The Argument Hour, With Seth And TC

I listen to a lot of game industry podcasts. 

Many of them are just people talking about games they like, or games they're looking forward to. There's never been a lot of design focused podcasts... a few have cropped up over the years, some better than others. I listen to the following pretty regularly that actually talk about the design of games:

Ludology
Board Game Design Lab
Building the Game
Game Designers of North Carolina

There are a few others as well, but I still always thought there was room for designers talking about the nitty-gritty of game design. I've always wanted to participate in something like that, but I didn't want to figure out how to do hosting and editing myself, and I would have wanted another voice to talk to (rather than just monologueing).

I mentioned something about this on social media a couple of months ago, and I got some interest from game designer, podcaster, and boardgame twitter personality, T.C. Petty III. Then Isaac Shalev of On Board Games contacted us, offering to edit and host such a podcast on On Board Games, should T.C. and I decide to record one.

And so was born The Argument Hour, with Seth and TC! 

The Argument Hour is a segment I've started doing with TC Petty III on the On Board Games podcast, where T.C. and I pick a topic related to board game design, and we basically argue about it for while. Then we do our twist on a game review. I don't like the idea of unilaterally saying whether a game is good or bad, so our reviews are more of a mechanical look at the game in question, and then our opinion on what kind of player that game would be good for.

We've done two episodes so far, and then went on a hiatus while I spent 6 weeks in the hospital while my new baby boy was in the ICU, but I hope we can get together again soon to record another one.

Episode 1 dealt with the "Alpha Player Problem" (whether it even exists), and included a brief review of Kingdomino.

Episode 2 was all about honing/returning to the well/designers revisiting ideas. The review that time was The Voyages of Marco Polo.

So if you read this blog, maybe you'd be interested in this. Give them a listen and enjoy!Leave a note here with comments and suggestions...

Rise Of The Valiant

This is part of The Kingdoms storyline series. As it unfolds you will read how one marooned space captain's quest for revenge snowballs into a strong, proud Empire dedicated to upholding justice. Edge Valiant has suffered a mutiny aboard his previous ship the Indomitable and been stranded on an unknown planet. His only belongings are a broken matter manipulator attached to his wrist and the meager clothes on his back. Forced to survive on an alien world, Edge is determined to not only survive, but to rebuild and track down those who have wronged him.

Table of Contents

• The First Week
• The Second Week

Treasures Of The Savage Frontier - PC (MS-DOS) - 1992

Treasures of the Savage Frontier marks the end of the road for SSI's Gold Box engine.  It has given good service over the nine AD&D (and two Buck Rogers) games starting with Pool of Radiance in 1988.  There have been a couple of hiccups along the way, but for the most part the series has been very good.

This game is the follow up to Gateway to the Savage Frontier released the previous year.  The main things I remember about Gateway was the step backwards the Gold Box engine took and the contrived ending.  This time I am playing the DOS version as the VGA graphics are a big improvement over the 16 colours displayed on the Amiga.  Things got off to an inauspicious start when I had to create my party using the awkward character designer.  Picking the icons was so much easier in The Dark Queen of Krynn.

I can't say I'm sorry to see the back of this.

Indeed, it seems like Treasures of the Savage Frontier used a Gold Box engine several versions older than the last couple of games:-

1. You have to press (M)ove to enter a move mode and then (E)xit before you can perform any other actions.  In most of the games you can simply use the cursor keys or the mouse to move.
2. You have to quit the game and restart in order to load a saved game.
3. It's not so easy to move around with the mouse - the cursor no longer changes to show your intended direction in the 3D window.
4. The graphics aren't as good as The Dark Queen of Krynn which was also released in 1992.
5. This last point affects all Gold Box games - what is described is not what you see in the first person view.

Description vs reality.

The manual says that Amanitas has magically transported your party, the Heroes of Ascore, to the city of Llorkh.  Zhentarim survivors from the last game are battling the resident dwarves for control of the city.  You have been summoned to aid the dwarves in defeating the Zhentarim and are then to visit Amanitas in Secomber.

Amanitus was the mage in Gateway to the Savage Frontier  who told us where to go next.  He does this again but this time we can communicate with him via a magic crown so we don't need to travel to Secomber each time we complete a task.

As the game goes on it is revealed that the Zhentarim, Hosttower Mages and the Kraken society have joined forces with the goal of taking over the region.  The Lord's Alliance is made up of a dozen cities who have grouped together to combat common threats in the area.  The evil union is intent on breaking up the Alliance using kidnapping, deception and subterfuge to set the cities against one another.  They have also framed the Heroes of Ascore as traitors.

Miscellaneous notes...

• Combat has been tweaked by occasionally adding fresh opponents or friendly NPCs to a battle already in progress.  This can make the fights a little more interesting.

• Some higher level items of magic equipment have been given names such as Sword of Stalking +4, Squid Shield +2 and Redflame Armour +2.  I'm not sure if they are imbued with extra abilities.

• I kept picking up loads of Lucky Papers during the game.  Without knowing what they were for I didn't want to throw them away...

• It turned out you can read them with three coloured crystals, one each from a Zhentil Lord, a Hosttower Sorceress and a Kraken Master.  If you meet them in battle and kill one of the enemies you can pick up their crystal. The remaining opponents smash theirs.  To collect them all you have to ensure you kill a different type of opponent first.  Lucky papers show the enemy objectives in each town.  I guess you can use these if you want to complete any city quest out of order.  I didn't.

• There is a cheesy romance between the main character and a recruited NPC.  It doesn't detract from the plot but doesn't really add anything either.

*barf*

• There were at least a couple magic stores that sold the whole gamut of +1 weapons and armour.  I don't recall seeing one in any of the other gold box games apart from the occasional store that sold wands, potions and scrolls.

After completing quests in all the cities it was off to Mirabar to meet with the Councilors of the Lord's Alliance and to prove our innocence.  This brought up the usual end game screens with pages of reading...

What came next seemed disconnected from the main quest and felt like it was tacked on afterwards.  We were tasked with retrieving a magical gem from the hoard of a long dead (yeah, right) dragon.  This was to be found in Ice Peak in the far north of the overworld map.

The dragon's lair was located in a maze-like area on the far side of a one way door - once in you can't get out.

Alas, I was unable to finish the game due to an impossible penultimate battle.  You are attacked by three groups made up of blackrobed mages, spies and masters.  The blackrobed mages and blackrobed spies always get the jump on you and have a propensity for casting hold monster and hold person spells.  The blackrobed masters finish off held characters and disrupt my mages spells.  I'm lucky if I can get through the first round with half my party able to move.  Having a hasted party, invisible characters, and even turning the level down to Novice makes no difference to the outcome.  After many failed attempts I watched a couple of 'Let's Plays' on YouTube to see how it was done.  The videos showed the players being attacked by two groups of four and one group of five.  I had this...

Thirteen opponents would have been doable, twenty-five were not.  If anyone has any ideas please let me know*.

Although I couldn't complete the game I did like it.  Contemporary reviews weren't very kind calling it more of the same.  This is fine by me as I like the series.  Also, I found Treasures of the Savage Frontier was refreshing as it took us back to where Hold Person and Stinking Cloud spells still worked and my starting characters couldn't yet cast Fireballs. 

It was not quite the fitting end to the series I had hoped for but I still enjoyed it.  Here's hoping SSI's Dark Sun engine games are just as good.









*Addendum

After finishing writing this entry I did go on to complete the game.  I needed to load up my final save just to confirm the names of the enemies in the 'unwinnable' battle so I didn't bother buffing.  I decided to have a go anyway and was lucky enough to get off two fireballs before the enemy started to cast, so disrupting most of their spellcasters.  Their first volley of 'holds' only affected a couple of my party.  Some friendly dwarves and extra enemies turned up and I eventually won with only three dead characters.  The end game....

Having no chance to rest or heal we were thrown into a battle against Freezefire.  This was an ancient dragon that once terrorised the realm.  After the last battle it was disappointingly easy.  Although it had a -8 AC, it only had 56 hit points and was not immune to magic.  It went down within two rounds managing to hit only one accompanying dwarf with some kind of cold attack.

"You do realise this game doesn't have a sequel don't you?"

The End

 

Improving Freemium Design - Ionage

If you have a game that you'd like featured on the IFD series just fill out the form http://bit.ly/14h2pJg.

I first saw Ionage with his article on Gamesbrief and I decided to reach out to him about his experience/observations with the freemium vs. premium debate. Long story short, Tim and I had some great discussions and I was eager to try out his game after talking about monetization theories. Now the game is finished so let's see how he executed his monetization strategy off of those ideas!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.ionage.ionage

What it does right

Concept

The first thing I like about Ionage is the concept. Coming up with a unique concept on a platform that has hundreds of thousands of games is a very difficult thing to do, but I don't think I've played or seen another game like this before. You can tweet me if you've played something similar. It combines real time strategy (RTS) with tower defense elements, but without the mindless AI pathing. I wouldn't call myself a sci-fi fan, but I can enjoy a space themed game here and there.

Tutorial

The second thing I immediately liked was the tutorial system. There are question marks that the player taps to read a hint of what to do next. If the player already knows then they don't have to tap any of the question marks.

Tap the question mark and it shows the text

Here's the tip after tapping the question mark

If I play devil's advocate, this can hurt games as well. If you give some players too much freedom then they don't stay on track, pay attention or learn, and can leave the game out of frustration or lack of knowledge on what to do next. This possible problem typically happens more in causal games/audiences though and I don't think it correlates with the audience Ionage will have, but something to note nonetheless.

Leveling/upgrades/progression

I challenge all developers to put a leveling system in the game because it can do so many things for your game and players. For example, it's the easiest way to compare player progress, can drive indirect competition between friends or help give the player a sense of accomplishment. Not only are there player levels, but there are upgrades to weapons and abilities to unlock (like repairing). Lastly there's a map with missions and some level of decision on what to do/play/unlock next. This helps with player engagement and even immersion. That is, if you believe players can become immersed in a mobile title.

Some upgrades require me to monetize

This is a debatable topic. Some believe a properly designed F2P game gives players the ability to play the whole game for free (albeit might be a very slow progression), and some say paying players need a different experience than non-paying players. Why can't we have both? So far in Ionage you can. I haven't beaten the entire game, but so far when I beat a level it opens up more levels and/or upgrades. If I'm good at the game, I shouldn't need to purchase the monetized upgrades but if want to dominate this game I might purchase the upgrades to stomp the AI opponent. The game starts easy, but 30-60 minutes in I start hitting levels with secondary missions that are challenging so I am feeling a nudge to monetize.

No delay mechanics

I have yet to meet a player who said I can't wait for my 14 day wait time to upgrade my town hall in Super Awesome City Builder so players of Ionage will like the fact that there's no delay mechanics. I don't have to wait for my ship to get to the next mission, wait for my upgrade to "ship" out to my virtual base and you better not mention anything about energy to me!

What could be improved

No delay mechanics

This is a win for players, but in my mind a loss for Twice Circled. We can argue about how terrible or annoying delay mechanics are as gamers, but you can't argue against the revenue it generates. Just check top grossing charts if you don't believe me. If you have a profitable F2P studio without using delay mechanics, that's great, but know that your happiness with user experience/immersion/whatever is coming at a cost.

I should also note that delay mechanics don't have to be session stopping. Delay can limit two things; time to progress through content and actions/time per play session. In my opinion games the use delay mechanics shouldn't encourage the player to leave the game when they hit the delay. A great example of this is Hay Day. You have to wait for a building or food/supplies, but there are so many things to do that the player isn't encouraged to leave the game when they encounter a delay mechanic. You can fish, shop on the newspaper, visit other farms, etc. Just watch someone else playing Hay Day to see what I mean.

Confusing IAP options

When I visit the store I see a series of badges (IAP options). 9 different badges to be precise. Some unlock upgrades, some are worth medals, some unlock game modes and others unlock permanent modifiers that can be toggled. My first tip in boosting virtual economies is not overwhelming the player with a bunch of options. Perhaps it's just me, but this store is a little confusing and the options do overwhelm me.

I'm also not feeling a need to make an IAP yet. I've been able to beat all the side missions besides one, and I've had enough medals to unlock any of the non-monetization-required upgrades.

LCV issues...

Let's say I'm completely in love with this game, and want to buy everything. What is it worth to me?

That's actually a trick question. To maximize freemium revenues you need to allow players to spend what they want to for your game. This model is exactly how games get funding on crowd funding sites like Kickstarter. If you look at a game like Wasteland 2, all price points ($15-$10,000) get you the game but the more you spend the closer you get (emotionally and some physically) to the game, and some people really want that.

If I bought everything in Ionage the total comes out to $13.41 and Twice Circled takes home $9.39. I don't know how much it was to make Ionage, but let's use $50,000 for example. You need 5,325 players buying every option to break even, but most paying players won't purchase every option. Let's say the average is 2 IAPs (which might even be optimistic) or $2.07 ARPPU (average revenue per paying user). You'll need 24,155 paying players to break even. If the conversion rate follows a typical 2% then you need about 1,207,750 installs... and these are all organic figures! Throw in user acquisition costs and this quickly gets messy. This is why you need the allow players to pay what they want to pay. Without the Power Law, F2P would have a hard time existing.

It's possible to have a success or be profitable with a monetization strategy like this, but you have to gain new users as quick as current ones are churning which is an extremely difficult thing to do organically, and very costly through user acquisition. Also, you need to be dealing with really big figures. Again it's feasible, but when creating a business plan I don't think investors will be interested in what you may think is "feasible."

Not evergreen

The mission map allows me to select the next level if there's a choice but I'm sure there's an end to the content. I don't know how long it takes to consume all the content, but to maximize profits it's best to design a F2P game to have no end, or at least no reason to quit. This is also called Evergreen.

Some might think this is an evil tactic, but again as long as you're not directly preying on players with psychological tricks then there's nothing wrong with people wanting to play your game for years.

Super professional mockup made in paint 

Single platform

I believe Ionage is only available on one platform, Android. Not all games do better on iOS from a revenue perspective, but many do. I've also heard some success stories on Windows 8 and I think this is a very similar type of game and target audience as those successes. I'd love to see this game on more screens, but I realize this comes at a cost as well.

No multiplayer or social mechanics

Since there's an end to content, multiplayer could possibly give a reason for players to continue playing the game. There's also no way to share/tweet scores or invite friends. Complain all you want about Candy Crush Facebook requests but do you think that game would've been as successful without their aggressive Facebook integration? Word of mouth and social networks can play a big role in how you get discovered and it's almost free (minus development time to integrate API).


With all the things I just critiqued I do like the game as a gamer and I hope it's successful for Twice Circled, but I think they're in a tough spot. They had some struggles with the monetization strategy when making the game and even if they did go premium, Android has something like an 80% to 95% piracy rate. There have been studios that have been successful with the premium model on Android, but I really don't know of many. However, if the game isn't profitable that doesn't mean this has been all for nothing. The knowledge developers learn by launching their own games is exactly the experience and knowledge they will need to be successful in the future. If OMGPOP released 35 titles before getting their success story, and this is Twice Circled's first title... then I can't wait to see what they're release in the future.

If you need help designing or fixing your F2P game you can find me here at my blog or on Twitter.

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lafranquiciadeserviciosalaspersonas.blogspot.com's impact on internet security

Hello there,
My name is Adam and I am doing some research online regarding free security tools for a project.
Your page helped me a lot with finding stats so I wanted first to say thanks!
(This is the page I refer to http://lafranquiciadeserviciosalaspersonas.blogspot.com/ )

As I dig in a bit more, I found this source that was published just now, and I figured you might want to add to your page so your users would have some fresh figures.
https://www.safetydetective.com/blog/free-security-tools-that-you-need-to-start-using-now/

Again, thanks for being the first step in my research, and I hope I returned the favor.
Adam Roger
Security Expert @ SecurityPrivacy.org

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