Regarding the iPad:

• Common complaints about the device include: no Flash support, the screen’s “boxy” 4:3 aspect ratio, no user-facing camera (present even in cheap netbooks), and no multitasking. It is, in the words of many, “a big iPod Touch.”
• RE: Kindle vs. iPad, a succinct argument by Paid Content: “Total cost of owning an iPad (assuming a $30 monthly data plan and 3 yr product life) is roughly 6x-7x the cost of a Kindle 2 (priced at $269 and likely going lower). Also, with an E-Ink screen, smaller form factor, lower weight, and better battery life, the Kindle may appeal more to serious book readers.” [I'll add: these are solid arguments, but it's worth mentioning that until we know the average price of apps in the Kindle App store, it's very hard to estimate the "total cost" of ownership for a future Kindle owner.]
• Penny Arcade elegantly captures the average enthusiast’s reaction to the iPad
• Bottom line: I’d never bet against Apple, but that doesn’t mean I’d necessarily bet *on* Apple in this particular case. The prospects for v1 of the iPad are questionable enough (and the app store crowded enough) that I’m inclined to wait and see how things shape up post-launch. The Kindle App Store, on the other hand, intrigues me. There are supposedly a few million Kindle v2’s out there, and the App Store shouldn’t feel crowded at launch. The audience for the Kindle is older but generally tech-savvy. Seems like a nice potential opportunity for small, agile indies.

Wal-Mart and Best Buy have ended the sale of used games in their stores, forcing E-Play (the kiosk startup they were partnered with) to shut down.

A former Microsoft VP wrote an op-ed for the New York Times which slammed the company for fostering an organizational culture that actively thwarts innovation. His complaints mostly pointed to intense and destructive internal politics. IMO, the same complaint can be leveled against *most* large companies, so it’s unclear how much there is to blame here. That said, I have to admit that the politicking (plus strategic indecision) at MS really could be dizzying… especially when it resulted — as it frequently did — in major reorganizations! Three to four reorgs *a year* were not uncommon in my experience.

A large research study found that managers generally believe “recognition for good work” is the most important driver of positive morale and motivation for knowledge workers. The same managers considered “making progress in their jobs” to be the *least* important driver of morale and motivation. But when knowledge workers themselves were studied, the researchers determined that making progress was, in fact, the *most* important driver of morale! This won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who has worked on a game that was ultimately canceled, or on a project that was undone by corporate politics (see the previous note on MS for added irony.)

As noted in my previous AoI, DS title sales appear to be softening. Michael Pachter is blaming it on piracy in Europe and cannibalization by iPod Touch games. How about rising consumer apathy towards the platform? I’ve used my DS just once in the past year, to play Scribblenauts.

There’s more to life than games:

Kristof on eastern Congo: “Sometimes I wish eastern Congo could suffer an earthquake or a tsunami, so that it might finally get the attention it needs. The barbaric civil war being waged here is the most lethal conflict since World War II and has claimed at least 30 times as many lives as the Haiti earthquake…. Human Rights Watch estimates that for every Hutu fighter sent back to Rwanda last year, at least seven women were raped and 900 people forced to flee for their lives.”

BoingBoing shows how incredibly adept criminals have become at using “skimmers” to steal ATM card information and rob banking customers. “The U.S. Secret Service estimates that annual losses from ATM fraud totaled about $1 billion in 2008, or about $350,000 each day. Card skimming, where the fraudster affixes a bogus card reader on top of the real reader, accounts for more than 80 percent of ATM fraud.”

Might as well post this tonight; I’m sure the Apple tablet is going to demand a whole post of its own.

(An illicit?) review of OnLive’s beta service. Summary: as rumored, the service works OK for games that aren’t “too twitchy,” like FPS. Avid PC gamers will likely be “very disappointed by the experience,” but then again, OnLive probably isn’t targeting avid PC gamers… it’s probably targeting the much larger number of people who aren’t willing to buy an expensive PC and deal with driver conflicts, inexplicable crashes, etc. I should add that the comparison videos in this writeup were interesting… OnLive is definitely scaling back the graphical fidelity of the games it hosts.

Exciting news about the Kindle Development Kit (KDK), which rolls out next month in limited beta and will permit for games on the Kindle. Should prove lucrative for the early adopters who position themselves correctly and make it into the launch portfolio.

Snackable Media generated *$170m* from SMS-based gaming content in 2009?? That managed to slip right under my radar until now. (Snackable’s most popular title is a celebrity & pop culture txt trivia game offering $50k in prize money — it has a million monthly active users paying $10 bucks a month.)

Pocket God and Flight Control both hit 2m units sold on the iPhone. And speaking of iPhone; here’s an article highlighting the effectiveness of in-app purchases.

Microsoft just unveiled Ribbon Hero, a game that teaches you how to use MS Office. Danc advised the team that built it, and rightly labels the fact that it even exists a minor miracle. ;-)

Looks like the market for 3rd party DS games is collapsing, according to Ubisoft.

More than half the most popular e-books on the Kindle are available at no charge. Publishers are offering free versions of digital books in hopes of hooking readers on longer series by relatively unknown writers.

Top Xbox Live Indie Games are estimated to earn between $21k and $130k, according to Kotaku. (I assume that “top” probably means the top 1% of the catalog, give or take.)

I was recently interviewed by Matt Martin of GamesIndustry.biz on the subject of publishers making the transition to Facebook. Since my correspondence with Matt was via email, I thought I’d take advantage and share the full transcript, for those of you who are interested in this topic:

Question: Is Facebook a viable format for traditional videogame publishers? Are there opportunities for someone like EA or Take 2 to make a significant profit? Or is Facebook as a platform over for those big publishers that haven’t already established themselves on the service?

Facebook is definitely a viable platform for traditional publishers. The short-term problem, as I’ve noted in the past, is that traditional publishers simply aren’t geared towards making the kinds of games that succeed on Facebook. In general, their game designers are trained (and prefer) to make games that are fun above all else, where a Facebook game designer needs to be as concerned with designing a free-to-play game that is capable of generating real revenue. And in general, their designers are also accustomed to thinking of player acquisition as “marketing’s problem,” whereas viral player acquisition is clearly a core design challenge on Facebook. But I don’t want to make it sound like design is the only challenge; traditional publishers don’t have much experience marketing these kinds of games, in this kind of channel, to this broad an audience. They’re set up to manage the relationship with Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, to push discs into retail stores, and to blow a wad of cash on TV and magazine advertising. Obviously this is a generalization, but you get my point.

But as I mentioned earlier, that’s all a short-term problem. There’s no inherent reason why traditional publishers can’t build (or buy) fresh studios to focus on this opportunity. They’ve done it before; mobile games are a good example. The traditional publishers will end up wasting quite a lot of money in the process — you can be certain of that — but some of them will ultimately succeed at entering the market.

Question: Would big game franchises such as The Sims or Civilization translate to Facebook gaming, or should publishers try new projects and IP?

Regardless of the platform, it always pays to have a healthy portfolio approach. There’s no reason *not* to try bringing established franchises to Facebook; you simply need to be wary of being too literal in the translation. Put another way: as long as The Sims on Facebook is different enough from The Sims on PC+console, EA has an opportunity to broaden the already huge audience for the Sims and make some extra cash in the process. On the other hand, if the two experiences are excessively similar, EA might find that it has inadvertently trained its consumers to expect all Sims content for free (assuming the Facebook version is F2P, which is likely but not a given). At any rate, I doubt they’ll make that mistake.

All that said, the early life of a platform is generally a great time to launch original IP, and publishers should clearly take advantage of the opportunity to the greatest extent possible. But who in their right mind would say no to a Facebook version of Civilization? :-)

Question: What gaming opportunities are still available on Facebook, and how long do you expect until the platform suffers from a glut of games?

Currently, I think the number of gaming opportunities on Facebook dramatically outnumber the genres that one might call saturated. With a few notable exceptions, many of the most popular games on Facebook seem to be cut from the same cloth. They have simple art, they are oftentimes “social” in only the loosest of ways, and they’re generally simple puzzle games or RPGs. Many quickly devolve into unabashed time sinks. There’s clearly tremendous demand for these experiences so please don’t think I’m denigrating them, but there’s also room for many other experiences as well.

I should add that to my knowledge, there’s been little exploration of potentially lucrative niche audiences on Facebook. This is a platform with hundreds of millions of users — surely there must be some online audiences in the millions (or tens of millions) that would be unreachable in the console space but are reachable on Facebook! What do those audiences want? Religiously-themed games? Something else? Ironically, one might call “games that appeal particularly to hardcore gamers” an under-explored niche on Facebook!

Note from PiH:

Since Tuesday evening, PIH staff has been working around the clock to bring relief to the people of Haiti who are suffering immensely in the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake. You have seen the images on the news, read the updates on the web, and responded in a profoundly generous way to our calls for help – we are indebted to you for your quick mobilization and generous contributions.

Our team, because of our deep roots in Haiti, was able to be among the first to respond with emergency medical services. Since the first days, our staff has stepped up to take on the challenge of serving the most vulnerable in Port-au-Prince and of providing comprehensive care ranging from basic primary care to complicated surgical services at our sites in the Central Plateau and Artibonite Valley. Co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer wrote yesterday, “We find that years of investment in building a strong local partner organization mean that we are again in the position of responding effectively to a natural disaster. We are very proud of our team.”

All of this work-our years of investment and our ability to respond is made possible because of people like you who do not become paralyzed in the face of suffering but rather stand up and help serve.

Yesterday, Dr. Farmer arrived in Port-au-Prince to check in with our team and to meet with Government and UN officials. Since his visit, we have already seen the tide begin to change – this morning, the PIH/Zanmi Lasante team was designated by the World Health Organization to serve as the coordinators of the public hospital, Hopital de l’ Universite d’Etat d’Haiti (HUEH), where thousands are suffering in need of medicines and surgeries. In this new role, we will be supporting the administration and staff and recruiting other NGOs to help restore services, particularly triage, nursing, and surgical, at the city’s central hospital. Our priority is to increase stock of medicines and supplies, ensure steadily functioning operating rooms, and guarantee sufficient medical staff is available, particularly for nursing care to help with post-op recovery, iv management, and other care that has had to be self managed over the past three days.

With supply chains in place and flights arriving more consistently in Port-au-Prince since the air traffic control has been reinstated, today has already been a turning point in our ability to respond to the enormity of the devastation and really get the field hospitals and public hospitals up and running. We have two planes of surgeons and surgical supplies arriving within hours, we have fuel on its way to Haiti through the DR, and we are reallocating supplies from our ten sites to where they are needed most on a regular basis.

It is clear to us all that relief for Haiti must rely on our collective immediate response and our sustained long-term commitment to building back better. Our approach to health care delivery in resource-poor settings-partnering with the public sector, employing locally, and investing for the long-term-is a key part of the solution for Haiti now and in the future. We hope that you will continue to stand with Haiti now and in the months and years to come.

Read our ongoing updates from the field at www.standwithhaiti.org.

When I look at Facebook, I see a games platform that has been thoroughly enjoying the “early glory” phase of maturity. Not too long ago, there was guarded optimism about the potential of Facebook to host profitable games, but few good examples of such games. Less than a blink of an eye later, Facebook has become the apple of our industry’s eye.

While most publishers are laying employees off by the hundreds, Facebook-centric publishers are hiring like mad. Savvy conference organizers are rushing to capitalize on audience demand for business venues to discuss social gaming. The inevitable stories of unbelievable growth have, quite predictably, become common-place. Facebook’s platform managers have finally started embracing our industry and contributing to the hype around their platform. And finally, a remarkable number of developers (and even large publishers) have begun to re-orient themselves towards the development of social games.

Facebook’s “inevitable misery”

All of these are classic signs that Facebook gaming’s “early glory” phase is in full swing. You may therefore conclude, with 99% certainty, that Facebook as a games platform is likely within a single year’s reach of the “inevitable misery” phase of its lifecycle. Probably much less than a year, in fact. As I’ve argued before, this does not necessarily mean that savvy developers should begin to look elsewhere — it simply means that there will soon be a large quantity of blood in Facebook’s waters. The victims of that impending blood-bath are listed here, in no particular order:

• Developers who fail to realize that the quality bar for content is rising rapidly.
• Developers who believe that “viral game design” is all that matters. Hardly! User retention will prove increasingly crucial (and difficult!) as the options available to consumers explode in quantity. Furthermore, effective marketing and/or cross-promotion will increasingly distinguish those games that reach critical mass — the point before which “virality” is meaningless — from those games that do not reach critical mass and therefore fail.
• Developers who run afoul of Facebook’s platform managers. Make no mistake: Facebook may be an “open platform” but they can and will pull the rug out from under developers… not because they are nasty people, but because they genuinely believe their actions serve the greater good and/or the customer (they may also be looking to pad their own pocketbook.) Facebook might choose to dramatically change the mechanics upon which a developer has unfortunately bet all their eggs. Or perhaps Facebook might begin to proactively promote content, ala Xbox LIVE or the iPhone App store, in which case a developer could find their competitors’ games featured at the expense of their own! (Better be sure you’re supporting Facebook Credits if you want to stay off the black list…)

Early signs of trouble?

Very early signs of the “inevitable misery” phase are already evident. Not long ago, I was hearing that the conversion rate from free users to paying users on Facebook was somewhere around 3%. However, Zynga recently revealed that as of now, 1% to 2% is probably more accurate. Falling conversion rates are one of the harbingers of “inevitable misery,” though I must re-emphasize that neither falling conversion rates nor the inevitable misery phase itself are inherently “bad.” A low conversion rate is fine when your game attracts 70m players! The inevitable misery phase features a great many losers, but it sets the stage for some big winners as well.

When it arrives, what will Facebook’s “inevitable misery” phase look like?

Facebook gaming’s “inevitable misery” phase is going to look a lot like every other successful platform’s inevitable misery phase. Industry news will turn mostly sour for a period of time. Many developers will lose their shirts as games that formerly would have succeeded no longer do so. But there is one major difference between Facebook and other platforms that came before it: never before has a platform been so friendly to cross-promotion and viral growth. These twin forces will likely guarantee that today’s big social gaming companies (i.e., Zynga, Playdom, EA Playfish, etc) should continue to thrive despite any mistakes they might make. In other words, we are less likely to see a Sierra Online-esq fall from grace.

Between having truck-loads of venture capital to advertise new games with, and having millions of existing players that they can point towards new games, these social gaming juggernauts should have an easier time surviving the inevitable misery phase. They may be hiring new employees way too quickly (which unnecessarily increases their burn rate and makes them less efficient), and they may currently be cranking out derivative, shallow games, but as long as they manage to publish at least a few compelling titles as well, they should be OK. (Those “compelling titles” may be clones of competing games, but hopefully a rising quality bar and greater consumer awareness will make cloning harder in the future. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but we can hope!)

And what should you do if you’re not a Zynga, Playdom or Playfish? Well, aside from referring to the advice I gave in my previous article, I’ll add this: unlike so many other games platforms, Facebook is actually large, open, and accessible enough to support many games that target niche audiences — and Zynga is less likely to clone your game if you’ve targeted a niche. (They’re probably looking for games that have the potential to attract 100m players, not 1m or 5m players.) I’m not suggesting that indie developers abandon the mass market — not at all — but niche strategies are worth considering as competition on Facebook continues to intensify.

An in-depth look at the reasons Duke Nukem Forever never shipped. This is one of the better articles I’ve read in Wired.

I appreciate time/date and season-specific functionality in games, such as the Christmas-linked “Pure White” mode in Demon’s Souls. Why don’t more games do stuff like this on a larger scale? Make it server-based and you’ve just reduced player incentive to resell games (i.e. you might miss out on cool functionality that only gets unlocked on certain days of the year.)

The free version of Shazam for the iPhone was recently limited to five uses a month, while a new $4.99 version supports unlimited uses. The $4.99 version is supposedly selling well, which should be encouraging to all iPhone developers. (It ain’t easy to convince people to pay for something that was previously free.) Also notable: Shazam has apparently been adding 500k new users every week for an entire year.

Steve Perlman demos OnLive and discusses everything – the technology, the business model, etc. I’m still in “believe it when I see it” mode… but I’m definitely eager to see it. :-)

Things that retail game publishers worry about: 2009 saw 1,099 retail game releases across all major platforms, increasing the total games available to consumers by 55%. At least 50 games (i.e. Call of Duty and GTA) are permanent fixtures on the retail shelf. What’s all this translate to? Less available shelf space, and less average shelf-time per game.

Google’s answer to the iPhone was finally unveiled. Looks slick, but my main reason for being interested in it has less to do with the phone, and more to do with abandoning the train wreck that is AT&T’s overburdened network.

There’s more to life than games:

A remarkably well-written essay about the death penalty; it exposes the flaws in arson investigation practices and tackles Texas’ criminal justice system, in general. Fair warning: it’s a very long essay, but one worth reading regardless of whether or not you support the death penalty.

Israel will become the first country in the world to give people who sign their organ donor cards “points”; these points push your name higher up on the transplant waiting list in the event that you personally require an organ donation. Seems like the only fair system, to me.

Amazing, amazing anti-aging related research! Let the vampire jokes begin…

In my experience, one of the problems that most seems to bedevil game developers is the problem of timing; specifically, understanding when is the “right time” to begin developing for a specific platform. To understand why this is such a challenge for developers, you need to understand how a games platform tends to evolve.

Here’s the typical scenario: A platform — for example, XBLA, or the iPhone app store, or Facebook — comes into existence. Most people regard the platform suspiciously, for a variety of reasons. It’s an unproven market, for starters. The platform owner’s commitment to growing the platform may be unclear. The pros and cons of working with the platform owner in this context are unknown. There are lots of other platforms to choose from. Etc. Most developers take all this into account and decide to pass on the platform for the time being.

Then the platform begins to take off. The inevitable articles in respected publications such as Gamasutra and Edge appear; developer ABC claims to have made a million bucks; game XYZ has sold half a million units; average conversion rates are through the roof; etc.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

The platform’s owner is probably out there cheering more loudly than anyone. They publish statistics which are 100% true, but which may or may not actually convey a complete picture of what’s actually happening on the platform. (For example, I’ve noticed that Playstation Home presentations are full of great-sounding statistics which tell you almost nothing about your chances of actually generating a profit on that platform, or even your chances of indirectly generating profit via secondary effects — like the buzz that platform helps generate for your IP.) But please don’t take this as Sony-bashing, because as far as I know most platform owners are guilty of this.

Even if the platform’s stats really do paint an accurate, unexaggerated picture of what is happening on the platform, those stats likely reflect a past that has no bearing on the future competitive nature of the platform. Remember the early days of XBLA on the 360? Remember 20% average conversion rates? All that positivity was totally legitimate, but it reflected an ecosystem that was benefiting from an extreme mismatch between consumer demand (which was high) and content supply (which was low — back then one game a week was considered a very large amount of content for XBLA, and even the retail ecosystem was still pretty short on content.)

And that’s where the first big wave of developers get themselves in trouble. They rush to develop games for this wonderful new platform, not realizing (or simply disregarding the fact) that everyone else is doing the same thing. Content supply explodes, because even on a closed platform internal and external pressures push platform managers to lean towards distributing more content rather than less. After all, it’s hard to predict hits, so why turn away something that has a chance of positively surprising you? There’s also the tricky politics of rejecting content from your long-time partners, which can be a painful thing for any platform owner.

Equilibrium’s a bitch

While content supply is exploding, consumer demand also increases, but not nearly enough to keep pace with the content explosion. Consequently, the supply/demand imbalance quickly corrects itself, and in some cases even over-corrects. Worst of all, many developers (some new entrants to the platform, but also some veterans) fail to realize that greater competition means a higher bar for success, and as a result they fail to increase the quality of their games and/or their marketing efforts and ultimately get lost in the crowd. The easy money is gone, and while some developers continue to succeed, a large number fall flat on their faces. Many do not recover. Sierra Online’s stunning fall from top XBLA publisher to total irrelevance is a good (and sad) example of this.

As the pain spreads, the general buzz about the platform begins to sour. Reports of games flopping appear everywhere. Developers complain loudly that the platform is being mismanaged, that there’s too much content, that pricing pressure is too great, and any other number of complaints. (Piracy? Cloning? Favoritism? 1st/3rd party politics? You name it!) Some developers get scared away. Some stay engaged but never figure out how to compete effectively. Does this sound familiar? It should, because it happened to XBLA and it’s happening on the iPhone even as we speak.

But if (and here’s a big if) the platform’s economics are fundamentally sound and if the platform isn’t being too badly mismanaged, some developers ultimately will find a way to raise the bar and stand out from the crowd. They create remarkable games; they market themselves effectively; they adopt more profitable business models where possible; they establish a good relationship with a key publisher or the platform owner itself. These developers benefit from the fact that while the platform has become dramatically more competitive, it has also continued to grow and attract new consumers who still want to download games! (Even if, as if often the case, the new consumers download fewer games on average.) Basically, the ecosystem has inevitably evolved into a hit-driven ecosystem, and while that sucks for most developers, it’s a truly wonderful thing for the few companies that actually manage to crank out hits!

Hope springs eternal

And now something funny happens: the new hits inspire new confidence in the platform. Bigger players, who may not have taken the platform seriously in the early days, or who experimented with it and failed, begin to show their faces — perhaps even in force. EA’s recent releases on XBLA (Battlefield, Madden, etc) are a great example of this. Some truly enormous hits (examples: Trials HD, Battlefield 1943) are launched to great fanfare. The buzz cycle turns positive again!

So, can you guess what happens next?

Nobody knows how long it will take, but eventually the cycle will turn negative. Too much higher-quality content. Too much content with higher marketing budgets. Games that “should” have succeeded start to fail, for any number of reasons. And the wheel keeps turning.

Of course, there may be aberrational moments which disrupt the cycle. For example: a big price drop in the price of a console which causes many new consumers to flood into the market. Or a big change in a console’s dashboard (i.e. NXE) which improves merchandising or introduces features that drive consumers to certain content. But the wheel never stops turning entirely… until the platform dies, that is.

Enough storytelling… what’s the punchline?

So if you’re a developer, what can you actually do about all this? One answer: try to time the cycle; start investing when everyone else is cutting back! Unfortunately, timing a market has never been easy — if it was, we’d all be stock market millionaires wouldn’t we? And remember the “big if” I mentioned earlier: only fundamentally sound platforms ultimately recover from down cycles. Others languish or fail altogether. (Can you imagine the pain that developers who doubled down on Wiiware must be feeling right now? Who knows how long it will take Nintendo to truly fix that platform’s many problems?)

So if timing the market is tough, how about trying to earn the “easy money” by focusing on new platforms that haven’t yet become very competitive? Unfortunately, that’s also quite difficult, because you just don’t know which platforms will ultimately succeed. Just ask all the Android developers who were sure they’d be rolling in cash by now.

The truth of the matter is there’s simply no magic answer — just lots of little rules to keep in mind. Focus on platforms that demonstrate reasonably high upside for hit games, even if the competition is rough. Avoid platforms with terrible merchandising and apathetic management (or worse, management that is actively hostile to third parties.) Develop a good relationship with the platform owner. Market the heck out of your game for months (if not years) before it is released. Keep your costs reasonable. Develop something that stands out and delights people. No matter how competitive a market gets, there is always room for a Braid. Or a Crayon Physics. Or a Flight Control. These were not expensive games to develop.

And above all else, be ready to try, try again. Predicting hits is hard. Developing hits is even harder (especially when it comes to original IP!) Odds are, you’re going to fail. But whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

Zynga has raised an additional $180m in funding from Digital Sky Technologies (DST), the same group that put $200m in Facebook.

Ubisoft is developing almost double the games for Natal as for Sony’s motion wand — 10 vs. 4 to 5. Interesting vote of confidence in Natal, or just a vote of confidence in the Xbox, in general?

Some interesting observations about things that annoy consumers in microtransaction-supported games, and possible solutions. One example: “I find it kind of annoying that when you rent items it is in real time, not in-game. So if you rent an item for a week and then only play twice a week then you only have the item for four or eight hours.” Solution: a durability system could give the player a sense of controlling his investment, since the inevitable deterioration of the item is the player’s responsibility rather than an arbitrary game rule.

According to a recent study of the US gaming market, mobile phones account for 3% of total games spending, traditional PC games account for 20%, consoles for 57%, MMOs for 9%, and game portals for 11%. European consumers, on average, spend less on portals & MMOs and more on traditional PC gaming.

November console game sales: 37% of sales were for the Xbox 360, 29% for the Wii and 19% for the PS3. Xbox is up from just 28% in 2008. All of that growth can apparently be credited to Call of Duty.

As expected, many Facebook users are initially responding with wariness or outright hostility to developer requests for their email address. (For those that haven’t heard: Facebook applications will no longer be able to send notifications to users, per a recent change in the platform’s policy.) This was well-put: “Much like any other web app developer, Facebook app developers are going to have to really engage and earn the trust of their users in order to get a significant number of user emails.”

There’s more to life than games:

Henry Mintzberg on executive bonuses: “The problem isn’t that they are poorly designed. The problem is that they exist.” Amen!

Observation #3: A polished game stands out from the crowd.

Some of the games that I played could really have used a few additional rounds of playtesting and design iteration before they were submitted to the IGF. The developers of those games would probably have been better off holding back their games until next year’s competition.

I know this can be tough to swallow. Perhaps you’ve worked long and hard on your game, and you really want some recognition for your effort. You might be counting on that recognition to help boost your marketing or business development efforts. I can imagine many an indie developer thinking, “My game isn’t perfect, but it shows a hint of something great, so I’m going for it!” And to be clear, that’s a fine attitude — if you wait until your game is “perfect,” you’ll probably never finish it! But unfortunately, some developers jump the gun and submit their games before they are truly fun, much less “perfect.”

If you’re creating a new gameplay mechanic (or an interesting twist on an old mechanic), make sure that you have implemented at least one very polished, very entertaining instance of that mechanic. A single, excellent level is better than five mediocre levels, in my opinion. Per observation #2, other developers are making me trudge through hours of tedious gameplay, so I’m going to be especially appreciative of a developer who wows me with ten short minutes of brilliance.

Of course, “very polished” doesn’t necessarily mean “short and sweet.” But many independent developers don’t have the time or resources to produce several hours of very polished gameplay, so all I’m saying is that if you can’t, you might as well err on the side of short and sweet. I’m fairly certain that you’ll be better off!

PS. Don’t forget to frequently playtest your game on other people. It doesn’t take long to lose your sense of perspective when immersed in a project; a pair of fresh eyes will significantly increase your odds of ultimately developing a polished gameplay experience. Also, for an example of a relatively simple indie game that is extremely polished, check out geoDefense (or its sequel, geoDefense Swarm) on the iPhone.

Observation #2: if at all possible, it’s best to entertain a judge from the very first minute — just like a potential customer.

Several of the games I evaluated simply weren’t very fun to start with. Some even came with explicit caveats which I will collectively paraphrase as follows: Dear judge, you must play this game for several hours before you understand why it is special.

Who wants to slog through an endless tutorial that isn’t inherently fun before actually getting to enjoy themselves? Who wants to trudge through hours of uninspired gameplay before the “magic” of the game’s design reveals itself? As a judge, I’m willing to do it because I feel obligated, but which game do you think I’ll probably give the higher score: the game that entertained me for three consecutive hours, or the game that entertained me for only the final hour out of three hours, total? With rare exception, it will be the former. And you can bet that most consumers will vote the same way with their wallets. In summary:

• Long-winded, boring tutorials are bad (seems like this should be self-evident, right?)
• Conversely, dumping people into a game without any explanation of how to play is also bad, unless the initial gameplay experience is very intuitive. For an example of a game that does a good job of introducing the player to the core mechanics of the game, see Braid.
• Games that don’t become very interesting (or don’t reveal their “special sauce”) until the player has invested lots of time into them are not inherently “bad”, but unfortunately such games are often doomed to smaller audiences. Most people simply aren’t willing to give a game the benefit of the doubt if it doesn’t entertain them relatively immediately. Long story short, developers should think carefully about finding ways to expose their game’s “special sauce” right away.

PS. On a tangent, my old post on crafting a good game demo might be interesting to some of you.