I read this interview with Playfish‘s CEO Kristian Segerstråle a while back. When asked one of the key challenges in the development of social games, he points to the importance of all elements in the game being more fun with friends. This is of course a rudimentary element of any social experience and seems so simple when its down on paper like that, but as we’ve been working through the design of Flutter I’ve come to appreciate just how easy it is to forget that no player action exists in isolation. This is equally:

• Enlightening – as this social aspect can add tonnes of competitive or collaborative depth to a mechanic that in isolation could be quite shallow
• Terrifying – when you realize how bullet proof your mechanics need to be in order to survive in a user driven economy. When friends are being ranked against each other based on your designs, you better be sure your rules and fair and reasonable.

Thinking about this reminded me of Jesse Schell’s book The Art of Game Design, and the lenses he uses to dissect his game designs. This rule has become a new lens for us:

• The Lens of the Social Platform
• Is your game more fun with friends?
• How does each mechanic motivate a collaborative or competitive desire within your player?

The subtleties of mechanics aside, these interactions become truly next level when they become (as Kristian says) a way for friends to communicate. Families are coming together over Farmville, Pet Society is keeping school friends in regular contact despite being scattered around the globe. This is why social games are so huge, because these simple playful interactions are given a whole new meaning and relevance when they help to define a relationship between real people.

What if we could take it even further and make the interactions, environments, themes and messages in the games meaningful themselves? We then start to tap the potential for these games to be a playful discussion of real world issues that the media has become so poor at letting us form our own opinions around.

But before we get too serious, it’s always most important that its fun!

Thought this might be interesting to share for anyone who’s interested in cross-media entertainment / promotion / merchandising.

Avatar was the best thing I’ve seen at the movies in years. Technology and beautiful effects aside, I was really impressed that the story was compelling and the world thoroughly immersive. I could have watched it again straight away, and was keen to get online to dive into whatever extended material I could find. Even crazier, for the first time ever I came out of a film keen to pick up the game that goes along with the film. I’d heard it was average but didn’t care, it was a window back into Pandora and I was itching for more. So I was the perfect consumer right? They had me hook line and sinker, but that’s when it went down hill a bit.

Firstly, the internet. Oh my how it can make or break things. While anything that gets as big as Avatar will have its creepy devout followers, this new age of connectedness has made these overly enthusiastic fans more visible than any official content. Na’vi photoshop and makeup tutorials are flooding the internet to the enthrallment of said devout fans, and entertainment of others (lets just say they’re not laughing with them). I’m now trying to avoid all this stuff as it’s really detracting from the movie’s appeal. As Mark put it: it’s making Avatar seriously uncool. How do you counteract this? Not sure, potentially make your own web presence more powerful, entertaining, and cool than poking fun at the nerds.

Next, the game. I fired up the demo for PC and was immediately impressed by the visuals. Awesome presentation of Pandora. But then I got down to playing and was put on the end of rockets, flame throwers, machine guns etc, tasked with plowing through a stretch of Pandorian forest before mowing down a tribe of Na’vi. What…the…hell? You’ve just spent 3 hours building this deep sympathetic bond with this alien race and planet and now you’re asking me to burn and butcher them both? Right, nice. I’m assuming the demo is focused on the human side because its better than the Na’vi gameplay. I think they should have realized their key selling point was seeing Pandora through the eyes of a Na’vi, people have already got enough Gears of War / Halo.

Right, rant over, time to go and see it again in IMAX

Muse

La Roux

Modular

Nobuo Uematsu

Frontier

WiiWare

Ubisoft

PS3

Team Ico

PS2

TYLER GLAIEL

Goldfrapp

Kasabian

Phoenix

That Game Company

PSN

While we really ran it down to the wire, we were very proud to end the year on a possitive note by showing off our first vertical slice demo of Flutter to an audience of around 50 NHNZ staffers on the last day of the working year. The responce was excellent, with heaps of questions coming from the crowd, and some valuable feedback as everyone got a chance to play the game first hand. It’s scary looking over someone’s shoulder as they toy with your baby, but shaking off the jitters and opening your ears to the feedback is a pivotal point in the development process.

We now start with a new year, refreshed from our various travels and adventures, ready to refine the heck out of this small slice of the game. More on that soon.