Knowledge Base
We’ve been developing virtual worlds for over 10 years, beginning with our own community ‘Dubit Chat’, and going on to create worlds for partners including Sky Sports, Motorola, Cartoon Network, The BBC and brands including Real Madrid, Monty Python, and The Wizard of Oz.
Along the way we’ve learnt a bunch about virtual worlds, how to design economies, what makes a game fun, the business model, and all those other juicy bits! Every week we like to share what we’ve learnt on our blog, and because we’re super helpful people we’ve even saved you the trouble of wading through the blog and grouped together some of our favorite (and hopefully useful) blog posts below.
Of course, we’re not the only ones writing about social game design. Every week we read through all the social games articles and link to the best stuff in our This Week in Social Games newsletter, sign-up here.
Game Design
- Part 1: No hard choices, no losing, only false achievement
- Part 2: Whatever happend to our sense of adventure?
- Is your game fun? Low cost product testing
Viral Growth
- What is Moshi Monsters viral growth?
- If bolting wings onto a car wont make it fly don’t expect that tacking a Facebook Connect button into a game will make it viral
Business Model
- How do virtual worlds make money, how big is the market, and how much do they make?
- Calculate how much your virtual world can afford to spend acquiring a new player
- Calculate how the addressable market size affects your virtual world business model
- Your business plan needs hosting costs, start by modeling your website visits per hour
- How much does it cost to moderate a virtual world?
- Template virtual world (or freemium) business model, spreadsheet included!
Virtual Economies
- Design a social game economy: how much should a virtual t-shirt cost?
- Converting players into payers in 5 steps
Insight
- 30% of teenagers spend more than 2 hours a night chatting online
- The 10 must read social gaming posts of 2011
- Analysis of the top 20 virtual worlds, and what that means for your game
