The Secret Growth Driver Behind Hit Casual MMOs

The Secret Growth Driver Behind Hit Casual MMOs « Free To Play

The Secret Growth Driver Behind Hit Casual MMOs
Posted by Adrian Crook under distribution , subscription , virtual items , virtual worlds , casual , mmo , broadband , america , java


At last month’s Casual Games Conference in Seattle, I spent about 30 minutes chatting with Daniel James, CEO of Three Rings. Daniel told me an interesting story about how Puzzle Pirates, the hit Java MMO, has accelerated user base growth.

Puzzle Pirates utilizes few other distribution portals outside of www.puzzlepirates.com. But one site Daniel has had phenomenal success with has been Miniclip.com, the browser-based games portal.

In Daniel’s experience, a stunning 1 million out of Puzzle Pirates’ 3 million players have come via Miniclip alone.

Because Miniclip users are younger, they don’t monetize as well as other players. Daniel’s estimation was 1% monetization for Miniclip users vs 5% among the rest of the Puzzle Pirates user base. However, according to Daniel a secondary wave of word-of-mouthers join Puzzle Pirates shortly after each wave of new Miniclip users and the conversion rate among this secondary wave is much better.

I bring this up now because of this very recent Ypulse article, which contends that Miniclip has been the primary growth catalyst for games like Club Penguin and Runescape as well. A degree of influence not surprising given the “explosive growth” of the Miniclip.com site itself, as illustrated on this chart.

Here are some quotes from the Ypulse article:

Without Miniclip, it is likely that there is no Club Penguin phenomenon. The product launched in October 2005 and was able to eke out a base of about 25,000 users. A few months later, the game was posted on Miniclip and experienced explosive growth. By September, the product had over 2.6 million users. Runescape’s user base saw a similar, if slightly less dramatic, increase from a niche game to a multi-million user success.

With a core demographic of 10-24 year olds, Miniclip has built a portal with the power to instantly launch a youth brand. What network TV was for The Transformers, so Miniclip has been for Club Penguin. Great products can travel virally, but the task is a lot easier if the starting point is 30 million exposures.

How to Become a Great Network Programmer: Part II

How to Become a Great Network Programmer: Part II - GameCareerGuide.com

#
How to Become a Great Network Programmer: Part II
[08.21.07]
- Adam Martin
#

Game 3. RTS: Determinism, Replay, Sync

You've made a simple real-time game and a simple persistent game, but nothing so far has run into any of the big classic problems of network programming. That's going to change with the next game. It's time to learn about determinism.

The aim here is to create a top-down real-time strategy game with a hundred or more units running around on a map and swarming your opponent's base(s), all without any apparent slowdown in the graphical user interface.

The best way to do this is to make all your calculations deterministic so that instead of having to send the result of every single calculation across the network, you can just send the inputs of each player to each other player, and all the players' machines can work out for themselves what's happening on all the other computers. This method reduces the volume of network messages vastly, but it goes horribly wrong if the slightest bit of non-determinism sneaks into the system.

Making this work properly and play nicely with a good path-finding algorithm will give you plenty to chew on. Get something wrong, and your units will start wandering off in strange directions or giving up and not moving at all. Or, if you try to skip the determinism, you'll quickly find the volume of shared data and calculations are so great, you can't get the game to work at a decent real-time speed.

Remember, though, that "deterministic" doesn't mean you can't have random numbers -- it just means you have to seed them.

For bonus points, implement a fully deterministic AI as well.

more information in the original article

IDC: Online Gaming Revenues Soar in 2011

IDC: Online Gaming Revenues Soar in 2011 : Next Generation - Interactive Entertainment Today, Video Game and Industry News

IDC: Online Gaming Revenues Soar in 2011
By Kris Graft Print | Send to a friend | Email the editor
An analyst with IDC expects worldwide online console revenue to shoot skyward from $981 million in 2007 to $10.5 billion by 2011.
ImageAnalyst Billy Pidgeon said new consoles with out-of-the-box connectivity and onboard storage would facilitate the enormous growth.

Currently, game companies are generating online revenue from subscription fees, paid downloadable content and in-game advertising.

Pidgeon, who is a program manager at IDC, said there is “huge potential” for online gaming revenues.

“Getting gamers online and enticing them to spend on content and services is crucial for vendors and publishers,” he said in a statement.

Virtually all major console game companies are vying for online revenues, whether it’s through paid subscriptions for services like Xbox Live, both new and classic downloadable games or deals with in-game ad providers.

IDC said console revenue will stand at 2.5 percent of total worldwide videogame market revenue. However, revenue in the online gaming sector is poised to expand to 18.6 percent of total market value, according to IDC’s latest report.

Other forecasts from IDC are as follows:

* Although subscription revenue for premium online services and games will grow from $476 million in 2007 to over $2.4 billion in 2011, its share of online console revenue will decline from 48.5% in 2007 (already down from a high of 86.5% in 2006) to 23.2% by 2011.
* Downloadable content (DLC) consisting of games and game-related items, which at $35 million in 2006 represented a 13.5% market share of online console revenue, will become connected consoles' primary revenue source in 2007, growing from $493 million in 2007 to $7.2 billion in 2011. In 2011, game-centric DLC will make up 68.6% of online revenue.
* Advertising revenue from sponsored services, in-game ads, and product placement in connected consoles will reach $12 million in 2007, posting the first significant online console ad spend. Advertising revenue will grow to $858 million in 2011, with an 8.2% market share of online revenue.


The data comes from the IDC report, Worldwide Connected Console 2007-2011 Forecast: Downloads for Dollars.

A June 2006 report from research firm DFC Intelligence pegged online gaming revenues--including PC gaming--to reach $13 billion by 2011.

GAME DESIGN: The Long and Short of It

GAME DESIGN: The Long and Short of It : Next Generation - Interactive Entertainment Today, Video Game and Industry News

GAME DESIGN: The Long and Short of It
By James Portnow Print | Send to a friend | Email the editor
When is one game two games? Almost all the time, claims James Portnow in this week's latest game design column. But which of those games is more important?
ImageAlmost every game is actually two games, one being the minute-to-minute game and the other being the broader overall game. I’ve heard so much debate about which one is “more important” and which should be a designer’s “main focus”, that I’ve decided to put my two cents in.

Remember, there’s no fact in this article, just opinion supported by what passes for reason around here... In the end you’ll have to make up your own mind.

Game Nesting

Most games can be viewed as a series of smaller interconnected games that are tied together to make one unified whole. Consider, for example, American football: each play is a game, each “game” is a game and each season is a game. Now consider, if you will, your standard digital role-playing game: combat is a game, questing (1) is a game and leveling/character building is a game.

There is no limit to how many nested games any given game may contain. It’s largely a matter of perception anyway – and of how you define “game”. The important thing is that no matter how many unique games you’ve identified within a game, only two really matter: the action and the arc.

The Action

The action is easy to define: it’s what you’re doing most of the time. Usually you will start experiencing the action within five minutes of picking up a game (In fact, I’ve heard arguments that it’s bad game design if you don’t… I can think of arguments to the contrary though). The action is usually slightly less cerebral than the arc, engaging you in a more visceral way. The action is also brief in duration but often repeated. You can fully experience one iteration of the action in a matter of minutes, if not seconds (2).

The Arc

The arc is a little harder to define. It’s what the player understands to be “the game”. Often the arc is the reason a player continues playing a game. It takes place over a much longer span of time and, once completed, usually the signals the end of the player’s engagement with that particular game (when we feel the arc is complete we let our accounts go inactive or put the game back on the shelf). The arc is typically the headier portion of the game – in really good games it’s the section we think about when we aren’t actually playing the game.

The arc can be vaguely defined as “what the player views the point of a game to be”.

So, Mr. Portnow, Which is More Important?

I’m going to argue that the action is definitively the more important of the two. Were I working on a game and someone said to me, “We can perfect the action or the the arc. Which should we perfect?”, I would quickly answer, “The action.”

"Were I working on a game and someone said to me, 'We can perfect the action or the the arc. Which should we perfect?', I would quickly answer, 'The action.'"
Why? After all, the arc is really what holds our interest. It’s what makes a game sustainable. It’s why we continue to play… The problem is that there can be no arc if there is no action. If the action is bad no one will ever experience the arc. Imagine an MMORPG with a fantastic character system and leveling tree. Now imagine that the combat in that MMO is mind-numbingly, nay, painfully boring. No one’s going to grind through sixty levels of an MMO just to complete the arc in the way it was intended.

Now let’s take the opposite case: let’s examine games like Pac-Man or Galaga or chess. It’s easy to see these games as “all action”, but that does an injustice to our players and to our species. Humans have a remarkable capacity for contextualizing things. Often we can rely on our players to invent their own arc.

Very few people play any of the above-mentioned games once. Rather they play them again and again with the object of improving at them. They devise ways to do better than the last time. They come up with new strategies, observing the game as they play it in order to better their skills. In fact, it’s not uncommon to find people dissecting an individual game long after it’s been completed in order to fit it into their arc. If the action is good enough we make learning its own meta-game.

Should we do this often? No. Not at all. It is far far better to have a well crafted arc to lay on top of your action than to force the player to invent an arc for themselves. I’m simply saying it’s impossible to go the other way, hoping to get away with mediocre action to underpin your brilliant arc.

1. Here I define “questing” as directed progression: it can be anything from getting from one side of a dungeon to the other to getting 12 rat meat from Slern the Beggar.

2. Consider the individual play in football to be the action.

More information in the original article

Identity 2.0

OSCON 2005 Keynote - Identity 2.0

OSCON 2005 Keynote - Identity 2.0
Dick Hardt | Founder & CEO, Sxip Identity
Watch Dick deliver a compelling and dynamic introduction on Identity 2.0 and how the concept of digital identity is evolving.

“Dick Hardt is brilliant. Watch (and copy) the style. Learn tons from the substance.” - Lawrence Lessig

“Really captures the complexities of participating in an online world and how identity is at the center of the Web experience.” - Dan Farber

“A barn-burner of a presentation. I loved this.” - Cory Doctorow

“I watched it twice, and greatly enjoyed it both times.” - Jon Udell

Top 10 Revenue Models for Free To Play Games

Top 10 Revenue Models for Free To Play Games « Free To Play

The following 10 revenue models allow some or all of their associated game or virtual world to be played for free. The ordering is quite unscientific and I’m sure I’ve missed something obvious or messed up a detail. I leave it to the internet to correct me.

1. Virtual Item Sales
A well familiar revenue model first established in Korea and now the dominant model in Asia. Nexon - makers of KartRider, MapleStory, Audition and more - are widely seen as the leaders in this area, doing $230M of gross revenue in 2005 (the most recent year for which they’ve released figures), with 85% of that revenue coming from virtual item sales.

Virtual item sales is the practice of allowing users to purchase functional, decorative, or functional & decorative in-game items for use in and out of gameplay. A virtual item system usually uses two currencies - an attention currency (users earn virtual money via in-game activities) and a real money-based currency (users buy virtual money using real money). Typically, 5-15% of users opt for the latter currency and the influx of real world money is what provides the virtual item sales revenue stream.

What’s so compelling about virtual item sales is the unlimited ARPU (average revenue per user). According to Daniel James, CEO of Three Rings, some hardcore Puzzle Pirates users have poured more than $10,000 apiece into the game via virtual item purchases. To reach that contribution level via a World of Warcraft-style $15/month subscription would take a user 55 years.

While extremely shaky sources peg the overall size of the virtual item sales market at $1.5-2B this year, without an NPD-esque measurement organization there’s no way to verify that number.

2. Subscription Tiers
Runescape, the Java MMO from Jagex, is one of the leaders in the tiered subscription space. A tiered subscription model allows users to play the core game for free, but those that desire access to elite weapons or other game content, must pay a small ($5/month) subscription fee. Over 1 million of Runescape’s 6+ million users have opted into the tiered subscription program, grossing $60M annually for Jagex.

Dungeon Runners, an NCsoft free to play MMO, offers a similar $5/month subscription package that affords players access to the elite items, a bank and the ability to stack potions. It also gives subscribers server queue priority.

3. Advertising
Several different forms of game-related advertising revenue streams have popped up in recent years. Firms such as Massive, IGA and Double Fusion do big business in in-game advertising for clients such as EA, Activision, THQ and Microsoft. Game ad agencies typically serve up static ads (ads that ship with a product and never change) or dynamic (ads that are updated in real time via the net) within game products that are contextually appropriate for advertising (i.e. sports, racing, or contemporary shooters).

The size of this conventional in-game advertising market is currently pegged at $100-200M, according to well-placed industry sources. However, the number and quality of games with dynamic advertising enabled is escalating dramatically. So much so that Yankee Group predicts the in-game ad market will reach $732M by 2010.

Other emergent forms of advertising revenue streams for games include:

* Google Adsense PPC ads (see my recent post on Maid Marian, grossing $800K/year from Google Ads alone)
* Sponsored item sales (Habbo Hotel)
* In-game video ads (Real Networks)

4. Real Estate or “Land Use Fees“
Second Life is the biggest legitimate player utilizing this revenue model whereby virtual land is sold leased to individuals. Monthly lease fees range from $5 to $195, depending on the size of land in question. Users may also purchase their own island for a one time fee of $1,675 in addition to a monthly fee of $295.

Approximately 70% of Second Life’s revenue comes from land sales and maintenance fees. Of course the virtual land ownership revenue model doesn’t come without headache, as the Bragg vs Linden suit has proven.

Entropia Universe uses land auctions as a revenue stream, but a recent headline-making $100,000 land sale has been called into question as the successful bidder is an employee of Entropia’s developer, MindArk.

5. Merchandise
In what’s become a phenomenon of Furby proportions, Webkinz plush toys and their associated Webkinz World have taken the pre-teen set by storm. Users purchase a $15 Webkinz plush toy at retail and enter a secret code to activate the associated virtual character in Webkinz World. Beyond the retail plush toy purchase, there are no additional fees for playing in Webkinz World.

Two million Webkinz toys have been sold since April 2005, with more than 1 million of those users registering their pet online. That’s more than US$20M in retail sales in just 24 months.

Another successful merchandise-based revenue model is collectible card games, or CCGs. Neopets launched a CCG in 2003 and just this week MapleStory became the latest free to play game to go this route, announcing a partnership with Wizards of the Coast. Consumers purchase MapleStory real-world cards that come with codes redeemable for exclusive in-game content in the MapleStory MMORPG.

6. Auctions & Player Trades
In June 2005, Sony set up Station Exchange on select Everquest II servers. Station Exchange facilitates player to player trade of in-game items - including the provision of an escrow service - in return for a 10% closing fee as well as listing fees ranging from $1 (items and coins) to $10 (characters).

While Station Exchange recorded only $274K in net revenue in its first year of limited release, it was enough for Sony Online President John Smedley to declare it the future of RMT. Read the SOE Station Exchange whitepaper for more.

Entropia Universe - a world in which virtual items actually decay with use and require real money to repair or replace - utilizes first party auctions as their primary revenue stream. This means that instead of merely facilitating player to player auctions and taking a cut (a la Station Exchange’s eBay model), Entropia auctions items directly to their players.

Entropia items sell for ludicrous sums, with rare weapons auctions closing at $26,000, land auctions for (allegedly) $100,000. The May 2007 auction of five in-game banking licenses brought in $404,000, total. Ironically, Entropia takes no fees for player-to-player auctions.

In the wake of this success, watch for third party virtual item auction houses such as Dan Kelly’s Sparter.com to offer developers and publishers a cut to ensure the (exclusive?) cooperation of their products.

7. Expansion Packs
The best known example of expansion packs as a primary revenue model is the Arenanet product, Guild Wars. Likened by Richard Garriott to a series of fantasy novels, Guild Wars relies not on monthly subscription fees for its revenue, but on the sale of successive expansion packs for $29.99.

The game’s creators argue that the thin-pipe origins of their technology allow their game to be run far more economically than competing titles, enabling this no-subscription free model.

Over 3 million people have purchased the previous three Guild Wars products (Guild Wars, Guild Wars: Factions and Guild Wars: Nightfall) with those numbers set to surge again with the release of Guild Wars: Eye of the North on August 31, 2007.

8. Event or Tournament Fees
Netamin’s free to play, ad-supported Ulimate Baseball Online uses event fees as an additional revenue stream. UBO’s Pay to Play tournaments cost $5 per player to enter and offer cash prizes up to $4,500.

Shot Online, a free to play/virtual item sales golf MMO, also charges users to enter tournaments.

Third parties such as Valve’s Tournament.com and Groove Game’s Skillground.com are getting into the pay to play tournament scene as well. These sites charge charging entry fees for game tournaments for games such as Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike.

9. TrialPay
At the recent Virtual Goods Summit and again at the Seattle Casual Games Conference, I bumped into representatives from TrialPay. TrialPay is a third party facility that allows customers to pay for products (i.e. games) by trying or buying from advertisers.

What this means is that when you go to pay for a casual game or purchase virtual currency, you can instead select from a demographically targeted list of special offers. Trying or buying one of these offers - from merchants such as Avis, Geico, Vonage, etc - allows you to get your game purchase for free, as the offer merchant has paid the game provider for acquiring a new customer on their behalf.

TrialPay claims that this allows game developers to earn more per user, as some offers pay game developers upwards of $50 per user (as opposed to the $20 a casual game might normally charge).

Someone from TrialPay can jump in and give me a more relevant example of their system’s use in the game space, but all I could find was a casual games company called Dreamquest Games.

10. Donations
Clocking in at last on the list is of alternate revenue streams is player donations. Raph Koster recently blogged about meeting up with the Kingdom of Loathing guys at ComicCon in San Diego. Raph reported that while KoL’s revenue is “definitely indie,” their primary revenue stream of player donations is a sustainable one.

According to Wired, the donation revenue has allowed creator Zack Johnson to quit his day job and hire six employees to help improve and maintain the product.

That’s what Maid Marian founder Gene Endrody would call a “lifestyle business,” but I suspect most of us wouldn’t scoff at it or any of the above revenue models.

MMO Money, MMO Problems

GameTab - Viewing External Article

still have lots of designers left on the game and we continue to add more and more developers to the team. It is the nature of the industry for some people to leave while others take their place. Part of the process of growing a company especially when you are as large as we are now.

MMO Money, MMO Problems

MMO Money, MMO Problems

Tuesday, July 31, 2007 Update by Craig "Russ" Russell

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next page »

MMORPGs (Mindless Mage, Orc, Rogue, and Paladin Games) are the biggest thing to hit the internet since people grew tired of illegal music, pornography and pictures of Sonic The Hedgehog photoshopped into movies. However, I am just a simple forty year old Christian mother of two, and I don't know what the hell they are. To clarify, I asked Something Awful's own World Of Warcaft expert, Abraham. He told me that MMOs are "a bad idea made worse by a lot of people". This was an incredible waste of my valuable time, and lead to my son being more than eight minutes late for soccer practice.

Fortunately, I discovered that the SA forums had their own MMO industry insider. Going by the name of Lum_, this kind-hearted peddler of evil video games took time out from his busy schedule to give us all a little background on what it's like to witness the MMO scene from the point of the developer. He pulled no punches in answering questions from forum members, and now I'm going to thank him by making his answers public and possible costing him his job. Thanks again, Lum_!


Background:
- Worked at Mythic Entertainment on DAOC from 2001 to 2006.
- Currently at NCsoft on a secret project.
- Used to write a whiny website ranting about UO and EQ (from 1999 to 2001)

Rules:
- No trade secrets will be divulged. I still work in the industry, y'know.
- No direct commentary about competitors because that's not kosher.
- ...that's about it, really.

Software spots key players in online communities

Software spots key players in online communities - tech - 20 July 2007 - New Scientist Tech

Software that identifies the most informative people in an online community, based on their posting patterns, has been developed by researchers at Cornell University, New York, and Microsoft Research in Washington State, both in the US.

The researchers worked out how to spot key players within discussions by analysing the connections between thousands of messages on several topics.

The work could help website designers automatically reward, or highlight, the most valuable members of a community, or improve methods for searching through a conversation for the most relevant information.

Previous research has shown that certain people underpin the usefulness of a group or discussion by providing brief but straightforward and useful answers.

"You have a socially recognised role of some people as experts in some way in a community," says Howard Welser, a sociologist at Cornell University, who led the work. "That role was what we were trying to measure. The indicators we found had to do with the structure of their interaction with others."

more information in the original article

Top 10 Ways to Remove Barriers to Entry in MMOs

Top 10 Ways to Remove Barriers to Entry in MMOs and Virtual Worlds « Free To Play

Top 10 Ways to Remove Barriers to Entry in MMOs and Virtual Worlds
Posted by Adrian Crook under casual , top 10 , mmo , design


Whether you’re making a casual MMO like Maple Story or a virtual world like Habbo Hotel, here are 10 ways to remove game-killing barriers to entry and create the largest possible addressable market.

1. Free to Play
The Free to Play business model is here to stay - and growing every day. In an entertainment world filled with endless choices, asking someone to pony up $50 before they can play a game is rapidly becoming a non-starter. The focus now is on getting players through the front door, keeping them happy, then monetizing 5-15% of them. Non-paying customers become “content” for the paying minority, so don’t think you can ignore them.

2. Integrated graphics support

“If our games required a video card, we’d lose 80% of our audience”
- Min Kim, Director of Game Operations, Nexon North America

“Graphics are not important - the mind models the situation”
- Daniel James, CEO, Three Rings

Enthusiasts who purchase the latest, greatest video card make up just 4% of the market. Integrated graphics (i.e. no dedicated video card and therefore lower graphics performance) accounts for over 60% of all new computer sales. It would be foolish to develop a Free to Play product requires a video card when success in the F2P sector is partially reliant on addressing a large market and monetizing just a small fraction of your player base.

3. Multiple, regionalized payment systems
Finding the right payment method is a key success factor for Free to Play products. When a user finds a payment method they’re comfortable with, they are fiercely loyal to it. But there are nearly as many payment methods as their are markets. Erik Bethke of GoPets says his company utilizes 90 different payment systems worldwide in order to address the local preferences of each region and make it as easy as possible for users to pay.

Many factors influence payment method selection. Credit card penetration in China is low, so billing customers via their land-line telephone provider has become a widely used payment system that provides excellent security in exchange for high surcharges. In Europe, SMS payments are hugely successful and carriers take anywhere from 10-30% surcharges versus the 40-50% fees of North American carriers. PayPal, checks, points cards and more are also used.

We have three people on staff whose full-time job is to open envelopes with single dollar bills and quarters in them. The users can’t figure out how to get the cash to us. One user sent in a $5 bill in a $14.95 FedEx package so it would get to us on time.
- Craig Sherman, CEO, Gaia Online

4. Little or no download
Get users into a game as fast as possible. If your game requires the user to download client software, make it as small as possible and give the user something to do while they wait for the game to download and install (i.e. setting up their character).

But better yet, make your game in Java, Flash, Shockwave or Silverlight so it’s playable within a browser. A game delivered via Java applet (i.e. Puzzle Pirates, Bang! Howdy, Runescape) can be downloaded and installed in under a minute. A signed Java applet will even avoid tripping a user’s installed spyware detectors.

Only ~30% of players actually tolerate downloads at all, the other 70% preferring to play online. I believe this percentage of download-intolerant players is increasing.
- Daniel James, CEO, Three Rings

5. Deferred sign up
How many times have you been faced with filling out a mandatory sign up form before you can starting playing a new game? The barrier of filling out one more form and becoming a member of yet another online site/network/game/etc that might eventually spam you - before you even try the product - is a huge barrier to entry.

Why not let a new player name and create their character, enter and start experiencing the product, then ask for sign up information along the way? A game that gets this right is Maid Marian’s Shockwave MMO Sherwood Dungeon, which allows you to start playing immediately after you enter your desired character’s name. Despite its simplistic graphics and lack of server-side character saves, Sherwood has attracted over 1M users to its Free to Play ad-supported game.

6. Easy to understand world/lore
Pets, penguins, pirates, party goers - these are some of the most successful Free to Play virtual worlds and games. If you want to keep your game’s potential market big, utilize commonly understood worlds, characters and rules as often as possible. There are exceptions of course, but generally the more jargon and fiction you graft onto your property, the greater the barrier to entry for new players.

7. Quick to play core
Build your game or virtual world around a quick-to-play core mechanic that loops into a larger meta-game. A game that can be played in small 5 minute chunks that feed into a higher purpose.

The casual MMO Puzzle Pirates was designed with short play sessions and a solid meta-game in mind. However, the average Puzzle Pirates user spends 2.5 hours per day in the game - 30 days a month. And while some players do drop in and leave, others spend up to 9 hours a day in-game. Ultimately, the game’s short compulsion loops keep players online longer than traditional, longer compulsion loops that take 30-60 minutes to complete.

8. Warp, don’t walk
Spending precious minutes walking to destinations is, for many, a significant barrier to entry and a big waste of time. Many games and virtual worlds allow “warping” between areas to avoid long marches or simply a point-and-click interface with the world.

9. Spending limits
It seems counterintuitive, but enforcing spending caps on some or all of your player base (depending on your product’s demographics) may actually increase your user base. Habbo Hotel puts spending caps on all payment methods to control the influx of cash into their economy but also to allay parents’ fears. Users can spend money only on 2-3 predefined days of the week.

Limiting how much a player can spend spend in a short period of time benefits the game by reducing parental concern and decreasing incidents of buyer’s remorse in new players.

10. Secondary markets
The presence of a secondary market can drive the primary market. Wizards of the Coast had this observation, as told by Daniel James at this year’s Virtual Goods Summit:

Wizards of the Coast had some interesting things to say, that secondary markets, for example of Magic Online, have been incredibly valuable in driving the primary market. People will buy way more cards in the primary market because they know they can flip them. Mostly they don’t, though, they just hold onto them. Which is a great tip for people thinking about this.

So embrace secondary markets as more users will choose to participate in your primary market if they believe they can sell their goods to others when they’re done the game.

Sources:

* Integrated graphics stats
* Sherwood Dungeon stats
* Quotes & Puzzle Pirates Stats via Virtual Goods Summit

Notes:

* Thanks to Raph Koster for analyzing my previous post.

Nickelodeon To Invest $100M In Online Casual Games

Gamasutra - MTV's Nickelodeon To Invest $100M In Online Casual Games

MTV's Nickelodeon To Invest $100M In Online Casual Games

MTV's Nickelodeon To Invest $100M In Online Casual Games MTV Networks' Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group has announced its commitment to invest $100 million over the next two years in development, distribution and creation of casual gaming titles, sites and platforms.

According to the company, the investment is a part of MTV's strategy to secure a leading role in the gaming space -- including casual, console and handheld games, as well as related media.

The Group's president, Cyma Zarghami, made the announcement at the Casual Connect gaming conference in Seattle, WA, in a keynote address delivered by Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group's Executive Vice President of Digital Media, Steve Youngwood.

According to the Nickelodeon Kids and Family group, the investment will produce several initiatives in the next two years, including the myNOGGIN edugaming subscription service for preschoolers (available in the fall), new multiplayer games and tournaments in the Nicktropolis online world, the kid-friendly subscription-based Nick Gaming Club (launching in 2008) and The-NGames.com, which through a recently-announced partnership with AddictingGames, will create a massive online casual gaming site focused solely on teen girls.

Additionally, the investment will support the expansion of AddictingGames to include casual MMOGs with the introduction of AddictingWorlds. AddictingGames recently partnered with Habbo, adding another virtual world to its existing partnership with sister site Neopets. The company says increased emphasis will be placed on user-submitted games on the site, including more prominent upload capabilities and game-making engines.

The company also says that increased Shockwave focus will be placed on the creation of games that will also provide opportunities for prominent integrated advertising. Jigsaw Video will be the first app to launch, while Shockwave plans to link itself more closely with family-targeted brands within Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group, like Nick-at-Nite television, to give advertisers the ability to promote their messaging across multiple platforms. Shockwave will also increase its publishing of downloadable games with Carrie the Caregiver Episode 2: Preschool, scheduled to come out later this year.

Neopets will also be transformed into Neostudios, the company says, which will focus on developing new virtual world gaming experiences online while continuing to grow and evolve the existing ones. The first of these will launch at the end of 2008 with the goal of launching a new game every other year.

"Particularly in the kids' space, with more than 86% of kids 8 to 14 gaming online, we see great momentum for online casual gaming," said Zarghami. "This investment will not only benefit our audiences, but also our marketing and distribution partners."

ASIAN POP / MMO Better Blues

ASIAN POP / MMO Better Blues

ASIAN POP
MMO Better Blues

By Jeff Yang, Special to SF Gate

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

* Printable Version
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ChinaJoy booth babes: Because bikini-clad women and unarm... More booth babes at ChinaJoy's "Dead or Alive" exhibit: J... K2 Network's Joshua Hong. Courtesy of K2 Network Sword of the New World: Just chillin' until it's time to ... More...
Asian Pop
Archive

Entertainment
entertainment links

Korea is the online gaming capital of Asia. But will its wares play in the U.S.?

Before our phone interview begins, K2 Network chief executive Joshua Hong has one small warning. "I want to apologize in advance if I have to put you on hold every so often," he says. "I've been dealing with a really awful cold, and I don't want to be having a coughing fit directly into your ear."

Microsoft Casual Games Partners with GoPets

Worlds In Motion - Microsoft Casual Games Partners with GoPets

Microsoft Casual Games Partners with GoPets

-GoPets, an online world established in South Korea in 2004, lets users explore, play casual games, and create and customize virtual pets. Now, Microsoft Casual Games has announced it will partner with GoPets to launch the game on Windows Live Messenger, integrating the virtual world with its instant messaging service.

The service is now available via IM to Messenger users in the U.S., Australia, Japan and Korea-- but Microsoft says it'll expand it to more than 30 countries by the end of 2007.

“GoPets is an online community where anyone can adopt a pet, customize it to their liking and interact with other pet owners anywhere in the GoPets virtual world at any time of day,” said Erik Bethke, CEO and founder of GoPets Ltd. “With direct access through Windows Live Messenger, it will be even easier for pet fans to make friends all over the world through common interests and shared experiences, such as chatting and playing games on the Windows Live Messenger and GoPets platforms.”

GoPets' basic membership is free, with special access for premium membership, and goods and currency-- "gold shells"-- for sale. Currently in an open beta phase in fifteen languages and eight territories around the world, GoPets recently surpassed 640,000 registered users, but that number is likely to grow, since Windows Live Messenger's userbase is pegged at nearly 260 million active accounts worldwide.

Erik Bethke, CEO of GoPets, recently spoke at the Casual Connect gaming conference in Seattle, on his online worlds philosophy. He'd rather use the word "citizen" than "user," for one.

"I believe that when we sell something with virtual currency, people believe it's theirs," Bethke said. "They should be able to buy, sell, trade and everything."

fastest-growing virtual world ever

Guess who just launched the fastest-growing virtual world ever?: Sciam Observations

Guess who just launched the fastest-growing virtual world ever?

A. Blizzard (World of Warcraft)

B. Linden Labs (Second Life)

C. Mattel (Hot Wheels, Barbie, etc.)

All right, so it's obviously C, otherwise why is this blogger jabbering at you, right?

Last night at the Digital Life preview a Mattel rep--who, just to make the conversation extra surreal, actually looked sort of like Barbie--told me that in the first 60 days of its existence, the new online virtual world Barbie Girls has signed up three million members, and they're adding new ones at the rate of 50,000 a day.

Just for reference, it took Second Life 3 years to reach 1 million members.

Access to the world is free, the dolls that get you in-game pets and other goodies are not, and the whole shebang is still in beta.

Between this and the runaway success of WebKinz and Club Penguin (which, all by itself, already has a valuation of $500 million - nearly what Rupert Murdoch paid for Myspace) I can only imagine what a future populated by people who literally grew up living in virtual worlds would look like.

In other words, all the stuff that is now newsworthy in Second Life might become routine: Shareholder meetings in protected virtual spaces? Speed dating in virtual restaurants? What if the 20-years-hence successor to World of Warcraft really does become "the new golf"?

>> More on kids and their virtual worlds from a recent NYTimes piece.

UPDATE:
I had a chance to subsequently verify these figures with the PR rep whom I spoke to in the first place. Lauren Dougherty of Mattel says:

"I had referenced that we were rapidly *nearing* 3 million with 2.75 million registered users to-date and a growth averaging between 40,OOO - 50,000 new registered users per day."

2007 Persistent Worlds whitepaper (IGDA)

Online Games SIG/2007WPSB/index - IGDAwiki

Online Games SIG/2007WPSB/index
International Game Developers Association
< Online Games SIG | 2007WPSB
Jump to: navigation, search
Image:I alert-dev.gif The contents of Online Games SIG/2007WPSB/index are in-development. Please be patient while changes are formulated. Thank you!

Welcome to the 2007 Persistent World White Paper Project. The 2007WPSB section of the Wiki is the development sandbox for this ongoing project. We welcome new volunteers and contributors. To find our more about taking part in the project, please contact James Hursthouse (james at onlinegameservices dot com). We would ask that you do NOT make any direct changes to these pages before volunteering as a member of the team. Thanks!!

If you have any comments or suggestions pertaining to a particular section, please use the 'Discussion' tab at the top of the main page for that section. Section Coordinators are monitoring those pages for ideas relating to their section.!!

Practical Scheduling For Games

Gamasutra - Q&A: Producers Of The Roundtable - Practical Scheduling For Games

Q&A: Producers Of The Roundtable - Practical Scheduling For Games
(Page 1/7)
Next arrow

[Gamasutra is partnering with GameProducer.net, a game production resource, for a series of Q&As named 'Producers of the Round Table'. The Round Table is a place for producers who work in game industry to present their opinions in response to questions.

In this installment, which deals with scheduling issues in game development, participants include Robbie Edwards, Senior Producer at Red Storm Entertainment/Ubisoft, Peter O'Brien, Producer at Bizarre Creations, Harvard Bonin, Senior Producer last at Electronic Arts, Adrian Crook, Producer at Relic Entertainment, and Frank Rogan, Producer at Gas Powered Games.]

More information in the original article.

Practical Scheduling For Games

Gamasutra - Q&A: Producers Of The Roundtable - Practical Scheduling For Games

Q&A: Producers Of The Roundtable - Practical Scheduling For Games
(Page 1/7)
Next arrow

[Gamasutra is partnering with GameProducer.net, a game production resource, for a series of Q&As named 'Producers of the Round Table'. The Round Table is a place for producers who work in game industry to present their opinions in response to questions.

In this installment, which deals with scheduling issues in game development, participants include Robbie Edwards, Senior Producer at Red Storm Entertainment/Ubisoft, Peter O'Brien, Producer at Bizarre Creations, Harvard Bonin, Senior Producer last at Electronic Arts, Adrian Crook, Producer at Relic Entertainment, and Frank Rogan, Producer at Gas Powered Games.]

Business Success May Depend on Gaming Skills

Study: Business Success May Depend on
Gaming Skills

The
leaders of tomorrow may be the hardcore gamers of today, especially players of
MMORPGs. IBM has teamed with Seriosity on a new study, which found that many of
the skills developed from playing online are similar to those needed for
corporate leadership roles.

So you've leveled up your elf
warrior, organized multiple clans, and become a true hero in a virtual world.
Now it's time to take those skills to the real world. According to a new study
by IBM and Palo Alto, CA-based Seriosity, gaming skills and online role playing
skills in particular are actually becoming more and more important to the next
generation of corporate leaders.

Download the whitepaper.

Advanced Game Production & Management

IGDA Leadership Forum » Program

Program
Posted by JasonDellaRocca on February 16th, 2007

The IGDA Leadership Forum will host two complementary tracks. The Production Track will focus on the nuts and bolts of game production, such as scheduling techniques, post-mortems, and project pipelines. The Leadership Track will cover general leadership skills as well as more advanced team management and motivation techniques. Both tracks will consist of a mix of one-hour lectures, panels, and roundtables.

For session descriptions in each track and info on speakers, please view:

* Keynotes
* Leadership Track
* Production Track
* Roundtables
* Speakers

A full conference schedule will be posted in the near-future.

Non-Recruitment Policy

The IGDA Leadership Forum has a strict non-recruitment policy. Event sponsors, advertisers and speakers will not be permitted to promote recruiting/job opportunities.

TOP SECRET PROJECT - WIKI

Main Page - TOP SECRET PROJECT - WIKI

Welcome to the Project Top Secret Wiki!

Project Top Secret was set up and is being directed by long time gaming veteran David Perry, creator of games such as Earthworm Jim, MDK, and Matrix:Path of Neo. The project is supported by Acclaim Entertainment, and the resulting game will be published by Acclaim.

The purpose of Project Top Secret is, primarily, to enlist a community of thousands of gamers to collaborate with each other in the development of a Massive Multiplayer Online Racing Game for wide distribution. The game will be free to play and advertising supported. Top Secret is also a way to help spotlight and encourage game design and development talent that can be found all over the world, and a special prize awaits one individual who stands out in a substantial way during the course of the project, which is scheduled to last approximately one year. The majority of the project will take place on the Top Secret forums, and there is room for up to 100,000 people to join the project.

The design process is split into Milestones, each one representing a substantial design phase. Once we complete a Milestone we then move to the next one. Milestones are split into Tasks, all of which must be completed before moving to the next Milestone. There may be many Tasks running at the same time.

This Wiki will be used to record the full process of the development from Day One. You will be able to see which Tasks have been completed, the results of each, and which are currently in progress.

As new Milestones or Tasks are opened or added, they will be recorded here. Until a Milestone or Task is opened, it will NOT be on this Wiki. There is no crystal ball here, but you WILL be able to see currently running tasks and those tasks already completed.

MMOBUX.com

Advanced MMOG currency research [provided by mmobux]

How this site works

MMOBUX compares prices for virtual currencies in computer games, such as Gold in World of Warcraft.

Here's how you can find the cheapest price to boost your character:

1. Find your game in the list below
2. Find your server and faction
3. Click the website of the shop where you want to buy

Photosynth demo- must see

TED | Talks | Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Photosynth demo (video)

Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Photosynth demo

About this Talk

Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar. "Perhaps the most amazing demo I've seen this year," wrote Ethan Zuckerman, after TED2007. Indeed, Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images.

Middleware

MMORPG.COM - Your Headquarters for Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games!

Middleware and a look at Icarus Studios
When Carolyn Koh attended the recent Online Game Developers Conference, she learned a little something about Icarus Studios and Middleware as a whole.
advertisement

Middleware is everywhere these days when you look at the MMOG industry, and more than that, entire MMOG platforms are available for the budding MMOG studio to build their world up, and Joe Ludwig of Flying Labs Software shared their Adventures in Middleware in a lecture at the recent OGDC.

A summary explanation of middleware may simply be, "The nuts and bolts, the glue that hold an MMOG together."

Using middleware can cut the development time of an MMOG by more than half. What does that mean to gamers? It means that game developers can concentrate on game design and production. It means that players will see faster game development. Games with a 2 to 4 year development cycle instead of the traditional 4 to 6 before the advent of middleware. It means, for example: less buggy code, less buggy services (such as billing). It could mean an entire platform on which to build an MMOG, including development tools and project management tools.

However, as Joe Ludwig shared with us, Developers need to select the middleware carefully.

"We used A LOT of middleware," he informed the attendees. "Some were free, some were cheap, some took so much work to integrate we're removing it from the game." Some of providers of the middleware they chose to use simply dropped out of sight!

His tips on evaluating middleware included:

* Get the source code - source is more useful for debugging than modifying
* Evaluate the provider too. Make sure they are going to be there for you when you need them
* Include more than just programmers in the evaluation. Include the artists, the sound designers and operations.
* Schedule enough evaluation time
* Don't believe the hype. Evaluate it based on what's there, not what is promised.
* Don't be afraid to reject middleware.

At OGDC, BigWorld with whom we've spoken a time or two was present, as was Icarus Studios. Icarus attempts to stand apart as they boast not only the platform, that is the network architecture and administration tools, but the tools suite which combine the best of the best as well as project services such as project consultation, prototype development, outsourcing and staffing.

"Icarus Studios provides the tools for building virtual worlds," said David Gardner, the Executive Vice President of Icarus Studios as I questioned him about what his Icarus did. "Too many people have confused the Studios with the upcoming MMORPG, Fallen Earth."

But... isn't Fallen Earth produced by Icarus Studios? David was quick to clarify, "We invested in Fallen Earth as we wanted an MMOG to showcase our studio, but we are by no means the developers of Fallen Earth."

A quick check proved that the Fallen Earth MMO project is its own company, Fallen Earth, LLC although Icarus Studios is the principle investor in Fallen Earth. So, while the companies are closely related, and Icarus Studios provides project services and the platform on which Fallen Earth is being developed, they are separate companies. Although the announcement for Icarus Studios was made only a short time ago, the platform has already been licensed twice and per David, a few more deals in the works.

"Icarus Studios has created the only suite of tools designed from scratch specifically as an integrated 3rd party environment for 3D online world creation," says Jim Hettinger, CEO of Icarus Studios. "We're launching our technology suite today after an 18-month stealth period during which our 65-person team completed our six-year development and QA testing efforts."

So, back to Icarus Studios. What exactly is it? "It's a next Gen platform," Brad Lineberger, CTO of Icarus Studios elaborated. Although much is built from scratch from when the company was formed in 2001, Icarus has also included various other 3rd party software packages in their tools. "We've licensed what we've deemed is the Best of Breed. We utilize the PhysX Ageia physics engine and Vivox for integrated voice communication, for example."

Icarus positions themselves as a comprehensive resource center, from complete project development, platform and tool licensing to studio services and library resources. Not only can MMOG developers license the Icarus platform, they can contract with Icarus to provide staff that is fully trained in using the platform and tools. For their client, Fallen Earth, Lee Hammok serves as the lead game designer with Fred Rugar heading up art.

Here are some of the services that Icarus Studios provides apart from the design platform and tool suite:

* Production Services including design consulting, prototype development, project outsourcing, staff augmentation and world hosting services.
* Studios Services including a motion capture studio, a sound studio, art creation and 3D interior scanning

From what I garnered from the short meeting at OGDC and subsequent follow through with a few white papers and the information on their website, Icarus Studios looks to supply comprehensive services, very much a "one stop shop."

Duping and its impact (german)

Olnigg

Der übliche Niedergang einer virtuellen Wirtschaft
dargestellt am Beispiel des MMORPGs Vanguard
Vorab ein Hinweis in eigener Sache:

Sie erinnern sich?
Am 18.02.2007 sprach OLNIGG in der Ausgabe 135 für das Bugparadies Vanguard eine Kaufempfehlung aus.
Wer hätte sich jemals träumen lassen, dass unserem Rat ausgerechnet die Firma Sony Online Entertainment Folge leisten und diese nicht nur das Spiel sondern alle Rechte inklusive der halben Belegschaft einkaufen würde?
Doch mehr über Hintergründe und Folgen wenn überhaupt, dann erst in einer der nächsten Ausgaben.
Ach ja, und wir möchten an dieser Stelle auch ausdrücklich eine Kaufempfehlung für OLNIGG aussprechen.
Sigil - eine Firma, die von Anfang an eine Nulltoleranzgrenze für Gold- und Itemhandel ankündigte:

What's So Great About Realism?

Engines of Creation #14: What's So Great About Realism?

What's So Great About Realism?

by Dave Rickey
2004-01-28

Reality is over-rated, dear
Don't let's be fooled by the hype
There's no such thing as tomorrow, you hear -
Amuse yourself, the time is ripe.
Reality Song, Evergreen Dayflies

When viewed objectively, the fact that the "realism" argument keeps coming up in these games would seem odd. Bringing realism into a discussion that includes fireballs, trolls, energy swords, blasters, and nanotechnology is, at first glance, totally out of place. Yet come up it does, over and over, and in the oddest contexts ("A *real* fireball would leave a smoke trail"). Somehow, in spite of the obvious incongruities, we cannot escape from the belief that reality is the default, and departures from it are suspect and probably false.

Games are where people go to escape reality, so why the push to make it "real"? Because games have to ride the line between keeping our minds busy with fantasy, yet keeping it believable enough to keep our interest, to be fun. When you go too real or too fantasy, the balance is lost and results in a game that has lost its spirit and isn't fun. So, often discussion about games revolves around making them fun. And then things get ugly, because everyone has very firm ideas about what is fun, and often those beliefs aren't accurate even for themselves. For some strange reason, like a zen koan about the eye that cannot see itself, players can play a game, have fun doing so, but not really know why it is fun.

One key to the path out of this confusion comes from recent developments in neuropsychology. What they are finding is the real fundamental workings of neural chemistry and firing that underlay the conscious and unconscious processes that we think of as "thinking". One is that, although our minds are very plastic, they contain pre-dispositions, sort of a genetically derived "BIOS" that sets the initial conditions that allow our minds to form. The brain wiring seems to contain certain hardwired functions, and one of these is termed "intuitive physics", a part of our brain that, although not directly coded with knowledge of how real-world physical processes works, is built to gather and integrate data on those workings and form them into a set of expectations. If there is any hard-wired function in this, it is a simple drive to identify causality: Observable effects have identifiable causes, and we cannot help but look for them. This tendency to identify causes for effects can get quite pronounced, such as the phase most children go through when they imagine profound or dire consequences from apparently innocuous actions. The roots of superstition probably lie in trying to establish causes for otherwise inexplicable observations. The desire to understand the ultimate causes of the world around us fuels both science and religion, this is a very powerful instinct we are talking about.

The other key comes from how the brain preserves neural pathways that prove successful at making predictions and suppresses those that fail. When we attempt something and succeed, we feel a rush of pleasure: endorphins, dopamine, and various hormonal and neurochemical effects encourage the neural connections that have just formed to be reinforced and optimized. When we attempt to reach a goal and fail, we feel frustration, shame, even anger, and similar processes discourage the neural patterns that led to the circumstances that created those feelings. When we have a successful pattern of goal-seeking established, and something that changes the circumstances so that the pattern is no longer effective, we feel confusion, disorientation, even fear, and a strong desire to re-establish the environment that fits our earlier, successful, pattern.

Out of this, we may be able to extract an answer to one of the most vexing questions in game design: What is fun? Fun is the process of establishing, seeking, and achieving goals, in a larger context that gives both the process and the results consistent meaning. Fun environments both surprise and reassure us. They surprise us by working on rules that are very different from those of the real world, and reassure us by having an internal consistancy and logic that is reminiscent of that we find in the real world. Realism is a constant theme, because the exemplar of the environment where these things can occur is the real one. The reason why the market for trading real cash for in-game rewards will never be stamped out is because ultimately, they act as stand-ins for the same thing: The underlying desire to achieve goals.

Link Management, very interesting

Jeff Freeman » I Have Many Lists of Links

I Have Many Lists of Links
April 24, 2007
[blogging]

I have bookmarks in a browser (at work and at home), a neglected blogroll here, way too many feeds at Bloglines, plus a mess of saved links in my scrapbook add-on.

Then there are my StumbleUpon likes, and - if I don’t exercise a bit of self control - Technorati’s polite offers to watch links and del.icio.us’ desire for a tag on every page threaten to spill-out additional lists.

There are many, many 3rd party services, and a few utilities, to assist in managing lists of links separately.

I made this graphic as a goof, poking fun at all the sharing sites there are now: