A few page tab apps begin to recover losses following removal of default landing tab: here’s why

With the removal of Facebook’s default landing tab feature in March, most page tab applications have seen a significant drop in users, and many people in the industry predict the end for what had been a big business.

But now, two of the biggest tab app developers are experiencing a resurgence while others watch their monthly active users flatline well below their pre-Timeline peaks.

Customizable page applications from Woobox and Thunderpenny have re-entered our AppData gainers charts after weeks of being among the biggest losers in terms of daily and monthly active users on the Facebook platform. Woobox is even seeing numbers similar to what it had in January before the launch of Timeline for pages, which is when admins lost the ability to set a default landing tab for new visitors to their page.

A recent Mashable article suggested that visits to custom tabs were down about 50 percent, which Woobox founder and CEO George DeCarlo confirms was the case for his own apps. However, the data in the Mashable article only looks at January through mid-April. An analysis using our own AppData tracking service shows that for many tabs, monthly and daily active users continued to fall sharply during April and May, but that trend hasn’t held through June and July. In most cases, traffic has leveled off, looking something like this:

For Woobox and Thunderpenny, the No. 3 and No. 5 developers on Facebook, the numbers are swinging back up.

There are a few things going on here. Page owners who thought tab apps were eliminated completely with Timeline have realized this isn’t the case and begun adding apps to their pages again. Users are becoming accustomed to the new layout and learning where to find additional content through apps. Page owners are adapting and employing better strategies to support the tab apps they implement. And clever developers are taking steps to help page owners understand best practices for apps on Timeline. Pages and developers that haven’t changed their approach have seen their numbers bottom out, as in the first graph above.

The key difference since Timeline is that now page owners have to actively promote their tab applications, whereas previously the app was the first thing new visitors saw when they came to the page. Woobox’s DeCarlo says he immediately recognized this and when Timeline launched, Woobox added a feature to give page owners a short shareable URL with a customizable image, headline and summary that would appear when the link was posted to Facebook.

Thunderpenny, another page app developer that is seeing an increase in users, has a new Tips & Tricks section that explains what page owners should do now that the default landing tab option is gone. For example, the developer recommends changing the links on a company’s website to lead to a specific tab rather than the main page. It also recommends giving the app prime placement among other tabs and using the new “pin post” option to prominently feature a status update that links to the tab.

In reviewing other custom page tab apps, such as those from Wildfire and FanRx, we did not find comparable resources to help page owners maximize engagement with tabs.

The trend we had seen pre-Timeline was that marketers were investing too much in the development of tabs, but not enough in promotion and re-engagement through News Feed. Now that Facebook has made it more difficult for pages to claim success by launching a tab alone, marketers may be more strategic about the type of experiences they create in tabs and how they bring users to them.

DeCarlo also notes that just because page apps are receiving less traffic, doesn’t mean they are less effective tools for marketers. He says Woobox drives more than 2 million Likes per day to pages using its custom fan-gated HTML tabs. Other page owners might have their own goals, such as getting email subscribers, website visitors or coupon redemptions.

It’s unclear whether Woobox and Thunderpenny’s growth trends will continue. Users increasingly access Facebook on mobile devices, where tab applications aren’t always accessible. Advertisers are also moving toward Sponsored Stories and Page Post Ads, which cannot lead to custom tabs. However, if more developers and page owners adapt to Timeline and take advantage of new options like Facebook Open Graph, we could see other tab apps rise from the lows they’ve recently reached.

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No Zombies Allowed: Here's what happens when Small Street meets the zombie apocalypse

Earlier this year, Glu Mobile released Small Street on iOS, which was in itself a horizontal clone of the vertical tower-builder Tiny Tower. Now, Booyah has released yet another game that's inspired heavily by both of the above: No Zombies Allowed, which includes the company's famous location-based gameplay.

No Zombies Allowed is a horizontal city-builder, giving you a relatively infinite amount of space to build your safe-haven from left to right by constructing homes and businesses. The object is to complete enough homes to save the many survivors of the zombie apocalypse, while also making sure to defeat the zombies that appear at your compound's front gate. Every few moments, a survivor will appear, with each containing a personality type relating to the job they'd like to perform (a leader, warrior, joker, and so on), and you can choose to bring them into your compound and give them a place to live and work. When zombies appear at the gate, you'll simply tap on them to shoot them (the gate is appropriately outfitted with an armed guard) and will receive bonus coins and goods when doing so.

These coins can be used to purchase additional buildings in your compound, while the goods go to order products to serve at your many businesses (up to three products per business). Apparently, the zombie apocalypse didn't actually break supply chains. Every few "levels" or buildings, you'll have the chance to open up a direct supply route with one of the businesses in your real world town, based on your current location. You can search for businesses, or simply choose from a list of those businesses closest to you, with Google Maps working to bring in your search results. Different businesses will give you different amounts of goods, and you'll need to assign survivors to the truck routes, which can take an hour or more to complete.

Technically speaking, the game performs fine, with plenty of adorable graphics (who knew zombies could be so cute?), but ultimately, the gameplay is just another take on Tiny Tower with the inclusion of zombies and some location-based play. If you've exhausted all of the options for Tiny Tower clones in the App Store, by all means try out No Zombies Allowed, but you shouldn't go in expecting something revolutionary.

Click here to download No Zombies Allowed on iTunes --->

Have you tried No Zombies Allowed on iPhone or iPad? What do you think of this cute take on the zombie apocalypse? Sound off in the comments!

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Here's why one OMGPOP staffer turned Zynga down at the final hour

When Zynga bought New York-based Draw Something maker OMGPOP for a cool $180 million, they took its entire staff with it--save for one man: Shay Pierce. In a telling op-ed on Gamasutra, the game designer explains in detail exactly why he turned Zynga's job offer down, one with a lucrative salary and an attractive benefits package, mind you.

Without explicitly stating it, Zynga gave Pierce an ultimatum. The megalith developer all but forced the designer to choose between his pride and joy, Connectrode (pictured), and a well-paying job in the games industry. The former is an iPhone puzzler that the designer created and release in dedication to his wife, Laura. In fact, Connectrode displays that dedication when players first launch the game--his wife's version of the game shows it every time.

"'I hope they don't make me choose between Connectrode and a job,' I told my wife Laura,'" Pierce wrote on Gamasutra. "'I really hope that they don't turn it into that choice.'" Ultimately, his love for his own creation and what it meant to him was enough for Pierce to turn down the job offer from Zynga as part of the buyout. (Again, Zynga didn't explicitly force Pierce to give up his game, but he feared a potential conflict of interest that would result in him having to take down Connectrode.) But this was a matter of good and evil, too, according to Pierce.

"When an entity exists in an ecosystem, and acts within that ecosystem in a way that is short-sighted, behaving in a way that is actively destructive to the healthy functioning of that ecosystem and the other entities in it (including, in the long term, themselves) -- yes, I believe that that is evil," Pierce wrote. "And I believe that Zynga does exactly that." We strongly recommend you read Pierce's piece in full right here.

Are you surprised that someone would turn down Zynga like this? Would you do the same in this situation? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.

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Here’s why Amazon gets all my money and more

I’ve stopped buying books in physical format (can make exception on Terry Pratchett). I only buy books in digital format. And Amazon is doing superb job. Here’s my reason for buying kindle books only from them:

I really like Kindle app. It’s hassle free. I can get samples to ipod or ipad or to my computer and sync between devices. I can buy stuff for ipad, read it in ipod and check library in PC. It’s just super cool. Kindle app user interface is good. Has everything I need and more. I don’t need night lamp anymore. Ipod touch is great device with proper backlight, so night time I read my kindle books using this tiny device. It’s convenient. The catalogue is huge: I can get the book I want in 76% of the cases. I do wish people would transform their old books to kindle formats, and have sent authors info on this. Maybe one day I get 100% of the books via kindle store. Ok prices. Sure, the prices could be always lower than paperback versions, which is bit like slapping my face… but I don’t complain. It’s not that big price difference anyway. Convenience is what matters me most. My bookshelf is always with me, even when I’m offline. (As long as I have battery left…) My digital book library takes heckofa less space than my physical lib. I don’t know if there’s DRM. For once, I’m happy to be a customer who can buy stuff without hassling with visible DRM. For example, if Amazon goes down (it doesn’t, just stating an example), I can still access my books. If my network connection goes down, I can access my books.

I simply don’t have any reason not to buy physical books (except for Terry Pratchett, since there’s no kindle digital Finnish version available – and for the fact that the hardcover versions look good on my house, they are decoration too) and thus I’m buying only Kindle books.

They have made pretty close to everything right (small thing with the book prices that should be lower for digital versions compared to physical and second minor thing is that I’d like to fetch & download book samples via kindle app), and totally got my money.

Also, I’ve spent more money on books than ever before (I’ve been a regular book buyer always), for your information. That means not only they get all the money I spend in books… but they’ve actually managed to increase the amount of stuff I spend on books.

The bottom line is that… I feel like I’m treated as a respected customer. I get stuff the way I like in nice format with decent price.

That makes it easy to buy stuff from them.

There’s plenty of lessons here for other industries as well.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 18th, 2012 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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If Angry Birds playgrounds weren't enough, then here's a theme park

You suddenly feel the urge to book a one-way flight to Finland. Why? Well, it's a land where birds don't fly, but use an intricate system of giant slingshots to travel--it's quite fascinating. OK, we made that up, but hopefully that's what Rovio and Särkänniemi Adventure Park are getting at with Angry Birds Land. It's exactly what it sounds like: an Angry Birds theme park.

Angry Birds Land is currently under construction as an addition to Särkänniemi Adventure Park in Tampere, Finland. According to TravelBite, the Angry Birds wonderland of sorts will be crafted with the world's best amusement parks in mind. You're looking at the Disney World of Angry Birds. "Our goal is to motivate the fans, both adults and children, to exercise and enjoy the outdoors," Rovio EVP Licensing and Merchandising Harri Koponen told TravelBite.

The travel website reports that Angry Birds Land will have the usual rides and attractions--whatever that means--but also a "Magic Places" area in which the real and game worlds collide. Särkänniemi Adventure Park opens for the summer on April 28. While it's uncertain whether Angry Birds Land will be ready by then, the Finnish theme park will post sneak peeks of its progress online. (We're sure it'll be more impressive than swing sets.) So, where are you going on vacation this summer?

[Via PocketGamer]

Are you surprised that an Angry Birds theme park would crop up? Would you fly to Finland to see it? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.

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Here's what you read last year: Games.com's Top Articles of 2011

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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Here’s why pirates are important to our whole industry, nations and technological progress

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessarily like what you parrot lovers do, but I feel that there’s certain stuff that gets forgotten in all this piracy discussion. I’m taking economical point-of-view, and showing you in a pretty concrete way how we’d be screwed if there wasn’t pirates. (And, we’d might be in bad situation too if everybody would be pirating)

And no, pirating doesn’t make you as cool as LeChuck. Image googled and used without permission. I hope I don’t get into deep shit thanks to this.

I read one chap claiming that “pirates cost us (movie industry) 1 billion dollars revenues yearly” (figure that I just invented since I cannot remember the exact sum, but let’s say it’s 1 billion).

Now, pirates come and say “that’s not true!”.

But, I feel that’s pretty bad response. It’s somewhat irrelevant too. Let’s see what happens if we agree with the entertainment industry chap. That’s not necessarily a shinier future for the whole industry, or for technological progress for that matter. Let’s say that piracy costs for example 1 billion of lost revenue yearly to software makers.

1 billion is lost… but who have it?
Here’s the thing that these chaps fail to see:

the lost revenue from software manufacturers goes somewhere else, like to perhaps to hardware manufacturers

This is important, and this is also how software makers benefit. I explain.

The more revenue harware manufacturers make, the better computers they can make. More memory, more speed, and everything costs less.

That’s hugely important. I repeat the sentence bit differently, it’s that important:

if makers of hardware get more revenue, they can use that money to boost the development of computers

If CPU manufacturer gets more money, they can spend that money on research, and get faster computers at cheaper price which benefits software makers since cost of computers is getting lower, which means software makers don’t need to spend that much money to computers.

Let’s do an another example.

Let’s think of example world, called NormalWorld. In normal world, there’s pirates, non-pirates and something between. Here’s the population:

50% of population are Parrot Lovers, they spend 1 billion dollars to hardware and illegally pirate all the software, and spend 1 billion to Ship industry. 50% of population are Good Citizens, who spend 1 billion dollars on hardware and 1 billion dollars to software. But no money to Ship industry. In NormalWorld, software industry makers are spending 0.5 billion to buy better computers from hardware industry.

In NormalWorld, hardware industry is doing fine (2.5 billion total = 1 billion from parrot folks, 1 billion from Good and 0.5 from software), ship industry too is going strong (1 billion from Parrot Lovers), and so is software (0.5 billion total = they get 1 billion from Good but lose 0.5 to hardware).

Everybody praises how Good Citizens are moral and respectable people, and everybody loves them (expect the parrots, who like more the other chaps).

But there are people who say that we should see what our neighbour, SopaWorld does. In SopaWorld, there’s no piracy.

This leads to the following situation:

50% of population are Parrot Lovers there as well, forced to spend 1 billion to software industry, spending 0 billion to hardware, and ship industry gets 1 billion. 50% of population are Good Citizens, who spend 1 billion dollars on hardware and 1 billion dollars to software. But no money to Ship industry. In SopaWorld, software industry makers are spending 1.5 billion to buy expensive computers from hardware industry.

The hardware makers have less money on research, so they sell computers at 3 times higher price since they have got no technological progress which makes components cheaper. It follows that:

In SopaWorld, hardware industry is still doing fine thanks to higher prices (2.5 billion, 0 billion from parrot folks, 1 billion from Good and 1.5 from software), ship industry too is going strong (1 billion), and so is software (only 0.5 billion total = they need to buy 3x more expensive computers).

As you can see, the overall result is exactly the same as in NormalWorld. In NormalWorld, pirates bought so much hardware that software makers didn’t need to spend that much money, but in SopaWorld, pirates aren’t supporting hardware industry, so software industry needs to spend more money, as prices of hardware are higher.

NOTICE: these are imaginary numbers of course, and I’m not saying this would happen if governments introduce laws or if piracy stops. Just trying to explain that we cannot just look at one factor and forget everything else. I will be slowly be reaching towards the conclusions of this article. Read further.

Stopping piracy, might mean loss to other industries…
Then there’s also the DamnItWorld.

In DamnItWorld, things are bit different. DamnItWorld was exactly like NormalWorld, but then a new way to punish piracy caused the following change in the population:

Since Angry Parrot Lovers (they were like Parrot Lovers except they really had no intention of buying never any software) were no longer getting software free, and had no intention to get faster hardware (since they could no longer brag about how they saw in their goddamn expensive home cinema all the newest ripped full hd quality movies). These people had no absolutely any reason to continue purchasing better computers. They weren’t going to buy software anyway, so they stopped buying hardware too. Instead, they took their fishing gear and started buying ships. In DamnItWorld, the ship industry gets 2 billion Good Citizens still spend 1 billion to hardware and 1 billion to software, but they are using worse computers than their neighbours (since computer technology is not profitable here, so no much improvements are being made) and since computers are shitty, their games also have worse looking graphics than in the neighbour countries (that might be a good thing though). Software industry here uses 0.5 billion to buy from hardware, but gets crappy quality computers. Software industry is blaming hardware industry for high costs, hardware industry is blaming software industry for crappy quality products – and they both are whining that ship industry should be taxed so that some money would go into technological research which would help technological progress.

DamnItWorld has 1.5 billion hardware, 0.5 billion software and 2 billion ship industry. Tons of ex-software people nowadays manufacture ships.

Then there’s the LetsSavePaperWorld where people store 2 billion worth of paper under their pillows, hoping that after 30 years, somebody will be willing to buy that paper with some good price. Like, when for example all trees have been cut and there’s shortage of toilet paper. Then those might come handy.

The point
What I’m trying to show you here, that stating something like “movie industry is losing 1 billion or 10 000 jobs thanks to software piracy” also means that some other industries have those 10 000 jobs. (Since movie industry is losing, it means there’s buying power).

If movie industry arguments that stopping online piracy creates jobs, that indeed is true. It sure creates jobs to the software industry. What they fail to point out, that jobs are lost from some other industry.

It works globally too: sure, if random Finnish person (not that we honest citizens pirate, but for the argument, let’s say we do) pirates your US movies and shares it freely here, the US movie industry suffers (compared to situation where Finn would have spent 500 eur to buy stuff). But what the movie industry fails to notice is that the nasty imaginary Finnish pirate is buying your TV electronics that helps your TV industry. If our imaginary Finnish parrot lover is forced to “spend money to US movie industry” or “spend money to US tv industry” (as you see, we like your industries), then to US as a nation, it’s quite irrelevant. Finn is willing to spend 500 eur to your country, and you can choose which industry (tv or movies) gets that money. That Finn is too lazy to work more, so he won’t have more than the 500 eur to spend anyway. That’s all there is for you. And if you cut the piracy option, our imaginary pirate just might start go build ships instead – and then the US movie and tv industry is actually getting 0 eur.

And it works locally too, here’s an example:

If our Regular Joe american is spending 500 dollars yearly on hardware, 0 dollars yearly on software and 500 dollars yearly on shoes – and now is forced to buy software (since movie industry is losing), it means that Joe will spend 500 dollars yearly on hardware, 500 on software and 0 dollars on shoes. So yes, software industry wins, but shoe industry loses.

(Unless of course Joe takes another job, gets +500 dollars to spend on shoes too yearly, and then receives burnout at the age of 29 – then all other industries win, and Joe’s health suffers.)

So, shouldn’t we all become pirates! That way everybody wins, right?!
As said, this is a matter of balance. If everybody would be pirates and nobody would spend a dime in software industry, that industry would die.

If nobody would spend a dime in software industry, then it would mean that other industries win and software industry loses. If software industry dies totally, then it might lead to a scenario where hardware industry gets taxed to support software industry. Or, it might mean that after everybody stopped making software, nobody is buying any more hardware and we are all making ships.

The key point here is that, piracy is not just about “what is wrong and what is right”. This is a matter of allocation of resources.

What do we want to support?

Hardware makers? Software makers? Ship industry?

… or health care, or parrot food, or wood leg industry or what. And of course we must remember that nowadays the different industries are so connected that it’s quite damn tough to say how things really affect. For example, if you like this article so much that you go and order my $1 ludum dare mini game thing from year 2010, the following happens:

Transaction handler industry receives their share of that dollar I get my share of that dollar Indirectly, Finnish government benefits from that dollar too, as I pay taxes And as my taxes support public health care, there’s some finnish hospital worker who gets his share of this transaction (or the tax money can be used to support roads building or library, or whatever they might do with it) Website server bandwidth thingy receives their share indirectly (as I need to pay that too)

And that’s at the expense of your dollar, which you could use to buy for example sweet cold drink.

It’s your call.

The final point
Please notice that all these numbers are fictional. I think there’s no person living in this planet who can accurately draw the flow of money in gaming/movie industry – and all connected industries. This doesn’t mean it would be irrelevant either. This simply means that “cutting piracy” has effects that affect various industries and arguments about “lost jobs” are shaky at most. I find this sort of legislation quite dangerous to be honest.

If there’s pirates, then there’s more support for example to hardware industry (or any other non-software industry for that matter, since pirates have more money left to spend on hardware, rest of us spent it on software you know). If we stop pirates, then they might take their money to some other industry. Or, if they are forced to buy software, then it means all those *other* industries suffer (like the drink industry which didn’t get your dollar when you chose to buy my game).

I wouldn’t be suprised to see more taxing of “industries that do well” to “support those industries that do poorer”, which practically would mean that we got rid of pirates yes, but thanks to taxation, things are (in industry scale) exactly the way they were before.

And after all, we are talking about entertainment industry here. There are much more important jobs in the world than making games or movies. Firemen, police, mental care, teachers, doctors, nurses, child care… all these are important industries.

I’m not saying that it’s somehow acceptable that certain individuals (or groups) have taken the right to share some one else’s invention without owners permission. Telling “it’s good for all” is simply not true, since it forgets the creator.

I don’t have no more so strong opinion on piracy, whether it’s right or wrong. I do not like the idea of government introducing laws and regulations into this industry. I do think that old copyright ideas might not be suitable anymore, but I do also think inventors should not be forgotten when we praise how good sharing of culture is.

I’m not fan of piracy, but stopping piracy is bit like fighting against windmills – and there’s some indirect benefits from piracy.

I think in the end, it’s an individual choice on how we respect each others effort, and how we balance everything. If we all support software industry, other industries suffer… which also makes software industry suffer (since there’s no good hardware). If we all support hardware industry, then software industry suffers (and then there’s no good software). If too many people join the pirate bandwagon, if too many think “I have the right to do this, as I support hardware industry – I let others support software”, then software industry will be facing bad times. It can mean poorer quality, or bigger lawsuits or other bad things.

I feel that as a person who supports both hardware and software industry – it would be equally nice if those pirates who do not support software industry, would re-consider if they too would like to have some direct support to software industry.

How do you vote?
Every citizen who spends their money to hardware and not on software is directly hoping of voting the following:

Hardware quality must get better, therefore I support your industry! Software quality (and all other industries) can suffer!

And every citizen who spends their money on software and not hardware, is directly hoping of voting:

Software quality must get better, therefore I support you! Hardware quality (and all other industries) can suffer!

By “hardware quality” I here mean “faster CPU, better gfx card, more memory, faster memory, better screens, etc”. By “software quality” I mean for example “better graphics, better gameplay, better innovations”.

To put other way around: those nasty pirates who don’t indirectly support software industry, gladly support hardware industry – which helps us makers of software industry too, indirectly (they help get cheaper computers, which means you and me pay less for CPUs).

I’m not saying this makes piracy legal or good in absolute sense. As noted earlier, if nobody supports software industry, software industry suffers.

Note to pirates who argue that “they pirate just because want better service”. There’s better way to get better service than boycott. It happens this way. (1) Buy stuff and (2) tell what you want. Sure, boycott might work too, but as a creator I know It’s easier to do better services when you have some money to fund the development of better service.

Naturally, this is only the direct support. As pointed out earlier, direct support to software industry might mean indirect support to various other industries. And of course directly hoping of voting here might not mean better quality products. For example, the maker of hardware might keep the profits and buy ships instead. That’s why you can only hope your money goes to making of better products. Long-term, I think it’s pretty safe to say that “industries that receive support tends to grow”, so your hopes might come true)

We need balance, and perhaps bit more respect towards each others work.

What is certain, that we hell sure should have much more respect for people who do some actual work (and not just watch movies or code magic numbers).

This entry was posted on Monday, January 2nd, 2012 at 1:43 am and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Here’s what I have been baking for the last year

Have you ever played board/party games such as Mafia/Werewolf? Or Battlestar Galactica? Have you played and liked especially the traitor aspect of these games?

If you answered yes for both, then you might wanna read further. If you wanna hear know more about traitor mechanism and cooperative card game then read further.

Introduction
I’ve been working somewhat under the radar for well over a year now. I’ve been doing a card game, not a video game, but a card game. I have kept the possibility of offering also downloadable version, but my first priority has been to create a game that can be played on your kitchen table, with real friends.

Not on your computer, with virtual buddies.

And I now can say that the game is in such shape, that I’m willing to share some more information about it. After 3 very big revisions, I’ve now get all bits and pieces of the game together, and it plays good. I’m proud of the stuff I’ve done.

So, let’s get into the the (zombie) meat of the game: traitor mechanism

Crappy “hd quality” ipod touch camera pic – yes, I’m hunting a better device – but perhaps you’ll see something in that picture

The Infected card game is a game for 1-4 players, and in case there’s 2 or more players, a traitor mechanism is used. Traitor in this game is of course the infected. The chap who got bitten, brain melting, but who is not quite a zombie yet. Only slowly transforming into one, while sabotaging the human players.

And this happens secretly.

For example, in a 3 player game, each player receives a blood sample card which determines whether the player is carrying a nasty zombie virus or if he is clean. During the game, the humans try make a successful escape and figure out who the infected is. It’s not going to be easy.

And while the game is going, the infected tries to sabotage the game.

The meat of the game is to have healthy amount of suspicion, paranoia and backstabbing. All that good game can offer.

Here’ll be zombies

I hate my ipod touch camera. Don’t ever think it’s any good.

In the game, there will be zombie threats that players need to handle. Mechanicswise, it is relatively simple: draw new zombie cards until you draw a smaller valued card than the previous one. Between card drawing, players get to do actions.

It’s pretty simple, but there’s plenty of things to do, and good amount of decisions to be made. All action happens simultaneously, so game scales well whether there’s 1 or 4 players.

And then there’s the items

Apple should have sticker “VHS quality” near the “take HD pics” in their ads

The game has plenty of items. Chainsaws, molotov cocktails, crowbars, revolvers, shotguns… you name it. And plenty is getting used. During threats, player decide to play number of item cards and try to reach equal or greater sum than the zombie threat cards. Each item can be equipped, and then players have access to the item specialties. Different items work better in different situations. For example, Flashlight does not give much bonuses, but is good against several different threat cards. Chainsaw is powerful against threats, but can also be used to receive more item cards for the whole group.

Then there’s also few more things
There’s 7 different characters, with different specialties. There’s also “major threats” which will affect the difficulty. There’s some additional variants, such as “total co-op” mode where there’s no traitor at all. There’s advanced game variant which makes the game slightly more difficult to play (for humans), for groups that have beaten the basic game.

Design philosophy
I’ve strived to have as simple rules as possible (and turn summary – which is practically major part of the game – can fit to about one page of rules), and I’ve tried to keep the mechanism simple. The rules are easy to remember, and since cards provide different choises, there’s stuff to consider. For example, item cards can be played in a threat, they can be discarded to take other actions, they can be equipped, or used as a buffer against threats in case you need to discard them.

I’ve also tried to provide meaningful tactics for the traitor. Here’s some strategies:

He can secretly lose a challenge (there’s no need to show cards) which prevents gaining more cards He can hog certain rare cards (such as “vest”) and prevent others from getting enough resources for successful escape When it’s his turn to lead, he can select nasty zombie encounter and secretly discard the easy encounter

And some more. There’s several different ways to sabotage… but of course if he sabotages too much others might get too suspicious and get rid of him.

When it’s available?
When it’s shiny and polished.

I’ve gone through 3 major revisions. The first version was way too luck based, where traitor could affect nothing. Second was not much better. It wasn’t until the third big revision that really nailed it all. The 3rd generation is the one that I’ve been working on for some time now, adding things here and there. Testing. Adding more things. And testing some more.

3rd version also got totally new graphics (from “realistic blood” to “cartoony”), which makes the game so much more fun to playtest.

The co-op version works great, and scales well. I need to get healthy amount of traitor mode testing done, and then we’ll see. The game is currently – as I see it – in “polish shiny” phase. I will playtest, playtest, playtest it, and make some minor tweaks here and there. Maybe I change number of item cards, or change some zombie encounter, or tweak character special abilities a bit. It’s mainly testing & balancing now.

I’m right now freezing features and “new items”, and those go into my “ideas for expansions” list.

So…. when it’s available?
When I consider game done, it’s my plan to do the following steps:

Get the game to a publisher (I’m putting my full effort to get z-man games interested) Possibly do a small pre-order based self-print for those interested (since Z-Man way will take quite a bit before there’s even glimpse of hope seeing the game published)

This will take time for sure. My goal is to nail the game – finish it – “in the nearly future”*, and then it totally depends on the publishing process. This is my first physical card game, so I’m almost complete n00b when it comes to that.

We’ll see. Meanwhile, check Infected card game website – there’s links to rulebook, and other stuff is going to appear there too at some point*

*valve time

Psst… if you are interested in ordering the game…
…I don’t mind if you mention that in a comment to this blog post.

Tags: traitorgame

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 31st, 2011 at 1:35 am and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Here’s why I cannot steal your game idea even if you want me to

Some reasons:

I don’t care about your idea: I don’t mean to be harsh, but… I have plenty of ideas. Why would I care about your idea? If I’d wanna steal a proven game idea, I’d clone [insert random hit game here] and do something bit differently: There’s proven selling games out there already, so I really don’t care about your idea. I would have to change it anyway: One of the most fun things in game development is working on *my* idea. I wanna do *my* ideas. My my my. I don’t want *your* idea. I want mine. Your idea isn’t that new or unique: Let’s say you have killer idea. That’s cool and all, but it’s already been done. There is some game out there with same or similar idea. It’s been done in some ways. Your idea is not that new. Mine isn’t either, but it’s easier to lie to myself about this. It’s the implementation that counts: Minecraft’s idea is not new. There was plenty of games that had the similar idea. Minecraft was done somewhat differently, with different perspective. In the way developer wanted. It was his work on that idea that counted. We all have ideas already, and new coming: If we focus on getting ideas, it’s pretty simple. We can check out Kongregate, we can check out Steam, Big Fish Games, AppStore and many other places, filled with games to get ideas. We can check tv, outdoors and whatnot. They too are filled with ideas. Ideas are cheap to come up with. Making the idea into reality, that’s different story. Quiz for you. Which one of these takes more time: (A) come up with an idea about a mmorpg where hundred billion people shoot ninjas with lasers, or (B) make that idea happen. Even if I’d want to steal your idea, I cannot: no matter how much you explain to me the game idea – I don’t 100% get it. I miss at least 1% of what you meant and would do something differently. And then it wouldn’t be your idea anymore, as you wanted something else, I something else. But most importantly: I don’t want your idea. I have “my” own idea. I wanna do my ideas, not your ideas. Okay?

Indies are egoistic.

And that’s a good thing.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 17th, 2011 at 9:18 am and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Here’s some things we all can steal from Minecraft game

Besides Notch’s hat, we all can consider stealing some elements that Minecraft is using:

#1 – the art style
Just think about how genius it is. Just blocks! How difficult it is to model bunch of blocks, yet animate them. Super easy. And even if you don’t know how to animate, you can go to a site like FPS creator site, spend a few bucks to a model pack AND (this is important) export only model BONES and ANIMATIONS. Then in your own programming SDK, you can create cubes and attach the cubes to the animated bones.

And voila, you’ve just got animated box man to appear on your screen.

Don’t necessarily steal the idea of “world is made of blocks”, since you can have other shapes too, such as a terrain. Just ensure using blocky style in all the art, and it’ll be consistent.

It doesn’t matter whether you are doing an RPG, FPS, RTS or whatnot – the main idea is that you can steal this simple style and save humongous amount of gold in art assets.

#2 – Actually, that’s it
I see quite zero sense in trying to clone Minecraft. Terraria isn’t Minecraft clone, Terraria just happens to have digging and blocks, but it’s hugely different gaming experience. Cloning Minecraft would mean spending some years building a game where you have blocks that you can use to build anything. But who would buy it? Everybody and their mom already has Minecraft so it’s pretty pointless (unless you target different platforms, then it might have some sense) as there would be zero reason to buy your clone.

I feel that stealing the art style would make tons of sense for lots of indie developers. By using block style to build whatever game they are building, they would make a huge leap in terms of getting game ready faster.

You already doing this?

This entry was posted on Friday, September 16th, 2011 at 9:15 am and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Should I do iPad games? (Here’s a tip on how to decide)

When massive number of people are doing something, my advice is to do something totally different. For example, should I do iPad games because everybody else is doing them as well?

What “everybody else” is doing, doesn’t really matter for me.

But when I see something like this from the godfather of indie devs, then I might reconsider.

If Cliff does something, it’s good to take notes, and consider if you can lend some of his knowledge & experience.

I’m sure he won’t mind.

In case you don’t know who Cliff is, well, his GSB game has got over 100000 people playing it. The game costs about $20 to buy, so do the math.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2011 at 11:49 am and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Here's A Quick Check for Feline Urinary Tract Infection

There's a couple different ways you can tell if your cat has a Feline Urinary Tract Infection (UTI). The most obvious way is if she cries while urinating, you see blood in her urine, and/or she won't use the cat litter box to urinate.

If you see this behavior in your cat, please call your vet immediately to get her checked! This is a very painful infection for kitty to suffer through.

But here's another way you can do a rough estimate check for a feline UTI before your cat feels the pain. Quite simply, you can do a fast check of your cat's urine pH balance. If it's out of range, call your vet as fast as you can to schedule an appointment for kitty. She'll need further examination for an accurate diagnosis.

The benefit of checking your cat's urine pH level yourself is save you and kitty a lot of grief. It's easy and safe to do. Your cat won't be traumatized, and this is another way you can stay on top of her health.

Take a clean cat litter box, and put either a little bit of aquarium gravel in it, or some non-absorbent litter. You want just enough to make kitty happy to scratch around in.

Confine kitty with this cat litter box set up in a quiet room. Do this around her elimination schedule. You'll get the most accurate results if you can check her urine sample as soon as she's eliminated.

Once kitty has made her liquid deposit, dip a urine pH test strip in the urine. Gently shake off the excess, and read the corresponding chart. If she's healthy, the level should read between 6.6 - 6.8. If it's higher or lower, call your vet for further consultation.

Please be aware that this test can be affected by when your cat last ate. If she ate several hours earlier, the results might be high. Re-test her one more time - soon after she's eaten. If the reading is normal, no worries. If it's still high, get her to the vet- quickly.

This is an easy way to check your cat's urinary tract health, but it's only a rough estimate. However, you can do it on your schedule, in your home, and kitty isn't traumatized. If anything, she might think this is just another crazy human thing she has to put up with.

Happy testing!

About the author: Nancy stopped the cat urine odor problem at her home, and kept the kitty that caused it. "18 Ways to Stop Cat Urine Odor Problems" saves you money, time and frustration by solving your cat urine odor problem - permanently.

http://www.stopcaturineodor.com

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Here’s what I’ve been cooking… (gameplay meets card art!)

I’ve haven’t made a big fuss about the Infected game progress. I haven’t shown much game art (mainly because there hardly wasn’t any art to show) and I’ve been working on the gameplay.

I compiled bunch of card texts and arts together (using my Duckduck program, which is a program for creating deck art), and here’s few card samples:

Blood sample card
This card determines if there’s infected blood running through your veins… You keep this card secret, so nobody else knows in which of the 2 teams you belong. Each player will receive a card stating either “clean” or “infected”.

Items
Items have gone through a big change. Essentially, I combined items and action cards into one deck (which is now called “Items”). Items are used to overcome challenges, counter nasty events and to progress on winning the game.

Event
Event cards give players challenges which they need to overcome. A number in the top left part of the card tells something about the difficulty of the event, and then there’s always a special power on events which might trigger when they are played.

Each card won’t have unique art (at least not in this point of project), only each deck will have unique art.

All these card art are from the Big Revision II (which consists of huge amount of smaller revisions). I will go through (at least) once more all the cards and then pretty soon get things shipped to my door (which will take 2-3 weeks or so).

The current version is much simpler to play, less random, and new version aims to offer several interesting decisions (events for example are very different from earlier version, and now the item have value number which need to be considered too when playing cards). Rules are very simple to learn and the game is fast to play.

I enter sleep mode now and get back to this tomorrow.

Tags: traitorgame

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 5th, 2011 at 10:54 pm and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Here’s how your dungeon master is fooling you

I’m looking a dungeon crawler board game a bit and one thing that strike to me about “being the dungeon master” (in board games, and I guess in pen & paper RPGs as well) is that the dungeon master sometimes plays for totally different victory conditions.

When I was hosting Hero Quest sessions, it was my goal to “kill the heroes” (something like that said in the rulebook I think) but actually, I think I never played according to meet that goal. My goal was different.

My goal was to [i]provide a challenging (where players felt they could get killed), but something that players can barely beat[/i]. When I could provide such gaming experience, I knew I did a great job.

Dungeon master (or storyteller) is there to kill the chaps if they do really stupid stuff, but biggest factor was in noticing every player’s playing style (some folks preferred combat, some wanted puzzles/exploring, some liked to negotiate) and meet those challenges.

Funny that when computer “balances the game”, it’s sometimes considered cheating or stupid (and players start exploiting the AI – such as playing worse to get past really difficult zones)… but when human person (the dungeon master) does balancing, it’s perfectly okay.

Or do you really think that your own dungeon master never secretly helped your heroes, thinking: “oh shit, heroes are badly wounded already and there’s that ogre behind the corner… maybe I make it a dead ogre instead and let them get the treasure now.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 11th, 2011 at 7:35 am and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Here’s list of some useful skills for indie game developers

Here’s my list, in no any specific order:
- patience
- people skills
- organizating skills
- negotiation
- passion
- programming
- ability to understand importance of details
- ability to see the big picture
- networking
- storytelling
- marketing
- english
- open mind
- ability to listen
- continous improvement
- troll killer
- doesn’t gives rat’s arse bottom attitude, sometimes
- transparency
- realizing that making an overnight success takes at least 11 years
- ability to see what works
- did I mention passion?
- respect for different people
- habit of thanking people
- math & physics knowledge is a plus: it helps in many areas
- realizing that nobody will steal your game idea, no matter how hard you try (we simply don’t ever fully see what you do, before you’ve finished)
- determination to finis things
- more determination to polish after finish (it was a fortunate typo in the sentence above this one)
- understanding that graphics most likely isn’t the thing you can compete with
- focus
- vision

And many, many more.

What would you add on this list?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Here’s a pretty sweet tool for sharing gaming team stuff

I’m using Dropbox for many things, and it works pretty wonders for shared collaboration if you have a small team. Especially good for artists + coders combination since others can instantly run the stuff coders do, and artists have nice way to put their stuff. (Of course keep in mind that no 3rd party system cannot be relied on, you must have your own backups and you must think twice for which purposes you want to use it)

Anyways.

It works on several platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, and Mobile)

And it works when offline.

And it’s free: 2GB free space right away.

And one gets more free space when you invite other folks, so… get Dropbox (and help get me precious +250 MB more free space if you join through this link and install it on your machine, which would be greatly appreciated thanks you very much)

P.S. In fact, if you join through my link, you might get extra +250MB space as well. (At least one guy just reported receiving this). Pretty sweet!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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