A soul stirring experience @ The Baale Mane - Zynga GWS

It was a Wednesday afternoon, the logistics and list of items to be donated were in place, We met up at the Logos ground floor and got our Volunteer T-shirts (again! :] ) and got into the mini van and proceeded towards The Baale Mane in Gopalapura. The heat was at its peak, and few of us were restless already. After traveling for close to 2hrs we finally reached the place. We were greeted with amazingly colored roses and a very attentive audience.


And then it happened. We entered a room full of children, as chirpy as the birds in a garden, as pretty as blossoming rose buds. Their eyes sparkled at the sight of a bunch of people with goodies enter into the room. A few of them mixed up with us like we visited them every week, while a few of them were sitting in the distant corner, staring straight into our eyes, piercing our souls.



When Anish and Adarsh (the translators) entered the room they were definitely the star attraction due to their bubbly and happy persona. They spoke about Zynga and what kind of games we make and received many witty responses from the girls.


What followed was a fun hour of sweet munching, singing, backyard dancing and many laughs.  Many of us were asked to introduce ourselves (since we asked the children to introduce themselves)……and from our way of introduction I feel next time I could (should) be better prepared! Just like Amrita who could throw some spontaneous dance steps with the kids.


(They too have scrum and scrum of scrums and Jira tickets assigned)

While all the pretty Zynga girls were busy preparing some yummy sandwiches, Saleem's dance was a smash hit and his trivia question "who is the prime minister of Karnataka?" was the highlight of the day. Vyas and Kalyan joined in with some dazzling footwork and stretching and generally caused mayhem when I got pulled into. Mahesh 'anna' (Once known as Ram Reddy) was definitely popular among the children for reasons we still need don't know :) (I am guessing he gave them extra chocolates). Namrata aka 'bannergut'ta akka' was surprised to know how many of the children were from bannergatta.


Despite all their liveliness, we could somehow sense the distant pain, the longing to have someone who would not just visit them once a month or year, but take care of them forever..! It indeed moved each one of us to witness those little ones, disowned and dejected, those little ones who deserved so much more in life, who were capable of being the Kalpana Chawlas, Pratibha Patils and Saina's of the future..!

We have so many wonderful memories of spending time with these beautiful children. While I was there, I was always surrounded by kids just wanting to shake hands and few even asked me to write my name on their hands along with my phone number (thinking I was ram charan) , or to spend time little more time with a brother figure. where we were deeply touched by the resilience of the young kids living over there. The kids seemed to be so happy and full of life despite so very few materialistic pleasures. There were also volunteers from different country dedicating their time at this orphanage.

The smiles and the happiness we shared and received was the biggest joy of our trip, it became very clear to us how little it takes to make children in this part of the world extremely happy.

What is a "Social Game"?

So, What is a Social Game?

Some may say - A game which you can play with friends! 

Some with more knowledge may say "a game that has a very gentle learning curve, easy-to-understand UI, and lives on a social network,taking advantage of your friendships in meaningful ways within the game."

Some trying to be politically correct may say “games played via social media like Facebook”

And some trying to be more technically correct may say "it’s a game with several of the following characteristics:

• Asynchronous
• Involves some for of interaction with friends (even if it’s just visiting their “game state”)
• Probably free
• Some kind of persistent game state

Things that would not considered as a part of the “social” definition because they tend to change a lot:

• Platform
• Time as a resource"

But what is a "Social Game" from the players point of view. Lets consider I pick any "Social" game on FB. what is the first thing that i get to do once i log into to the game!

- Nice company splash screen provided the company has the time to put it there!

- A welcome note saying "Tadaaaaa!!! you will have amazing fun playing this game"

- Next thing you do is follow a not so great tutorial (there are few exceptions though) which tells you what to do in the game!

- You complete the initial Goal! "Tadaaa!!! now you get the hang of it and continue playing"

It sounds pretty ok so far! but wait..what happens next! you complete a set of initial goals and you start having fun and liking the game! sounds interesting and exciting isn't it! you wish!!!

OK! so what am i talking about! yes you are right i am referring to CASH! CASH! CASH! be it virtual or real! One thing the every game on FB or Mobile with a social tag to it does the moment you start enjoying the game is to suck money out of its players!

Having said that not every game does this! there are games on Facebook and Mobile which let you have as much fun even if you are not a premium player!

Taking the "Fun" Out of Games!

Notifications play an active role in driving people back to the game, and when they get back to the games, the users inevitably find out that their fish, crops, properties, mafia, zoo, etc has been eaten, withered, robbed, attacked, unfed, or worse, driving them to engage with the game again to repair the damage and return to some state. But, if you add in the ‘just spend money to make it better’ routine, users are conditioned into a new mindset – that returning to the game means that they need to spend money.

Something that was once fun suddenly became something that costs money, still needed attention, and would continue to drag on their wallets for the visible future.  Having worked in payments and commerce, I would argue that this is turning into an avoidable recurring payment. Who wants more financial responsibility, especially now?

So! YOU should not play Social Games on FB & Mobile?

No! I would be wrong in saying or suggesting this! we should play games for various reason and there are  lots of games to choose from! not every game out there is waiting to suck the money out of YOU! "Draw Something" is one of those games which lets you have a lot of fun with friends and which is truly social in Nature and now by the recent Zynga acquisition the game has all the more Social features, one of them is - you can send a message to you friend commenting about the drawing once you have finished guessing

So! Am I saying that Co's shouldn't make money out Us through their Games?

No! They can and they should! end of the its a Business Model which generates revenue for the companies invested time and money.

So to keep revenue at levels comparable to those before the scammy offers were removed and before Facebook took their 30 percent cut,  Zynga and other social game providers have been experimenting with their formulas, where one of the cheaper experiments is to ask for money. Unfortunately, asking for money can turn-off users, including my friends and myself, and cause others to look for other options.

While Facebook needs it cut, and Zynga deserves respect for continuously testing and incrementally improving their games, the addition of revenue and incentives is a delicate matter that should not be taken lightly.  Innovation in game play is important, but innovation in ways to nag users into paying can have disastrous effects when user have the choice, ability, and inclination to say ‘no’.  I look forward to Zynga applying more game innovation to draw users back. I don’t know if my friends will come back and play, but give them a good reason to, and maybe they will.

PRETOTYPING

Below is one the interesting article i picked up from Google. To all the up coming designers and conceptualisers after reading this will help them understand the term "First Fake it and then Make it"

go ahead and read on.

WHAT IS PRETOTYPING?

Pretotyping [pree-tuh-tahy-ping], verb: Testing the initial appeal and actual usage of a potential new product by simulating its core experience with the smallest possible investment of time and money.

Less formally, pretotyping is a way to test a product idea quickly and inexpensively by creating extremely simplified versions of that product to help validate the premise that "If we build it, they will use it."

We did not invent or discover pretotyping; it's something that a small number of innovators do naturally. As a matter of fact, our concept and formulation of pretotyping was formed by reading and hearing stories about such innovators and the evolution of their ideas. But what these innovators were doing naturally was not exactly prototyping; it did not have a name and we thought it deserved one. We initially coined the term pretendotype because the most unique aspect of this approach was to pretend or imagine the intended functionality. However, since pretendotype was a quite a mouthful, we simplified it pretotype. The concept of pretotyping is also very close in spirit and practice to Eric Ries' brilliant Lean Startup Movement and the practice of building the Minimum Viable Product (MVP.)

The best way to explain pretotyping is through examples, so let's look at one. Below is a photo of Jeff Hawkins' pretotype for the Palm Pilot:  

The founder of Palm Computing mocked up a Palm Pilot with wood and paper; then carried it with him for weeks pretending it was a working device. His objective was to learn if he would actually use such a device before going to the next, very expensive and time-consuming step, of building an actual working prototype. Even though Hawkins did not use the term pretotyping (because we hadn't made it up yet) that's exactly what he was doing; i.e., simulating the core experience of having and using a Palm Pilot with the smallest possible investment of time and money to see if he would actually carry and use it. Pretotyping differs from prototyping in one important respect. The main objective of prototyping is to answer questions related to building the product: Can we build it? Will it work as expected? How cheaply can we build it? How fast can we make it? The main objective of pretotyping is to answer questions about the product's appeal and usage: Would people be interested in it? Will they use it as expected? Will they continue to use it? ... Why do we believe that pretotyping is an important, but often neglected, step in innovation? Read on. Good Failure vs. Bad Failure The odds are stacked against innovators. Most new products and services fail. Failure is an unavoidable part of the innovation process; but some failures are much harder to take – and survive – than others. In some cases, the failures can be attributed to poor execution in the way the innovative product or service was built and implemented. But in way too many cases, the innovative product or service was well thought out, planned and built. The team put a lot of time and effort to give it lots of cool features, they tested and debugged it, polished it and made it look as good as the possibly could – only to find out that they put all this time and effort on ... the wrong it. They built something that people did not want or need. If your new product or service fails fast and cheaply, you will have the time, resources and energy to try something else – and keep trying until you have a hit. But if you've spent months and years and tons of money on a single idea that flops, you may have ran out of time, money and energy to give it another go. Fail Fast ... and Often Pretotyping is an approach to developing and launching innovation that helps you to determine if you are building the right it before you invest a lot of time and effort to build it right. Pretotyping helps you to fail ... but fast enough and cheaply enough that you have time and resources to try something different. A pretotype is a mock-up of the intended product or service that can be built in minutes, hours or days instead of weeks, months or years. The art and science of pretotyping is aimed to help innovators: Identify the core feature and core experience of the new potential product. Decide what core features can – and should – be mocked-up (or dramatically simplified). Use mock-ups to systematically test and collect feedback and usage data. Analyze usage data to determine the next step. Try and Test More Ideas Saving innovators from wasting too much time and money pursuing the wrong 'it' is an obvious benefit of pretotyping; but there is another, less obvious but possibly greater, advantage to pretotyping. Since the investment require for pretotyping is very small – minutes, hours or days at the most – pretotyping gives you the freedom to try out some crazy and far-out ideas that 'just might work' but that would probably be shelved if pursuing them required a non-trivial investment.

Link: http://www.pretotyping.org/

What makes a successful traditional social game on FB?

What makes a successful traditional social game!

• Is it the highly evolved game play engaging the users to stick for a long time?
• Is it the simplicity of the activity like just click and play?

Facebook games can be classified into 2 categories:

1. Social Games
2. Casual Games

Social Games are the kind of games which have a common social feature like completing the objectives, moving up the levels, sending receiving gifts. (Sims Social, Cityville,etc)

Casual Games are the social games too but a little less on the social features. Games like bejeweled, Tetris can be categorized as sociocasual games.

Coming back to the question to what makes a game successful on facebook?
below are few critical features that I personally believe that would make a game successful on facebook.

Simplicity of the "Game Loop": Right from the moment you log in to the game the "ease" factor comes into play. One needs to exploit this ease of access to the activity while designing the game. lets start by looking at the "Game Loop" (A chain of actions you do over and over again to gain in-game currency) in some social games:

The game loop should be designed with a mindset that we are try to make a 5-6yr old understand it just by looking at someone play (this is something i use) or complete that activity. This usually helps in simplifying the activity that I want to work on. If we take the above examples i feel they are practically very simple but the added layers makes the goal of the activity complex. I don't deny the fact that layers should be added to make the activity more interesting but one has to draw the line between what we want in the game to what the game needs to make it happen. the bottom line here is to keep the initial activity for the player very simple and elementary so that it keeps him engaged and more importantly make him have fun while doing it.

 By now I feel i have made my point about simple "killer" game loop.


Missions/Story:
A sense of meaning is added to FishVille via missions that also deliver a story over time. Completing missions yields rewards and unlocks new missions. Some missions require items obtainable only from neighbors, effectively incentivizing social engagement and, subsequently, virality.


Talking about sociocasual games they generally do not require a story. Taking the hit example of Angry Birds, the moment you log in to the game in the initial screens there a short pictorial representation of the theme of the game giving the user enough context of what the game is about and once you start playing it the game gets more addictive and the rest is a proven history.

Collections:
Collecting items adds an element of anticipation to a degree of that found in the Sims Social. Users who cannot seem to get that “rare” item from their game can add it to their wish list or send an gift request, which allows a friend to gift the item.

Action Element:
Where FarmVille and its predecessors were criticized for not being true games, FrontierVille or the recent games on FB have started adding an action element—clicking to collect reward items—that creates a more engaging game experience. (In fact, this very same mechanic was employed in EA's Battlefiled 3/NFS RUN, where players must tap a button to perform attacks instead of them occurring automatically.) Users are granted bonus coins for collecting action rewards in succession, thus adding strategic complexity.

 
Social Interactions:
Users may visit their neighbors’ land and complete a set number of actions per day. These actions benefit both parties. It is also possible to “hire” a neighbor to perform tasks on their own land. These elements provide functional rewards for having more friends, which is further compounded by Reputation, a stat which increases the functional benefit a user provides when hired by neighbors.

the above are just few examples that I feel can catalyze the progress of a social game in the present scenario of online FB gaming.

2012: The Facebook Credilution

FB credits another soap bubble which is in the air.Some of you may know what is Facebook Credit. It is a sort of virtual currency that you can use in FB games and apps. You can currently buy facebook credit using your credit card or debit card,etc.

You take out your mobile and type an sms ‘ PAY 1234 FB 100′ This means ‘PAY (vendor code) 100 rs . In return you get an sms in 30 seconds which says 100 rs deducted from your FB credits. At the same time the vendor gets a sms on his mobile which says 100 rs added to his fb credits and would mention your customer code so that the vendor can keep track.

Knowing our personal information was not enough now FB wants your money too. Facebook is going to make us spend our money on FB credit to make life easier? so next time you are at movies and you realize you have forgotten you wallet and the only thing you have is your cellphone, you can buy the movie tickets by trading the FB credits at the counter and saving yourself from the embarrassment among you friends.

Another interesting piece of information I found as FB page, that states "The Only Legit and 100% Working Facebook Game Hacks on Planet Earth!".

I do not how true this is, the only thing that stopped me from trying to see if it works or not is the fear of getting my account hacked. But the thought of a page proclaiming such a strong statement is interesting to me that how FB can allow such a page to continue to be on its network.