds that sexy.

Perhaps the branding industry should consider branding games rather than gamifying brands instead, if only for the reason that it’s more likely to work.

A Simple Reason Why Games Aren’t Finished

CNN recently asked why games are never finished by most players. In an age when production values are so high, it’s a very valid question. The industry response is often that older players with work and family commitments simply can’t play as much as they used to, so this makes the case for shorter, more intense, games.

I disagree. In my experience, players find the time to play just as readers find the time to read. Online games also indicate that games can occupy many hundreds of hours for motivated players in the right circumstances.

The uncomfortable question to ask is whether the problem is the games rather than the players. Simply put, are players not completing games because they’re boring?

Synchronous or Asynchronous Gameplay [Definitions]

Asynchronous gameplay is a popular phrase for describing various forms of online games that connect players but don’t require simultaneous play. Many eminent commentators have talked about the possibilities for this kind of gameplay, and how it might be the future for games.

However, in a fascinating debate on Gamasutra initiated by Ian Bogost, Raph Koster and I ran across a confusion of terms. Raph said that asynchronous games have existed for hundreds of years, citing play-by-mail Chess as an example. Except I think play-by-mail Chess is synchronous. When talking about synchrony, we actually meant two entirely different things.

Where many people casually talk about synchrony in relation to whether players are together in real time, I think it means games that require players to be in sync with one another in game time. This article elaborates on that idea and describes how real and game time intermingle.

Keeping Players At Bay [Diablo 3]

Reddit is not happy. Nor Wired. Nor Rock Paper Shotgun. Nor indeed much of the internet this morning. Why? Primarily because of the news about Diablo 3.

In short: the game will insist on using always-online authentication, forbid modding (allowing access to the engine or tools), and include a market for the buying and selling of items. The first means you won’t be able to play the game on a plane. The second means that fans will not be allowed to fully express themselves. And the third means that those with more money may progress faster.

Of the three ideas, only the third is smart. Most players really don’t mind if others have used a shortcut to their success as long as it doesn’t affect them directly. But the other two are terrible. They are indicative of a growing trend in publishing to try and keep players at bay. They may work in the short term, but as long term strategies they are fraught with danger.

Investment [Engagement Hierarchy]

(Last December I started to write a series of posts about a concept called ‘the engagement hierarchy’. My thesis is that players engage with games in five distinctive manners, and that while all games get users who engage at all levels, there are clear clusters around one rung or another on the hierarchy that define largely what that game can be.)

Investment is what happens when players fantasize. Characters come to life, music is hummed-along-to, and the possibilities of the game world feel as though they extend beyond the boundaries of what the player sees on screen. Players imagine scenarios, moments, what-ifs, winning strategies, infer qualities of the game that the developers never actually included, and otherwise find the game magical in a way that they can’t quite express. 

More than enjoying the experience, invested players participate in it. They resonate with it, become the influencers who connect other players and want to know its creators. An invested game is one that is important, and invested players feel as though they are a part of something.

All Games Are About Death [Fundamentals]

Death from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series of graphic novels.

A common whipping boy theme in the media regarding games is that they are violent. Why must they always involve killing, ask the exasperated. Why can’t games be nice? Games certainly can be nice, but take a step back from the visceral element of the violence question and what they’re really asking is: Why must games be based around death?

The reason is that death produces focus and causes change. Without death (whether symbolically or actually) a game has no purpose, no reason to pick up the gun and no sense of motion. Without death there are no wins. There is only activity.

It may be as visceral as a bloody spatter, as ordinary as a rotting crop or as abstract as a penalty shootout, but death is everywhere in games. Death frames a game. Artistically as well as functionally, death is right at the heart of what games are.

How Engagement Killed Gameplay [Language]

(with thanks to Casper Moller)

I used to hear the word gameplay bandied around by executives a lot. Everyone would say that their game was all about innovative gameplay, and believe it, even though most of their games looked and acted just like every other game. However something has changed.

Nobody in those meetings talks about gameplay any more. It seems to have fallen by the wayside. Now everyone’s talking about engagement. It’s changing the way that games are thought of, and so the kinds of games that are getting funded and developed.

Engagement has, in a sense, killed the ideal of gameplay, how we see games, and certainly how we will develop them in the future.

To Demo or Not to Demo? [Marketing]

Sharna Jackson tweeted me, asking:

what's the verdict on playable demos? Just trying to decide if we need one on an app we're developing for 8+

And it’s an excellent question. Studios often get caught on the subject of whether they should give away a demo of their game, or leave it alone. The prospect is that they will acquire customers through this marketing effort, but the fear is that they will effectively give the store away.

Here’s my view: If you’re going to give away a demo, make it substantial. Otherwise, don’t bother.

You Need 100 Hours of Gameplay [Design]

(with thanks to Dan Brady)

Most retail games end up in the second hand sales bin almost as quickly as they are bought. Most iPhone games get played only a couple of times and are then uninstalled. Most Facebook games only manage 5-10% engagement. However some games sustain players long after their initial purchase, invite continued engagement and even spawning wildly enthusiastic fans.

Of course the reasons for this are many. Differences of execution, idea, marketing story and other factors all contribute to fandom, but there is also an interesting commonality across successful games that goes ignored by developers. Great games deliver tonnes of interesting gameplay.

How much? 100 hours worth.