the little gamer » Game Development

Swords and Sandals 3 - coming soon

the little gamer — Mon, 12 May 2008 07:05:41 +0000

The next Swords and Sandals installment is coming soonish. We’ve not yet announced a launch date, it’s a big project and there is still a bit to go. For the fans though, here’s a little teaser video. there are a few more on Youtube.com

You’ll notice that the biggest change to the game is that it will be full multiplayer.

We’ll let you know when there is more to see.

Fizzy.com opens doors to developers

the little gamer — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 04:59:44 +0000

Fizzy is now about 9 months old. There have been several upgrades to the site itself in that time, and plenty of new content, but this latest update is by far the most significant. Fizzy has now launched its developer portal. If you are a Casual Game developer (in Flash), you can now sign up to become a Fizzy Developer and start using the developer portal right away. When you start using it to distribute your content, you get a 50% share of all revenue your game(s) generate. Visit www.fizzy.com/developers

The portal has everything you need:

Comprehensive Documentation
Personalised SDKs
Add Free games (web games) and Download game (for sale)
Testing enviroment
Online reporting (keep track of plays, downloads, sales, etc)
Online statements
Public Developer profiles on Fizzy
and more…

The developer portal has been built from the ground up to maximise revenue for Casual Game developers, with built in game marketing all part of the deal. Take a look at the reach of Fizzy already (still only 9 months old, remember).

If you are a Flash Games developer, then you should certainly have a look at this as a potential source of significant additional revenue

fizzy.com

the little gamer — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 08:34:19 +0000

Surely not another casual games website!

We think it’s different enough to be worth a mention. I’ll talk more over the next few days about how Fizzy is different, but right now I’d like to thank the team at 3RD sense for all the effort they have put into building the site and its hugely engaging content.

I guess the big difference about us as a business is that we are Casual Game Developer and Casual Game web site Publisher in one. Most of the other bigger players in the industry tend to do one or the other.

Anyway, have a play and why not buy some games….

Visit www.fizzy.com

ANDLet us know what you think

New Playaholics

the little gamer — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 02:19:53 +0000

It’s been about a year in development, and it is finally here.

A casual games portal with over 150 games (all with integrated high scores), a free membership service, a subscription service, an avatar system, a forum, competitions, and more is a big project. The first thing I need to do is thank the team. They have done an awesome job. Playaholics is now an incredible casual games portal.

Proibably the best thing to do is to have a play. www.playaholics.com

By all means tell us what you think.

The Little Gamer

Rubik’s Cube revisited

the little gamer — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 03:11:27 +0000

When researching my recent post calling for a new puzzle game format, I took a fresh look at dozens of famous games from Tetris to Zuma — but I think the Rubik’s Cube may still be the king of all puzzles.

One minute I was examining Rubik’s Cube from the casual game developer’s point of view, and the next I was carried back to my school days, when this remarkable puzzle was launched and more than 100 million copies sold in just two years.

Back then, I was a teenage student in Britain, not running a company in Australia. I had only been on this planet a decade and a half and had so much to learn. Yet somehow I managed to get my personal best time for the Rubik’s Cube under 25 seconds.

The secret to the success of Rubik’s Cube is that it was the ultimate challenge. It seemed almost impossible, but it wasn’t. People talked about the millions of permutations — the endless variety of patterns that could be formed on the six sides simultaneously. But one of the secrets to solving the Rubik’s Cube is to focus on the fact that it’s built from just 27 pieces. Sometimes it’s the simplest concept that creates the most complex and challenging casual games, but that sort of magic is very hard to recreate.

I certainly couldn’t beat 25 seconds at the moment, but I’m tempted to dust off my old Rubik’s Cube and start practicing again. There’s a whole community that never forgot the Rubik’s Cube, and I feel like it’s time for a revival.

The Little Gamer

The real puzzle

the little gamer — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 01:55:49 +0000

Every now and again, someone comes up with a new puzzle format — or an excellent new version of an existing puzzle format — and in an instant, they capture the imagination of half the world.

The Rubik’s Cube did that in the early 80s. Everyone got into it. More than 100 million were sold in just two years.

Tetris had a similar impact when Nintendo included it with the Gameboy. Suddenly, it seemed like everyone was rotating and nudging falling blocks.

In their time, Bejeweled and Text Twist were big land-grabbers in the online casual game space. But Text twist wasn’t a new puzzle format — for years, newspapers have been publishing strings of letters and asking their readers to find a word.

In recent years, Zuma has come the closest to generating a similar level of interest to the previous greats. As far as I’m aware, Zuma’s format had never been used before.

Although it’s a three-or-more-in-a-row game, which is not new, the idea of shooting the balls while they’re rolling around a track had never been done before. This fresh approach, backed by sensational artwork and production, created a truly addictive game — a unique combination of strategy and playing against the clock.

Today, it seems the market is saturated with decent, playable games. Sometimes it feels like all the good ideas have already been taken. Sure, Suduko created hype — but it had the backing of major newspapers. However, it’s time to remind ourselves: the real problem is not market saturation, it’s that as an industry we have resigned ourselves to this saturation by producing more of the same. I want something new: an entirely new puzzle format.

Great ideas for entirely new formats can come from anywhere. Sometimes it’s late nights, sometimes it’s coffee and sometimes they materialise over a beer. I don’t doubt that Rubik’s Cube, Bejeweled, Text Twist and Zuma are history-making puzzles, but I think they’ve monopolised their space for a little too long. The race is on for the next big thing.
The Little Gamer

A different a-gender

the little gamer — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 08:10:16 +0000

Whether you call it a fact, a cliché or a myth, there’s no doubting that almost anyone who has anything to say about casual games has something to say about the perceptions that women play casual games and men play hardcore games.

A big thankyou to Guilded Lilies (GL) for, at last, advancing this discussion beyond simplistic name-calling.

GL argues that women who play games are being placed into two different categories — the ‘girl gamer’ and the ‘casual gamer’. This isn’t the best way to make women who play games feel loved, GL says, because it does not approach them as individuals.

But what really caught my eye was the comment from Tekanji. She said that as a woman gamer, she’d prefer to be just a ‘person who plays video games’. Tekanji basically asks — why should we be classified as a ‘girl gamer’ or ‘boy gamer’? Why are we not just “gamers”?

It’s a good question. However, with my traditional marketing background, I know these classifications have probably come about because the easiest way to start segmenting markets is according to gender. And no business person can or should ignore the statistics showing that while women/girls account for about 44 percent of online gamers, they are far more likely to be playing casual games than hardcore games.

So, that’s probably why the gender categorisation has come about - its easy and the stats are exciting. But that doesn’t mean its the best way to start to segment potential markets. None of us thinks of ourselves as being part of a gender group or a constructed category when we go to find a game to play. None of us thinks of ourselves in terms of a stereotype. We’re Anne who likes Quake. Or Sam who is hooked on Solitaire. Or Wilhelm who’d rather play a virtual 18 holes of golf.

So what is the best way to categorise or segment? Because no matter what you think about it, segmentation remains an effective tool in any marketing or product development activity, including game development. But the most effective segmentation requires us to have a deep understanding of who plays, why they play and why they like it. We need to go beyond simple demographics of gender and age into the varied and subtle reasons why groups of individuals play games.

What follows then, is that as game developers, we need to be designing our games for groups of people with common interests. Rather than thinking of them as ‘boy games’ or ‘girl games’, we should think of them as games that appeal to people who like to be intellectually stretched. Or games for people who like a two minute break. Or for people who can’t get enough of the Smurfs. People who get bored on public transport. People who like to kill time (as opposed to the dentist) in the dentist’s waiting room.

If we do this successfully, the individual will never realise that they’ve ever been categorised in the first place. They just love the game and we know we’re giving players what they want.

Once we have that nailed, we can explore drilling down deeper still and looking at games adaptation based on user needs/wants within the game play experience. That’s probably a discussion for another day though…

The Little Gamer