musings of a social architect

De-Cloaking

 Hello! It''s been awhile since I've blogged. I've been heads-down in semi-stealth mode, launching a SmartGames startup. SmartGames are personalized, bite-size, socially connected games that keep you sharp. We're inspired by the recent explosion of Brain Games, and passionate about creating games that bring people closer together. Here's the story about how our company came to be, and some of the struggles and joys we've experienced along the way.
Shufflebrain: The making of a social games company

Our first game, PhotoGrab, is a gaming environment where you play your friends' photos — and turn your own photos into SmartGames for your friends to play. We're launching the beta version of Photograb on Facebook in a few weeks. If you enjoy lightweight games — and love to share digital photos with your friends — Photograb is for YOU!  To be among the first play, join our PhotoGrab Beta group on FaceBook,

When Beta launches, I'll post a message here, and migrate this blog to shufflebrain.com (currently under construction).Thanks for reading my blog - I hope you'll join us on our new adventures,  building and running SmartGames for Social Networks.

P.S. If you have further questions, or you want a sneak peek of PhotoGrab Beta, send email to amyjokim at gmail dot com telling me who you are, and why you want early access, and we'll see what we can do.

PARC talk in Palo Alto Tue 4/8/2008

I'll be speaking in Palo Alto @ 7:30 PM this coming Tuesday, discussing how to apply game mechanics to social software. Hope to see some of you there! Please come up and say hello after the talk.

Game Meets Web

Wow, the gaming world is revving up to Web speed. Checkout this exchange from an allstar panel of gaming luminaries @ GDC 2008.

Raph Koster: “Iteration speed on the web is insane. The base assumptions on pace are astounding. The web can test and iterate in matters of hours; Flickr is patching every 30 minutes. Web analytics is something we can’t do and on top of this games are very hard to make. Unlike the web guys, we can’t afford to make six different versions of a game to see which one works best.”

Peter Molyneux: “Shouldn’t we be making our own social networks [as games and as platforms]? I see what those guys are doing and I think the mistake they are making is the one that we took 20 years to fix; they are mistaking complexity for depth”

Raph Koster: “The fact is that those guys are learning our tricks much quicker than we are learning theirs. They are gamers. They understand the things that we are good at, like interfaces and they learn fast.”

Phil Harrison: “We already make social networks. MMOs are social networks but with a narrative.”

Neil Young: “At EA we’ve been playing around with creating applications and releasing them and watching them go viral. It’s incredibly fast. If you are making games right now and you don’t understand this stuff, you won’t be around for long.”

Applying game dynamics to virtual worlds

Jeremy Liew has an excellent post up today - Applying game dynamics to virtual worlds. Especially this passage:

4. Free to play can mean casual (to start) but if you want to get paid, you have to focus on the hard core. They are the ones who will shell out real dollars for digital goods. There must be a satisfying hardcore experience even for casual and social games. Not only are they the sources of your revenue, they are also evangelists, and beacons on the horizon for new players. If you’re missing hard core, you’re missing deep fun. [THIS WAS A LIGHTBULB MOMENT FOR ME].

I've seen this lesson unfold in practice -- it's TRICKY, you have to design an experience that's light enough to attract massive numbers of casual players, but deep enough to attract the get-a-life Web gamers who have the time and propensity to get deeply involved in something.

Betting on Social Networks | Bubba Murarka

Thanks to my friend Rajat, I just discoved Bubba Muraka's blog. He's got some great posts -- e.g. Betting on Social Networks. Here, he articulates just what I've been wondering about - is FaceBook (along with other social networks) just another distribution channel among many? Or is it the new "destination site", above and beyond all others? I don't think anyone knows the answer right now -- the market will answer that question over the next few years. And many of us will be part of creating the answer. Fun times.

Social Ads: what's old is new again

Joshua Porter has an excellent post up analyzing  Why Social Ads Don’t Work.

...What if the activity you’re doing actually does determine your willingness to click on ads? This is what is being suggested by the early returns on ads in social networks. If this is so, then we can start by making a list of activities in which it would make sense that people are most susceptible.

    * Searching
    * Shopping
    * Traveling

These activities all share something in common. People are on the move, and are actively looking for products and services to help them along their way.There is a reason why Google wants super short time-per-visit and Facebook wants super long time-per-visit. It’s because the services support two completely different activities. Google wants a tremendous number of incredibly short visits. Facebook wants people to never leave.

But a fundamental problem with the way that MySpace and Facebook have been looking at their audiences is that they think their audiences exist to make them money through the sharing of attention. They believe since they have so much attention (super long time-on-site) that they should have no problem doing so. But it is the very reason why they have long time-on-site that makes them bad for advertising. They have provided a comfortable third place…people are already where they want to be!

Social network audiences are less like searchers and more like homebodies.

It's fascinating to see the same pattern playing out in today's social networks as we saw with chatrooms in the late 90's. Highly interactive social spaces don't generate high click-through rates, 'cause people are there to engage with each other. HOWEVER -- activities that enhance relationships (e.g. digital gifts, lightweight social games) can generate lots of interest in social spaces.

I'll bet that the more that social ads look like relationship-enhancing activities, the better they'll do.   

 

Rock Band + Downloadable Songs = Gamer Heaven

'Rock Band' sells 2.5 million songs

We've been playing Rock Band recently -- and although I LOVE the gameplay, I hate the song list (not my taste). So I'm thrilled beyond words to see that downloadable songs for Rock Band are selling well. A robust market will support a variety of songs - and increase my chances of finding songs to play that I LOVE (e.g. Baba O'Reilly by The Who)

BTW - I worked on Rock Band early in the project, helping to design the online & community features (look for my name in the credits :-)  I'm so proud to see how the game finally turned out. There were a LOT of tough decisions and tricky compromises to make, and Harmonix navigated that terrain beautifully.

It's a struggle to get my work done these days - 'cause all I want to do is pickup that guitar and rock out.

More Insights into Game Design Trends

Anyone for maths?

Math Brain Training, coming soon...

Types of Game Designers

A good summary of game design roles as practiced in the industry (bear in mind that these roles are changing

'Wii warm-up' good for surgeons

More evidence that games can be effective for training SPECIFIC neurological systems.

Researcher Kanav Kohel explained that the type of game play was crucial.
"You don't gain a lot from swinging an imaginary tennis racket.
"The whole point about surgery is to execute small finely controlled movements with your hands, and that is exactly what you get with the Wii."

The fine control needed to move a virtual marble around a 3D maze is similar to the skills needed to perform keyhole surgery, for example.

Some good advice from Raph

Jeremy Liew points to a couple of excellent posts from Raph on - great stuff for up-and-coming game designers:

Game Design Fundamentals: Part 1
Game Design Fundamentals: Part 2

And a choice quote from Raph...

Link: Raph’s Website � Web-based VW news round-up.

... that’s what all the most popular apps on Facebook seem to be: either fancier versions of Poke (poke with vampires! Poke with movie lists! Poke with stuffed animals!) or richer profile stuff (wall with video! Profile with movie lists! Wall with a stuffed animal!). Which goes to show what SNSes are built around: rich profiles, and presence.