Gamasutra Interview

For your reading pleasure my interview about my upcoming talk at GDC Next:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/200393/Whats_Next_Move_to_mobile_or_fall_behind.php

The f2p audience and you

If you design a f2p game the formula MAU*Conversion *ARPPU will define your designers live. Whats important is that MAU is also a function of your setting & genre.

In other words if you pick a niche setting your reach will suffer, so will your revenue. If your setting is niche then marketing will have a harder time finding users - which raises acquisition costs which lessens your revenue.

So it is important to know how large your audience can be depending on those two factors. Hardly any marketing research has been done, most picks for those are gut feelings of the developers. Is science fiction niche compared to general topics? Or Fantasy?

If you look back into history you will notice that Fantasy on a world wide level was niche until Lord of the Rings hit the Hollywood blockbuster list. Yes, it was apart from one territory, the USA.

Oh no, you will claim, I read Fantasy all my life! It can't be! Well it was as you aren't the large reach audience, you are the niche. If you are large enough then f2p will work easier for you.

That is the difference between Clash of Clans and its "predecessors" Edgeworld (SciFi). Or why Candy Crush has such a large audience. Or why Call of Duty works better than SciFi shooters.

That is also why IP's seems to make it easier as there is already a defined audience. Note I say "seem" as that IP can also be a bane to your growth if said IP isn't popular enough.

So in order to lessen the risk, increasing revenue and lowering costs of user acquisition you should make sure your setting is cool - worldwide.

And I haven't even touched genre yet ...

The gaming industry and you

I am kinda famous in Germany, but not because I shipped top 10 hits, simply because I do this job since a long time and shipped 100+ games, some of them I won't even tell - those are my skeletons in the closet .

So therefore I got a lot of "friends" on Facebook who either read or ignore whatever troll post I publish. I know who my close friends in the industry are, and I also know that many don't like me simply because I polarize a lot. This is basically part of my self promotion: instead objectively publishing analyses about theories I do talks which are a little bit more - lets say - demagogue.

Why? Simply because it gets people to think than to get bored about numbers and careful statements. That's all I want.

Recently I went into fights with 2 industry colleges on Facebook on 2 different occasions. On one case he simply attacked the f2p business model aggressively in a way which I don't even know from him.

The other case I simply posted that the writers of magazines & blogs should at some point return the favor when they find newsworthy things on my wall (which happens more than I thought it was). One of them attacked that post in a way which I never have seen him - emotionally, aggressively - even damaging to both of us.

On Gamescom I met them both. The journalist surprised me as we simply talked about other hobbies and we both realized that we are pretty much nerds alike. He was building tank models like I did - something which I never thought of him doing. This somehow gave us common ground and a better understanding of each other.

The other one was totally changed and we talked about one of his upcoming titles which gets excellent previews so far and he simply said "email me, I send you one". Maybe a peace gift, but I see it simply as "maybe we both went too far - lets get over with it".

All I want to say is "I am sorry" - next time we should simply clarify things one on one instead publicly fighting about the small things. There are more important things than to fight each other.

Thanks to you two, you know who you are.

My GDC Europe 2013 talk is online

GDC 2013 vault opened today and my talk "Getting past pay to win" is among the free content. Check it out here:

http://www.gdcvault.com/free/gdc-europe-13 for a list of all talks

and

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1019236/Getting-Past-Pay-to

for mine. Enjoy!

Gamescom is behind us

Gamescom is exciting for me as I meet all industry friends easily within one location. I rarely go to that show to check out new games as websites do a much better job giving me all information I need (check out HD Titanfall trailers, or Watchdogs, even better, awesome!)

But some players need to wait for hours to peek at a new game for 5 minutes. Wtf. People. Why does Gamescom use that system to filter people (I know age rating). There were 340.000 visitors this year. Awesome record!

But less than 5000 can be jiggled through your lanes waiting for the games presentation, assuming you can get 50 people per 30 minute presentation all day long.

That is a huge price you pay for your booth to get only a fraction of the audience. 1.7%. One point seven! It is time to rethink the game show concept I believe.

Source: http://www.gamezone.de

The Tigers of Asia

When I started in online games 1997 I realized this is going to be big. I had no idea how big, but I felt it as I was already hooked to online gaming.

When I experienced free to play the first time and learned it came from Asia I knew they were ahead of us. Luckily the Asian developers and publishers didn't know how to tackle our gamers at that time. There seemed to be a vast difference in play style and game style. I even made a talk about it on KGC, the Korean Game Developer Conference.

Some years later the Asian Tigers became giants, so large in fact that they own major shares in western gaming giants. The revenue they pull in just from their local market is so high that they can play money games in the west - exactly when we are shaken up by the console transition year.

I said years ago we should be prepared for the time when Asia understands our gaming market. Are we prepared? I doubt it. Maybe we should prepare for a time where most large and creative companies are owned by Asian online companies.

Largest player battle ever in Eve Online - I was there

So in case your games site hasn't told you yet: Yesterday on July 28th the largest player battle happened in Eve Online with over 4000 players participating.

Coverage of the Verge: http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/28/4565558/eve-online-biggest-space-battle-in-history

And the Mittani report: http://themittani.com/news/live-reports-battle-6vdt-cfc-victorious and an aftermath report of it of the same site: http://themittani.com/features/6vdt-cfc-battle-report.

We won. Our enemy, the TEST alliance, retreated to Delve, another area of the universe. Their retreat basically give us the region "Fountain" under control.

If you ask how it feels to be there let me explain: if you haven't done this kind of mass battle yet you will get frustrated, annoyed even. The reason is that the only way CCP can run such a battle is to slow down time. They call it TiDi which makes all actions slower than real time. In our case TiDi was so bad that all actions took 10x longer than normal. That doesn't sound much but imagine targeting a ship takes 3 minutes ... and shooting it up to 10 minutes. The whole game runs in slow motion in this one sector.

The advantage of such a TiDi is that the game doesn't lag or crash, it only slows down. If you are used to it and learn to cope with it its actually fun. I finished GoT season three while fighting in it. Yes that's how much time you have.

You might argue that this isn't fun but you need to know that Eve is not an action game, everything in Eve is slow so slowing it down even further to fight crash lags is no problem at all. Many players complain about it who never fought in these battles, but they work and you must work them because otherwise you can never defend against .... 3000 players invading your system you worked years for.

There will be a time when server architects know how to run 4000 players in one "arena". But so far there are still physical limits to overcome and Eve sets a record here.

Now that the news is spreading even the BBC covers it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23489293

Codes: Things some developers never learn

I am wondering why obvious best practices get ignored so often.

I am talking for example about serial numbers & codes. Whether it be windows serial numbers, Steam codes, Nintendo Club pins or codes from iTunes some of those are ignoring obvious solutions to common problems.

Lets take a look at a sample code:

             ABlO-XY12-ZU80-I1lO-4354

Note that a lot of characters can't simply be identified. Is it a one, "L" or "i"? No one knows. The obvious solution? Do not use "L", "I" or 1's in your codes. Its as simple as that. Do not use "O" like in "Order" and zeros. (Feedback from readers: do not use S, Z, 5, and Q either). Even if your printer promises they can be distinguished at some print run its being ignored and your users can't.

And: ignore upper and lower case entries, treat input as identical. PLEASE.

Besides those obvious errors the entry of the codes in your input field can be optimized as well. Why in hell can't I copy/paste some serials with multiple code sections like above into an input field with 5 separate fields? Because it all pastes into the first field, ignoring the other 4. They don't carry over. Its not really hard to do.

Also: the last digits is a check sum. This check sum does NOT check the code server side for validation, it is to check client side if the USER did an error. Server side validation is always against a database so your codes can't be cloned.

It is not hard to do codes correct. So whenever you are involved in a project where codes are either for licensing, installation, or bonus codes please follow the simple rules above. It makes your live easier, less support tickets and less frustrated customers.

p.s.: A co worker pointed out rightly that the statements above might say that the serial number check sum client side is all you need. This is of course wrong, the check has to be made server side all the time. The check sum I meant is the user input check so at least the basic serial is correct and not gibberish. That can be client side. However exposing your check sum method in the client isn't wise either. Maybe we need two.

No words needed

In Russia, Game Play YOU!

Remember even due to those limits here Russia presents the largest online game audience in Europe:

In Russia, Game Play YOU!

The App Store Problem

Developers complain that their game doesn't sell in the app store or doesn't have enough downloads and thus doesn't make enough revenue through their in app purchases.

There are problems getting visibility on the app store, its key to success. However the main problem I see isn't visibility - its boredom of the users looking at your app.

Let me give you one example: I am looking for good strategy games in my iPad and iPhone since months and can't find a lot. Most so called strategy games are Tower Defense games or variations of games already in the app store since years. There are exceptions like Autumn Dynasty or Ravenmark. But most other strategy titles can be put into 3 or 4 drawers or "me too" or clones of existing concepts. Boring.

The same is happening on many other genres. It seems that developers look whats selling and copy that concept - and then complain their game isn't selling. How lame is that. I can understand that licensed IP's for movies like Despicable Me simply copy a game concept (runners) and be good with it - but long term revenue is not happening on game types which exist in the app store since years.

Developer friends told me they are tired of the App Store. Its not as exiting as it used to be. But that's exactly whats happening. 90% of all games being published already exist.

That's exactly why indies have better success than commercial developers: they despise copying concepts.

So the first step for success on the iOS store is to make a big step away to all mass concepts like runners, tower defenses and match three games.

Game burnout

Its strange often. When you work in the games industry you play a lot of games. I mean a LOT. I think I played like 15.000 games in my life. Yes I mean different ones. The effect on this is that most games I play have similar mechanics or features than a game I played before.

This removes an important element of games: surprise & excitement. "This is cool" is missing often which makes me bored about most games. This isn't bad as I can spot the special things inside a game which are great very fast and easy. Generally it takes like 20 minutes and I can tell you how a game is constructed and how it will progress along. That's usually when I stop playing it.

Rarely a game* will bind me for hours, the most recent one was Dishonored. (*I mean single player games, MMO's are different). I started playing Tomb Raider and while it is an excellent game I was bored within minutes. I knew too many things they were doing including their quick time moments (did I tell you I hate the qt moment thingy which seem to be popular?. Don't get me wrong, Tomb Raider is an excellent game, but not for someone who played as much as I did.

So I am on a mission to find that one game which keeps me occupied for hours. Have suggestions? Let me know.

The whole thing is made worse with the fact that I love online games. As soon as I play a single player game I am missing people. Humans - which I can talk to, play with or against. This is so powerful that most single player games have a hard time to compete. I went as far as saying "Single player games will be niche in 5-10 years" in a talk back 2006 I think. Was I right? We'll see.

Btw people suggested Animal Crossing 3DS which I can really recommend to ANY age, in fact most people who I know love that game are beyond 30. So don't get fooled. Play that little gem! My 3DS was stolen by my daughter so I can't play right now :(

The Inner World

So my students (no, rather ex students) of the Film Academy Ludwigsburg achieve a #1 spot on Amazon Germany with their first adventure game "The Inner World".

The project started in a creative camp where the students had to design a universe. One team came up with an unusual setting where creatures lived inside our own existing world, kind of upside down world inside earth depending entirely on light.

The world then was used in my board game design workshop to create a very nice game which was rated pretty good. The students then used the world & board game foundation to create an adventure game concept, which they also used for their diploma.

So that one student came to his diploma review with the papers of his newly founded company Fizzbin, took his diploma and went off creating the adventure "The Inner World" mentioned above.

The game will be released shortly and it seems they get great coverage. Even the most famous youtuber Gronkh will feature it today.

I wish them all the best and many follow up titles!

German quote of the team after this blogpost went online: "WIr wurden ge-gronkhed und geteutet. GOIL."

Randomness in games part II

Guess what: random numbers on computers aren't random. They are generated by algorithms and math tells us that formulas are not random. Proper random number generators also take CPU time - which is negligible unless you need thousands of random numbers per second - as it is in most online games (with combat drawing most random numbers).

The problem with programming is that lazy ones simply use the supplied rand() function supplied by their compiler. But compiler writers rarely spend a lot of time creating great random number generators.

What does random mean anyway. From our viewpoint it means that I get various results for a given action. I read feedback by the game and see some randomness to create variances in the game.

Imagine I would lose due to random numbers 3 times in a row. "That sucks" is the first reaction. But can it be? Sure it can, a random number generator theoretically could create numbers which lets you lose 10 times in a row. Not great, and bad for the game - so we try to prevent it.

Yes, I will now explain how we can make sure this doesn't happen, basically making random less random.
We need to make sure that there is no win or loss streak in the numbers, so we need to distribute them evenly. We also need to make sure that its random, not sorted.

We simply take a table (let's say 10.000 entries) and we fill the table with numbers from 0-99, sequentially until the table is full. Now we start to randomly exchange numbers until the table is totally jumbled and "random". Still streaks can appear so we analyze the table for those and remove them, we make sure there is a rough even distribution of random numbers for every sample we take.

Sounds confusing? Check these links out for some table references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Random_Digits_with_100,000_Normal_Deviates
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1418.html

So these tables guarantee that I get true random numbers but no winning streaks or losing streaks - AND they are much faster for the game as I simply take one number after the other.
AND they can be persistent as I simply save the index (the current random number I took) for each player - so the player doesn't see a repetitive behavior in the game.
So now you know how World of Warcraft generates their randomness. As I knew how they work I could even play with their randomness and increase the likelihood of epic drops. See my 7 year old blog entry which explains this:
http://teut.blogspot.de/2006/11/my-t1-item-xyz-doesnt-drop.html

Important: Never use these tables for gambling sites like Poker, otherwise some bright MIT students will forecast your 'random' numbers and loot your savings! (it really happened to Poker sites years ago).

So now you know how to generate the numbers - but how do we use randomness? If a game is truly random its actually very boring as random feedback doesn't create a good game.

But this is part of on of my next blog entries - coming soon.

n00b iPhone app mistakes

#1: ignore the sound switch the user set. Blare loud in the office when I start your app although I switched it mute (talking to you Skype!)

#2: save games. That's so last century. Auto save. Also cloud save so I can reuse it with re-installs or across devices. Thank you.

#3 super long intros. You know that most players don't even remember your company name and really don't care about the licenses you used. Stop doing this shit.

#4: make intros not cancellable. Yes. Let the user look through a 1 minute intro before he can play. Most users uninstalled your game faster than your intro finishes.

#5: full animated cinematic and voiced over sequences. Make your game a 1.8 GB download. Thank you. Enough said? Its a mobile device.

#6: make a mandatory registration. Yes, let me register before I can play and your registration either doesn't work or doesn't like m password or even needs a confirmation email click. Sorry. Uninstall is so much quicker and even user friendly!

#7: before I even finish your tutorial you ask me to rate your game. You know. I don't. Let me take a look at your game first. Thank you.

#8: Don't use incremental updates. Let me patch a 1.2 GB update. Thanks. Took an hour.

#9: Don't give me those updates "bug fixes". Give me a list of bug fixes. I know you just want to reset your ratings, ad placement or trackers.

#10 (Feedback from Tino): When I turn off Notifications I mean OFF. Not "maybe I can notify you again - without asking?"

Having more oddities and don#t likes of games on iOS? Let me know!

Mini Games in Games

I often get design pitches from my students which include mini games. I even got pitches in the past from professional developers with mini games playing a major role.

First I ask you: when is the last time you played a blockbuster hit which included mini games? There aren't many. You need to search for them.

Mini games in a design pitch is generally proof that the main game design sucks. The mini games were included to cover the entertainment holes of the original design. That is why mini games should never be included in a game design - mini games essentially admit fail in your main game design mechanics.

Of course IF you are a professional and know what you are doing mini games can be entertaining. In fact there are games just evolving around mini games (Mario Party, Puzzle Pirates etc.) or are just a tremendously successful mini game. But if you are a beginner designer please - please (!) forget all mini game ideas you have.

Mini Games

Randomness in games

Random numbers play a large role in any computer game. They are key to many game mechanics to introduce variety in feedback.

Some games however take it too far and randomize too much. If you play many rogue likes then you are used to this randomness of loot and dungeon layouts: these games randomize the dungeon floors and all loot.

The dungeon layout works in this case as its part of the global feedback: you enter a dungeon which leads to hell and if you die you have to start from scratch. Would the dungeon be identical every time you start over then you would be bored real quick. To prevent this the dungeon layout is random.

This doesn't work for all games however. People love to talk about exploration and their findings. So in World of Warcraft there are hundreds if not thousands of sites listing the maps and loot tables of the dungeons.

Lesson: if multiple of these sites exist then there is a demand. If there is a demand then the overall mechanic works nicely.

Note: you won't find any of these sites about Diablo with the exception of items.

But regarding items in Diablo here is the thing: if you look for epic items it doesn't matter which boss monsters you kill. The drip chance is random, the item in question is random. So you simply farm any monsters you find and sell your stuff in the auction house - the rewarding gold you spend on items - guess where - in the auction house. Basically the auction house becomes an item shop supplied by random drops of players.

This undermines the exploration, the reward to have killed a specific monster and finally your favorite epic drops. Worse: if the player realizes that all drops are random then the content you supply doesn't matter anymore - as items can be found anywhere. You could theoretically limit your game to one zone and boss - of course I over simplify.

Generally randomness should not give only random rewards. Randomness should introduce variety to feedback, not generate random feedback.

Next up: how to use random generators effectively in games.

Target audience(s) in online games

In the old economy we tended to focus a lot on the target audience. We specifically did things in the game design & marketing to target the player we had in mind. After years of retail experience this is done pretty accurate by the publishers.

However in online games this is different, very different.

First difference: retail games are usually fire and forget products. After they are on the shelf they get their DLC or add on and then its off to new products. Sequels reset the cycle.

So the target audience in retail games are a static entity. They don't change as the time is simply too short. They might change for the sequel due to new data, but that's it.

In online games the audience shifts a lot. We talk about games which lasts for a decade or longer. The audience of such an online game is not static. Players come and leave on a daily basis. You might have a constant number of active users but this still doesn't mean the users are identical to last months users.

This means that your target audience is a moving target. They change over time. As within a decade a lot of things happen:

- a console cycle or two passes by
- your computer is 5x as powerful
- things gets invented like the internet or smartphones
- social networks gets created and have a billion users.

So no wonder that online games need a different approach to user targeting.

Why am I writing this? As I always have to fight the notion of the "old economy" that they speak about "THE" target audience. Also what happens if we have all users targeted, is there something like saturation within an online games user acquisition? No.

Well get this: if your online games live 10 years then all former 10 year olds are 20 and represent a wonderful new audience. You have an endless supply of new users simply because we always produce new ones and even more year by year!

Image source: Wikipedia.org

The styles of free to play monetization

Yes, free to play monetization comes in various styles, even trends, they might be even fashionable so to say.

As I have the luxury to experience different companies "styles" of monetization I noticed something unusual.

Companies tend to stick to their style and also think it is the only one which works for them. So they create games and always adapt their monetization style to them - which usually worked unless the games genre or mechanics are not fitting that style. As a consequence those games usually do worse than the original.

So that said company tries a different style it saw at games of another company - and fails. It doesn't work very well as that other company worked years to optimize their "style" and that one might not fit your game at all.

So you're stuck. Either you continue making games which fit your monetization style or you learn how to create perfectly fitting monetization styles to your game. But that means you understand the fundamentals behind it - that you created a formula or schematics which can be made fit to various game styles.

Note that this is true for the inventors of the "European style" of monetization in free to play. Some of them stuck to their style and didn't grow, some of them opened up and are growing beyond their original hit games.

The reason for this "one style" style is of course that their performing games are analyzed and they know exactly what works and what doesn't.So they copy/paste those mechanics to other games and they work as well - but not as good as the original. The title isn't suited perfectly to that mechanic after all. So you create more and more "copies" of the original which deteriorate in quality or revenue over time.

Time to adapt your monetization style. Key learning: monetization works really well if it is fitted perfectly to your game design.

Just like in fashion - they only fit it to bodies (nsfw).

Bad opinion II

So it continues. It comes around every couple of years that industry professionals claim it is a good idea for Nintendo to get rid of their hardware business and write their games for all platforms. Mario on PS4, iPad etc. They think it is a good idea.

Some things they forget:

Nintendo is a Japanese company. They are patient as an elephant. They don't care if they lost one generation of consoles, hey, its just 5 years.

Nintendo is a rich company. Valued billions, having billions in cash reserve. In fact it is one of the richest companies of Japan.

Mario, Zelda, Pokemon etc are the high value IP's which cause people to buy Nintendo hardware.

Nintendo always innovated the consoles, controllers and systems with Sony & MS following their lead.

Compared to Sony and Microsoft Entertainment Nintendo had profitable console generations. MS did not. Sony did not.

Why should they bother about other platforms? Nintendo often enough stated that they do not see MS or Sony as competitors. They merely see bicycles, girls and TV as competition as they steal entertainment time from their consumers.

German article on Krawall.de mirroring my opinion:
http://www.krawall.de/web/Wii_U/special/id,65290/

And a video / Statement with the same position:
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/uujebd/the-final-bosman-what-about-nintendo-

In transition years there is no limit on bad opinions

The industry is in chaos, no one knows where it goes, everyone speculates and meanwhile the smartphone and tablet market opens up an entirely new segment.

Lets take 2 examples:

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/31/forget-the-xbox-one-and-ps-4-the-most-powerful-gaming-device-is-your-pc/

Yes, your PC is faster than the next gen. Is it? Its not, simply as the number nerds forgot that on the next gen you can access the hardware directly, on the PC you can't. The layers of software between the games and the hardware is so thick to be compatible with 30 years old history that it slows down your games.

On next gen that is not the case. Ask yourself why most XBox 360 titles still look better than the most recent PC titles. That's why.

My favourite of the week is however this one: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/05/30/take-two-ceo-talks-mmos-next-gen-gta-v-and-zombies.aspx

Oh boy. MMO's don't work in USA. Thats what he said. Thats why he partners with TenCent for Asia, that's it. No MMO works in USA. I had to read that twice.

He also focusses in Asia on MMO's where 10-20 are successful. What a wrong numbers game. Does he know that in Asia they release like a new MMO per week?

But it gets better!

He believes the rental problem on console games only exists in the first 8 weeks of new games. Really. Did he ever visit a games rental store?

If I owned Take2 shares I would sell now. Or wait, no, I would sell after GTA V release.

June 10th 2013 will be remembered

June 10th will be remembered as the day which changed our (games) industry. June 10th is the day where the key press conference are on E3. Big announcements will be made by Sony and Microsoft for their new consoles.

But.

Apple makes another keynote on June 10th as well. Deliberately placed to compete with the important gaming conference. Readers take note. I warned you.

June 10th 2013. Not a nice date to remember. 06.10.2013 (US) or 10.06.2013. 100613. 061013. Doesn't look nice.

Here is what else happened June 10th in our history: http://www.historyorb.com/day/june/10

Mobile is eating the world

What I said on Quo Vadis but in better slides:

2013 05 BEA - ’Mobile is eating the World’ from bge20

Sony share value during XBox One presentation

Without words:

XBox One Big Brother is watching you

Many things have been said about the epic fail of Microsoft's presentation of their XBox One (and the bad name), but this here basically cuts my interest to buy one in half:

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/139706-microsofts-new-kinect-patent-goes-big-brother-will-spy-on-you-for-the-mpaa

Yes, this is really a plan. Do you really want Microsoft watching your living room. Really?

What bothers me in most computer games

Yesterday I answered an interview of the magazine Spiegel about Eve Online and one of the questions was "What do find so fascinating about Eve?"

When I answered I realized what the single thing is what bothers me on most games to date: they tell me what to do and how to do it. The freedom is so limited that you feel like a game on rails. Worst invention of the industry in this regard: QTE. Yes I mean you Call of Duty.

The one single player game I played recently for longer was Dishonored. I could pick up my mission when I wanted, still could roam around my base afterwards and went to the boat which dropped me in the mission area. Even there I could approach my goal as I wanted, there was no timer, path or QTE telling me how to do it. I love that game.

In MMO's its similar: World of Warcraft has a path of success. You level up, then you do your attunement quests (old times), then you did 5 man heroics until you get bored and finally you raid and progress until you beat the end boss of the current expansion and have the ultimate gear ... until the next expansion made it worthless. What a waste of time? What a way to be masochistic?

In Eve Online you are a pilot of a space ship. So there. Thats it. What do you do? Well what do you WANT to do? Simply do it. Pirate? Diplomat? Spy? Trader? Logistics? Flying missions? Troll? Scammer? Being part of large scale war? Explore the universe for alien artifacts?

And here is the problem why those "sandbox" games aren't as big as World of Warcraft: in order to enjoy the scope for the game you have to know what you want, you need to motivate yourself. And exactly here most players fail: they want to be entertained but not work for it. They are lazy.

And game developers are lazy too. Because producing a game on rails is easier than creating a sandbox. Otherwise we would see more of them as they are very successful even as single player games.

Nintendo - again and again

With each transition year the same discussions appear generation after generation - and I can't really hear it anymore: Nintendo is in deep shit and should stop making consoles - instead they should release their core IP's like Mario & Zelda on all other platforms.

WTF.

This is the worst decision they could make. The sole existence of that argument proves that Nintendo should not do it: if you want to play their great games then buy their hardware.

And Nintendo still builds the best console hardware. Microsofts XBox is louder than a vacuum cleaner and red circles all the time. The PS3 is huge, can't be stacked and its only advantage is the Blue Ray.

Nintendo has one weakness they need to learn fast: online. That's where Sony and their PS4 learned very fast - the XBox paved the way but Microsoft screwed it up.

Let's see what may 21st will bring when Microsoft spills their beans.

Only one ting is clear: Nintendo, being 125+ years old, having a market cap others are envious about - has patience like an elephant. If this generation isn't theirs then it might be the next.

NEVER underestimate Nintendo!

A/B testing for lazies

Every time there is a question hanging in the air people call for A/B tests to find out the right solution. Isn't that a bit lazy? You don't have the time to test out everything with A/B tests, considering they aren't as easy to do as you think.

My answer is always do what best practice is from successful online games. So you simply take a bunch of them and look how they do it. Most of the long running ones have tested the hell out of their systems, so why don't you take their lesson and simply steal their key findings? They have it right there for you, online, in their game.

So there was a question recently if its better to sort your premium currency packages low to high or high to low. The answer is now really obvious if you follow my advice. You don't need to run an A/B test to find out.

You can learn so much by looking at good f2p games and what they do. Some of them even have fan made statistic sites which you can use how successful they are in various countries, popular items or vehicles. Simply look for them.

So open your eyes. All knowledge is right there in front of you, a simple search away.

Mobile is not worth it (NOT!)

I will remind Bobby about this in 5 years when he regets this:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-05-09-activisions-kotick-brushes-aside-the-mobile-market

Cheers

WoW dies (NOT!)

Here, 8.3 million subscribers only. Wtf, its dead Jim!

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2418730,00.asp

No its not. Even with 5m, heck even with 2m subscribers its an awesome business case. And even in 5 years, no 10 years we still can play WoW. Wanna bet?


Simply because until today no successful MMO has been shut down. You still can play Ultima Online or even Tibia if you want, both like 15 years old?

Additional signs of change

EA posted its financial earnings and it disappoints. Without their cash of 1.6b in the bank they would be gone by now. "Don't expect growth on the giants EA and Activision" they say. Ok, so why do others grow like hell. And some new mobile companies have a market cap of 9 billion. Wtf.

Those are all signs of disruption. Its happening and quick. The old games market will change dramatically in the next 2-3 years, so don't moan if your favorite FPS is no longer the #1 topic on the web sites.

Then EA announced they bought the Star Wars license. Oh my. Thanks no, I see what you did to Harry Potter. And fail, major fail: the license excludes online, social and mobile platforms. That deal is like an ancient relic. Fire the guy who did it.

But then its all about small 90 men companies doing more money than the old economy.

So when are you joining?

LoL is not a good role model for f2p

League of Legends, or LoL for short, is often mentioned as a successful f2p game you should learn from. Fact is that LoL is one of the largest MMO's to date. Of course it makes tons of money for Riot and their owner Tencent.

So why am I hesitent to use LoL as a role model for good f2p models? The reaon is simple: their monetization system is very very specific and only works due to their reach.

Simple explanation: Revenue = Active users * conversion * ARPPU

Their active users is phenomenal high (42 million MAU as of this writing) and this multiplies the revenue formula to the skies.

But their conversion is low, i.e. how many players actively pay. That is my biggest critic. If you use LoL as a role model you might end up with a low conversion and if you fail to get the reach your game fails badly. That's a huge risk. A game can survive with an average reach and a good conversion easily, but rarely the other way around.

Note that the ARPPU is somewhat dependent on the conversion. If your conversion is low your ARPPU can be unusually high and vice versa.

Again: LoL works wonderfully for Riot and Tencent as their reach is so high. Sidenote: their reach is so high due to Tencents reach.

Eve Online - post two

CCP held their yearly fanfest last weekend and also celebrated the 10th anniversary of Eve Online. So CCP showed Dust514 and also details about the next expansion Odyssey.

That's where I come in with my rant. As in the last years all we get is graphics and data edits. We get "new" ships which are nothing else then modified existing ships with new data and texture, the latter even taken from existing ships.

Again: we get re-balancing in mining and ore, manufacturing materials and some UI improvements which are overdue.

What surprised me is stuff like in their keynote video they were surprised how well received the UI changes from probing were. Didn't they know what we were fighting with their sucky interface all the time?

To summarize: all changes they announced as an "expansion" is work from a small team, very small team. And that is where CCP is intelligent about their propaganda that a major team is still maintaining Eve. Its not. All their eggs are in one basket and that's Dust 514.

I think the community of Eve is being mislead and they don't even realize it. CCP is overspending on a genre they don't have experience in: a f2p shooter on a console which just is in its last year and dying. That is great business (not!).

And to top this off they announced a 10th anniversary collectors edition of Eve Online for fucking 149 Euro. What?

Eve Online - post one

If you ever wonder why MMO's are so vastly different to "multiplayer" or "single player" games read this. Simple as that:

http://kotaku.com/the-extraordinary-mischievous-too-short-life-of-sean-481060252

Major change incoming

We are living through a major change in technology and digital media. A large one incoming. Get ready.

This is my talk I held at Quo Vadis in Berlin 2013

Why mobile/Touch will win from Teut Weidemann

This is important

Times change fast, faster than ever before. I couldn't have made a better presentation than these guys: READ all slides to the end. World changing.

2012 KPCB Internet Trends Year-End Update from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Always on - is a good thing! Unless ...

Always on. Scandal. Microsoft getting bashed. A good man quit his job at Microsoft due to his Twitter slip - but he just stated the truth.

Whats going on? Why did this shitstorm happen out of a simple thing called "Always on"?

Always on means that the console in question needs an internet connection in order to work. I.e. if you don't have a connection you can't play. Usually that is the case anyway, so why the anger?

Case 1: Some people only occasionally connect their XBox to the internet. That happens on dial in connections or if the console isn't near the internet plug (note that old XBoxes didn't have Wifi).

Case 2: No or flaky internet connection. You will be surprised that a lot of people do not have a stable internet connection. This happens mainly at country side locations.

Case 3: Short internet service interruptions. That happens occasionally on thunderstorms or simply outage from hardware failures.

Case 4: Limited bandwidth contract. That is quite common in many countries - even USA. A console with is always on can't be controlled about the amount of data it sends.

If a game stops working simply due to the above situations then this could be seen as a fail. But as the console should offer a good service it should handle those gracefully.

In other words the game should continue to work even if the connection is interrupted - for a while. Of course most games require a connection due to online features, but that's another matter.

What matters is that the customer does worry that he can't play when he wants to. You know, internet usually doesn't work when you need it. This worry is what Microsoft has to get rid of. But so far their PR & marketing sleeps.

This always on isn't new. Uplay, Origin from EA or Steam had the same issue as also Steam. But they fixed it so no one worries anymore - but still the bad message exists and some people refuse to even install services like these.

So the fail wasn't that the Microsoft employee spread the news, the mistake is the bad handling of the user worries.

F2p is not a game!

Free to play is not a game. Why do I say this obvious statement - because people do forget and put all f2p games into one basket.

So here he comes and tells me "This f2p game does this and that, we should be looking into this to adapt it as well".

Wrong: you can't copy/paste stuff from one f2p business model to another. And that's what it is: f2p is a business model - NOT A GAME.

So if you think that a feature from one f2p game fits yours you should better think twice and carefully analyze WHY it works for that game & genre, if at all (you usually do not know if it works!).

That is why most monetization mechanics from let's say Candy Crush Saga won't work in your f2p FPS or strategy game. Those are entirely different genres and games and the user does behave differently within the game environment. Of course you can learn a lot from King.com's cash cow but be professional when adapting mechanics!

This brings me to another point: most companies within the f2p space discovered "their" style of monetization model which works best for them and their games. You will find that within the portfolio of these companies  they implement the f2p business model in a very similar way.

This leads to some odd behaviors of f2p companies:

1: They think their model is the best
2: They think other models aren't working as they tried adapting them and failed (see above)

It is a very odd situation and basically is further made worse as real data of what works and what doesn't isn't readily available.

That's why specialists who has seen data of working games from more than one company within the f2p space are so high in demand - until this information is widely available.

I was a huge Sony fan

In my younger years I was a huge Sony fan. In the time of Hifi, Walkman and classic Tube TV's Sony was the #1 quality manufacturer, they were the 'Apple' of their time.

Now Sony is in trouble since some years and even the PS3 didn't seem to make Sony happy. Now they announced the PS4 and somehow developers are excited - why?

First: the PS4 is a powerful machine considering its a high end PC but without all the compatibility brakes from Windows PC's. It features 8GB of ultra fast memory. And the graphics card is pretty nice but actually is better than its PC counterparts as games can use it to its full extend without worrying about backwards compatibility of 15 years VGA graphics. It will be actually much faster than comparable PC graphic cards.

But that is not the most important thing, we expect new consoles to be powerful. What is important is that somehow Sony learned from its past mistakes and someone up there at Sony decided to correct all of them.

First Sony announced to make their approval process easier for games - switching to a one step process just like the App store from Apple. For my readers who do not know how the approval process works on XBox360 or PS3 should google it, its a pain in the arse for developers and actually very expensive - impossible to finance by smaller studios.

Speaking about smaller studios: Sony wants to embrace indies (about time!) and is actively seeking them out for partnerships. They also announced the partnership with Unity3d, a good development engine for everyone.

And here is the kicker: usually you need very expensive development kits to create games on consoles, not this time: Unity3d compiles on retail PS4 machines, i.e. everyone owning Unity3d and asking Sony can develop for it and try to get approved. AWESOME.

The future looks suddenly brighter for the next generation of consoles if Microsoft follows Sony's example - from the past news though they seem to screw it up.

And just to make it clear: I play on PS3 - and will order a PS4. I AM a Sony fan!

Update 2013: Sony is back: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/09/sony-2012-earnings/

Eve Online - the future of online games?

Many people ask me why I use Eve Online as a reference for game mechanics, even though most players who tried Eve know it basically is a hardcore game for old farts. Its accessibility doesn't exist, the tutorial still sucks even though it has been revamped multiple times now.

Still Eve Online hit the 500.000 subscriber mark - after 10 years. Compared to World of Warcrafts 11 million Eve must be a failure, right? 10 years and only 500k subsribers?

Well it isn't - as it solely finances CCP's Dust514 f2p PS3 game (thats a lot of abrev right there) and also finances their Vampire game in development.

Why Eve is so important is that it is a sandbox. A nice interview what this means to your player base is found here, and it will push away some of you who might just have thought trying the game:

You will hear that CCP doesn't do anything against scammers or even Ponzi schemes within the game. So beware, space is a dangerous place as its inhabited by the most dangerous creature known to man: himself!

So back to topic: Sandboxes are important as they seem to be a solution to the content dilemma MMO's have. Developers never catch up with the speed of players consuming content. So making a sandbox is an obvious choice.

The funny thing is that MMOs then come around full circle as they started out being sandboxes: Even Ultima Online was one, and one of the best.

The problem is that sandboxes are not understood by many developers. The easiest thing you need to learn is the hardest: let it go. Do not control. Something the designers of todays quicktime event games have a hard time to adapt to. Or managers. Even worse.

PS4: Managing Expections

The new Playstation has been announced and featuring a 8 Core CPU and PC like graphics card many people think why they should buy a PS4 when they got a high end PC already.

Here is the thing: the games on a PS4 will look better than on your PC, even if your specs are better on paper. Why?

Because on the PS4 you can fully utilize the graphic cards power without worrying about backwards compatibility or performance for small machines. You can go all in. On the PC this is not possible.

Want proof? Ask yourself why most XBox360 games look better than many of today's PC games although the XBox is now 6 years old. The reason becomes obvious.

Another thing you should not forget is that the hardware of the PS4 won't change much in the next few years so devlopers can fully commit to its features in the their pipeline, something which is not possible on the PC. Besides the development cycle of 2 years fits much better to a stable platform than on a moving one like the PC.

In other words the still-stand of PS4 hardware specs for the next 5+ years becomes an advantage, not a disadvantage.

Here is the funny quote on the link above: "The games looked amazing, but we’re skeptical that everything was gameplay. A lot of the videos seemed like target videos, examples of what the developers have in mind, rather than actual working games"

It was gameplay, real time rendering. 

Wrong prejudice preconceptions?

India is a huge country with over 1.2 billion people. So we should think its huge for games, smartphones or computers. But it isn't. Mechanics we learn to use to market products no longer work in that country. We wrongly assume that our market mechanics work in countries like India, or Russia, or Brasil. Why is this?

To understand those markets and people you have to understand how they developed.

We have grown up with home computers, then switched to PC, then hooked the PC up to the internet. Then we got smartphones and went online with them too. This is our pattern and this can be used to target us for marketing or to look for similarities when launching products.

In markets like China or India people never had home computers. Or PC's. When the internet came they had to go to internet cafes to go online. This means that they encountered gaming as online only, as those games were default installed and people usually went to those places in groups, i.e. in social groups to play together. That is one reason why online games are so huge in Asia: they never experienced the grand history of single player games.

What else is different? Well if you do not have a computer at home how do you manage the daily tasks where we usually access the internet? Mobile. In India and China the primary access to the internet including search engines are mobile phones. At one time the number of searches on mobile in China was larger than searches on Google - worldwide.

In the days of the smartphone this doesn't sound that strange, but you have to realize that even before the iPhone revolutionized the phone market that the Asians went online with their phones. They had their own standards, search engines and even the UMTS network was implemented sooner than here. I remember a time where I had to rent an UMTS phone for Korea as their phones were already pure digital.

Let us return to India. The reason why I use that example is that we operate in free to play business and usually you target people by using Google Adsense or Facebook ads (Facebook has only a 5% penetration - still 62m people though). Now in India when no one is sitting in front of his computer - how do you get them to actually notice your product?

A good friend of mine told me how to target India, and this actually ruined my plans to launch games in India "easily" without leaving my office:

Billboards it is. Can you imagine to fill India with its vast space and huge cities with enough billboards to get noticed? That's tough - close to impossible. So how about mobile? Apple has some problem in India selling their iPhone but so does Samsung.

India still has very strong local providers who tune their services and phones to the populations specific attributes mostly using phone types we no longer use so it will be hard to break through them. To target people through those custom services is even harder. So time will tell.

So that are a couple of reasons why a country with 1.2 billion people isn't a huge gaming market yet. And that also means that rather sooner or later India will explode and be a huge market for all of us. Better be prepared. Otherwise you will miss markets like you did miss Brazil. Brazil you ask? Well ... research yourself, its huge already for online games - it already exploded.

The challenge of going digital

I remember the time when publishers all were looking forward going digital with distribution. "It's here" they said and most of them were too early.

Now as digital is here there is a resistance going digital as they finally realize what it means: it means your product is visible worldwide - all at once - and if its quality is not good enough everyone is going to know about it.

In the old economy retail played a major role. It allows you to control sales by controlling shelf space. If you were good at doing this you could sell a minimum viable number of copies of your games - even if they are under average quality. There is always the 1% impulse buyers.

Now that is gone if you go digital. Visibility is no longer under your retail sales control. Someone else tells his audience whether your product is cool or not. No wonder the big guns try to establish their own digital distribution portals like Origin or U-Play and clone Steam - to control the "digital shelf".

Take a look at Steam: estimated revenues are 1.5b US$ in 2012 excluding micro transactions.

This means Steam is huge. In fact their revenues are larger than most publishers. And this does NOT include item sales! Check out the footprint: Steam is as important as retail. So yes digital is here and publishers are cautious what it really means.

It means it will be harder to get attention as suddenly all products available - worldwide - are fighting for attention. Before only your local markets did, and many smaller companies didn't even enter your home turf. Now everyone can. A good preview how hard it will be to get visibility is the App Store.

"Wait a second - what about consoles?" you might say. Recent rumors and leaks suggests that the next generation console will offer all games digitally and on disc with both offering instant play, with the disc merely replacing the necessary download. This means digital will be 100% there for all games - circumventing retail. And we know that digital trumps retail for many users as you can buy when and whatever you want independent on distance, time and location.

Time runs fast

I can't believe it is only three years ago that Apple announced the iPad. 66 million sold in 2012 alone, the 100th million unit sold in October 2012. The iPad is responsible for the change in computing and even gaming.

It single handily destroyed the Netbook market.

It made the Notebook market suffer.

It changed the gaming market.

 Even my boss carries around an iPad 4 now - 24h a day.

Studies show that iPad gaming happens mostly on the couch and in bed. That iPad players are more core than we might think. That iPad gamer has more disposable income. That console gaming time suffers as soon as there is an iPad in the house hold.

And the best as last: the iPad is the only wife compatible gaming device so far.

And it just has started 3 years ago. How will the tablet market look like in 3 more years? The power of the console in your hands on 8 hours battery on a resolution larger than most monitors in your household.

Update, you should follow Asymco for recent data: https://twitter.com/asymco

I didn't know the iPad outsells the iPhone by performance relative from the start. Amazing.

Video Games and Age

I owned nearly every console there has been including exotic ones like the MB Vectrex. I noticed that with age comes an inability to play certain games.

It started with first person shooters. I was trained with the mouse on PC using AWDS keys for movement. Using a controller was very alien to me and since Halo I am not used to it nor very skilled. So I stopped playing shooters. A pitty as there are many good ones including Halo, Gears of War etc.

So it happened that a game was released in 2011 my game industry buddies still talk about today. Rarely does this happen. Usually we go on and talk about the latest shiniest new releases. But this game tends to stick around for many - although some of my friends hate it, can't even understand what the fuzz is about.

Of course I talk about Dark Souls.

A game I would love to play but can't. I tried on my PS3 and failed due to controller incompatibility with my hands and brain. Then I had hope that the PC version helps as it supported mouse and keyboard. No, it doesn't help either.

So there it is - the game I would love to play and experience the fascination my friends have - but I can't as my hands simply don't work with the controllers.

So the question I pull out of this is: are controllers like the XBox 360 one coming of age? Is the future generation which is not trained to D-pad, analog sticks and omg 10 buttons dying? Are we forced to play games with touch even if they don't work with touch? Is history repeating itself and genres are not as popular anymore as before simply because they don't work on new formats? (happened to RTS as they don't work on consoles)

The "Bottomless Bag" problem

The bottomless bag is an item from World of Warcraft and refers to a classic D&D item called "Bag of Holding" which could store items larger than its own size. Even Eve Online has containers which store more than their own size.


When designing online games there are certain limitations you have to be aware of like data base size. Databases tend to grow over time when operating an online game. This growth is not bad unless you hit a certain limit where maintenance of that database takes simply too long and can shut down a game for a day.

So why do databases grow? Because designers are lazy and too generous.

Let me give you an example: the in game mail in Settlers Online.

In Settlers you can send mails to other players. you can also attach items to mails and send stuff around. You get your rewards from certain quests via mail with the items attached. You get your trades via mail and you get some event items or gifts via mail.

Over time you stack up considerable amounts of mails in your inbox. Multiply this by thousands of players and your mail database can explode to immense proportions. This is made worse as "deleted" mails aren't usually deleted but only flagged as being deleted (there are reasons for this).

The reason for the exploding database? Because the designer was to generous: he gave you unlimited mailbox space!

So here it is: limit the users mailbox space. But how?

Expiration Timers
This method was made popular by MMO RPG'S like World of Warcraft. You attach a timer to a read mail (note "read!") and the mail gets deleted after that expiration timer (usually days or weeks). This self cleans the mail box of read mails.
Problem: assume there is an item attached: do you delete that mail as well? That's a no go.
If your answer is no then I attach a crap item to all my mails so they never get deleted - exploiting your system.
So what now?

Mailbox hard limit
If you limit the mailbox to lets say 50 mails, what do you do with mails being sent after the mailbox is full? Delete? What about mails with important items attached like compensations or trade? Exception? Then you can exploit the system - again.
So no mailbox hard limit. What then?

Auto Accept & Expiration Timers
So lets say we use expiration timers and auto accept items attached to expired mails. Where do we put those items? Into the users inventory? What happens if that is full? Oh god, why can't the world be easier.

Aftermath
Of course there are solution which will fit your needs. But I just wanted to explain that this simple designers decision not to limit the mailbox can have dire consequences to your game operations.
And fixing this problem can cause a myriad of additional work for your programmers, designers or even support.

Take Away
Generally do not give anything out for free in an online game. Not even mailbox space. Or number of items you can collect. Or number of horse you can have. Or anything - only if the player invests time, skill or money - yes money.
Limit numbers is a key design decision to any mechanic which involves "gains" in an online game.
The positive side effect is of course that you can monetize those limits suddenly by loosening the limit for paying players. Why not pay for larger mailbox sizes? Or inventories (which many games do already) or even pay for having the ability to collect more treasure maps than anyone else.

p.s.: the easiest solution to the mail problem is not to limit the mailbox but to incentivize the user to delete mails himself - like Ultima Online did to clean up their database from trash items.

The World will end as we know it - in 2013

I mean the game industry world - the one we are used to. The one with PC games being niche, the one with consoles being the big revenue makers. Where there is only one MMO RPG dominating the world. Where games are usually all around the big IP's of the top publishers - on console.

The major trends which we have seen in 2012 surfacing which will be even stronger in 2013 are:

Crowd Funding
It is an additional source for money. And as most people know in the gaming industry - money is the #1 problem of all developers. So this is an alternative. Not the best, but it is in addition to what we already have. And it also is able to fund games which are under the threshold of publishers - this means single man games, small teams, games with budgets of less then 1 million.
Of course there are the big million budget funded games - but those will be the "AAA" of kick starter. The important thing is not the money or that users decide which games are being made - the important thing is that the industry will see a new source of creativity from that funding. This impulse is desperately needed as otherwise CoD 10 and Fifa 2014 and Halo 5 and xyz 10 are all the same again and again.

Digital Distribution
It took long enough. We had hoped it will happen back in 2000 but the internet bubble bursting destroyed our master plan. Finally digital distribution has a break through and I expect this to quickly push into the console space as well.
There are more games being sold on digital platforms than on retail. Add it up. You will come to the same conclusion. Note I said "most" as in numbers, not in revenue. That will follow. Quickly.
What does this mean? It means retail becomes secondary, not the major platform anymore. The time as we went to stores to get games are over. Amazon does the rest of the death push of retail - but games will be a niche shelf space pretty soon. - if consoles push digital.

'Mobile' as major game space
I put mobile in quotes as studies shows that the main space people play mobile games is the couch or bed - so its not really "mobile". Still Smartphones and iPads will push the games market to bigger segments as even the console market. Even now the mobile market is the only one where western game makers have even access to all Asian markets. Note that consoles don't exist there and most western online games (the only one popular on PC) do not have a single chance of being published there. But hey, now even Asian's play single player games - but on mobile.
Why is Asia so important for mobile? Because it doubles, nearly triples the revenue potential of games on the devices with no major investment. This is huge. The Asian games market is so big that we (in the west) have not even a glimpse of its power.
So will mobile destroy consoles? I think it will push aside handheld gaming as we know it but AAA console games will stay - at least for the next generation. But as more and more developers find it easier to publish on mobile the creativity and cool games might move away from consoles to tablets.

Free to Play
F2p seems saturated 'they' say. I hear that often but always shake my head. F2p has just started and shows some saturation - but only in spaces where big companies are located and all their copy cats - as those copy cats don't know how to enter the f2p market but to copy the lead publishers - and of course fail ;)

Believe me: there are many game genres and types still to be published successfully as f2p as big as League of Legends or even World of Tanks. There is still plenty of space. Want proof? Which publisher would have accepted a Counterstrike type game with World War II tanks and persistent development? NO ONE!

Of course now they say "yes of course it works". But before? Nah, they wouldn't even have gotten an appointment.

So there is lots of space. The primary reason is being online: when you got the world internet population as potential customers it is easier to reach a critical mass to be profitable then in retail or any other publishing platform.

Online - Persistent
Games have shown that if they are online (even if only basic asynchronous) and persistent that the success doubles easily. The recent example of Clash of Clans and Hay Day shows that also on mobile it is a pre-requisite for huge success potential.
So the time of Fantasy MMO RPG's might be over, but hey, the time for online MMO's just has started!

Conclusion
If you want to be on the ride combine all four from above. Do a tablet/PC online persistent crowd funded free to play title.

Cheers, Teut

Metric (design) (marketing)

In a time where most of the entertainment happens in the internet there is a craft creeping up the companies which is tied into metrics. Companies love metrics. Why? I explain below.

First: if you read this you are being tracked by Google. It just so happens that blogger.com is owned by Google and they just look at you where you came from before you read this and where to go when you leave. They also like to peek around your previous visits what you did there and save from which country and provider you came, and which OS, resolution etc. you were using. Don't worry though, the info is anonymous, so they don't actually know "its you". Its all about statistical analysis.

This information gathering is used by business intelligence to judge their strategies. But here is the catch. Metrics tell you WHAT happened, but rarely WHY it happened.

Again: WHAT happened. Is this enough to base your strategy upon? Hardly. Without understanding the WHY you might be completely wrong. You might be obsessed with the difference of correlation and dependence. This gets even pro's confused when they see data, so don't worry if you mix those two up all the time.

Why do I write this? Because here is an excellent article about why marketing might be so mislead by metrics right now. Go ahead and read it, its excellent:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/opinion/sunday/can-social-media-sell-soap.html

And as promised above here is my explanation why companies love metrics: because for the first time their suits understand what's happening - every single day-

Yes, you read that right. Often in the past marketing did some magic and was great, but management didn't really understand the fundamentals. The same was with game design in the past. It was considered sometimes black magic why certain game designers always seem to hit the good stuff. A mystic. Now with online games you clearly can see what element sucks and which rocks. Its all in the numbers.

But did you notice here what I did write above?

Let me quote myself from above: "their suits understand what's happening"

But not WHY. Think about it. This will change how companies operate in the next few years. Its already happening and the metric companies lead the pack. You have to go with them and hopefully teach them that people who know WHY are still important.

Cheers Teut

Numbers - from end of 2012

8 Million
The number of Angry Birds downloads on Christmas eve December 24th

30 Million
The number of Angry Birds downloads between December 22nd and 29th

17.4 Million
The number of new Smartphone/Tablet devices activated during Christmas, up from 6.8 Million last year

50 Million
The number of new smart devices activated between December 25th and January 1st

328 Million
The number of total apps downloaded on Christmas eve.

1 Million
The average daily revenue of Supercell with only 2 games in the iOS Appstore

453.000
The number of Minecraft sold aross all platforms on a single day on December 24th (thats more than lifetime sales of most PC #1 hits)

5 Million
The number of Minecraft sold lifetime on XBLA

5 Million
The number of Minecraft sold on Smartphones/Tablets

627 Million
Last quarter revenue of DeNA with an operational profit of 254 million

30 Million
The number of active users in all Bandai games combined - only in Japan on social networks. This was "only" 10 million in January 2012, that is 3x more in just under a year - in Japan only.

Yes, the industry is changing. If you still believe the next 5 years will be similar to the PS3/XBox360 Generation then it is time to wake up.

Sources: Flurry, Notch, Rovio, Business Insider.