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Archive for November, 2011

[D] The Best Laid Plans of Farms and Friends

Do you have friends? Yes? Okay, awesome, we’ve got common ground to work on. Doing things socially is a large motivator for a lot of people; the desire to work together or to show off accomplishments is a driving factor behind many activities. Even unrelated actually participating, sports fans want to socially proclaim their love for their team (R.I.P. Atlanta Thrashers) despite having nothing to do with the success of the team. Capitalizing on that desire for social experiences is currently a driver behind a lot of change in the game industry, both in terms of mechanics and monetization.

Of course everyone is familiar with FarmVille, either by direct experience or remote vilification,  so we’ll use that as an example. Here, you grow virtual crops and raise virtual animals and run a virtual farm. There is a cyclical nature in the game where the goal is to get better at doing these things so you can get better at doing these things, etc, etc. Which, while not my perferred method of gameplay, is something that appeals to people. Why it appeals to people is a whole discussion on Skinner Box (new window) game design, which I’m sure I’ll rehash at some point, despite there being loads of well written thoughts on the topic already. Let’s, for the sake of this discussion, just accept it for what it is and not debate the merits.

This method of “earning” rewards (which are really just time based milestone rewards, rather than skill based) and sharing the rewards with your friends to generate more (gasp!) rewards is a feeder in to the cyclical design. Frequently giving a player bonuses, rewards, etc and promoting the idea of sharing those accomplishments with their friends is built-in marketing. I doubt anyone that reads this will be shocked, and most of us have probably been annoyed by it at some point. The idea works, though, because people feel like they’re helping (“Oh! I’m going to send you this extra Pig Feeder 9000″) rather than annoying (“Oh! I’m going to spam your Facebook with posts about Pig Feeders!”) helps encourage shares. Even if the return rate is 5%, you’re still getting your players to work for you, for free.

This isn’t new. At all. Word of mouth marketing is a known and powerful thing. These games just nudge you slightly harder than some things. Think about the last time you nabbed a great deal on something. Did you think, “Man, I should tell FriendX about this because they’d love this!” before calling them or sending them an email about it? That is exactly the momentum they’re trying to capture. There is nothing wrong with the concept; I’m completely stoked if a friend gives me the heads up a game I’ve been wanting is half off today. Or a game he thinks I would enjoy is half off, even if I have never heard of it. So what makes these games so obnoxious and intrusive to us when they do this on Facebook?

First, they’re not well tailored. Most applications just have you shotgun posts out to all your friends at worst, or at best let you pick friends that have played that game at some point ever. What if I was playing a game  where I was managing a cafe, for example. So you get some kind of reward, let’s say gourmet coffee. The game then internally examines your friends that play the game, and notices my coffee sales are low. It then specifically targets a need by recommending you share a reward with me that is benefit to a specific deficiency in my play. By doing this, you’re causing connections that are less frequent (lowering annoyance factor) and more relevant (raising return rates) to the recipient.

The next important part for taking these sorts of ideas from the flood of reskinned FarmVille games is to make the achievements meaningful. A reward for successfully clicking a button after a timer runs out or a meter fills up is only satisfying on a base level. Tie some actual accomplishment to it, and people that aren’t swayed by current methods will suddenly become more involved. Let’s go back to our hypothetical cafe game. Say you have to solve puzzles to add recipes to your menu. So now, that gourmet coffee reward you sent me is the result of you successfully solving 10 puzzles in less than the average time. This encourages skill growth, which promotes critical thinking about the gameplay that is happening, and helps keep the brain doing things that are good for it like problem solving.

At this point, if you’re my father, you’re probably wondering about when I’m going to get to the whole monetization part of it. So what we’ve done so far is build a better system that encourages social participation in games, and allows us to user the player  base as free marketing while that marketing still provides a desirable service to the players. We’re moving away from the traditional casual game design to more skill based challenges. Now since our game is starting to have meat on its bones, we can begin to make money. If you make quality content, people will respect and trust what you do. Thus, charging for extra content has a high payout rate since you have earned the loyalty and support of your customers. Our cafe game can release a $5 Smoothie Pack that adds a whole new style of puzzle, with new rewards and challenges, and have a much higher conversion percent from non-payers to payers, because the content is worth the money.

This all sounds nice and simple, but the reality is that you have to be able to make a very good game to begin with for this to work. Your premium content doesn’t need to let people accomplish things for free. Rather, the premium content should be new and unique experiences that expand on a solid gameplay core to drive sales. After all, at the end of the day, giving away loads of free stuff doesn’t pay the bills unless you want to plaster advertising everywhere, and good luck with that one. Building an engaging, skill-driven core system with meaningful and relevant social interactions will allow you to monetize on hearty, game-expanding premium content and grow a satisfied, trusting user base. Obviously, this is a pretty bare-bones analysis, and there are a lot of other factors to consider, but if I typed everything today I’d have no content for Wednesday.

Monday, 07 November 2011 17:14 Written by Daniel 3 Comments

[D] Casting Dispel Illusions

Look, I’m going to be pretty straightforward with you here. Before I do, though, just promise you’ll at least finish this paragraph. Promise? Okay, good. This post is going to be about tabletop roleplaying games, such as Dungeons and Dragons. Wait! Wait, don’t go! You promised! Okay, so either you’re now incredibly interested (probably because you play these sorts of games) or incredibly uninterested (probably because you don’t). I’d like to talk about the ways that these games are perceived, and often played, as opposed to what is the core idea (at least for me) behind them. I’d like a chance to illustrate how play can be used to teach, how social games encourage cooperative problem solving, and how using our imagination and telling stories is an important part of what makes us human. So please put aside the preconceived notions for a moment and let me see if I can explain why I find these games so fascinating. Also, your promise is up now, so you can stop reading if you want to.

First, let’s deal with some of the negatives. It is hard to talk about these games without conjuring the image of some unwashed trolls crammed in to a tiny basement or apartment, rolling dice among thousands of discarded Mountain Dew cans while they argue about if the fighter gets +1 or +2 on his attack roll against a specific opponent. If I tried to tell you that it is never like that in reality then I would be lying. Those types of players do exist, and you’ll find them stinking up your local game store on a regular basis. There is also the religious opposition to these sorts of games, though not all tabletop rpgs involve elements of magic or the supernatural, which has been debated a thousand times on the internet. I invite you to use your Google-fu if that aspect of the argument interests you; I have no intention of inviting religious discussion here.

To frustrate every teacher that reads this (sorry Mom!) and my English major wife, I’m not going to cover my points in the order of how they were listed in the first paragraph. Humans, in general, love a good story. In all fairness, Dolphins or pandas might, as well, but I really can’t say. Most of us love telling them and hearing them. This idea to imagine something interesting, exciting, or important is part of who we are. These stories can be as outlandish and fantastical as Lord of the Rings or as simple and true as the tale of Apollo 13. I think we can all relate to the kid in the back yard, picturing his team down by 2 with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th. We use this exercise to picture things in ways that are contrary to our own internal logic and experiences; we picture what it is like to be in another situation. Tabletop games let a group of people get together and tell a story as a group. Each person contributes their piece, their characters, their views, and thus a fresh perspective. At its best, it is guided improv storytelling where each person has an important role in the narrative. This isn’t just a healthy way of exercising the creative parts of the brain, but it helps with the next part.

Learning through storytelling involves removing yourself from your existing perspective and trying to see things from another angle. Presenting challenging moral choices makes us think about why we make the decisions we do, and why certain moral beliefs resonate strongly with us. We can use fantastical elements to mirror real world problems and examine them without some of the biases that exist by theorizing in the real world. Crafting theoretical societies, and deciding how a “good” or “bad” character would act within them grants insight in to how important certain moral choices are, and what we value. For instance, the warmongering heir to the throne is kidnapped, to be murdered and replaced by a clone that would strive to avoid war. Placing characters in this situation lets us examine the morality of murder, lying, and war. When we think about our choices, and how we decide what is good or evil, we begin to make more sense of the grey areas in our personal views.

A huge factor in this is the social aspect. We don’t confront these decisions alone, but rather with our friends. We mull over our decisions, and talk about what’s right or not. We communicate with each other, examine viewpoints we wouldn’t otherwise consider, and (hopefully) attempt to cooperate for the best possible outcome. Playing games cooperatively with people helps us learn to come together to problem solve, which is a skill that is incredibly important in the real world. Not only is it important to keep the brain active, but being able to practice working as a team is something that we don’t get enough time doing. In school, group projects generally consist of doing something we aren’t interested in to begin with. So adding conflicting views and different work ethics to the mix certainly isn’t going to be enjoyable. However, in a tabletop scenario the players all want to succeed as a team; there is excitement and motivation behind penetrating the mysteries of puzzles and coming out on top. The environment promotes this sort of growth, rather than presenting more obstacles to overcome.

These are all arguments that only hold up when all the people involved in the game agree on the importance of imagination, cooperation, storytelling, and having a good time. For me, that’s how these games should be played. The rules provide a guidance for resolving specific scenarios, or tools for dismantling challenges, but the real value and worth of tabletop games comes from the people involved. Much like most activities, surrounding yourself with a social group that promotes personal growth, critical thinking, and supportive optimism is going to make all the difference.

There are loads of different tabletop RPG systems out there, from fantasy settings to modern day to science fiction. Finding the one that works for you and your friends or family is the trick. If this post has made you interested, and you’d like help getting started, post your questions in the comments below.

Saturday, 05 November 2011 14:43 Written by Daniel 0 Comments

[D] Compound Slaughter

Recently, I taught myself the compound interest formula again. I learned it in school, sure, but I’m not at a point in life where I’m managing investment portfolios or doing other calculations where compound interest comes in to play. It just doesn’t happen. However, I do like to kill goblins. I like to kill goblins a lot. Enter Dungeon Defenders, where I can harass three of my friends to get on Skype, we can build some defenses, and (this may be a shock) defend against waves of enemies. Various items spill forth from the cartoon carcasses when you dispatch the enemies, and a key mechanic in the game is upgrading these items to improve your ability to dispatch more enemies. (The cyclical, Skinner-box reward system here is not the point of this post; please ignore it.)

It was here, at the upgrade screen, that I noticed something. Every time I upgraded my chainsword’s damage, it wasn’t a flat amount. So the first upgrade would take me from 100 to 115, while the next would take me from 115 to 131. I started doing math. Very rough math. It looked like it was compounding at a 15% rate. So, quickly to the Google I go and find a compound interest calculator. I begin using this to decide what weapons are better or worse. Sure, my chainsword does 567 damage right now, but if I upgrade this cutlass 22 times and its starting damage is 46, will it eventually be better than the chainsword? Math had come to the rescue, and a kind of math that I don’t use often. Playing Dungeon Defenders has retaught me compound interest.

I wish I could stop there, but sadly I can’t. My calculations were becoming dramatically incorrect. The numbers, oddly, weren’t adding up. So I enlisted my fellow defender’s aid, and we charted our weapon upgrades. Low and behold! A trend! Any time the added value was greater than 80, the game capped the upgrade at 80! So this forcibly inserted a wrench in my formula, and now we had no idea what we were doing! We were lost in a sea of uncertainty! How would we ever decide what killed goblins most effectively? We’d use Excel, of course.

Enter the spreadsheet. I’m not sure how much you know about Excel, but it does all sorts of handy things. Such as if-then-else statements. So now I’ve got an Excel sheet full of things that look like this: =IF(B2*0.1475 >= 80,B2+80,B2*1.1475). Now you’re thoroughly confused, of course. “Daniel!” you shout, “that’s adding 14.75% instead of the 15% you told us about earlier!” I hate to say this, but I was wrong. It turns out that weapons don’t upgrade at a normal rate at all. In fact, weapons upgrade at rates unique to the weapon and/or weapon type. So we recorded more data to reverse engineer the equations the best we can, and by using an average we can predict a rough final value +/- 2% of the actual, which is close enough.

In some ways, this is the story about why I wrote the Dungeon Defenders Upgrade Calculator, but it really is about more than that. It is about ways that we should pick recreation that helps encourage us to keep our brain active and healthy, and trick us in to having fun learning things, promoting critical thinking, and making sure those dirty, rotten goblins keep their hands off our crystals.

Thursday, 03 November 2011 18:19 Written by Daniel 1 Comment