This is really fascinating - must play one on wooga's games. Read the full wired.co.uk article here:
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/01/features/test-test-test
Excerpt:
"...Wooga is a new type of game developer, one that emphasises metrics over creativity. Its core discipline is A/B or split testing, in which new features are introduced to a selection of users, and their reactions measured. Features remain only if users engage with them. If they don't respond, wooga tries new features until they do. Each wooga title is updated weekly; the initial release is just another stage in development. "After launch we become very metrics-driven," says Begemann. "During the first two weeks of Brain Buddies [wooga's first game], we did four or five A/B tests. It was very fast -- almost daily iterations."
The result is a rigorous process that practically automates the creation of a social game, and maximises each title's chance of success. "We A/B test everything, we optimise everything," says Stephanie Kaiser, a lead game designer. "In the product department, it's very simple," says Thorbjörn Warin, a former employee. "They have all of their KPIs [key performance indicators] and metrics. It's really, 'This week, we focus on nothing but retention, let's identify ten activities that can increase that.' In the first 60 seconds of Monster World, there are 13 to 15 tracking points. For a new user, when they start playing, every three or four seconds, Stephanie and Jens can see what is happening. Usually something has to be improved, and that's when creativity comes in." Wooga's users don't just play a game; they design it...."
Original article in The Atlantic by STEVE BLANK - Steve Blank is a retired Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur-turned-educator and the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. He blogs at www.steveblank.com.
This is an excerpt of Blank's thought's on piracy - read the original article for the full argument:
"THE BIG LIE OF PIRACY
One of the claims that studios make is that they need legislation to stop piracy. The fact is piracy is rampant in all forms of commerce. Video games and software have been targets since their inception. Grocery and retail stores euphemistically call it shrinkage. Credit card companies call it fraud. But none use regulation as often as the movie studios to solve a business problem. And none are so willing to do collateral damage to other innovative industries (VCRs, DVRs, cloud storage and now the Internet itself.)
The studios don't even pretend that this legislation benefits consumers. It's all about protecting short-term profit.
When lawyers, MBAs and financial managers run your industry and your lobbyists are ex-Senators, understanding technology and innovation is not one of your core capabilities.
The SOPA bill (and DNS blocking) is what happens when someone with the title of anti-piracy or copyright lawyer has greater clout than your head of new technology. SOPA gives corporations unprecedented power to censor almost any site on the Internet. It's as if someone shoplifts in your store, SOPA allows the government to shut down your store.
History has shown that time and market forces provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology is a video recorder, a personal computer, an MP3 player or now the Net. It's prudent for courts and congress to exercise caution before restructuring liability theories for the purpose of addressing specific market abuses, despite their apparent present magnitude.
What the music and movie industry should be doing in Washington is promoting legislation to adapt copyright law to new technology -- and then leading the transition to the new platforms...."
One of Steven Rosenbaum's Five Predictions:
"Here are FIVE CES PREDICTIONS you can expect to see come true in Las Vegas this year.
TVs get sexy. Expect Samsung, Vizio, Panasonic, Sony, and more to come out with sleeker, brighter, more awesome screens. A related new technology called 4K is expected to greatly improve image resolutions. While it's still early on, there will be some new voice control gizmos trying to get a jump on the Siri TV product that Apple is rumored to have on its way to market. However, as always, no Apple at CES. Last year the big buzz was 3-D on the heels of Avatar. But the glasses were expensive and proprietary to the set manufacturer, which kept customers away. Expect a new batch of passive 3-D glasses that are cheap (like the ones in the movie theaters) and interchangeable from set to set. LG is planning to offer 4K HDTVs that include passive 3-D technology. TVs with 4K resolution will be able to deliver full HD resolution with the passive 3-D. Maybe 3-D will break out this year? Could be..."
Read the full FastCompany article here:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1805914/5-big-tv-trends-at-ces-2012
1 – Journey
thatgamecompany
Los Angeles-based thatgamecompany will be releasing their successor to Flow and Flower in Spring 2012. As possibly the most well-known developers on this list, TGC will be following up the massive success of their two previous releases on the PlayStation Network with Journey, a game that looks set to continue in the abstract vein of gameplay that the company have become known for, while adding a key new ingredient: online co-operative gameplay.
Your avatar, a mysterious robed figure, travels across a gorgeously stylised windswept desert towards a distant mountain, either with or without the help of other online players you meet along the way. Details as to the game’s narrative and backstory remain hazy, though imagery in the official trailer and promotional material suggest that the game will have a firmer narrative structure than either Flow or Flower.
The core of TGC’s releases has always been a focus on how games can elicit an emotive reaction from players, and the unusual application of co-op gameplay in Journey builds on these foundations. In the game, players cannot speak to each other and are visually defined only by a uniquely assigned symbol that appears on their robes. Robin Hunicke, Journey’s producer, has explained that as an experiment they were aiming to take away the pressure associated with performing socially in online gaming to give players the opportunity to form deeper, lasting connections with each other:
“One of the things we talked about early in the project was this idea of creating a connection between players in an environment where you feel small and less empowered than you might in a traditional video game setting. We thought this would be conducive to a feeling of wanting to spend time together. And we wanted to create this connection without forcing it – we don’t make you play with someone else, but we chose the desert setting because we thought a desolate and unfriendly place might actually encourage a connection between players.”
Trailer
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PSN download)
Release date: Spring 2012
I love Flow & Flower & can't wait for this one!
read the full post here:
http://whatculture.com/gaming/5-or-6-indie-games-to-look-forward-to-in-2012.php
Just stumbled on this blog & I like Patrick Meier's distinction:
"Open crowdsourcing or “unbounded crowdsourcing” refers to the collection of information with no intentional constraints. Anyone who hears about an effort to crowdsource information can participate. This definition is inline with the original description put forward by Jeff Howe: outsourcing a task to a generally large group of people in the form of an open call.
In contrast, the point of “bounded crowdsourcing” is to start with a small number of trusted individuals and to have these individuals invite say 3 additional individuals to join the project–individuals who they fully trust and can vouch for. After joining and working on the project, these individuals in turn invite 3 additional people they fully trust. And so on and so forth at an exponential rate if desired. Just like crowdsourcing is nothing new in the field of statistics, neither is “bounded crowdsourcing”; it’s analog being snowball sampling..."
I'm bookmarking this blog - thank you, Patrick!
Read the full post & others here:
http://irevolution.net/2011/12/07/why-bounded-crowdsourcing/
Get ready for 'blended TV' - here's a short excerpt from this original post:
"Cory Bergman founder of Lostremote, a web site dedicated to social TV, speaks of “a smart social guide” displaying 4 kinds of recommendations :
1. new episodes of shows you customarily watch;
2. current shows your friends enjoy;
3. trending shows across the larger population, and
4. what your friends are watching now.”
Maybe like the four sides of a cube?..."
Original post here:
http://nbry.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/once-the-dust-of-social-tv-hype-settles-...
It's hard to pull a good stand-alone paragraph here as 2011 seems to be a cascade of flops & fails. Here are some headers & topic sentences:
"Zemeckis Hurts
There are the big, loud, splashy flops that get a lot of media attention, and then there are those that fly under the radar, but whose failure has wide ranging repercussions other than the box office report on Monday morning..."
"Summer Genre Flops: “Green Lantern” & “Cowboys & Aliens”
Summer 2011 wasn’t quite the bloodbath that Jon Favreau predicted, but two films that took blows straight in the teeth include Favreau’s own genre mish-mash “Cowboys & Aliens.”..."
"Snyder’s Feminist Fantasy Has No ‘Punch’
Another WB bust was Zack Snyder’s feminist/misogynist fantasy “Sucker Punch,” which was made for $82 million and tanked with only $89 million worldwide. Domestically, audiences barely cared, with a platry $36 million in ticket sales..."
The full post is here:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/2011-by-the-numbers-the-year-in-box-of...