The Gold Rush - Social Gaming

1848, was when gold was discovered in the Bay Area. People from all over the world came to the place in search of gold, wanting to make their fortunes. some made it. a hundred and fifty years later, the Bay Area is again a booming ground for gold. Except that this time, the gold can be seen only on a screen.

Social Gaming is a concept in its infancy. Nobody really understands how it works. With staggering statistics of a hundred million players per day, it certainly is a sizable phenomenon. More so, this could be a new business model that could be a significant factor to change the existing ones in ways and means that may not be obvious. These games rely heavily on something called a 'social mechanic', which makes sure that a player does not play alone. The player is rewarded for bringing in and playing with more and more people. The most successful games in this category offer avenues for a player's self expression, like coming up with a colorful farm, decorating a house, taking care of a pet, etc.

The existence of a social networking platform like Facebook, makes it possible for these games to reach millions of people in all age groups at the convenience of their homes. Adding to these numbers are the mobile devices that can play these games as well. So this is a new cultural phenomenon where family members can play together or with each other. 

Now, these games can be played for free. However, there is a catch. To get items for farming, you could either work in your farm or you can pay cash. Yes, the cash is from your pocket. You pay real world money to purchase the cash online. Most of the times the amount is nominal ($5-$50). Assuming that even if 1% of people buy $5 money, it quickly becomes profitable. What the companies are selling, is virtual money. In other words, they are selling goods on the screen to the player. The player has a motivation to buy this virtual gold, so that he or she could make their farm look better without having to spend much time in the farm. This would give them a competitive edge over other members they know in real life who play the farm game as well. This in turn would elevate their social status in the real world. This is one line of thought, there could be many other reasons why people might want to get virtual money.

Another interesting factor about Social Games is their development time. With the existing networking infrastructure and the tools for making games it is possible to realize the game idea and deploy it into the market within a matter of few weeks. This is in strong contrast to the development of console games that takes 2-3 years to hit the market. From a business standpoint, this is incredibly luring - a short development time, a consumer market of a million people and very good chances of being commercially successful. So this new gold rush has attracted thousands of startup companies all over the world. The Bay Area, with its Silicon Valley is home to half of them. 

Toy, Puzzle and Game - The Game Design Triad

Game Design Traid represents the entity that a player is interacting with, traditionally called a game. Any game should always have both the toy as well as the puzzle components built into it. This integration should to to such an high extent that, the game designer should ask himself if this traid condition is met at every point in the game. To be more precise, let me define what i mean by a toy, a puzzle and a game.

A Toy is any object that the player plays with. Like the player's car in Need For Speed, a Rubicks cube that can be twisted, your avatar ( mario ) in the game or a barbie doll. Something that you get pleasure and can have fun just by interacting with it. A Toy is fun to play with. 

A Puzzle is a toy with a goal. The proximity of the player to the goal is not altered by anyone other than the player himself.  The toy can be interactively manipulated by the player according to a well known rule-set. For every action of the player, the toy changes its state. The player would know the goal beforehand and would try to achieve this goal by adhering to the rules. Rubick's cube is a puzzle since it has a unique goal, all the six sides of the cube should have the same colour. And this is achieved by following one rule, twist along the X,Y or Z axes.

A Game is a puzzle where the proximity of the player to the goal is being altered by the player as well as anything that is not the player. 

The distinction between a toy and a puzzle is clear. Toy + Goal = Puzzle. However, the distinction between a puzzle and game is subtle. Any game should make the player take decisions. A puzzle in the game is what makes a player take this decision. 

Let us take the example of Tetris. 

• As a toy, it is so much fun to just guide the blocks and rotate them into different orientations as they fall.
• As a puzzle, the player constantly takes a decision to see where the current block fits into the existing set of blocks. 
• As a game, the player competes against god who throws the blocks from the top, one after the other. The conflict is to form as many lines of blocks as possible without hitting the roof. It could be argued that Tetris is a very good puzzle and a highly unbalanced game. God always wins. If the number of blocks that the second player (God) threw down were made limited, then Tetris would become a balanced two player game.

I feel any game can be analysed for 'how much fun is it?' at any point by considering the different components of the triad, namely toy, puzzle and a game. So any game should be a very powerful toy initially, and then it should be made into a good puzzle that well integrates the nature of the toy. This would require adding a goal that is coherent with the toy's nature. Further, a conflict should be introduced into this puzzle such that there is a change in the state of the puzzle even when the player is not-interacting with it. 

To summarize, here are the three steps for designing a game:

1. Build a toy that is fun to play with.
2. Introduce a clear goal and a set of rules to manipulate that toy. Essentially come up with a puzzle.
3. Add opponent to the puzzle, that changes the state of the puzzle even when the player is not interacting with it. Most often the introduced force will try to increase the player's proximity to his goal. This will be your game.

By the above set of rules, any toy can be made into a puzzle and a game. Vice-versa, any game can be broken down into its component puzzle and the toy that lies beneath. Here are some of the games and the break-up. 

School, Play and Ubuntu

"Can learning in school be fun like playing?"

Perhaps, this question has been asked a million times over many years. Yet we see an almost rigid curriculum in most schools that apparently does not seem to change. I was fairly reminded on yet another question that had popped into my mind when i started to learn about Linux nine years back. the question then used to be:


"Can Linux have a graphical user interface like windows?"

Linux offered more control to a user and allowed him to be more productive. But there was a high learning curve to getting the things done. There was a myriad of commands to know, even perhaps to do a simple task. I even remember a hilarious situation where one of my friends could not quit the vi editor.But today, we see that Ubuntu is the answer to that question. It lets a novice user explore Linux through the GUI, while offering him a console to type in commands as he matures using the system. There were GUIs nine years back too, however they were trying hard to cater to an average audience. We have reached a point now, where Ubuntu is a feasible solution to use for parents and grandparents alike. 

I draw an analogy between these questions. Schools of today are like the Linux systems nine years back. They need a good GUI in the form of games that will allow the children to play and learn. Not all the things can be learnt through games, most of it has to do with the permutations and combinations that are involved.. very much like the numerous options a command in Linux can have. Hence augmenting the existing school system with games that teach seems to be the right way. Besides, faster the students learn, the higher they will grow. "Use the technology, to teach technology" is a maxim I like here. So the current curriculum should focus more towards making all the 'frequently used stuff' part of learning into a game. So that students who need just the GUI part will be done with it quickly, while more serious students could quickly learn about the system through GUI and proceed further to use consoles to create their own toolkits. The bar is higher each year in terms of what is to be learned, and so is the necessity to innovate in the curriculum of the future.

Of Toys and Video Games

"Can you find a sport that is not interesting to play with?"

This was an interesting question that sparked in my mind as I heard Jesse reveal the Lens of Toy. Even without a goal, most if not all of the sports are fun to play with. Like football is fun to kick around, Tennis gives us the fun of hitting the ball with the racquet, Athletics like swimming, running or jumping are purely a matter of joy even if done individually. A goal seems to be added later to this activity which further heightens the level of achievement and satisfaction.

I feel designing games with toying around as a perspective could be extremely useful. All video games are projections of the player in the virtual world. There is either a gun in FPS, or a character in 2D like mario, or perhaps just a map that you can pull around in a strategy game like Command&Conquer. All great video games seem to have the property that, they would give the player a sense of control or satisfaction in just toying around with his projection. Be it the sound of mario jumping or the ease with which he can be controlled while jumping. As a player, I could purely toy around with mario for a minute making him jump,crouch, dash and run. when a motive is added, this elevates the level of fun that I am having.

My thought would be that if a player is not enjoying every moment in a game, probably he will find it daunting at a point. And the best way to keep the player interested is, to give him a toy, which in our case is the avatar of player in the virtual world. Even a cool looking gun that fires projectiles that the player can control, is as good as an avatar since that is the projection of the player in a FPS. This could also be the reason for the success of many casual games in the market. they are addictive. I would henceforth consider the toy mechanic in my game design, since I have realized that it is a very important part for any video game.

The properties of a good 'toy in video game' or the 'projection' of the player would:-

1. be highly interactive, to an extent that the player feels completely in control of this toy. this interactivity should be consistent.

2. give the player a joy of accomplishment. this could be as small as jumping or shooting out a projectile.

There should be a seamless integration between what a toy is and what it does in the game. Rather, designing a toy for the game or a game around a toy would be a good bet. I would spend quite a lot of time coming up with the toy, as this is 'the' part of game that the player is in constant touch with.