Browser Games Blog

Civilization World becomes boring towards later part of the game

2011-08-19T12:24:00.004+08:00

After writing my last blog post about Civilization World, I had completed 2 CivWorld games, and is currently playing another 2. For one of the games, I had been one of the top 10 players.

Before I can come up with a strategy guide, I start to get dull with the game.

It is a big problem with the game design, that the game become dead slow towards the end.

One of the reason that the game gets dull is the lack of building type. Each attribute can be boost by some building - population by granary, production by lumber mill, stone masonary, iron smelt and factory, science by library and university, culture by theater and museum, wealth by bank and market. And that's all! In the original Civilization there are so many building with more effectiveness when you advance your science, like sewage system, stock market, coleseum, etc. and etc. and you can boost up your growth with all these new bulidings and science advancement. However in Civilization World there is no more new building after industrialization (factory is latest building you can get), and the boost is not effective even if you building another building of the same type. For instance, I had tried to build 4 granaries in a row, and found that population growth just increase to double.

So, with requirement to advance a technology increase exponentially at later part (something like 500,000 science to research communism, for example), while the science gain for each harvest is around 80, it takes more than 1 week to research one technology at later era of the game. The case is similar if you want to win with culture or wealth victory.

Therefore it becomes dead boring once you get through after industrialization, and everyday there is not much advancement in the game.

And the game usually ends later than 3000 AD (my last game ends at 3160 AD), which is quite ridiculous to me.

I hope 2K Games can make some improvement on this.

Google Games has launched!

2011-08-15T12:09:00.000+08:00

Earlier we have guessing whether Google+ games will be coming very soon in our post Will Google Games coming very soon? blog post. Now the conjecture is confirmed. Now when you log in to your Google+ account, you will see a "Games" stream appear at your top menu:

When you click to the "Games" button, you will be brought to the Google+ "Games" stream.

Currently you will only have some common selections: Angry Birds, City of Wonders, Bejeweled Blitz etc. and most of them already has a Facebook counterpart.

When you click into one of the game and select "Play", you will be confirmed with a message that these games need to access your Google+ profile. If you have no concern on this, then you will be brought to the actual game page, very much similar to Facebook games. Very nice!

With Google's effort, I think there will be much more games added to the repertoire very soon. I am looking forward to see this new game platform become bigger.

Tycoon World New Round Starts Today

2011-08-01T11:22:00.000+08:00

A new round of Tycoon World will start today at CEST 12:05 (UTC+8).

If you are interested to start trying out this strategic industry simulation game, it is a good time to do it today~

Happy gaming!

A First Look At Civilization World

2011-07-27T16:29:00.000+08:00

Civilization World is a Facebook based browser game developed by the original developer of Sid Meier's Civilization. It was launched on 6th July, 2011. After some messy time of server congestion, now it becomes stable for playing as an open beta.

When you go into Civilization World, you must choose a game to join. There are several ongoing game to be joint. You can look at the game year, which indicates how long the game had started. It is recommended that you join an earlier game.

Once you have chosen a game to be played, you will be directed to your city view. You will be in this game until the game round ended. In your city view, you can start building your city. A tutorial will be guiding you what can you do in your city. What you must start to do is to build houses for your citizens to live.

There are several occupations for your citizens: - Farmers, Workers, Scientists, Merchants and Artists, each of the occupations corresponds to one important aspect of your city. Farmers are for collecting food, which is for the growth of your population; Workers are for the collection of productions, which are used for building your city; Scientists are collecting science, which is for your civilization advancement; Merchants collecting gold, which is for your wealth; and finally Artists collecting culture, which are for producing great persons for you and in turn is for building wonders.

Besides that, there are three important mini-games for you to collect extra resources. A maze is for increasing your science. If you collect enough science points, there will be maze steps for you to advance your maze, and once you success, you can collect extra science points. A puzzle is for culture, in the same way, once you complete parts of the puzzle, you can increase culture points. A road connection game is for collecting extra gold.

Once you understand what can you do in your city, you should start considering joining a civilization. Civilization World is a game that you cannot play alone, at least you cannot win alone. You must join other players to form civilizations. Players in the same civilization share technology and great persons to build wonders. A wonder must be completed by having great persons from different players in the same civilization.

This is a social game which you can win. The game is divided into ages - stone ages, bronze ages, dark ages etc. which can be won by a civilization as a whole by several ways:- winning enough battles, research of a certain technology, complete a certain amount of wonders or accumulation of certain amount of gold, which all are counted in your civilization as a whole.

This is quite an easy game when compared with the original Sid Meier's Civilization, while still contains the main ingredients. I like this game in a sense that this is a special kind of social game, which involves co-operation within a civilization and competition between civilizations, which has found a perfect balance between co-operation and competition.

It is a must-play no matter you are a civilization fans or a social game fans.

I give this game 4 out of 5 stars.

CivWorld goes open beta with server jam!

2011-07-12T16:00:00.001+08:00

The long awaited Facebook browser game Sid Meier's Civilization World (CivWorld) had started its beta on 8th July. The feedback is huge and there are large amount of players trying to get into the server in a short period of time.

I am one of them :-)

I think 2K Games had not anticipated the enthusiastic feedback of the public, or maybe they are lack of the experience to handle browser games, the hosting server had soon go to its limit, and many of the waiting people are not able to get into the server.

Well, I am one of them too... :-(

I still have not a chance to try this out yet, but I anticipate that this would be a great game. I have been a long time fans of Sid Meier's Civilization series ;-)

I will give a review on this once I have a chance to get into the server and try this out. Stay tuned!

For more information, please go to the official Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/civworld?sk=wall

Will Google Games coming very soon?

2011-07-11T15:20:00.000+08:00

Google+ has entered into the testing stage, for which a small group of Google users, which join by receiving invitation either from Google directly or from friends, becomes a group of tester to help testing Google+ out. So we expect Google+ will be opened to public very soon.

Google+ is a Facebook rival from Google, which allow users to share news, photo, video and links to "circle" of people, which users creates and add friends to. This is very much similar to Facebook, though quite preliminary, with the addition of the idea of "Circles", which allow you to divide your friends into circles of people which you can share particular information to particular group of target people.

To really compete with Facebook, it cannot do without social games. So here comes the conjecture whether Google will add games to Google+.

I believe the answer is positive, this can be seen from Google's earlier investment in social games, and some evidence by examining the source code of Google+.

In that case, will this open a new era to social and browser gaming? Let's keep an open eye for it! ;-)

Mozilla Launched Gaming Project to Enhance Browser Games

2010-09-09T11:14:00.000+08:00

Mozilla had launched a set of new open web technologies, specifically for browser game development, so that web developers can use this new set of new technologies, namely Open Video, audio, WebGL, touch events, device orientation, geolocation, and fast JavaScript engines to build complex browser games.

Mozilla had also announced the Game_On_2010 browser game contest.

With this effort from Mozilla, I think there will be some great changes in browser games in the next few years. Browser games can be more complex, probably with better graphics, and thus can arouse more interests from gamers. I am really looking forward to that.

Reference:
Mozilla: Now is the time for browser games
Mozilla Labs Gaming

Tycoon World

2010-09-07T15:42:00.000+08:00

Formerly Industrial Tycoon, now called Tycoon World is a German-based business simulation game, having an English translation.

In this game, you are a business owner, who build shops, factories, raw material plants, and earn money. There is a public market place where you can sell and buy products from and to other players in the game. The money you have earned, can be used to build even more shops and factories, or can be used to research new products and higher qualities of products. With new research, you can make even higher turnover in the game.

Shops are main source of income, where you sell your final products to customers. For the products to be sold in the shops, they can be either be bought from the market place from other players, or can be produced in your own factory chain. For the raw materials used to product your product, can be either bought from other players, or be extracted from your own raw material fields. So to get started easily, you usually will build business chain , like logs -> lumber -> wooden table etc.

There are 14 kinds of industries in this game, with nearly a hundred kinds of products. The price of these products can be fluctuate with the demand-supply trend in the game world. With higher demand and fewer players producing the products, the price can be set higher. Therefore the main way to be successful in the game is to choose the correct industry by watching the demand-supply trend closely.

There are several kinds of decision to be made in order to success: like when and whether to upgrade your production plant and when and whether to have product and quality research. There is a limit of 100 building to be built, and therefore when and what to build is a very important decision.

This is an interesting game, as although simple, it has a very complete business ecosystem in the game, and what other players do in the game is closely related to how you will success.

Overall I rate 4 out of 5 for this game.

Terra Militaris Announced

2010-09-01T09:59:00.000+08:00

Terra Militaris, an empire-building strategy game, is announced and will be launched at the end of 2010. This will be available at the gpotato.eu browser game portal.

From the announcement, looks like this game will have a hero system. An interesting idea which is not available in all the empire-building game is the idea of trade route and the spreading of religion to increase political influence. This idea has come from Civilization IV. It is interesting to see how these ideas are implemented in an browser-based online game.

Reference:
http://www.pcgamersworld.com/2010/08/browser-based-strategy-game-terra-militaris-announced/

Game site:
http://terra-militaris.gpotato.eu/

Social Games is the Entrance Point for many Gamers

2010-08-26T14:44:00.003+08:00

Study has showned that 56.8 millions of US consumers has ever played a social games, and among these population, 35% are first time gamers. 10% of which had spent real money on social games. This interesting study shows that the rise of social games had expanded the online gaming markets in great amount. Many gamers, especially those females and elders, which normally are not interested in online gaming, has entered into this playground with social games as the entrance point. With the growth of social games, it looks like that the browser game market will grow with it, and the trend would be most of the future browser online games with at least contain some "social" elements in it.

I think, with this trends, future games should focus on designs on how to integrate social elements into traditional online games. Interaction between friends, combining with rich gaming elements like good gameplay and good story, would make a success in the future browser game market.

Reference: http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_100823.html

Google Chrome Web Store Enhance Browser Games in the Future

2010-08-18T09:52:00.000+08:00

After a few month's of speculation on what Google is going to do with the several acquisition of browser games related business, finally it is an answer from GDC Europe. Google had announced the Google Chrome Web Store, which shall be launched in coming October.

One of the features of the Google Chrome Web Store is to allow users to rate and review browser games, and to "install" the browser game by adding new tabs to the user interface. If there is a payment involved with the game, it can then be done through Google Checkout.

Will this be a popular service? Will users use it as a one-stop interface for browser games? That's what we are going to see.

Reference:
Google Shows the Future of Browser Games (1Up)

Awsome Features In Social Games Today

2010-08-17T15:00:00.000+08:00

I have just read an interesting article on listing 6 awsome social features in today's facebook games.

To make a summary, here are what defines a social game:

1. Have your friends in your game world. Having your friends in your farm/cafe/city/hotel is a big fun, and can create a sense of familiarity to you that this game world is really YOUR world. Having some interaction with your friends in your game world is even more interesting.

2. Get your friends' help and helping your friends. One of the most common features in social game that most people like is you can help your friends and get their help in return. This will easily create an invisible linkage between you and your friends, especially for friends that are far away and not meeting often.

3. Team play. This even create a higher sense of linkage. You and your friends forming a team and accomplish tasks together, or going to adventure together. This is the biggest fun that people may not be able to do in the real world day-to-day.

4. Chatting and emoticons. Through chatting and use emoticons to express emotion, you can discuss topics about the games or outside the games.

Please share your view on what do you think are awsome social features for games!

Browser Game Market Grows As More Players Willing To Pay

2010-08-17T12:09:00.001+08:00

Statistics and market research shows that more and more browser game and social game players are becoming more willing to pay real money in exchange of game currency and goods:

Growth of social gaming market steadily rising as players willing to exchange real money for virtual content

The social game revenues has grown from $80 million in 2008, to over $800 million in 2010, and it is estimated that it will probably exceeds $1.5 billion in 2014.

The browser game business is really bocoming a profitable business.

Change of Focus

2010-08-17T12:01:00.001+08:00

Besides offering game reviews on some nice browser games that the author of Browser Games Blog had played, and share some guidelines, the Browser Games Blog will also share some news and thoughts in the browser games and social games market from now on and on.

I have divide my posts into 3 main tags to distinguish them: News, Thoughts and Reviews. You can simply click on the tags for topics that interest you most.

Stay tuned with us!

Google Has Put More Investment On Social Browser Game

2010-08-11T10:11:00.000+08:00

After investing into Zynga, one of the largest social game developer, Google has put more investment into social gaming by acquiring Jambool, the social game payment company. Besides, Google has planned to launch Google Game later this year to compete seriously with Facebook on social gaming. It is worth to keep watch how this internet giant goes on social gaming. Stay tune!

Google Steps Up Its Investment In Social Games With $70 Million Acquisition Of Jambool

Another Piece To Google’s Social Puzzle: To Acquire Jambool For $70 Million

Mythopolis Opens Its First Alpha Test Server

2010-08-11T09:58:00.001+08:00

Koramgames has just announced the launch of the first alpha test server for its brand new browser SLG game - Mythopolis.

Mythopolis - Where you decides the Fates of Gods and Men

This game is also integrated with Facebook, you can access the game with:

http://apps.facebook.com/mythopolis

Happy Gaming!

Top 5 Popular Empire Building Browser Games

2010-08-09T16:24:00.003+08:00

I would like to compile a list of the most popular empire building browser based games in the web. Here is a starter, if you have something to add to this list, please comment to this post.

1. Travian - I guess this is the most popular medieval empire building game in the web.
2. OGame - The most popular space simulation type of empire building game.
3. Evony - Recently arising hit
4. Empire Craft - The one I like, with good story quest and hero system
5. Ikariam - Another famous one, treated as one of the original

Any more to add?

Empire Craft

2010-08-09T15:42:00.001+08:00

Empire Craft is one of the browser based empire building game that use Facebook as a authentication platform, but does not belong to the genre social gaming.

Empire Craft is quite a typical empire building game, with all the elements you can think of in a typical empire building. You build up your resources fields, you build the building you need for various purpose, you advance your technology, you build up army and conquer other players etc.

However, there are a few things that I like that make this game different from other typical empire building games - quests, stories, use of heroes and private dungeons.

Empire Craft has a nice quest system. It got typical tutorial quests that guide you step-by-step to building up your empire. Besides that, the quests go into "advanced" stage as well. Even when you have build up things far from a novice do, the quest still guide you forward to building a strong and success empire.

More interesting, these quests contain stories. There are quite a number of neutral cities, which allow you to explore and provide story quests for you. This had made this game something different from standard empire building strategy games. This has given some favour of RPG into it.

The use of heroes is another point of interest in this game. Besides leading an army into conquering other cities, your hero can be the governor of your city, which helps the resource growth of your cities, and improve the defense and build speed of your cities as well. Moreover, there are private dungeons associates with the story quests as well, which you must use your hero to venture into the dungeons to complete the story quests.

Besides other players' cities, there are wandering monter armies in the fields for you to fight, which can help you get treasure and experience point for your heroes. These wandering monsters are associated with the story quests as well.

Finally, military ranks and nobility titles are something worth mentioning of. While you complete story quests and some associated daily quests associated with your military, you gradually improve your fame and ranking, and you can get higher nobility title and military rank. With this ranks and titles, more advanced story quests are opened to you and you can venture into deep level of dungeons.

These elements had made Empire Craft a much richer and interesting game than other empire building game.

I rank 5 out of 5 for this game.

Try it out and let me know what do you think!

China Gamers Need to Reveal their Real Names

2010-08-04T10:30:00.001+08:00

Starting on Sunday 1st August 2010, China's gamers have to use their real names and national ID numbers before playing online, in an effort to reduce juvenile online gaming and tighten supervision over the sprawling industry. This new measure was issued by the Ministry of Culture in China.

"Real Names" Hits Web Game

In the view that China is currently one of the largest market for online browser games, will this new policy impact the browser game industry?

Some young gamers think they don't care; while elder one would have own concern.

What do you think?

Success with Browser-based Empire Building Games

2010-08-03T12:19:00.001+08:00

Have you played Travian? Ikariam? Evony? Imperial Ages? O Game?

You notice that there are quite some similarities in these empire building type of browser games?

Yes, basically you start with nothing, with an empty city, or base, to begin with. You start with minimal resources. With this, you start your empire.

This blog post aims to guide you to success to browser-based empire building games.

1. Resource - yes, of course resources is the most important thing in empire building games. Everything need resources. Building need resources, technology advancement need resources, army need resources. Therefore the first priority is to build up your resource "mines".

2. Technology - most of empire building games consists of a tech-tree. It is very important that you have good enough technology advancement. Technology is important for you to have new buildings and army.

3. Army - no need to mention, you need a large and advanced army to protect your cities or bases; and you need your army to expand your empire. Always leave enough resource to expand your army.

The above 3 are things that every players know. Now comes to something more.

4. Guild - yes, join a guild, and make a lot of friends. In online games, you cannot success without allies and friends. Guild, and friends are your best support in the game. When you are continuously attacked by someone stronger than you, friends are the only way to help you out of trouble.

5. Raid inactive neighbours - no matter how well you build your resource fields, resource needed to build up your empire will never be enough. An unlimited resource is your inactive neighbours. Raid them at least daily to get the resource from them. This way you can build up yourself faster than others.

6. Spying - know thy neighbor, and thou shalt win. Upgrade your espionage building as high as possible. Most of the games provide you more detail spying reports with higher level espionage building. On the other hand, your enemies are more difficult to gain information from you when you have high level espionage building. This way, your enemies are hard to know how you are doing, and dare not raid you, while you know everything from them, and know how to prepare a war on them.

7. Expand - build up your second city, third city and so on as soon as you can. More cities means more resource fields, in turn means more resources for your building, technology and army, in turn, means success.

8. Complete quests - for those empire building games that have quest system, remember to complete the quests as much as you can. Quests usually work as a good guideline for your building sequence. Most importantly, completing quests comes with rewards, which means more resources for you.

9. Go online often - usually there is a cap on the resources you can store. If you do not go online for long while, all your resource reaches cap and there is no more resource growth. Go online often to use your resources wisely, to upgrade your buildings and armies.

10. Keep watch of the top list - you need to know how yourself is positioning in the game and how others are doing, so that you know how and where and how much to improve yourself.

Here is the top 10 way of ensuring success in browser-based empire building games, which are very popular nowadays.

Can you think of more? Please come and share with us!

Two Game Guides Promotion

2010-08-02T15:23:00.002+08:00

Mafia Wars Blueprint by T Dub

Did you ever play the browser game Mafia Wars? Find it hard to ever make a success in the game? Here is the game guide that you may want. The game guide for this hot game: Mafia Wars Blueprint is offered by T Dub.

Evony Secrets Guide by James Ruben

Evony is another famous Medieval world empire building game. You build your city, you build your army and you conquer the world. If you want to have quick and big success, please try the Evony Secrets Guide as offered by James Ruben.

Please write us a comments if you like these products.

Google Develops a Facebook Rival

2010-07-29T17:16:00.001+08:00

If you like social gaming, then Facebook may not be the only platform that serves you in the future. According to this journal article, Google is investigating on the social gaming business, and is developing a rival to Facebook on social gaming:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703292704575393531040685308.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection

Social Gaming Is A Serious Business

2010-07-29T16:54:00.002+08:00

Business are putting more money into and gaining more money from social gaming. I would like to share an article with you, published on CNET news:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20011946-36.html?tag=nl.e703

My City - A Very Simple Game

2010-07-29T16:42:00.000+08:00

Sometimes I like really simple game, games that you only need to spend a few minutes a day. This can be fun.

My City is a very simple game that I like. What we do is we start with a city with no population at all, then we start to add citizens to it day by day, until you get a big city. Sounds boring, huh?

The fun is you can add different kind of citizen to it, depending on what is your city's current attribute. There are 7 attributes to a city: prosperity, safety, workforce, culture, science, entertainment and health. Each citizen you add, the citizen contributes to the attribute of the city. For example, if you add a hospital doctor to your city, you add +1 safey, +1 science and +1 health to your city. With different citizens added on and on, your city will build up with certain attribute and therefore develop into a certain style. You may have high entertainment and culture, but with low safety and health (like mine); or you may have high prosperity and high workforce, but with low culture and science, etc.

With different attributes to your city, different citizen will be available to your city, and some citizen will become unavailable. For example, serial killers come into play when your city have +10 safety and >= 10 population while hospital doctors disappear when you have > +40 health, etc. The fun of the game becomes trying to make some new kind of citizen available to you and so as to increase the demography.

You can also add citizens to your friends' city. The number of citizens that you can add per day to different cities depend on your population. The high is the population, you can add citizens to more of your friends.

Here is my city:
http://apps.facebook.com/virtualcity/526091044/default.aspx

Please come and add some citizen to my city, and I will return the favor to you~

Enjoy and happy gaming!

Why Facebook games are so successful?

2010-07-19T12:16:00.001+08:00

Facebook games are growing very quickly these one or two years, from very simple games for simple social connection to very sophisticated one, with a lot of players. What is the reason for it's success?

1. Natural traffics - yes, Facebook is almost the most public website on the web. If you put a game onto Facebook, you are already potentially accessible by billions of users in the whole world.

2. Easy to promote - Facebook has its own very simple way to "Create an ad", and most importantly, it is cheap. When you create an ad through Facebook, then potentially billions of Facebook users will be able to see your ad and get interested into the game.

3. Integrated login - a game can use Facebook's login framework, i.e. a user just login into Facebook, and go to the games application, then he is already login into the game. This simple authentication process had reduce the user's reluctant to sign up a new account. He is naturally drawn into the game when he feels interested, without any concern.

4. Social network - of course! Facebook is a social network site after all. What is the biggest fun in playing browser games /Facebook games is, of course, playing with a group of friends. Sending gifts to your friends and getting gifts back from them; helping out in their game world; joining adventures together etc. are actually the biggest fun in browser games above all.

5. Word of mouth - most of the games will put a post onto the player's wall when the player is playing, or when gaining some achievement in the game. In this way, all of the people in this player's friends list will be able to see it. This had become a natural word of mouth network, and natural advertisement, that will be able to be trusted as it is found on a friend's wall. This would help the game spreads very quick.

What do you think are the other success factor for Facebook games? Please give your comments and share your idea~