Social Networking Games: Steps

Showing posts with label Steps. Show all posts

Sunday, October 27, 2013

5 steps to protect your Facebook privacy in lieu of upcoming Graph Search changes

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Facebook is in the process of a privacy shift that would let all users be discovered via Graph Search.

The company reminded users earlier this month that it is phasing out the “Who can look up your timeline by name,” Facebook privacy feature that allowed people to essentially opt-out of being discoverable within Graph Search.

Here’s how you can make sure that you don’t get unwanted attention or unfamilar friend requests as a result of this Facebook privacy change.

This is what Facebook is ending:

Screen Shot 2013-10-22 at 11.59.27 AM That privacy setting allowed people to choose who can see their profile when they type their name into Graph Search. Facebook claimed that only a small percentage of users took advantage of this, so it is sunsetting the feature.

For those who did have this Facebook privacy setting enabled, a message will pop up on top of News Feed soon, notifying the user that they will soon be viewable within Graph Search. Short of not having a profile photo or cover photo, there’s not really a way to be truly hidden or anonymous on Facebook, but there are ways to deflect unwanted messages or friend requests.

1. Change future post audience

The first major change can come with changing future posts away from public to friends or friends of friends (or a custom audience group curated by yourself). To do this, go into your privacy settings and edit the “Who can see your future posts?” area.

Screen Shot 2013-10-22 at 12.13.40 PM Having this set to public means that anyone can see what you post. By restricting it to friends (or a customized group), only those people can see your posts on your timeline. This setting can also be changed on a post-by-post basis on desktop and mobile whenever you post something new.

2. Restrict contact options

You can also restrict who can send a friend request and who can send messages. Users can go into privacy settings and make it so they can’t receive a friend request from a person unless they have a mutual friend. They can also tighten up the settings on their inbox so only messages from friends make it to the inbox, while others are kept in the “other” box.

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3. Limit past posts

But what if you’ve lived your Facebook life in public? All of those photos from college and status updates from years past can easily be changed from the privacy settings screen. Simply click “Limit Past Posts,” and agree to the prompt. It will change all past public posts to friends only, so unknown people can’t see them. However, cover photos and profile photos are public. Anything else can be hidden.

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4. Take advantage of convenience

Many of these settings can be easily changed from the left sidebar, if you’re on the redesigned News Feed.

Screen Shot 2013-10-22 at 12.31.06 PM If you’ve done it all right, users who are not already a friend or friend-of-friend will only be able to see your name, profile photo, cover photo and any other information mandated public.

4. View As

You can also check to see how your profile looks to certain friends, friends-of-friends and users outside of your network.

Go to your timeline, and click on the cog on the bottom right corner of the cover photo. Then click View As. This will allow you to view your timeline as if you were someone else, so you can see exactly what they see.

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Readers: What else do you want to know about protecting your privacy on Facebook?

Top image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Saturday, February 4, 2012

How to kill immersion in 5 easy steps

I’m mainly taking an RPG game or adventure game point-of-view here, or any game where story plays very important role.

Here you go:

Have big loading times and use word “loading” when switching between places. Show the same dialogue options over and over (if you wanna ensure that “character might need that info”, then make so that character has journal where conversation was stored) Hold the players hand by (1) first letting character tell what to do, (2) then showing text telling what to do, (3) then pointing the next goal on the map regarding what to do and (4) showing hint “maybe I should go there” in the journal. (This one is tricky: on the other hand you don’t want to player to be lost not knowing what to do next… but on the other hand too much information kills immersion. Check this video ‘if Quake was done today’) Making player guess what you thought that should be done next. If player knows what should happen next, but your game user interface prevents (in RPG, not talking about car driving game) him from reaching the goal, that kills immersion. There’s a great article about this at Raph Koster’s site. Make character pick dialogue option he thinks is ok, when in reality the other party takes it as offense. This too can be tricky, but bear in mind that as a not-native English speaking chap, I might miss some nuances of conversations… and sometimes I might pick dialogue option that I thought was friendly, when in reality it was offensive. There’s no easy way to get past through this option though, and not sure what’s a good solution (other than accept the fact that this way I learn better English…)

Anything to add to this list? Complaints or solutions?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 at 7:19 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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Thursday, April 7, 2011

Five steps to success with Saltwater Coral Reef Aquariums

Do you dream of watching the natural beauty of the undersea reef life while sitting in your living room?

Whether your goal is a nano reef tank or a 150 gallon aquarium with an ecosystem of coral and saltwater fish, the following five steps will lead you on your way to success.

1) Commit! Decide you are going to spend the $$ it takes to make a proper go of it. At a minimum, most tanks, (from 10 gal to 55 gal) take between $250 and $500 to get going. Can you do it cheaper? Yes, but usually not your first one. You have to know what you are doing and understand how things can and will go wrong before you can choose less expensive husbandry options and/or equipment. Save up if you have to, but count on that first tank being expensive.

Realize that this is not a short term commitment. And as much fun as it is to collect the coolest coral fragments out there and show them off to your friends, there WILL come a time when you are hauling all of those same 'frags' out of the tank and into temporary storage when your six year old cracks the side of the display tank with a pool ball or some other calamity occurs.

2) Study! Spend time on the internet, in books and watching nature shows on reefs BEFORE you get your animals. Understand the animals that you are going to keep and how they interact with each other. If you count on the LFS (Local Fish Store) or your buddy down the road to keep you out of trouble and don't do your homework.. You will fail. That is the one guarantee in this hobby. DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

The only way around this is to be able to afford to pay someone else to set-up and maintain your tank.

3) Mingle! (see 2 above) There are plenty of reef-keeping societies out there with lots of experience to help you along your way and teach you what you need to know. As long as you are doing your own homework, they are usually happy to help!

4) Keep an open mind! There is not just one way to keep a reef tank - no matter how loudly people on the various bulletin boards and forums out there might shout that there is. 5) Share! It is amazing how much help people are willing to give when they realize that you are offering a particularly nice specimen that they have always wanted. Equipment that they didn't even remember they had may magically appear or they might be willing to share a very nice piece of their own reef frag with you.

Trading frags not only is a great way to increase your variety, but it helps maintain genetic strains of corals (frags are also known as 'clones') that might otherwise die out in a single tank struck by the calamity mentioned in 1 above.

About the author: Chris Knowlton is an avid fan of reef keeping and propagation. He maintains a nano tank and two large saltwater reef aquariums. To visit his site and read 5 More Steps to Success with Saltwater Coral Reef Aquariums visit http://www.KnowltonsReef.com

(Reprints of this article are allowed, but must have an active link to the authors website.)

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Friday, March 18, 2011

GDC 2011: Deadly Premonition's 7 Steps To A Memorable Story

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Friday, March 4, 2011 GDC 2011: Deadly Premonition's 7 Steps To A Memorable Story

In 2010, Deadly Premonition was a surprise hit among players searching for a deep narrative single player game, and went on to win over a dozen end of the year awards from a variety of media outlets (including Gamasutra).

At GDC 2011, Deadly Premonition director Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro, revealed his seven tactics for creating a memorably story that will inspire a strong fan reaction.

Point 1: Make gamers think about your game when they aren’t playing it.

Relate actions in the game to actions players take in real life. “Gamers who smoke have said this a lot – when they see York smoke in the game, they want to light up in their living room,” said Suehiro. “Sleeping, Hunger, and Shaving, wanting to stay clean. Though these things seem unnecessary at first glance, they help with the cause and effect.” The goal is to link memories of Deadly Premonition with the player’s actions real world.

Suehiro says he likes to put daily human needs in the game, because they help affect the player outside the screen. “Playful elements” like predictions in the coffee, discussing movies lead to players identifying with the characters. “They’ve also told us they’ve rented one of the movies York talked about in the car,” he said. These things linger in your mind.

Point 2: Make gamers actively “want” to play through your meticulously scripted story.

Being forced to play through a tightly-bound storyline is a chore. “Those rails make the player feel like they’re being forced to do something. How do we alleviate that?” he asks. “How do you make them want to play through it?”

There are two pre-existing methods; multiple endings, and side quests. DP used a third method – freedom of timing – allowing for a “change of heart” from the player. They can stop whatever quest they’re on at any time, and take another path. It creates the illusion of freedom. “Once they’re comfortable, they’re more willing to get involved in the story,” he says.

In other games, including his previous game Spy Fiction, you get scolded for failure. In Deadly Premonition they wanted the main character, York, to go along with the player when he changes his mind. “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” is the feeling York gives the player when he or she goes off the rails of the story to pursue their own path. In fact, an important character within the story itself tells the player that timing is what’s important, not speed.

The goal is to earn the player’s cooperation with the story and suspension of disbelief. To do this, you’ve got to allow for a retry at any time, support the player’s actions 100%, and modify the story to allow for a player’s change of heart. Player feels empowered due to decision being allowed.

Point 3: Creating a storyline for a free-roaming open world game.

“We need to make a universe and characters in our game that are unique,” he says. Vague characters never stick in anyone’s mind.

When creating a storyline, it’s not uncommon that you’d figure out the map of the game world, and character details after the script for the main plot is complete. In DP they created the high level synopsis, then the map and character details, then made a 24 hour action table for each character’s daily life. Only then did they finalize the plot.

“The universe, the environment, and the characters are just as important as the storyline,” he says, especially for a free roaming open world game. “When we started making this game many years ago, there weren’t many games with free-roaming storylines that we could refer to,” said Suehiro, and this was the solution they came up with.

Point 4: Prevent players from quitting the game at the result screen.

Any game that prioritizes getting the player to finish the game over getting the player to want to learn more of the story is already dead. Every pause in a game, such as a results screen or chapter end, is a place a player might choose to quit.

“We inserted a glimpse of the next challenge before the results screen, making them want to know what happens next,” Suehiro said, though he did not address the idea of making a game where results screens and stages aren’t necessary, such as in larger open world games like the Fallout series.

Point 5: Make appealing characters.

“If you can’t remember any of the names of the characters, then that game is crappy,” said Suehiro. Note down everything you can possibly think of about a character, to really develop them so that they’ll stick in players’ minds. “You need to spend a lot of time to make deep characters,” he says. “It really helps to generate a resume for every character you make.”

He creates a mind map for each character, including habits, hobbies, the character’s first love, and so forth. Signature phrases and poses are also important, he says, because they’re easy for fans to recall. “It’s important that your fans can copy the poses and use the phrases,” he says. “You want your characters to have these elements that are copyable and mimic-able.”

“It could be a lot more natural though,” he said, acknowledging that his own poses and phrases for his main characters were a little extreme. The most important point is that the characters have good and bad points. “They say every rose has its thorn,” he says. York, for instance, is a good looking agent, but he’s an otaku and inconsiderate. Each character has a main overlying good quality, but some weaknesses built in.

“It takes courage as a game designer to add a bad side to your character,” he says. “Of course you want everyone to love your characters.” But putting flaws in them makes players actually identify with them more.

Point 6: Direct voice recording sessions.

Characters should speak in a memorable way. How did he voice direct without knowing English? He referred to music and thematic ideas when dealing with the actors. Agent York’s manner of speech is inspired by the Liverpool sound and the British Invasion. “I focused on the how of the lines being spoken,” he said, focusing on rhythm and “musically, how they work in the scene. You need to make sure you have your own set of rules when you go to a voice recording.”

Point 7: Use your ideas whenever and wherever you can.

“What’s most important are your ideas,” he says. You should use all your ideas while you can use them! Even if you feel people may not see everything you’ve put into the game, unnoticed ideas explode when they do get noticed, he says. “You should use your ideas when you can. Don’t hold on to them until a rainy day.” As an example, he showed the fact that the town of Greenvale where the game takes place, is actually an outline of the Dalmatian in the game.

In the end, Suehiro closed with the thought that that, “If I get the chance, I’d like to make another game that makes larger leaps for a world-wide audience.”

Posted by Simon Carless on March 4, 2011 6:00 PM | Permalink

Comments

I wish I could sit down and drink coffee with Swery... and talk about cool things. We'd be best buds.

Posted by: Ujn Hunter | March 7, 2011 12:55 PM