As Casual Connect approaches this month, I'm very curious to see what the consolidation and maturation of Social Gaming means for the mid size and smaller players in the industry.   With the emergence of Social Gaming, everyone quickly put their eggs in the same basket but it hasn't turned out to be an easy road for all.  The giants own 90% of the space and rest are left fighting for the crumbs.  That being the case how do we go forward?  We need to start realizing other ways to monetize a connected multi-platform audience.  How does a niche player do this?  How can we optimize paid participation to make up for the lack of relative volume?  I've got ideas but it's going to take some experimentation, I think one key will be to leverage one platform to monetize on another (ie convert Facebook players into paid mobile players through tie-ins and cross promotion). The current formulas may not work as well for smaller players, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to succeed differently.   I'm hoping I'll see some innovation and opportunity for the rest of us heading into 2012.  If you've got ideas I'd love to hear them.  See you in Seattle.

The backlash in defense of social games at GDC this year was interesting.  I've got to admit, social games have been a hard pill to swallow in a lot of ways.  But, as with anything we feel critical of, it's only fair and healthy to do a little self examination of our own motivations.  The bottom line is, companies like Zynga have found a way to create an experience that is accessible and has enough common appeal to garner an incredibly broad  audience.  As game developers, wouldn't we delighted if our own content had reached and appealed to so many?  We can argue about the depth and quality of the experience, but clearly it's working in ways we never would have imagined.  I've been a critic of the genre like many, saying they aren't "real games",  but perhaps we need to quit judging and broaden our definition of gaming.  How foolish is it for us as developers to dismiss something that has the potential to reach so many, just because it's not done by our formula?   There are still things I don't like about the industry and things I think will be done better over the course of time.  However, there are wonderfully smart and creative people working to make these experiences and thinking about play in ways that we hadn't considered up to now.  We need to acknowledge that and give credit where it's due.  We don't have to embrace any aspect of the industry that doesn't work for us on a personal or philosophical level, but it doesn't mean we can't learn and grow from it.  That's exactly what I'm trying to do as we move forward, I'm excited to see what the future holds.

I watched the HI5 presentation yesterday morning with interest and amusement.  Alex St. John never fails to entertain and alway makes an interesting, if not overstated, case for his latest and greatest ventures.  Today was no exception.  I've got to admit alot of it made pretty good sense, at least on paper.  The most compelling aspect of Sociopay was the mysterious heuristics based black box that makes pricing and, more importantly, decisions about whether or not to show a specific customers payment, offers, or pre-roll sponsored content.  The theory goes that the system will determine the likelihood of the customer actually making a purchase, and based on that evaluation will choose to monetize customers differently.  Whales will be shown only direct payment options, players in the middle will be shown appropriate offers or direct payment if the item value is too high,  and those that would never spend are shown pre-roll and rewarded with sponsored items for the viewing.  In addition, the system will offer items priced differently for different players, theoretically figuring out their indvidiual purchase price threshold.  That pricing will be based on their likelihood to buy as well as their global location and relative economic condition.  

This all sounds pretty interesting, assuming it's possible and works well.  In a situation like this you're only as good you're data and your assumptions based on the data.  What if your black box isn't such a great predictor?  What if it leaves money on the table with wrong assumptions?  We can assume if done well it will constantly re-define itself based on the incoming data and adjust accordingly, so it will become better over the course of time.  Perhaps it could do so quickly enough that you would not miss to much earning opportunity.  If it can maybe there's something to it.  Of course without a substantial user base it's irrelevant.  If nothing else the system creates some interesting assumptions and good food for thought on approached to monetizing different types of users.  

Interesting after my last post that Unity made the annoucement regarding exporting to Molehill.  It definitely lowers the objection to the plug-in install base.  However, that comes with a lot of assumptions.  First and foremost that it will work well and offer performance similar to what we'd expect from a next gen 3D technology in Flash.  Will there be a large disparity in performance in Molehill versus Unity3D?  If not, what is the advantage in maintaining Unity as a standalone plugin?  Do you want a very low user install base or one in the 90th percentile?   Will major features still need to be coded differently for Flash, versus the Unity player, iphone etc?  I'm very excited about the possibilities, just cautiously so.  Development announcements are a long way off from a useable product, so I guess only time will tell.  I'm looking forward to finding out.

Heavy Taxation - Facebook finally dropped the other shoe recently and decided to make credits a mandatory payment method.  Suddenly we've all got 30% less revenue in our pockets to work with.  While it's perfectly reasonable for Facebook to expect to make some money from the platform they've built, the number is substantial and potentially damaging for smaller developers that don't have volume and leverage on the platform yet.  I applaud Facebook for balancing the economy by rescinding free credits, and I understand the potential for reduced friction.  But I do not believe reduced friction will balance out potential losses and I think the tax will be a serious impediment to smaller developer looking to gain traction on the platform.  Facebook needs to find a way to carefully loosen the virality stranglehold, or find other ways to assist smaller developers in the ecosystem.  The cost of being on the platform is going up too much.  In this regard we know the platform is essential, but we are also looking at ways to leverage the platform beyond in-Facebook experiences.

Content Delivery - Flash isn't dead, HTML5 isn't ready (for primetime), and everything else has low market penetration.  A lot of people drank the Jobsian kool-aid last year but the reality is Flash isn't close to dead.  It's not perfect, but it works well enough and gives you the best potential shot at reaching the most customers.  Adobe has done a decent job of enabling flash content on portable devices as apps, so the cross platform potential is appealing enough.  I'm very excited about HTML5 and will continue to pursue it, but it's clearly not ready to deliver consistent performance across a wide berth of browsers.   The cross platform potential is intriguing, but for anything processor intensive the wild variation in capabilities and performance browser to browser is a deal killer.  As for other options like Unity3D, they're making great strides and I love the platform, but for the broadest range of audience the plug-in install is still an issue.  This is less true in certain demographics, but definitely still a consideration.  Unity's cross platform abilities are definitely appealing as well.  So which to choose?  There is no one answer or perfect platform, so for now we have to hedge our bets and keep a toe in multiple platforms.  This costs more to do but keeps us learning and pushing the envelope.  

Platforms - The places people play and consume their social games and media are evolving rapidly.  Since mobile and social are the next big thing, we have to ask a lot of questions about what we're developing and how we can maximize that development across multiple platforms.  Does my interface and control translate well to multiples screen sizes?  Can I write code that will perform acceptably across a wider range of processors performance?  Am I developing assets that will work well at multiple resolutions?  Can my control scheme work well on a touch screen?  Building the same game for three platforms (laptop, tablet, phone) can be a massive waste of resources or an opportunity for tremendous savings and efficiency. But it takes planning and a thorough understanding of each platforms' benefits and limitations to realize those efficiencies.  This is something we're really working to get a handle on.

So that's what keeps me up at night from time to time lately.  Keeping up with things is part of what makes it fun and there's no shortage of change.  Hopefully as an agile company we find ways to capitalize and make the most opportunities within the ecosystem as they come up. 

In real world sports, there is an intricacy to motion that is really subtle and often overlooked in sports games.  To help capture that, the best thing you can do is examine the thought process that the player goes through in choosing how and when to move.  One of my least favorite things in a sports title is steady pace movement.  In real sports acceleration is constantly varying on multiple planes.  How dull would an NFL game be if the players could only run at a single predetermined pace?  Watching acceleration off the line, or a receiver slowly adding distance between himself and the last defender are part of what make the game exciting to watch.  It's also what makes a game more fun to play.  What is the live player thinking and doing in those moments?  Looking up field, evaluating defender positions, accelerating and decelerating to avoid tackles, or feeling the burst of adrenaline when he breaks through and beats the last defender.  All of these things need to be translated into the play of our games.  It's always about asking the right questions and coding the best possible conditional response we come up with.  A player doesn't leave the line at full speed, he takes a step or two to accelerate.  He may slow down to catch the ball and then have a sudden burst of speed when the catch is secured.    Or he may slow and evaluate the positions of the defenders before moving ahead.  Lots and lots of conditional thought and action yields more variety and more exciting play in your title.  Try thinking like a player, if you can translate that into your code you're going to have a much better game. 

I've been more aware of just how often I'm checking email or twitter on my phone instead of being completely engaged in whatever moment I'm in.  While it's great to have the option I'm wondering what it really does to my quality of life and the lives of those around me.  Do we really need to know all this stuff all the time, or have we come to crave distraction and constant bombardment of information our technology rich lifestyles provide?  How important or valuable is the information that it deserves our constant attention?   Divided focus isn't really focus at all.  My kids are growing up before my eyes, and if my eyes are on my phone I'm missing it.   Be honest and ask yourself the same questions.  Besides cheating the ones that deserve our full attention we're cheating ourselves too.  I'm going to work on this and try to develop better practices.