Find Happy Players

FIND HAPPY PLAYERS comes to mind after reading many recent articles on F2P, monetization, and marketing. It seems that F2P, Oculus Rift, and Goat Simulator have been making headlines on the idea of happy or dissatisfied players. People paid money to crowd fund the Oculus Rift because they were happy to pay for it. Free to play games can be great because you can start for free and pay to buy really cool stuff when you want it. Goat Simulator is $9.99 on Steam and people have happy to pay for it. The common element here is that people WANT to give out their hard earned money for these experiences.
Now the issue here is that F2P games are giving people a bad taste in their mouth due to poor in-app purchase design. Oculus Rift sold out to Facebook and some say Goat Simulator is just a broken game. However, each game designer or producer should remember that at one point these games got a lot of attention for being really cool. I realize some say each of these things listed above have their faults, but they were cool at one point. This entry is less about the poor follow through and more about the initial creation...Ranting now.
Boom! Each producer and designer should strive to make things that people really want to buy. Make each in-app purchase really great! Make new experimental technology! Make funny ass games about goats taking over the world! Have fun!

Moving Forward!

The art is winding down for KnightSpeed and its time for me to start working on our new project. Here is a list of things I need to do:

• Start sketching out levels and models. The game will be in 2.5 D or 2D. We would like to have some 3D models since that is where my strengths lie.
• Build a toy! Make something in the real world simulating what we want to do. See if its fun.
• Get to the fun fast! Make sure the game is fun first before moving forward.

Make it JUICY!!!

Make your game juicy or don't make your game!

The Importance of the Second Screen

Using a mobile phone or tablet as a second screen is starting to gain traction with the announcement of Amazon's Fire TV. I really wanted to use my Ouya to do this, but ended up being too much of a pain. The Wii U has done this successfully, but is the Wii U a success? Either way the second screen is pushing into the gaming scene whether we want it or not. I say want it! It's a great idea to add more depth to a console or PC game. See the article below from PocketGamer.Biz.

http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Salvaged/feature.asp?c=58748

Deck Building Games Are Awesome!

Right now I am looking at making a simple mobile game. After seeing games like Threes! and 2048, I would love to make a simple game that is based off of deck building games! I love deck building games. Especially Dominion, DC, Star Trek, and Resident Evil.

So far, I want to keep the cards very simple. Either using numbers or symbols. I was thinking using elements like fire, water, earth, and dark etc.

No complex pictures with a flat design look similar to Threes! I have found that the flat design look is very popular and very readable. I want to either slide cards around or tap on one card then tap another to execute.

Deck building is surrounded by having base cards, a pool to buy from, and use those cards to get more cards which then are worth points.

Post ongoing. More on the way...

Unity3D is awesome!

I really like the Unity3D game engine and I wanted to give a shout out for them. They have just arrived at 2,000,000 registered developers! That is crazy. Congratulations to them :).

Microsoft pulling another 180! A good 180.

Microsoft pulled another u-turn by confirming a headset included with the Xbox One. That is pretty awesome to have that. Let's push to get a mini-keyboard too! The Xbox One is starting to look like a sweet deal. So far we can expect a headset, used games, and hopefully a great indie market after the announcement with Unity3D!

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-04-microsoft-will-now-include-a-headset-with-xbox-one