Why Skylanders Matters to Kids
It’s clear that Skylanders matters for videogame publisher Activision and for Penguin with their licensed book deal, but why does Skylanders matter for children? All will be explained in this guest post by family gaming expert Andy Robertson.
If you’ve not come across it already Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure is a videogame that uses collectible toy figures to grant access to characters and levels in the game. Interesting but not that unusual?
The real novelty is the Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology that saves a child’s progress in the game to the toy figure without the need for it to be plugged in (or buttons to be pressed). Not only that but you can take your toy to a friend’s house and play on their version of the game no matter which platform (360, Wii, PS3) they have.
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The 2012 social gaming glossary: the 13 terms & 8 benchmarks everyone should know
There’s nothing we geeks enjoy more than inventing new words. Performant. That’s not a real word. It’s just another way of saying efficient: the server is performant. The world doesn’t need the word ‘performant’, but at least it’s meaning easy to guess. Online game jargon, on the other hand, is not so straightforward. K-Factor anyone? A new reality TV show? A new cereal? Nope, it’s the measure of viral growth. Obvious when you think about it…
That’s why I thought I’d start the year with a social game and virtual world glossary. I’ve listed the 13 most important terms, what they mean, and benchmarks.
So if you’ve ever wondered how much the average person spends in a virtual world, or what stickiness actually measures, then this post is for you.
1. Churn
The percentage of users who leave your game each month, or sometimes measured as the percentage who leave each week. For example, if a game that has 100 users at the start of the month, and 70 of those users are still playing the game at the end of the month, then we would say the churn rate is 30% because 30 of the original 100 people left that month.
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The ten best social game articles of 2011 – part two
Our This Week in Social Games newsletter is now one year old. On its six-month birthday we celebrated by counting down the most popular on stories of the past half a year. So now it’s a whole one year old we thought it only right to finish the job with the most popular stories from July to December 2011.
If you’ve not read the first part, you can read it here or subscribe to it here.
1 - Roger Dickey’s Tactics for Game Monetization
The man most of our readers wanted to hear from in 2011 was Mafia Wars creator Roger Dickey. His presentation at Money Talks is perfect for anyone new to games monetization and has some great examples for seasoned Veterans. Dickey’s key reason for social games success is what he calls ‘fun pain’. Want to know what he’s on about? Watch the video below.
More than half of UK children own a toy based on a virtual world
Children’s virtual worlds – like Moshi Monsters and Club Penguin – aren’t just popular online; they’re also proving a big hit as toys with new research showing over half of UK children own a toy based on a virtual world with some as popular as Dr Who.
Dubit’s research department recently studied the popularity of toys based on online worlds, looking at Disney’s Club Penguin, Mind Candy’s Moshi Monsters, as well as Build-a-BearVille, Poptropica and Webkinz.
The study of 500 kids showed that an amazing 55 per cent of children owned a toy from at least one of these games. The most popular was Disney’s Club Penguin, with 32 per cent of children owning a branded toy from the online world. Club Penguin, which has 150 million registered users (globally) launched in 2005 and has spawned a series of books and video games. Each toy is connected to the virtual world as they’re packaged with a code that allows items to be unlocked in the virtual world.
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Fighting against free is like fighting against gravity
Digital content will be free. Tv will be free, games will be free, books will be free, music will be free. All digital entertainment will be free. Fighting against free is like fighting against gravity. Why? Because digital distribution is free.
The internet is the most efficient distribution network ever invented. If something can be digitized if can be distributed for almost zero cost. It sounds obvious, but the impact is profound.
In the past businesses relied on distribution to protect their prices:
- Writing the news is easy. Creating a network of printing presses and distribution centres to get the news across the country in the same day is hard.
- Creating music is easy. Recording an album, burning a CD, and setting up a network of shops to sell the music is hard.
When you buy a newspaper or a CD only a small part of the price goes towards the cost of creating the content. You’re really paying for the distribution.
Today anyone can write their own blog or create their own music. But it’s not the citizen journalists that are threatening the newspapers. The real threat are the millions of ordinary people who email news stories to their friends!
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Inside the sausage factory
Sausages are delicious, but I prefer not to think how they’re made. While I hope to never see inside a sausage factory, sometimes it is interesting to see how thing get made. I think that’s why our customers like to visit us; they want to see what goes into making a kids virtual world. Thankfully there’s very little meat grinding.
So if you’ve ever wondered what sort of people makes games for kids, then this post is for you.
For over a year, long standing Dubiteer, illustrator, and comic book artist, Simon Perrins, has been capturing the zeitgeist of the Dubit development studio in black and white sketches. In over 100 images, Simon has recorded the many of major themes throughout the year, including whatever did Matthew Fisher do with Richards chair, the three moods of Chris Ramsden, and Andy Kay’s second child.
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You can’t polish a turd. Don’t iterate a bad game design.
Everyone knows data driven design is important. Zynga do it, so it must be good. But it’s not a golden ticket. Sometimes a design is just bad, and as we say in the North of England, “You can’t polish a turd”. Which translates as: despite your best efforts there are some things you just can’t fix or improve.
This post is about how to not polish a turd. Or more accurately, the risks of relying on AB testing, and how find inspiration for great game designs.
I like MY sandwiches
I like sandwiches. Not all types of sandwiches, and not all fillings. But I always like the sandwiches I make myself.
You see, when I make a sandwich there’s no salt beef, no pickles, no mayonnaise, no coronation chicken, no fatty ham, and definitely no egg. That’s just a few of the things I don’t like (the list is long).
If you were to make me a sandwich you’ll probably make me a sandwich I don’t want. Not that I’d tell you, I’m too polite. I’d eat the sandwich, but I’d remember not eat a sandwich you’ve made again.
That’s the problem. It’s much easier to make things for ourselves – I know what sandwich fillings I like. The same is true of games. I know what I like (Monkey Island, Fallout, and Deux Ex) so I know how to design a game I want to play (and quite probably other 30-year-old men like me want to play).
Making games for kids isn’t so easy. I am not an 8-year-old girl. I never have been, and I don’t believe in reincarnation, so I never will be. So how do I know what an 8 year old girl will like?
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The 7 month social game gamble: 2 months design, 5 months programming, but is it fun? There is a better way
The recipe for making a new game is pretty simple: spend 2 months designing the game, 5 months of late nights and weekends programming it, fix all the bugs, and release a beta.
There’s nothing wrong with recipe, but you’ve got to remember to stick your finger in the mixture and give it a taste. After all, you wouldn’t bake a cake and never taste what’s in the bowl, it might need some more sugar! Yet that’s what most game developers do. They’ll happily spend a bucket of cash building a game for 7 months, and only after 7 months do they find out if anyone really likes the game. This is the 7 Month Gamble. There is a better way.
Although we make kids games and virtual worlds, the ideas in this post are still relevant for you folks making social games.
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Ten things you didn’t know about Moshi Monsters
Since beginning in 2007 Moshi Monsters has risen to become an online game and children’s social network with over 50 million members worldwide. There is a good chance that if you have children they probably have a Moshi of their own, as half of the country’s six to twelve year-olds are members.
As Moshi Monsters gets tipped to become one of the must have toys for Christmas 2011 we present you with ten things you probably didn’t know about the Moshi phenomen.
Before it went social Moshi Monsters was facing bankruptcy
Mind Candy, the company behind Moshi Monsters, hasn’t always had it so good. Speaking to The Independent, Mind Candy CEO, Michael Acton Smith said: “The real tipping point came in 2009 when we allowed kids to connect with each other and gave them a forum to discuss things. Until then, it had been a solo experience and we were on the edge of bankruptcy. It was when we added the social element that membership really took off.”
Education was the focus
When the game was built in 2007 the focus was on educating children. Acton Smith claims that teachers and parents loved it but kids just rolled their eyes.
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The ten best social gaming articles of 2011 – Part one
We’ve been publishing our This Week in Social Games (TWISG) newsletter for six months. It’s our weekly e-newsletter that contains that week’s most insightful articles on social games and virtual worlds and delivers them as a digest into our subscriber’s inbox.
But that’s not meta enough for us at Dubit. So now we’ve scoured all the issues of TWISG and produced this list of the top ten articles (based on clicks). It’s a bit like those annuals you used to get as a kid but you don’t have to wait for Christmas.
Want the week’s most insightful social gaming and virtual world articles sent to your inbox every week? Then sign-up to receive TWISG.
1 . Do you speak metrics? (free sign-up required)
Do you know your WAU from your ARPU? What’s the K-Factor? If this makes no sense to you then you have been one of the many people who clicked this story. Unfortunately it requires registration to Games Industry Biz but if you’re not signed-up already, now’s the time.
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