Progress Bar Illusions

Progress Bar Illusions

by John Biggs on December 31, 2010
Tags: progress bar, video

I always wondered why OS X progress bars had an odd ripple effect and now we know: rippling progress bars seem to move faster across the screen, making you think stuff is getting done faster.

What’s a QA team without a spec?

Elder Game: MMO game development » What’s a QA team without a spec?

What’s a QA team without a spec? A goddamned nuisance and a waste of time, that’s what.

Man I hate when QA people do their jobs without specs! It’s so irritating. When Asheron’s Call 2 launched, there were thousands of outstanding bugs in the QA database that we opted not to fix before launch. Sounds bad, doesn’t it? But if you looked at them, you’d understand. Hundreds of them were bugs about how buildings were floating 2 virtual inches off the ground; if you zoomed the camera down to the floor and looked up, you could see that these structures were very slightly hovering.

How the PK Mafia Ruins Business

How the PK Mafia Ruins Business « MMO Tidbits

No, I don’t mean gankers. The PK mafia I refer to is that school of game design which believe that the only “true” PvP game is the one where PvP death has a real penalty. The proponents typically urge very harsh penalties, as found in Darkfall (where all your possessions fall to the ground for the enemy to loot).

Some years back a school of thought argued that a “true” role-playing experience required fully open PvP (anyone can kill anyone else). The leaders of Funcom’s design department for Age of Conan must have been believers, since the only “official” RP server for Conan is also a PvP server. Curiously, I never saw a single PK on that server result from RP, despite spending months in a bloodthirsty, hardcore RP guild. I did see plenty of casual killing and suffered a predictable dose of gankings. Nobody bothered to “dress it up” with roleplay. They were too busy ambushing the next victim or getting to a safer spot ASAP. The only RP PvP fight I saw was a carefully arranged event by people who knew each other, like a virtual world LARP.

Developers should 'incentivise fans to market for you'

Developers should 'incentivise fans to market for you' | Game Development | News by Develop

The solution was to present the player with an opt-in page upon registration to use their Twitter account to tweet game updates. For each action that they permitted to be tweeted, the player gained an additional 1 per cent to income.

"There were people that turned it off," said Abad, "but early on most people switched them all on, and that was a really good way for us to get the word out - by building into the gameplay mechanics incentives for them to market it for us."

Microtransactions: will pay for power-ups and self-expression, but not for new content

Free to play gamers will pay for power-ups and self-expression, but not for new content | Games Brief

The survey of 2,425 respondents identified that free-to-play web games generated the highest revenue ($75 on average) and that virtual currencies were the most popular purchase. But the report unveiled a number of valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t in the world of microtransactions.

20% Discount code for GDC Austin 2009 at icopartners

ICO Partners » Blog Archive » GDC Austin 2009: get your 20% discount code here!

Head over to the icopartners blog to get it.

Tomb Raider: Underworld post mortem

Gamasutra - Features - Postmortem: Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider: Underworld

Very interesting article, mostly because Eric Lindstrom mentions a couple of good examples of anticipated risks which nevertheless became reality, regardless of mitigation efforts.

"It is particularly interesting to note that much of what went wrong in development involved pitfalls that we anticipated but still fell into despite our efforts to avoid them. It's important to note that most postmortems talk about "What Went Wrong" and not just "What We Did Wrong" because sometimes you make mistakes, but other times you suffer from acts of god and do your best to cope.

A Game Developer article last year ("What Went Wrong?" December 2008) specifically questioned why game development seems to make the same mistakes over and over. In light of that, some of the "wrongs" will be discussed in terms of how our methods to avoid known issues fell short."

Microtransactions and flash games

Gamasutra - Features - Generating Cash For Premium Flash

A couple of useful comments about flash games and how to use microtransactions for monetization. Common sense is yet again very helpful.

"Done correctly, games designed with microtransactions in mind need not infuriate gamers. Harris recalls that his team was careful to build a complete game for those who just want to play -- and beat -- the game for free.

"You can go through all 30 levels of SAS without paying a dime," he says. "We believe that to be very important. And people who don't mind forking over a few dollars for extra content can go to the premium license tab and buy some kick-ass guns, the ability to regenerate health, and even something called 'guardian angel' which lets you continue from where you died."

Localisation of games

ICO Partners » Blog Archive » Localise and shine: it may be easier than you think

A nice article by Thomas and Diane which covers all aspects of localisation. Its impact on the localisation of the game content, Customer Support and community management.

Game developer locations

For those who are looking for a nice index of game development related companies which are located in the UK:
UK game developer locations

And here is global map of "all" game development studios:
http://www.gamedevmap.com

READY and DONE in SCRUM

The Definition of READY | Xebia Blog

Defining READY

READY is defined by the Definition of READY. It is similar to the Definition of DONE, but with the following differences. Whereas with the Definition of DONE the "supplier" is the Team and the "client" is the Product Owner, it's the other way around with the Definition of READY: the Team is the "client" and the Product Owner is the "supplier". Even though I will detail the Definition of READY later, in the end it boils down to one statement: READY is when the team says: "Ah, we get it".

Even though you can put any precondition in the Definition of READY, the need for a good backlog overshadows all other considerations, so you'll definitely need to address two items: readiness of User Stories, and readiness of the Backlog.

agile best practices | offshore best practices | distributed Scrum

Ignite Outsourcing :: Israeli Scrum conference | agile best practices | offshore best practices | distributed Scrum methodology

When Scrum was first conceived, back in 2001, distributed software development and global teams where not as common as they are today. In this lecture, Aviram Eisenberg elaborates the main contradictions between Agile best practices and offshore best practices, and how can they be combined to create a successful distributed Scrum development methodology

Behaviour-Driven Development

BehaviourDrivenDevelopment - Behaviour-Driven Development

Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) is an evolution in the thinking behind TestDrivenDevelopment and AcceptanceTestDrivenPlanning.

It brings together strands from TestDrivenDevelopment and DomainDrivenDesign into an integrated whole, making the relationship between these two powerful approaches to software development more evident.

It aims to help focus development on the delivery of prioritised, verifiable business value by providing a common vocabulary (also referred to as a UbiquitousLanguage) that spans the divide between Business and Technology.

It presents a framework of activity based on three core principles:

1.Business and Technology should refer to the same system in the same way - ItsAllBehaviour
2.Any system should have an identified, verifiable value to the business - WheresTheBusinessValue
3.Up-front analysis, design and planning all have a diminishing return - EnoughIsEnough

Phill Harrison no longer director of Atari

Harrison out as Atari president // News

"Because of a shift of business operations to the US, Phil Harrison will move from the role of president to that of non-executive director of the group. As all board members, he will continue to assist, support and guide the company's strategy," said Atari.

Atari just recently announced net losses of 226 million€ for last year.

The limits of microtransactions

Tobold's MMORPG Blog

In the battle of business models for MMORPGs the monthly flat fee subscription model has one decisive advantage: It is extremely simple to understand, and has only one variable, cost per month. A statement that a particular game is going to be Free2Play and financed by microtransactions is not really telling you much; there are lots of parameters on what exactly is for sale, and how much it costs.

2008 Game Developer Salary Survey

Gamasutra - News - 2008 Game Developer Salary Survey Reveals $79,000 Average Income

Programming: programmers are the highest paid talent next to high-end businesspeople, with an average annual salary of $85,024. Experience pays in this role, as those with greater than six years of experience earned 26% more than the average annual salary.

Art & Animation: artists – averaging a $69,532 salary, nonetheless, 28% of art directors reported lower salaries than the previous year. But these more experienced, higher status artists also tend to earn at least 35% more than those with less experience and lower title.

Game Design: averaging $67,379, design positions sprouted an average $3,730 over last year. As with many roles, region makes a difference, given that West Coast designers make on average $8,283 or 12% more than the rest of the game designers in the country.

Production: of all the game development disciplines, production – with a salary average overall of $82,905 – is the most welcoming to women, with 21% of the workforce made up of females – more than twice the industry average. The discipline as a whole saw a strong $4,189 bump from last year.

10 Game Design Process Pitfalls

Gamasutra - Features - 10 Game Design Process Pitfalls

Game designer Fisch looks into the process of making games, suggesting the ten biggest reasons why a game's production doesn't end up working out quite as hoped, and possible fixes for those issues.

Optimize Your Pipeline Through Usability

Gamasutra - Features - Game Tools Tune-Up: Optimize Your Pipeline Through Usability

There are probably tools in your pipeline that could benefit from usability techniques, but as a developer, you'll want to know which tools would benefit the most before investing in them.

In this article, I'll discuss how to find the bottlenecks holding up your production, measure the usability of your tools using proven techniques and streamline your entire development process.

Scrum Checklist

Scrum checklist - Henrik Kniberg's blog

"The main target group for this checklist are teams that are relatively new to Scrum and likely to get many things wrong.

Each item is tagged by priority. I consider the priority 1 items to be pretty fundamental, I'd hesitate to even call it Scrum if a company hasn't implemented all those items (or at least has good reasons not to).

When helping companies implement Scrum I normally start by ensuring that all priority 1 items on the checklist are implemented (or intentionally skipped) before even considering priority 2 and priority 3."

...

Independent Games Sales for 2008

Independent Games Sales: Stats 101

A presentation for the Indie Games Summit at Game Developers Conference 2009 by Simon Carless.

View more presentations from simoniker.