a great post from http://abutterflydreaming.com/
“To date, having a strong brand doesn’t really seem to matter to Facebook app users. On the AppData Leaderboard, the big brands that we’re used to seeing in the video game space are nowhere to be seen. Will EA be able to change that? It’s hard to say, but it seems unlikely unless they’re willing to really invest in building their user base. The social game companies on Facebook have built their enormous user base both by building viral spread into their games through notifications and rewards for bringing in friends, but also by millions upon millions of dollars of Facebook ads. That’s why you can’t log on without seeing an ad for "Mafia Wars."
Since these games are social, building up the user base has a multipliciative effect on the value to the player and to the viral spread — when you see all your friends are playing something, you’re far more likely to check it out, and once you do, you’re more likely to have a good time interacting with your friends in the game. “
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=116983
We can easily become slaves to novelty, especially in the form of shiny technological toys that push novelty to us every hour of the day.
“…The brain is built to ignore the old and focus on the new….
Novelty is probably one of the most powerful signals to determine what we pay attention to in the world.”“Researchers have found that novelty causes a number of brain systems to become activated, and foremost among these is the dopamine system…
…research shows that dopamine is more like the "gimme more" neurotransmitter.”“…the role of dopamine is not in the pleasure that one may get from the drug, but in establishing the craving that keeps one coming back for more…
When dopamine is released, it is a signal to the brain that is it now time to start learning what is going on.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-poldrack/multitasking-the-brain-se_b_334674.html
http://thisthatotherthing.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/multitasking-is-the-brain-seeking-novelty/
Use Google images, find a picture which suits or hints at the characters face.
Then to form a character brief, a back story or to help bring someone to life, ask yourself questions like this;
Ask the questions slowly, with time to ponder, collate and compile a picture of the person in your mind. You don’t need to literally answer every question, and in 5 or 10 minutes you can create a rich and deep background, allowing you to play the character with great depth and personality.
BMW TV ad, my emphasis.
We are a car company.
But we don’t just make cars.
We make time machines, build Snowploughs, and create works of art.
We inspire fans, and fan clubs.
We are efficient and dynamic.
We even shape the future.
We realized a long time ago that what you make people feel is just as important … as what you make.
And at BMW we make Joy.
http://www.bmw.tv/core-services/view-video.mp4?id=1056&type=itunes&formatType=ipod
BMWs may create joy in their owner, they have a darker side and can also create superiority and arrogance on the road.
The challenge of creating a great experience within the frame work of the business model, may be getting harder.
“In a fixed-cost world, the designer can focus on just one thing: making the player’s experience as engaging and interesting and fun as possible.
For a F2P game, however, designers have to balance making free content fun enough to engage first-time players but not so much fun that they would not yearn for something more, something that could be turned into a transaction sometime in the future.
Every design decision must be made with a mind towards how it affects the balance between free and paid content. Thus, the true cost of piracy is that the line between game business and game design has become very blurry.”
Soren Johnson
“What are you selling? Are you selling content, expansions, accessories, customization items, functional items?
What 10 items are going to be driving your sales on a daily basis? This needs to be decided while your game is in the production cycle. Trying to determine this late in development or changing the direction of your game to accommodate this will often ruin the consistency of your game design. Plan from the start and know the role virtual goods are going to be playing in your game.
How are you going to convince players that they need to purchase your virtual goods/content? Will it be via your website or game launcher? What messaging will you use? Will you offer them sample cash shop items via a quest in-game? “
“…neuroscientists have discovered that a brain centre involved in sensing emotion and fear called the amygdala kicks into action when volunteers listen to scary music with eyes closed.
“A lot of time we do like to close our eyes when we listen to music, we feel like this is a more powerful experience,” says Talma Hendler, a neuroscientist at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center in Israel, who led the new brain imaging study.
Shutting your eyes heightens people’s emotional responses to the outside world…”
via http://derrenbrownart.com/blog/2009/08/scary-music-spookier-eyes-shut/
“In modern Japanese slang, the term otaku refers to a fan of any particular theme, topic, or hobby.” – Wikipedia
Seth Godin in Purple Cow;
“Otaku describes something that’s more than a hobby but a little less than an obsession… Otaku is the desire to find out everything about <something>”
“Consumers with otaku are the sneezers you seek. They’re the ones that will take the time to learn about your product, and take their friends time to tell them about it. The flash of insight is that some markets have more otaku-stricken consumers than others. The task of the remarkable marketer is to identify these markets and focus on them to the exclusion of lesser markets – regardless of size.”
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2003/12/are_you_an_enth.html
If you are the enthusiast and otaku, scratch your own itch. If you aren’t, understand and study your otaku’s hive. Understand what makes them tick and create a product that solves a problem for them in a remarkable way.
IDEO’s deep dive process – total immersion into the problem at hand.
http://www.designthinkingblog.com/2009/07/inside-ideo-deep-dive-part-2/
“Youngsters tend to live for the moment whilst older folks are more concerned about their futures.”
“A key difference emerged between participants who were aged thirteen and younger versus those aged sixteen and older, with the older group being more future oriented. There were no age-related differences among participants aged thirteen or less, or among participants aged sixteen or more, whilst fourteen and fifteen-year-olds were mixed…”
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2009/06/our-changing-attitudes-to-time.html
The younger age group tends to favour immediate reward, while the mid-adolescent & older age groups tend to value immediate rewards less.
http://newteevee.com/2009/07/14/want-to-get-your-web-series-sponsored-10-things-to-think-about/
A great article on level design, the Temptress and Storyteller.
http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dg3w5bqn_5995dwkxf9&ncl=true
“People prize what they don’t understand at least as much as what they do” Randall Sullivan on the creators of the Georgia Guidestones, in a Wired article
Wyatt Martin “if you want to keep people interested, you can let them know only so much“ – the only remaining contact with R.C. Christian creator of the Guidestones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones
JJ Abrams also in Wired
”We’re smack in the middle of the age of immediacy.”…
”Perhaps that’s why mystery now more than ever, has a special meaning. Because it’s the anomaly, the glaring affirmation that the age of immediacy has a meaningful downside. Mystery demands that you stop and consider – or at the very least, slow down and discover. It’s a challenge to get there yourself, on its terms, not yours.”
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box.html
Movies/TV are a series of mystery boxes, revealing their meta stories over time, withholding information to maximize the mystery and stimulate the imagination – jaws/aliens etc
“One of the reasons we like crosswords is that they let us have an intellectual triumph on a small scale”
Amy Reynaldo, Wired
“compression is the tendency of rewards to become less effective with repetition”
Seth Godin, Permission Marketing
In the same way that we adapt to familiar fragrances and start to no longer notice them, you can become immune to the thrill of rewards with excessive repetition.
Add some mystery to the rewards;
http://genecloud.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/223/
Think about them as treats, that you use more sparingly;
http://genecloud.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/are-the-rewards-like-good-treats/
“If people realise I am thirty-five,” he said, “they won’t allow their imaginations to run wild. They’ll see me as an adult acting, rather than a kid playing. Most people in the audience want to forget the rules, but they need a little help. I have to create an imaginary world for them: if I do it well, they will walk in to it with me.” Philippe a Cirque clown
Cirque Du Soleil : The Spark, Igniting The Creative Fire That Lives Within Us All by Lyn Heward and John U. Bacon
Players want to suspend disbelief, give them no cause to step outside of the world you have created for them.
“Man has been in the hunting game all throughout his existence. Primitive man’s main job was to hunt. Survival depended on it. Early man had to hunt for food and clothing, as well as shelter and protection.”
There are great parallels between hunting and playing games.
Hunting requires skill, knowledge and an investment of time. It demands concentration, effort and an understanding of the environment you are in. It has risk reward choices, offers thrills, fun and is rewarding on a number of different levels.
“…it’s not just the killing that is the thrill, it is the hunt. A hunter has used his/her skills to find or track his prey” … “It’s exciting to find the wild game, but it now finalizes the deal when the prey becomes yours; your trophy, your reward, your meal, your memory, your payoff.”
“…this goes back to early man. It’s inbred in humans.”
Game rewards can sit in a structure & have a purpose of generating emotion and loyalty for a game. Loyalty is a slightly different, more conscious and perhaps more positive version of addiction.
Is there a good loyalty encouraging structure for your game’s rewards?
“Finding the right reward model
…loyalty programs provide a good basis for understanding the basic levers of incentives and rewards…
- The frequent flyer model — Participation -> richer experience — …reserve exit row seats in advance, get a United representative on the phone quickly, and — best of all — board before the unwashed masses.
- The credit card points model — Participation -> cash …most, an accrued currency ("miles" or "points") are exchanged for tangible goods…
- The American Express model — Participation -> manufactured exclusivity — "Membership has its privileges." Amex marketing has taught us that simply using the card communicates a sense of status. Invitation-only web services …offer a certain cache to the users as representations of geek cred.”
So much time and energy goes in to designing, implementing, testing and releasing software features that only a minority of people use.
“Only 20% of a mobile phone’s features are used regularly; up to a quarter remain completely undiscovered”
from a study by WDSGlobal
1 billion apps downloaded from the App Store, yet most go used or unexplored. Our appetite is there, and for whatever reason our hunger fades quickly.
“Pinch Media drawing on iPhone analytics data highlights that (only) ~20% of user’s ever return to use an application the day after it is installed. There are many ways to interpret this data: the harshest being that ~80% of user’s are so unimpressed with their application that they never return to it.”
http://www.janchipchase.com/blog/archives/2009/04/1000000000-apps-pfft.html
In some cases breadth of function is important, although no excuse for complexity.
“A lot of software developers are seduced by the old "80/20" rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies.
Unfortunately, it’s never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features.”
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html
Is featuritis driven by fear?
“Fear of being perceived as having fewer features than your competitors. Fear that you won’t be viewed as complete. Fear that people are making purchase decisions off of a checklist, and that he who has the most features wins (or at the least, that he who has the fewest features definitely loses). Fear of losing key clients who say, "If you don’t add THIS… I’ll have to go elsewhere."
Be brave. And besides, continuing to pile on new features eventually leads to an endless downhill slide toward poor usability and maintenance. A negative spiral of incremental improvements. Fighting and clawing for market share by competing solely on features is an unhealthy, unsustainable, and unfun way to live.
Be the "I Rule" product, not the "This thing I bought does everything, but I suck!" product.”
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/06/featuritis_vs_t.html
